98 degree midi

COMPUTER TEAMWORK

Thad Brown's excellent article ("Cover story: Two Heads Are Better Than One," August 2004) elucidates a few tricky aspects of using two or more computers in a personal studio and offers some great solutions.

As I began using more software synths, I found that latency settings crept up to at least 23 milliseconds when the host digital audio workstation ran a lot of audio tracks, effects plug-ins, and soft synths. That's too high for real-time monitoring if I want to add a new synth track.

The solution is simple - it requires two computers, a mixer, a second synth-hosting application, and a means of splitting the source MIDI signal to the two computers. I load both computers with identical sets of software synths, software samplers, and samples. I split the MIDI output from my controller and route it to both the primary and auxiliary computers. I run a second synth-hosting application on the auxiliary computer at a very low latency. Then, I load the same soft synth into each DAW, but monitor the synth from the auxiliary computer while I record a new MIDI track on the primary computer. Once I have a track I want to use, I switch to monitoring the synthesizer on the primary computer. Bill Lorentzen via email

IRONING OUT DIFFERENCES

I just finished reading "Capturing the Kit" (July 2004), and it's a good and useful article. But the annoying word "dampening" kept popping out and irritating me like fingernails on a blackboard.

Dampening is spritzing water on your good shirt just before you iron out its wrinkles. To "dampen" means to "make moist" or to "make damp." Damping is the process of reducing the activity of something, or (in the case of vibrations) of decreasing the length of time of a resonance. The verb is "damp," as in "I used duct tape to damp the snare's top head."

I speak from the authority of a master's degree in electronics engineering, a lot of technical-writing experience, and of having ironed a lot of shirts. Bob Wey Ear-Relevant Sounds

Bob - You are correct, sir! - Steve O

LEGAL ADVICE

Your article on manufacturing CD-G's ("CD+G=$," June 2004) was very informative. However, the section on the legal aspects of karaoke recordings (under the subhead "Technical and Legal" on pp. 60 and 62) missed the mark.

A karaoke recording with synchronized lyrics requires a voluntary (not a compulsory) license from the publisher. This was set by a landmark case in 1990 involving the Rolling Stones' publisher, ABKCO Music and Records, Inc., which made synchronized lyrics a "synchronous" use. This obviates the applicability of the compulsory license provisions of the copyright act.

The most significant difference between the voluntary license and the compulsory license is that the publisher can say "no" under a voluntary license. Compulsory licenses are obligatory (provided that you follow strict licensing guidelines), and the publishers are not permitted to say "no." Your article mistakenly stated that "compulsory licenses do not cover the charts." They cover all previously released commercial recordings whether or not they are hits or charting songs.

If one does not have synchronized lyrics, then the recording is considered "backing tracks." This type of recording, while not a CD-G type of recording, is subject to a standard mechanical license, and the Harry Fox Agency will license it.

Furthermore, it is pertinent to note that most publishers will charge a one-time, nonrecoupable fixing fee ($50-$250), as well as an advance payment against future royalties. Steven Corn Corn Music Services, Inc.

Steven - Thanks for clarifying this. We asked music-industry attorney and EM author Michael Aczon, and he concurred with your opinion. - Steve O

CAVEAT EMPTOR

I appreciated the article about preparing your computer for use as a digital audio workstation ("Desktop Musician: Conquering the DAW," June 2004). For me, synths and home studios are just a hobby. (I've subscribed to EM for 16 years.) However, my business is maintaining Windows business networks, and I am constantly amazed at the cheap PCs people buy for running business applications. A DAW requires much more out of a PC than the average business application. Author Kevin Smith spent a good portion of his article trying to steer people away from using an entry-level PC as a DAW, but I would like to expand on his admonitions.

Steer clear of any PC that can be purchased at a store. Your best bet is to purchase online from a major manufacturer and to purchase from a "business line" of PCs, like the Compaq DeskPro (now known as HP's Desktop d-series) or the Dell OptiPlex models. In addition, if the PC is offered with Windows XP Home Edition or a Celeron chip, keep looking: Windows XP Pro and a Pentium 4 chip are the baselines for business PCs. Personal-studio owners have other choices, such as rackmount DAW systems. That is the way to go when you want your PC to run music software right out of the box.

Avoid cheap PCs. When you see two PCs side by side that have similar specs but one is twice as expensive as the second, there is usually a good reason for that. Performance is much more than the component parts; it depends on the quality of those parts and how well they work together.

Don't use the motherboard's built-in graphics chip. The overwhelming majority of them use the computer's main memory for their storage, robbing performance from the CPU. Instead, get a separate video card that has the graphics capability for your uses.

Laptops are compromises. Get one only if you need extreme portability, and then be realistic about your performance expectations.

Avoid the Windows Millennium Edition (ME) operating system. Windows 98 SE is much more stable. If you need Windows 9x compatibility for some programs, consider dual-booting Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000 or XP Pro.

If a minitower is available, don't opt for the compact-case version. You'll appreciate it when you have to add that third hard drive and yet another DSP Farm card.

Consider using multiple hard drives. The first one ought to be your system drive. If you plan to dual-boot, divide it into two partitions (one OS per partition). The second one ought to be your data drive, and should be as large as you can afford. If you get a third drive for backing up (which I highly recommend), don't mirror it to your primary data drive unless you have a hard RAID controller. Soft RAID controllers rob performance from the processor. The better solution is to manually copy files after the session is over.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. And many thanks for years of great articles and reviews - I devour them all! Name Withheld by Request via email

Name - Thanks for your advice! For the most part, I agree with you, but I do have a few comments. For one thing, I would be wary of buying strictly from a company's business line, as those machines may not be tweaked for optimal real-time performance. For example, a company may put a slower drive into their business models than into their high-end "workstation" products, and since drive speed has an influence on a number of things - track count among them - that could be a factor. I have experience with the Dell OptiPlex, for instance, and would not necessarily recommend it for music production.

Second, in my opinion, it's not advisable to purchase Win 98 SE at this point, assuming you could even find a vendor that specs it. Newer products from many major manufacturers (Steinberg and Cakewalk among them) are configured for XP only. Dual booting is an option, but XP should be adequate in nearly all cases today.

Finally, when purchasing drives, be aware of acoustic noise levels and buy only what you need now, as external drives are readily available for upgrading. I have had good luck with the Maxtor One Touch series, which is relatively inexpensive and very quiet. - Dennis Miller

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

In reading Larry the O's entertaining May 2004 "Final Mix" piece on the subtle shadings of semantics ("What's in a Word?"), his "O-grown" proverb contained a "generalization of the extreme" when he stated "a person has control over nothing in his life." That is something I try to avoid.

In the spirit of subtleties and pinpoint accuracy discussed in his article, perhaps the proverb should be revised to say "a person has control over 'little' in his life." Nothing is that simple. Or is that being simplistic? Kevin White Storrs, Connecticut

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Address correspondence and email to "Letters," Electronic Musician, 6400 Hollis Street, Suite 12, Emeryville, CA, 94608, or emeditorial@primediabusiness.com. Published letters may be edited for space and clarity.