post your s**t when it's done! I'm a fan of that setup, with complaints. Battery is great once you learn it. Be sure it's Battery 2 at least.

I will. I'm doing up an original now. I think I have everything set and mapped enough for this song. Battery is slowly starting to make some sense for me. I started mouse clicking the drums in. It's really not so bad, it just takes time. I am using step sequencer for some parts and piano roll for the rest.

The only thing I am wondering is how to control volume for each drum sample individually on the Sonar end. For instance, I have all snare drums (snare left and snare right) on stereo 5/6 output in battery. On the sonar end is there a way to break them apart to separate audio tracks to control volume for each sample individually? I have been adjusting the volume through battery since I can do it individually for each cell but was wondering if there was a better way.

You can control the velocity in the piano roll view by hovering in the right spot over each note. However, velocity doesn't mean volume. Velocity is just math that goes to Battery. What I do is have multiple drum samples per cell, and I use the stack view to stack them (right clicking in the stack view gives you all kinds of options once you have all the samples in). You can click on the left side of the stack view to preview the different samples that will be triggered at different velocities.

SO, to my knowledge, you'd need multiple samples at different volumes to have different volume, UNLESS there's a way to literally map the velocity to the overall cell volume. It seems like you should be able to do that. I'd go read that Battery manual end to end (it's around).

I think I have my velocities set good enough for now. I was wondering how your audio tracks look in Sonar. When I create the project I insert soft synth, select battery, choose to insert midi track and all stereo outputs. Sonar then creates audio tracks for all stereo outputs from battery. Even though in battery I have Snare Left, and Snare Right (two separate cells) on stereo output 5/6 is there a way to have snare left and snare right on their own audio tracks in Sonar? Currently in Sonar I have one audio track for Snares with an input of battery stereo 5/6 and an output to my Drum Master stereo bus.

Man this stuff gets complicated. I was just wondering how your tracks are set up in Sonar.

Thanks for the help. I appreciate it.

I don't know why you would want separate audio tracks for snare left and snare right, but if you do, you need to assign left to like 5/6 and the right to like 7/8. Why do you want them separate though? Don't you want to control the snare on a single track? You only mic a snare once.

No problem on the questions. I'm just glad you are asking non-douchey questions instead of "I want to make beats,wher can I get this program?"

The reason why I was asking about the tracks is volume related to mixing down. Say Snare Left is a little louder than Snare right and I wanted to bring the volume of Snare right up a little bit (at max velocity). Currently I go into battery and select the snare right cell, and slide the master volume slider up or down. I wasn't sure if I should be somehow doing that with a Sonar audio track instead of battery.

Regardless I am up and running now. Though It seems like every time I sit down to program beats I end up pulling more samples into battery and mapping velocities heheh.

I've been using the multi-mic Rock kit in battery 3 lately. I don't like the ride sound they have, but other than that it sounds realistic and great. I do some humanization, add saturation to the cymbals, and adjust velocities in the midi. I send out like this:

Bass drum - mono
Snare - mono
Toms - stereo
hi hats - stereo
crash 1 & 2 - stereo
ride/bell - stereo

Anyway, I just got ezdrummer and superior drummer from my friend, and I'm gonna give that a try, but right now, I'm loving battery. I actually just recorded a cover of the metroid metal theme, and I used battery for the drums. I'll post that in a little bit.

Sweet! I'm still on Battery 2. I'm sure 3 kicks.

I checked out session drummer 2 and ezdrummer and did not really like either of them. When I got to Battery 3 I thought the interface and cell matrix layout was awesome so I decided to stick with it. The rock kit has some good sounding cymbals in my opinion. I am using the ns_kit library which is why it is taking me forever to map the cells. Overall I love the drum sound of ns_kit. Bare bones the cymbals sound good, but not great to me. I'm sure once I mix and EQ them I will be able to get a great sound.

Nice dude. It's different. I like it.

What do you have for a guitar setup?

My only electric guitar right now is a Fender Standard Stratocaster, and I actually just ran it through Guitar Rig 3, and used some of their metal presets. I think I used the mid/bridge pickup selection for that one. I was pleased with the lead tone, but the rhythm needs to be fatter and chunkier, and its hard to get that sound right for me.

On my other songs lately I've been sending my strat through my line6 vavle112 and then miking the amp with a SM57 and sending that to one track and then also sending the direct out to another track. Then its just a matter of getting a good mix of the mic and the DI.

My next studio purchase is a small mixer (6 inputs or so) so I can utilize multiple mics. Anyone have any suggestions? I was looking at some of the behringer mixers since they're pretty cheap, comparatively.

Well my birthday is coming up soon, and that's not extraordinarily expensive - I might get that . Whats the difference between the 1/4" and XLR main outputs though? What exactly does balanced and unbalanced mean? And will it affect sound quality in a big way?

Hopefully this makes sense
http://www.tweakheadz.com/all_about_cables.htm

I've been meaning to get a condenser mic for a looong time, finally pulled the trigger
http://www.fullcompass.com/product/246912.html

List Price: $1,477.00
Sale Price: $399.00

Most other places are around

I checked the BBB, s**t is legit.

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... sku=242411
Anybody have any experience with these? If so would you recommend?

I have the HD-25 II and I love em, though I can't speak for this model. Sennheiser usually makes good stuff though.

The Senheiser HD series is pretty awesome.

The HD-595s and HD-650s are pretty much the industry standard for reference cans. I'm sure the 250s are mad solid for the price.

I have the HD600's, and after months of research, I don't think I you can get a better reference can for the price. I'm sure the 280's will rock. There are advantages and disadvantages to closed back, but unless you want to jack up the price for a headphone amp, closed back is your option, and should do nicely.

Those headphones are not $400, but yeah, they were expensive. I think I paid like $270 for them or something. It was either those and an amp, or monitors, so I went for the cans. I'm in a weird room.

quickie new mic test



This was just in my bedroom, and my acoustic sounds shitty, but it's accurately shitty!

Have any of you ever had experience with Ez drummer?

I don't have experience with EZdrummer but I've heard a lot of tracks that use it. Pretty much, all the drums that use it sound pretty much the same, BUT they all sound pretty good so its OK.