A lot of time at KVR is spend on returning issues that in the worst case will end up in flamewars and will get people banned. These are what they are and this thread is not about moralizing about them. I guess that if nothing else, these threads are at least social internet events that entertain people. However considering the amount of time people spend on such issues, I can not help wondering how much of it really means anything for music production for people. So here comes the question: Do any of the following issues REALLY means anything to you with regard to your drive, will, inspiration, ability, needs or skills for making music?

1. What DAW you are using?
2. To what extent instrument X emulates instrument Y correctly?
3. Whether you make it on a mac or pc?
4. Whether the software is dongled?
5. Whether the gear available to you are software or hardware?
6. Whether the gear available to you are analog or digital?
7. Whether the your software has ALL possible features you can think of?
8. Whether you can record, render, play files in 24 bit 96 khz?
9. Whether you like marketing strategics of the companies you buy from?
10. Other?

For my concern, the daw I am using can have significant impact on inspiration, the amount of music produced and the speed at which it is produced. At a desert island, I would make music with whatever daw available though. PC over mac only matters because one of my fav daws (Orion) and some vsti are not made in mac versions. I don't like dongles but if there is a program I really want (Reason for the time being)I will live with it. No matter how much I like the sound of hardware, it does not beat the convenience of software, so neither hardware nor analog gear matters to me. Too much of a hazzle to me setting them up, recording and processing them. My needs are very basic so no need of all thinkable features. Vocal generators and processors are a must to me though. I cant hear any difference between 16 bit 44,1 khz and higher formats so luckily I am not into these debates. Marketing strategics only matters if the company cheats people in which case I will not support them.

My conclusion is that whatever reasons drive to participate in such debates, the production of music is not one of importance among them. How about you?

Cheers
Last edited by IncarnateX on Sat Aug 18, 2012 4:03 am; edited 1 time in total

I'm well pissed with people always going on about that.

+1.

Yeah. The threads can be depressing and uninspiring. Nonetheless the debates return and are well visited. I thought it either really must mean something to people or that they must have other reasons for engaging in them like entertaintment value or something.

1. yes
2. no
3. yes
4. no
5. yes
6. no
7. no
8. no
9. yes

1. Yes. I find some quicker than others or more encouraging of certain activities than others.
2. Not at all. I don't know the originals.
3. Yes, I have acquired general distaste for Windows after using it since 1992(?).
4. Yes. Dongles have actively discouraged my use of software. I use Reason's online login 99% of the time.
5. Unsure. I'm very interested in hardware and I find the promise of total recall on software unreliable. I enjoy hands-on activity.
6. Like #2, I've no experience and therefore: no.
7. No.
8. No.
9. Yes, if they do really piss poor things, like NI dumping Kore and sending us masturbatory "look how cool we are" magazines and shirts as a "loyalty reward."

People buy this stuff because they want to make music or meaningfully participate in the process of making music. As everybody must make the transition from being a novice to an expert, at any single point in time on that journey they are confronted by a set of mechanical choices. This thang, that thang or the other thang. The stream of thang choices can become a surrogate for the skills progress they really need to make. Then, thang acquisitions, and the choices that have underpinned them, become a purpose in their own right, at which point fanboyism sets in. This is the process of justifying thang choices, rather than actually making or working on music.

Years ago I came across a question on some forum, perhaps even here, about how could you get this exact same sound that John Barbieri got on a Prophet 5 on such-and-such a track way back when? Now before anybody starts genuflecting towards the transistors of the great synths of yesteryore, the thing with the P5 was that it wasn't built terribly well. The pots behind the knobs were steppy. Barbieri made this flaw one of his trademark techniques, playing into the steppiness to get quite a radically new musical expression out of the thing. You can't easily get this with any soft synth and controller combination I know of. So you can't get that exact same sound without an original P5, or an onerous amount of effort. And the moral of this story is: how did John Barbieri get that exact same sound, when nobody before him was making it?

That's the audio soft industry right there. How do you re-do something that's already been done, probably thousands of times before? Which is the most exquisitely perfect emulation of this compressor, or that EQ, or the other thang, or the other thang? Because if only you had the other thang, you could do it too? You could really be somebody if only you had the other thang with the exact same sound? Only problem is, so will 64,000 other dudes, and, let's face it, some of them probably got it for free. The ghost isn't in the machine. So the fact that you're using this thang or that thang just puts you into the same crowdfest as tens of thousands of others. It doesn't make a hoot's pisswank what you're using, it's the music that counts. It's taking what you have and making something new. Or you can buy a plugin and sound just like T-Pain.

If you go down the thang route, looking for the pot of brilliance at the end of the thang rainbow, you'll never actually get there, and certainly not before a bazillion other dudes get there first. You just spend years of your life arguing why your thangs are the best. The name for this is: displacement activity.

Did they really do that? Oh dear.

While having nothing substantial to compensate with one must say they tried.

However, would such an event be enough for you to dump them, I wonder?

Cheers

Yup. Been there. Got over it and moved on. Easy to get caught in it though.

Cheers

Amazingly, it's so few people who worry about such things. The vast majority of people realize this is a forum, where people share a WIDE variety of ideas and don't believe that their pov is the only one. It's only a small group, but BOY do they think they are the only ones who are right.

The rest of the 200,000+ have fun, share info and use the forums as they were intended

Excellent post, HanafiH

I stuck with Cubase behind specific features that are not covered elsewhere and its comfort level factor and compatibility and ease with something else I use which does things nothing else does.

if Y absolutely has to happen. If we're talking about synthesizers emulating old synthesizers, that'll be 'no extent'.

No.

I am not discouraged by it at all personally.

hardware I have no interest in, I'm cramped for space as it is.

No. See 5.

I don't actually think up too many features. I made an actual feature request the other day but I tend to just use what I have, which I bought for its features as much as anything I guess.

96khz has no place in my life.

well... Taken as a whole, my experience with IKMM is topped off by the fact their marketing strategy is part of the product usage itself with AT3. I delete most of the news NI sends me today but I'm done ranting about them.

Probably most of those are not that important to me. I can and have made music with any number of different methods and equipment.

Overall, I find s/w far cheaper and often easier, but in the end I made less music and spent less time enjoying making music when my equipment veered to more s/w. So having h/w is important to me because I simply hate diddling around with a mouse all day. And it cripples my wrists. So I pick very carefully what s/w I have to use (and I do indeed have to use s/w - a complete h/w set up is not sensible or feasible). But within my preferences of equipment, that is all it is - I could make music with FL on a notebook and a Yamaha home organ if I had to. Fortunately I don't have to.

As to flame wars over gear - it's entertainment and nothing else. Anyone who takes that kind of nonsense seriously is a dick in the extreme, and simply shows that they actually don't know as much about making music as they think they do.

tldr

btw, which DAW are you guys using ?

Okay. Just answer this part then.





Reason, Orion, Beatmaker 2 for iPad. Own and have previously used Sonar 8.5 & Samplitude MusicStudio 14 but only use the V-Vocal now in Sonar and audio cleaning in Sam MS14. Have owned Cubase SE, demoed FL Studio and tried the free version of Reaper + some forgotten. I was able to make music with all of them. Same but different, different but same. To each his own.