Clip Safe
Clip Safe is a magical lifeline for distorted takes – a red-eye tool for recorded audio. Clip Safe records your take on two channels, one at a lower volume. If your recording clips, it lets you substitute it for the other one. Don't ask us how it works, it just does.
I'm not sure how they're doing that, but it seems like an obvious feature that everybody ought to include in their audio interfaces. I'm sure we've all had the frustrating experience of laying down a really great take of something only to notice some clipping.
Looks awesome. Jonathan Mann has been using Reason+Record. Anybody here using that setup? I've been using Reason for almost all my MIDI/soft-synth stuff for years but haven't dabbled with Record yet.
I imagine the extra line inputs on the back could get a little confusing, but I like that they make it easy to have a few things hooked up at the same time and then you can choose which you are recording right there on the interface. That makes a lot of sense to me.
Of course, I would like to be able to record 4 things at once and also have two headphone outs. I look forward to the bigger versions of this box.
Ken
Ken's Super Duper Band 'n Stuff - Berkeley Social Scene - Tiny Robots - Seamus Collective - Semolina Pilchards - Cutie Pies - Explino! - Bravo Bros. - 2 from 14 - and more!
i would just like to remind everyone that Ken eats kittens - blue lang
I bought Record and...hated it. It was actually easier to rewire into Reaper, edit and denoise in Audition, chop up the result and import it into Reason. I sold Record to someone who now finds the same thing.
Record does have great EQ and mixer, but it also has that infuriating dongle. Which, now that Record's been integrated into Reason, is now infuriating in Reason too. Propellerhead software have added some new goodies to Reason to make us users embrace the dongle and integration...but if you check out their forum, not many are impressed.
As for Balance...'Clip Safe' is a nice idea, but IMO hardly a deal maker in choosing a hardware interface.
I use Record on my laptops because it's so easy on resources, as opposed to Cubase. It's an incredibly capable DAW, except that no plugins means being stuck with Neptune for vocal pitch needs. Lame. Also, the workflow that works so well in Reason just seems cumbersome in a DAW. Maybe I'm just too spoiled by Cubase's UI.
Irwin: I'd sell my soul to jesus to program drums like signboy.
Once upon a time I had an idea for an algorithm that could clean up clipped recordings as a post-processing effect. I don't know how well it would work but I should try implementing it someday. Obviously when signal is gone it's gone, but the idea I had could probably do an okay job of making it sound un-clipped.
I'm guessing that in this interface they've just got the input routed onto two channels, and one of them is attenuated by -24dB or something, and it's up to the software to just record both channels and then offer a normalized version of the attenuated signal if clipping occurs. With good enough ADCs and 24-bit recording, 24dB is chump change.
That's exactly what I thought. They just route the audio to a second channel that probably has a pad on it to record at -20db from the original gain or something simple like that. Honestly, that just seems like a waste of resources to me. I would prefer to be able to record 4 things at once on the box and be careful with my levels.
Ken
Ken's Super Duper Band 'n Stuff - Berkeley Social Scene - Tiny Robots - Seamus Collective - Semolina Pilchards - Cutie Pies - Explino! - Bravo Bros. - 2 from 14 - and more!
i would just like to remind everyone that Ken eats kittens - blue lang
not to kick a dead horse, but what is the problem the whole world seems to have with dongles? You plug it in the back and stuff works. You don't even have to type in an annoying password.
Irwin: I'd sell my soul to jesus to program drums like signboy.
Because it's yet another thing to lose and to deal with if you're on a laptop or any other device with a limited number of ports (and heaven forbid you have to change your USB hub around while you're using the software). I was really glad when Logic switched from a dongle to a serial number registration.
I mean, any sort of copy protection measure is only there to keep honest users honest anyway, so why make it more annoying than it has to be?
They're easy to lose.
They're easy to break.
They're unreliable.
Often they just stop working altogether.
To replace them you have to pay the software company - which you can't do if they no longer exist. And then wait for it to arrive.
They're inconvenient to use, taking up a port which you may not be able to spare.
They eat CPU time.
If they get cracked, the users who paid are effectively penalised.
Put all these together, and you've got the reason why most users are put off by dongles - to the extent of it being a deal breaker. You also get the reason why almost all software companies who tried dongles dropped the idea.
Now Propellerhead have given us a dongle, an uninspiring audio interface which doubles as a dongle, three extra modules which do nothing new, and a hefty price tag for integrating two programs which were pretty much already integrated.
The Propellerhead forums are full of the usual fanboys who love it. And no one else anymore. It looks like Propellerhead have given up finding new markets and are concentrating on their base.
Kapitano wrote:The Propellerhead forums are full of the usual fanboys who love it. And no one else anymore. It looks like Propellerhead have given up finding new markets and are concentrating on their base.
And someday even the Propellerhead users are going to get sick of it and that base will migrate to some other vendor's software, and that vendor will call Propellerhead on the phone and say "All your base are belong to us."
fluffy wrote:And someday even the Propellerhead users are going to get sick of it and that base will migrate to some other vendor's software, and that vendor will call Propellerhead on the phone and say "All your base are belong to us."
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