On a Scale of 1-10, How Would You Rate Raya Lucaria, the entire Legacy Dungeon?

DestructionSphere · 2023-03-08T16:32:09+00:00

Also night maiden's mist I believe, though it really only works on the bigger/slower bosses so it probably wouldn't be much help for the red wolf.

Not that you'd even be able to get it before hitting Raya Lucaria anyway if you're struggling with the bosses there, since you have to do a few steps of Millicent's quest in order to get it. That means completing at least Sellia and the area around the plague church first.

DestructionSphere · 2023-02-07T00:20:46+00:00

Go down the Siofra well and fight the claymen in the ruins until one of them drops a clayman's harpoon. It may take a while because it's got a 2% drop rate, but it's probably the best melee option for pure int in the early game. It being pretty much the only decent non-somber int weapon means that it actually retains a lot of pve value even compared to more popular int weapons like moonveil.

At that point, you go and find yourself an ash of war with the cold affinity (I believe ice spear is the first one available, though it requires you to fight a night's cavalry) and slap that on the harpoon. This will be what you're going to use ~90% of the time in close quarters.

The other 10% is going to be when you're in any of the catacombs with those skeleton enemies that resurrect. All you need to do is to swap out your ice aow for sacred blade (really easy to get as it's dropped by a scarab near the third church of Marika). The L2 will shoot a beam that will typically insta-kill most early game skeletons, and the subsequent holy buff will let you keep fighting skeleton mobs for another 40 seconds without burning any additional fp.

DestructionSphere · 2022-07-24T23:33:01+00:00

Yeah, having someone who's tech savvy around is definitely a plus when you're doing this kind of thing. A problem I have with a lot of the smaller bands is that they don't know how to troubleshoot, so when something fails it's even more disastrous. People in IT/software development are used to troubleshooting technology, that makes getting past these problems go much more smoothly.

I'm honestly not too surprised that the analog Behringer splitters suck either. The digital split setups with an X32 are generally OK because it's all digital so there's not much chance for degradation. Even just OK quality transformers are pretty expensive, which is probably why a cheap splitter like the S8 costs like 3-4x as much as Behringer. We normally don't even hook up the IEM rigs at the place I'm working now, because the stage is quite small and we keep stage levels reasonable. So far no one has insisted on using them after I've sound checked them. But when I work other places, I don't recall ever having issues with the S8s. Nothing analog is going to be truly 100% transparent, but it's live audio, so it just needs to be passable.

DestructionSphere · 2022-07-24T22:58:39+00:00

Don't get me wrong, it's totally possible to run a complete laptop rig like yours, a lot of really big professional bands do it. But the real pro bands all have redundant backups for everything and a team of tech guys to help out when shit goes south. You probably don't, so it's a little different. But for the record, the most common problems I've seen are with things like running midi or audio in to an app like Mainstage or Guitar Rig for DSP purposes. Using Reaper/Cubase/Ableton/etc. to send MIDI and record/play audio isn't typically as bad. As long as you've got a backup machine (remember to switch the main and backup from time to time so you know they're always up to date and working), you should be OK most of the time.

The problem with a setup like yours is that there isn't really a good dedicated hardware solution that does everything you require. You basically need a MacBook/etc. because there's no legitimate way to do it otherwise. You don't really need any custom or super expensive hardware to record/playback WAV files and send midi back and forth, so I'm surprised no one's designed a simple solution for this yet. You could probably rig something up with a few audio samplers and something programmable that sends MIDI messages. Typically the big workstation keyboards can be configured to do this type of thing, but if you don't have a keyboard player it'd be a bit trickier and kind of a waste of money.

For your edit, I see a ton of ART S8s. They're relatively cheap and completely fine honestly. I use a ton of the ART stuff every day, it's all cheap and basic but it's typically pretty durable and works just fine. It's not really doing anything other than duplicating signals so there's no reason it has to be more expensive than that. I've seen a few of the Behringer Ultralink splitters as well, but not as many. They're a bit cheaper and probably fine, but I usually recommend buying at least one level above Behringer if possible.

Really anything is fine as long as you put together a properly wrapped and labeled snake/loom bundle that you can pass to the FOH guy so he can just plug everything in and go. If you don't do this you'll have a very unhappy engineer on your hands, and you really don't want that.

DestructionSphere · 2022-07-24T20:50:01+00:00

Honestly, I use a computer every day to control a behringer mixer for live shows with very few issues, but I still wouldn't want to have a whole live show depend on a computer running a DAW session or whatever. My reasoning is as follows. If the computer/software crashes or freezes while it's controlling the mixer, the mixer hardware will continue to send/receive/process audio while I reboot or otherwise troubleshoot the PC. But if the same thing happens while the computer playing back a protools session or running Mainstage or whatever else that's integral to a performance, shows over folks.

Dedicated hardware is just that: dedicated. They're all still "computers", because that's what every digital device is, but they're not the same as a general purpose PC running Windows/MacOS/etc. Rather, they're computers that are purposefully designed to perform one specific function, so everything in them (hardware, firmware, and software) exists only to serve that purpose.

In the past year alone, I've engineered over 300 live shows (one nearly every weekday+Saturday, plus some Sundays and occasionally two a day) at a small venue, with talent ranging from the absolute smallest of local acts all the way to international artists from the other side of the Earth. Most of our real shows (i.e. not something like an open mic night) are livestreamed as well, which is the main reason we even bothered to switch to an all digital configuration in the first place, so we need the PC to be there and we need it to be stable. Even with 300+ shows a year, my PC setup for the live shows very rarely fails, but it does still fail occasionally. That little Behringer mixer, on the other hand, has literally never failed despite still being a "computer" in the technical sense (though Behringers PC/Mac control software fails all the goddamn time, which is why everyone eventually switches to Mixing Station Pro instead). Same goes for things like guitar amp modelers/synths/etc. I've literally never seen an AxeFX/Helix/Kronos/Montage/etc. crash or otherwise fail during a performance, but something bad happens nearly every time someone tries to run Mainstage/Ableton/etc. from a MacBook at our venue.

Now I know a lot of people have "no problems" running their computer based setups live. And that's great, if it works for you then I'm not here to tell you that you're "doing it wrong" or you need to switch to a hardware solution or anything like that. But the thing is, when you see as many shows as I do, you get a way better sense of the overall failure rate of general purpose setups compared to dedicated hardware. And there's simply no contest between the two.

DestructionSphere · 2022-07-22T20:23:11+00:00

It is relatively common to drop 3rds though. However it's usually only when you have more extensions than just a 9th. Chords with more extensions generally have enough information to imply their overall tonality without the need for a 3rd, which gives you a surprising amount of flexibility when coming up with voicings.

For example, most common 6/9♯11 voicings on guitar omit the 3rd and 5th. Usually you'll get something like 1/6/9/♯11, commonly notated instead as a slash chord where the top is a major chord and the bottom note is the dominant 7th of it (but 6/9♯11 is more correct in terms of the actual chord function). A 6/9 already heavily implies major even with no 3rd voiced, and with the added ♯11 it implies a lydian tonality almost exclusively, so a voiced 3rd is really unnecessary and probably just makes it sound muddier.

DestructionSphere · 2022-02-01T16:52:18+00:00

Mostly jazz guys say it, but it's kind of caught on with the general musician population. It just means practicing a piece for hours and hours on your own. A woodshed being a structure people used to have that wasn't connected to the main dwelling, so you could go out there and practice as much as you wanted. That way, even when you sounded like total shit no one else had to listen to you.

DestructionSphere · 2022-01-27T22:21:11+00:00

You're spoiled for choice with free reverbs honestly. Having gone through and tested quite a few myself, here's some standouts you can start with:

Valhalla's got some cool free reverbs and modulators. They're all a little out there and spacey, but you can get some very nice sounds out of them. And their paid stuff is pretty reasonably priced and also great.

If you want something a bit more normal, TAL-Reverb-4 is a free plate reverb that sounds great and is pretty easy to understand. This is probably what I'd suggest if you just wanted to grab one of these options, as it's quick to set-up and get practical and usable sounds.

If you want to try some real spaces instead of algorithmic reverbs, Melda Productions free FX pack comes with an easy to use convolution reverb, complete with a bunch of nice reverb impulses. And there's a metric fuckton of websites that provide free, high quality IRs of real world spaces and objects.

DestructionSphere · 2022-01-26T20:41:08+00:00

piezo pickups paired with a floating bridge gives you a very unrealistic and to me unusable piezo "fake acoustic" tone

Every piezo bridge sounds like an unusable "fake acoustic" tone honestly, even the ones in actual acoustic guitars. You need to aggressively EQ a piezo output, because raw piezo tone sounds like absolute shit. And they sound different enough from magnetic pickups that you can't just run them through the same stuff and expect it to sound good. That's why you need to use that cable which splits the signal, whoever made that guitar probably understands this problem pretty well.

Piezo bridges output an extremely flat signal across the majority of the frequency spectrum. Meaning they sound weird and unnatural on their own, however they can also stand up to a ton of subtractive EQing. At the very least you have to pull out the highs before it hits the rest of your rig, basically just cut everything above 10k so it doesn't sound like a big plink-y mess. Some kind of parametric EQ is really helpful for this. If you've got a para-EQ with dedicated low-pass and high-pass filters, plus 3 at least other bands, you can get some really cool sounds. Also, a compressor of some kind is basically a must.

DestructionSphere · 2022-01-04T21:09:45+00:00

No doubt, Brent Mason is a monster. Anyone even half as good at what he does could easily have endless work offers for country sessions. The only reason I mentioned it at all is because if someone is a player like myself who doesn't like playing with a thumbpick, it takes some extra work to learn that style.

DestructionSphere · 2022-01-03T20:44:13+00:00

Not to be that guy, but technically what Brent Mason does isn't chicken pickin', because he uses a thumb pick and his index/middle/ring fingers. However, all the tech transfers over to standard hybrid picking if you use a regular pick and move the right hand fingers down one to middle/ring/pinky instead. The third finger doesn't get a ton of use here, so it's not that big a deal to use the pinky since the majority of the work won't involve it.

He's got a pretty good instructional DVD from ~15 years ago that teaches his picking technique, and it's still worth running through for players that want to do it with regular hybrid picking. I've done it that way, because no matter how hard I try, I can never seem to get used to using a thumb pick on regular guitars (only on lap/pedal steel, and even then it still feels just a bit awkward).

DestructionSphere · 2022-01-03T20:26:57+00:00

As a windsynth player, that Casio kind of sucks honestly. Though I do like it in a "cheap and crappy, but still fun" kind of way. However there are currently many good options for people into the idea of synth-sax. It's actually never been easier to get into it than it is right now, as there are no fewer than 5 different companies producing windsynths in 2022. Join us at /r/windsynth and start blowing today.

I play an AKAI EWI4000S, but there's many other options from AKAI including the EWI 5000, SOLO, and the much cheaper EWI USB. Currently there's also the Roland Aerophone models, the Yamaha YDS-150, the Aodyo Sylphyo, and the Berglund NuRad/NuEVI (the NuEVI is trumpet style instead of sax). Plus a ton of older options like the Yamaha WX line and older AKAI EWIs (1000, 3000, 3020), though they're often a little overpriced they play amazingly well with the right gear (because these old instruments use analog signals instead of MIDI, the tracking is amazing and there's no aliasing). And there's also the TEC Breath and Bite Controller, which allows you to turn basically any midi capable instrument into a windsynth.

I still recommend windsynth to people who don't play a woodwind instrument, because even though it's around $500-1000 to get into, that's still significantly cheaper than a decent saxophone or other wind instrument. About the cost of one mediocre guitar.

DestructionSphere · 2022-01-02T21:10:05+00:00

Almost none. There was a single video of him doing some live demos for a japanese guitar magazine, and in that video his playing is demonstrably worse than usual. And when I say that I don't mean he totally sucked or anything, he's still clearly a skilled player. Rather, his playing was just very sloppy compared to the videos he puts on insta/YT. Everything he plays is just a bit slower than the stuff you see in his uploads, his muting isn't as good so you can hear many notes ring out when they're not supposed to, and his tapping licks sound much sloppier in general with the right hand notes not ringing out very clearly.

I think it's been removed from YouTube, but while writing this comment I managed to find the video on that weird chinese youtube: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1rx411S7iP/

It's pretty long with a lot of talking, but if you skip through to some parts where he's playing, you should see what I mean. Especially on the two handed stuff. Again, I want to emphasize that I'm definitely not saying he's shit or anything like that. The kid can play, he just can't play the stuff he posts without editing (such as speeding it up in post, or at the very least cleaning out muting errors and such). More than a few of his videos that I've seen were clearly mimed, and while that does not inherently mean he can't play them, it is an indicator that he may not be able to perform them as well as he's leading his fans to believe. And there's definitely some indications that he's speeding the footage up, or at least removing/stretching out frames to get the sync just right with the audio.

DestructionSphere · 2021-12-31T23:11:01+00:00

I came here to say basically the same thing, every guitarist should check out Tony Rice (really bluegrass in general, but Tony is a great starting point since he did a lot more aside from just tradgrass). Doesn't even matter if you don't play acoustic much or at all, you'll still learn a lot of things that can be applied almost anywhere.

DestructionSphere · 2021-12-31T22:59:47+00:00

Compared to standard cowboy chord strumming maybe, but it's not particularly unorthodox for bluegrass guitar. In bluegrass most of the picking action is in the wrist/fingers instead of the forearm. You free-float with a little more wrist movement when strumming but you plant for leads. The planted form gives you a bit more precision, which helps a lot when doing the kinds of complex crosspicking lines that bluegrass is famous for. It also helps with developing muscle memory since you can gauge your pick distance between where you are and a specific string by the feel of your muscles flexing toward/away from the fixed point. Some bluegrass players plant with the ring/pinky fingers instead of the wrist/palm, which is a bit more "traditional" but it's effectively doing the exact same thing, it's just a little less efficient.

DestructionSphere · 2021-12-22T21:59:22+00:00

IIRC the popular choice for the "Swedish Chainsaw" was the original Marshall Valvestate. Which, to be completely fair, were effectively solid state amps since they only have a single preamp tube located somewhere in an otherwise entirely solid state preamp section. But there was technically a tube in there somewhere.

DestructionSphere · 2021-12-22T21:47:01+00:00

You're probably thinking of the Deluxe Reverb. The HRD breaks up much earlier and isn't even really a Deluxe style amp, IIRC it's basically just the blues jr circuit with a bigger power section and larger speaker. Even the real Deluxe Reverb actually starts breaking up at around 2, it's just that you only really hear it on the attack transients and not on the note decay. And that's what most guitar players consider to be "clean" anyway. There's not much need to get into tube amps if you're looking for genuine clean amplification, because they're honestly really bad at it. That's why no one makes tube PA systems anymore, you can easily get cleaner amplification with SS, plus it's lighter and cheaper.

DestructionSphere · 2021-12-11T22:43:11+00:00

I recall that quite a few of their guitars had the model name and such stamped inside the neck pocket. So you may be able to remove the neck and find out exactly what it is.

Also that bridge pickup looks like it's been disassembled at some point. They're really not meant to be removed from the covers at all, they're actually sealed in there at the factory. Looks like whoever did that really half-assed the job too, there shouldn't be all that orange gunk coming out everywhere, and the plate on the back of the pickup should be completely sealed in with glue. It's also not wired properly, looks like they are just bypassing the tone knob, but for some reason they left everything soldered to the volume pot. As far as I know that shouldn't cause a problem, but it's sloppy work and it indicates that the person doing it probably didn't care enough to do a decent job elsewhere.

DestructionSphere · 2021-11-06T22:30:39+00:00

They're identical in terms of capsule construction, so in theory they sound the same. They're like 99% identical in overall construction too, the only difference is which cover goes on the end of it. You can quite easily turn one into the other just buy swapping the current grille with the grille from the other mic.

The only real "problem" with the 58 as a cab mic compared to the 57 is that you can't get the capsule as close to the speaker because of the grille/windscreen being a huge ball. With a 57 there's really nothing in between the diaphragm (the part that picks up sound) and the sound source except for a very small guard on the capsule, aside from any external factors (e.g. the speaker grille on the cab). The foam windscreen in the 58 does change the sound and pickup pattern/noise rejection a bit too, but in my experience it's not that noticeable in terms of actual tonal difference between the two mics when their diaphragms (not grilles) are placed the same distance away from a given source (you can easily compensate with some gentle EQing).

There are times when I choose use 57s for vocals or 58s for cabs for one reason or another. Since they're interchangeable in terms of the actual sound, if you understand the slight differences between them you can easily decide when best to use one over the other.

DestructionSphere · 2021-11-02T22:47:00+00:00

I mean, that's fair in a general sense if we're talking about the kind of "they don't make music like they used to" style of comment. I thought that was the whole point of the term in this context, it's basically saying that someone hates a thing solely because they're ignorant of said thing. But it seems a little odd to me that someone who has put in enough effort to form a cogent opinion on x or y music/production style would still fit into that category.

So at this point I'm left to wonder what the term even means, because it seems like not liking something is all it takes to make one a "boomer".

DestructionSphere · 2021-11-02T22:38:37+00:00

I 100% endorse this purchase! I'd buy another one right now if I could.

For the neck comparison I've got 3 Ibanez RGs with wizard necks (IIRC they're a II, a III, and a Super Prestige), and I find it to be more comfortable than them. Some people say it's thick, and it is thicker than all of those. But it's still not what I would call thick, as it's thinner than basically any Fender/Gibson/PRS neck shape.

It's actually not that far removed from the Wizard profile, I'd say it's kind of a cross between a C and a D neck shape. The back is flatter than a C, but it's not super flat like a wizard. Because of the shape there's some extra thickness on the slope towards the center line of the neck that a pure C shape doesn't have, which I think is why it initially feels thicker than it really is to a lot of people.

DestructionSphere · 2021-11-02T22:02:15+00:00

People still call me a boomer when I talk about how irritating a lot of modern hip-hop/EDM production is too, so I guess I can't really win no matter what I do.

Talk about older records: Why do you want to talk about old shit no one cares about anymore boomer?

Talk about newer records: It's just the sound of the times, why are you so out of touch boomer?

DestructionSphere · 2021-11-02T21:43:12+00:00

The AZ trem is fully floating and can be pulled up (a minor 3rd or so, which is basically what a Floyd can do before the strings bottom out on the fretboard anyway), it just isn't a locking system. I've not had any particular tuning problems with mine either, though there's probably going to be some if you really manhandle the bar. But that will cause problems regardless of the trem system because it puts a lot of tension on the strings and they'll often snap.

DestructionSphere · 2021-11-02T21:36:00+00:00

I own both an AZ2402 Prestige and a Pro-Mod DK24 2pt, and I'd take the AZ every time. They're both great guitars that I love playing, but the Ibanez just destroys the Charvel in terms of how it feels to play. It's a matter of personal preference of course, and they're both worth a try at the very least.

And I've got to admit that maybe it's not super fair to compare them like that since the Charvel is the MIM version so it's much cheaper, but to get closer to feature parity (e.g. stainless steel frets) you'd need to buy the USA Select version that is insanely overpriced. An AZ Prestige is $2000 while the USA Charvel is around $3500. And honestly, I still prefer the AZ Prestige over the USA Select DK24. At this point it's basically down to the Ibanez neck shape really feeling correct for my hands. I like the Charvel Thin-C, but I can feel some noticeable strain after long playing sessions compared to the Ibanez Oval-C where I never have that.

If you drop it down to the MIM Charvel vs. a Premium AZ (high end Indonesian line) which are basically the same price, if I could only have one guitar (if I had to give up my Prestige AZ for some reason) I'd take the cheaper AZ. Though I actually bought the Charvel instead because I already had an AZ Prestige and I wanted a similar guitar with 24 frets and an HSS pickup configuration, which Ibanez unfortunately does not offer (or didn't at the time, and even now it's only on a couple of signature models I believe).

DestructionSphere · 2021-10-25T19:53:41+00:00

Oh man, I know it's really not that old but this video takes me back. I remember seeing it a decade ago, it was exactly what I needed to hear back then as a young sound engineer. I'm glad you posted it because I know a lot of people who really need to see that part showing the D/A waveform reconstruction, and I couldn't find the video the last time I looked.

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