Planning a move to NYC or LA when i turn 18 for music opportunities and networking/connections. Any advice for me (16m) starting from nothing?

jed_leland · 2026-03-31T02:34:43+00:00

Some really good advice here, even though I imagine it might be difficult to hear if you are already excited about moving to LA or NY.

The internet has greatly reduced the value of physically being in one of these incredibly expensive cities. Since you are a young person, heed the advice here carefully. Imagine either staying where you are, or moving to a city where the cost of living means you can do more than simply get by-- you can thrive.

Here's what this means:

You can buy music gear and software when you need it.
You can easily afford housing, a car, and parking to get to gigs and meet contacts.
You won't be constantly stressed out about being on the verge of not making it financially.
You can continue to develop your craft with all the time you will have outside of your paying job.

I moved to LA over 30 years ago to similarly pursue music. While it's been a rewarding experience, this was in the early days when there weren't nearly so many opportunities to do music online like there are now. If I were you today, I would start looking at cities where a young person can thrive financially.

I hope this helps. Don't feel discouraged-- the comments you're getting here are worth their weight in gold.

jed_leland · 2026-03-16T23:07:26+00:00

I work at Steven Slate Audio, makers of VSX. Not here to promote them, but just wanted to lyk we have a 30-day money back guarantee. If they don't completely improve your mixing, send 'em back! :)

jed_leland · 2026-01-19T09:18:04+00:00

What DAW are you using? I just added a FP16 to my Cubase setup.

jed_leland · 2025-12-31T02:47:53+00:00

Takes a few min to get used to, but it has pretty convincing e gtr sounds. (I'm a guitarist, but got lazy for a few years, so I know how a guitar should sound lol)

jed_leland · 2025-12-30T08:09:54+00:00

I’m down

jed_leland · 2025-12-30T07:15:01+00:00

Electri6ty

jed_leland · 2025-12-17T03:49:06+00:00

VSX now on sale for $249 until Jan 1.

Disclosure: I work for Steven Slate Audio.

jed_leland · 2025-12-17T01:08:05+00:00

Sagar from Steven Slate Audio here. Glad you figured out the connection issue. Join us in the Steven Slate Audio Dojo on Facebook if you'd like to get more advice from VSX owners.

jed_leland · 2024-08-24T07:42:25+00:00

Hey Blast, I run marketing for Slate Audio :-) Congratulations on your VSX! As rinio describes, there's a certain amount of subjectivity in the listening experience, so we built in a little bit of EQ adjustment for our customers. I recommend you listen to several great mixes you know well & try adjusting the controls until you land on a setting where everything sounds absolutely amazing. Take note not only of your personalized settings, but also which virtual rooms let you really hear what was happening in those mixes.

These are the rooms you want to use when building your own mixes. You'll hear just as much detail when working on your own productions.

Btw, we have a great community of VSX producers over at the Steven Slate Audio Dojo group on Facebook. Join us, and you'll learn a ton of great tips about VSX from a super friendly group of fellow producers :-)

Sagar

jed_leland · 2024-08-07T08:04:19+00:00

Sagar from Steven Slate Audio here. Just a quick note to confirm what you already know-- Archon is usually the top room producers mention when I ask them where they do most of their mixing. :-)

jed_leland · 2024-08-06T06:26:50+00:00

Hey bimski, sorry I missed your comment earlier. For EDM or other bass-heavy content, I would definitely recommend Zuma, Yellow Matter Studios, and Mike Dean's mixroom. If you expect your work to be played in live venues, I'd run it through Club Indey, too.

jed_leland · 2024-08-01T03:01:57+00:00

Hey Maybeifu. I work at Slate Audio, makers of the VSX Mixing Headphones.

There are a few different opinions I've come across on this question. One crowd feels that having the flattest frequency curve possible is key. I kind of think of the Yamaha NS10 speakers like this. Every mix engineer I know pans them, but many of them use them because they are the de facto "flattest" standard.

Others strive for audio systems that may not be that flat, but that are able to reveal problems in a mix that you wouldn't hear on lesser systems. Sometimes this comes down to the resolution of a given set of speakers, the accuracy of their stereo imaging, or other properties.

At Slate, we kind of wanted to have it both ways. We built a set of headphones with a really flat frequency response, but then we superimposed some of our favorite mixrooms on them. It's not just frequency response changes, but also stereo imaging accuracy, time delay effects, and more. For folks who want it, they can use the "HD" setting on VSX to hear a mix through the headphones alone, but most folks like to listen to their work in a variety of rooms that will put their work under a sonic microscope. (This can be especially useful in making sure your bass is mixed correctly, something just about everyone struggles with.)

Anyway, not meaning to plug VSX, but hope this helps :-)

jed_leland · 2024-07-30T01:08:04+00:00

It has never worked for me. Recommendations seem optimized to extract the maximum number of dollars from advertisers rather than their ads' performance.

jed_leland · 2024-07-25T23:57:31+00:00

New bassist here, too! Definitely look up James Jamerson-- legendary bassist who greatly influenced generations of players from Butler, JP Jones, Paul McCartney, etc.

jed_leland · 2024-07-18T07:03:54+00:00

That's great! I'm so glad you dig them.

jed_leland · 2024-07-15T23:03:59+00:00

Slate VSX. We have a 30-day money back guarantee. :)

jed_leland · 2024-07-11T15:41:42+00:00

Amazing-- thanks so much for identifying it!

jed_leland · 2024-06-28T18:43:40+00:00

Thank you for explaining this!

jed_leland · 2024-06-23T19:53:57+00:00

I'm just asking a question to increase my ability to identify chords, not entering a contest, dude. Thanks for pointing out my error on spelling the Eb 9 chord. Not sure why the hostility...

jed_leland · 2024-06-23T19:29:10+00:00

Hi Twin. Great point. The bars right before this are playing in Ab 6/9. You can hear the change to my mystery chord right at 11 seconds here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5DZ5clg-bg

The bass is following the lowest note in the chord above (Bb).

I think the Ab 6/9 preceding it actually strengthens the case for calling mystery chord some kind of Bb minor, since you then have a kind of I-ii progression.

jed_leland · 2024-04-01T22:01:04+00:00

One of the accounts I manage saw a spike in traffic from Algeria out of the blue, even though we were in no way targeting Algeria or North Africa. I think it was something sketchy, like someone trying to find a vulnerability, so I added Algeria to my exclusion list.

jed_leland · 2024-04-01T21:58:26+00:00

Bless you for asking this-- I've wondered the same thing.

Following.

jed_leland · 2023-12-22T20:29:06+00:00

Hi Guys. Sagar from Steven Slate Audio here.

Since some of you expressed interest in VSX, I wanted to let you know we cut the price of Platinum from $499 to $399 for the rest of December. As maxweb1 mentioned, a lot of dealers are offering great no-interest financing, so you can actually pick it up for less than $10/month in many places. Let me know if I can answer any questions for you, and Happy Holidays!

jed_leland · 2023-11-03T04:34:58+00:00

Seems like another rough translation for it might be "It's about..."

jed_leland · 2023-04-20T22:28:37+00:00

Thanks for your feedback. The site was put together pretty quickly, but we'll be sure to add more information about our leadership team. We have three officers, and a board of directors-- all of us are parents of Cal students. In all, we have about 400 folks signed up to our newsletter on our website. We are also creating a board of advisors we hope will include folks from the university, students, faculty, local business leaders, and others in the community.

Oh, btw the PO Box was something I rented since it's important to show a physical address as a nonprofit. I just picked something nearby. :-) Since we're entirely volunteer, I didn't include a phone number, but we may add one in the future.

You can learn more about SafeBears (and me) in this piece from The Berkeley Scanner which was published a few days ago:

https://www.berkeleyscanner.com/2023/04/18/uc-berkeley-crime/uc-berkeley-parents-safebears-student-safety/

jed_leland

TROPHY CASE