“Audio cable types are some of the most numerous of any cable, with both the consumer and professional space packed with different options for different uses and different generations of technology.” says a extensive guide.
Even in an in-the-box studio you will still need some cables, for example for a microphone or for recording a guitar or keyboard, or anything else that requires a physical connection. Also, you will need USB and MIDI cables. Either way, you’ll soon find yourself in a tangle of cables.
But at least in the digital domain this mess will be mitigated: you don’t need a stereo cable to connect your synths and effects to your DAW, and that’s already a huge step forward in simplification.
Remember Murphy’s Law? If a cable can break, it will and leave you standing awkwardly amidst an eerie hum and not knowing where it’s coming from.
But you may need cables, albeit virtual, even in the digital world. For example, you have a music program that you really like but it doesn’t exist in VST format. How to drive it from your DAW?
I would like to build a monument dedicated to people like Tobias Erichsen, creator of VirtualMIDI. Its utility allows you to quickly create a virtual MIDI cable (more cables if necessary), and thus it will be simple to connect your standalone software (non VST) with a MIDI channel of your DAW and so all events can be recorded and played back even without VST. Really excellent.
Also have a look at all of Tobias’ other utilities, some are really useful even if more complex to use (a MIDI network driver? Really?).
If instead you need to capture an audio stream (for example, a singer who sings remotely on your base station in Skype) you will need an audio router.
Sound threatening? It’s just weird terms, it’s actually as simple as plugging a jack into your mixer or amp. Let’s see how.
Probably the most complete solution is the free and open source Jack Audio Connection Kit, which can handle both MIDI and audio cables.
With Jack2 you can also connect your DAW to OBS, thus opening the door to audio/video performances. If you’re already drooling, hold back.
If, on the other hand, you only need a no-frills audio cable, plug and unplug, probably the simplest and freest solution is that of VB Audio, VB-CABLE Virtual Audio Device.
Cable input, cable output and done. Just connect the right cable to the right place. All audio streams sent to VB-CABLE inputs (Playback Device) will be forwarded to VB-CABLE outputs (Recording Device).
In previous episodes we talked extensively about virtual instruments, or VSTs. But what exactly are they?
Virtual studio technology (VST) is a digital interface standard that is used to connect and integrate software audio effects, synthesizers and effect plugins with recording systems and audio editors (DAW). VST is basically a software emulation of hardware synthesizers, instruments and samplers, and often provides a custom user interface that mimics the original hardware down to knobs and switches. It provides recording engineers and musicians access to virtual versions of devices and equipment that might be otherwise too expensive or difficult to procure, or that are inexistant on marker as hardware.
There are many types of VST plugins, which can be mostly classified as instruments (VSTi) or effects. VSTi does exactly what its name implies, as it emulates different musical instruments so that the recording engineer or musician does not need to procure the specific instrument or find someone who can play it. Modern VST plugins provide their own custom GUI, but older ones tended to rely on the UI of the host software.
Steinberg released the VST interface specification and SDK in 1996. They released it at the same time as Steinberg Cubase 3.02, which included the first VST format plugins: Espacial (a reverb), Choirus (a chorus effect), Stereo Echo, and Auto-Panner.
Steinberg updated the VST interface specification to version 2.0 in 1999. One addition was the ability for plugins to receive MIDI data. This supported the introduction of Virtual Studio Technology Instrument (VSTi) format plugins. VST Instruments can act as standalone software synthesizers, samplers, or drum machines.
VST have a story: in 2006, the VST interface specification was updated to version 2.4. Changes included the ability to process audio with 64-bit precision. A free-software replacement was developed for LMMS that would be used later by other free-software projects.
VST 3.6.7 came out in March, 2017. A long story that make this technology solid and tested.
There are three types of VST plugins:
VST instruments generate audio. They are generally either virtual synthesizers or virtual samplers. Many recreate the look and sound of famous hardware synthesizers.
VST effects process rather than generate audio—and perform the same functions as hardware audio processors such as reverbs and phasers. Other monitoring effects provide visual feedback of the input signal without processing the audio. Most hosts allow multiple effects to be chained. Audio monitoring devices such as spectrum analyzers and meters represent audio characteristics (frequency distribution, amplitude, etc.) visually.
VST MIDI effects process MIDI messages (for example, transpose or arpeggiate) and route the MIDI data to other VST instruments or to hardware devices.
VST plugins often have many controls, and therefore need a method of managing presets (sets of control settings).
Steinberg Cubase VST introduced two file formats for storing presets: an FXP file stores a single preset, while an FXB file stores a whole bank of presets. These formats have since been adopted by many other VST hosts, although Cubase itself switched to a new system of preset management with Cubase 4.0.
Many VST plugins have their own method of loading and saving presets, which do not necessarily use the standard FXP/FXB formats.
Now that we have bought an audio interface, we need to think about the tape recorder, mixer, effects, anything required in a studio.
In a digital studio, the reel to reel recorder is part of the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
The digital audio workstation (DAW) has become the music producer’s canvas, a central software platform containing all the sounds, instruments, and tools they use for recording music (and other).
DAWs are deep, complex programs with lots to learn. Choosing a DAW is one of the biggest early decisions a producer faces. But what is a digital audio workstation exactly, what can you do with them, and which one is a best fit for your own ideas and interests?
Think of a DAW as a digital representation of a physical recording studio where you can produce audio for a wide variety of mediums including film, gaming, podcasting, music, UX, and more. The whole studio process is packed into one, the creative ideas in tandem with the technical. You can record tracks, build up beats, add instruments or vocal parts, then lay out the arrangement, apply effects, and mix the finished work all within one interconnected hub.
Today, the convenience and accessibility of DAWs have made them the most popular way of making music and editing audio — used by everyone from bedroom producers and songwriters all the way up to top industry professionals.
There’s a range of DAWs available that we will explore in more detail below, each with unique features and advantages. That said, common standards of design and compatibility can be identified across the different brands. Personally i use as DAW Presonus Studio One and Reaper, but it’s just because in my opinion they have the best workflow for me, the one that facilitates my personal way of working.
But all DAWs have points in common, find the one that best suits your personal preferences. If someone tells you “this sounds better than that,” doubt it. A DAW doesn’t have to “sound better” but allow you to manage the way you work most effectively without hindering your creativity.
We’re talking bits, they can’t sound better in one DAW than another. If they feel like they do, there’s something wrong with either your setup or DAW. There are lots of both free and paid ones. Find yours and learn to use it well, even reading the fucking manual. The DAW is the most important tool in your creative arsenal.
What can you do with a DAW?
1. Record, play and edit audiotracks
Digital audio workstations come with built-in viewport that allow you to record, save, edit, and playback audio. To record audio from external instruments or microphones, you need an audio interface. An audio interface takes audio signals and converts them into data that a computer can process, allowing you to record and edit audio in software based environments like a DAW.
An audio track in your DAW (in this case in Studio One, but is the same in any DAW)
Once you record, all audio is saved and displayed on the timeline, where you can cut, copy, and paste audio waveforms. From the sequencer window, you can easily mute waveforms, stitch them together, and crossfade them into one another, much like you would with audio recorded on physical tape.
2. Record, play and edit MIDI virtual instrumentstracks
DAWs also allow you to play virtual instruments (VST) for composing music. Virtual instruments and effects are software programs designed to replicate the sounds of physical instruments like synthesizers, pianos, drums, guitars, violins, trumpets, and more, or create completely new digital instruments for which there is no analog reference.
Most DAWs come with stock libraries of sounds, but they also allow for third party plug-ins—external software that can be “plugged in” to a DAW to enhance its functionality. In general, each VST has an installer that copies the needed files in the right place, a location predefined by Steinberg, the inventor of VST technology. However, many free plugins don’t have an installer, so you’ll need to place the necessary files in the correct folder by yourself.
Also check that the VST plugin is consistent with your DAW, a 64 bit DAW wants 64 bit VSTs, or it won’t work.
As you can easily imagine, a track in which the events you play or the settings of an audio effect are recorded is not equivalent to an audio track: another very important technology comes into play: MIDI.
Yes, your DAW can record two types of events: audio, such as from a microphone or guitar plugged into your sound card input, or digital in a format called MIDI. Midi tracks don’t contain audio, but a list of events such as how you pressed the A key for 1 second and with what intensity, and a series of other performance-related events. A example in the following table:
Before MIDI Learn, there were MIDI implementation charts only. This table shows how the Korg Volca Drum responds to various MIDI messages. The Control Change section in the middle lists the MIDI CC numbers and the parameters they correspond to. If you wanted to control the pitch of oscillator 1 from an external MIDI controller, for example, you’d set one of its encoders to output MIDI CC 26.
Don’t be scared, there’s no need to handwrite these codes. Your MIDI keyboard (you have one, don’t you?) will send the DAW everything needed to write your performance, just like when you use your PC keyboard to write text.
The enormous advantage is that, just like in a word processor, it will then be very easy to correct any errors, modify the execution, align the MIDI messages in a grid, manipulate the intensity of a note, in short, everything you possibly want to modify in your MIDI track. This track will faithfully send all the necessary MIDI messages to the virtual synth VST, which will play it using the sound you have chosen (any sound included in the library of the VST) and on the dedicated MIDI channel. All this events are recorded in the piano roll, vhere you can edit each note in very simple manner.
MIDI is so popular and flexible that you can find a lot of songs on MIDI format in many sites, where you can download a song and then import the file in your DAW, where you can manipulate sounds for better results for make the better cover never seen..
Midi events in piano roll view, the area dedicated to MIDI in any DAW. Any event can be edited yout editing the notes on piano roll. Very easy!
Sounds complicated but it’s not, just imagine a midi track as if it were text in your favorite word processor, and being able to edit each note as you would in the word processor.
If these concepts are difficult for you to understand, I recommend watching this video. It’s based on Studio One, a commercial DAW, but the concepts apply to any DAW.
Your DAW is not “only” a recorder, it also has a mixer to mix your sounds as you wish and VST plugins are not only instruments, but also sound effects of all kinds that you can apply to your tracks.
Mixer console in Studio One Each slider represent a track.
All this can be managed to get your final master in the preferred audio format and resolution.
There would still be a million things to say, and we’ll do it in dedicated posts. For now it’s enough for me to think that you understand how important it is to choose the right DAW for you, don’t follow the advice of gurus but get an idea by trying to work with one software and then another. The main functions of DAWs are almost equivalent, find the one that best fits your creative workflow, it’s the only trick.
It is a legitimate question, in fact a computer today can be used to create a recording studio to create even complex works which until recently would have required the use of a real studio, equipped with gigantic mixers, multitrack recorders reels and every blessing tools.
However the response to this question is long, and therefore I will divide it into different parts.
introduction
The recording studio is a fundamental part of music production process, as it directly influences the quality of your final product, let’s say the record.
These studios each have a distinctive sound, influenced by available equipment and recording environments (it’s easy to imagine that having a large room to record in will produce a sound with unique natural reverb, for example).
Over time some of these studios have become legendary, for example the Abbey Road Studios or the Sarm Studio, used by very famous bands (Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley tell you something?).
Furthermore, each of these studios had several legendary sound engineers, able to manage and create great works such as Atom Hearth Mother or The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and many other works that have made the history of modern music.
Thus the combination of studio equipment and sound engineer was a fundamental must for any artist who wanted to try their hand at making the fundamental album of their artistic career.
The studio itself was equipped with gigantic mixers, huge multitrack reel to reel tape recorders, walls of audio and effects equipment, miles of cables. The musicians and sound engineers communicated behind a large window, which divided the musician from the actual studio.
A legendary multitrack Otari MX 80 Tape Recorder
All of this equipment had one thing in common: they cost a fortune and to be able to afford to do a studio production you had to have a fat wallet (here come the legendary producer, a guy that have the ability to find the money needed for pay the studio).
Each instrument had to be recorded on a single track in order to be able to mix it with the rest of the instruments later, but the tape recorders and magnetic tapes of that era had physical limits, so the sound engineers had to resort to particular tricks such as bounce, transferring some tracks to a single one to free space on the tape. There was no copy/paste, and in the case surgical cuts of the tape were used, which was glued to the joint with adhesive tape. To record complex arrangements (think for example of those of the historical Pink Floyd) the life of the studio was not easy at all.
Life wasn’t easy even for aspiring musicians: to spread and sell your work you needed at least a recorder, and a Revox or a Teac cost a kidney at the time. Billy Studer, the inventor, was very happy dude.
Then a miracle happened: in the early 1980s Tascam’ produced a small integrated portable studio, called Portastudio, mixer and 4-track recorder on the then common cassette tapes. Incredible.
The recording quality was certainly not that of a studio, the cassettes were certainly not equivalent in frequency response to those of an Ampex tape, but who cares! For an aspiring musician it was an epic step forward. Or at least for me it was
The home-recording wave, which allowed musicians to cheaply record and produce music at home was started,and is cited as one of the most significant innovations in music production technology.
I was the lucky owner of a Portastudio, and enjoyed it very much. However, for now we are talking about analog sound on tape recorders, but the first computers for music are arriving, which record digitally.
Atari 1040 ST come in 1985, and the game change again. Its MIDI ports and VST technology will change the way music is produced forever. But this is the next episode.
Before go at Part 2, please look the following video, he explain a lot on recording process on a computer. Next step we need to talk about weird stuff like MIDI, VSTs and DAWs, so follow the given links to start understanding what they are.
We don’t want to be amateurs who just push the button, do we?
