Thursday, July 31, 2003
Product manuals - a great source of information!
Kelly's Music and Computers can often be a very challenging place to work. We receive hundreds of e-mails a month, and while our Sales Team is great at finding answers to your questions, someone has to answer the tricky ones. That's my job - finding answers to the tricky questions.
Given that we offer over 1200 different products, I don't always have the luxury of turning on the required piece of hardware or software to find the answer. Some product manufactures are great for spelling out all product details on their web sites, and others do little more that list the product name :-(. I find that most answers can be found in product manuals. To help make my job easier, and to help you as well, we started gathering on-line manuals and are now making them available to you on our site.
I feel that you can learn much more about a product from the manual than you can from a list of features, so be sure to check them out! To find them on our site, just search for the product you are interested in, and look way down the page, under System Requirements. You will find a section called "Downloads". Fill out the form (you do need to provide your real e-mail address so that we can e-mail you the link) and you will soon have access to manuals, demos and any other information we can find for the product.
- Dave
Posted at 12:49 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Fruity Loops / FLStudio Tutorial...
Just came across this great little tutorial on Fruity Loops from Electronic Musician. Thought I would share it with everyone since Fruity Loops is a lot of fun, but can be a bit confusing for newcomers.
Sometimes us musicians tend to frown on "make your own beats" programs like FruityLoops or Reason, but I must admit that I've spent countless hours with both making great music and having a lot of fun! (Hopefully BU doesn't call up asking for their degrees back when they find out...)
- Kelly
Posted at 2:27 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Monday, July 28, 2003
Tech for live concerts - are we there yet?
I just got back from a 5 hour drive to a weekend music festival in MN (SpiritFest Midwest.) It was worth the travel to see one of the opening acts - Phil Driscoll - an amazing trumpet player and an excellent musician. The ending act on Sunday was Salvador, a high energy latin band with a great horn section and a lot of joy! With 8 guys in the band, including a drummer and percussionist, set up takes a long time. As with any summer music festival, you end up doing a lot of waiting in between acts while they do sound checks.
Since I was without my Palm or laptop (gasp!), I had some time to do some thinking about how technology could help with the tedious process of sound checks and setting levels.
Wouldn't it be great if each musician had access to all channels of the mix and could adjust them on the fly as they needed to? At present the cabling would be prohibitive, but if you could run each input to a digital mixer, and then using Yamaha's mLan technology (which is based on Firewire), you could then send the entire mix to each musician's monitor using one cable. Since it is a digital signal, all you would need is a mini digital mixer that each player can use to tweak their personal mix before it gets sent to their monitor.
This solution would be simple, involve very few cables and should be relatively cheap. While we are at it, why not develop a mixer control language that would allow you to store your settings for each song or set on a CD and load it into the mixer before the performance? Maybe even allow some parameters to be entered such as the type of monitors/speakers, size of the venue, etc. and have some software that could automatically calculate adjustments.
Would this save the half hour wait between concerts at a festival, or would it just be more technology to get in the way?
- Kelly
Posted at 3:10 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Thursday, July 24, 2003
The best deal yet?
We just made a special purchase of Cubase and Wavelab, allowing us to do a bundle that includes Cubase, Wavelab, Acid, MK-125 Keyboard, SB Live Soundcard and we are even tossing in MyMP3 for free! The whole bundle is selling for $299.99 US. Wavelab itself sells for $400, so the bundle is cheaper than buying the individual programs.
Sound too good to be true? Well, there is a catch. (Isn't there always?) These aren't the latest versions of the software. Cubase VST 5 instead of Cubase SL, Wavelab 3 instead of Wavelab 4 and Acid Pro 2.0 instead of Acid Pro 4.
So you have to ask yourself - if you can get all of this for only $300 do you really need the latest version? It's a question I ask myself each time I get an upgrade notice for software that I already own. Do I want to fork over the cash for the new features?
Do you upgrade every time there is a new version, or are you happy letting the cutting edge pass you by as long as what you have meets your needs? When it comes to hardware, I must admit I'm a junkie - I love my toys! However, will I pay $200 more for a 2.8 Ghz instead of a 2.7. Not likely! $200 more to get a DVD-RW and bigger hard drive? Sure!
For software, though, I must admit that I could probably go back to Word 97 and not miss any of the features in Word 2002. Same with Excel - I mean, how many different ways are there to add numbers? In fact, much to Microsoft's chagrin many users and discovering that a free open source office package like OpenOffice meets all of their needs.
The new Cubase, for example, as some great advantages in terms of stability and user interface, but only runs on XP or 2000. If you have Windows 98, you have to stick with VST. Even if you have Windows XP and a fast machine, you might have a second PC sitting around. A lot of our customers are buying this bundle for a second computer - using VST system link you can connect the two computers and use Cubase SL/SX to control them both.
Wavelab 4, on the other hand, wasn't the major upgrade that Cubase presented. In fact, Dave still uses Wavelab 3 as he never bothered to upgrade to 4 since the older version does everything he needs. If it was a great program a year ago, does that mean it isn't any more since there is a new version? Dave would say no.
Acid 2.0 is two generations behind the current 4.0 version. If you just want the basic functionality, Acid 2 works just fine. However, don't expect a lot by way of tech support or bug fixes - Sonic Foundry will want you to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Although the cynic in me says it is to generate more revenue, the tech in me knows that supporting older versions of software can be tricky if you don't have access to the software yourself - and running multiple versions of the same software can sometimes be tricky.
What do you think? Latest and greatest or save your bucks?
- Kelly
Posted at 8:59 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Our very first blog...
We have so much fun playing with the latest and greatest music technology here at Kelly's Music & Computers, we thought we might let you join us by starting a Blog :-)
When we started Kelly's Music & Computers over 6 years ago, we were on the cutting edge - we were one of the very first e-commerce companies providing music software and hardware solutions. Back then we had a small web site, with a bit of product info. Things sure have changed since the days when "Under Construction" signs were in the vogue!
We've always tried to stay current, both with music technology, and with technology in general. (My wife has lost track of the number of laptops I've had over the past few years!) Starting a Blog seemed like a logical addition to our site. After all, we want to stay current with technology, and what better way to share the latest news, gossip, tips and tricks than a Blog?
So, we hope you enjoy our view of the music software and hardware industry as we provide personal insights on the latest developments, along with some reminiscing about the "good old days"!
- Kelly
Posted at 6:40 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
