you didn't say what kind of sound card you were using-if it is just the stock laptop soundcard it is crap. Buy a 24 bit PCMCIA sound card and max out the ram on your laptop. Those are 2 cheap upgrades you could do hardware wise and then just download all the freeware/trial ware out there

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Originally posted by timmyboy2 you didn't say what kind of sound card you were using-if it is just the stock laptop soundcard it is crap. Buy a 24 bit PCMCIA sound card and max out the ram on your laptop. Those are 2 cheap upgrades you could do hardware wise and then just download all the freeware/trial ware out there

Definately. RAM for the win. Nothing else gives you the noticable performance upgrade feeling that RAM can give.

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Originally posted by Zombie0915 It sounds like a comparison thing, higher quality meaning just something else somewhat similar that the person likes better. People form these standards and comapre things against them, people who choose similar standards ally themselves together, quality seems to be very much a social construction.

not really, other tracks can be used as measuring bars, and are often used so, but that's not to say the quality of a track can not be measured without referring to other tracks.

one example: mostly (if not always), when a track has two colliding elements, it will suffer as a result.

it's really not that complex.

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another example, this one really simple: overdrive an entire track and it will result in a serious quality loss.

it can't get much simpler than that, you overdrive a track, it gets distorted.

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People who own my ass: Citric Acid, Boomer187, Tribu, Sand Leaper,
Jackson, venomX, jamie, Renegade, Konjin, Akridrot, Miss Bliss.
Psy-T - Down The Rabbit Hole (400minute long acid set)

So things must sound like they were used on purpose and not the result of technical faults, lazyness, or lack of skill, that much is obvious to me.

But what I fail to understand is how this can be objective, what if the musician used distortion on purpose, how does one know when a musician is doing something as creative expression and when something is just an error that a lazy musician left in the piece? It still remains a social construction, you think there should be more bass because you are used to hearing more bass, you think there should not be distortion because you are used to hearing it clear.

In the context of EDM, of course high quality EDM is going to have the elements that EDM fans expect, some rhythms they can count, some sound the get stuck in their heads, some bass so that they can feel the shaking, but there is something to be said for challenging those assumptions. I feel this logic used for an objective standard for quality music, could just as easily be used to assert that trance songs are "low quality" without supersaws, because they are present in the "best" trance tunes, surely you would never use logic like that.

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Originally posted by Zombie0915 I feel this logic used for an objective standard for quality music, could just as easily be used to assert that trance songs are "low quality" without supersaws, because they are present in the "best" trance tunes, surely you would never use logic like that.

that would be yet again using the measuring bars as the be-all end-all of measurment, when they are just tools to help you.

as for distortion, it is by definition 'bad'; not to say you can't ignore that fact, but when trying to asses something objectively, you may use the arbitrariness of that. it doesn't even require you to do some big step of denial, unless you factor in society, it's undesireable by nature.

...and even using distortion as a creative tool does not make it 'legit' or 'good'... if it's used improperly, it is by nature, 'bad', not by consensus.


so how do you use distortion properly? by not abusing other sounds, inadvertantly or advertantly. if you do abuse other sounds in the process regardless of your intentions, your music will be "low quality" by definition - thus, objectively; whether it transcends that fact to become 'great art' is down to listeners, tastes, marketing, and consensus.

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People who own my ass: Citric Acid, Boomer187, Tribu, Sand Leaper,
Jackson, venomX, jamie, Renegade, Konjin, Akridrot, Miss Bliss.
Psy-T - Down The Rabbit Hole (400minute long acid set)

You know what? I downloaded Reason because I didn't had enough money to buy it long time ago. And now recently, I bought it. If I didn't download Reason I would never be able to make music at all. I'm just a kid, I started making music when I was 9. Now I'm 15