[Frank Stearns]

Nil writes:

On 01 Dec 2015, Luxey wrote in rec.audio.pro:

It is Win10 32bit, as proposed in OP and follow ups. Yes,
normally, I also set indexing to the lowest priority. Now I've
disabled it just to see what happens. There was no much
difference. I don't know what would happen in the long run?
Tomorrow, I'll switch it back on.

The search feature in Windows 7 and later is much improved over that in
XP. In XP the indexing seemed to never end and would noticeably bog
down system performance. Since 7, after the initial indexing operation
(which can take a very long time,) I find the performance penalty to be
practically unnoticeable. However, I don't like the way built-in search
feature works, so I have it shut off for that reason. There are other
search tools I like better.

In Win7, there is a terrible flaw in file name searching. The wild cards don't fully
understand substrings.

Thus, a NAME search for the substring "*mix*" in the file name string
"my_bigmixer.txt" returns nothing. (In XP, such substring matches worked.)

But, if you search for "*big*", a match will be found because "_" is apparently
understood. But this general substring fault is one of the more idiotic things
MS has done.

If you have a 3rd party file browser for Win7 with filename substring searching that
works, would love to hear about it. (Yes, I have UNIX tools but they need to run in
a shell and it's then something of an annoyance to "do something" with your matches,
compared to if they appear in an explorer window.)

Thanks,

Frank
Mobile Audio
--

[Frank Stearns]

JackA writes:

-snips-

Frank, we come from two different schools of music appreciation. I enjoy th=
ose audio engineers who demand real-time recordings. I began losing interes=
t in (Pop) music due to drum machines and such. I mean, I really enjoyed re=
al drummers like Buddy Rich. I like talent, musicians and audio engineers, =
those who could accomplish so much with so little.

My ultimate appreciation is acoustic live -- NO transducers to be found anywhere; NO
amplified instruments on stage. This often means unamplified
Bluegrass/folk/singer-songwriter, chamber music, instrument and voice recitals,
choral and orchestral (but watch out; often reinforcement has been brought in by
stealth).

I like that aesthetic; and clients have told me that's one reason they keep coming
back. Even with lots of production "behind the scenes" that some mixes call for, I
strive to create a sense of that live experience. Hard to do with pop and rock
(almost by definition); that's why I typically avoid such projects.

But you can *still* extract a mix that will give you that feel, if first you know
what "acoustic live" sounds like to begin with, and second know how to make your
production tools do that.

YMMV.

Frank
Mobile Audio
--

[Nil[_2_]]

On 01 Dec 2015, Frank Stearns
wrote in rec.audio.pro:

In Win7, there is a terrible flaw in file name searching. The wild
cards don't fully understand substrings.

I didn't know about that. My objection to Windows's search is that you
have to explicitly configure it to search the whole disk - by default
it only searches some common areas of the disk - and that indexing is
so damn slow, and that the search syntax is so obscure and un-standard.

If you have a 3rd party file browser for Win7 with filename
substring searching that works, would love to hear about it.

I use two different ones. For searching by file name only (which is 99%
of my searches) I like Everything Search (http://www.voidtools.com/).
It creates its own self-maintaining index, which takes only a minute,
and searches are nearly instantaneous. You can search using common
regular expressions.

In the rare event that I need to search for file content, I use Agent
Ransack (http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/). It doesn't create an
index so it has to search files one by one, and so is slower than
Everything. But it's very thorough and accurate.

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Nil wrote:
On 01 Dec 2015, Frank Stearns
wrote in rec.audio.pro:

In Win7, there is a terrible flaw in file name searching. The wild
cards don't fully understand substrings.

I didn't know about that. My objection to Windows's search is that you
have to explicitly configure it to search the whole disk - by default
it only searches some common areas of the disk - and that indexing is
so damn slow, and that the search syntax is so obscure and un-standard.

If you have a 3rd party file browser for Win7 with filename
substring searching that works, would love to hear about it.

I use two different ones. For searching by file name only (which is 99%
of my searches) I like Everything Search (http://www.voidtools.com/).
It creates its own self-maintaining index, which takes only a minute,
and searches are nearly instantaneous. You can search using common
regular expressions.

In the rare event that I need to search for file content, I use Agent
Ransack (http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/). It doesn't create an
index so it has to search files one by one, and so is slower than
Everything. But it's very thorough and accurate.


http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

Then you too can

%u%\find . -name "*pat*.ex*" | xargs grep "something"

( the %u% is a trick you have to use to defeat the command prompt's
interpreter's handling of "find" as an internal command or something )

--
Les Cargill

[Frank Stearns]

Nil writes:

On 01 Dec 2015, Frank Stearns
wrote in rec.audio.pro:

In Win7, there is a terrible flaw in file name searching. The wild
cards don't fully understand substrings.

I didn't know about that. My objection to Windows's search is that you
have to explicitly configure it to search the whole disk - by default
it only searches some common areas of the disk - and that indexing is
so damn slow, and that the search syntax is so obscure and un-standard.

Amen.

If you have a 3rd party file browser for Win7 with filename
substring searching that works, would love to hear about it.

I use two different ones. For searching by file name only (which is 99%
of my searches) I like Everything Search (http://www.voidtools.com/).
It creates its own self-maintaining index, which takes only a minute,
and searches are nearly instantaneous. You can search using common
regular expressions.

In the rare event that I need to search for file content, I use Agent
Ransack (http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/). It doesn't create an
index so it has to search files one by one, and so is slower than
Everything. But it's very thorough and accurate.

Both look interesting -- thanks.

Frank
Mobile Audio

--

[Scott Dorsey]

Frank Stearns wrote:

Well, there are "tracks" and there are "music elements". Some music elements take
one track (a lead voice, say), or lots of tracks, such as a drum kit, backing singer
overdubs (multiple passes), or various percussion knick knacks.

For live recordings, often the PA guy will have a massive number of tracks
up there, but you only care about a few of them. I'll see guys with 96
channels at FOB, but it will be split up among three different bands so
that the opening acts can be set up and the channel strips left alone
and no console reset needs to be done between acts. As a recording engineer,
I might only care about 16 of those 96 channels at any given time, but
making sure I get the right 16 and in the right order can be an adventure.

Ironically in the digital world, the PA consoles all have scene recall and so
you don't see that any longer... people just store the state for the opening
acts and switch scenes in and out. On the other hand, it means that the
channel names all change when the acts change.

When you think in terms of "musical elements" the process is far less daunting --
and you can more quickly ascertain whether you have a good arrangement lurking under
all those tracks. If so, then it's YOUR job as the mix engineer to bring out the
music.

In the digital studio world, there's no reason to throw out a scratch track
or a scratch stem mix. Maybe the producer thought bongos would sound good,
and they laid down a bongo track but then decided to never use it. In the
analogue world where tracks are limited we'd wipe it, in the Pro Tools world
it just sticks around forever. So there might be a vast number of tracks
going into the mixing session that are never used.

The first time I tackled a 110 track mix, I was overwhelmed. But the experience did
nudge me square into thinking in terms of music elements. Mix quality went up for a
given amount of time put in.

And I bet the more time you put in, the more stuff you cut out of the mix too.


I'm now far less likely to condemn a high-track count session out of hand. I've
learned to use such things to my advantage.

I'm still apt to condemn it, on the grounds that it's a sign that people are
not making decisions in the tracking session and passing those decisions on
to the mixing stage. I want to see decisions made as quickly as possible so
as little time as possible is wasted. This can be hard to do when the producer
has no vision about what it should sound like, or if his vision conflicts with
the band's vision. But that's another issue.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Frank Stearns]

(Scott Dorsey) writes:

Frank Stearns wrote:

Well, there are "tracks" and there are "music elements". Some music elements take
one track (a lead voice, say), or lots of tracks, such as a drum kit, backing singer
overdubs (multiple passes), or various percussion knick knacks.

For live recordings, often the PA guy will have a massive number of tracks
up there, but you only care about a few of them. I'll see guys with 96
channels at FOB, but it will be split up among three different bands so
that the opening acts can be set up and the channel strips left alone
and no console reset needs to be done between acts. As a recording engineer,
I might only care about 16 of those 96 channels at any given time, but
making sure I get the right 16 and in the right order can be an adventure.

Sounds like fun. Fortunately, my live stuff is mostly single-show acoustic or
classical, 8-16 tracks, rarely more, though I do have one this Friday running 22
tracks.


Ironically in the digital world, the PA consoles all have scene recall and so
you don't see that any longer... people just store the state for the opening
acts and switch scenes in and out. On the other hand, it means that the
channel names all change when the acts change.

Some recalls might also change the soft patches. Then you're really in for a "good
time".

When you think in terms of "musical elements" the process is far less daunting --
and you can more quickly ascertain whether you have a good arrangement lurking under
all those tracks. If so, then it's YOUR job as the mix engineer to bring out the
music.

In the digital studio world, there's no reason to throw out a scratch track
or a scratch stem mix. Maybe the producer thought bongos would sound good,
and they laid down a bongo track but then decided to never use it. In the
analogue world where tracks are limited we'd wipe it, in the Pro Tools world
it just sticks around forever. So there might be a vast number of tracks
going into the mixing session that are never used.

The first time I tackled a 110 track mix, I was overwhelmed. But the experience did
nudge me square into thinking in terms of music elements. Mix quality went up for a
given amount of time put in.

And I bet the more time you put in, the more stuff you cut out of the mix too.

That's what I'd expected, but it didn't happen as much as anticipated -- but then, I
haven't yet done a large number of these 100+ track mixes to get a good sense of
what typically happens, though I would expect underdubbing to be a mixer's best
friend.

Ironically, on a 98 track mix, after I'd spent of lot time making it "all work", the
producer dropped a single track, an electric piano, which cleaned up a lot of
things.

The larger irony is that I'd suggested dropping that piano track the first time I
heard it, but they said "no, see if you can make it work." Well, I did, but in the
end they did change their minds. I didn't change the bill for that mix, however.


I'm now far less likely to condemn a high-track count session out of hand. I've
learned to use such things to my advantage.

I'm still apt to condemn it, on the grounds that it's a sign that people are
not making decisions in the tracking session and passing those decisions on
to the mixing stage. I want to see decisions made as quickly as possible so
as little time as possible is wasted. This can be hard to do when the producer
has no vision about what it should sound like, or if his vision conflicts with
the band's vision. But that's another issue.

In the projects I've done, it's more of the latter and for that reason I'm probably
quicker to condemn "collaboration". J.S. Bach had a clear vision of what he was
doing and didn't tend to invite others to help; and I have the sense that Trevor
Rabin has a razor-sharp view of what he wants as well.

Now, if you want to bring in a hot-shot drummer to do what he does best, that's fine
-- the experienced producer knows what they might get. And I'm okay with 12-15
tracks to capture that drum session.

What could get ugly is the producer saying, "okay, let's do another pass, but lay it
back a bit more .... okay, now one more but lean into it a little more". Now I've
got 45 tracks of drums to deal with. (Still not completely the end of the world;
it's easy to group those three passes and jump around among them.)

But yes, I agree, a little more clarity going in makes for better music. But hey, if
they give me carte blanche to fix a mess (and the budget to match), I don't mind
jumping in with both feet.

Frank
Mobile Audio

--