Hi Peter, Whatever you do, don’t keep university data on your home NAS! It opens you up to all sorts of risks I don’t think you’d want to take on, and it almost certainly would violate any information security policy the university might have. Amazon S3 glacier deep archive sounds about right for thi ...

It’s always worth looking at EQ to reduce ‘collisions’ between instruments and increase clarity, so I’d say that EQ certainly could be part of the solution for the piano, and not just EQ on the piano, but on each instrument individually. You may then find it’s fine to turn the piano down a bit while ...

A very good recording! The piano quality in particular is excellent. For me, the vocal is too prominent, and the lower frequencies a little undefined both for the bass and the lower drums. I think it might be a good idea to use EQ to give each instrument and the voice more of their own space, by ...

I use Google Backup for day to day backup to the cloud, which can run in real-time if you want. When projects are completed, I upload the archives to AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive which is very cheap, and very secure. There is a delay of up to 12 hours if you want to restore anything, so this is best ...

This is the curse of technology! It promises to be cheaper and easier but ‘every form of refuge has its price’.

Yes, good point about transposition, Merlyn. Saxes and trumpets transpose (and different saxes transpose differently).

For this I would use Dorico SE or Musescore. Both are free. For horn players, you would generally need notation. But horn parts are very carefully written, with dynamics, slurs and lots of articulations (staccato, tenuto, accent, etc). There are I’m sure horn players who can work with just notes, ...

I’ve never done a proper test to see if I can distinguish dithered from non-dithered renders. I’ve never noticed anything, and I suspect with 24 bit output files I would no chance of detecting it.

Yes, I remember them! I liked that tune…

Hi Alexis,

I can't speak to Windows PCs and Cubase compatibility.

I think, though, if you choose any reputable brand of audio interface there are unlikely to be problems.

For me, AI generated art and music have no value. I’m sure AI art generation is now able to generate images indistinguishable from masterpieces by the great artists, but to me they are worthless. Great art is about communicating, or evoking, something profound about the human condition. Without the h ...

In my view a PRO provides exactly what you’re looking for. You’ll have proof that the song is yours, you can still allow people to learn your songs and play them informally, but then when your songs are used in a commercial sense you can earn royalties. Probably worth researching. Bob Maybe. I am lo ...

Hi, the best thing to do is to read about US copyright law on the official website. Those texts are usually rocket science for average people. No, they are pretty clear, I’ve read them myself. From copyright.gov: IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING REGISTERING A GROUP OF UNPUBLISHED WORKS You may register up t ...

Hi, the best thing to do is to read about US copyright law on the official website.

It’s quite hard to do what you’re looking to do, Alexis. There are so many variables in how the guitar is played it’s not an easy thing to replicate on keys.

I would go for keyboard patches which fill the same ‘space’ in the music.

Try checking your ‘DPC latency’. DPC = direct procedure call. This will check whether some other processes on your machine are causing delays to the execution of your audio rendering. I haven’t needed to do this for many years, fortunately, so I can’t recommend any particular product for this, but yo ...

I’m quite happy with algorithms suggesting things, but mostly I go deliberately looking for things.

I understand your difficulty. People are reluctant to change the way they work unless they can see the benefits clearly. So, I’d focus on getting your customers to understand how they would gain from this.

MacBook Pros do have a headphone Jack. I’m not sure about MacBook Airs.

I agree completely with what Bob and CC have said.

Don’t forget backups. If you keep the samples on the Macbook, attaching an external drive for Time Machine wouldn’t be too much of a hassle.

My thoughts are that the best thing to do is to get the best monitors you can and then gradually learn how your mixes will translate on them. If that’s the PMC’s you tried, then great. It will take a little time to do that, but the benefit of being able to hear what’s really going on in your mixes is ...

Floating point refers to the position of the decimal point. Roughly speaking, floating point numbers have two components, one holding a number, the second indicating where the decimal point is to go. This means that it can represent an extremely large range of numbers. This is just a simplified, and ...

Tony, don't sell it. Put it in a cupboard until you want it again.

The best thing is to use the calibrated level just as a start point. You may prefer to have the levels higher or lower in practice. That's fine. The idea is to have the level such that you can the detail of what's going on in the mix, listening is not fatiguing even over long periods, and you're ...

I use SPLnFFT for iPad.