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         |  phiz
             from Liverpool (United Kingdom) on 2003-07-26 11:15 [#00794538] Points: 2622 Status: Lurker
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 | just bought this little box of fun. Very nice sounds, havin alot of fun with it.
 
 anyone else bought any hardware latelyme??
 
 seems to give a new lease of life to music making too, i've
 been needing to get my hands on some decent beats for a
 while and my output has gone up 1000%.
 
 
 
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         |  J Swift
             from United Kingdom on 2003-07-26 11:21 [#00794549] Points: 650 Status: Regular
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 | Last thing I bought was a WaveStation. Always gives me a massive buzz to have some new gear to play
 with - Am trying to save up for an Analog Systems modular
 synth... with custom EMS Synthi filters! *drool*
 
 
 
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         |  phiz
             from Liverpool (United Kingdom) on 2003-07-26 11:33 [#00794555] Points: 2622 Status: Lurker
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 | top range gear is just fantasy land really for me. dunno about youse but the high end gear seems to be available to
 people who are allready signed or actual studios with money
 to spend.
 
 i do like it though that having to make do with the gear
 you've got pushes you to get the best from what you've got.
 
 
 
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         |  J Swift
             from United Kingdom on 2003-07-26 11:53 [#00794574] Points: 650 Status: Regular
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 | Yeah, the modular synth is still a bit of a dream for me at the moment!
 I'm a mastering engineer by day, so I can sort of justify
 buying lots of music gear.
 
 
 
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         |  phiz
             from Liverpool (United Kingdom) on 2003-07-26 11:58 [#00794579] Points: 2622 Status: Lurker
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 | was looking at that new Moog Voyager in the shop, unbeleivable, fantasy world.
 
 and also this signed Moog Theramin, great fun, but a fortune
 to buy.
 
 must be fun sittin in a studio with all that shit around you
 just waiting to be fiddled with.
 whats involved in the mastering? are you deleting certain
 frequencies before it goes to a master track??
 
 
 
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         |  J Swift
             from United Kingdom on 2003-07-26 12:08 [#00794586] Points: 650 Status: Regular
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 | I'd love a Moog Voyager too! I don't actually have too much gear at the moment, just the odd module and a few analog
 synths.
 Mastering's just something I got into pretty recently - I'll
 get sent a finished studio mix (usually on CDR these days)
 and process it so it's all radio friendly, so the whole
 album sits well together, and so you can get nice loud
 recording levels.
 Just like a fresh pair of ears really, touching up EQ...
 It's quite a cool job - Gives me a lot of spare time to get
 on with my own music.
 The gear we use at the mastering studio is stupidly
 expensive though!
 I've been using a £20,000+ compressor today, hehe.. and it
 looks like it was built down my local garage.
 
 
 
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         |  phiz
             from Liverpool (United Kingdom) on 2003-07-26 12:14 [#00794595] Points: 2622 Status: Lurker
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 | sounds a great job so even no matter how good you think your tunes are theres
 allways something that needs sorting out?
 
 its weird that a tune just needs a touch of that 20 grand
 compressor just to make it right. i mean is the difference
 that big?
 
 
 
 
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         |  J Swift
             from United Kingdom on 2003-07-26 12:22 [#00794601] Points: 650 Status: Regular
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 | Well, in all honesty, no... it's not 20x better than a £1,000 valve compressor - It's just that every mastering
 studio has to try and have the best equipment money can
 buy.
 It's just that mastering engineers are VERY anal about these
 things!
 Good mastering is actually pretty subtle on the whole - But
 there's just some ultra-technical stuff that a typical
 musician/producer wouldn't want to be worrying about.
 The main thing for dance producers is that they need their
 track, maybe done entirely digital in Logic, to sit well
 next to another track, maybe done in another country using
 all analogue gear...
 So in dance music we'd quite often use filters to split a
 track into bass, mid-range and top-end, and process them all
 separately, then mix them back together - So you get this
 sort of pumped up sound... And because everyone tends to use
 pretty similar valve gear and pretty standard settings and
 levels, everything should sit well together on a mix or on a
 radio show.
 
 
 
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         |  phiz
             from Liverpool (United Kingdom) on 2003-07-26 12:34 [#00794606] Points: 2622 Status: Lurker
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 | so it must cost alot to even get to the stage of having your tunes mastered in such a detailed way. what would it cost
 for me to turn up with what i think is a finished mix of 3
 or 4 tunes to be mastered for vynil production?
 
 and i know what you mean about the anality side of things,
 you can really lose yourself in tightening things up that
 you lose the original tune.
 
 
 
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         |  J Swift
             from United Kingdom on 2003-07-26 13:34 [#00794628] Points: 650 Status: Regular
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 | The cost would really depend on how much time/work you wanted on it (usually charged by the hour).
 We really do what is called pre-mastering when it comes to
 vinyl - So our studio would do all the polishing to your
 mix, and then you'd have to use a specialist vinyl pressing
 place to actually get them cut... That's a whole other art
 form, things like cutting needle heat and friction, and all
 sorts of bazzar techincal things!
 Probably around £120 for a basic master on a single... But
 would really have to hear the original recordings first to
 get an idea of time and things.
 You can pay a LOT more if you want quite a bit of work doing
 - But simple mastering can work out quite cheap.
 A commercial release may easily cost a few £thousand+ to
 get mastered properly.
 
 
 
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