How To Sync Traktor To Reaper

I finally got Traktor to sync with something else - Reaper - using MIDI Clock (running on Mac OS X, on the same machine). Here's how I did it..

Start Traktor.
Start Reaper.
Open Reaper Preferences, select Devices > MIDI Devices.
Double click "Traktor Virtual Input" and select "use this device" and "send midi clock to this device".
In Traktor, open the sync panel thing up the top by clicking the metronome.
Click "EXT" button - this tells traktor to listen for MIDI Clock.

Now get a track (with an accurate grid!) loaded into a traktor deck.
In Reaper, have something that has a beat set up (i.e. a loop from a recording, midi loop, place some audio in the timeline).

Press play in Reaper so your loop plays forever.
In Traktor, the sync panel should show a tempo similar to the tempo in Reaper. You'll notice that it wavers about a bit.
Press play on your gridded track and click Sync.

The Traktor deck should be roughly in sync with Reaper! (In fact, it is loose enough that it sounds a bit like a real DJ is nudging it.)

Questions:
- If we send the MIDI over a network or MIDI connection to a different machine, will this sync well enough to bother with?
- Can we sync two copies of Traktor (on different machines) this way?

If you have problems (or corrections), comment below so we can determine what I really did to make this work.

Monitor Speakers

I have been wanting to make some el cheapo near-field monitors for ages. My plan was to get the cheapest drivers I could find, probably with tweeters built in (aha! car speakers!) and put them in decent-sized boxes made out of MDF.

Last weekend when we painted our bedroom I saw that Warehouse had $20 4 inch car speakers and I was like "I am so gonna finally do this". (Luckily for me, the car speaker aisle is the same as the paint aisle.)

SO this weekend I did the stuff in about a day. A little bit of measuring and marking yesterday, and pretty much all day today sawing, glueing and getting tired.

The boxes are glued together with No More Nails and then screwed as well. I didn't use any tables or information about what size cabs would be best for the drivers, just decided based on the size I felt would be good & practical but ensuring there was a reasonable amount of internal volume.

Here's a couple of pictures, there are some more up on flickr.



And the best news - I am completely astounded by how they sound! Exactly what I was hoping for, enough range to produce on, they sound good without having to be turned up too loud, and much clearer highs than any of my other speakers.



Wahoo!

free mp3: SoNic Smith - Ladies Style (Haszari's Mans Style remix)

Yep, new bits are here from Haszari. I've been fiddling with this for a while but I think now it is ready for blog primetime.

It is my remix of SoNic Smith's Ladies Style. SoNic Smith is a prolific Dunedin producer who makes all kids of breaks, as well as the odd bit of rave d&b and even some acid house flavours. My aim with this mix was to take the bouncy break beat original in a fidget-house direction, maybe with 3% bassline house influence. Pretty happy with how it's turned out.

Here it is for you to download (from zippyshare megaupload because zippyshare went down):
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QIJH3Y8P

LEAVE COMMENTS ABOUT THIS BELOW!

Again my usual arsenal of great open source tools was used to make this, Ardour, which really packs a punch these days (don't buy Pro Tools eh) for all the editing, all LADSPA plugins for the mix/edit and mastering, ZynAddSubFX doing the business as a fat as all heck fake analogue synth (man that is a great softsynth). Go download all that software (just install 64Studio, it's all packaged in there for ya).

cheeeers

The Jacket

I've remastered and tidied up The Jacket, used some more sample, and made a housier version which may be more clubby. They're all available at last.fm (see player below) or GarageBand which is a good option if you wanna iLike me on Facebook.

I used the EQ in excellent JAMin to make the spectrum roughly flat (it was quite low-end-heavy and there were little dips here and there). I didn't use any compression, but I think the EQing left a lot of room for makeup gain, so it could well be a lot louder. Anyone know about mastering? I don't.

If you want higher bit rate versions send me an email, sweet as..



ADDITIONAL ADDITIONAL:
The new ("original") version is now in the last.fm player (128k) and still available at zshare too (320k).

TOP POST UPDATE:
There's a new version I've put on zshare (cos I know all you blog readers love viewing zshare ads).. it has a nice complementary sub and some swooshes here and there and the drums are tidied up:
Haszari - The Jacket (original) [320kbps]

It'll go up on Last FM (etc) eventually but they're rejecting the 128k bla bla bla ...

Original post follows...

Here is a work-in-progress track currently called "Jacket". I'm happier with this (even in its current state) than I have been with any homemade music thus far. Here's a last.fm player, and the track is free-downloadable from last.fm, so go and grab it!

It was made with my favourite free software: ZynAddSubFX synth, Hydrogen drum machine, Ardour digital audio workstation, and sequencer Rosegarden. This is all installed and configured to run with low latency by default in the wonderful free operating system (Debian based) 64Studio.

Now your bit: leave comments below or let me know more directly what you reckon, what would make it better, etc etc. Thanks.

Update: Haszari takes on new PR role for Gabriel & Dresden

Since bringing up the issue of song-destroying monotonous electro remixes, I have gone out and shown my support for the track by buying the old-arse not relevant original mix from that dang beatport.

Just before I did this, I found a presumably old remix competition which had the parts of the song freely downloadable (128k mp3)! Great!

The bonus is that now that I realise the original doesn't have much of an intro, I might be able to give it one with a bit of looping of some of those parts. And I keep the smug "I actually bought this" warm fuzzy feeling.

Slightly curious is that one of the parts is kick and it seems to be eight minutes of kick drum (with gaps for breaks of course). (The others are vocal, bass, drums and music.) I guess this is house music; the kick is pretty important right?

Cheers, Remix Mag and Gabriel & Dresden.