 Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well welcome to the show this show We're gonna be answering some of the biggest questions in music production the ones that have been eating away at your soul I've got some it's gone crazy already I've got some friends with me here today some very good friends and they're gonna help us answer those huge questions in music Production now this could go on a little while I'll try and get to all of the questions that I've prepared But if you do have some questions there in the live comments go ahead and ask them I'll try and squeeze some of those in as well now as I say I've got some good friends with me here today with who I'll be introducing in a moment They've all got their own YouTube channels And I want you to check out the links in the description down below and take a look at their channels And make sure you go ahead and subscribe because I think they're all really high quality channels And you know they cover things that I don't cover on my channel as well So definitely check them out So I'm just gonna say hi quickly to some of the people who are there in the chat already Thank you so much for joining us guys. We have I'm just picking them randomly here. I'm not there's no preferential treatment Just hi to Paul Mint there. Good day to have I got this right? Cian Brady. I Always get names wrong. I'll even get the names of my guests wrong probably Josie music You're here great to see you guys do make sure that another one's just come in there Jeff Nice to see you do make sure that you ask some questions in the comments Some of these guys will be taking a look at that who I'm about to introduce now I've got three guests with me here today All actually good friends of mine But the very first one that I'm gonna introduce you to here is a guy called Marlon. He's from white noise studios He's from the Netherlands, okay The only person here who speaks two languages on a regular basis and runs a whole channel in his second language very impressive indeed Hi, Marlon. How are you doing? Hi guys? nice to see you I'm I guess they're okay. They've got my pretty face on the screen for a start. Why wouldn't you be okay? But I was I was researching you a little bit here Marlon You you have you first of all folks Marlon is probably the most qualified to answer all of the questions that you're gonna have He said he runs a real studio. Okay. I don't shake your head. He's pretty smart guy He knows lots and lots of stuff about lots and lots of things. I mean not about facial grooming He doesn't know about that but anything to do with audio production He's very very hot on and I was looking I was looking you up actually today And I was noticing you come from a town called am I pronouncing it right when I say winter Swig? Windows wake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, as I said winter Swig. Yeah, so it winter Swig I was noticing. I'm gonna share this with you. I was noticing In the things to do in winter swing at the moment. This is on trip advisor. Thank you trip advisor There's no mention of white noise studio here. We've got an old lady looking at pictures We've got a little house there that you can even ride on the look at number eight there ride on the bus Surely surely they could have had you in there, Marlon. What's your explanation for this? Oh, this sort of you know oversight on it's 100% correct It's it's my target demographics old women and small houses and So that's good. So yep, if you're an old lady hop on the bus go over to Marlon studio there in winter Swig as It's commonly referred to Also known as almost Germany So anyway, welcome to the show as I say folks check out the link in the description to Marlon's channel He's particularly does awesome plug-in reviews Really high energy stuff. He gets straight to the point and he gives you some really good details on plugins and things Very very cool stuff indeed Now the next person I'm going to introduce. Thank you Marlon. You'll be back later. The next person I'm going to introduce Is a drummer a songwriter A vocalist and he's recently released a single really fantastic. I've had his music on the show His name is Ed Thorne. Can I add how are you doing? Hello, Mike? I'm really good. Thanks for having me on board Well, good to see you here in your in purple. You're in a purple patch As I say, nice to see you there now Ed Love the recent single that you brought out called bright lights. Thank you. Yeah, can you tell me just quickly? about That sort of what what's your journey been in music production and how did you come up with your Ed Thorne YouTube channel? Oh That's a long story briefly I Yeah, keep it short been a drama since I was 11 I went to uni then I was pushed into doing music production Produced a few songs at uni kind of have the skills Ended up setting up a live sound business about six years ago Transferred all the skills got way better at it and then ended up coming back to studio stuff about two years ago And decided to produce an album of my own original content And then I thought I know what I'll document the writing recording and production of the album on YouTube Except no one wanted to know no one really cared about a drummer. They hadn't heard of trying to write songs so then I pivoted the content and now I Stumbled on a few ideas that work for me And that's how the channel has developed and I still write in tandem my own sanity and for supporting content for me to talk about in the videos awesome I think that the music I've heard on Spotify is a real testament to your production abilities songwriting abilities are really like it a lot and and I'm gonna say this about your channel that For me when I watch your channel you take a little bit more to the sort of higher-end stuff You know, I can see you sort of gravitating towards that in terms of gear plug-ins that sort of thing. Am I correct in saying that? Yeah, it is more towards the higher-end of the home studio Production element. I think partly cuz I I think that's I find that stuff a little bit more Interesting I do have some reviews coming up with some more You know kind of entry-level stuff. Yeah, that keeps my interest and that's what I'm enthusiastic cool Now before I introduce the next guest, I'm just gonna have you here for a moment for your reaction to something I just want to share with the viewers of the viewers of my channel We were we often chat on Facebook Messenger and recently you sent me a little voice message, right? Now I'm good. I'm gonna have to bleep out an expletive here in this voice message I just want to share this with my audience, right because I'll use the word bleep Okay, the audience can guess what the word originally was so quote from Ed Thorn Your mannerism is very genteel and nice and compassionate on video But in real life, you're a massive bleep. Oh Mike. I'm so getting you back So, yeah, that gives you an insight to Ed Thorn behind the scenes folks and I'll get rid of him now see you again soon and Lastly a very good friend of mine a guy I admire enormously We've kind of been on a YouTube journey together first got to know him when I only had 300 subscribers He was on a massive 6000 subscribers then way back in the old days He's been a bit of a mentor to me I admire him very much because he's got a very down-to-earth approach with Producing music and if that's your thing definitely check out the link in the description and I'm going to introduce to you Pete Johns From studio live today. How are you going Pete? It's a long time. We haven't been on camera together It's been way too long Mike and this is the closest up that I've ever been on your show I'm a little worried now because after seeing your treatment of Marlon and Ed I'm just a little bit worried about what you've got up your sleeve because Anyone who knows Mike's knows that he's always got a surprise or two ready to go But now it's an absolute pleasure to be here with you and the gentleman here the evening morning afternoon wherever you are in the world Yeah, Pete I should have mentioned Pete is in Adelaide here in Australia with me Marlon is in Holland the Netherlands and Ed is in London In some different parts of the world, which is why me and Pete are drinking alcohol and the other two guys are not Nothing to do with the time of day just because we're Australian. So That's what we did. Anyway, so Pete it's interesting you should bring that up You're a guy here as I say it's kind of shaped Shaped the things that I do on the channel and one of the things you've shaped As a result of one of our early live shows together was the way I pronounce Reverb Don't you mean reverb Mike? Well, it's funny you should raise that Because ever since you kind of picked it out live on air With me Right, I've corrected my pronunciation, but I've got a good reason Pete to go back to my old way I was watching a video today with Warren here who would argue with Warren and Hugh Pagham now, do you know who Hugh Pagham is? I don't I'm gonna show my ignorance like it's a producer. No, you're not ignorant. Don't ever say that about yourself Don't ever say that about yourself other people may but don't Hugh Produce we did like Phil Collins the police. I think you might have done cake bush You know, a whole bunch of people you may or may not have heard of and anyway, he raised the Question of that particular effect and he pronounced it River Just saying I'm just saying I'm just saying You know Pete John's you should send him an email buddy. That's all I'm saying. I think so Well, there you go potatoes potatoes as Says here in the chat here Yeah, you know what given that my kind of area of Not expertise. I don't even like to say that but my area of passion is garage band And I'm in a journal battle. We'll have to check with Ed and Marlon garage band or garage And I know and then yeah pronunciation in the world of audio is Hot topic, you know, so I didn't mention that in your intro. I didn't you're the first person I didn't want to mention it in case I was corrected by someone and my It's a garage band. I'd leave immediately. That's how it works. All right. Let's get on with a bloody show Okay, let's bring these guys back in oh There goes it Okay, so let's go to the questions now as I say do not forget to ask some questions awesome follow-up questions folks in the chat there To to the ones I'm gonna ask here and there is As I say, they're gonna be directed at some of you in particular some of my guests in particular And they're gonna be the first ones to answer and if we have time then the other two bearded folks can also reply I won't be reply. I don't have a beard. I know I know how unmasked in of me So the first one's gonna be directed at Marlon from white noise studio. Oh dear Marlin The eternal question the eternal question. I think you'll have an opinion on this and And I think you may You may have the answer on the top of your head so to speak So the question is Marlon, can you mix on headphones? My answer is it depends It's always the same It really does I used to have AKG headphones and even tried beats headphones don't buy me for it But from the moment I had these ones I can say yes, you can mix on headphones But what is that you've gone your head there? Oh, hello audio. I don't know them They look beautiful. They're from Slovenia. Wait, wait Wow, they look gorgeous looking so they're open open backed the open backed headphones and they're pretty linear Extremely linear. So you don't have you don't want to use these when you want a nice hi-fi experience But they really are a secondary pair of Monitors and I can make the mixed decisions on these ones. So that's actually pretty nice But I've noticed be with other brands Like I said AKG and some cheaper ones that when you make there goes your sponsorship deal with AKG Just but just a part of it doesn't matter when you make when you mix on those and you Listen your mixes back on other systems on headphones. It's completely false apart that you have to start over So as a reference, it's fine, but as a mix complete mix replacements. It's more difficult These ones I can do mixes, but I still have to reference once in a while But I can make a mix on these ones that they will translate. So that's good How do you sort of objectively judge that whether you've made a good mix using those as opposed to monitors or other headphones? You can you can listen to that in regards of reverb That's one thing because on headphones you normally tend to use a lot more reverb than on speakers You can notice it also in your padding It's actually easier to hear Things in in your in your stereo width with headphones than on speakers Usually because they are so isolated with left. Did I make a bunk over here? Yeah Because this doesn't have any cross bleed, right? So you don't have any normal You don't listen on headphones like you would listen to speakers or actually anyone talking or real life skewed Okay, thanks for your answer there. I'm gonna head over to the aid thorn there He may have some input there. What have you got in your head there? Hey, I have the Sennheiser HD 300. Oh, yeah, that way 300 pros. Um, yeah, I actually mixed you mentioned bright lights earlier I mixed that entire song on headphones because And my flatmate was getting a bit annoyed with me blaring speakers all day talking to myself on camera to make videos all day So I had to move to headphones for pretty much everything and and combined with sonar works, which is a great piece of software for Calibrating your room sound and calibrating your speakers to the sound of your room and they have headphone profiles as well to flatten out your Headphones so you get a flat frequency response combined that it's incredible and it is very accurate and in terms of panning as Marlon said and delay panning and control and really identifying Separation and spatial awareness headphones are brilliant But as Marlon said I would always go back and reference on a couple of speakers now Sonar works have just done an update and your views may find this interesting to their software which Basically gives you profiles for they've measured the EQ profiles of hundreds of devices from Laptop speakers mobile phones cast stereos Mix or tone mixed cubes Yamaha NS10s so you can reference your mix on all these different devices So basically representing what your end user would be listening listening to your music on which is I think is Mind-blowing. I just shame was plug. I put a video out about it yesterday and it's it's a great Great addition to the software. So yeah headphones. Well, I watch that cool. Mr. Johns over there you you've you may have a bit of a special perspective on this really I reckon with your sort of target People often say I'm a bit special, but no No, I do and that is that yeah I guess a lot of what I focused on is using what you have and I think that Yeah, I know a lot of people who make a lot of really good music on headphones and I think a lot of the time Yeah, we do get a little bit caught up in the gear that we're using and what what what we're actually Mixing on and how you're listening to it. But yeah, I agree with what the other guys have said that it is It's horses for courses and it totally depends on the type of music you're mixing and what your end result is and what your end goal Is too so not all the people talk about what you're actually trying to do with your music And I think as listening patterns change and as the type of music people producing is changing We're finding a changing environment in in home recording as a whole So yeah as much as I like listening on a nice pair of monitor speakers I think you know get grabbing your headphones, especially in the sort of environments that we're in because I mean yeah You know hands up who's recording in their home in a home studio Yeah, you can't always blast your speakers and you've got children and flatmates and other people around you So I think having a decent pair of headphones is a good start And I think you know starting with whatever you got creating with whatever you got and then Leveling up so you know like I like what Marlon and Ed were saying there that you know their journeys Are you start out and you get your gear and then you work out what works for you? And then yeah, if you want to upgrade and you want to do other things in the future Then that if that works for you then more power to you Cool cool. So I'll just put in my two cents worth I think it's important first of all just to understand the differences between headphones and monitor speakers in terms of what you're getting so The probably the most obvious thing is the room you're not hearing the room so That then that for example, you know, there's the sound coming out of your right monitor speaker It's not just going in your right ear when you're listening to monitors. Okay, it's bouncing around the room So first of all you're getting reflections So you're not hearing it's not isolated to one ear or the other whereas you can actually do that in headphones and also The the room affects the actual sound You you know in terms of is the tombra the right word the timbre? I don't know I don't know English sounds good doesn't I'll keep that in sounds fancy But yeah, the actual tone of the sound couldn't change with the room so I think it's about being also aware of the tools you're using and potentially their sort of limitations or or their advantages, I mean Arguably I tend to think these days. I don't know if anyone's done a survey, but I'm thinking that a Lot of people listening to our music on headphones Rather than speakers these days, so there could be a case I guess to say That's where most yep was actually most people listening to music through that tiny little speaker the bottom That would be a good question for the folks here live Mike to ask them When do you listen to most of music? Who's listening? Remember the last time I listened to music for pleasure on speakers. It's all headphones Let us know in the chat there where you are listen to most music I've got a quick question that's come up here from Jossie music. Thanks, Jossie Are the personas areas 3.5s enough to start mixing? I don't know if you guys have had any experience with these at all Have any of you had an experience with personas monitors? Pete's nodding his head there. Ah, yeah I just bought I just bought a pair for this very studio because I kept getting recommended them Especially because the mobile creating environment you need something mobile and portable and easy to use and yeah I just installed them and I had I mean the KRK rockets that I had with the older G4s I know G3 four inch ones and these are as good if not better and these are 99 bucks for a pair and the old KRK is at 200 250 each So yeah, they they do punch well above their weight in my experience Especially if you're in a small studio like this and you're just using mainly headphones And you just want some monitor speakers for referencing then yeah, they they do a good job in my experience So far I've had them like three weeks So yeah, I've watched this space because I but yeah that they again They if you're in the high end you got you know comparing them to like some eight inch Mackeys and you'd like plug these in Of course, it's going to be a difference. But yeah as far as reference speakers goes if you're starting out I think they're gold Yeah, I think sound on sound said they were by far the best value for money speakers of all time Hmm. Yeah, I'd agree with that. Awesome. Good stuff. Haven't used them But everyone knows I'm a big personas fan personas. You should be sending me some just saying Anyway, moving on Stu cash says he listens headphones and the car. Yep. Sometimes at the same time for me, by the way 99% AirPods Pro We'll get on to Apple things a bit later in one of the other questions But yeah cool and Speakers mostly very scientific research we've done here is a sample of three or four PSO headphones are winning at the moment as I stated in in my theory I presented so moving on to the next question Thanks guys for that one. This one's going to be directed first off to the Ed Thorn that we have in the bottom right corner there You're not gonna let me forget that one. Oh The Ed Thorn just in all of Ed social media. He is the Ed Thorn He is the Ed Thorn He's the only Ed Thorn that I know at least anyway It's the only Ed Thorn that you should know check his link in the description down below Right moving on. This is this is something you I think you're gonna have a good opinion on this Ed It may not be exactly what people Expect but you are a drummer Primarily as an instrumentalist you're a drummer. I've heard you being very apologetic about your vocals I actually think that your vocals are quite good, but I'll pigeonhole you as a drummer And the question for you is in this world of home studios I'll put it up on the screen virtual drums or real drums you might be a bit biased but Just give us your opinion on on virtual drums versus real drums as from a drummer's perspective Well from a drummer's perspective, I am a bit of a purist I I just don't believe I mean you can use You can humanize stuff in plugins now To create a bit of a swing and a bit of an inconsistent, you know, it's it's crazy that Softwares and plugins enable you to create inconsistencies in a digital in theory perfect realm to sound more human I mean as a drummer, I've spent 25 years playing I've spent decades practicing So I'm a bit of a purist in terms of I certainly on my stuff. I can't imagine ever programming anything Except maybe some percussion, but I I think The the just the feel you get from a human is is always going to be there even if you Quantize the life out of stuff in Pro Tools for example, and the beat detective quantization in Pro Tools is unbelievable I've actually just done it on a on a couple of songs and It yes, it's unbelievable and you do still get the human feel In the beats in between as long as you don't quantize every single 16th note in which case then yes You may as well program, but this is very stylistic I come from this from a rock pop Point of view if you're you know into trap or hip hop then programming stuff is the way forward because People were pushing in samples, you know in the 80s. So stylistically and sonically, you know using 808 Stuff like that. It's stylistically. That's what's kind of expected and the reality of recording drums is It's very difficult, you know, I have to go to another studio to record drums I I don't have the setup in my in my flat at the moment, which is shame But not just from a recording point of view, you need, you know, so many more mic preamp inputs You need bigger interfaces more microphones. The cost just goes through the roof very quickly So in comparison to programming stuff And using some of the amazing bits of software out there at the moment it kind of You know, it's hard to justify one and also Mixing and producing drums and editing drums is difficult It's a lot of work to get right There are so many advantages into, you know, punching stuff in on a keyboard and Quantizing it and then humanizing it to unquantize it a little bit to make it sound realistic and adding in some swing Any, you know, you get equal amounts of control with both but live drums are much more difficult to Control because it, you know, everything bleeds into each other You get kick and snare in every single microphone and symbols in every microphone And you can you can you know, you can do your best to optimize this in the studio or minimize these The bleed but the reality is it's it's tricky But I love it. I love the challenge Good. I was having a fight with someone the other day in a forum I wasn't using my real name because I don't fight under my real name But uh, I didn't I'm gonna keep I think I can spot your tells on social media So this person was saying, you know, uh real drums versus fake drums or virtual drums And I was I was sort of pointing out to them one thing that it's a virtual drum kit. It's not virtual drums in other words They are samples. In other words for samples is recordings. They're real drums Yeah, but then as as a as a collection of drums as a drum kit, that's virtual and I sort of feel about virtual instruments in general It's not so much the sound of them. There's no doubt that, you know, even the old favorites like addictive drums have fantastic sounding drums But then you've got to be able to play them well You've got to be able to if you want it to sound like a real drummer You've got to play them the way a real drummer and you know, I the other day, of course, I was mixing One of your songs in one of my videos and I was just sort of taking note of that that Um, the way a real drummer plays is very different to the way I do it With my fingers on a piano keyboard or on a drum pad. There's subtleties in there Yeah, and I think like any instrumentalist falls into Little nuances like drummerisms for example where A drummer knows physically on a kit what is possible and what isn't a producer Who isn't a drummer and hasn't figured out that certain things do and don't work with coordination And you've only got four limbs to do stuff with The producer can go in without the limitation the practical limitation of the instrument and Create whatever they they want. You know, so you hear these trap beats Kind of ridiculously fast hi-hats. It's like, yeah, some, you know, I could do that But some drummers could do that but not everyone has the technique to pull off really clean Things on the hi hats for example. So yeah, it's also a creative tool, which is the beauty of it It's interesting that you you mentioned that that again when I was listening to this interview with Hugh I was always pronounced his name of pageant today. Um, he was talking about that the famous Reverb or the gated reverb that was used, you know in the 80s, which came I think before in the air tonight reverb It came about before in the air tonight, but then became Huge during that time and one of the things about that was um, if you were going to record the drums and and have that effect It didn't work very well with cymbals at all that the cymbals just messed the whole thing So they recorded all the cymbals separately Yeah, I've heard of that. Um, there is a very famous drummer. I won't mention because I can't Can't corroborate this but yeah, I've heard of people Recording kick and snare and toms and then miming with one hand because a lot of drummers rely on their lead hand for timing and coordination Um, so miming with one hand air drumming with one hand playing kick snare and toms Tracking and then doing the cymbals over the top to avoid the bleed of the cymbals which can you know the cymbals cause Havoc with gates, you know, you can get a really clean kick and snare sound with a gate and then you hit a crash and blar and all of a sudden You get this You know as the gate opens up because it's triggered this pair mic for example. So yeah doing that way I get it from a production point of view but From a vibe point of view and you know, there's a drummer No way, no one's ever getting me to do that because this is how I play my whole Coordination and dynamics are based on how the whole kit sounds in a room and that's the sign of A great drummer from a good drummer is how Adaptable they are to their own inter kit dynamics and how aware of you know, the recording environment they're in One thing I love about recording is that I see, you know writing writing producing Mixing and mastering is I love having a just a global perspective of all the processes and I think it makes each one of them better Cool. Cool. Great answer from Ed there. I would expect nothing less from him I'll move straight over to mr. John's over there in Adelaide. Mr. John's you didn't expect that, did you? That was a bit of a surprise. I was caught. Is there anyone out there in the garage band community? Because just a quick note. I'll say this before you tell anyone else Don't think that if you're recording songs on mobile devices that you're just using the microphone on that device You can plug your audio interface mega audio interfaces into a mobile device. No problem Is there anyone out that you're aware of who are recording live drums onto their mobile devices? Yeah, it's probably rarer only because there's not a lot of people with like big mixing desks that are plugging them into Their iPhones and iPads that is possible because there's lots of desks Lots of boards that actually are class compliant meaning you can plug them into your iPhone or your iPad and record You know 12 channel 16 channel But a lot of people these days have got six or eight channel interfaces and they're plugged in a bunch of mics and they're Setting up either in garage band or Cubases or a pro. There's a heap of options in there and they're recording Yeah, they're recording live drums It's like I say it's not as common as it would be on a desktop or a pc or a mac But it's definitely happening like there's definitely people in the garage band world that are are doing Real drums, and I thought it's a it's interesting one of the comments There was um, yeah a lot of people that program virtual drums think that drummers have extra arms and legs And that they can actually do a bunch of things at once. Yeah, there you go Now I used I used to fall into that category I probably still do because you know, I used I've done a lot of videos on virtual guitars And my mission there I play guitar and I probably wouldn't actually use a virtual guitar in my music Because I can pick up a guitar and play but my mission with those videos is to try and teach keyboard players How guitars work what you can and what you can't do but then again, I'm reminded of the fact That when the Beatles said we're not going to play live anymore that opened up this whole new world of saying Hey in the studio we can do whatever we like. We don't have to be able to do it in real life So there's another perspective there to say the studio can be a place Where you can forget the fact that you've only got two arms and two legs And if you want four cymbals to play all at the same time and that sounds good, you can do it. There you go Ed Thorn Anyway, but Totally. Yeah, and I think you you've said this before. Sorry. I'm sorry And you've said this before that like yeah virtual instruments We had a debate about this that people get all caught up on virtual instruments So it's like unless you're banging two bits of wood together an electric guitar is by definition a virtual instrument because you are using Amplification to make a string go through an amplifier So anything that's not natural or a real instrument. You could argue is anything that's not completely percussive Well, it's how those strings resonate together. It's how the neck and the and the body That creates the whole sound and you know, it's how a piano resonates together individual notes Isolated, I guess if the samples recorded with the other strings um Resonating as well. It works. But yeah, I don't know. There's purists About this and there's there's the virtual realm. But I mean it's all changing and it's all becoming acceptable, isn't it? What say you marlin over there in holland? What say you are a drummer and by the way just just as a little interjection Marlin plays the drums and he also plays bass really well. Check out his latest video, which I think you released it yesterday I was watching it today About a was a bass a bass guitar effects unit kind of a thing. Yeah, the one one One off stopped to get your best bass guitar sounds ever That was it. Yeah, it was good First time I've heard you play bass guitar. It was really impressive actually nice playing on there But what say you anyway about the virtual drum issue um I like both actually, uh, I record live drummers a lot and I Work with samples a lot as well, and I think they work together really well if I got if I have a free jazz drummer then samples are usually not an option because it's impossible to to to um Enhance the free jazz drum with samples because it's so complicated and intricate and a lot mostly But if you have a rock drummer for example samples adding samples can actually really enhance the groove In a good way. I think I did it as well in his record. I think you did some snares samples and stuff Don't tell anyone I was going to mention it earlier marlon when he was talking about he never uses samples When he was saying that I was thinking I didn't say that I said I said I never program on my on my music I don't Yes, there was a little enhancement going on in a couple of places tastefully done very very commonly done Actually, but I must say samples have been a lifesaver for me on many occasions when I get tracks to be mixed which were recorded in a rehearsal room with a zoom Recorder and I want we want thick big tom-toms. I'm like, uh, okay So first I always try to do it with ecu first and if that doesn't work I isolate the toms and try to trigger them with samples and it actually works Really well most of the times Cool any specifics for you is for your triggers? No, I just use cubase a hit by detection. It's it's works. It works awfully Marlon, I have a question for you and uh, I've heard simon phillips being asked this very same question Because simon phillips and the states runs a recording studio Question is have you ever been tempted to replace any of the drum parts that you've had sent to you with your own playing? um, no, because I also think that's He's honest. Yeah, just honest, but It's fine. I assumed you would have No, no, no I it's usually it's more work to replace them Then just get in and edit Awesome, I think we'll move on to the next question But the final thing I just want to pop it pop in here about this is a user coin Speaking of two arms and two legs some bands have used two drummers. So that multiplies the sound. So there you go How about that, then they twice is expensive and you have to punch program the information in more times Oh, can you imagine the sound check? Oh Have you have you guys ever listened to the first track of uh blood sex sugar magic? Where are the chili pebbles? The first track. Yeah, very effective of the album Power of equality two drums It's displayed twice. It's one drum kid on the left and run from kid on the right. One is really very Yeah, one is a very close sounding and one is very reverby Cool. Do you think I can try that? Do you think I can try that with addictive drums? Do you think it's gonna? Addictive jett smith I did not know that good fact That's good No, it's actually When you know you can hear it because you are you're flamming all the time It's it's not it's not sink. It's uh, it's got a little flam. So you I'm gonna listen to that because drum sound wise that album is incredible. It's so good incredible It's big sound very big sound another card and check one out. Um now moving on got got time Restraints here marlon time restraints. Yes, we do now moving talking about drummers time restraints So moving on this question is directed at um at pete here Primarily and the reason I'll just give you a little bit of background because most of the time that I've Well, I've noticed recently that pete's turned into a bit of a An asshole really. I mean I was looking for another word but and yeah, wanker's a good word. That's that's still now the reason that I say that is uh, because Well, most of the time I've known him he was a pc user and then The m1 chip came out and and he's he's gone to the dark side I've noticed a couple of social media posts which suggest That he's uh, no God Oh god, I'm surrounded by bearded men with m1s. Okay, so The question is the question is not what I had there. This this is a question for you mr. Johns Mac or pc for music production. What say you now that you've had a whole one month's experience on the subject Uh, can can I go can I go off and say uh ipad? Because uh, that's that's what I've used Uh, no if I wasn't able to use a mobile device, which is obviously my preference as it is for all of us We all know that I would use uh a mac may reason is that um I've tried pc and look it's it's my personal experience and I say before I give any advice I say two things in my experience and in my opinion I think there are too many people out there that make definitive statements about their Experience of their opinion and expect other people to just tow the line. That is bs. I'm being polite with this work But yeah in my experience. So prior to this I tried reaper Um, I play around with cakewalk band lab Whatever the one you use is that's nice and fancy and free now and they just never gelled with me And it wasn't until I grabbed an iphone and ipad and started playing around with garage band and q basis and these sort of apps That it really just gelled like it was just so simple to get up and running and now that I've moved over to the mac I realize why all the people that I've been giving grief to for 30 years about their apple products and their max Just saying that pc is my far superior We're actually on to something because the the barrier to entry is so much lower And I think that's what helps people you can start out with garage band You just press a button you say I want to record a guitar you press the guitar button and you record a guitar And then you do your thing But it has the whole other end of the spectrum where you can go right up to using logic pro and actually having a full feature dw where you can do everything you need to do That is a very weird thing because if you asked me this question exactly six months ago I would have given you a very different answer because I until the m1 came along I didn't rate max and I didn't want to own one because it was too hard But the they've actually found a way to get a mac into the hands of 30 year pc windows advocates like me Okay, well, that's a fair enough answer. Um, I'll I'll withhold my opinion for a moment In fairness, I've not used the mac with an m1 on it. So it wouldn't be fair But um, I'll go over also because he held the box up just a moment ago to me to form the air So it's that box of you I know that you've struggled a lot recently with issues with your computers of seeing you crying like a little girl in some some of our messages So yeah, how long ago did you get this? Uh, it arrived literally the other day. Um, but I'm going to give myself about two days to set it up and Install all the software so I've got that primarily for at the moment for actually for video editing and screen casting because I have a top spec 2015 mac book pro Which as long as you keep cool and this was the this was what I didn't realize it was overheating And bottlenecking um as it slows, you know, minimizes the processing So it doesn't heat up more which is a big problem with this 2015 model I was unaware of when I bought it refurbished to replace my other one which was having the same problem Which was a heating issue. So um that the mac book pros can overheat. I've since got a tray Uh cooling tray and it works brilliantly. I had it out on the weekend with a live Oh, it stopped working now. It stopped working now. I'm sorry. Sorry Just to uh, yeah, he had it out working so quickly. I don't know what's gonna Ed might have to leave and come back Which is leaving there The timing was immaculate Yeah, good good, uh, I don't know if Ed can still see us or not Ed you may want to leave the stream and come back again. We'll go. It's a marlin. That was just hilarious I actually realized the one thing Mac obviously it's it's all about workflow what you like, right? Uh, I I work I work worked on both but my primary computer is a pc But one thing I I always dislike when I go to mac is I used to play games a lot. So I have we wasd type of I use control you know on pc you can use control a lot control click keyboard commands on mac you have to use the command key and that one Is located next to the space bar and that is From economical sense, it's terrible Yes, I agree with you there. I I use both so I have to go between the two is that it's mind boggling I really dislike the command key over there So maybe we can change the old command the key commands on mac to to use control That will be logical, but by default. I think that's that's that's on anger. No, uh, it's not really nice to use So I'm going to go back to ed because I want to give him your time because he was interrupted by his mac failing on him at the moment As if on cue as if on cue and I was just saying My book pro is having problems. It literally turned itself off and said there's a problem with something Which I'm going to I'm actually going to put this out there No, I'm not going to say that but I was going to blame a recently installed piece of software um That's I don't do that. No go on go for it. What have you recently installed just as a by the way I don't know. But yeah the irony of Explaining how this computer had problems and it closes down live on stream. My apologies everyone Um, I forgot on what I was saying uh other than basically the what the problem I've had with my mac book pro is It's only got two gpu graphics cores, which so I don't know for whatever reason It's just developed a problem where if I'm uh screen casting which is capturing the screen To record the software that I'm working in and the audio and my voiceovers It just it can't handle it and um spazs us out a little bit. So I've actually ordered the m1 Just to try and avoid any of these issues now. Unfortunately, you can only get 16 gigabytes in it at the moment I was hoping I could you know future-proof myself and get like 128 or something But I got so fed up with having issues with this country. I've just uh with this laptop I've just bitten the bullet and bought that one and then And the country That's a whole another live stream As I'm when a better m1 mac comes out or when things are a bit more stable and you know Universal audio caught up with all of the plugins and interface interactions with it. I'll probably yeah So that's I think that's one of the other sort of issues I mean, it's a new thing and I definitely have heard lots and lots of good things about m1 Um been tempted myself for sure But you know, I don't buy things people just send me things but uh But I I do use a macbook pro as as well. Um, I I've got to say personally I I and I could be sort of a bit unpopular with some people because it's just my opinion that There's all this thing about how user friendly max are all the time and I'm going to say the same for ios as well As opposed to android and I think we're just sort of wired differently some of us because When susie asked me to fix something on her phone. It's an ios device. I'm like, where did they put the settings? I usually get to the settings from the app. Why is the settings all hidden away there and it confuses me And I find that the max in general for me. They work wonderfully the hardware is gorgeous all that sort of stuff But when things go wrong and when it gets a bit geeky I just find them much more cumbersome personally than pc's. It may be ignorance on my part But I don't necessarily find that they They're they're easier to use. I just think it depends on what kind of person you are now I will say that um that one advantage of them Or one difference with me and I think the same may be true of marlin down below Let's see if I can get the directions right marlin down there Is that I do build my own pc's I have done for many many years. I'm a bit geeky like that So I think when you build your own stuff, then that's a different thing with pc's if you really like to tweak and tailor and You know have this specific memory and what have you Lots of people are not interested in doing that wouldn't have the confidence to do it wouldn't care for doing it Wouldn't have the time for doing it. I get it. That's fine You know, I just drive my car. I don't take it apart. So Yeah, I think uh a couple of things on that mic I think to to ends point like that because I thought that too I actually literally got the eight gigabyte mac mini because I just wanted to see what an off the shelf and someone mentioned You know mac equals dollars and it used to but the thing is I paid just over a thousand dollars like all up For my mac mini m1 and it crushes my old like i5 with 16 gig of ram Because then it's got eight gig of ram because it's all different now That's the thing intel want you to think that it still matters about clock speed and it still matters about graphics It still matters about memory it actually just matters about energy efficiency and processing power and what you can actually get done And I think marlin might have been mentioned or someone mentioned workflow before And it is so much more of just about the workflow side of it The other point is though I agree with you the user friendly side mac people and ios people Get very like defensive about the fact that how user friendly it is It is not my channel only exists because ios is not user friendly if apple If apple had all the manuals and all the user guides for how to use all their stuff I wouldn't actually have a job because I only have my job because it's not And I have to explain the simple stuff that people should be able to do with a tap of a button that actually takes 14 buttons So I think we're all secretly agreeing with you there Some of the software that we in the hardware that we use as well Thank goodness for youtube's. Let's just take a moment to Take the world for youtubers and how great they are and they're here to help everybody All right good answers there. I did like that one mac in fact mac versus pc if you're watching the the rerun of this do You know go ahead and make lots of comments down below about mac versus pc I'll go ahead and delete them right away, but if you want to make those comments absolutely fine I won't be reading them. Uh, but anyway moving on to the next question Now let's actually i'm not going to go to the next question. I'm going to go to something Something a little bit more topical for me guys and um, I'm a little bit confused about this over the last few months I have uh two or three occasions um reviewed software Which is being supplied on a subscription basis rather than buying it, okay? And I've just and I've noticed not so much on my videos But when I look at other people's videos, which I do a bit of research before you do a video There's a lot of hate about subscription a lot of hate about subscription And here's my quandary. I was thinking about this today Very deep and meaningful. I was thinking I don't hear the same gripes when people talk about spotify Or when people talk about netflix, right? I'm talking not talking about musicians with spotify. I'm talking about listeners Everyone thinks it's cool that you can subscribe to spotify and get whatever you want whenever you want Everyone thinks it's great that you can just subscribe to netflix and not have to buy movies or what have you What's what's what's going on here clean it clear it up for me going straight over first of all to marlin um, I think both I have have their uh place but one thing I have as an objection to subscription is when you have a subscription you need to have it For as long as you have projects running If you have if your subscription ends and you are in the middle of a project, you have a problem If you own a plugin, you don't have that problem at all Uh, that's sad. You should never end your subscription while working on a project But that's one thing, uh On the other hand with subscription with for instance plugin aligned you pay your monthly fee You get added new plugins all the time for free You don't pay anything more and just get more and more and more. So that is actually a really good thing Why people like dislike subscriptions, uh in comparison to, um, paid ones I think it has to do because uh with musicians being very conservative Hmm, it's a very interesting perspective of musicians. Yeah, you know old gear is always better new gear. So All right, and things in the past are always better than new stuff I I don't mind. I think both works. So whatever Okay, interesting. I'll head over to uh, mr. Thorne What's your perspective on this? Do you do you have any subscriptions or do people just send you stuff? Well, uh, uh, yeah now I kind of refuse to pay for plugins. Although I did have to pay for fub filter They were having none of it when I asked And that's for our licenses. Um After I don't have huge opinions on this I do prefer the idea of owning something outright I think, you know, if you add up a couple of years worth of subscriptions You could have, you know, the reality is you're gonna come back to the same handful of plugins in every project Anyway, at least in this idea. I've got maybe 10 That I use right. That's very true. That's very true for different brands Uh 10 or 12 are using every mix. Uh, so by the time you paid for a couple years of subscriptions You could own those now that there there's one company that fall in in the middle of this here where you and obviously I won't mention it, but you you purchase plugins For a very competitive price You never actually own them because you're actually only buying a a license that does run out And then you get a little email that says oh, you need to update this license Or you need to update to this version. Otherwise, it's not going to work after a certain amount of time. Um interesting business model Same is true. Just incidentally as a weird sidetrack same is true with itunes Um, you know when you used to buy songs on itunes, there was a case. I don't know why I've remembered this I've got all sorts of rubbish in my head. I think it was bruce Willis, I seem to remember who put his iPod In his will he wanted to leave all the music he'd bought to his daughter And they were like, no, you can't do that. You've only got that on license You don't actually you you've bought the song, but you don't own it. You can't keep it can't give it to someone else. So there you go Yeah, I've noticed your facial expression. He was like Yeah, I mean, okay I know he was the sidetrack. He's got nothing to add there. We'll move away. We'll switch him off and we'll go We've had malin already. Oh, it's a peak I'm just gonna try a different facial expression every time I uh, yeah, so obviously the apple universe is renowned for subscriptions and there's a lot of subscription models within iOS in general And I actually think I've got a bit of a different take on this and I I come and go with the different things Because I think subscriptions are great that if you got a something that cost 300 dollars And instead you can pay five dollars a month for it for as long as you need it That can actually be good from a budget tree because who's got 300 bucks to throw down I think the issue that most folks have with plugins or with software Is it doesn't get updated that often you're not paying for something new There's not the new hotness or the new shininess if you compare it to netflix or spotify or amazon prime You're getting new content on the daily weekly monthly. Yeah So if you pay your subscription fee in march in april There's going to be a whole bunch of new shows and movies and music and whatever to listen to it's always changing The problem is if I pay for adobe and I've got my premiere pro and my photoshop, and I'm paying my 50 bucks a month They're updating that once a year once every two years. There's nothing new coming there So I think subscription models are great for content where it's constantly evolving and updating and growing And you're getting new stuff I don't think it's that great for something like pro tools where people are paying a monthly fee to use the Same old pro tools. They've been using for like three years And that's I don't know that that's sort of and I and I do wonder As I was pondering this issue of why do I see so much hostility in the comments with With subscriptions because there's there's various pros and cons either way But I do wonder if if pro tools didn't sort of just Give the whole thing a bad name because they're kind of the most prominent and first to go. Hey And correct me if I'm wrong. I'll just bring in ed here because I think he uses pro tools I'm not sure if marlon does or not but Ed can you buy pro tools or is it just Is only subscription here As far as I know the top two packages are subscription only. I've just I've just done a 90 day trial I mean, it's a phenomenal bit of software from a I kind of agree with john there from, you know from a Profit point of view from the company point of view It makes sense to go down the subscription route because I thought about this with apple, you know, I paid 200 pounds for logic 10 Seven years ago now and apple haven't made any more money out of me on their da w so from a business point of view It makes sense that pro tools would Go subscription but from a user point of view I agree with what john said unless they're offering regular updates like, you know, the television channels do You're paying basically paying multiple times for the same thing that isn't getting updated very often so It's all We won't have gained any new fans doing that and I'm I was concerned for a while that logic may follow Apple sorry may follow suit and do the same thing with logic, but Yeah, I just don't think they will because they can get so many people on their channel on their platform Sorry for a 200 pound. I don't know the equivalent in australia 300 dollar fee That I think they'll stick with it. I'm hoping fingers crossed because I don't want to be paying Don't you think that there may be an argument for doing it for the home recording person doing it on a project basis in other words I'm just as another example. This is not plug-in basis is hardware base But there's a place here where you can rent musical gear now you can get I think U87s are about 100 dollars a month to rent and I've thought to myself, you know what you don't need to Own a u87 if you are going to make a record an ep this year It's going to take you six months You may just be better off to rent it for four or five months to do your vocal tracks Rather than Do the big spend we you may not use just saying from a cash flow point of view It may be a good. I think there's a good argument since I run a studio So I own a lot of stuff, but covid hit So a lot of sessions were cancelled people weren't able to come Stuff like that So I have a lot of gear sitting around doing nothing at the moment. So it's a bit I get I get why you want to rent instead of want to buy And I guess what I'm alluding to is is there's a case if you're just thinking look, I'm not really going to be a producer I just want to produce my ep. I'm going to do that this year Um, then there may be an argument there to say hey, you know Just subscribe for a few months to some of those plugins Remember to freeze your tracks guys and that sort of thing, you know, so that you've you've got the tracks with the effects applied to them And that sort of thing Yeah, just mentioning that Do you do your demo productions with the stuff you have and do the final recordings with the rented stuff will be an excellent solution I'm going to say just from this comment here And yes, if you remaster in 15 years, but the subscription software is not available anymore You're in trouble I've got to say I have that problem with just plugins that I bought years ago, which I work. Where are they now? You know, I'm two or three versions ahead. I've opened up a project from five years ago Oh my god, where have I put you know, so, you know, it can happen either way there So folks, what are we doing for time here? Just having a look right over there. Oh, we're only an hour in You know, we break Mike if you're gonna go over too much. I'm hanging in here until I grow a beard guys Good answers so far. Um, if you've got any specific questions that you want the panel to ask, uh, folks Then definitely ask in the comments there Guys if you my guess if you can point me towards some of those because it's a little difficult for me to keep track of them here Um, nice to see a few favorites in here. I'm just going to say hello to jade there Um, she she's had her opinion but good a jade a friend of the channel and of pete's channel and a friend In actual fact check out jade stars youtube channel and I saw way back here I can't probably scroll back far enough, but I saw a lexie in the comments there Way back somewhere there good a lexie. Nice to see you here friends of all of us here. Check out his channel Well, lexie can you guys can you remind me? What's the name of your channel? How do you pronounce his surname? It's russian alexa seloviev music Thank you. Thank you, Ed Saved me there Moving on to another question. I'm not sure who I'm going to aim this one. Let's have a look. Oh Oh Okay, no, this one's going to go to the ed thorn. Um, I think he I've seen it a lot of uh product reviews on ed's channel some very good product reviews about audio interfaces one of his favorite topics So i'm going to go over to you ed to ask you this question I'll put up on the screen now should you record at 96 kilohertz or higher? Very good question. Um with some very polarizing opinions. Um, I did a video on this about a year ago and during my research found out that it's There's there's there's many opinions and it's it's actually quite a complicated subject when you get into sample rates and why certain things are used the reality is Yes, obviously the higher the sample rate The higher the bit rate the better. However sample rate only really refers to the frequency range that you can capture Uh in an audio source. So for example 96 kilohertz there You basically basically it's two samples per killer per hurt of frequency So 96 kilohertz translates to 40 what you can potentially capture range up to 48 kilohertz Frequency now the reality is you know humans can hear I can't hear half of that at most. I mean, you know, it's well known that we can hear up to 20 kilohertz there's some research to suggest that Above 20 hertz triggers alpha brainwaves, which gives us that sense of feeling above 20, but that goes up to 24 25 kilohertz apparently so Uh, I mean the problems yes in theory you could down sample, but I don't see the point in that at 96 Your files are obviously twice as big and it's also twice the work for your plugins to process I personally record at 48 keeps things simple That's what I send to my mastering engineer when I'm not mastering stuff myself And it works fine. You know cd quality is 44.1 kilohertz which translates to a frequency range of 22.0 to 2250 2250 hertz That you can capture. So You know, that's plenty cd quality is plenty and that's what the streaming platforms are operating at 16 or 24 bit depending on the platform and 44.1 kilohertz so to record at 196 just because a device can do it just gives you far too much data And you're gonna have huge file size, which you know is going to affect your cpu and computer speed so my personal suggestion would be go at 96 if you feel like it but I mean broadcasting is different Broadcasting you'd want to go for 96, uh, or yeah, because then they go down to 48 when they go live But I would suggest 48 keeps things simple keeps things easy and I'd be very surprised I tend I tend to agree on some of it. I used to record in 96 years ago in fact, but at the end I didn't know that I had any benefit and I was getting a lot bigger files Um, I think my current interface goes up to 192 never tried it even never even switched it over Um, and I did know I think it may have been on your channel. You were noting with audience for example They're just not playing that game anymore. They've I think they're they're maxing at 96 Yeah, and I'm reviewing the ID mark for Sorry ad 1 4 mark 2 this week and that is still at 96 I was surprised they They didn't upscale that to 192 So I asked them about it and they just said we don't see the need You know 96 is you know by the time it's down sampled for your door Or plugins to handle or by the time it's down sampled to go to mastering at 44 or 48 So then go to streaming at 44 or 48 Just doesn't matter and and the new the new ID 1 4 Sounds amazing. You will not miss that extra 96 killers Cool. I they're sending me one at the moment just as a by the way to my audience So I'll be I think they're sending me two actually the one four and the the smaller one as well Looking forward to trying them out. Um, I'm going to go over to marlin. He may disagree with you. I hope he does I hope he does. I'd like to see a grown man cry. What do you reckon? Uh, you should record in the Format it will be at the end. So if your end product is 48 recorded 48 and product is 41 Uh, 44.1 recorded 44.1, uh, 96 not really needed In regards to plugins most plugins offer over sampling options these days so This is just because the ripple effect of the plugins. Usually if you're running at base sample rates Can be audible And and and it actually can sound pleasing. That's that's another That's another one But if you don't want that you have over sampling options, which of course will cost most if you use it But then you will be way above the hearing range of humans So is there an is there an advantage? Do you think though to any advantage at all to recording at say 96? Even though your your target's going to be 48 or 44 At this moment, I would say no But maybe for future releases if you have if you plan for maybe what will happen in the future then you are safe That you have 96 kHz recording and you are not limited by 48 kHz, but to be completely honest 48 even versus a 300 kilobit mp3 The difference is so inaudible. You can hear it a little bit, but it's it's And that's coming from a european folks. So they normally You know a little bit You can nicely test it on for instance, uh, if you have diesel I think spotify will go that route too. Do you know diesel? Yeah, just from they offer a uh, a lossless. It's it's a flak A flak option and if you toggle between 320 and flak, you can hear a slight difference in Mostly transients that it's just a tad less with 320 kilobits But the flak it sounds and I was just thinking as you were saying that you can hear a slight difference Yeah, and also take into account your kids are screaming in the background or you've got your engine of your car or I mean how many of us just sit down In a pristine environment and listen to music anymore Most most of it comes down to when you have a very elitist, uh Uh listening environment perfect for every speaker's perfect headphones. Then you can hear a difference And not their usage No, I think a myth to dispel where there might be some confusion between sample rates is I get the impression some people think that if I have You know 48 kilohertz that's two samples per hertz of frequency if I go to 96 That's eight samples there for the resolution is better. That's not how it works So if it did, you know amazing and and I'm sure I'm sure there'll be a day when digital technology You're saying that the rather you're saying the frequency range increases rather than the sample right rather than the actual resolution I mean it gets complicated But and that's so that's where bit depth kind of comes into play with dynamic range, uh, yeah, I mean I I I put a video out on this very basically Simplifying what is quite actually quite a complicated scientific By experts who know way more than I do of course, of course you will I'll bring pete in here a moment But I think a good way of thinking about this for folks listening or watching In the comments there is is that um, it may be easy for you to think about this in terms of photography or digital photography So you've got sort of two factors You've got the um the actual number of pixels in the photo And then you've got the range of colors which have been captured within that photo as well And and and it's just a handy way to sort of think about it. I've got those two factors Now pete johns, um, what just quickly I've wondered about this When when you're recording on mobile devices What choices do you get in terms of sample rates? So it depends on the software, uh, I use garage band a lot as we've already talked about and that is locked into 44.124 bit So you are recording at 44.124 bit And that's what your mixes and that's what your masters and that's what everything's going to be and To be honest, I've be I've tried the others I must have been I bought a steinberg interface and it had on the thing 192 kilohertz I'm like I gotta try this so I fire up reaper and I record at 192 kilohertz And my computer just started crying It just said no, I don't want this anymore. Please stop right now My hard drive was wearing and it was just like smoke coming out the back So I decided that that wasn't something that I wanted to do anymore But yeah, I think it all comes down to the end listener And I think a lot of the answers we've given here today Would probably have been different 10 or 20 years ago when people were listening on I would say better listening environments that might be controversial to say But I think people are listening on crappier speakers and crappier headphones today than they were 10 years or 20 years ago In general because a lot of people as Marlon said a couple of times They grabbed their phone and they're listening out of the little dinny speakers there So you're trying to like pump up some bass They ain't getting no bass out of here and 96 kilohertz Is that going to make a difference when you're listening through your phone? Unless you're using some you know a stereo amplifier like a headphone amp in here and some very nice cans Probably not so I don't know that's it's my my view on this is that I don't think that at this point in time I think Marlon's point is valid that maybe and I think Ed said the same thing There may be in 10 years time it'll flip back around There'll be the counterculture of people that want things to be high fidelity And I know Deezer have already got their HD itunes gearing up to try and have their HD master Which I think have to be 96 kilohertz if I'm not mistaken at least So yeah, I think it's coming But for the average home studio musician now to save you save your space save your hassle Save your processing power and go 44 or 48 Here's an interesting perspective. I've heard and I've just seen it in the comments here And I just want I'm not an expert on this. So I think You guys may know more about this But there is this idea that 96k creates harmonics in some frequencies Okay Now, of course because the idea being that it's created those harmonics now they're in the recording So even when you down sample those harmonics will still be There in in the recording. What say you Marlon? harmonics are always Usually if you've got even harmonics, there will be a double of your bass frequency. So if you have a 50 hertz Bass note the first harmonic will be at 100 100 hertz the second one the 50 and so on and so on and so on. So This is this has nothing to do with Separate it happens in music at the apples with distortion saturation stuff like that and not with sample rate Okay, interesting. I mean, I we may have dispelled a myth there I have heard this before as I said, I'm not an expert If you just simple if you simply take A sub bass enhancer it will add harmonics. It will it's completely frequency frequency independent It happens at every same ratio you use. So No, it's not not making any difference Marlon Marlon, could you just explain to everyone who may not know what oversampling is in a plugin? Because there's always this little little thing at the bottom and I just I basically you'll go nuts Yeah, if you have an 48 a sample rate in your project and you use a two times oversampling You have to go double the sample rate for that plugin. So to go to 96 Kilohertz and what's the benefit of that? The ripple effect if you can hear it. So there's a trade-off if you have a very low sample rate that there's a slight aliasing effect aliasing this one happening in which can be audible That usually happens in the in the higher frequencies if you double the frequency that Aliasing will be put in in a frequency range. You cannot hear that that's the whole thing Okay, that makes sense. So I'm just going to butt in here with a little bit of an opinion and To talk a little bit what Marlon said there if you will notice it or if you can hear it this idea of Yeah, these things make this can you hear and I would say if you would even notice it I'm experience. I've had a lot recently or during the course of the channel growing Is a lot of people sending me their music usually I'll get emails and things. Hey, would you have a list to this? and and I've noticed time and time again The what I listen to I mean sees you often listen to these songs as they come is the song That's the prime thing that my brain just goes song song. What's happening or something the lyric what's happening the melody Maybe the mix a little bit because that's usually what they're emailing me and say hey Can you check this mix out? But my focus goes to the song time and time and time again And and I just think sometimes as musicians we can lack confidence in what we do So then we try to look for technical solutions to overcome What we view as our shortfalls. Yeah, this will be a great ep if only I really focus on compression this time Oh Focus on your songwriting every single time, you know, just do that first You can ruin it with bad mixing for sure, you know But uh, yeah, you you know the sayings polishing turds and all that So that's where I gotta go with this to be honest with you guys Here I am. I'm running a youtube channel about music production. I probably can't hear the difference between 96 and 48 to be quite honest with you Just that's the truth. That's my big and you're and you're old. So you cannot hear above five I can't hear above It's very very shocking tasting music. So, you know, you've got the trifecta of just horrible stuff You've just insolved a thorn there. I'm I'm a big fan of a thorn Just a quick thank you to uh, I hope I'm saying it right robath For the 10 dollar Donation there in the channel 10 euro even better 10 euro even yet very very generous. It's like that's like 50 or $300 Are we are we invoicing for our $2.50? Yeah Absolutely Okay, let's um, I put a little time we're going about 10 minutes more folks on this. Um, and um I'm just seeing some of the questions down there Um, I may get back to someone. I'll get one more question from my list I'll bring it up on the banners here and I know That mr. Thorn is going to probably have a bit of an opinion on this as well as mr. Marlon and me and I'm northern mike. I have an opinion on everything So here we go. I'll leave you all up for this one plugins or hardware. It's an oldie, but a goodie Um starting off with mr. Thor Okay, absolutely both all the way. Um, I think they both have a use I've I've only really delved into the hardware world in the last year I'm glad I did. It was a very interesting learning curve. It's a very different workflow Uh hardware acts differently to plugins plugins are reasonably Easy to get your head around. I think how the gain structures work and the processes and it's all very visual um My personal thoughts on it at the moment is hardware in if you can record through a nice preamp A couple of nice compressors obviously don't overdo it because you can't undo it I avoid eq because I think that's very mix dependent. I certainly wouldn't track with reverb, but a nice preamp Bit of gentle compression. I actually go through two Um to go in especially on vocals and acoustic guitars. This sounds great Uh mix everything in the box and then if you can hardware to go out So if you that's where you know a couple of eqs and a nice hardware compression Um, and you know, uh, um, I really want to get the rupert neve orbit summing desk I think that'd be amazing except just two thousand pound Oh They always are The things you want are always expensive Just now I actually agree with you there and I do the same by the way on the way in I record with Compression um a limiter sometimes Um, not much else But can you can you explain to the audience why that would be because I know a lot of people think well Why can't I just add that on as a plug-in afterwards? Why do I need to have that during the process of recording? Yeah, good question. Um for me there's and I've done comparison videos comparing analog and universal audio Hardware emulation plugins and for me every single time there is a depth to the sound. There's a 3d element to it There's a fullness and a warmth that I get from Tracking particularly vocals and acoustic guitar through a preamp versus putting on a digital emulation I just I don't Plug-ins are very good don't get me wrong But if you really listen in my opinion, there is a difference and I just prefer how analog sound and it is that 10th degree that the difference the benefit is tiny But if you multiply that through multiple bits of hardware versus multiple plugins Over multiple tracks by the time you get to a finished mix your a and b is actually not going to be that big It's going to be like that big in my opinion Okay, well, but I just I just want to interject before we go over to um p on this um that I just want to sort of say this especially for people just starting out who are watching this and are in the chat I actually agree with Pretty much all of what eds said there. However, do not Believe for a moment that before you record your next ep that you have to buy hardware Before you do that again going back to my point earlier song song song every song song and performance every time But but i'm trying to remind people as well that we sort of say hey the song's important your performance is important I've been trying to say to people recently the only thing we've got to remember Is you know, you're a good singer and you're a good songwriter There's a lot of them out there. You're competing against them. So then we come to this point where There's two songs great singers great songwriters on both You can get a little bit of an edge with better quality Of audio or better sonic quality. So there is a consideration there, but I'll move over to first of all to Mr. John's over here because he he doesn't use Outboard hardware again educate me, but it could be done. Couldn't it could be done again with mobile devices with Yeah, absolutely. Yeah Yeah, mobile world is no different to pc or mac again It's the you're recording ones and zeros into a device And this is probably the biggest misconception people get that whether it's a mac or a pc or an iphone or an ipad You hook it up something you're recording audio at a sample rate at a bit depth and that is exactly the same So yeah, if I wanted to I don't because I'm a lazy man I think that's probably the key point here is that I'm a very lazy guy And I remember the four track days mike you're old enough ed probably not You're old enough to remember the four track days where we had to use our board gear You want to reverb on your four track? You grabbed your rack mounted reverb unit You dialed in your settings and then you put it out from there and then you looped it back in through your effect Back into your four track and then you recorded it and then you had to lay your second track And then you had to bounce it all down and by the time you had 16 tracks that sounded like an absolute dog's breakfast But it was fun and we learned a lot and I think I don't know if this is a thing because There's a lot of people that love their analog gear that started out in studios with analog gear There's people in between I think that had to deal with analog gear And they just love in the box so much because we don't have to plug Stuff in anymore and then there's people that are enjoying the retro chic I'm not saying this is you ed but there's a lot of people that like hey, I've done all the in the box stuff I want to play with some knobs. I want to turn some dials and that was me. Yeah Yeah, just because it's cool because there is a certain thing like you've said this a lot and ed you probably agree When you're making music we said at the very start it's got to be fun You've got to be passionate You're going to be enjoying it and there is something about turning a knob on a piece of kit As opposed to just pushing a slider with your mouse or your touchscreen that actually feels like you're creating And that's the thing people probably think this is surprising that I say that because I don't use any of it But I totally understand and dig why people love their analog gear. I get it. I just I'm far far too lazy to plug anything in anymore Cool. Cool. And I think that's you know, just to um, seeing Pete's praises a little bit Going right back to the beginning because you know, I've been I was a fan of Pete's channel before I even started youtube And I do love the idea of just getting stuff done. Pete's the kind of guy He's probably going to record pretty much a whole song in a day. He may have it mastered and released Through distro kid Late in the day. He's made the artwork. Where'd you go for your artwork? Pete? Just a little plug there Canva probably And he's got the whole thing and you know, there's something wonderfully wonderfully Spontaneous about that and and just very very cool that that was not possible before We did not have the technology to do that and probably myself and Ed are a little bit more like We're much more insecure. So we go. We've got to have that We've got to have that 3d being less than 5k for it to be right or else we can't release it and yeah, so Yeah, and I think you said it right before without the song Like if you're if you're if you're in a million dollar studio and you've got a crap song You can record it with the most pristine outboard gear in the world and it's still a crap song If you've got an amazing song and you record it on the voice recorder on your phone It's still an amazing song and that's the big difference people think that they can polish a turd and they can do whatever else you say By having all the gear in the world to make it sound great It'll sound great But it'll sound like a great turd Instead of a crappy turd that it might sound if you don't have all the gear So yeah, it's all about writing and recording a good song at the source and then everything you do from there should improve it But you can't fix it fix it in the mix as a myth and I think we all know that I don't think anyone's arguing on the side of Yeah, just make it do whatever and then fix everything in post Marlon, what do you reckon hardware software? I had a first software. I again both or whatever or either. It doesn't matter Um, we want answers though, Marlon. We want answers here I do have a little rant because when you see a big name Mixer I only work in the box. Yeah true. But what happened before you actually mixed That's always left out. So but that said, uh, I use both hardware and software Hardware is a pain pain in the the butt. Hey, this is a nice one if you want to If you want to recall settings. So when I use hardware always go early in the chain Uh, I did test the tegela cram, uh rc a while back At that one is a remote controlled hardware unit, which is excellent for recalling When you use that that unit on the master bus So that's something I like Using hardware on the way in not always I use a lot of external effects. That's my way I just capture the audio as clean as possible and then then add my analog Sound Somewhere early in the chain with external effects. I print it And then I use plugins to finalize my mixes. This is my workflow That said, I worked with plugins for actually before actually used hardware So you can get excellent results with plugins as well. So it all works Cool. Thank you for clearing that up for us. Now as clear as mud Um, it's great. We've We've alluded to turds quite a lot during this conversation. Thanks Hey, johns, uh, I think I'm on race is a good point there. You know, you hear these records that like chris lord algae is mixed and Yeah, you know, I mean he's maybe not a good example But you hear these records that producers who mix in the box Use but yeah, they've gone through, you know, a rack of neaves a rack of 1076 1176 la 2a compressors So that so the source quality, you know, they're going through vintage microphones in acoustically perfectly treated rooms So the source quality is far better than you're going to get out of a 50 pound interface that's been recorded in a toilet Do you know what I mean? Absolutely, but then then again as well, you know coming back to it. It's more often than not those great producers It's not just the gear that they're recording with it's the talent they're recording as well You know, the songwriting the songwriting capabilities the performance cap not all of it's great mind you Chris I would raise a point though that the the best and the most important and the only equipment that matters is the equipment you have To record that song right now Get the song out and and I I've played hundreds and thousands of weddings And I can guarantee no bride and groom have chosen the first song based on whether it was recorded at 48 or 96 Or through a need preamp or into a bar and your interface they do it because the song means something to people Absolutely every time and that is the essence of music. It's why we all loved music right from the beginning Probably for all of us when we were kids. There was a particular song or something we heard We just thought that's cool. It evoked emotions in us. We we weren't thinking Oh, I don't know what microphone they're using on the I'm marlin making together, but the rest of us Hey, I have my my best vocal recordings with death metal musicians singers were recorded with an sm58 Yeah, absolutely. And I've heard that a lot about the sm58 Particularly powerful voices Gritty voices. It's excellent Bono, I think used for some of their most famous recordings use the sm58 As a weird little fact gentleman, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you here some of my favorite people in the world on screen with me I can now die happy I hope it's not too soon Um, I'd love to have you all back again folks. I hope you've got something Thank you so much for joining us. Um, I didn't really take many of your questions But I really do appreciate you tuning in for this if you're watching on the replay Do make sure you like subscribe and leave some comments if you would like to ask some specific questions I'm sure these gentlemen will come back to the comments and ask any that are directed at them Just use it at before their name so that they um know about that But yeah, again, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us Um, I do hope you come back again And I hope that everyone goes and subscribes to your channel right away Right away, even if you don't like beards go there You can eat all the beards You'll get a wealth of information from these guys all from a different perspective and there's all lots of different perspectives On these questions these questions that we've asked today will be asked again and again again in um, facebook groups So and so forth. There is no clear definitive answer to them. You've got to come to your own conclusion But we have given you some perspectives. I hope um in this show Thank you so much for joining us ed thorn any last words No, thank you for having us keep creating stay positive be kind to one another and I'll see you on the next one See you in the next one. Good boy egg thorn Pete johns I said egg thorn. Did anyone notice that? We'll let it go by must have been when I was looking at pete john's head I thought egg and I was like egg thorn Pete johns anything else you would like to add before you head off to bed because it's quite late there Apparently having head like an egg. No, uh, yeah, please keep creating You know my mantra is create record release So keep doing that and yeah me and ed have a very similar thing that we say at the end Which is be kind to yourself because remember you got to fit the oxygen mask to yourself before you help others Including children and then be kind to other folks and keep creating rock on mic rock on everywhere very very cool Marlon, how can you beat that that was? I won't be that I am not going to be that I'm just going to say keep on rocking and check out everyone's channel. See you do that Yeah, thanks guys last wave to everyone and I'll end the show. Thanks so much everyone who watch and we'll see you next time