mauricioibanez's Reviews
28 reviews Back to mauricioibanez's Equipboard
346
My experience with the GForce M-Tron Pro.
I purchased this virtual instrument last year and I have to say it's one of the best decisions I've made. The sheer amount of sounds and the sound quality are well worth the investment. From choirs, to strings and church organs, M-Tron Pro has it all. You can get those Steven Wilson, King Crimson mellotron sounds with ease. A must-have.
346
My experience with the Line 6 Pod HD500.
This is not even Line 6's latest model and it sounds great. I use it on studio direct mode most of the time, direct to my studio monitors or with a FRFR cabinet. I would say that if you spend enough time crafting your presets and learning about this unit, you will get impressive sounds that are hard to distinguish from their real non-digital counterparts. The only limitation may be the amount of FX you can put in the chain, up to 8 FX if I'm not mistaken. You have to choose wisely. I am well aware that there are better and more sophisticated modeling units than this one, like the Axe-FX or the Kemper amp but those are much more expensive. The Pod HD500 packs a punch for a lot less money.
346
Nice! I've seen videos of people getting great tones with the ac30 model on their HD500 on Youtube. It takes some editing. Pod HD500 Edit is great to manage all the parameters comfortably. :)
346
Here's an interesting page about video resolution and audio quality on Youtube. I wouldn't consider any low res video to judge audio quality there.
https://www.quora.com/Does-changing-the-video-quality-on-YouTube-also-affect-the-sound-quality-in-any-way
346
My experience with the ETN10C
This is a stunning steel-string acoustic guitar. The sound is warm, big and sparkly. It stays in tune quite well too. I've used it on most of my steel-string acoustic parts on my songs. The construction quality and finish are superb. I would use another steel-string guitar if I wanted a different flavor but this guitar covers all my steel-string needs at the moment. Wonderful instrument.
346
My Custom PC
This is my current music production machine. Processor: AMD FX(tm)-8150 Eight-Core Processor 3.60 GHz, 32 GB RAM, Windows 10 Pro 64 bit. It works beautifully with Reaper and my audio plugins. I often have sessions of 20+ tracks, all of them with several plugins and this system handles everything perfectly. I work with a dual screen system, which allows me to see the mixer on the second screen at all times.
346
My experience with the M-Audio ProjectMix.
I haven't used this audio interface much because I busted one of the preamps and it always clipped. I had it serviced and have been using it more often lately. It can produce quite decent recordings provided you use good quality microphones. Lately I've been recording drums so I needed to use it. M-Audio never updated the Mac drivers which didn't allow me to use it on OSX so I switched to Windows 10 on a custom PC. I'm glad I did, because this setup is more powerful than my previous Mac setup. Update as of Dec 23, 2015: My ProjectMix is fried. The LCD screen won't show anything but squares and no letters. None of the faders or buttons work. I can't reset it or get it into test mode. The fact that this unit has been forgotten by M-Audio with no driver updates for years proves its unreliability. I will send it to have it serviced and fingers crossed, they might be able to fix it. If that doesn't happen, I will have to buy a new audio interface with 8 mic pres.
346
Upate as of July 27 2016. My ProjectMix I/O is working again. I sent it to an independent repair shop and the engineer was able to replace the mainboard with a spare one he had from another machine that was broken and beyond repair. My ProjectMix works perfectly now. :)
346
Update as of October 10 2016. There are various discussions regarding the ProjectMix preamps being way too hot when recording drums. Since the unit has a phantom power button that applies to all channels, it's fine for condenser mics for overheads or vocals but in a drumkit recording situation, the signal of the dynamic mics gets boosted too high, resulting in signals from kick and snare that are way too hot even with minimal gain at the preamps. There are no attenuation pads on the unit, making it more frustrating. This is a design problem from M-Audio's part. Fortunately it can be solved by buying in-line attenuators such as the Audio Technica AT8202. The attenuators go between the mic and the cable and have a 3 position switch: -30db, -20db and -10db. This allows for the signal to be tamed and get to the console without clipping, allowing to dial the gain setting on the preamps to taste. :)
346
My experience with Reaper DAW.
I started using this DAW a couple of years ago and I was surprised by how small it is. The developer is always improving it with constant updates. I used a variety of DAWs before but now all my work is based on Reaper. I love how simple and efficient it is. It has an incredible array of features and is very customizable. I love the fact that you can buy it for 60 dollars. So much value for so little money! :)
346
My experience with Windows 10
I bought Windows 7 Ultimate years ago and first installed it on a Bootcamp partition on Mac. I always had trouble with dpc latency issues that ruined my recordings so I didn't like using it. Now I got a custom PC and got the opportunity to update my Windows 7 Ultimate license to Windows 10 for free. It's the best Windows system I've ever tried. Very stable and rock solid!
346
My personal experience with the mid 2009 13-inch MacBook Pro.
My beloved MacBook Pro. I got it back in 2010. It has been quite useful in my music production endeavours but lately it's been falling short of processing power. I use many virtual instruments and I need more processing power so I got a custom PC to replace it.