The Alternative Cracks

[Kevin A]

Major topic
This thread is design to help those who steal, or just can't afford to buy software, find honest alternatives to get the job done. Lets talk about some software developers that offer free products and how good they are. Lets do some research and don't forget the screenshots.

Minor topic
Is it all just zero's and one's (01), or do yo think the bigger the price the better the quality.
Lets do some research.

 

[NORTH]

Hmmm... interesting idea Kev.

I know I sure would love to find a lean sequencer that can handle VSTs... lots of them, cause my copy of LIVE 4.1 is crashing like mad with only 3 or 4 tracks.

Anyone?

-NORTH

 

[9zeros]

audacity is a good music editor like goldwave and acid.....its free and open source as well

 

[Formant024]

^^^^ get logic, get sx3 and you wont be crying...

Live is a sampling utility with minor midi support so you wont get the best out of it. Still great proggie ...for rmx'ing.

 

[NORTH]

I tried Logic a few years ago and it confused the hell out of me... have they simplified it? Cubase wasn't too friendly either when I was using 5.1... I could upgrade to SX, but I'm installing Fruity Studio 5 right now, since I've never tried it yet.

To me, hip hop is mostly straight forward sequencing... there are orchestral components, but I don't need a beast sequencer... just a lean mean VST machine.

-NORTH

 

[Formant024]

Logic isnt user ( read noob ) friendly, it takes some time to comprehand, but the best when rocking hardware. Cubase 5.1 is a pain indeed, SX is a much better improvement ( cant compare the both anymore ) but IMO has a messy gui. FL5 is easy, convenient automation and great for vst and sampling, little less great for hardware.

You'll have fun with FL, keep note of the current project folder, when having a vst or effect loaded it will appear in the automation folder in the current project folder. In there you'll find the plugs you've loaded including all their belonging parameters, right click a parameter and select edit to automate it. Couldn't get any simpler hehe.

Best tip for a noob

F5 goes to songlist
F6 goes to step sequencer
F7 goes to piano roll
F8 goes to directory
F9 goes to mixer

cheers

 

[NORTH]

Formant... you rock, thanks for the tips.

I can't believe how far FL has come in that past few years. And to think I thought REASON was all I needed for so long... FL perfectly complements REASON... I just hope I don't run into the same poor performance LIVE was giving me... cause I'm dying to put my copy of SampleTank, Battery, GuitarRig, etc.. to use!

-NORTH

 

[Formant024]

Hey, au contraire to reason, FL is also a rewire host ( and client ) so you can slave Reason to FL. But personaly...why bother with the crappy machines in reason if you can use much better vst synths, drummachines and dynamics/fx ( and that god awfull crappy mixer ) in FL. I like the Redrum, but one machines doesn't make me hook up a whole program since there are pretty good alternatives.

sampletank would be nice for the presets, battery too but slightly unneccesary with features like the beatslicer ( which read rex files btw ) and the FPC thingy. Them being legacy plugs would mean less sucking up the cpu.

Real time stretching works great too, nice algorhytms but make sure your samples are cut in the exact bar length.

Last but not least, ( very important ), fl currently has one the best rendering engines. Set rendering to sync depth 256 and you'll notice the difference between playback ( if playback interpolation is set to linear that is ). If you'd like to monitor exact you go the audio tab in the setting ( F10 ) and set interpolation to sync depth 256 ( but can create latency ). This one of the reasons people ( which I refer to as noobs ) claim that FL has a typical sound to it, they just dont know hehehe.

And Ctrl+E opens up the wav editor when you have selected a sampler channel in the SS window.

Another fine feature ( lacking in a lot of proggies ) is to render all tracks individualy. You simply select "split mixer tracks" in the rendering settings. This way you can take you pimp ass beatz to a studio and mix all waves through a nice analogue console ( hell, thaz what I do ) or at home if you have multitrack setup. It certainly looks better than those peeps coming with zipped up Reason packages and realising that this studio doesn't runn Reason hehe. Anyway, beatz the hell out of those proggies that makes you render tracks one by one which is boring and time consuming...

 

[Formant024]

Recording in FL5 in a nutshell

1.) F10, set driver to ASIO full duplex in the AUDIO tab, open asio option and mark the full duplex

2.) F9, set the "IN" to the emulated on board driver ( in case of asio4all )

3.) Hit "Rec" next to the "OUT" tab and give name to the wav file of the "to-be-recorded track", which you can also consider to be a pattern in the way you handle it after your done recording.

4.) Now hit the record button in the transport section followed by play to start recording.

5.) When done recording a new channel pops up in the SS window where you can mute/unmute the recording, edit parameters given by the properties windows or edit via CTRL+E.

6.) Hit F5, underneath the usual pattern channels are the audio patterns, what you just recorded shows up in the first audio track. Clicking on the track acts like the patterns above.

7.) To record another track, hit REC again in the mixer and start the same procedure from step 4 ( here above ). Another channel will be added in the SS window and is placed in the 2nd audio track in the song editor (F5).

So no need for other platforms anymore, do everything in FL.

(To Kevin A; sorry dude, but there's no work around, under asio4all you will keep having 2ms of delay because the asio drivers are emulated and not hardware supported. Save up for a EMU1616 or other (preferably) PCMCIA soundcards to get rid of this, it's not a software issue so other plugs or pgrms wont do any good).

 

[NORTH]

Formant... I've been using REASON for beats and ACID to record vocals and instruments on top of my beats... and it has been working ok.. but DAMNNNNN.. I believe I am onto a whole new territory of beat manufacturing with FL! I just noticed Edirol Orchestral seems to be less of a performance hog than Sampletank, but the Sampletank has some of the BEST bass samples around.

Thanks for all the pointers... I'm gonna take your advice and really dig into as much of the legacy stuff as possible, before committing to VSTs such as Battery... since performance is VERY important to me.

*Nice effort Kev.. but in my research, there just doesn't appear to be a viable FREE option out there that can compete.

 

[Kevin A]

Yeah ya'll pretty much defeated the purpose. You wasn't suppose to ask about, just share info on free stuff you researched and found to be good. Ya gotta use those reading skillz!

 

[Lex]

^^LOL, its bound to happen though.

I'm sure everyone knows about it, but for those who don't www.kvraudio.com have a collection VSTs and other audio utilities for all for free, which seem pretty decent to me [Although I almost never use them to be honest]

 

[Kevin A]

^^LOL, its bound to happen though.

I'm sure everyone knows about it, but for those who don't www.kvraudio.com have a collection VSTs and other audio utilities for all for free, which seem pretty decent to me [Although I almost never use them to be honest]

Yeah I know I just wanted to do a little more than send people a site that hosts them all, plus wings already posted a thread for KvR.

 

[shadeed]

I swear a lotta y'all MUST work for Propellerheads, Sony and everybody else because I REALLY believe that I'm the only one that believes that there is actually a good purpose
for pirated software. I think the best purpose for this type of software is to get an idea of the program and use it in its full abilities BEFORE you go out and invest your dough in a studio setup. Honestly most of us bought our first pieces of equipment based off recommendation, and most of us are in debt based on studio purchases.
It's nothing wrong with testing before you buy in my eyes anyway.

Honestly, the only person I could respect saying don't mess with pirated software is Fade, because it's his site and he could get in some trouble behind that mess.

I can't understand how people (only so-called "producers") can't get high and mighty about obtaining a copy of a program, but then get on their computer and download a whole album when their goal is to be in the music business, how backwards is that?????

 

[Kevin A]

I swear a lotta y'all MUST work for Propellerheads, Sony and everybody else because I REALLY believe that I'm the only one that believes that there is actually a good purpose for pirated software.

You gotta read that first thread in order to know what the thread is about. It's about a resource not a beef. But who's reading anyway!

Major topic
This thread is design to help those who steal, or just can't afford to buy software, find honest alternatives to get the job done. Lets talk about some software developers that offer free products and how good they are. Lets do some research and don't forget the screenshots.