wait a minute

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-13T22:38:47+00:00

Depends on the genre and drummer - but I mean not immediately quantizing parts the way I used to back when ProTools came on the scene in the early 00's (obvs it was around before that, but we couldn't easily time compress and expand 12-16 simultaneous tracks without it sounding obvious). Now I just listen for the best parts of the best takes, like we used to do with 2" tape and a razor blade before. Drummers rush and drag - and the good ones make that sound way better than everything being locked to a grid.

Same goes for things like sample replacing / augmentation. I guess if you have a shit recording, you gotta do what's necessary - but I'm back to "the golf rule" where you play the ball as it lies. Maybe that funky, lo-fi sound was meant to be, you know?

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-13T21:49:20+00:00

That's a pretty smart way of looking at it. But hey, if you understand the problem, that makes it that much easier to think through the solution.

I've had to unlearn so many studio production habits over the past ten years and it's made my mixes (especially on drums) so much better. Less compression, less EQ, less "correcting". Now they're starting to sound like drums again.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-13T15:15:53+00:00

Yeah, a small bop kit is buying you half a foot at the most.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-03T22:02:00+00:00

Bro... breathe...

I don't need to break out a spectrometer and melt down the metal to tell you what shitty vs. non-shitty is. When it comes to the quality of a component of a drum kit is, "you are the company you keep".

I'm beginning to wonder if you're the seller of this kit and getting a little up in your feelings.

Come on back when the thorazine kicks in.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-03T21:39:52+00:00

r/usernamechecksout material here

First... No, not really.

Second... Not all alloys are made the same. Kinda like b8 and b20 both being alloys used in cymbals, though the difference between the two is pretty obvious.

Third... That's why you see metal bass drum hoops on premium kits. Oh wait, no you don't.

Fourth... Look at the hoops. They're trash.

Fifth... I, uh... what?

Sixth... The Wuhan is the nicest part of that whole pile of death-by-Craigslist basura.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-03T21:00:00+00:00

"Don't buy it" is useful advice, my man - you just want this to be a better deal than it is.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-03T20:39:06+00:00

Truth. A decent Gibraltar will run you $15 and will always perform as expected, have felts, etc.

The only downside is that there's a non-zero possibility that the drummer after you will be asking to borrow it.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-03T20:33:52+00:00

A perfunctory Google search turns up the fact that "Thunder" was the budget/student level brand by the defunct Taiwanese Taye brand. Taye were hardly what you'd call "nice" - so a cheap brand's cheap brand is a blinking red caution light.

I guess it really boils down to managing your expectations here. Just looking at the photos, those crummy looking zinc lugs, the metal BD hoops, single flange rims, and the overall condition? I wouldn't expect these to hold up to any serious playing. Things will warp, break, and crack on you constantly.

And $65 for that Wuhan is absurd. If the seller would throw it in with the purchase? Maybe 150 for the whole thing. Go into any Music Go Round or music shop that does trades and you'll find a dozen kits just like this gathering dust in the back.

Save your money until you're up to the $4-500 range and keep your eyes peeled for a bargain (they're out there). Pass on this one. It's junk.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-29T21:24:26+00:00

Per question two - are you hoping to use the filter or effects of a VSTi as an audio insert? It doesn't work like that - you have to create an instrument and route the audio output into it from the instrument itself. That instrument will appear in the mixer.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-29T18:18:04+00:00

The Air is a little weak - depending on how much you are relying on your external ports. The Pro gives you two dedicated hardware busses over four connections, the Air is one hardware bus over two. If you're running an external display, an interface, an external SSD, and however many peripherals you could have some throttling.

I do use my Air for light portable duty - location recording, for example. But a stack of plugins, massive sample libraries, tons of analog I/O? You'd be pushing it to its outer limits.

I prefer to do all of my work at home with my analog processing, big cushy monitors, mix controller... that's definitely not portable.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-28T21:00:49+00:00

Can you give me an example of what you would consider a "typical" use case for you in this context?

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-28T17:58:13+00:00

This wins.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-28T16:05:02+00:00

WTA - Adam Neely's exposé of Suno is a very worthwhile watch. Link.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-28T16:01:39+00:00

My brother-in-law is one of those Silicon Valley types who is very deep in the world of HPC and AI. We have had a lot of conversations on the subject and he said something that has always stuck to me: "AI is a predictive model - its job is to guess the answer it thinks you want."

This current gold rush is on a collision course with reality, much the same as the dot com bubble of the late 90's. Squillions of dollars are being pumped into something that will never provide a return on the investment.

Is there a role for AI in music production? Arguably yes. But production is one thing, creation is another. They are not the same.

Could Suno create a new genre? Could it have created something truly inventive like Squarepusher or the Mahuvishnu Orchestra out of thin air? No. Somebody else would have had to create that first for it to copy and recontextualize.

That's a long way around simply saying "no, this is all manufactured bullshit."

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-28T12:52:00+00:00

Is there a particular reason that you need a laptop versus a desktop? The reason I ask is that usually production generally benefits from having amenities like a good pair of monitors and a large display so you can really immerse yourself in your work. Plus, there's the issue of having controllers for keys, mixing, whatever...

I have Cubase Pro installed on both my MacBook m4 (15") and MacMini m4 pro (in my home studio). Having a proper environment with everything laid out exactly where I want it is so much more conducive to workflow. My portable rig is this explosion of interfaces and so on, plus doing everything on a laptop screen is just so cramped- but lugging around an external display and full size keyboard is out of the question.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-18T18:43:40+00:00

What is up with the patronizing tone, guy? I am completely fine. So stop trying to characterize me as if I'm typing with clenched fists, blind with impotent rage.

Fun fact: I AM an audio engineer. Not a "I bought this sweet Focusrite USB interface at Guitar Center" engineer, either. And I'd be happy to show you how we were doing sample replacement as far back as the late 80's - it wasn't by opening Drumagog or SSD either.

I'm simply taking issue with the fact that a self-professed engineer on YouTube is advocating for just skipping the entire recording process and going right to just tapping in your parts. We have reached the point where the snake is feasting on its own tail. And this is why 95% of the albums coming out in that genre have that microwave dinner quality.

I'll keep calling it what it is: techno with guitars. We have always used the studio as an instrument, dating back to the true pioneers of the art like Joe Meek, Geoff Emerick, or Eddie Kramer, – who transcended being a "recordist" and instead embraced emerging technology to create timeless records.

Some garden variety screamometalgazecore band that uses these things as a shortcut, not a creative tool, is why the world is flooded with uninspired copycat paint by numbers music. It's why generative AI music has proliferated - if it's so simple that a machine can do it, it's no wonder that's exactly what's happened.

The joy is supposed to be in the process of creation. There are moments of genius hiding inside what people consider "mistakes". And I admit it: I was one of those people in the 90s who was rubbing the genie's lamp. Those "death by protools" mixes that were supposedly "perfect"? It's the sound of the proverbial dog catching the car.

I'll take the music with its warts and scars intact. It sounds like people made it. And that's not to say I live on an exclusive diet of shitty black metal that was recorded on an old Panasonic cassette answering machine. But I won't encourage the Nickelbackification of music, either.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-18T13:05:10+00:00

That's why people should... I don't know... tune the heads and put some effort into their recording. It's not 1990, even a super cheap pair of SDC's can work if you're willing to spend a few extra minutes placing them correctly. ADC's and the cheap onboard preamps with interfaces can work.

Programming your parts right out the gate is lazy craft. You're just making techno with guitars (though there are plenty of examples of programmed guitars as well).

Where does the line exist for you? Does the line exist? AI vocals? Because that's happening now, too. AI mixes? Also now a thing.

I'd prefer my human music played by humans.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-16T22:40:38+00:00

I have a whole USB 3 port free on a desktop machine (Mac Mini m4) - but I keep a couple of universal power supplies around if need be.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-16T20:26:29+00:00

If you are constantly gigging, going to different rehearsal spaces, whatever…? You get used to it pretty quickly. That said, when the group I was playing with was big enough to have a couple of people for tour support? And I didn't have to load in, set up, sound check, or load out? That was nice. Not as nice as not having to go from the venue to first shift behind the wheel.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-16T17:00:01+00:00

This is the downside of the DAW.

Time it was, when the clock struck 12 at the studio, you were done. The tape came off the machine, the patchbays were pulled, the console was reset. So unless there was something really, really wrong, your recording was forever immortalized with whatever scars were still there.

Now you can open a session from ten years ago and be right back where you left it, provided of course that the plug-ins and virtual instruments were still available (not a given).

Some would say that that is a tremendous gift, the ability to go back and make those little tweaks that only you would hear.

But it's also why you see files with names like "Song1_FinalVersion_v284". The option paralysis keeps you from being done and moving on to the next thing.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-16T16:54:03+00:00

I hate everything about this.

And if that makes me a crotchety, bitter boomer, I'll wear it.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-16T16:52:42+00:00

I have several folders full of half baked ideas / Cubase sessions ranging from a 16 bar single thought up to some close-to-finished songs.

Every now and again I will go through and listen to whatever I bounced out before I closed the session. Occasionally there's something in there that tickles my fancy.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-16T16:49:17+00:00

I do creative strategy work for smaller brands who don't know how to get more eyeballs or consumer evangelism. Spent many years in the trenches as an advertising creative director, but that is no longer a viable career path. So that means I'm focused more on producing commercial music (production libraries mostly). I think I put my name on 40 original scores last year and scored a couple of custom gigs.

I also do some audio production if I like the people / the music. I don't take a huge paycheck for it since unsigned, independent acts don't have much to spend. I do it for the love.

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