The moog freqbox, a versatile fx pedal unit that can be used as an oscillator in a modular synth setup. When I first plugged them in, I noticed how huge they sounded. How alive. They reminded me of the older moog stuff, like tarus pedals and model d minimoog. With two, the oscillators would beat and sound pretty vintage. These things are FAT. The biggest. The sync sounds were so mean and huge, it would make my whole house shake. I ran these into my doepfer custom eurorack filled with rare boutique modules. I loves how the moog oscillators sounded through the polivoks filter the most. I prefered these oscillators for BASS duties. There is this warm beef that you get in the 60 to 200hz range on the low end of the frequency spectrum. No other synths and oscillators can pump this style of sound out. These pedals really did sound more vintage to me than the little phatty and the new minimoog voyagers. They had plenty of high end frequencies which I think are lacking a tad on the newer moog synths.

As far as the tracking goes? Well I ran into a little trouble. But once they warmed up I could get about 3 octaves of stable tracking no problem. Amos Gaynes, one of the techs who works at moog saw my initial comments on the tracking that I posted a while back, and offered to modify them so they would track better. After the mod, they did better. This is how great the customer support is over at moog music. A couple of things that I think would make these better would be a fine tuning knob for the osc, and if they could be put into doepfer format and make them track a tiny bit better they would put the competition in the modular synth world out of business when it comes to fat big bass oscillators. That would be so awesome. I kind of did not like having two wall warts. I also was not fond of having them on the floor with long cables to my modular, but that is something I could of fixed If i bought a rack mount for the pedals. For synth oscillators, these are the best for modular bass lines. Better than any other modular doepfer eurorack oscillator that I have used in the bass dept. for sure. I still like other things for leads more though.

We did run our guitar through this pedal, and we could get some really strange sounds with it. Something new and different for sure. The sound quality of this pedal is top notch and will enhance any guitar or modular synth rig with ease. You really cannot go wrong here. I give this a 4 out of 5.

This is a link to a video I did that shows off the moog in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_wAH_Z6R3Q …

Holy Shit. I am not kidding. This thing is the bomb. It gets all those mid tones right, and now the attack sounds perfect, you get that growl, you get that thubby attack of a real tube amp. This is a hybrid amp, It has the line 6 digital amp emulations, and a Reinhold Bogner tube pre amp to get the best of both worlds. I recommend this for metal chords, chug, and rythm. For leads, it still lacks that super resonance of an all analog amp. And the clean channel is kind of dull and doesn’t have enough chime for me. But for metal, and power chords, it is amazing. It has a lot of great emulations in it. I can get that rectumfrier tone out of this thing, no problem. The a30 emu is not that great, but ok on somethings. The verbs sound kind of weak, as do most of hte fx, the delay is ok, as is the phaser and flanger. Chorus is a but weak too. I still think the clean sound is weak, you will need something else to do clean with. Pair this with a fender or an old roland amp.

I pair this up with a les paul and a flying V. Great results for metal, and death metal type of guitar which i am now experimenting with. By no way am I saying that this is as good as an old marshal, or an engle powerball or something like that. But to fit this style of playing into a VAC mix with electronics, it works really well if I mic it up and do my mixing tricks. I am able to get the kinds of sounds I want, really mean rhythms. For the price, you simply cannot beat this amp. To get better, you will have to spend thousands more, No joke. This is a huge step up from the POD xt I was using. I mean the it sounds a lot more analog, but not pure, and like I said, some of the high notes don’t resonate and cut as good as real analog amps do. The digital still gets in the way of the high end. But in the middle it’s fine, and that is where I play most of the time anyway so i get great results with this amp so far. I give it a 4 out of 5.

Updated, high res hifi divx version of the sh2 futile demo..

Ok, i made a video of the sh-2 using the riffs from futile to show off the sh2., i love this synth! I don’t need a moog, when you have a sh-2, you will never need one. Rolands are the heart and soul of VAC. I HEART ROLAND! well, old roland..

Here is the high quality divx version of the video on stage6. Click here for the Divx version of the video, needs divx plugin

Divx plug in makes my browser act weird, so i put a link to it and the youtube one back as the default.

By far my favorite AD and DA convertor. Is it the best sounding? No. I think the best sounding is still the Lavry Blue or the prism high end converters. But I prefer the RME fireface 800 to the apogee DA16 AD16, because the apogee colors the mid range in a way that really does not compliment electronic music that well. What makes this the best in my opinion? The drivers, and how it works amazingly perfect with the PC and the MAC. The built in mixer and control panel in the os are simply amazing and very useful for metering and making sure levels are good. This is a solid stable product. So many devices out there have crappy drivers, tc electronics is horrid. This is the best best buy. You get a ton of ins and outs. And kick ass sound quality. I shot it out with the lynx two cards, and my kurzweil AD DA. I would say the the rme had better bass than all the other converters I tested. But the high end seemed a little pinched and not as open as either the lynxtwo or the kurzweil. But mastering can usually help that enough. The lynxtwo and the Kurzweil both cannot touch the low end of the RME FireFace 800. So for bass, stability, drivers, and utilities the rme fireface 800 won me over hands down.. And don’t think the fireface 400 is the same thing, that thing is over priced garbage. Don’t even bother with the fireface 400. If you look around and hagle on price, you can get the fireface 800 for about 1150 new.

Input AD: 8 x 1/4″ TRS, 4 x XLR Mic, 1/4″ TRS Line, all servo-balanced. 1 x 1/4″ TS unbalanced
Output DA: 8 x 1/4″ TRS, servo-balanced, DC-coupled signal path. 1 x 1/4″ TRS unbalanced
Input Digital: 2 x ADAT optical or SPDIF optical, SPDIF coaxial (AES/EBU compatible)
Output Digital: 2 x ADAT optical or SPDIF optical, SPDIF coaxial (AES/EBU compatible)
MIDI: 1 x MIDI I/O via 5-pin DIN jacks, for 16 channels low jitter hi-speed MIDI

Dynamic range AD: 109 dB RMS unweighted, 112 dBA
THD AD: < -110 dB (< 0.00032 %)
THD+N AD: < -104 dB (< 0.00063 %)
Crosstalk AD: > 110 dB

Dynamic range DA: 116 dB RMS unweighted, 119 dBA (unmuted)
THD DA: < -103 dB (< 0.0007 %)
THD+N DA: < -100 dB (< 0.001 %)
Crosstalk DA: > 110 dB

Input/Output level for 0 dBFS @ Hi Gain: +19 dBu
Input/Output level for 0 dBFS @ +4 dBu: +13 dBu
Input/Output level for 0 dBFS @ -10 dBV: +2 dBV
Sample rate internally: 32, 44.1, 48, 64, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz, 128, 176.4, 192 kHz
Sample rate externally: 28 kHz - 200 kHz
Frequency response AD/DA, -0.1 dB: 5 Hz - 21,5 kHz (sf 48 kHz)
Frequency response AD/DA, -0.5 dB: < 5 Hz - 43.5 kHz (sf 96 kHz)
Frequency response AD/DA, -1 dB: < 5 Hz - 70 kHz (sf 192 kHz)

I have used a lot of headphones, jvc marshmellows, sony, bose, sure. And in the sub 500 dollar range, nothing can touch these ultimate ear’s. dual drivers. great bass, great mid range and awesome high range. Very detalied and a good stereo image. They get plenty loud and punch perfectly. They come with a lot of different sized ends to fit all kinds of ears. these fit great in my ears. I cannot live with out these, i use them to check my mixes, work out at the gym with them, and i have even done live sound with them. they are perfect for everything. I would never let someone borrow these, you would have to pry these out of my dead cold hands. I cannot live with out these. I highly recomend these. perfect for ipods and mp3 players too. Sure they cost a tad more than regular headphones, but they are so worth it, they make music listening about 100% better than average headphones.

The daw war is over.

Midi jitter on external midi, sequencing synths and drums in real time from the computer. This is a big deal to those of us who like to sequence live and mix analog for better sound quality and tight notation. Logic 8 is the winner. Logic 8 with amt8 on osx is 1ms of midi jitter! this is as tight as notator on the atari st, which to this date held the record for tight midi on a computer. now logic 8 ties this record! KUDOS TO YOU APPLE AND EMAGIC! YOU HAVE WON THE MIDI WAR. AMT8 interface was used in my test. I triggered a high hat on my dr 880 drum machine, recorded it in, wrote down all the peak transients and subtracted the differences. yup 1 ms of jitter! so drums and bass lines can finally sound tight in real time thanks to apple and logic 8. I am so happy. i bought this software. logic 8 express! it has answered all my midi prayers! finally a daw that does it all, sounds great, and is feature laden. beats out all daws now. easily the king! i bet removing the dongle had a big impact of the midi timing. i cannot thank you enough, this has been a huge hassle for me over the last 10 years. i have pulled out hair, gone insane, gotten banned off the steinberg forums, and turned many against me because of this. its over. when i tested logic 7 with the amt8, i got 3 ms of jitter on osx. so logic 8 is even better!

More on logic 8 instrument plug ins: Well i hve had time to go through and play with the instrument plug ins that logic express 8 comes with. WOW. the sample libraries that come with the exs24 are worth it! wow, great analog samples. juptier 8 and strings, choir is good too. The FM synth is ok, the VA mono and poly are ok nothing that great but better than the crap cubase comes with for sure, and all of it is useable to make good sounding music. But ultra beat is the thing that blows me away the most. great drum kits covering a lot of groun in electro. very nice. tight, fat, big and punchy. very nice. doesn’t make me regret selling my jomox for one second. This more than makes up for that. I cannot beleive all the stuff this thing has for 200 dollars! this gives you a complete sound library to make several lps with no hardware at all. It’s simply amazing to me.. The sound sets are nice in all reguards with all the plug ins. very impressed.

I all most forgot. Midi recording. you know that oh so important thing, recording your keyboard performances. This never worked right on any daw either. When i would do like piano rolls that cascade sometimes i would do 64th or 32nd notes really fast, and cubase would choke and never record it right, never play it back right, never sound like what i played in. I’ve had people watch me play, and then listen to the play back, and the people watching me would say “that isn’t what yo uplayed” all daws except logic were flawed big time. and when in loop mode cubase was bonkers and would never put the 1st beat in the right place. Logic is the only daw that has ever played back what i played in correctly and exactly. This is a huge deal to me. and in the past 10 years something that has killed my inspiration using cubase and sonar. crappy midi recording. With logic that is a thing of the past. Midi is done correctly. Many people think they suck at playing keybaords, but i bet if they tried logic, they would be suprised to find it was their computer software that was not recording them and scanning the midi correctly.. to me this is unforgiveable, perverting performances. thanks cubase, thanks sonar. no thanks. logic does it right thankfully..

PC MIDI: cubase sx with many interfaces including the midex8 on 4 different pcs i tested all were from 13 to 20 ms of midi jitter. Saw studio was 7 ms of midi jitter. Sonar 6 was 14 ms of midi jitter. Logic 5.5.1 with amt on xp(which was never stable) was 3ms of jitter but completely un usable because midi would just stop working, then you would have to reload logic and it would work for 5 minutes the quit again. so this is irrelevant.

Let me break down the daws for you in other ways. Saw has the best sound and worst interface with crap midi, sonar 6 has crap midi, second best sound and crap interface, cubase has crap sound and crap midi with an awesome interface. that is the pc side of things. on the Mac logic 7 had good midi, and decent sound, with an ok to decent interface. Now, logic 8 has a great interface, the best midi ever on a modern computer, and the sound quality is up there with sonar and samplitude. sonar had awesome time streching, now so does logic 8, cubase has awesome audio editing, but so does logic 8 now, 7 was no where close to cubase in audio editing, but now, its as good. finally logic 8 delivers on all fronts where all daws have failed before. LOGIC 8 express is 199! BUY IT NOW! Logic 8 studio is 499. BUY ONE OF THEM! cheaper than the competition, and way better in all regards! + NO MORE DONGLE!!!!!!! AWESOME!

Update: I have since upgraded to the full version of logic, Just get express and outboard fx, space design and delay designer are crap when compared to my kurzweil ksp8. Sculpture synth is nothing special either. So save your money and just buy express. Unless you need the sound track pro and waveburn, those are really useful, i use sound track to edit sound on my videos that i post on my blog. So i guess for that, it was worth it. The plug in instruments really don’t sound that great so the mainstage program either.