PC Correct?

Ultraviolence HQ 2009

Despite a frightening episode of temporary blindness a couple of weeks ago, which was how you’d imagine it only more boring, I’ve been feeling loads better lately. My chest still bugs me but there have been no prolonged life stopping periods of pain so far this year, so the guys at the Pain Clinic decided its best not to stick any anaesthetic needles in there for now. I’ve been able to do regular short cycle rides and have built a new PC for my studio.
Personally, I think the headaches associated with owning a music PC are overplayed by some. I expect slightly less hassle than maintaining small to medium size analogue based MIDI studio from ten years ago, and on the whole it is. For every hour I’ve recently been spending messing around with software licences, I’d probably have had to spend two or three routing out suspect cables, power supplies, vicious Atari mice and so forth. The aforementioned licences have been much easier to handle with a broadband connection – I decided against an Internet connection for my last two music computers but this seems to have gone smoothly enough using Windows Defender for protection on known sites. Now it’ll remain safely unplugged apart from updates every month or so. Hardware wise, the more things you connect to a PC the more hassle can be – here’s a few units I’ve had extensive experience of…

RME 9632 Hammerfall PCI (soundcard)

I had been through several cheaper soundcards before biting the bullet and spending £300 on this, mostly due to compatibility issues with my Powercores (see below). I certainly wouldn’t look back – the card’s user interface seems simple but allows control of every possible function, along with extensive diagnostic system and level information with good value D/A converters. However, the single best thing about the unit is that it has absolutely never caused my PC to crash with any software or hardware configuration. The last thing you need when on a creative roll is error messages, and this is rock solid.

PC Electronic Powercore (DSP card)

Although clocking up the years this is a great sounding unit, and has a weight and depth that most native plug-ins lack. However, stability issues make it hard to recommend. Coupled with my original M-Audio 1010LT soundcard unexplained buzzes made for an untenable config, with neither TC or M-Audio admitting any responsibility for the common situation. I replaced the M-Audio with a Focusrite Sapphire – all was well until the introduction of a second PCI Powercore where instability issues, especially when using Access’s Virus synth plug, came about again. Even with the RME card the Virus plug is still unreliable, with timing issues when running more than one instance. Why? It’s still on version 1.0.0, as TC and Access can’t agree on whose responsibility an update is. Like all things Powercore, it’s great when it works but not worth the hassle. I’ve become something of an addict, but I’d recommend non-users to stay clear.

Universal Audio UAD-1 (DSP card)

This has the opposite problem to the Powercore – it is very easy to use but I find the plugs themselves to be very retro and that, for me, means dull. I’ve a friend who mixes band music and swears by it. He tested the Neve plugs and, summing aside, found them dead-on accurate compared with the real desk. But perhaps the thought of owning the world’s best studio in 1983, and having Phil Collins in for session doesn’t consume his mind with suicidal thoughts…There just aren’t many UAD plugs that work for me – unfortunate as the system is super user friendly, convenient and inexpensive. As my spare PCI slots get rarer, this might have to go. Maybe along with the Powercore as well…as PCs get more powerful do we really need accelerators? Possibly not unless they’re a…

SSL Duende (DSP card)

The future of user interfaces is now...draw and go

This is sublime – I have two firewire models that have effectively replaced my Tascam mixing desk, with 32 stereo channels of the giving the best EQ sound I’ve ever heard – including real SSL desks. The bundled plugs are great, but add the optional X-EQ for a frequency-busting 10 band filtered EQ using a graphic interface. I see no reasons for plugs, apart from emus, to stick to awkward virtual knobs – graphical interfaces are much quicker to edit, easier to see what’s going on, look nicer. In this case total control from floor to ceiling, bollock bashes to head splits, and the best thing for mixing ever.

New Order: Original Masters

Blue Monday: art over wealth and ego

When I was awarded my first recording contract in the early 90s I was shocked at how the music business still encouraged childish images of rebellion and pretentious attitudes from artists, because I thought that had all been killed off. Not by the then current rave culture but by New Order, surely the best band of their era. The most iconic image, for me was their Top of the Pops appearance for Blue Monday. Seemingly dragged from Manchester via the Co-op clothing department, they looked gaunt and uncomfortable as they shambled their way through their beautifully melancholy electronic symphony. They imsisted on playing live and, as though to prove it, even the synthesizers were out of tune. Such a world away from Miami Vice, big hair, big grins, big voices, big wallets, wanker DJs, the whole shebang.

Hearing recent pastiches of their work by The Ting Tings and Sugarbabes reminded me to restock my New Order CD collection, as when my old discs were either played to death or killed by trampling and oxidisation. All their 80s albums now come remastered in a collector’s edition with a second CD of remixes. The original album tracks still sound fresh, with Bernard Sumner’s little stories and/or streams of consciousness are always poignant and warming even when intending nonchalance and sarcasm. The backing is mostly inventive, and can fluctuate from charmingly naïve to toweringly statuesque in a brilliantly disarming fashion. The effect is heightened by the fact anybody with a modern PC could theoretically make this music, but nobody ever will. The remixes, however, from the likes of Shep Pettibone sound hideously dated and weren’t that great in the first place, overlong and literally laced with bells and whistles. Blue Monday ‘88 sounded bad by 1989, its shameless commercialism standing in monotonic contrast to the accidental ethics of the original’s infamous loss making sleeve design. The pleasingly restrained remastering process whilst adding nothing to the recordings, doesn’t spoil anything, making it no worse than pointless. The Perfect Pit is a glaring omission from the Lowlife CD – a short deconstructed version of The Perfect Kiss which I beleive to be the precursor of 808 State’s Cubik – the track which defined early ‘90’s hardcore and remains influential.

New Order were so hardcore from a marketing perspective that many of their singles didn’t appear on the albums at all. But the remastering of the relatively recent singles compilations has fared much worse than the albums, with the sound compressed to all but eliminate dynamics in order to raise the volume – perhaps to appeal to the severely disabled listener incapable of adjusting his or her hi-fi controls. I don’t really see the point of remastering old material at all – the originals sounded fine and translated well to CD so what’s the point? Current music is mixed in the knowledge of what the modern mastering process involves, and therefore is well suited to the procedure. Take the aforementioned Sugarbabes’ About You Now, for example. Its titanium clad production thrives on the mechanical pummelling and squashing like a super-knight, but older recordings cannot survive the punishment that they were not designed for. There is no point in imposing these 2008 production values onto old recordings, any more than there is a point to applying 21^st century moral values onto a 17^th century witch-hunt.

So as well as recommending the old editions of the New Order albums, a real must-have is Substance 1987 – now widely available for well under a tenner. Over two hours of New Order single heaven with their own remixes, completely untouched by misguided tweaking. The one problem – you might have to turn the original masters up.

Grand Theft Intellect

I was recently contemplating selling my Nord Rack synth – I rarely use hardware modules nowadays and have spent well into four figures on soft synths, including a Nord Lead emulator from Polish software company Discovery. Unfortunately, it isn’t quite an exact emulation (Discovery’s website is amusingly contrary on the subject, claiming the software is “not a reverse engineered Nord Lead” whilst allowing the import of Nord Lead data), in practical terms it simply lacks bass, so I’ve had to keep the Nord. But as I was trying to wring some sub-bass from the import of the dive bomb sound from Facilitator, my mind began to wander as to the moral, and not just the legal situation with such faux emulators.
As far as I’m concerned, the decision to use legal software is a moral one – I know where and how to obtain cracked software as do most people. And I know that were I to use illegal software I would be very unlikely to be prosecuted for doing so. So why is it OK to use (in this case) Nord’s work to create the software and then charge for it? I’ll stop picking on Discovery now as they’re a small and rather affable company, but look at TC Electronic and Native Instruments with the TC-01 synth and Pro-53 respectively. Both cloaked emulations from relatively large companies who have a fearsome attitude towards protecting their intellectual property. However, in the cases of these particular synths I would argue that it is at least in part not their property to protect, but rather that of original manufacturers, Roland and Prophet. The problem is more widespread than a few plugs – look how many 909 drum sounds are routinely included with dance music sample libraries. On what moral grounds can these sounds be sold and resold again and again for profit without their original creators being paid? Taken to its logical conclusion, shouldn’t Bob Moog be paid a small royalty on every soft synth sold? Looking at other media should THQ, makers of the videogame Saint’s Row, be kicking money upstairs to the Rockstar Games, makers of its vastly superior inspiration, Grand Theft Auto? Counterfeit music artists are also commonplace - ripping an MP3 by girl group The Saturdays may be illegal but I cannot see how that squares morally with their unpaid usage of an image and production sound based around that of Girls Aloud. Is their music data not, at least partially, stolen goods?
The idea of paying for pure data and no physical product is still in relative infancy, and there is much real as well as “convenient” confusion from consumers. But eventually perhaps we will see a situation of a fairer payment system, whereby the actual creators of data and its origins are financially compensated and not just those immediately involved.
Meantime, there will be many who profit from the direct or indirect ideas of others and taking a moral high ground on copyright issues whilst doing so.