What DAW are you using?

[paperhatrecords]

Samplitude Pro X. Not even the upgraded version, the one from 15 years ago. I really should upgrade though as the big hindrance is not being able to use VST3. There are a lot of noticeable bugs I am sure have been fixed since then too.

 

[ecc83]

Samplitude Pro X. Not even the upgraded version, the one from 15 years ago. I really should upgrade though as the big hindrance is not being able to use VST3. There are a lot of noticeable bugs I am sure have been fixed since then too.

Hi there! I have used Samplitude for many years and presently have Pro X suite 6 on this laptop along with Pro X2 Silver* which I fire up much more often. I have Pro X suite 3 on an old HP lappy and even SE8 from a magazine freebie years ago! But I am neither musician nor song builder. My son who lives in France is both and uses Sam pro X 3. (and Reaper and the free Cakewalk. note, both might solve your VST3 problem?)

However MAGIX, Samplitude's parent company got into financial difficulties earlier this year, they are still going but the situation is unclear. A new firm called "Boris FX.com have now released Samplitude 2025 and a year's subscription will cost me about £100, something I shall do for my son later this year. Nice guy there you can email <neal@borisfx.com> You can download a complete copy of Sam 2025 for evaluation.

*Sam Silver is free forever and mainly released in America, always takes me a time to track it down. Pretty good but you need to get it activated by MAGIX and I don't know how that works now due to their recent troubles.

Hope this helps?

Dave.

 

[paperhatrecords]

Hi there! I have used Samplitude for many years and presently have Pro X suite 6 on this laptop along with Pro X2 Silver* which I fire up much more often. I have Pro X suite 3 on an old HP lappy and even SE8 from a magazine freebie years ago! But I am neither musician nor song builder. My son who lives in France is both and uses Sam pro X 3. (and Reaper and the free Cakewalk. note, both might solve your VST3 problem?)

However MAGIX, Samplitude's parent company got into financial difficulties earlier this year, they are still going but the situation is unclear. A new firm called "Boris FX.com have now released Samplitude 2025 and a year's subscription will cost me about £100, something I shall do for my son later this year. Nice guy there you can email <neal@borisfx.com> You can download a complete copy of Sam 2025 for evaluation.

*Sam Silver is free forever and mainly released in America, always takes me a time to track it down. Pretty good but you need to get it activated by MAGIX and I don't know how that works now due to their recent troubles.

Hope this helps?

Dave.

Good to know - hadn't followed their financial difficulties. I am a hell no on subscription models for anything. If they go to that I may have to find a different DAW. Sucks.

I can't stand it when companies change their model.

 

[ecc83]

"I can't stand it when companies change their model." Well, strictly speaking they haven't, Borisfx .com have bought them out?

A year's subscription is £110 which is what I shall do. The good news is Sam 2025 supports VST3. If you wanted to change DAWs the most cost effective by far is Cockos Reaper, it is also very powerful and my son is starting to use it more and more. He does still find Samplitude way the best editor though.

Dave.

 

[Count Bassie]

I'm just re-starting my recording thing, got REAPER because later Windows systems won't deal with Cool Edit Pro- I really liked that one for my purposes: it's primarily an editor, and I liked the way it was laid out. I find REAPER to be way too feature-rich for my simpler needs, but you don't have to go deep to be functional. Anyway I'm kind of starting my learning curve again and will stick with what I've got.

 

[ecc83]

I'm just re-starting my recording thing, got REAPER because later Windows systems won't deal with Cool Edit Pro- I really liked that one for my purposes: it's primarily an editor, and I liked the way it was laid out. I find REAPER to be way too feature-rich for my simpler needs, but you don't have to go deep to be functional. Anyway I'm kind of starting my learning curve again and will stick with what I've got.

Have a hack round for the free Samplitide ProX 2 Silver*. Sam is a very good editor. Also, just for editing don't forget Audacity? Runs on anything and totally free and zero hassle. If you use it don't forget to "export as .wav" otherwise nothing else will play the tracks.

*going to have a look myself. https://miditech.de/en/software/

Dave.

 

[RRuskin]

Audition 3 works just fine for me.

 

[TalismanRich]

I'm just re-starting my recording thing, got REAPER because later Windows systems won't deal with Cool Edit Pro- I really liked that one for my purposes: it's primarily an editor, and I liked the way it was laid out. I find REAPER to be way too feature-rich for my simpler needs, but you don't have to go deep to be functional. Anyway I'm kind of starting my learning curve again and will stick with what I've got.

That's something that I discovered early on. Just because you CAN customize it, create a theme, write scripts, do surround sound, etc. etc., doesn't mean you have to do that. I have never once in the 10 years that I've used it, written a script or designed a theme. I use the 5.x theme, that's about as customized as I've gone but that's because I used v5 for so many years.

If you enjoy doing those things, it's a great platform. If you just want to record a few tracks, mix them down and post them on Bandcamp or Youtube, it works great for that too.

 

[Count Bassie]

Have a hack round for the free Samplitide ProX 2 Silver*. Sam is a very good editor. Also, just for editing don't forget Audacity? Runs on anything and totally free and zero hassle. If you use it don't forget to "export as .wav" otherwise nothing else will play the tracks.

*going to have a look myself. https://miditech.de/en/software/

Dave.

Samplitude has a freebie, that's interesting.
I still need an interface, but once I get hooked up I'll get digging in, and good heads up a about Audacity. I'm not quite flush fur Audition, else I'd have snagged it...

Thanks for the replies you guys!

 

[ecc83]

Samplitude has a freebie, that's interesting.
I still need an interface, but once I get hooked up I'll get digging in, and good heads up a about Audacity. I'm not quite flush fur Audition, else I'd have snagged it...

Thanks for the replies you guys!

I could be wrong but I think you can only get Adobe Audition as part of a suite? Includes video editing and other ***t you don't need and subscription only.
I have had AA 1.5 for 20 years! It came on a PC my best mate built for me for my 60th birthday. It is the only cracked software I have ever had. I emailed Adobe a few times over the years and told them that if they sold a decent, cut down version for about £50 I would buy it and so would many others I bet. At the time there was MAGIX Home Recording and various versions of Cubase at about the nifty price level.

Another good editor with some cracking noise reduction tricks is Sound Forge. Originally by Sony now part of the MAGIX stable.

Dave.

 

[HTZ]

Mostly Ableton, but also Reason, Fruity Loops and Renoise.

 

[BaronEstelle]

For the past 4-5 years I write/compose in Reason, 5, 5.5, 9, 11.5, 12 and track in Pro Tools, 10.5, and whatever the latest is. I'm pretty miserable at editing and I don't
have hardly any patience for it I just want to move on to the next one, always. I used Acid 1.0, 2, 4. 5, and 7 for many years. I first used it with an Aardvark Ark 24 farr warr
card that I though was the coolest thing in the world. That was followed closely by MOTY 2408, more farr warr, and then using cameras with farr warr on them. Then the amazing Apogee Duet farr warr that I still thing is one of the best converters I've ever heard because of the amazing imaging and frequency allocation.

I started using a Computerland MIDI card in a 386 with Windows 3.1 and Cakewalk for Windows. That was square one for computers and music. Cakewalk combined with Sound
Forge was the first actual DAW type setup, and before they integrated it. I think it was Cakewalk Pro Audio that first did that. Wow that was something. I've used every piece of
software I could get on my computer since that time, tried everything and anything.

This one program called "Cool Edit Pro" had brainwave frequency generators in it. I was doing research with a Neuropsychologist buddy and composing brain training pieces
for relaxation and sleep. You had to program and generate the brain waves and you could edit them in that software too. That software became Cool Edit for Windows, then
it became.....ready......Adobe Audition, sans brainwave capability. I still have the brainwave versions and a library of generate wave sounds for binaural beats. I use the latest and greatest Adobe Audition, it's klunky, the multitrack stuff is kludgy and I still can't get it to work with my control surfaces but I like the EQ fiddly things on there and I can manually copy and paste things to get the loops by hand that I like to do. Also, very import, zero crossing. whew....that's a life saver.

 

[Scott Baxendale]

For the past 4-5 years I write/compose in Reason, 5, 5.5, 9, 11.5, 12 and track in Pro Tools, 10.5, and whatever the latest is. I'm pretty miserable at editing and I don't
have hardly any patience for it I just want to move on to the next one, always. I used Acid 1.0, 2, 4. 5, and 7 for many years. I first used it with an Aardvark Ark 24 farr warr
card that I though was the coolest thing in the world. That was followed closely by MOTY 2408, more farr warr, and then using cameras with farr warr on them. Then the amazing Apogee Duet farr warr that I still thing is one of the best converters I've ever heard because of the amazing imaging and frequency allocation.

I started using a Computerland MIDI card in a 386 with Windows 3.1 and Cakewalk for Windows. That was square one for computers and music. Cakewalk combined with Sound
Forge was the first actual DAW type setup, and before they integrated it. I think it was Cakewalk Pro Audio that first did that. Wow that was something. I've used every piece of
software I could get on my computer since that time, tried everything and anything.

This one program called "Cool Edit Pro" had brainwave frequency generators in it. I was doing research with a Neuropsychologist buddy and composing brain training pieces
for relaxation and sleep. You had to program and generate the brain waves and you could edit them in that software too. That software became Cool Edit for Windows, then
it became.....ready......Adobe Audition, sans brainwave capability. I still have the brainwave versions and a library of generate wave sounds for binaural beats. I use the latest and greatest Adobe Audition, it's klunky, the multitrack stuff is kludgy and I still can't get it to work with my control surfaces but I like the EQ fiddly things on there and I can manually copy and paste things to get the loops by hand that I like to do. Also, very import, zero crossing. whew....that's a life saver.

I still used acid pro on windows XP for editing drum loops.

 

[Papanate]

This one program called "Cool Edit Pro" had brainwave frequency generators in it. I was doing research with a Neuropsychologist buddy and composing brain training pieces
for relaxation and sleep. You had to program and generate the brain waves and you could edit them in that software too. That software became Cool Edit for Windows, then
it became.....ready......Adobe Audition, sans brainwave capability. I still have the brainwave versions and a library of generate wave sounds for binaural beats. I use the latest and greatest Adobe Audition, it's klunky, the multitrack stuff is kludgy and I still can't get it to work with my control surfaces but I like the EQ fiddly things on there and I can manually copy and paste things to get the loops by hand that I like to do. Also, very import, zero crossing. whew....that's a life saver.

The idea was pretty out there - who knows if it worked - lot of confirmation bias in the testing -

 

[RRuskin]

For the past 4-5 years I write/compose in Reason, 5, 5.5, 9, 11.5, 12 and track in Pro Tools, 10.5, and whatever the latest is. I'm pretty miserable at editing and I don't
have hardly any patience for it I just want to move on to the next one, always. I used Acid 1.0, 2, 4. 5, and 7 for many years. I first used it with an Aardvark Ark 24 farr warr
card that I though was the coolest thing in the world. That was followed closely by MOTY 2408, more farr warr, and then using cameras with farr warr on them. Then the amazing Apogee Duet farr warr that I still thing is one of the best converters I've ever heard because of the amazing imaging and frequency allocation.

I started using a Computerland MIDI card in a 386 with Windows 3.1 and Cakewalk for Windows. That was square one for computers and music. Cakewalk combined with Sound
Forge was the first actual DAW type setup, and before they integrated it. I think it was Cakewalk Pro Audio that first did that. Wow that was something. I've used every piece of
software I could get on my computer since that time, tried everything and anything.

This one program called "Cool Edit Pro" had brainwave frequency generators in it. I was doing research with a Neuropsychologist buddy and composing brain training pieces
for relaxation and sleep. You had to program and generate the brain waves and you could edit them in that software too. That software became Cool Edit for Windows, then
it became.....ready......Adobe Audition, sans brainwave capability. I still have the brainwave versions and a library of generate wave sounds for binaural beats. I use the latest and greatest Adobe Audition, it's klunky, the multitrack stuff is kludgy and I still can't get it to work with my control surfaces but I like the EQ fiddly things on there and I can manually copy and paste things to get the loops by hand that I like to do. Also, very import, zero crossing. whew....that's a life saver.

I'm still using Audition 3 as my DAW.

 

[BaronEstelle]

I was involved with the testing of the Binaural Beat stimulation waves with a board certified Neuropsychologist using NASA based brain wave measurement technology for several clinical trials. I did a few on myself and was involved with testing on individuals. It should pulse reduction, heart rate reduction, and subjective reports of relaxation in the standing or sitting subjects.

In the subjects that were laying down, sleep within 15 minutes was reproduced reliably. I've seen it work many times. The problem is depenence on the music. Now that doesn't make me happy even though it could potentially result in sales, but it's better to have people healthy. I had one person literally to wear out a CD listening to my CD for 22 years every night. That's consistency right there.

The effect doesn't work on everyone simply because not everyone is "brain tuned" to be responsive to physiological indicators. There does also seem to be a correlations between intelligence and susceptibility to the binaural pattern. Also children are much more senstive than adults. I know it works, it's pure physics past a certain point. Programming a frequency with a 5 hertz difference corresponds to a universal magnetic rhythm, for example, that causes the seashores the world over to meet a consistent rhythm of 5 hertz per second. Also, a flickering flame, relaxing to look at in a fireplace, flickers at 5 hertz, universally. It's odd because software or video versions of flickering flames do not visual stay consistent on 5 hertz like the real thing. However, audio recordings are generally more accurate to consistently maintain a 5 hertz pulse. The pulse is not effects by the moon cycles, but the moon cycles do have other magnetic effects, such as aggression, or mental outlooks depeding on the susceptibility of the individual.

I'm not a psychologist. I'm a philosopher of science and physics in addition to being a musician. I write some books too.

 

[Papanate]

I'm not a psychologist. I'm a philosopher of science and physics in addition to being a musician. I write some books too.

It appears your science is dependent on the people thinking it will work - and children are more likely to believe it than adults - and one guy who wore out your CD (How do you do that BTW?) music/white noise etc… are excellent at inducing sleep - so how did you arrive at the process you have as working - I’m more inclined to believe the Music/White Noise had more to do with it.

 

[BaronEstelle]

It appears your science is dependent on the people thinking it will work - and children are more likely to believe it than adults - and one guy who wore out your CD (How do you do that BTW?) music/white noise etc… are excellent at inducing sleep - so how did you arrive at the process you have as working - I’m more inclined to believe the Music/White Noise had more to do with it.

You are assuming that the results were based exclusively on subjective reports. Subjective reports were only anecdotal. The whole idea with a control group is to eliminate subject reports. And only in one control group was audible white/pink/brown noise used naked with no music or frequency masking. The binaural frequency relationship can be placed anywhere in the spectrum but mid bass is preferred and low bass is pretty much always used at least in our sound algorithim, but there are several that included compound waves with multiple binaural occurences in selected spots of the spectrum individually played but also played simultaneously.

It wasn't "my" science either, it was a clinical psychology dissertation for a major university with one of the highest rated Clinical Psych programs in the country. He went on to be a board certified Neuropsychologist and presents at national conferentia even now. No, he had his Ph.D. dissertation riding on the pilot studies, it could never have relied exclusively or even predominately on subjective reports. Later on as the brain-mapping and analysis technology started to become orthogonal with the algorithims it because almost completely redundant because we could predict what they would say if they were actually asked.

The pilot study was interesting though: it included hard rock, classical, binaural mixed (which was where my 50 or some compositions were), and binaural raw. The binaural showed an across the board 17% higher effectiveness for study and relax conditions. The next, oddly was classical and but the brain maps in the generational studies always showed classical to sometimes increase frontal activities. This is due to the so-called "organizing effect" that classical music, primarily due to correct time, has on the brain. The binaural conditions in the generational studies further outdistanced even classical, however.

Children are actually much more objective than adults because it's purely a measurement of brain map. The NASA technology involved a 24 channel QEEG, quantum electro encephalograph reading to generate a color brain map that shows shifts in specific activities in brain areas by color. The judgement of the effectiveness was never based on subjective reports, only data. Slowed pulse, slowed heart rate, increase in activity in the amygdala, lessening of frontal operations to a certain extent. Adults were only asked what they felt if they showed the appropriate shift in what is called the "frequency following effect. "

 

[BaronEstelle]

A for the process itself, it is long accepted science, and again, your habit of possessive pronouns despite you darn well knowing better, it is not "mine." I'm going to assume you have at least some familiarity with brain science, brain waves, the hertz frequency spectrum. Hans Berger, a German psychiatrist more electromechanically minded than Freud, discovered EEG in 1924 based on his theory that the brain operated at or in any case emitted frequencies that could be measured. His 'alpha wave' was only one of such frequencies and is often called the Berger wave. The fundamental brain frequencies correspond to levels of activity/awareness in the physical realm with the exception of sleep. The brain is more active during sleep than at any other time. During sleep the brain enters "highly orchestrated" states that consolidate memories and even provide system cues for the flushing of metabolic wastes, REM sleep corresponds to yet more specialized brain states that cue emotional regulation and allows for vivid dreaming as well as lucid-dreaming, a state where you are "awake" in your dreams which can be induced by light sound devices.

From slow/low to highest/fastest - Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma are the major brain states. Berger showed the way for the initial discovery of these brain states.
They are always there, always on, and always sitting at some frequency with possible sub-frequencies, or even multiple sub-frequencies possible.

The "Frequency Following Effect" - Any sound that occurs in your sensorium is heard by your brain in much the same way as driving down the highway you do not read every billboard along the way but your brain certainly sees it, as well as the rest of the visual information. Your brain "hears" everything in your surround. If any particular sound persists in some way for 5-15 seconds the brain will pickup on and "follow" that sound. If it stays exactly the same the brain has a habit of getting bored with it and trailing off in search of more interesting sound. The brain exhibits the "frequency following effect" is also translated visually, in that our eyes are drawn to movement and attain degrades in consistent patterns.

Two more things. When walking along an ocean shore, the sound of the waves hitting the shore is relaxing. This universally has been measure to be at 5 hertz which is a very relaxing sound which corresponds to a binaural beat, since we have two ears and hear binaural signals. It's also visually established by stairing at a flickering flame. This flicker too has been measured to be at 5 hertz universally. This is why these two conditions naturally relax us. 4 hertz and below for the global brainwave state, which can be induced, is relaxation, and just slightly lower is sleep.

Two guitar strings out of tune. Hit both of them and you hear a "beat" of the out of tuneness. This is a binaural beat from two sources. In the Brainwave code in Cool Edit, it was easy to program and export large stereo wave files (MP3 or other compressed formats do not work, AIFF is best) you select your frequency where the wave will reside then you create it's twin however far apart you want your target frequency or "brain state" to be. I chose mid-low frequencies because they can be felt as well as heard. Pipe one side in one ear and another in another and the "relaxation response" takes effects which is this pulse on the amygdala on the brainstem which just happens to be near the end of the ear canals and neurally connected. The pleasure and relaxation centers in the brain also reside in the amygdala. So the frequencies going into the brain cause the frequency following effect for the binaural beat to reach the "relaxation effect" and lower pulse, heart rate, lowers urine production, and changes the topography of a brain map to identifiable states as "just above sleep," or "meditating." Higher faster frequencies are the excitatory frequencies.

This is a very basic sketch of what is generally known as "psychoacoustics" the mechanical process is patented in the service of EEG Biofeedback and Quantitative Electro encephalogram data collection and analysis commonly represented in a brain map. These states can be induced visually and auditorilly with "light/sound" devices that flash at the same hertz pulse as the sound "beats." These can also be used into induce lucid dreaming in subjects who set light and sound devices to start up after they have fallen asleep. It is then that the subject is lucid dreaming with conscious awareness being capsulated within the dream state to heightened sensory awareness.

It works without question, and the data has been consistent for at least 30 years in the modern brain mapping era.

If anyone wants to try some fo these binaural files I'll be happy to shoot you some.