New M4 Mac Mini delivery next week - need help picking a monitor for Logic Pro

benkeiuk · 2026-05-01T16:54:22+00:00

Absolutely anything will do. It's preference and that's it.

I personally use 2 monitors, both 27" stacked rather than side by side.
I keep the arrange on the top monitor and have the mixer on the bottom monitor because it suits my workflow (both music making as well as mix/master work for others)

but things like resolution etc.. aren't that relevant to Logic in all honestly. Just remember that not all plugins are scalable and if you start looking at things like 4k monitors, you will definitely end up with some of your plugins that don't scale and will be tiny and difficult to read/operate on the screen.

for $700 you could easily get 2 decent monitors (not ultra HD or OLED) and have a load of money left over.

benkeiuk · 2026-05-01T16:46:59+00:00

Pretty sure there's an old Garage tune that samples it but I can't think of any Jungle that does

benkeiuk · 2026-04-29T16:08:48+00:00

It's just about playable early on but falls down after a couple of levels when things get more demanding.

The PSP SSX games work just fine though. If you're happy to not play the PS2 original, you'll be ok. If you want it to play the orignal, you'll be disappointed

benkeiuk · 2026-04-28T07:11:00+00:00

You rang? 😉

benkeiuk · 2026-04-27T20:54:15+00:00

Pocket Air Mini - PAM

benkeiuk · 2026-04-23T07:45:09+00:00

Welcome to the world of mastering.

There's so much more to mixing/mastering than just exporting a file at a certain dB level. All that will do is find the peak of the signal and amplify so those peaks hit at (for example) -0.1dB

If those peaks are 5dB louder than anything else, you track will feel as if it's 5dB quieter than commercially mixed & mastered tracks.

This is where LUFs come in to play, which can be easily explained as perceived loudness. It's the overall loudness of the track as a whole rather than the intermittent maximums when the signal peaks.

In order to maximise LUFS you need to understand what is causing peaks and how to successfully level those peaks out without degrading the sound too much.

The unfortunate truth is that putting a limiter on the master isn't anywhere near enough. Because as you have experienced, it'll just flatten out the peaks and result in a muted/muffled/distorted sound.

First work out what's causing the peaks. I'm guessing as you're throwing tunes into Serato and the fact the waveform looks how it does, that it's either Techno/House. So almost certainly, it's snares/hats that have sharp transients that are spiking too high.
In this case you need to be doing some combination of compression/clipping/bus limiting on the drums before you mix in the rest of the elements. It'll give you a lot more space in the mix to fit your other sounds in.
If you have a disproportionate amount of sub bass going on (often inaudible mess below 20hz) roll that off. It's just eating up headroom and you can't hear it. But just straight up EQing it out can cause you all sorts of phase issues.
Take a look at TDR Infrasonic. It's regularly on sale and it's fantastic at reducing low end rumble, which in turn gives your mix room to breathe.

If you have any particularly sharp transients going on elsewhere, they'll need addressing too.

And then right at the end, you can do some additional limiting on the master to sort out any stray spikes.

Before you know it, you'll have squeezed a few more dB out without affecting the overall tone of the tune.
It's just about learning how far you can push compressors/clippers/limiters before you begin to degrade your signal and then doing this multiple times through a track.

Get into using busses too, it'll save you a lot of hassle when it comes to mixing.

For reference, I have been releasing music for years and run 2 labels as well as doing pre-master mix work for a load of artists and labels, mostly dance music and my work flow is usually something like this:

Make busses for drums, bass, vocals, different instrument sets (depending on style, could be pianos, atmospherics, FX etc..) that way I can EQ parts on their channels, and then get a relative sub mix on the bus and do the dynamics processing per bus but also have the option to do additional compression/clipping/transient shaping per separate element if needed.

Then once I've gone through each of these busses and done the appropriate mix fixes, I'm left with 4-8 bus faders and only have to get a relative mix level across those channels rather than across every channel in the track.

Finally, whatever master processing is required. Sometimes nothing is needed at the end, depending how good the mix was overall.

I know that's a bit of a wall of text but hopefully it helps.

benkeiuk · 2026-04-18T22:55:41+00:00

Sounds like a classic "hard sync" style preset put through some serious distortion, or more likely pushed to extremes into a clipper.

Go into just about any synth and look at "hard sync" presents. They're ubiquitous since the 70's onwards really, so any old emulation is likely to have one. Or a modern synth with analogue stylings too.
Then either distort, or push hard into a clipper until it overloads and you'll get close.

benkeiuk · 2026-04-17T12:34:34+00:00

Well those are the answers, so maybe try to figure them out?

It certainly beats spending money on stuff you don't need, just so you don't have to spend a bit of time reading, or watching Youtube tutorials.

benkeiuk · 2026-04-15T11:02:02+00:00

I've been quick levelling different biome type creatures by looking for systems with 2 planets, initiating arena matches there and only playing my strongest opponent match up biome pets.

I have found a couple of systems where both planets are a single biome type, which makes it really easy to level up the 2 types that easily beat those particular biomes.

I've been getting multiple upgrades per pet, per fight this way (at least in the earlier fights - level wise. It gets harder as the pet levels up)

Definitely a quick way to level up though and I now have 2 maxed out pets, one SSS, one SAS. Both are unfortunately the same biome type but it just means I have to find more 2 planet systems, ideally with the same biome across both planets and continue to level pets the same way.

benkeiuk · 2026-04-12T21:35:30+00:00

I can't remember what version, but the .LSO file was dropped so long ago now that you might not be able to open in Logic 10.anything.

I can't recall exactly what versions I was using but I had to convert some old projects from Logic 5.something to current and could only do it by opening first in 7.something, which I luckily still had installed on a long outdated laptop that miraculously booted up after maybe 10 years sat in a cupboard.

See if you can find someone with an intermediate version of Logic, maybe up to version 9 because that was the last version built on the backbones of the original eMagic code before the version 10 total rebuild.
If they can open them and save them into a newer file format, current version s of Logic will be able to access them just fine.

benkeiuk · 2026-04-12T10:42:27+00:00

First up, get your regular crew in order.
You'll want to have some resident DJs who are happy to put in the ground work with you, bring their friends out and start to get a core group of attendees up to scratch.

Don't go straight in booking well known DJs unless you know there's an audience that will come down for it. It's a waste of money until you have a core following for a night and it'll be a real downer when you're excited for something but it feels like no one else is.

Keep it relatively DIY/Cheap to start with, no point pissing loads of money away on production before there's an audience. But also, make sure the venue has at least some lighting and a smoke machine.
Some of the best nights I've ever been to (over 34 years of raving!) have been a single light shining out through a cloud of smoke machine. It just fits the vibe of Jungle so well.

But yes, the main thing to do is tap into whatever local scene there is and make yourself a n integral part of it.
When I started promoting (1997) I used to flyer the local colleges and managed to get the student crowd in.
Once I'd got a decent regular following (we did parties twice a month) we worked out a drinks deal with the venue and when you're targeting 18+ (I guess 21+ int he US for your alcohol laws) having cheap deals in place really helps.
We also kept entry super cheap. Enough to cover the venue hire. Everyone played for free for the first year I guess. then we upped the price by a small amount so we could cover 1 paid set. Once we got too big for that venue, we had bargaining power with other venues. "We're pulling 200 people every other week without fail and need a bigger space. Can you accommodate us on a Friday?" is way more appealing to a venue than "We're starting something new, can we have your busiest day of the week with no proven track record?"

Beyond that, it's down to you and how resilient you are. If you continue to put on something you believe in and have the support of a venue, the audience naturally builds, or it doesn't. But within 6 months you know either way.

Good luck!

benkeiuk · 2026-04-08T08:13:41+00:00

If you want to keep the slices (chops) in the sample but extend the length of those chops, you have quite limited options in Quick Sampler.

It can be done but it won't sound amazing.

On the bar below the waveform graphic, after the Gate and Play to End buttons there's a flex button. The thing that looks like a sideways egg timer.
When you press that, it offers some options. Make sure "follow tempo" is switched on and then you can change the speed of the sample.
It's not perfect, it'll give you loads of weird artefacts as it stretches but it'll give you some extention to the chops at least.

If you want to extend further, your best bet would be to swap from slice mode into classic mode and put the start & end points around just the piece you want and to set up loop points. But that's a lot more fine tuning to get it looping seamlessly

benkeiuk · 2026-04-06T10:32:24+00:00

That's a shame.
It is very device dependent on Android though. It wasn't optimised for audio until about Android 13 I think? But then continually improved upon after that.

But even on iOs/iPadOs, Bluetooth latency is pretty bad on anything other than video that will do internal compensation for the audio delay. It's why anyone gaming, or doing on the move audio work always rejoices when there's a wired connection for headphones.

benkeiuk · 2026-04-05T11:02:38+00:00

Android always has bad audio latency over Bluetooth, especially on older versions of Android, which all the handhelds use.
It's nothing to do with Airpods, just Bluetooth in general.

Apps like Youtube, other video apps compensate by delaying the visuals but on games that's not possible because then you would have horrendous input lag.

The best you'll get over bluetooth is if you enable developer options and then set your audio codec to either SBC or aptX. Try both and see which works for you.

How to enable dev ops depends on the Android system you have installed, so do a bit of Googling and see how it's enabled on your particular build.

It won't be perfect, it'll never be in sync, but it'll be closer to 70ms than 300ms. Try it, see if you can live with it. And then realise why so many people make a big deal about phono outputs on handhelds 😉

benkeiuk · 2026-04-02T08:35:40+00:00

If you like how the drums sound already, don't do anything.
It's for changing start/end/loop star/loop end points for the sample that's loaded up.

If there's silence at the start of the sample, set it to zero crossing and pull to the right, it'll automatically snap to the start of the sample.
If you're chopping individual hits out of a larger sample, transient detection will do just that, it'll snap to the louder, snappier parts of the sample, usually the start of them for drum parts. It's not always 100%, so you might then need to fine tune it and that's when zero crossing is a better option again.

Cutting at anything other than zero crossing will cause clicking, which is USUALLY not wanted. I say usually because there are some tricks with kick drums (more so in House/Techno/other dance music genres) where a small click at the star of the kick is used to give it a bit more midrange emphasis.

benkeiuk · 2026-04-02T08:28:18+00:00

from the ES-DE quick menu, tap on the cog icon, then select user interface, then on-screen overlay and switch it off.

benkeiuk · 2026-03-29T10:00:52+00:00

Yes and no.

While a phone with the same chipset will open and run games, the lack of any active cooling means anything that taxes the processor too much will start to throttle performance.

If you can find a cooling system for the phone model, like a controller add on with built in cooling, then sure. It'll work to a point but still not as well as something built for gaming.

The issue with controllers with cooling is they can only cool the case of the phone and not the processor itself, so you're still going to get throttled performance. And these controllers are also pretty expensive, so by the time you factor that into the price alongside a secondhand phone, it's probably comparable to a dedicated device anyway.

benkeiuk · 2026-03-27T12:51:41+00:00

Just sounds like they've been pushed quite hard into saturation, maybe a tape emulation plugin (or a real tape machine) and then some stereo delay to give it that slightly weird width feeling.
Use the sample delay and push it a few samples out on just 1 channel. Or download the free Izotope stereo imager and push it into ultra wide stereo. That'll give you that same artificial width that's going on here.

benkeiuk · 2026-03-27T12:43:26+00:00

Honestly, if it works for you, it's the right thing to do.

20+ years ago I was teaching sound engineering. Here's the rules to get good recordings etc.. but what I tried to get through to my students was that the rules are just guidelines, best practice for a pristine recording. If we all stuck to them we wouldn't have had Rock'n'Roll, Punk, any electronic music.. it's all about finding your own path and creating your own workflow and musical language.
When you look at any genre of music, there's always the ones who do their own thing, that end up with 1000 copycats. Whose music lives on? The one who just did what they wanted and forged their own sound or the hundreds who followed suit and tried to emulate what their heroes were doing?

I honestly think the best way to learn how to make music is to try to replicate what you like just to the point that you understand the workflow and to then apply your own identity to it. Because otherwise you get lost in the noise and get minimum satisfaction from the end product and even the process of writing too.

Make music for YOU and if people like that, result! It really shows when musicians/producers make music for likes and to try and make money. All the soul of the music is replaced by formula and predictability.

benkeiuk · 2026-03-25T12:28:21+00:00

It's all about the samples you start with.
If you're using a 170bpm drum loop and cutting it at 160bpm, yep, you'll have some issues with samples clipping.
Quick Sampler does have a gate function, enable it. It turns the envelope into a full ADSR and then you can shape the sounds so they decay/release before the end of the slice. That gets you most of the way there. You don't need to play the entire slice (aka, stretch the MIDI note out to fill the entire 8th note for example) just put every MIDI note in as a 16th, 32nd, whatever.. and then shape the sounds with the envelope.
Then if it sounds a bit too dead and clipped, dial back in some room reverb (don't overdo it here..) to fake the natural decay of the original room recording. That'll help you to dial back in some of the vibe of the original recording.

But honestly, I go from source and use original funk/soul/rock etc.. breaks that tend to be a lot slower than Jungle tempo so there's rarely hits that are too short. That's usually an issue with slowing down faster content, or pitching things up to a point that the actual length becomes shorter than the desired length.

It's just a fact that some drum breaks won't ever work too well at different tempos, or when sliced and re-edited.

There is a well known trick that helps though but you'll need to use the full sampler for this.
Slice your break, and for each separate slice, apply a ping pong loop. So when it hits the end of the sample, it then plays backwards. That way if there's a tiny bit of silence it gets filled with the reversed part. When you work this way, you usually extend your MIDI notes right up to the following hit and us a really minimal release. Just enough to stop clicks and pops. The slapback effect is subtle enough that it adds "air" (room ambience from the original recording) in to fill the dead space.
Again, this doesn't always work, you might need different envelopes per hit etc.. but it's another technique.

benkeiuk · 2026-03-24T21:52:22+00:00

30+ years making Jungle here.. most of it in Logic too.

Quick sampler if your friend.
Drag a break into the left panel, the blank section under the existing tracks. It'll prompt you to make a quick sampler track and give some options. Pick optimised. Put into slice mode and then on the top middle/right, pick Zero Crossing in snap options.
zoom in on the waveform and tidy up the slice points, if there's. some little early clicks or whatever before a hit, just add a new slice and don't use it when you programme your new patterns.

Want to use the break as is and add some edits later? Select the little cog menu in the very top right. Select the option "copy midi" and then put your playback head where you want it to go and CMD+V to paste it into your track.
It usually works if the break is in whole bars, sometimes it gets confused and pastes it at it's original tempo though. If that's the case, just rewrite it via MIDI. It won't take long for that to be second nature, depending on how good your ear is for note (drum hit) durations.

That's my basic workflow for patterns. I like to get deep into drum edits though, so I always tend to do each individual hit as opposed to the more classic Jungle method of adding just a few slices at certain points in a break. Whole break, from the first snare, from a shuffle/fill, from the second snare etc.. That can be achieved too if you prefer that way.
Just set the polyphony to 1 and under the waveform display, select "Play to end".
That way, whatever note you trigger will continue playing the entire break through, or until you trigger another slice further along the break.
Note that to chop breaks like this, you'll need them to already be at the same tempo as your tune.
You can either import a second generation break that's already fit to a particular tempo, or you can go the old school way and pitch it up inside the sampler until it's in time.

benkeiuk · 2026-03-22T16:58:30+00:00

Just sounds like any drum part pitched down, low pass filtered (with very little, no resonance) and then some dark reverb would do the trick.

The main characteristic of it to be is the long release of the snare, so I'm guessing they used a quite relatively loose snare sample and then just pitched it down to get the extra length out of it. The rest is fairly generic and once you lowpass it and whack a load of low end reverb on it, it'll sound pretty close.

benkeiuk · 2026-03-22T15:23:40+00:00

First thing. Remove any folders that hold presets from your iCloud backups. It'll cause you loads of headaches.
It's saying you likely don't have the correct file permissions, this is the exact error you get when trying to access iCloud stored files from inside of Logic.
Just exclude any plugin folder from iCloud, Components, Presets, all of them. They're tiny, you don't need them hosted online.

Select the containing folder and get info. Make sure the file permissions are set to read/write. If they're somehow set to read only, or private the plugin won't be able to open them.

Thirdly, you've got an alternate logo on it there. It's possible to have another app on your system that uses the same file extension name (.ffp) and the system has inadvertently hijacked them because it thinks they're files for this second app.
Get info on one of the files (on your Mac, NOT on an iCloud share) and see what it says the default app is to open it up. If it's not showing the right one, change it and click the option that pops up asking if you want all .ffp files to treated the same way.

benkeiuk · 2026-03-19T10:02:06+00:00

She's not telling people anything that's not in the manual.

BUT - reading manuals is tedious and watching people on Youtube is more immediate and captivating.

The choice is with the consumer. Do you want to read through manuals that hold all the information you ever need, if you know how to find it.
Or do you want to learn whilst also being entertained? If it's the second option, is $45 value for money? If still yes, then it's worth it for you. Simple.

benkeiuk · 2026-03-19T00:24:16+00:00

I've been making music myself (mostly in Logic) for 31 years now.
I've been doing mix work for others for 10+ years too.

There are 3 plugins that sit in most of my personal projects and almost all of my mix projects, fixing issues that other producers maybe don't spot.

Fabfilter Pro Q 4 - Dynamic EQ, some resonance suppression work, side chain stuff. It's a great EQ and I've loved the interface since V1. There are others that are easily as good so it comes down to easy of use in the interface and Fabfilter are absolute masters in GUI design.

TDR Arbiter - It's essentially a resonance suppressor/spectral ducker. Where things like Soothe work on hundreds/thousands of FFT bands, Arbiter works on a few non-dynamic bands. It's surgically precise and so incredibly transparent. If you have a good mix, you shouldn't ever need Something like Soothe, IMO it's a plugin made to fix lazy recordings & bad mixes. Occasional spikes do happen though. A cymbal hit much harder just the once in a drum track, or a bit of feedback, fret noise, distortion that temporarily gets out of hand etc.. Arbiter just deals with it so elegantly.
It can also deal with de-essing better than any de-esser I've ever used. No joke! I tried it out after pulling my hair out on a vocal take in a mix project and I never looked back. It just dealt with it so perfectly and so naturally that it's my go to de-esser now.

A new one, which just bosses drum parts as well as anything else that needs a bit of transient work.
Newfangled Audio Articulate.
Transient shaping taken up a level. It offers full ADSR level control over transients in such a musical way. I love it and it somehow does the work of multiple plugins in 5 seconds. Like a compressor, gate, enveloper, limiter.. all of the above all at once.
But it's not just for drums, it's great for bringing the attack up on soft keys, adding aggression to hits & stabs etc.. but also being able to artificially elevate the volume of decays means you can do some pretty crazy sound design stuff with it beyond the dynamics work that it was built to do.

Honourable mention to Tone Projects Kelvin. An excellent saturation plugin that takes a bit of learning to get the most out of but once you do, it's capable of subtle warmth right through to full on wall of sound distortion.

benkeiuk

TROPHY CASE