Sound from a Virtual Planet

Perhaps the most anticipated software development this spring was the release of the MAX/MSP/Jitter version 5 from Cycling 74, which came out last week. For those of you who don’t already know, MAX is object oriented programming environment for sound, music, video applications. Wikipedia has a very good overview and history of the program listed under Max (software).

A MAX/MSP Patch

While updates over the years have focused on, new objects and support for new OS technologies, the basic look and feel of MAX hasn’t changed much since it’s initial commercial release from Opcode. (Does anyone remember them?) MAX 5 addresses this with a complete rewrite of the entire underlining code, aligning it with current hardware and OS software platforms. A revised user interface includes a variety of on-screen de-bugging tools. Some of these, like a visual display of signal level at any connection, easily translate into powerful ways to learn about signal flow and processing. Visually, objects are much easier to look at, and a new user interface view separates the underlying patch structure from how it appears to a user/performer. Last year Cycling 74 announced an alliance with Ableton, makers of Live, and entire look of the new release of MAX looks a lot like its German cousin.

Pretty cool… That said, MAX (or Reaktor for that matter) isn’t for everyone. If you’ve got some hacker instincts, you’ll be able to get around MAX after working through the excellent tutorials that come with the program. Plan on a few weekends of focused study and experimentation and you’ll be on your way. Cycling 74 has a very good video introduction that will give you a taste of what the program is all about.

One of the high points of the Spring 2008 semester in the Music Technology Division at Berklee was a week-long visit from electronic musician Alessandro Cortini, best known for his work as the keyboard player for NIN. A visiting artist always presents a great opportunity for both students and teachers to get a better idea of exactly how people are working in the field. As with most visitors, I didn’t really know what to expect. I saw Allesandro play with NIN when the came through Boston in June 2006, and I did a bit of research, finding he was also part of a production/performance team called modwheelmood, but you don’t really know what someone’s going to do until they’re on campus.

Alessandro Cortini

I knew that Allesandro was doing a lot of work with modular synthesizers so I was keen on having him discuss strategies for integrating said devices into the composition/production process. On Monday afternoon he arrived to my composition seminar with his Buchla 200e modular synthesizer. What followed was a master class in the architecture, aesthetics and compositional strategies behind working with this wonderful instrument.

Alessandro Cortini’s Buchla 200e Modular Synth

There are two schools of thought regarding electronic instruments. These stem from the thinking and designs of two pioneers of early commercial synthesizers form the 1960s: Bob Moog and Don Buchla. Moog, working on the East Coast in upstate New York, felt that electronic instruments should be played by musicians, and his designs focused on the keyboard as the main connection between the player and machine. Buchla, on the other hand, was in a more free-thinking environment that was San Francisco, and he felt that the synthesizer should encourage a completely new way of developing and exploring musical ideas. (You’ll notice that Allesandro’s 200e has no keyboard controller.) From these two schools of thought came two early examples of commercially released synthesizer music. Just about everyone has heard of Wendy Carlos’ Switched On Bach that used the Moog Modular, and remains to this day, one of the best selling classical music albums of all time. Around the same time, Bay-area composer Morton Subotnick released an album called Silver Apples of the Moon, which was a showcase for the Buchla and the kind of music-making it encouraged.

Needless to say, in the mass market, the standard keyboard controller is the dominant interface for electronic music making. However, there are always those who are looking for new, unexplored or under-appreciated ways of manipulating electronic sound. Fast forward to 2008 and we find Cortini, who’s original calling was as a guitarist, touring and collaborating with Trent Reznor and NIN. Although he covers classic keyboard, bass and guitar parts on the road with NIN, his real passion is creating unique sound textures and rhythmic patterns that are used throughout the show.
While modular synthesizers are designed for studio use and are generally don’t stand up well to life on the road, Allesandro had a system built specifically for touring by EAR–Electro Acoustic Research. Onstage, there’s a Pro Tools system running backing tracks used in the show, and the EAR modular system gets it’s timing from it, so the rhythmic patterns it generates will always be in tempo. While this might seem like an obscure technical concept, Allesandro easily demonstrated how this was done in my Advanced MIDI Production class where he clocked his Buchla 200e to Logic.

During his week at Berklee, Alessandro talked a lot about using a modular synthesizer to generate musical ideas. The heart and soul of this comes from the different ways that a modular system controls musical timing. In general, this comes from a combination voltage-controlled step sequencers, and LFOs (low frequency oscillators), where the LFOs control tempo, rates, and rhythmic divisions, and the step sequencer produces control for pitch and other levels. Both of these sources are used to trigger envelopes that shape the sound. While this might sound simple, the routings and possibilities available in a modular system staggering. Check out this clip from YouTube of Allesandro tweaking his Buchla 200e. NIN fans might hear some vaguely familiar patterns and sounds.

In future posts I’ll be referring back to Allesandro Cortini’s Berklee visit. You can hear his work on both modular synthesizer and guitar on the new NIN release Ghosts I-IV. There are some cool studio shots of the sessions up on Flickr.

With the start of the 2008 Spring semester at Berkleemusic.com, I’m looking forward to the arrival of Absynth in my online course, Sound Design for the Electronic Musician. I spent the beginning of this year revising the course, and I’m excited by the educational opportunities Absynth will provide. So, what makes for a good teaching tool anyway? As with anything, we learn by doing, and you’ll learn from your experience with any electronic instrument. However, in my mind, a tool that’s particularly well suited to teaching is one that helps you make connections with larger concepts or principles. Absynth does that in a couple of useful ways: by using absolute values and providing time and frequency domain displays of waveforms.

Most synthesizers use arbitrary values for parameters. By arbitrary, I mean that a given value has no correspondence to an objective measure of a particular setting. For example, in Reason we can set a filter cutoff frequency to 85, but 85 what? Don’t we usually use Hz to describe frequency? As far as I can see, the values used for the parameters in Reason are totally arbitrary. By and large we’ve gotten used to this way of working with synthesizers and even in some effects processors. Take a look through your collection or virtual and hardware synths and see what you find.

Two things contribute to this, first is the legacy of analog instruments, which serve as the model for many current synthesizer designs. Back in the days of the Mini Moog, there were no display readouts of values. You used your ears and adjusted a parameter to taste. Any frequency values on analog gear is an approximation anyway, and it’s just not possible for a potentiometer to set a specific numeric value. Second, while the arrival of digital control and MIDI meant that absolute display of values like filter cutoff was more of a possibility technically, manufacturers often didn’t see the need. MIDI control has a range of 128 values in most implementations, so it can only address 128 specific values in any range. While a MIDI parameter value of 87 might correspond with a specific frequency, manufacturers often spared the user those details. Yamaha in it’s DX line of instruments was a notable exception here.

To my knowledge, the first synthesizer to fully implement absolute values for parameters was the Kurzweil K250, introduced in 1984.* Filter cutoff frequency was displayed as Hz, levels as dB, LFO rate as Hz, and time values, including envelope segment durations, in seconds. This made it a particularly powerful teaching tool, and it was a staple in the Berklee Music Synthesis Department labs for years, followed by the K2000 series. Absynth follows in this tradition by using absolute values for any parameter.

One synthesis concept that’s difficult for many students to grasp at first is the relationship of wave shape to spectrum. Early analog synths usually had two or three waveshapes available in their oscillator sections. With the arrival of digital oscillators and wavetables, synthesizers offered a greater selection of single cycle waveforms, however these were often displayed numerically. We see this in Reason’s Subtractor where waveshapes beyond the basic geometric staples are selectable by numbers 5 through 32. While a description of timbral characteristics can sometimes be found in the instrument’s documentation, we often don’t see the shape itself or the actual spectrum, the number and level of individual partials.

Waveform Display in Absynth

Spectrum Display in Absynth

As in most software instruments, Absynth has a number of waveforms available in it’s three oscillators. In addition, you can create and save your own waveshapes use the Wave Window editor. This unique editing environment lets the user select between the familiar time domain waveform display or a frequency domain display that shows the number, level and phase of individual partials. You use a pencil tool to simply redraw a waveshape in one window and the change in spectrum is displayed in the next. Conversely, when you change the level and phase of the displayed partials, you switch views and see a new shape. Pretty cool…

While Native Instruments boasts of many more exotic and even revolutionary features in Absynth’s promotional materials, absolute values and graphic displays are some of the basic features that make it a powerful tool for learning about sound. Hello Absynth…

Multi-segment Envelopes in Absynth

* While the Synclavier, Fairlight and perhaps other high-end systems incorporated absolute values, I’m thinking here of instruments that mere mortal, working musicians might be able to afford.

For some time we’ve taken pitch transposition and time-stretching of audio for granted, with one caveat; only an entire audio signal gets processed. We’ve come to expect programs like Ableton Live and now Pro Tools to treat audio like butter, speeding up and slowing down loops, time correcting sloppy drumming and pitch correcting the wanna-be diva. The Waterloo of this technology has traditionally been isolating events within an audio file. If a singer hits the wrong note, it’s usually not a problem to correct, since it’s a single monophonic event that can be easily isolated and processed. What about when the piano player hits the wrong note in a chord? Well, that’s another take…. We’ve always operated under this assumption, and it was a great reason to record performances as MIDI data, since we had the freedom to freely manipulate individual notes a chord.

All this changed last week at Musikmesse, Germany’s massive musical instrument trade show, when Celemony debuted their Direct Note Access (DNA) technology. DNA can analyze an audio event, isolate individual pitched elements, and freely manipulate them in pitch and time. While I’ve said that changes in music technology products are often evolutionary, not revolutionary, this is a really big one.

Celemony started in 2001 with the initial release of Melodyne, the brainchild of German programming whiz Peter Neubäcker. The whole idea behind the technology was to allow users to edit the pitch and timing of a note graphically. Melodyne does this by analyzing the source and displaying the result as graphic data on a pitch and time grid. From here, the audio properties can be manipulated much like note and controller data in a MIDI sequencer’s graphic editing window. Opcode first introduced this concept in the late 1990’s with their StudioVision sequencer. Here, monophonic audio performances were analyzed and represented as MIDI note and pitchbend data. You simply edited the MIDI data, and rendered the result back to an audio file. Melodyne expands on this, bypassing MIDI altogether and greatly enhancing the resulting sound quality.

Melodyne is available in a variety of products from the entry level Melodyne Uno to the flagship Melodyne Studio. Starting in Fall 2008 with version 2 of the Melodyne plug-in, Direct Note Access will be incorporated into their full line and perhaps inspire some interesting new products.

Peter Neubäcker freely admits that he assumed extending the Melodyne model to individual note events in a chord was not possible. Only after challenging this basic assumption did the algorithms behind this begin to take shape. The DNA acronym works, since Direct Note Access is really about exploring the genome of the harmonic life of music. While the demo video is truly amazing, keep in mind that the types of performances here illustrate what may be the best case scenario for effectively using this technology. There are limits, and one wonders if DNA could root out a wrong note in a dense, orchestral recording. Still, what Celemony has come up with is nothing short of remarkable.

Native Instruments’ free KORE Player is now out and available from their Website. To get going with this, you’ll follow a link for your platform, Mac or PC, and fill out a short form. You’ll get an e-mail message with a time-limited download link and a registration number. Be warned however, the download is over 600MB, so you’ll need lot’s of bandwidth to even think about it. Oh, and by the way, your best bet is to attempt this in the early evening, Eastern Daylight Savings Time, while the Germans are asleep.

Once on your desktop, the install is easy. The installer puts everything in it’s designated place, and KORE can be opened as a standalone application or instantiated as an AU, VST, or RTAS plug-in. Even though the KORE Player is free, you’ll still have to register with Native Instruments using their Service Center application and the registration number provided with your download link.

The free player application comes with an assortment of 50 Kore sounds to get you started. This is an excellent collection of both useful "bread and butter’ sounds, like sample-based drum kits, as well as the more exotic types of electronic sounds NI synths are known for. These sounds are not left-overs, and you could do quite a bit of music making with just this starting collection. However, it’s actually kind of a teaser, since the real power comes with the additional Soundpacks. These are premium collections with 200 patches in each, that cover a broad range of styles, starting at 59.00. Unfortunately, the weak dollar will continue to put customers in the US at a disadvantage with this and any other European product.

All-in-all, the KORE player is a great way to expand your pallet and get some fresh sounds into your electronic music.

Postscript…. On March 13, 2008, NI announced a server upgrades to accommodate the increased traffic.

OK, it’s a month later and people are still asking me about the coolest stuff I saw at the Winter NAMM 2008. So I guess I’ll have to come clean with my top 5. For those of us looking for big music technology news, trade shows are more or less sleepers. These days, fewer manufacturers time their release cycles to trade shows. Even Apple, who tries to set their trajectory in January with Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote, is more about getting products out the door as soon as they’re ready. So, for most music technology companies, major releases and announcements have already hit the street by January. There are some exceptions…

Although I got scooped on this one by my friend and fellow Berkleemusic blogger, Dave Franz, at the top of my list is Spectrasonics, who know a little something about drama. They skipped NAMM altogether last year while working on "something really big." The fruits of that labor saw the light of day at NAMM this year when patron saint of sound design Eric Persing rolled out Omnisphere.

Spectrasonics has been quite successful at creating powerful and evocative sampled instruments such as Atmosphere, Trilogy, and Stylus RMX. These were based on the UVI sound engine which essentially is a platform for sample playback. With the next generation of instruments, the company wanted to develop their own sound engine that would expand on sample playback and get much deeper into synthesis techniques such as granular, waveshaping, and FM. They came up with something they call the "Steam" engine. While the synthesis and modulation functions here are deep, Spectrasonics has made them immediately and easily accessible to any musician. The sound library itself is massive, comprised of the greatest hits of all their previous libraries along with a collection of new and unique samples. They showed one such sampling session for their demo where an upright piano was set on fire and carefully recorded as it went up in smoke. The sound quality was fabulous and the design was ingenious with things like a Farfisa organ graincloud sounding at once unique and familiar. The only downside of their demo was the September 15 release date. With such a build-up I didn’t meet anyone who didn’t want to leave the show with a copy tucked under their arm.

One of the biggest buzzes at the show this year was the Euphonix MC line of hardware DAW controllers. While primarily known for their high end digital consoles, Euphonix is coming out with a more modest line of products that uses their Ethernet-based EuCon DAW control protocol.

These new surfaces, the MC Mix and MC Control, are aimed at the project studio user with 999.00 and 1495.00 price tags, respectively. Currently, their main competition will be the Mackie Control units. However, a sleek, compact design, well-designed functionality, as well as the responsiveness of their high-speed control will make these units serious contenders.

Next on my list is Access. While it took a couple of years to perfect the technology behind the Access TI (totally integrated) line of Virus synthesizers, these instruments have become one the must-haves in current electronic arsenals. This year Access introduced an entry-level, stand-alone module version of the Virus TI called the Snow. To top things off, Richard Devine spent the weekend holding court at their booth, evangelizing the Virus and the newly released Atomizer companion software.

The software works alongside the Virus OS to beat slice audio input coming into the Virus, map the slices across the keyboard and provide addition processing controlled by the mod wheel and pitch bend. In the capable hands of Richard Devine this became a powerful, real-time performance tool. It looks like Access is pushing the envelope of what we can expect from a hardware synthesizer to include functions that we’d normally associate with custom laptop performance software. Atomizer will be free to all Virus TI users.

Korg had one of the coolest gadgets I saw at the show, and the closest thing to what one might call a glitch instrument. The new Kaossilator Dynamic Phrase Synthesizer takes a small Kaos pad controller and adds 100 different sounds and phrases.

An internal sequencer allows the user to assemble simple melodic/rhythmic fragments and manipulate them with the pad. The device itself is pocket sized, and while it offers little in the way of connectivity or pro features, it’s really fun to play, and downright addictive.

Somehow NAMM brings out the guitar player in everyone, and this year, Mackie’s new HotWire guitar amp was what did it for me. Legendary designer Greg Mackie reputedly spent years on this design, and the result is a remarkable combination of high and low tech in a great sounding amp. At the heart of this is analog tube circuitry. Not just one circuit, but a number of them, so that in fact, when switching between the various amp modes, the actual circuit routing changes, along with the selection of tubes used. Think of it like having a collection of tube amps at your disposal, where you can easily switch between them. In addition, the amp comes with a collection of creature comforts from a tuner and metronome, to on-board digital effects. The amp sells for 1500.00 and is expected to be available in March.

Winter NAMM 2008 Top Five Roundup.

1. Spectrasonics Atmosphere
2. Euphonix MC Controllers
3. Access Virus Snow and Atomizer software
3. Korg Kaossilator
5. Mackie HotWire Guitar amp

There’s always been a disconnect between musical instruments and technology. On one hand, we view instruments as things that take years of dedication and practice to master, while the unabashed goal of technology is to make the things we do, from basic communication to art creation, easier, and shall we say, more "democratic." With synthesizers, there has always been a steep learning curve involved with the art of sound design, however manufacturers have repeatedly found that most using these instruments, hardware or software, never stray far from the factory presets. Now let’s take a company like Native Instruments, who have developed an extraordinary line of unique, powerful instruments. How do they reconcile the two, staying on the cutting edge while serving the needs of the marketplace?

In the last couple of years, NI has been promoting its Kore system as a way to simplify working with massive software synthesizer patch libraries. Kore uses a database and browser to organize patches, formatted as Kore sounds, by sound categories. For those who have NI Komplete, this makes for a very powerful way to access sounds while in the production process. Typically, when looking for a bass sound, one would have to open each synth, browse for suitable patches, write them down, open another synth, and repeat the process, over and over again. This gets tiring fast; –not what attracted any of us to electronic music in the first place. With Kore, the patch browser lists all patches designated as bass patches, regardless of which instrument they’re from. They can be opened, auditioned and used in a project, all within Kore.

While on the surface it may seem like we’re opening a new synth each time we call up a patch, we’re actually running off the Kore Sound Engine. What NI has done is built the sound engines for REAKTOR, MASSIVE, ABSYNTH, FM8, KONTAKT and GUITAR RIG into Kore, so when any Kore sound is loaded the engine is ready to go. Pretty cool…

So what’s the next step? Give the software away…free. At NAMM NI announced that a free Kore Player would be available in March, and the company will be selling soundpacks for 59.00 each. The player will have all the sound engine capabilities of the full Kore 2 version with a starting collection of 30 patches. While this is a remarkable development in the electronic instrument industry, giving away the synth but selling the patches, this is a model that we see more and more with technology tools. You need to look no farther than the printer you probably got free when you bought a computer to understand that the cost is in the toner, not the machine. And so it goes for software synthesizers.

It will be interesting to see how this flies in the marketplace. While there seems to be some support for the business model, soundware never appeared to be much of a moneymaker in the music tech industry. But, when you take a look at how musicians actually use synthesizers, as opposed to how they say they use them, our friends in Berlin may be on to something.

The hardest part of getting through a NAMM show is wearing a badge that identifies me with Berklee. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m proud to represent the institution, and while my affiliation opens many doors, there are scores of alums in all aspects of the music industry who love re-connecting with their alma mater. If you want to travel to NAMM incognito, get your badge from Harvard.

The best spokesperson for any product is an artist who uses the product, and uses it well. This year, I was pleasantly surprised to see one of my former students, New York electronic artist Matt Moldover, talking about his work and performing at the Ableton Live booth. While sharing a common school experience with fellow alum Dan Lehrich, profiled in an earlier blog entry, Matt has taken a very different path, establishing a profile as performing artist.

Matt was one of the legion of guitar players that comes to Berklee each year. While most are looking to follow in the footsteps of one fretted deity or another, Matt always wanted to forge his own path, and after getting in the Music Synthesis major, that was combining interactive electronic performance with the guitar. At Berklee he discovered MAX, and soon was on to the idea of extending what he did as a player to sound from electronic sources. Matt didn’t want to play in a band, he wanted to play with sound.

Matt also got turned on to DJ and club culture. Moving to New York after graduation, he found a scene for like-minded electronic performers, and jettisoned his first name, becoming the artist known as Moldover. Being a player and a geek, he was in the right place at the right time when Native Instruments came out with Guitar Rig. The first time I saw him at NAMM, he was the Guitar Rig guy at NI. While he gave knowledgeable and convincing demos, I got the sense a different muse was calling. At a party in LA we had a chance to talk, and I got a glimpse of some of the projects he was working on, the first of which was the Interstellar ReMix Wagon for Burning Man, 2004.

The thing I didn’t quite realize about Moldover was that he was really pretty good at building stuff. His next project was the Octamasher, a performance system fueled by Ableton Live that gave eight “mashers” a tool to communally create a club mix. Social networking and interactive performance might sound like a research project at the MIT Media Lab, but this is a guy with a laptop, hacking a bunch of cheap keyboard controllers and hitting parties…. pretty cool.

Sometime last fall came a new website and the birth of “controllerism.” According the the site, Controllerism is “the art of manipulating sounds and creating music live using computer controllers and software.” Perhaps Matt will be the first to make both YouTube and dictionary.com. But, what I saw from him at the Ableton booth this year was a virtuoso performance that combined electronic music with the spontaneity and inventiveness of a jazz soloist, swapping clips of sound for notes and scales.

Dan Lehrich and Moldover may seem at opposite ends of a very wide playing field, but what really fascinates me is the real passion they both have for creating immersive performance experiences using computers and physical interfaces. While research in the field of interactive music systems continues at the highest levels of academia, it’s really cool to see real innovation happening on the street as well.

I’ve been going to the Winter NAMM show since 1997, and every year when I return I’m always asked “so, what did you see.” Granted, trade shows are all about products, but over the years I’ve come to realize that they’re really about people. I don’t really need to fly across the country to find out about new products; any of us can check a manufacturer’s website after the show closes on opening day and get the dope on their latest and greatest. What’s really cool is the people, and for me, some of the coolest people I meet are students I’ve had over the years. I’d like to highlight a couple of former students from Berklee’s Music Synthesis department, my day gig, who have gone down very different paths and are doing really cool things.

My first day in LA I had the opportunity to have lunch with game developer, Dan Lehrich. I count myself lucky because it seems like getting a mid-week lunch with anyone working in LA, is about as easy getting an audience with the Pope. Dan came to Berklee as a bass player and left as an interactive audio designer. He had a typical trajectory through the core courses in the Music Synthesis major until he found Max. Max is a graphical programming environment for music, and capability expands into audio with the MSP extensions and video with an additional toolkit call Jitter. I recall talking with Dan while he was in school, soon after he had this epiphany, and what really excited him was the possibility of programming the kind of interaction he experienced playing bass with other musicians. Once he got the bug, he got real tight with Max. He worked as a student employee in Synth department office, and became a fixture, tweaking his latest patch, showing his stuff and sharing ideas with anyone who walked past.

Then graduation, and reality set in. There’s really not a big market for interactive computer performance, and we all have to eat somehow. Fortunately, an internship opened up at game developer Electronic Arts in LA, and Dan was in. At lunch, he talked a bit about that first experience. As an audio intern, there’s a lot of grunt work to be done editing and managing files, not exactly glamorous. But, Dan really opened some eyes along the way with a solid knowledge of advanced synthesis techniques that they had never really seen in an intern before. His stock went up. After the internship had ended, he began working for independent developer Seven Studios. As things got busier, he eventually found himself in the enviable position of starting and managing an audio department for them, and was soon able to hire a fellow alum to help meet the mounting deadlines he faced.

Along the way, his passion for interactivity and programming skills continued to grow. One of the big game hits of the last few years has been Guitar Hero and the follow-up Rock Band. On the surface, the attraction of these games may be the engaging 3D animation, but the core of the game play experience comes through, you guessed it, interactive music systems. Dan refers to these as “tempo-driven” games. Seeing an opportunity in the marketplace, Dan put together a demo for a game using Max, pitched it to game producers, and after a series of starts and stops, it’s now in development.

While I’m always up for a good success story, as a teacher, I’m interested in what someone needs to know to be successful. When I posed this question to Dan over lunch, he stressed knowing the basics of digital audio –sample rate, resolution, compression and file formats. While a knowledge of granular synthesis techniques may have impressed his handlers at EA, being able to clearly communicate this basic information got him though the day.

Fall 2006 brought a cornucopia of software updates for music production. If you’re a Mac user, that includes the long awaited new operating system, Leopard. A late November release of Live 7 capped a season where we saw the arrival of Logic Studio, Reason 4, NI Komplete 5 and Pro Tools 7.4. This onslaught raises the inevitable question for users of when to upgrade –what works or when will it? Although most of us involved with technology welcome change, but we are periodically reminded of the commitment we make to troubleshooting and learning new features. This past fall, that was a big one.

Out of nowhere, Logic Studio was announced in early September. After months of rumors about what would become of Logic, 10 DVDs held the answer. By this time, there’s a number of really good reviews out of Logic 8, but suffice it to say, this is an evolution, not a revolution. However, with Logic 8 shipping as a software suite with Soundtrack, Compressor, and Mainstage –a new performance application that hosts software synths and processors– at half the price of Logic 7, the update for users is a no-brainer. The install took forever, even without adding the lifetime’s worth of GarageBand loops that are included. But when all was said and done, Logic 8 ran like a clock and played nice with just about all the plug-ins it scanned –again another wait while the AU police did its gig.

I had a beta of Reason 4 over the summer, so when I finally got the release version in October, there were no surprises. Our friends in Stockholm release no software until its time and Reason remains the most stable piece of software I have ever used….period.

By the time Leopard was announced, my attitude was two down, bring it on. The new OS went on sale at 6:00 PM, I had it in my hands by 7:00, and at 9:00 my G5 tower studio computer rebooted to reveal shades of purple. I soon found out it was the color of envy… of all those who had the good sense to leave well enough alone. Leopard brought every single piece of music software to its knees, with the exception of standalone softsynths, and of course Reason. Times like this bring out my dark side…the fearless geek. As with any other vice, indulgence turned into another lost weekend….sorting through plug-ins and general troubleshooting.

OK, I knew Pro Tools wouldn’t work, but when the new Logic 8 crashed on every launch, I got nervous. Some people read mysteries, others chase down software incompatibilities, and it was off to the races for me. As Logic started, things seemed to bog down when I got to the Waves plug-ins. With a quick trip the Waves Website, I found that their line of plug-ins was not yet compatible with Leopard. So, once my Waveshell hit the trash, things got a bit further on start-up, but still no luck.

It seems that I never met a plug-in I didn’t like, and I install just about anything I come across. The problem is, they stay there. After sorting though all the demos and betas, I finally narrowed the field to a few likely suspects. Again, off to the trash; but still, no luck. One of the most reliable ways to start sorting out problem children in the plug-ins folder is to take them all out and open the application. With an empty Components folder, Logic opened without a hitch. The next step is the tedious task of closing the application, adding a plug-in, then opening. As long as Logic opened, I was in the clear. Instead of adding individual plug-ins, I went through families at a time. I was pleasantly surprised that my favorites were not at fault. After a bit of this low-level detective work, I found that the Melodyne Rewire plug-in, one that I had never actually used, was the culprit. Once Logic opened, all the other applications that had previously crashed, ran without a problem. Any program that was an Audio Unit host stalled on that one plug-in. (As of this writing, all current Melodyne plug-ins run under Leopard.

I might add that when installing Leopard, I chose to migrate my applications, settings, and preferences, and thankfully all of installs and the associated labyrinth of copy protection schemes remained intact.

So, was it worth it? Heck yes… Leopard is a really slick OS visually, and despite the hit you might expect the processor would take from the added graphic elements, the system runs smoothly, is very stable, and there is a noticeable improvement in the performance of some applications. At first glance, there doesn’t look to be any changes to Core Audio, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some goodies somewhere under the hood.

So, should you upgrade? Well, that depends. Here are a few thoughts on when to upgrade:

Tips for upgrading:

1. Do you need to? If you use a machine for billable work, be very cautious with upgrades. (If you’re a working pro, I probably don’t need to tell you that.) If you are working on projects that have deadlines, don’t do it.

2. If you have two machines, start with one, using it as a test platform, then transition to the other. I started with my studio machine, and since I had no looming deadlines, this made some sense, hence my somewhat cavalier attitude this time out. I use my laptop to run my life and since it’s a newer Intel machine, it can work for just about any project that comes up as a back up. I’ll update it when the dust settles.

3. If you think you’re ready to make the leap to a new OS revision, check manufacturers’ Websites for compatibility. Don’t forget any drivers you may need. Although many are now class compliant and need no additional drivers, this is not always the case. MOTU hardware requires driver software, and they are thankfully pretty quick to update.

4. If you’re updating an OS or a host application such as any DAW, check with the companies that supply the plug-ins you rely on for compatibility.

5. Weed through your plug-ins before running a new OS or software version. A bit of housecleaning will usually ease a transition. I always try to set aside time when I make major upgrades or revisions to clear out software and plug-ins that I don’t use.

6. Back up before you make any changes. Getting a new OS is like getting a heart transplant (or at least a bypass). You’re making a major change to the critical part of your system and stuff can happen. You never know exactly how compatible documents will be with new versions of software that authored them.

Happy New Year and have fun with all the new stuff that’s out there.