Improving what I hear ... translation

I am quite lucky in that I have a regular pension income, not effected by the current crisis, and our outgoings (besides food etc) are  much less than what was normal. Also, given more time on our hands, both my wife and I have been indulging in our hobbies.

As a result, I started getting interested in monitoring, mix translation etc. I wanted to improve what I hear. So I've splashed out on two things to hopefully help me.

The first is a Waves VST plugin called "Abbey Road Studio 3" which hopes to :-

".... brings the acoustic environment of the legendary Abbey Road Studio 3 control room to your headphones, so you can have better reference for your mixes and productions wherever you are."

https://www.waves.com/plugins/abbey-road-studio-3#presenting-the-waves-abbey-road-studio-3-plugin

The second, more expensive treat is a new audio interface. As a bit of a Steinberg man, I've opted for the UR44C

https://new.steinberg.net/audio-interfaces/ur44c/

Besides the obvious advantage over my old UR22, including latency-free DSP effects, being more future proof and the fact that it tightly integrates with Cubase Pro 10.5, one of the main attractions at the moment is more outputs.

For example, it has two headphone outputs with their own vol controls so I can move easily from my main headphones to plug in some ear-buds or a cheap mono speaker to check how things translate. Also the extra outputs will allow a second set of speakers, possibly fairly basic ones to easily to switched to.

When you consider how people consume music today, translation across devices, streaming platforms, is becoming very important. You want your music to hopefully not collapse if it's played in mono, or with most of the bass chopped away. You want the message to still get across.


 

Your really fortunate Mr. B ( @MrBouzouki  ) I was looking forward to spending more time recording now that I've got settled in to my new place, but now my wife is working from home so I have to keep the noise down. This is certainly stifling my creativity. 

Sometimes when I think everything sounds as good as I can get it and I post it on sound cloud, I will listen to it on my phone with cheap headphones and it doesn't sound so good at all. So it is a lesson to keep in mind.

Sorry to hear your music making creativity is being stifled to some degree. @Vince.

I really am coming around to the idea that unlike the past, where audio quality is all, it's as important, if not more so, to have something that sounds OK everywhere. If you then play it on a fancy system and it sounds amazing that's a bonus in 2020 perhaps ?

I think that is why it's getting more popular to make music on the go and less popular to make music in a 'real' studio now. The technology has freed the musician from the shackles of the studio to some degree.

Hi @MrBouzouki  .... you might want to consider a room measurement and correction system like ARC or something.

Another thing ..... I don't know if you want to go down this rabbit hole ..... but boutique cables. The YouTube videos where they say cheap cables are just as good as expensive are 100% lies! (Yes, maybe if you go with an expensive name brand scam by one of the brands starting with an M .... ) but custom made audiophile quality cables .... you wont believe what you hear. I know this guy who makes them and it is unbelievable the work that he puts in. He even re-wired the front panels of his apollo interface with highest quality wires, special solder, no strand can cross another, each and every connection point soaked in de-oxit 100 for 8 hours, etc....

It's crazy.

Re: Cubase ... I'm still using 7.5  ...... is 10.5 a huge change in workflow? I'm in the middle of projects and I don't want to have to re-learn how to use it.

 

Hi @Bill from November Sound

Cubase 10.5 works fine for a modern PC.
I believe there have been some issues with Mac depending upon with what version of OS you have etc.

I started on 7.5 Artist and upgraded and upgraded until a deal for their big anniversary meant I switched over to the Pro version.
It's an amazing piece of software and some of the creative tools are fantastic.

I believe they have a deal at present, yes 4 days left on it (28th July)   

I'm not sure if that works for upgrades but it might.  I imagine version 11 is coming in the fall.

You can run more than one version at once from the dongle I believe. Certainly I've run the current one and the one before OK. Not sure if there is a big version difference. If you are at all serious about it then you could reach out to them and ask the question. You won't have been the first person in that position.

As regards my studio room all my research indicates I probably always will struggle in the tiny space I have.  A key thing for me is keeping monitoring levels low so the room has less effect. That's why the headphones thing is important to me.

I got it  @MrBouzouki  ... and it is beautiful!   
Cubase 10.5  that is.