Rutger Verberkmoes

Oddball Graphics – Showreel 2012

rutgerverberkmoes — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 07:14:15 +0000

Here’s the Oddball showreel with some great visual sorcery!

Graphics: Hugo Baptista

Music: that’s me! (guitar fills/solo: Hugo Baptista)

Mac G5 Quad back from the dead

rutgerverberkmoes — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 21:00:33 +0000

My G5 Quad is about 6 years old and still is a great machine, until a couple of weeks ago, when it froze on startup. Led no. 7 burned, which means that your processor’s dead or you logic board. In my case, it was the latter. Brought it to a Mac repair shop, they couldn’t help me, but had to pay €140,- for the check they did. A bit of Googling around learned that if you heat the logic board with a hair dryer, sometimes the machine could be brought back to life. I had nothing to lose, so gave it a try. Yes, it worked…. for a couple of hours. The feared LED#7 burned, the machine froze, fans going full power. I did the hair dryer treatment again, a bit longer than before, and it powered up fine, ran for about 12 hrs, so I thought that the problem was solved. Next day same problem on startup, I gave up hope…..

A few days ago I talked to a computer repair guy and he told me that instead of using a hair dryer or heat gun, you should remove the logic board and put it in an oven, he told that I should google on “reflow”, and yes, several Youtube video’s showed brave people putting the guts of their G5 machines into grills and ovens. I gave it a shot, desperate as I was, and after 8 minutes at 190˚C (375˚F) the apples were grilled. Did it work? Until now, YES!!! I ran the AHT (Apple Hardware Test), logic board OK, no other problems. Even after rebooting a couple of times, no LED’s burning:-)

Hopefully I can work another year on it before moving to a new Mac Pro (I was actually waiting for the Sandy bridge model that expect to arrive Q1 2012), but I read that the 2nd gen Sandy Bridge processors will be far more powerful than the ones that arrive in january, so I hope the logic board was “well done”…..

Of course, when the G5 dies again, I’ll let you know.

Update: april 3rd 2012. It died (again)…….

analog vs digital summing

rutgerverberkmoes — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:48:58 +0000

I’m convinced! Analog summing works better for me than digital summing.

I’m working on an album and wasn’t happy the way Logic did handle the mixdown. It sounded flat and messy. I then did a mix on my Soundtracs PC MIDI desk and I was really surprised, it sounded a lot better. More definition, better stereo imaging, etc. Lowering the levels in Logic did improve things, giving it more headroom, but I had to work very hard to get it to sound a bit like the “analog” mix (the digital mix was done in Logic using the SSL Duende Channel strip mostly for EQing and compression, the TC Electronic System 6000 for reverb). The mix on the Soundtracs was done very fast, only using one compressor (a Behringer T1952) for drum, bass and guitars and also one reverb (Korg A1) for most parts (using the auxes).

Because the fast Soundtracs mix did sound so much better I thought it could have something to do with analog vs digital summing. It always seemed a bit of a myth to me, but I wanted to hear it for myself:-) I made a submix trough the TC System 6000, returning in Logic (4 stereo busses) and send it into the Soundtracs. I’m also a proud owner of the Crane Song Spider, an very high quality 8 channel mic-pre/mixer. The same submix was also send trough the Spider for analog summing. So I ended up having 3 mixes:

1.) the digital summed mix in Logic.

2.) the analog summed mix using the Soundtracs console.

3.) the analog summed mix using the Crane Song Spider

As I expected in the meanwhile the Logic mix was the worst one. The Soundtracs did sound a lot better, which is actually pretty amazing when you consider it’s age (late 80-ties model). The Spider mix was a bit better than the Soundtracs mix, more focussed sound, especially the snare had more punch and detail, the same for the acoustic guitar. The Soundtracs mix had a bit more bass in it, but not necessarily better than the Spider, a matter of taste…..

If you have a decent mixer somewhere and you haven’t tried it using as a summing device, just do so, it could make an improvement to your mixes!

Video inside studio

rutgerverberkmoes — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:39:31 +0000

Here’s a video of my studio. Enjoy!

Hardware integration in Logic Pro (or any other DAW)

rutgerverberkmoes — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:35:23 +0000

If you’ve taken a look around on this site, you’ve probably seen that I still have (and use) quite a bit of hardware (synth’s, samplers and FX gear). Software is great for ease of use, but it’s not always the best sounding option when compared to hardware. My DAW software, Logic Pro 9, is great in what it does, but is poor when it comes to hardware integration. There used to be the Emagic SoundDriver hardware editor software, but this was dropped when Apple bought Emagic in 2003. Woudn’t it be great if there would be a synergy between these two products? Imagine that you could load your specific editor of your synth in a Audio Instrument channel slot and edit it as if it were a software instrument?

Please your opinions and/or comments!!

Great video!

rutgerverberkmoes — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:32:35 +0000

Here’s a great video of master percussionist Ruben van Rompaey. This track is the first recording in my new studio. The video was made by Shinya Tanaka (Japan).

All the percussion instruments were played by Ruben, of course not at the same time, but recorded layer over layer (overdubbing). The video represents the sound recording process perfectly in a visual way.

Have fun!

New Studio: interior

rutgerverberkmoes — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:25:33 +0000

Here some pics of the interior (and gear) of the new studio.

Click to view slideshow.

New studio: construction

rutgerverberkmoes — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:34:47 +0000

Finally, after months of hard work rebuilding the loft in our new house into a studio, it’s ready to rock! Here’s a photo report:

Click to view slideshow.

rutgerverberkmoes — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:11:41 +0000

Finally, after months of hard work rebuilding the loft in our new house into a studio, it’s ready to rock! Here’s a photo report:

Roland L-CD1 disk image

rutgerverberkmoes — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:57:39 +0000

For all you die hard Roland S-550 sampler fans, here’s a disk image (nero .nrg format) of the hard to find L-CD1 CD-ROM. On this 22 year old disk you’ll find the (to my knowledge) total Roland factory library for the S-550. Despite the fact that it’s ancient, some of the sounds are still very useful. You can also load this CD-ROM into NI Kontakt soft sampler!!

IMPORTANT!!!!! DO NOT play this file, it’s not a real wav file. You will have to change the extension back to .zip, then unzip and burn it.

L-CD1.nrg