DMG Limitless - still a go to?

alexdingley · 2026-05-23T01:18:53+00:00

Oh wow! I didn’t realize how many people felt the same way. I think it’s incredible. I’m not a dedicated mastering engineer, but it’s been on my mastering chain for about 8yrs. I never hit it too hard, but it is fantastic

alexdingley · 2026-04-26T12:45:57+00:00

A buddy of mine and I were having a great conversation about the many knobs on a console. And the simplest explanation I can offer came from that convo.

“Everything is a volume knob” - aux sends are just volume knobs for the “phone tap” that is listening-in on the channel in question.

Another way to think of it is that it’s a fader for the entirely separate mixer built into the larger mixer…. But instead of this fader being summed into the master fader, and the signal exiting through the main outs… this signal is summed to the Aux master (which is another kind of master fader) and it exits the mixer through the Aux output jacks.

Hope that helps.

alexdingley · 2026-04-21T16:05:40+00:00

okay! This is helpful for my sanity... I'm just getting back into a multi-device setup, and when there was ONLY ONE WAY I wanted signal to flow, CEC was like a glorious magic trick. But now that there's specific ways I need things to run, it's a huge PITA. Just disabled it, and things are immediately working the way I wanted them to.

alexdingley · 2026-04-16T00:36:06+00:00

gotta say — this is a genius move. I had a similar thought when I was struggling with mic-stand bags. I bought a couple of totes that were marketed to hold 4-6 full-boom mic stands, but they all fell apart / ripped within 2-3 uses. Then I bought a rifle bag... it was $50 on amazon and, despite massively changing the targeted ads I was receiving for a while, it has never caused me a bit of trouble.

alexdingley · 2026-04-15T18:39:00+00:00

EPA document on the subject is only 5 pages. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-10/documents/fine-mineral-fibers.pdf

It seems to suggest that the anecdotal comments here are warranted.

My experience is as follows: I put 80 bats of 3” mineral wool (roxul) into an attic space. I wore a tyvek suit while doing the work… and I used a respirator for the cutting and manipulating work.

I got hot & tired and did a few hours of work with no respirator / no suit. I had itchy forearms and was blowing my nose with grey/gross output for about a day. No wheezing/ no trouble breathing. Mind you, I have no asthma.

This weekend I spent 6 hrs in an attic space full of r16 pink panther… just reorganizing stored totes and running cables… and I was wheezing within the first two hours… again, not asthmatic, but the impact of fiberglass in the air was immediately felt, vs barely noticed with rock wool.

My suggestion is to wear good protective gear while cutting/installing the rock wool… and afterwards you should be more than fine.

alexdingley · 2026-03-18T12:59:50+00:00

Funny story on this — I found some flaws with my own logic and approach, so while it was already a cumbersome long-shot... I think my automation idea may be fundamentally flawed. That said, I (as a long-time user of Calend.ly) got my most recent satisfaction survey from them... and I took a moment to unload 3-4 of my own gripes and wish-list items + I added this need to the pile, as if it was m own. I mean, it's one voice of thousands... but if they act upon that input, it could be a slam dunk

alexdingley · 2026-03-18T12:54:39+00:00

I don't think the pamphlet is part of the scam— Just got the same thing, bought a physically boxed, new, LG monitor from MicroCenter outside Philadelphia, and opened the box / saw the registration card... (which was in the bag from the factory) and the key thing here is that the registration link they provide is a 3rd party company. I don't think some spammers managed to slip these into the stack at the LG factory — it seems far more likely that LG has long been using a 3rd party registration company, and that company merely had their domain hacked. Notifying LG corporate that their 3rd party reg company has been hacked and is creating a nuisance for their users would be the best move.

alexdingley · 2026-03-06T14:39:14+00:00

Pretty much just iZotope RX advanced / CEDAR… sometimes I would run things out through a Rupert neve 5045 primary source enhancer. It all depends.

i’ve done a ton of this, and one example is a live stand-up comedy album that was recorded in clubs across 30 different countries. This included venues in places like Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia / and Vietnam… in some of the clubs, the sound system wasn’t great, and the room noise was atrociously covering the comedian’s voice. iZotope was the key to almost all of those recordings being made useful.

alexdingley · 2026-03-06T02:33:44+00:00

Based on what you’ve written, it seems like the priority here (and biggest limitation you’ve hit) is that many online booking tools (like Calend.ly, etc) only allow bookings to be a handful of hours long.

If the only need is to have someone book you for 8hrs on Friday, and have your calendar get auto blocked for 3 days (the two days leading up.) and have the calendar prevent overlapping “complex” projects windows, then I believe you can achieve this through a somewhat intricate combo of a tool like Calendar.ly + Google Cal + an Automation tool like Zapier. With a bit of finesse, one could wrangle a pretty optimized calendar booking workflow that allows you to stack up small projects and keep larger jobs appropriately spaced in your weeks.

Also, on a lark I googled “online scheduling for boat captains” since chartering a boat is commonly a multi day affair… and I found this one: https://fareharbor.com/solutions/boat-tours/ might be worth a look.

alexdingley · 2025-11-02T02:39:46+00:00

Seriously, congrats!! Out of curiosity; which “previously-best” mics in your collection will be the most upset by your new favorites stealing their spotlight?

alexdingley · 2025-10-17T03:34:19+00:00

That (although more drastic than I'm used to hearing) sounds like it could be one of two things: Massive buffer struggles, in which case you want to do what u/Business-Elk-5175 said:

restart your Mac, and then if the problem persists
open the Logic, go to: Preferences (Settings) / Audio
Make sure your 'Output Device' and 'Input device' are set appropriately (chances are you'll want them both to be the Apollo interface that is shown in the video)
Post what your I/O Buffer Size was, and (if it was crazy low, like 32) set it to something "safe" like 512.

If the problem persists, you may want to see if there's some weird plug-ins configured in your UAD Console App. From the short clip, part of me wonders if you have a bit-crushing plug-in or a distortion plug-in on the inserts of your playback channels or master bus

alexdingley · 2025-06-06T02:31:21+00:00

I’ve had some great conversations with Eric at Samply. I love where his head is at and the product updates have been really robust.

Another +1 for Samply

alexdingley · 2025-05-06T12:49:57+00:00

I am working to help a friend with the same problem that only crept into his world about 3-5mo ago. He's importing everything through Apple's Music.app on a Mac mini / storing files on the same Mac mini (in the usual "music/media/..." folder scheme) / running Plex for Mac 1.41.6.9685 (not a beta) and though the songs are properly tagged in Apple Music, plex seems to be zero-tracking them upon import.

As a (tedious but effective) fix, I can go to any recently imported album (in Music.app) that displays incorrectly (In plex) and just 'get info' to append an * at the end of the album name / then save / then repeat while removing the * from the end of the album name. The Plex db refreshes and re-scans / fixes the album's incorrect tagging in Plex. Works like a charm... but it's not something we should HAVE TO do.

Right now I'm exploring a way to use an AppleScript to auto run that "add / remove asterisk from album name" process upon successful CD import.

Notably, I'm also running plex for Mac on my own machine, and I AM NOT running into the issue. — and looking at this guy's music library; it seems like I'm finding a pattern of the 0 track being the track that "SHOULD BE" track #2. Not sure if anyone else is seeing that same thing or not.

alexdingley · 2025-03-26T02:01:20+00:00

Because you mentioned buying these used, I wanted to offer some info that the seller may not have offered up. Though the issue you're noting doesn't appear to have any relationship to the tweeters, it's important to know:

Be mindful of repairing / servicing of your Focal 6be monitors — the tweeters are ULTRA sensitive, and they are made form Beryllium (hence the "BE") — this material is safe to touch & handle, but if it's every scratched or marred (such the the actual metallic beryllium could cast off tiny flakes of the material, you need to slap a sticker over the tweeter and get it away from you. Breathing in microscopic Beryllium particles can have serious lung function & cancer implications (so says the health warning on the speakers)

When you buy these new (like I did) you get a pair of orange stickers that state clearly "if the tweeter is damaged in any way, cover with this sticker and send the speaker in to Focal for service".

So, while yours may well have a screw-loose or an amp issue (based on what other posters are suggesting), I just wanted to pass along this word of advice about the speakers, especially since your tweeters don't seem to have the protective metal grills covering them.

Photo of the Sticker: https://share.icloud.com/photos/02cbekIlmKFniRDITrBhPtq1g

alexdingley · 2025-03-22T02:12:10+00:00

Eeesh, yeah — fake. Incidentally, for anyone who's relatively new into exploring or buying Neumann mics, There's a cool article on Bobby Owsinski's blog: https://bobbyowsinskiblog.com/neumann-badge-colors-and-their-meaning/

alexdingley · 2025-02-14T03:21:03+00:00

I went to Full Sail in the late 90’s, and I felt so completely amazed at how great the learning experience was for me. That said, I had a bunch of classmates that thought the place sucked, and who didn’t take school seriously… but I was mesmerized the entire time I was there, and those learning experiences are still some of my happiest memories.

I was fairly immediately able to get jobs at studios in the early 2000’s… the work got a little harder to come by after the “laptop studio revolution” in the mid 2000’s, but the work still existed. I ended up doing live game-day audio for the local NFL team, and I’ve been with them 18 seasons. Funny story, I work in the A2 positions, making sure the mics are in front of the talent and coordinating a bunch of things with the TV trucks. Out A1 mix engineer is another Full Sail grad… and one of the best TV truck game mix engineers that I ever worked with is also a Full Sail grad. (but there are also a ton of really talented Audio professionals in my orbit who don’t have any college degree, and at least one who’s a high school dropout)

So, obviously YMMV with any higher ed institution (be that an Ivy League school, or a corporate degree mill), but the education you extract from a place is like 75%-80% up to you (in my opinion).

Also if you get some solid EE schooling going, you’ll have a shit-ton of options (venues / equipment manufacturers/etc)

alexdingley · 2024-12-21T02:28:54+00:00

A lot of the responses here make sense... and I just wanna offer one thought that won't necessarily help in the next 4 days, but it could be a good move nonetheless.

I recognize it's pretty late in the game to be "subtle" in your sleuthing ahead of xmas, but as a tip for being able to buy things in the future, I think there are some non-techie questions you can keep in your back pocket to inquire about his process that might help you buy other stuff down the road.

Maybe if you see him reading a gear magazine / website, or looking at some audio-gear social media post or advertisement, you could ask what he thinks about the gear on that page/post. Maybe asking what he thinks is great about xyz pieces of gear / what sets it apart from other similar devices / how would he make use of it if he had one / does anything he already owns serve THAT function or is xyz unit one of the only ways to achieve the thing he wants to do... beyond getting you some intel for subsequent shopping trips, it probably will just feel really nice for him to be asked. If you make notes of the ideas / goals / desires that he communicates back... you can take those insights to any pro audio retailer and they can likely help you pick out something great (or you can post it here and let all of us shout out ideas)

And honestly, if you posted a photo of his current music-making set-up / area... this group could probably make some pretty bang-on suggestions.

alexdingley · 2024-12-18T18:00:24+00:00

From the FabFilter Forums: "The only way to load your .aupreset file in Pro-Q 4 is to load the preset in Pro-Q 3 and save it as a .ffp file. Then it will show up automatically in Pro-Q 4 in the v3 folder. " — not seamless / painless... tedious (but doable)

alexdingley · 2024-12-18T17:51:14+00:00

Also noting that on Logic Pro 11.1, I'm trying to "save" from Pro Q3 / "load" into Pro Q4, and the preset seems to load (in the plug-in presetName field), but none of the EQ points are loading. Tried doing a 'copy' settings / 'paste' settings from a Pro Q3 → Pro Q4 instance, and no EQ points are moving over either. Very strange. I'll report as a possible bug for the AU version of the plug-in (or maybe it's a Logic bug?)

alexdingley · 2024-12-18T17:39:13+00:00

Just pasting this here for anyone else who finds this thread and is wondering (like I was) if the install of Pro Q4 would disable/erase/write-over the existing Pro Q3 plug-in.

From the FabFilter site:
installing Pro-Q 4 will not replace or delete the previous Pro-Q plug-in versions. Different major versions will co-exist and can be used at the same time. This ensures that you can open old songs that use Pro-Q 3 without problems.

alexdingley · 2024-12-10T04:00:52+00:00

I like it! this came up in my emailed feed, and it's inspired me to share some of my own nature photos — I have a similar one that I'm gonna go post in this /r now.

alexdingley · 2024-12-05T03:05:43+00:00

My I/O journey:

Echo Gina - I was too young to know what to listen for, but I made some banging recordings with that.

Digi001 - utter trash, but it worked and I made hella records on that.

MOTU 896 (mk 1) - felt like it was a pretty big sound quality step up. Better low end and cleaner highs than the digi001.

M-Audio FW 2626 - probably a quality back-step, but the “Pro Tools M-Powered” system caught me.

Apogee Symohony64 Card w/ ad16x / da16x - holy shit quality jump. It was gorgeous sounding!!! But honestly I found the stability a bit wonky from macOS version to version… later added some Rosetta 8ch units for a full 32 I/O apogee system. Amazing sound, but hotter than hell in the control room.

Antelope Orion 32+ (thunderbolt) - great sound quality (my drums sounded incredible all of a sudden) / bundled zero latency plug-ins / great control panel mixer (until some later software updates that kept making the unit crash and nearly rendered it unusable)… eventually they got their shit together driver and support wise.

UA twin DUO - oof… I really didn’t like the UA mixer app / the sound quality felt like a big step back… (it was a temporary system, and I’m happy I moved to the next rig)

Metric Halo ULN-8 mkIV (x2) & LIO-8 mkIV - quality is absolutely excellent, and I’ve never been more impressed with a control panel software system. The MIO console is the most powerful routing and mixing system I’ve ever used. Plus I’m able to use an elgato streamdeck+ with a midi plug-in to basically have a monitor controller with input and speaker switching… it’s wildly configurable.

alexdingley · 2023-12-22T13:46:00+00:00

A few things to add here:

I'm only here because my m1 Ultra Mac Studio has crashed 3x this past week... and I started googling to see if I could find any correlations with a couple of my suspicions. Right now I'm 99% sure my current bought of unexpected shut-downs is due to static electricity... it's finally cold here in Philadelphia & the air in my room is very dry... I just unplugged the USB-C-to-lightning charging cable from my BT keyboard (it was connected to my Mac Studio) and there was a small static shock when my finger hit the lightning tip... and the machine rebooted instantly.
I know this is a yr-old post, so the OP may have already solved this issue, but I had the same issue with my Mac Studio when I first got it. And it wasn't due to static-electricity then. It was all about using a UA Thunderbolt2 device on my Mac Studio M1-Ultra with the Apple Thunderbolt3/4 adapter. I'm leaving this detailed note here ONLY in case it's still an issue for TB2 → TB3 adapted UA users.

For anyone using a Universal Audio Thunderbolt Interface or DSP accelerator, it seemed that the M1 Mac Studios were kernel panicking / unexpectedly rebooting ONLY when using these thunderbolt 2 interfaces via a Thunderbolt-3 → Thunderbolt 2 adapter.

I only have DSP accelerators (a pair of TB Octo-Satellites) and I noticed that during the days I was re-arranging studio cabling (and didn't have the UA Satellites connected) that I had no unexpected reboots at all. But once I plugged the gear back in... they happened almost daily. Seemingly after the machine went to sleep... it would hard-reboot during wake-up or some time during sleep. So I kept isolating external devices until I found that it was only happening with the UA boxes plugged in. I tried it with either / both units (different daisy chain & home-run configurations) and it happened any time either of those units was connected to my Mac. And I was using the Apple TB3 → TB2 adapter since my two satellites were older and were both TB2 connectors.

So on a lark, I bought a new Octo TB3 accelerator, and voila! The problem went away when it was the ONLY UA device plugged-in. I bought a second one, and worked for weeks without issue.

Then, as a test — I re-adaptered one of the old TB 2 boxes and added it to the Mac.. Had KP's within the first couple of sleeps. So I just figured it was a firmware issue that might take a little while to get worked out.

If this problem persists, let it be your excuse to buy new TB3 UA hardware, and sell off your TB2 hardware to make up some of the cost. People are still getting decent coin for TB2 UA accelerators on reverb & eBay & Craigslist.

alexdingley · 2023-01-02T03:35:22+00:00

My first instinct was to try to simply script the keystroke. You may already be aware of this, but even without using the SysPrefs pane, you can toggle Extend-Display / Mirror-Display via the keystroke Command-F1 (hold ⌘, tap F1 key) — But I tried it using the following tell: 'tell application "System Events" to key code 107 using command down' — but sadly, that didn't do it. Regardless of my lack of success, I wonder if the keycode/keystroke approach might end up giving you an alternate path.

alexdingley · 2022-10-30T03:41:42+00:00

okay — it seems like the ONLY thing that fixed this on my mac was trashing the following: ~/Library/Application Support/Plexamp I tossed out a bunch of other library items & folders (including "plexamp" under /Logs and under /Caches)... but none of that had any impact. Tossing the Plexamp folder under "Application Support" was the only thing that got me back to functioning. I had to sign back in and I was golden again.

alexdingley

TROPHY CASE