#48

I recently installed Reaktor 4 on my Powerbook G3.

It’s funny, because I remember that we used to joke on the NI forums that in some years people would return to “vintage software” for its retro 32-bit sound… and in some ways, I think I’m there. It might just be the very particular nostalgia it evokes in me, it feels like coming home - and Mac OS 9 is where I grew up, so in a sense it is. But I also like the simplistic, grainy sounds, the bad reverbs, and the ease of clipping. Maybe it says more about where my head is right now, but I even find myself enjoying some of the bureaucracy involved with running this setup - I don’t really have enough RAM to run the sequencer and Reaktor at the same time, so there’s a lot of exporting MIDI files, importing to Reaktor, recording its output, and then importing that to listen to the new part in context. Very different to having everything at your finger tips. Maybe I’ll be sick of it next week. Who knows.

Bumping this thread to moderate my previous statements (except the screen redraws: S L O W) and maybe shake a few more stories and memories out of you lot :slight_smile:

7 Likes
#49

Reaktor 3 and 4 were peak-Reaktor years for my work. Laptop + MIDI controller running ensembles I spent months refining and improvising within. A really interesting time in my life as I worked a lot with a friend in Denmark and we would be on Hotline, and eventually KDX, talking music and collaborating and helping each other with designs (him helping me more than the other way around) - it all culminated with visiting him and touring a bit together.

I’m glad the anti-laptop backlash seems to be waning :slight_smile:

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#50

I did my first releases on one of these, running cubase: I may still have it in storage somewhere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_STacy

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#51

I started - after classes at Western Public Radio - with Sound DesignerII + first version of Deck. Later used the Deck/Metro combination (and protools when I had access), then Metro on its own when Deck was lost in the Macromedia>Apple deal that resulted in Final Cut Pro. (I was SO excited when temp-hired to work on the first FCP version at Apple because I thought they would have rolled Deck into it… alas, not even remotely true…).
Turbosynth and Hyperprism too but that wasn’t a DAW.
I never understood why Metro failed to ignite. It was unique, fully featured, fantastic responsive developer, like an early equivalent to Scrivener or other boutique small-company and single-dev software. It worked beautifully and encouraged experimentation - but it was practically invisible. I think you can still buy it, though it looks like it hasn’t had much development for many years.
I’m so happy with most of the tools I now use so I don’t have much nostalgia for any of these.

2 Likes
#52

I’m sure you know about this already, but if not:
https://16-bits.org/ft2.php

It’s Fasttracker II recompiled for modern OSes (Win, Mac and Linux!) and it’s even open source!

Grab yourself a copy and dwell in 90ies nostalgia!
FT2 on MS-DOS was my first DAW. I used to make my hip-hop beats on it when I was 17.

3 Likes
#53

image

Was working on this monster from 1991-1999.
ADAC sounded very nice-as long as you didnt engage the digital filter inside it😂. You could have 4 stereo tracks, automated/painted levels like in Protools. The Harddisk was chockfull 1giga, it took 5 hours to make full backups on to DAT format tapes. Sometimes the backup failed on me for whatever reason, so we had to cancel Sessions🙈. I was working with a DDS Console to get the sound right and we had two TC locked Dats and an analogue 1/4inch Fostex 8track-Commercial Advertising work…i was a space cadet looking into a screen on a Macintosh for a couple of years😎
I always recorded music in my sparetime then and we were experimenting with the system, really nice was the Audio scrub. Theres a remix i did just scrubbing through various tracks-ppl were going crazy when they heard it😂

Ah yeah no midi at all of course-this was a Studer after all

3 Likes
#54

Interesting - I knew there were a lot of systems like this in the early 1990’s, but I’d never heard of this one.

I found some more information here:

http://www.mikecollins.plus.com/PUBLICATIONS/PDFS/Dyaxis.pdf

It sounds delightfully primitive.

#55

Just to echo the nostalgia of others here - I remember getting passed Fruity Loops on a handful of floppies during Spanish class in high school. I used that, Little Drummer Boy, Stomper, Hammerhead, Cool Edit Pro, Magix Music Maker, and literally any freeware/shareware I could find at the time, along with a computer made from parts I dug out of a dumpster at my dad’s job. The experience of severe limitations, offline processes, broken software and hardware, “programming” every sound…it was a profoundly more difficult and frustrating era, in hindsight.
What’s interesting to me is that I have all this nostalgia, all these great memories of my first “instruments”, and I will most likely never touch them again. Not only that, but I likely couldn’t do that, even if I wanted to. I feel like that’s a fairly unique experience as a musician.
Honestly the only thing I really miss is SoundForge. It was a REALLY GOOD editor, and being able to make really complicated sounds with it was amazing at the time. Doing offline stuff like isolating overtones but applying extreme EQs over and over, and THEN shipping the sound to Fruity Loops was pretty neat, and I don’t really have a way to get those sounds today.

3 Likes
#56

You probably know… but if not, Soundforge is still around (and now also works on macOS).

#57

Where can I find info on Soundforge now? All I see is a commercial product called Sound Forge, but I remember the old one being an open source project… Are they related?

#58

Never heard about an open source software called Soundforge. The Sound Forge I remember is an audio editor in the spirit of Wavelab. Initially developed by Sonic Foundry (the ones behind ACID and Vegas), later sold to Sony and now acquired by Magix. Afaik there has never been an open source version of it, but of course that does not mean that there’s never been a FOSS application with the same name.

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#59

I must be misremembering where I got it back then and you’re right. For some reason I have a memory of getting Soubdforge from Sourceforge, but my memory of that time isn’t the most reliable. :slight_smile:

Edit to add — I think my confusion actually stems from the fact that in the mid 90’s I fancied myself a bit of a hax0r and got pirated audio software from an open source hosting platform. So anyway, nothing to see here.

1 Like
#60

LOL I still use CoolEdit Pro for sound editing. Such an amazing program, even tried Adobe Audition, that should be its direct descendant. No way. CoolEdit FTW.
As they used to say “Cool Edit, sounds beyond cool”

1 Like
#61

I loveeeeee cooledit pro. It defined so much of the aesthetic of my early tracks.

Using a calculator to figure out pitching samples to be in time with each other, destructive editing, processing everything at lowest quality so it would complete faster on my shitty PC. What’s not to love!

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#62

hahaha pre-rendering the effects on the multitrack OVERNIGHT. LOL
That poor PentiumIII did really see some pain.

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#63

Oh WOW and now it’s owned by Magix??? The poor product has been through the wringer at this point. :frowning:

#65

M

image https://1cyjknyddcx62agyb002-web-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/products/m1.gif

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#66

I have a friend in town who did some super intense video programming (for the time) for a band I was in, but he performed solo as Digital Pile using M and a Sequential Circuits keyboard (can’t remember which) basically as a MIDI controller to manipulate Can samples on his Yamaha A3000. This was 98-99. It was SICK.

:slight_smile:

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#67

Amazing. I still kind of miss my old A3000, that was a really fun sampler.

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#68

I started really early, being fortunate to have access to a Synclavier, and various Roland hardware MC units. Went through phases with Opcode, Sound Designer, Sound Tools, Pro Tools…
M on an Amiga was my favorite from back in those days.

2 Likes