Who is Joe Barresi?

Joe Barresi is an American record engineer and producer who has worked with bands such as Kyuss, The Melvins, Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Coheed and Cambria, Tomahawk, L7,The Jesus Lizard, Parkway Drive and Bad Religion.   
                                                                                                             Source Wikipedia

Installation thoughts of EVIL DRUMS
The Platinum Samples Joe Barresi EVIL DRUMS expansion is a huge sound collection.
Installation of The BFD 2 is a bit tricky since EVIL DRUMS also works in the original BFD.
But thanks to the installation guide provided by Platinum Samples the installation process is done in less then an hour. The complete installation with upgrades, BFD 2 presets and extras
lands on about 76GB. The SDX Version of EVIL DRUMS is less painful and lands on 35 GB.

What you get
Now since Evil drums has 6 complete drum kits and allot of extra drum pieces I have decided that I will not list the complete list of each individual drum.
The Kits included are, Kit #1 – Pork Pie Tobacco Satin, Kit #2 – Ludwig 70′s Clear Vistalite,
Kit #3 – DW Classic/Hybrid, Kit #4 – Gretsch Natural Blonde Maple, Kit #5 Pork Pie Glamouflage ™ and Kit #6 – Ludwig Psychedelic Swirl
There is also 6 additional Kicks and 6 additional snares (plus A bonus Kick drum) 

For a complete list of what’s included, please visit
www.platinumsamples.com/KitLists/EJBKitList.html

Evil Drums in action.
I will use BFD2 for most of this review, this has nothing to do with how the plugins themselves work or that one is better then the other this is mostly since there is some more Graphical features in BFD that makes the review a bit more fun.
I will come to a comparison later on …

Pork Pie Tobacco Satin

The Pork Pie Tobacco Satin kit is among the best kits I have heard, The kick has a sweet rocky rich and punchy sound, the Snare is distinct and snappy.
The Toms has a decent amount of bottom giving that nice balance to get the toms fit nice in the MIX. The Hi-hat has a lovely crisp sound that I totally like.
The Ride and Crashes has a full and rich sound perfect for rock, Blues and Heavy Metal.

Kit #2 – Ludwig 70′s Clear Vistalite

Bombastic Motown, I don’t know any batter way to describe this kit.
The Ludwig 70′s Clear Vistalite has a classic full sound, the kick has a very open sound, the Snare has a a classic feel to the snappy sound. the Toms is the Favorite part of this KIT they ring nicely with a lot of character over the sound. The Hi-Hat sounds like its taken a beating giving that cool warmer crisp. The Crashes and ride is not as distinct as the once in the Pork Pie Tobacco Satin kit but still has allot of nice high frequency character.

Kit #3 – DW Classic/Hybrid, Kit

The DW Classic/Hybrid, Kit gave me a mixed feeling, The Kick has a nice deep yet punchy sound with a sweet amount of bottom. The snare has allot of rattle going out to the OH, Room and AMB microphones that can be nice is some situations. the Toms (Only Two) I did not really like,they had to much basic character over the sound but everything can not be perfect for everyone.
the Hi-Hat, Crashes and Ride had in my ears a sound somewhere between kit one and two.

Kit #4 – Gretsch Natural Blonde Maple

Gretsch has a huge variety of sounding drums, the one included in EVIL DRUMS features a classic sound with a plastic touch. This feature adds character that will allow the drums to stand out a bit in the mix. the Kick also has a longer bigger sound still with some plastic feel to it. the Snare is round and full and lowering the bottom microphone on the Snare and decreasing the amount of AMB on the snare gives a nice touch to the sound.
the Toms has a great bottom sound with some plastic touch that is very nice.
The Hi-Hat Crashes and Ride is a bit round but still crispy.

Kit #5 Pork Pie Glamouflage ™

The Pork Pie Glamouflage Kit is among my favorite kits as well, this is a kit with allot of flavor.
The kick is allot of beater click, the snare has a fat sound with a bitt less Wire sound.
The Toms has a amazing roundish long warm tone that I rely love.
The Hi-Hat is distinct and crisp clear, the same goes with the Crashes and Ride.

For people with a lower budget or if you fell you just want the Glamouflage Kit
Platinum Samples has recently released a the Glamouflage Kit in a Quickpack.
For more information on the Glamouflage Kit Quickpack go to…
www.platinumsamples.com/Glamouflage_QuickPack.html

Kit #6 – Ludwig Psychedelic Swirl

This is also a kit I had a bit of mixed feelings about, The kick is FAT with a nice beater snap,
the snare is short but with a fair amount of wire. The Toms has depth but why only two?
the Hi-hat Crashes and Ride sounds short and round with a little boost on the higher frequency.

Final thoughts
Platinum Samples know how to record and produce drum samples at high quality.
They make sure that the drums has enough of layers to give that realistic sound.
Working with EVIL DRUMS is a great joy and there allot of headroom for personal tweaking and sound adjustments.
there is a lot of nice additional hits to make nice fills without a Machinegun sound.
one thing I miss is more Toms for each kit, some have three some only two and I would have loved to se all have at least three and even four.
EVIL DRUMS is a huge library and if you had a look at the complete list of kit pieces you would know that there is allot of extras coming with this expansion pack.

I have showed you how EVIL DRUMS looks inside BFD 2, so here follows the basic Superior Drummer 2.0 layout with the Kit #1 – Pork Pie Tobacco Satin loaded.

As some of you have seen I have started adding videos to my reviews, so here is a Video showing all the complete Kits from EVIL DRUMS played both in BFD2 And Superior 2.0
I must add that there is some differences but this is mainly due to how the engine behaves and I have noticed no difference when I start tweaking the sounds.

Conclusion
Platinum Samples impresses me, all in all the Joe Barresi is one of the best drum expansion on the market. Sadly as I mentioned in the beginning EVIL DRUMS as an SDX is Discontinued, but from what I can tell they know how to deliver expansions in the SDX format as well.
The EVIL DRUMS expansion is extremely well made, with enough headroom for personal tweaking and sound adjustments.
This expansion pack is complete and a great buy since it will cover most music genres, so if you do more then one music genre Platinum Samples Joe Baressi EVIL DRUMS is a perfect addition to your drum library.
Working with EVIL DRUMS is fun, and the drums responds well to different velocity’s and makes it easy to bypass machinegun effects.
The price for EVIL DRUMS is $199.00.

Pros

• Great sound.
• Complete library for most if not all genres.
• Answers well to velocity’s.
• Headroom for additional sound tweaking.
• Lots of extras included.
• Affordable

Cons

• would have loved some additional Toms.

The verdict

Now to try and answer the question  “BFD2 VS Superior drummer 2”, here is my thoughts.
I use them both allot, I have always seen it as an achievement to learn how to mix drums!
This is a task I’m nowhere near completing and I am miles away from being a full skilled pro.
But to be able to give as good reviews I possible can I have to learn a plugin or software completely before I start writing.
From my experience there is not much difference in the result between the two. 
I base this on the results I got from using EVILDRUMS the time I spent in both BFD2 and Superior Drummer 2 so I hope that qualifies as an answer.

I would like to thank Platinum Samples for letting me review Joe Barresi EVIL DRUMS.

INTRODUCTION
Studio people working hours at their computer, uses their mouse in greater aspect then some may imagine. Look at all the small adjustments in automations, fiddling with Plugins, swapping drums in their favorite drum sampler and even drawing out the MIDI notes in the MIDI editor many other things.
I have helped setup complete studios for both Home users and Pro´s and I have always been amused with the “don’t waste money on keyboard, mouse and mousepad philosophy”.
Nine out of ten times they bought the cheapest available and then been disappointed.
A couple of my musicians friends that I helped build a PC for music and Gaming never complained about their buy… could be they put some money in it?!
I am not only a musician and reviewer!
Since 2005/2006 I have been playing games on my PC as well, most of the time it has been world of Warcraft, Unreal tournament and Warhammer online.
I enjoy a nice Battleground or a 2 hour shift with Zidaco (Nightelf druid) and I still play World of Warcraft on my Rogue, I can tell you if I had the cheapest possible I would not be able to pick up my guitar after a arena session that’s for sure.
Since about 2007 I started using gamer mousepads and I have to say it did me nearly more good in my studio then in the games, Now I am not saying that it will not make a difference for gaming! its just that a large fast mousepad takes of a huge strain on the arms making the studio work go smother and you can work easier and faster with less tension to your arms.
Lets se how well the ZOWIE GEAR G-TF speed works.

About ZOWIE GEAR

ZOWIE GEAR is an innovative manufacturer of competitive gaming gear, founded late 2008 with a mission to develop the best competitive gaming gear available.

We are not limited by shareholders telling us what we can or cannot do. We are a free-minded company consisting of experienced and creative individuals, united in ZOWIE on a common ground; our passion for gaming. No boundaries. No compromises. Just gaming.

ZOWIE GEAR has no ambition to become the biggest manufacturer of competitive gaming gear. We just want to be the best. If we can develop products that will increase a gamers performance by just 1%, we will do it. This is our mentality.

It’s not just a game.
This is ZOWIE GEAR. Strive for Perfection. Source

G-TF speed Mouspad

The G-TF speed mousepad comes in a nice gray box.

Features

As the features sais the G-TF speed has the measures 440 x 320 x 2 mm, this is a huge mousepad and that I rely love. I used to have a razor mouse that was big but this is even bigger, and the need to lift the mouse due to edges is minima or even NONE!!
The G-TF is black with a ZOWIE logo on the right top edge and a Spawn logo on the left corner. A nice Border has been added to the G-TF Speed that will help the surface stay intact with the mousepad.

This image shows the back of the G-TF Speed mousepad, the surface is rubber like and sticky so the mousepad will not me around and that is a great plus.

Close up image to show the SPAWN logo and also to show the G-TF Surface.

Looking at the name G-TF speed we understand that this mousepad is to make the mouse movement fast and accurate, a great thing in games but also very important when adjusting advanced features in your DAW software. I spent some time trying it out in Studio One and I notice quickly how easy I could hit correct points when working with some heavy Automations. Speed is most certain the right name for the G-TF Speed mousepad, but accuracy comes along with it. The Surface on the G-TF Speed is remarkable well made and my MX-518 basically fly of the mousepad, and the tension that normally comes in my arms after a long session is less tense.

I jump into World Of Warcraft and decide to give the G-TF Speed a go of some Battlegrounds with my rogue, For you who play close combat classes in World Of Warcraft you know there is a whole lot of movement going on. I really enjoyed the way the mouse movement and response from my MX-518.
Next I loaded up an old time favorite Unreal Tournament 4, UT is a good game for testing mouse response and movement.
I know UT is not the latest game but it is one of my favorites and the 40 min I spent in the game was a blast much thanks to the G-TF speed.

I also wanted to se how this “Liquid resistant surface allows for easy maintenance” works,
So I took a a new dish cloth soaked it and wrung it, and then cleaned the G-TF speed .

The results was a nice clean mousepad =)

Conclusion

The facts is clear to me, you can not “waste” money on a good mousepad, there is no waste in putting the extra money on a goof mousepad that wont die in 5 minutes and is not big enough to even have your mouse on.
The G-TF Speed is Priced around $28.99 and that is a very nice price for a mousepad of this size and quality. I love the speed and the accuracy the surface of the G-TF speed gives and no matter if I am working with music or Playing a tens arena battle my mouse responded perfect on the G-TF Speed Mousepad.
Are you in the market for a new mousepad to your studio, put in some extra money and get a ZOWIE GEAR G-TF Speed, you will not be disappointed.

Pros

Cons

 

I would like to thank ZOWIE GEAR for letting me do this review.

And to all my readers.

THANK YOU!!!

Toontracks description of EZkeys
EZkeys is a revolutionary plugin and stand alone instrument that combines a world-class piano player, songwriting partner, arranger and a meticulously sampled grand piano – all in one package. Developed with Toontrack Music’s forward thinking approach to music composition, EZkeys delivers breathtakingly rich tonal qualities and allows the user unlimited creativity through its groundbreaking functionality.

• 32- and 64-bit VST, AU and RTAS instrument as well as low latency stand-alone application
• Drag and drop the included MIDI straight to the built-in song track
• Drag and drop support for your own or third party MIDI straight into EZkeys
• Drag and drop MIDI from the song track or directly from the song browser to your DAW or to your desktop
• EZkeys will analyze and chord-separate any MIDI on the fly
• Real-time chord display that enables you to instantly see what chords you are playing
• Chord selector, based upon the circle of fifths, allowing you to change chords instantly
• Presets for the most commonly used chord types
• Customize the coloration of any chord by opening up the detailed view
• Transpose individual song blocks or full songs with a single mouse-click
• Comes with an easy to understand music theory document including MIDI examples
• Possibility to tune the piano by octave, semitone or cents
• Dynamics controls that let you adjust the velocity response to match your keyboard or playing style
• Three pedals: sustain, sostenuto and damping
• MIDI-learn and automation
• Thirteen ready-made presets utilizing high-quality effects from Overloud. The presets range from raw and unprocessed to heavily distorted and tweaked

This information was taken from Toontracks homepage  –-> KLICK<-–

First impression
One thing that I have learned when it comes to Toontrack is that they always manages to create a great looking GUI, that fits the product superb and is very easy to understand.
As I load the Stand-alone version of EZkeys it is with a smile on my face.
EZkeys starts amazingly fast and the GUI is flawless, A huge grand piano stands in the middle of the screen giving a great feeling of quality.
The Top of the GUI holds A Library selection feature (we can already tell there is more to come), followed by a Preset selection feature and on the top right feature a Menu button is placed that holds some features that I feel I am not going to go into in this review.

Toontrack have added two control sections nicely in the piano, By clicking covers named Dynamics and Tuning the covers pop up and allows us to control Soft note and Velocity adjustments under Dynamics and Octave, Semitone and Cent under Tuning.

Under the Piano is the section where most things happen.

You first find a Playback/sequence area where you can drag and drop MIDI on to,
The default library comes with a nice startup pack of MIDI files to get us started.
There is some additional tools to adjust and split the MIDI files included on the left side.

Below that if we look on the left side is a preset control section, in this screen we can see four knobs for Reverb, Tone, Comp and Detail but when we change the presets these knobs will change to match the added filters and effects.

In the middle we find the playback, show/Hide browser and song key, Signature and tempo features to set up EZkeys to play along with your song idea.

On the right side we find a big Volume knob.

The Browser

For anyone who have used Toontracks products before we recognize the look of the browser.
the browser is divided by category’s  folder , swing and BPM.
you can pre-listen to the file directly in the browser making the browsing very EZ.
If you find a selection you rely love you can ad it to Favorites that can be found to the left.

Working with a MIDI file.
I found a nice little BLUES intro I wanted to use for my review and pulled it into the Playback/sequence area of EZkeys.

To show you the key feature I clicked on the C and got a roll down with alternatives to use.

You can also click on Major to swap it to Minor if you need to.

When the sequence parts are added to the Playback/sequence area I right click on the first MIDI part and go to Properties.
Here I can set color of the MIDI part, change octave, Transpose and increase decrease the Velocity of the selected MIDI part

As I work with this little Tune I find that EZkeys is extremely EZ to work with, making a song has never been this easy and fun.
The sound quality of EZkeys is flawless and there is enough control options to get a sweet Piano sound for your song.
I have to ad that the sound amazes me since the EZkeys installer is only 586MB.
Toontrack has proved to me that size does not matter, MAN NOW I really want to try out EZdrummer.

EZkeys in action
Here follows a video of the included presets where EZkeys is playing some BLUES. 

Conclusion
Toontrack has done it again!
They have brought a product/tool to the market that is perfect, sounds great and is dead EZ to use. I become amazed with Toontracks ways to always come with a product that feels WORTH every penny. Talking about price, EZkeys holds the price off around 155 Euro and $149, a very affordable price.
Working with EZkeys is fun, and for me who play guitar and can do some 3 finger cords on the Piano I love to have EZkeys around.
If you need a nice lightweight Piano, or a incredible songwriters tool EZkeys will be just perfect, and the learning curve is nearly none at all.
Ezkeys is not heavy on recourses and sounds amazing so now my interests in EZdrummer has grown even more but that’s another story.
EZkeys is the ultimate songwriter tool aswell as a amazing Piano instrument plugin,
as a great ad it can also be used in stand alone mode.
All in all EZkeys is a Must have.
GO Get it!!!

Pros

• Easy to use
• Lightweight
• Affordable
• Great sounding

Cons

• None

The Verdict

Toontrack EZkeys is fully awarded.. spot on…

Thank you for reading

A sad note today is that my camera has broken and is in on warranty service,
so I will have to borrow the press images from Noctua.

About Noctua

Designed in Austria, Noctua’s premium cooling components are internationally renowned for their superb quietness, exceptional performance and thoroughgoing quality. Having received more than 1000 awards and recommendations from leading hardware websites and magazines, Noctua’s fans and heatsinks are chosen by more than a hundred thousand satisfied customers around the globe.

This text was taken from http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=unternehmen&lng=en

The NF-F12 PWM

Specs

Size	120x120x25 mm
Connector	Connector
Bearing	SSO2
Blade Geometry	Heptaperf™
Frame Technology	Focused Flow™
Rotational Speed (+/- 10%)	1500 RPM
Rotational Speed with L.N.A. (+/- 10%)	1200 RPM
Min. Rotational Speed (PWM)	300 RPM
Airflow	93,4 m³/h
Airflow with L.N.A.	74,3 m³/h
Acoustical Noise	22,4 dB(A)
Acoustical Noise with L.N.A	18,6 dB(A)
Static Pressure	2,61 mm H2O
Static Pressure with L.N.A.	1,83 mm H2O
Max. Input Power	0,6 W
Max. Input Current	0,05 A
Voltage	12 V
MTBF	> 150.000 h
Scope of Delivery	Low-Noise Adapter (L.N.A.) 4-Pin Y-Cable 30cm Extension Cable 4 Vibration-Compensators 4 Fan Screws
Warranty	6 years

First Impression.

The Noctua fans always come well packed in nice Boxes, giving a great first impression.

First of Noctua has added ant vibration corners to the fan to reduce the vibrations out to the case even further, and a note is that these can easily be removed if you feel you need to.

Turning the NF-F12 PWM around we se the big difference from its older brother.
Noctua has added so called notches to the fan to give a Focused flow.
Noctua describes this with these words..
“The NF-F12’s Varying Angular Distance and Vortex Control Notches”.
This is in Noctuas words to “stator guide vanes are set out in Varying Angular Distance and feature Vortex-Control Notches. Both measures help to spread the noise emission over a broader frequency spectrum and thus make the fan’s sound pattern more agreeable to the human ear.”
For more information visit http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=focused_flow_system

The NF-P12 PWM

Specs

First Impression.

As with The NF-F12 PWM the NF-P12 boxing gives a great quality Impression.

The NF-P12 PWM comes with “Shark tooth cuttings in the fan blades,
Noctua describes this as “Noctua’s signature Vortex-Control Notches split up trailing edge vortices and thus spread the fan’s noise emission over a wider range of frequencies. This measure makes the NF-P12 PWM sound more pleasant to the human ear”.
For more information visit http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=nine_blade_design

Testing the Fans.

Test setup
Motherboard:Gigabyte x58a-ud3r rev.2
Cpu: Intel i7 930 @ stock 2.8ghz
Cpu cooler: noctua nh-u12p se
Ram: 12gb Corsair Dominator lately swapped to vengeance DDR 3 1600mhz
Graphic card: msi 560 ti twin frozr
Hdd´s: System disk Kingston SSDnow v+100 128 gb,
Samples disk Western digital 300gb velociraptor,
Files Disk  1TB western digital caviar black.

I have had these fans installed on my NH-U12P SE2 for two days each, working with my system as usual as well as doing some hardcore testing via Prime 95 for an hour each.
I tested both fans with and without the N.L.A adapters to get a clear as possible view on their performance in my system. My room temp during these tests was 28c, and my system fans was set as they usually are for as little noise as possible just like I want it when recording and creating music.

Test results for NF-F12 PWM

Mode	MIN RPM	MAX RPM	Idle	load
No PWM	1500	1500	36	52
No PWM, N.L.A	1200	1200	38	59
PWM	720	920	43	64
PWM, N.L.A	720	920	43	64

Test results for NF-P12 PWM

Test summery and and sound.
As you can tell from the Tables above the NF-F12 PWM does a little better job with cooling the CPU. Now both the NF-F12 PWM and the NF-P12 PWM does cool the CPU well but it seams the Focused flow on the NF-F12 PWM makes a difference.
One thing that I found when testing these fans was that on the NF-F12 PWM using the N.L.A did not make any difference on the MAX RPM, but since the MAX RPM with the N.L.A on the
NF-P12 PWM then the RPM would be without it the RPM was lower.
This made me skip the N.L.A since I found no use with having it on my System.

If we look at the sound performance of the NF-F12 PWM and NF-P12 PWM I am very impressed, They both are very quiet fans and is nearly silent up to around 900RPM so during normal CPU activity and even when running a CPU heavy production in Studio ONE Professional V2 I could not hear the fans at all.
When running the fans at MAX RPM they become allot more noisy, and comparing the noise between these two fans the NF-P12 PWM had a little more firm sound then the NF-F12 PWM on MAX RPM but then the NF-F12 PWM has a 200 RPM higher top RPM and cools better.

Conclusion
Building a PC for Studio work is tricky, a fast system requires cooling,
A studio pc has to be quiet, so the cooling you get has to be quiet!

Noctua has done it again, both the NF-F12 PWM and the NF-P12 PWM are great fans that will help keep your system temps down. the NF-F12 PWN seams to be a bitt better on a CPU cooler that the NF-P12 but no matter what fan you get you will se excellent results.
If you plan to get a new fan for your CPU I recommend the NF-F12 PWM since it has a higher RPM and a bit better cooling performance when used on a CPU cooler.
All in all these two fans are amazing and I recommend them both for anyone no matter what you do with your PC, for ME who wants my Studio PC to be quiet the NF-F12 PWM is a winner.

Pros

• Great performance
• quiet
• nice extras included
• quality

Cons

• None

Verdict NF-F12 PWM

Verdict NF-P12 PWM

Once again I would like to thank Noctua for letting me do this review.

And to you who read this.. THANK YOU!!

Specs

For more details and specifications pleas visit the Antec P280 page
http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=NzA0NTM5

A first look.

Antec always delivered their products in nice looking packages, and the P280 package
follows that example very well.

A First Look

The front has been upgraded in the P280  for easy access,
a great change that I rely like.The nice steel finish looks amazing, and the Antec logo sits perfect at the lower section of the door.

Above the door we find the microphone , headphone jacks followed by the two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 perfectly placed for easy access.

This is angled image of the top shows two of the changes in the P280 upper section.

Antec has moved the power and reset buttons to the top of the case, a brilliant move if you ask me.
Now you don’t need to open the door every time u need access to the power and reset buttons.

Further in the back we now find the two 120 mm top fan slots.
sadly the cover grill from the old P180 was removed when Antec upgraded the P18x series and  there is no other cover option  included.
Sadly we don’t have any 140mm options on the p280.

Looking behind the door we find 3 x 5.25” slots.

Below that we can se a removable and washable dust filter
in front of  two 120 mm fan slots.

Note that the door is covered on the inside with sound damping material, a concept I have come to love and always look for in cases nowadays.

Inside The p280

The first thing that caught my eye was the huge Back plate cut out, Antec has taking the critics seriously and given more then enough space to change a third party cooler with ease.
Another big change to the P280 is that Antec has removed the lower chamber.

Antec has also changed is the HDD tray system, The old cage system and plate trays are gone and instead Antec have swapped to plastic HDD trays and all HDD are mounted in a rack at the front part of the case, the downside with this is that the air from the front fans will be pushed through the space between the hard drives and this can raise the tempeture of the air a little. 
The 5.25” slots are now fully tool-less, and this tool-less option worked great.
There is four big cutouts for cable management, a feature that I always love to se.

Lets head on and put the PC together.

Assembly


Putting the PC together in the P280 follows the Performance One legacy,
most of the time it was nearly to easy.
The case has allot of space and allot of smart solutions, making it one of the best cases I have built a PC in.

However I hit a minor issue, As you can see I have a KUHLER H₂O 620 CPU cooler and no matter how hard I tried I could not mount the radiator in the back of this case.
This problem seams to be when mounting the radiator directly to the case and using one fan from the inside of the case mounted on the radiator to push the air from inside the case through the radiator out the back.
After further investigation I found that it will work when mounting the radiator in ether pull configuration or push – pull configuration.
This is to me still feels a bit strange since the KUHLER H₂O 620 is also an Antec product.
Since I wanted to do a push configuration on the KUHLER I had to mount the radiator in the top of the case, this is in its own not a downside so am happy with the results.

With this image I want to show you one of the cool features inside the P280.

Antec has added 120 mm fan slots on the inner part of the main chamber on the HDD rack. 
A very smart and great idea, This helps cooling the Graphic card allot.

P280 in the studio.
I gave the P280 a full 2 weeks of testing, and the cooling in this case is amazing.
since I’m using the KUHLER H₂O 620 the CPU temps always stays great and in Push configuration we had a max CPU temp in prime 95 of 52C 

I did some additional changes to get optimal noise and cooling performance balance.
I moved the Rear 120 mm TwoCool fan to the front and set the included fan control to Low.
I installed a Gently typhoon in the back and used a third party fan controller to lower the speed to a point I liked.

Now as I mentioned in the start, Antec did not include any cover for the top two 120mm fan slots and I really wish Antec would look at this for the next release of a Performance one Case like the classic P180 had.  That cover gave the user an option to sound damped the cover and still allowd the air to flow out.
The two top Fan slots makes the case fully open and allot of noise comes out through the two holes so the case is not as Quiet as I could have wished but with some tweaking it is more quiet then allot of cases out there.

The new HDD trays are amazing the reduces vibrations and HDD noise far better then anything I have used before .
The cooling performance of the P280 is spot on great and over all I am pleased with the case.

Pros

• Great cooling
• Build quality
• Cable management
• HDD trays

Cons

• No way to cover the top fan slots
• Still uses 120mm fans
• KUHLER H₂O 620 not fully compatible
• Not as quiet as I hoped.

Conclusion.
The P280 case is a step closer to the former Antec glory and a step closer back to the top brand for building a cool and quiet PC.
The Antec P280 is a great case, and for many PC builders who wants a cool and quiet PC I can say I truly recommend the case. Sadly Antec did not open up for 140mm fans, and the lack of cover options on the top fan slots is features I miss.
So if your recording spot in your home does not allow you to have the pc somewhere it wont bother your recording you will probably be better of with a more closed solution such as the Fractal Design Define XL.

Another small downside is that Antecs own KUHLER H₂O 620 is not fully compatible with the P280 when mounting the radiator in the back with one fan in a push configuration.

If Antec would give a cover option for the top fan slots and ad an option for 140mm fans, this case has potentials to be a true studio case!!!
Over all I still can recommend the P280, but for Home studios the P280 lacks some silencing features to be spot on.

Verdict

Thank you for reading.

Technical Information.
The AudioBox 22VSL is the smallest version in the brand new AudioBox VSL series of USB 2.0 interfaces from PreSonus with a price around $199.95 US and 195 Euro.

The AudioBox 22VSL is compatible with both Windows and MAC and delivers support for  ASIO, Core Audio, Direct Sound (In Windows XP), Windows Audio Session API (In Windows Vista and Windows 7).

The AudioBox 22VSL is equipped with Class A XMAX mic preamps, known from the StudioLive mixers and has 24-bit, 96 kHz converters with 114 dB dynamic range and LED clip indicator for each channel.

The AudioBox 22VSL features the new VSL mixer software that holds processing features of Compressor, EQ and Gate as well as Reverb and Delay effects for monitoring purpose.

AudioBox 22VSL in/out specs

• 2 combo XLR / ¼” mic/instrument inputs
• 2 balanced ¼” main (L/R) line outputs
• 1 stereo ¼” headphone output
• 1 USB 2.0 port
  For more information and full specifications of the AudioBox 22VSL please visit,
  http://www.presonus.com/products/Detail.aspx?ProductId=63

Inside the box

As I open the nice looking box (see image above) I find that PreSonus has packed everything up nicely and everything needed to get the AudioBox 22VSl connected and letting you start your music creation is in the package, included with the  AudioBox 22VSL is

Studio One Artist

.

The next image will show all that was included in the box.

The AudioBox 22VSL
The AudioBox 22VSL has borrowed the looks from its older brother AudioBox USB, The blue steel case feels solid and the Interface is perfect in size.
The power led has been given a blue shine instead of the old red.

The front of the AudioBox 22VSL

Looking at the front we first find the two combo XLR / ¼” mic/instrument inputs, after that we find the 48V Phantom power switch (Push button).

The first two lower knobs are the Gain knobs for channel 1 and 2, that has a range of -15 dB to +65 dB.

On the right side of then we find the mixer knob that control the balance between input and playback signal, if you use the VSL software this knob should be set to VSL as the software handles this balance instead.

The two top knobs handles the Main and Headphone output levels.

The back of the AudioBox 22VSL

The back of the AudioBox 22VSL holds the USB 2.0 connector, MIDI in and out, the two balanced ¼” main (L/R) line outputs and the stereo ¼” headphone output.

Installing the AudioBox 22VSL drivers and software is straight forward, since I already have the PreSonus Studio One V2 Professional (check out the review here ) I did not need any further installation but I reckon installing everything would be a 20 min job and then you are ready to start creating music.

The AudioBox 22VSL is built with quality, the size is perfect and the hardware is top class.
The only thing I do not like with the layout is that the Headphone jack is placed on the back.
The two mic / instrument inputs are amazing, The XMAX mic preamp worked flawless with my Solaris condenser microphone, and the instrument input handled my Yamaha electric acoustic guitar, and my Ibanez RG 420 electric guitar perfect.
The sound is crisp clear and totally buzz hum and noise free with perfect results, even when I hooked up my V-AMP 3 to the AudioBox 22VSL and let it pre-process the sound a bit I was amazed with the results.

The VSL mixer

The big advantage with the AudioBox VSL series of Audio Interfaces is the VSL mixer software, it not only controls everything it also comes with the processing effects EQ, Compressor and Gate.

But to take things further PreSonus also added two FX channels that will let you ad Reverb and Delay as monitoring effect, this is very useful when you want to have a more finished sound in your headphones when recording something like vocals.
In the VSL mixer software we have on the lower section first two channel strips for Input 1 and input 2, then comes the DAW channels 1 and 2 and is the output channel from your DAW software. Next We can see the FX channel A and B that handles the Reverb and Delay effects, and last is the Main output channel.

Furthest to the right we find a browser, here you can load predefined presets for the channel strips as well as different FX modes and even complete setups for the whole VSL mixer.
I want to point out that you can easily save your own settings and rename any setting in all three tabs of the browser.
Note that all channel strips has Gate, Compressor and EQ that can be turned on and off.

There are two more features I want to point out!
If you look at the top of input 1 and 2 as well as DAW1 and Daw2 you can se that we have
HI PASS and above that we find that is a phase reverse toggle.

On the IN2 channel  is highlighted, This feature allows us to toggle the channel effects to process the audio file so we get a recorded audio that has been pre-processed by the VSL effects, Note that if you have any Input Channels sent to the FX buses, these effects cannot be recorded in your DAW.

Having the VSL is great, ether to just monitor your audio with effects or to pre-process the audio with EQ, Gate, Compressor, or you can do both.
The THE FX A and FX B allows us to get in touch with the finished sound or to get what you would have in the studios effects in your vocal when recording.
But that’s not it..
No matter the what buffer settings you use and what latency you have in DAW, you will still have near zero latency on the inputs when using the VSL mixer´s effects.
The big advantage with the VSL mixer is that it can be used to save up resources by using the Post feature to pre process the audio when recording in your DAW.

Conclusion
A first look at the PreSonus AudioBox 22VSL would probably make you think just another USB 2.0 Audio Interface, but one thing I have learned is to really look into an interface and its features before deciding if its for me or not.
The AudioBox 22VSL has the look of its older brother AudioBox USB , But that is not a bad choice made by PreSonus.
The  Build quality of the AudioBox 22VSL its FANTASTIC, This little box can handle allot of beating and that’s always nice if you are using it with your portable PC/MAC.
The control knobs feel very nice and even though the space is limited between the knobs they are easily turned.
The Preamps are first class, as I mentioned before they work perfect with anything I tested on them.
The only bad thing I found with the AudioBox 22VSL is the Headphone jack placement.
I swap headphones allot and it’s a pain when the jack is in the back of the interface.

The software bundle with the AudioBox 22VSL is great, you will have a good start point and will be doing music in less then an hour after you open the box.
The VSL mixer is awesome, and will be a life and timesaver for many who has it in the feature.
To be able to pre-process the sound or just to get a good monitoring effect when recording is ace, but the real strength to me is the the ability to pre-process the audio.
Just look at recording vocals, you use the VSL the get a perfect start point for your mix and save that setting to the VSL software.
Now every time you want to record vocals you can load that setting and your vocal audio file will have a nice start point for when its time to mix.

I am very impressed with the AudioBox 22VSL, PreSonus clearly know how to make great products and adding nice usable features at the right price.
I also want to add that during these three Months I have had the AudioBox 22VSL running with windows 7 64 bit, the driver has not once failed on me or the computer.

Pros

• Great build quality
• First class preamps.
• Easy to use
• Great price
• The VSL mixer
• Stable drivers

Cons

• NONE

I would like to thank PreSonus and Luthman for making this review reality.

And to all my readers … THANK YOU

About the BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion
This expansion is based on a Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute drum kit, and is one of the most advanced kits made by Yamaha.
The Expansion covers toms played with sticks, brushes, mallets, and rods.
The bass drums are hit with both wood and felt beaters. The snare drum is played with sticks and hot-rods, with the snare wire on and off for both.

This expansion is only available as a download version

FXpansion has a great page to listen to each Drum individually so head over there.
http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=88&tab=243

For full details of the BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion please visit. http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=88&tab=242

The BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion
BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion is as I mentioned earlier only available as a downloaded version, the package is roughly 1 Gig compressed but you have some bonus material to download so all in all you get a package of  1.3 gig.

Downloading and installing this Expansion takes about 30 min.
The BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion comes with six loadable kit presets,
One is the Mallet Tom kit where only the Toms are loaded.

Here is a Image showing the kit browser inside BFD2

Working with the BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion I find it is well suited for Jazz, Rock, fusion, classic metal.
The Expansion is well recorded with a great sound and there is much room for tweaking the sound in any way you may like.

  Here is Kit one from BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion loaded inside BFD2

The kick is warm and snappy but still has a round feel to it, the Snare is distinct yet snappy and the toms rough round and warm.
I especially like the kick in the BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion,
It has that round snappy sound that I love to use in rock songs and Power ballads.

One thing I miss is more predefined presets, BFD2 is a great Drum plug-in with some great built in processing plugins. and I would love to se FXpansion showing the full potential of their great product.

The BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion has allot of things going for it, and as I start tweaking the drums I find the samples respond nicely to everything I do giving the user allot of room to get the drums to fit nicely in the mix.

Now for something new to Dawfreak.
I have made a Video with Camtasia Studio of the BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion. This video shows the Stick, Rod and Brushes kit in action.

The Dawfreak sound demo
As always I want to give you an idea of how the expansion can sound, so here follows a small sound sample of how the BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion sounds with some tweaking done only using the built in pluggins in BFD2.

Conclusion.
The BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion is a great BFD2 expansion for anyone who is missing a worm kit with allot of tweaking potential.
Since this expansion also includes hits made with additional tools such as Brushes and Rods I feel this expansion is a great expansion to have around.
If your in to jazz, pop or rock the BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion is going to be a sweet extension to your BFD library, and the price is set to 50$ making it a very affordable expansion for BFD2.

Dawfreak awards The FXpansion BFD Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute Expansion with…

A huge thank you to the friendly people at FXpansion for letting me review the
BFD Maple Custom Absolute Expansion.

And thank you for reading, I hope to se you back soon again.

I am back with a fresh review.
Earlier this week TOONTRACK released the second generation of EZmix and TOONTRACK let me give you all a my review on it.

What is EZmix 2?
Ezmix 2 is a all in one plug-in that comes as stand alone and in Native-only plug-in format AU, RTAS and VST plugin format for MAC and PC, VST and AU supports both 32 and 64 bit hosts.
When I say all in one plug-in it basically is all in one, from EQ, Reverb, Compressor, gate to complete guitar rig or channel strips.
It can basically be used on anything you want, such as channel, subgroup, AUX or even master fader and can help you in stressed moments when you need to finish a mix faster then the speed of light.
EZmix 2 is a complete mixing tool with presets created by professionals and with professional high-end gear,for complete specs pleas visit the EZmix 2 page.
http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=135

A first look

As I load up EZmix 2 the name becomes clear, the GUI is nice and very EZ.

EZmix 2 is divided in two Sections, browser and effect controls.
The browser has both a search function and a categorization listed as Instrument Groups.  Drums, Bass, Guitars, Keyboards, Percussion, Strings, Vocals and Miscellaneous. This makes finding the right preset very easy.
When you have done your choices or made your search the matching presets will be listed nicely in the lower browser section.
Note that you can combined more then one choice in each category section to increase the chance to find the preset you are looking for.

Below that we have the actual plugin with effect controls, where the preset effects is adjusted through two turn knobs to increase or decrease the amount of processing you want.
Looking at the picture above you can see that the left knob will adjust the amount of predefined EQ and the right knob will adjust the amount of Tape Drive on the track.
The control section also holds volume adjustments for Input and output for a complete control of the processing done and the volume of the processed audio.

Working with EZmix 2
As I said before the GUI is very simple to understand, and working with EZmix is fun.
I decided to make a small song with some of the common tracks in it to show how EZmix sounds.

Before we go on, here is a mix with just panning done and no effects.

Inside Studio One v2

This song is set up with drums from TOONTRACK Superior Drummer 2 in a multi out setup. Bass guitar from Native Instruments Kontakt Elements, Piano, Strings and organ from the Studio One Presence library.

I found using the search feature was best and fastest, and then I just went through the different presets to find one I felt sounded good for this mix.

I used EZmix 2 on all channels, and I ended up with 16 EZmix 2 plugins as insert effects on the individual tracks and on most of the used Superior drummer output busses.
I also used EZmix 2 to get the distortion and clean sounds on the guitar tracks.
to top this of I used EZmix 2 as a send effect for Reverb on Kick, Snare and Toms,
and To finish of I used Ezmix as a final master effect on the Main output channel.
EZmix is dead simple to use and each instance takes les then a minute to et up,
Just find a preset, adjust in and output and then adjust the preset settings with the two Turn nobs and you are ready to go to next channel.
The sound you get is very good and you don’t have to spend hours and hours to get a pro mix on your song, and to top things of EZmix 2 is fairly CPU efficient.
The Included effects and presets are great sounding and even though you don’t have much control it seams enough to get a nice sound.
Talking of presets, TOONTRACK included

Here is the CPU usage of the Project.

Getting my mix done with EZmix 2 took me 10 minutes and I did not have to do allot of adjustment of the presets to get a sound I liked.
And here is the same song finished with EZmix 2 applied on the tracks.

Pros
+ Simple to use
+ Great sound
+ CPU efficient
+ Timesaver
+ Price
+ Loads of presets
+ Guitar and Bass rigs

Cons
- Limited
- cant combine presets to make a chain of effects inside EZmix

Conclusion
Toontrack has given us a great start point for mixing our songs quick and easy.
Ezmix 2 has all the different tools we need to get a good mix done.
The downside of EZmix 2 is.. it is EZ and you get a good sound from using it but it might not be your your sound.
EZmix 2 can only load 1 preset at the time so you cant chain more presets inside one instance of EZmix2, this means that you sometime  will have to load two or more instances on your Tracks / busses to get a perfect sound.

Ezmix 2 comes with enough control to tweak the sound and can be used on anything you want making it a great all in one plugin.
You can also use the stand alone version to jam along with your favorite songs or for guitar / Bass practice, since it has Guitar and bass rigs (amps and effects) included.
And if you feel you need more effects and presets, EZmix 2 is compatible with all the expansions from EZmix 1 http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?#EZmixLine

Over all I like the concept of EZmix 2 and I like that it works as both a processing effect as well as a guitar and bass rig.
Ezmix 2 is a very helpful tool for everyone in the music / sound industry and I believe it will be a timesaver for many people in this line of work for years to come.
And I have to say the price is just as EZ for what you get so go get it!!

The verdict

Great product for a small price.

Thank you for reading and I hope to se you back soon.
Please leave a comment below.

Introduction

AmplitTube 3 is a guitar and bass tone gear modeling software that works with most common DAW and also comes as stand alone software.
AmpliTube 3 comes with 160 precisely modeled pieces of vintage and modern gear, Lets have a look at some Specs and se what´s we find

Specs

Standalone application for both Windows and Mac OS X.

Supports the plug-in formats Audio Units, VST, RTAS on Mac OS X and VST, RTAS on Windows.

5 separate modules: Tuner, Stomp effects Pedalboard, Amp Head, Cabinet + Microphones, post Rack effects.

Over 160 included gear models

51 Stompbox effects

31 Amp models

46 Cabinet emulations

15 Studio Microphone models

17 Rack effects

High-precision Tuner

For a full list of the AmpliTube specs visit http://www.ikmultimedia.com/amplitube/specs/

A first look / Amp

I loaded up AmpliTube 3 as stand alone to get a look at the GUI, and the first impression is very nice.

On the main window we find the Amplifier, and it looks just like a Amp but in digital form.
The main window is divided in to 4 sections when loaded as a plug-in and 5 when in stand alone mode.

On the top we find presets, BPM, TAP, browser, Save functions, delete and quality control.
Below that we find 8 different routing configurations, Input selection (mono/stereo), Tuner and window selection for the Stomp A/B Amp A/B Cab A/B, Rack A/B and at the end Bypass and mute selections.

Next is the actual Section window, when we load AmpliTube 3 we always get the AMP A section showing.
This is the Amplifier section with all Controls you would normally find on a AMP.
So if you have messed around with the real deal this is set up to be as realistic as possible.
And as the specs said AmpliTube 3 comes with 31 Amp models.

Below that is Input level, A noise Gate, module control and output level.

In the stand alone version you also find a recording section that is cool for messing around with ideas or to rehearse a song.

Stomp
The actual first section if we look at the GUI is the STOMP section, ´
This is setup to look as a real Pedalboard.

Here is a sample on how you can set up the Stomp section, all Stompboxes can be moved around so you can get the sound you want just like in the real world.
And as I mentioned in the Specs, AmpliTube 3 comes with 51 Stompbox effects to toy with.

Cab

The Cab section holds not only the cabinets, it also is holds the microphone selection, placement and room control.

From here you can select from the 46 cabinets included to use with your rig and then place one or two microphones in front of the cabinet just as you can in the real world.
this option gives you freedom and control of the close and room sound.

The Rack

The last section for tweaking the sound is the Rack, all in all AmpliTube comes with 17 Rack effects that you can hook up to your rig for even more sound control.
some of the effects are Tube compressor, EQ, reverb and delay that you can set in any way you want in the rack.

The Browser.

The last window I want to show you is the Browser.
Here you can find all factory presets as well as the presets you have made and saved.
you can ether scroll all presets or search.

So how does it sound?

Here is 4 sound samples I have made just so you can get a clue on what AmpliTube 3 can do.

Classic Dist

Crunshy rock

Ballad

Metal

Conclusion
IK Multimedia has made a great standalone and plugin for anyone who owns a bass or guitar, and It can be used both live as well as in your recording software.
The GUI is flawless and it feels and looks like a complete Rig with all features you need to get that killer sound.
with great functions and easy to understand controls I can nothing but recommend AmpliTube 3 to anyone who wants a nice guitar and bass rig in your computer.
And as a side note for the plugin I have not had any issues with stability of the AmpliTube standalone or VST Plug-in Sadly I can not test the RTAS version since I don’t own Protools.
And if this is not enough AmpliTube 3 has a nice feature! the Amplitube Custom Shop

The Verdict

AmpliTube 3 rocks

Thank you for reading and hope to se you back soon.

A small Introduction.
Rock Legends QuickPack is based on a 125th Anniversary Limited Edition Gretsch Rock Legend drum kit, a kit that was limited to 125 total kits for 2008 production.
Platinum Samples Rock Legends QuickPack was recorded using vintage Neve, Sontec, Fairchild gear and Telefunken, AKG and Neumann microphones.
This was all recorded and produced by Rail Jon Rogut at Ocean Studios Burbank.
The Rock Legends QuickPack comes for both BFD2 and BFD ECO, but this review will only cover the BFD2 version.
For more information visit http://www.platinumsamples.com/ps/RockLegendsQuickPack.php

The Rock Legends kit.

Installing and First impression.

Downloading and Installing Rock Legends QuickPack takes a while, the complete setup is divided into 5 different installations.
After everything is installed we load up BFD2 and go through the activation process.

Rock Legends QuickPack comes with one kit loading file but also comes with a
huge amount of complete BFD2 presets.

This image only show a portion of all the presets that comes with Rock Legends QuickPack

Here  loaded up the CWK Basic Default, to show you how the kit looks loaded.

The full kit loaded into BFD2

Going through through the different drums I found that Platinum Samples and Rail Jon Rogut
has managed to record and program this expansion rely well.

The Kick is Fat and punchy with not to much click by default.
The Snare sounds classic and rich and comes with many additional hits.
The Toms Sounds amazingly rich and fat yet round and deep.
The Hi-hat was not my favorite but I bet many will argue with me on that.
The Cymbals had a lot of character that is perfect for this kit.

Below is a audio file I did with each drum hit individually, no EQ or compression was added and its just made so you can hear how the drums in Rock Legends QuickPack  sounds.

If the player does not work click->>> http://snd.sc/xsR3mr

Working with Rock Legends QuickPack.

As I Start working with the Rock Legends QuickPack I realize how well Platinum Samples have put this expansion together.
The velocity responds is just outstanding and you have a great amount of variations to get a great realistic sound.
After trying some of the presets out I found how many options the Rock Legends QuickPack rely have, and as a user I appreciate that Platinum Samples have put together all these presets for us users.

Next I wanted to go for some tweaking and to see how he sounds in the Rock Legends QuickPack responds to some additional EQ and compression.
The Rock Legends QuickPack is did not disappoint here ether, Rail Jon Rogut and Platinum Samples  has done a great job during the recording and mixing process giving us user a good sounding Kit that responds to EQ and Compression beautifully.

Here is a sample of how the The Rock Legends QuickPack sounded after some tweaking.

If the player does not work click->>> http://snd.sc/AnBQAA

Conclusion.

Platinum Samples and Rail Jon Rogut has released a great Expansion for BFD2 and BFD ECO.
The Rock Legends QuickPack comes loaded with presets, and if you want to make it sound more personal the Rock Legends QuickPack responds nicely to any tweaking.
The Rock Legends QuickPack has been very well programed with great velocity responds, and you have a great deal of additional hits.
For the price of $59.99 the Rock Legends QuickPack is most defiantly a great buy.
So if your looking for a classic rock kit I do recommend you to head over to Platinum Samples
for more information on how to get your hands on the Rock Legends QuickPack.

The verdict

Platinum Samples and Rail Jon Rogut has released a great Expansion

I want to thank Platinum Samples for letting me review the Rock Legends QuickPack.

and to my readers
Thank you, please leave a response if you like..
And stay tuned for more

Introduction.
My first real go with silent computing was with the Antec sonata case, back then I could not imagine that so many things could make noise in a computer and having a quiet studio is as you know most important.
From that day Antec has been in center for many of my studio pc builds when it comes to computer cases and Power supplies.
Antec has expanded their products and has brought many great silent products to the market. Today I will have a look at the TrueQuiet 120mm and TrueQuiet 140mm case fans.

Specifications.

TrueQuiet 120

Speed    Low 600RPM    High 1000RPM
Input Current    0.06A    0.12A
Air Flow    0.6m³ / min
(21.5 CFM)    1.0m³ / min
(35.8 CFM)
Static Pressure    0.3 mm-H2O
(0.1inch-H2O)    0.3 mm-H2O
(0.7inch-H2O)
Noise    8.9 dBA    19.9 dBA
Input Power    0.72 W    1.44 W

For more in depth specifications visit the TrueQuiet 120mm page

TrueQuiet 140

Speed    Low 500RPM    High 800RPM
Input Current    0.06A    0.10A
Air Flow    0.6m³ / min
(20.3 CFM)    0.9m³ / min
(32.4 CFM)
Static Pressure    0.2 mm-H2O
(0.1inch-H2O)    0.5 mm-H2O
(0.02inch-H2O)
Noise    9.8 dBA    20.0 dBA
Input Power    0.5 W    1.2 W

For more in depth specifications visit the TrueQuiet 140mm page

The package

TrueQuiet 120

TrueQuiet 140

The TrueQuiet fans comes in a standard transparent plastic package, and the first look at them shows that Antec has done some real changes to how a case fan can be made.

A Closer look.

The TrueQuiet fans comes with a short cabled fan controller, that can be set to High and Low. For the TrueQuiet 120 Low 600RPM High 1000RPM.
For the TrueQuiet 140 Low 500RPM High 800RPM.
This feature is sweet the controller will be inside the case making it nearly useless and I have seen far better fan controllers shipped with fans.

The fans comes with nine blades that have a unique shape, and the frame has has been modified a bit compared to regular fans.

The main changes that makes the TrueQuiet stand out is the mounting system.
The orange corners on the fan is actually a rubber mounting and damping system that goes through the fan to ensure no vibrations will go out onto the Case.
Most fans comes with rubber mounting system, but sadly they usually break when you mount the fan to the case. Antec has taken the mounting system to a complete new level with the TrueQuiet fans.

Antec´s version of the tool-less mounting system are Outstanding compared to other
tool-less rubber mounting systems as this one wont break as easy and is the most thought through mounting system I have seen. It is completely painless and easy to install and it is just as easy to remove the fan if you need to.

Testing the fans.
I installed the TrueQuiet 140 at the back of my Define XL case and the TrueQuiet 120 at the extra 120mm intake slot in the 5.25” bay.
I could not mount the TrueQuiet 140 fan on the 140mm intake spot on my Define XL since the frame on the TrueQuiet 140 was a bit larger then a regular fan so it would not fit.

Now I sadly don’t own any test tools for airflow or noise but here is how I felt the fans performed.

The TrueQuiet 120 felt week when set to low speed, but on high it pushed a decent amount of air.  I would say that this fan is however best used as intake fan as it does not push as much air as other 120mm fans. TrueQuiet 120 is dead quiet at full speed so having one of these in you case will give you some extra airflow with no additional noise.

If the TrueQuiet 120 would have had a third speed on the controller and a top speed of maybe 1450RPM then it would also have been perfect for exhaust, And I believe that the Truequiet 120 would not have made much more noise even at 1450RPM since most quiet fans are very quiet even at 1450RPM.

A normally a issue for exhaust fans specially if the fan grill on the case is small is turbulence noise. The TrueQuiet 140 pushes a good deal of air and even at 800RPM there is no turbulence, hum or noise coming from the fan and that’s impressive.

My system temps stayed the same as before I swapped to the TrueQuet fans, but the noise level has dropped significant and since installation the TrueQuiet fans I sometime wonder if my Computer has even started before the screen starts up showing it has.
I would also here would have loved to see a third speed of maybe 1000-1200RPM, so the user is given more options as I do not believe that adding a higher top speed than 800RPM would increase the noise to much.

The price for the TrueQuiet 120 is set at $14.99 on Newegg.
The price for the TrueQuiet 140 is set at $$20.99 on Newegg.

PROS
+ Superior mounting system
+ Quiet even at max RPM
+ quality
+ price
+ comes with a fan controller

Cons
- Not the best airflow
- only two speeds
- The fan controller is very limited and will be inside the case.

Conclusion
Getting a quiet computer can be a pain, it will take time and money to get the perfect balance between good cooling and low noise.
Antec has done a good job with the TrueQuiet Fans, but there is still some to ask for.
The fans are dead quiet and does the job god specially the TrueQuiet 140 that is perfect for most exhaust situations, but if you overclock you will need more powerful fans.
But most people who make music does not need to Overclock so for anyone building a studio PC the TrueQuiet will be awesome.

If Antec gave the TrueQuiet a third speed I would say that the True Quiet fans would have a shot at being among the top rated fans on the market.
The big reason I believe this is that they do push air as they are specially the TrueQuiet 140 and there is no noise at all coming from them. The mounting system is the best I have seen so these fans would most likely be close to dead quiet and perform outstanding with the speeds pushed a bit more.

A fan controller is always a nice feature but there are way better once out there that are shipped with other fans, being able to control the fans outside the box is nearly a must these days so this is something Antec should have a look at.

The TrueQuiet 120 is a god fan if you have an extra intake slot since it will add some additional air but will not generate any additional noise

The TrueQuiet 140 is a good pick for anyone who wants a quiet fan that can handle a system that is not overclocked.

The Verdict

Raise the max speed a notch and you have a true winner.

A Big Thanks to Antec for leting me review the TrueQuiet 120 and 140.

And as always, to my readers a big thank you.

Please leave a little note 

A little about Antec.
Antec, Inc. is the global leader in high-performance computer components and accessories for the gaming, PC upgrade and Do-It-Yourself markets. Founded in 1986, Antec is recognized as a pioneer in the industry and has maintained its position as a worldwide market leader and international provider of quiet, efficient and innovative products. Antec has also achieved great success in the distribution channel, meeting the demands of quality-conscious system builders, VARs and integrators.
This info was taken from http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/?page=info

HIGH CURRENT PRO 850W

Features

• 850 watts of Continuous Power
• 80 PLUS™ Gold certified - up to 92% efficient
• NVIDIA® SLI®-Ready certified, ATI CrossFireX™ certified
• High Current Hybrid Cable Management utilizes a 10-pin modular connector system
• Special heavy-gauge 16 AWG High Current cable for CPU connectors boosts conductivity, increasing efficiency and improving power delivery
• 2 x 8-pin CPU connectors included for dual-CPU gaming, server applications and high-end motherboards
• Gold-plated high-current terminals for optimal conductivity
• 135 mm double ball bearing PWM fan for optimal and quiet cooling
• Four fully-protected High Current +12V rails ensure high-end CPU and graphics cards compatibility
• Up to 99% power available on +12V rails
• DC-to-DC voltage regulator modules ensure stability and higher efficiency
• Highest quality Japanese brand capacitors for long-term reliability
• Double-layer PCB allows for heavy-duty components
• ATX12V version 2.3 and EPS12V version 2.92 compliant
• Full suite of industrial grade protection: – Over current protection (OCP) – Over voltage protection (OVP) – Short circuit protection (SCP) – Over power protection (OPP) – Over temperature protection (OTP)
• All cables braided and wrapped for better airflow and neatness
• Universal Input works on any 100V – 240V grid
• Active PFC with PF: 0.99
• MTBF: 100,000 hours
• Meets ErP Lot 6: requirement: 5Vsb < 1W
• AQ5 Antec Quality 5 year limited warranty on parts and labor
• Safety: cUL, TÜV, CE, CB, FCC, C-TICK, CCC, BSMI, Gost-R
• Unit Dimensions
  - 86 mm (H) x 150 mm (W) x 180 mm (D)
  - 3,4″ (H) x 5,9″ (W) x 7,1″ (D)
• Package Dimensions
  - 290 mm (H) x 240 mm (W) x 120 mm (D)
  - 4,7″ (H) x 9,4″ (W) x 11,4″ (D)
• Weight
  - Net : 2,5 kg / 5,5 lbs
  - Gross : 3,9 kg / 8,5 lbsSource for this info http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=MjcyNQ==

   

  The box
  Antec sent the HCP-850 box well packed and protected for any damage during the shipment, and the box it self speaks for Quality.

  Next follows a couple of images for the HCP-850 BOX
  

      

  

  Lets continue and se what’s inside the box.
  
  Everything is nicely packed.

  

  In one of the bags we find all the modular cables you may need.

  
  

  The HCP-850 PSU is placed in a nice looking bag.

   

  I pulled out the HCP-850 from the bag.
  

  The HCP-850 comes with a dark blue color, and the first impression is quality at its finest.
  The fan included is a 135 mm double ball bearing PWM fan that looks to be a great fan.

  

  

  Spinning the HCP-850 around we can se the 10-pin modular connector system.

   

  Installation.
  The great thing about a modular PSU is that you only have the cables you need inside your case. This makes the cable management nice and the actual installation process easy.
  All the cables on the HCP-850 had good length and fit nice into my Fractal design Define XL.

  Since the Define XL has a separate chamber for the PSU with intake cutout with dust filter at the bottom, I mounted the HCP-850 with the fan facing down.
  By doing this I make sure that the PSU will get optimal cooling so the fan wont have to spin up to much even on the warmer seasons of the year.
  The installation took about 40 min with cable management, this includes the uninstalling of my old PSU.
  I must say though that the cables where a bit stiff to work with.

   

   

  Testing.
  
  Test setup
  Motherboard:Gigabyte x58a-ud3r rev.2
  Cpu: Intel i7 930 @ stock 2.8ghz
  Cpu cooler: noctua nh-u12p se
  Ram: 12gb Corsair vengeance DDR 3 1600mhz
  Graphic card: msi 560 ti twin frozr
  Hdd´s: System disk Kingston SSDnow v+100 128 gb,
  two 1tb samsung spinpoint f3 hdd.

  Sadly I don’t own any PSU testing hardware or software, so I can just give you my overall usage experience of the HCP-850.
  Now I work allot with music so A PSU will not get stressed, But I do also play some games and I have not once heard the HCP-850 fan ramp up.
  This PSU is dead quiet for anything I do and since I installed the HCP-850 my PC is close to silent.
  Now for any Studio PC THE HCP-850 is perfect since it offers all the power you will need and is the most quiet PSU I have used.

   

  PROS
  + pure quality PSU
  + Modular
  + dead quiet
  + Stable
  + SLI ready

  Cons
  - A bit high price
  - somewhat stiff cables

  Conclusion.
  Buying a PSU can be a pain, there are many manufacturers who claim SILENT performance but you will soon notice that this is never is the truth.
  One thing is certain, You nearly always get what you pay for.
  Antec brands the HIGH CURRENT Pro 850 with “Quiet computing”, and the price tag is roughly $ 175-190 but you really get what you pay for.
  The Antec HCP-850 is easy to install, its stable and most important lives up to the
  “Quiet computing” Antec states.

  If you want a quiet stable and well built PSU, Take my word on it…
  The Antec HIGH CURRENT PRO 850 is well worth the money.

  The verdict
  
  The price still is a bit to high for 5/5

• Thanks for reading

  and pleas leave post any thoughts.

I’m back with a small review of the Energy Pack from Blue Cat audio.
the plugins included in this bundle is Digital Peak Meter Pro, Dynamics, MB-5 Dynamix,
MB-7 Mixer and Protector.

Lets have brief look at the plugins and some of the features.

Digital Peak Meter Pro

The Digital Peak Meter Pro is a audio analysis tool that comes in mono and stereo format,
with  flexible and customizable audio meters and side chain features that is possible thanks to its midi and automation Output.
the controls for Digital Peak Meter Pro are easy to understand and you get a very powerful analyses tool with features to combined the peak and RMS together, reversed, modified and recorded as automation curves .
With the Midi features in Digital Peak Meter Pro you can use it to create automation curves and real time side chain.

Dynamics

The Blue cat Dynamics plugin is a multi processing plugin with compressor, limiter, gate, expander features and comes in mono and stereo format.
Dynamics has advanced features and all the controls needed to shape your audio file,
With its CA/Opto and Peak/RMS controls you have full control of the envelope detection.
I always loved these kind of all in one pluggins since I can control the audio file inside one plugin and that saves both time and CPU.
Working with the Dynamics is all about control, all from frequency-dependent compression, parallel compression, and side chaining can be done.
An additional brick wall limiter/clipper helps to protect the output for more control.
I did not notice any unwanted coloring of the audio.

MB-5 Dynamix

The Blue cat MB-5 Dynamix is a multiband dynamics processor that comes in mono and stereo format, and that can be used as multiband compressor, limiter, gate, expander, waveshaper or why not all at once.
With and integrated EQ curve
Once more we get all the goodies inside one plugin, and with great results.
Blue Cat Dynamix gives us control, great processing and no unwanted coloring of the audio. and to top that of an additional brick wall limiter/clipper helps to protect the output and gives even more control.

MB-7 Mixer

The Blue cat MB-7 Mixer is not your everyday multiband compressor, yet many of its features may look that way,  Blue cat calls it a “unique plug-in that splits the signal into several frequency bands and lets you mix them as if they were separate tracks”.

The MB-7 Mixer that comes in mono and stereo format, and gives a new flavor to how you can control bands and EQ Curves.
Not only that! the MB-7 Mixer also comes in a so called Dual format witch basically lets you control EQ and frequency for Left and right separately, a strong fun and great feature.

Protector

Blue Cat’s Protector is a 0dB stereo brickwall limiter, and with a true Bite in it and offers a powerful side chain capability thanks to its MIDI CC output.

Impression and Conclusion
The Energy pack bundle from Blue cat is a nice Plugin suite, that offers some extra features for people who want control and great sound for a descent price.
The default GUI is not not the greatest but it has all you need and the metering inside the plugins is nice and clear.
Even though the default GUI is not the best a Cool feature with Blue cat plugins is that you can swap skins.
Looking at the price Blue cat Energy pack is set at 229 EUR and that is what you below what you would normally pay for a suite like this.
You know I always hunger for presets and Blue cat did not meet up to what I normally want to se even at a price of 229 EUR, however one thing that I liked about the Blue cat plugins is that Blue cat offers tutorials on http://www.bluecataudio.com/Tutorials/Home/.
This gives new users a good ground to start from and with no additional price and is good for the total value of the bundle.
Another good thing is that these plugins does not ad any unwanted coloring or distortions of the audio files.
The downside is that the controls is somewhat sensitive, so you have to be steady on the hand when adjusting settings.
A additional strength with the Blue Cat plugins is the advanced MIDI and automation output capabilities.

Pros
+ No coloring of the audio.
+ strong side chain features.
+ Great sounding plugins.
+ good value.
+ skins.
+ free tutorials.

Cons
- not the greatest default GUI.
- sensitive controls.
- Lack of presets.

The verdict

Thank you for tuning in and thanks to Blue Cat audio for letting me review the Energy pack.

Before we start I want to say that roots comes in two versions, ROOTS Sticks and ROOTS Brushes, Rods & Mallets.
They can be bought separate or as a bundle, For more information on prices please visit.  http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?

A little about Toontrack,

Toontrack Music was originally started as a production company for composing game and movie soundtracks.
In 1999 producers Fredrik Thordendal of Meshuggah and Mattias Eklund of Toontrack Music decided to design a sample library for their own use.
They called Tomas Haake drummer of Heavy Metal band Meshuggah to record the drum samples. The library was called Drumkit From Hell.

Toontrack really made a revolution back then and what they did With the original DFH changed the way drum samples sounded forever.

Roots SDX
The Roots SDX was recorded in the legendary Blackbird Studio’s, with musician
Roy “Futureman” Wooten as engineer.
Using  external PRE-AMPS such as Shadow Hills Gamma,
Microphones such as NEUMANN U47, RCA 44, ELAM 201 and many more to give us users a great sounding library.

For more details on the ROOTS SDX please visit.
http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=115
http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=116

Installation

Installing All 10 DVD of both Toots Sticks and ROOTS Brushes, Rods & Mallets take time so prepare with a cup of coffee or a soda and just wait for the installations to complete.
After the installation is completed the normal activation is done and then we are read to go.

First impression

The basic kit layout.

Sticks
I started testing out ROOTS sticks and I could tell from the start that there is some heavy classic equipment behind these library.
The mixer showed that there is more then one routing through the mixer and as always you get full bleed control for the channels inside Superior Drummer 2
The sound is classic but with some tweaking I could get a fresh new sound.
I started testing all the kits and being a rocker I have to say the Gretsch kit is SWEET,
but all in all the sounds are very nice and versatile giving you variety for your music.

Now I have a couple of sound files that you can listen to.
These are all from the Stick library and uses the MIDI files for ROOTS that is available after you register your copy of ROOTS.

Default Kit: http://snd.sc/tmpy6p

Gretsch Kit: http://snd.sc/uStcep

Ludwig Kit: http://snd.sc/uIDcAW

Ludwig damped Kit: http://snd.sc/vLkZS7

Brushes, Rods & Mallets
The Brushes, Rods & Mallets library does in some ways sound even more CLASSIC, and it is by far the best sounding Brushes kits I have heard.
The mixer is does also here give routing through the mixer and as always you get full bleed control for the channels inside Superior Drummer 2
I got that jazz bar funk feeling and I with some cool effects it can make new cool sounds.
The Brushes, Rods & Mallets fits everyone who loves these kind of drums.

Now I have again a couple of sound files that you can listen to.
These are all The Brushes, Rods & Mallets library and uses the MIDI files for ROOTS.

Brushes: http://snd.sc/uGpIua

Mallets: http://snd.sc/rFOLq3

Rods: http://snd.sc/sA8nqu

Conclusion
Toontrack has done it again, Being able to deliver something that does not feel the same as everything else is how Toontrack manages to make the best expansions out there.
ROOTS brings the sound, feeling and the Soul from the great legendary Blackbird Studio’s to your computer.
If you are into Jazz, funk, Blues, classic rock Or modern pop and like to have a old classic drum sound with a heart, Roots is most certain for you.
The only downside I found with ROOTS was that the Toms missed something, I had high tuned Toms and low tuned Toms but I missed at least one that could fit in the middle.
The ROOTS SDX is very versatile so you cant go wrong unless your into metal or hard rock, then I believe that Toontrack The Metal Foundry is the SDX library you.

I will not be doing Pro and cons for Expansion since its ether you like it or you don’t.
If you believe ROOTS is for you go visit your local music store, ask them to demo it live for you.

The verdict

I want to thank Toontrack for letting me review the 2 new ROOTS SDX.

And to my readers.

THANKS!!

From the company Toontrack i bring you.

First of a little about Toontrack,

Toontrack Music was originally started as a production company for composing game and movie soundtracks.
In 1999 producers Fredrik Thordendal of Meshuggah and Mattias Eklund of Toontrack Music decided to design a sample library for their own use.
They called Tomas Haake drummer of Heavy Metal band Meshuggah to record the drum samples. The library was called Drumkit From Hell.

Toontrack really made a revolution back then and what they did With the original DFH changed the way drum samples sounded forever.

Superior drummer 2

Every once in a while you find that something that blows your mind, that Tool you always wished for.
For me Drum sounds was a pain in the “BIP” to find, and when I found something good the price was way over a normal rockers budget.
And then there was always something missing,  always something I did not like.
The kick was good but the snare sounded crap and so on.
Well this was my life until Toontrack released Superior drummer 2.0
The next generation of the Toontrack Superior series was not just a minor change to the GUI or even more samples to make realism.
Superior Drummer was a HUGE change!
The GUI was not only upgraded it was completely reworked, and the future list was above every DAW users wildest dreams.
The gray and blue pad look was still hidden there if you wanted it, but the new GUI was to sweet to ever  look back at the old look.

Superior Drummer 2 just was from the first time i started the plugin, A MIND BLOWER!

Installation
Installing Superior Drummer is easy and you get a couple of choices on what and how you want to install S2, like less HDD demanding features.
to get a full view of what’s included in Superior Drummer 2.0 visit Toontrack´s page,
https://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=30

A first look

The first thing you will se when you load Superior Drummer 2 is a Drum kit with all the parts loaded just like you where at a real drum kit.
You will also see the mixer setting for the highlighted drum, a envelope section for the highlighted drum and much more.

On the top you will find presets for the loaded library and these presets are a really good start point if you´r not good at tweaking sounds.
Each drum has controls for Envelopes, Pitch, Articulation, Humanize and microphones.
You can also tell S2 how it should act on velocity.
Toontrack also looked at ways to clear up Ram for you.
There is a 16bit mode and Cached mode (load on demand), but you also have a Bounce feature that I will show you later.

Changing drums is done within the drum view.
By clicking on the small arrows on the drums you will find a variety of brands for that drum.
Introduced in the update 2.3.0 is a feature called Preview page.

Click the mini arrow on one of the drums,
Then click on Preview

The new Preview page will then pop up so you can listen to the sound before loading it.

Now I want to mention that if you expand your Superior libraries,
you will soon get into the X-drum feature.
It is the only way to load a drum piece from any other SDX library, and is tricky to get into and is a bit time demanding and I wish Toontrack looked at a easier way to do this.

The Mixer

Toontrack has aimed at a mixer that looks allot like a DAW mixer.
Here you can send channels to busses or why not to a different output.
Not only can you do this. you can also add plugins to the channel strips, sadly you can only use the built in plugins that was crafted by Sonalksis for Toontrack.
It would have been great to se VST support.

The mixer is also the spot were all the bleed control is best managed.
Superior 2 is the only plugin that allows you to control the bleeds at the fullest.
Below is an image showing how the bleed control looks.

By ticking the small boxes you activate that bleed and then you can with the lever adjust the amount of bleed you want from that drum bleeding into the highlighted drum.
this kind of tweaking gives you 100% control over your drum sound.

The Groves tab.

The groves section is also new to the superior line and is a good start point for your drumbeats.

Now this feature is implemented one way or another in most common Drum plugins.
Toontrack is in some ways behind on this, I think they should look at adding a edit feature within Superior.
Now you get a great amount of different MIDI files specially made for Superior Drummer, but you have to drag the MIDI files to your host and then edit them.

Next i am going to show you something that is not new for Superior drummer 2
but is the biggest reason to why Superior drummer beats everything out there.

The bounce tab

Lets say you are very happy withy your drums, but you are running low on CPU power and/or RAM ..
Bounce the drums!!!

This is a outstanding idea!
You can convert all drums in superior to 24 bit audio files, load the audio file into your Song and then just disable superior to free up loads if ram and CPU.

Before we hit the conclusion.

Here is a small sound sample of Superior Drummer 2
http://soundcloud.com/jesper-studio/sup-2

pros

+ Nice GUI.
+ Superior samples and millions of ways to get “YOUR SOUND”.
+ Easy ways to take load of the ram in just 1-3 clicks.
+ THE BOUNCE
+ The price.
+ Great support
+ User forum.

- No reverb plugin.
- X-drum is a bit tricky.

Conclusion.

Superior drummer is the an amazing drum sampler and the the price is really great for what you get and the sound is just amazing.
To take full use of Superior Drummer 2 I recommend a full installation and that is 18 gig for the Avatar library, but if you want S2 on your portable pc as well there is less HDD space demanding installation features.
If you want to extend your library, you will have to have a good amount of HDD space.
Giving users not only 2 but 3 ways to free up on system recourses is fantastic, its up to the users how they want to work with Superior Drummer 2.
Superior Drummer 2 is the best of the best even though it is huge.
the only big issue I have with Superior Drummer 2 is the X-drum configuration that can be tiresome in some cases.

The Verdict.

Toontrack has succeeded with bringing the drums to the DAW at full, and is knocking XLN Audio Addictive drum down from Editors choice.

I want to thank Toontrack for letting me review Superior drummer 2.0

And to my readers.

THANKS!!

Introduction.

PreSonus was founded by Jim Odom in 1995, his goal was to build professional and affordable music production tools for musicians and audio engineers.

For more information about the history of PreSonus and for an in depth look at their products I recommend you visit their webpage www.presonus.com.

Two years ago PreSonus stepped into the world of DAW software with the launching of Studio One. I first came across Studio One when I was visiting the local music store and both me and the guys at the music store was impressed with what PreSonus had done with Studio One.
About 3 Weeks ago I was given the opportunity to work with PreSonus as they released the next generation of Studio One.

Today I will give you my review of Studio One professional 2, and I will go through some of the new features in Studio One as well as trying to show you the exceptional workflow of Studio One.
For a complete list of the different versions of Studio One and to see all the new features, what’s included and introduction videos visit the nice web page for Studio One version 2. http://studioone.presonus.com/.

Installation

I got the download version of Studio One Professional 2, the complete package is divided into 21 parts and it took me about 30 minutes to download and install everything including Melodyne essentials and Native instruments Komplete Elements.

Studio One Professional ships with 31 64-bit Native Effects, 4 instruments and a HUGE collection of instrument samples, sounds and loops. I also found that PreSonus has understood the need for presets since Studio One holds loads of presets and even complete channel strip settings. Not only that, but PreSonus have added some excellent third party sounds and instruments.

Looking at the content of Studio One I am very impressed at what’s included, especially since the price of Studio One Professional is set at as low as €383.45 making Studio One Professional the best value DAW software on the market.

To get a complete view of what’s included, follow the link below to the PreSonus web page.

http://studioone.presonus.com/what-is-included/

My Computer.
Motherboard: Gigabyte x58a-ud3r rev.2
Cpu: Intel i7 930 @ stock 2.8ghz
Cpu cooler: Noctua nh-u12p se
Ram: 12gb Corsair Dominator lately swapped to vengeance DDR 3 1600mhz
Graphic card: MSI 560 TI twin frozr
Hdd´s: System disk Kingston SSDnow v+100 128 gb,
and 2 Samsung spinpoint F3 1 TB each.
Interface: Focusrite Saffire LE that has broken inputs
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64bit.
I have not done any major tweaks and processor scheduling is set as Windows 7 default.
This is to test programs and plugins in a normal home pc environment.

Before I continue I want to say that all images in this review can be opened in full size so you can get a clear view of what I want to show you.

First impression

When Studio One starts up you will see a start page that looks like the image above.
From here you can create a new song, mastering project, or open an existing document such as midi files, PreSonus Capture™ Sessions, Steinberg Cubase Track Archives, Steinberg Sequel Projects, Kristal Audio Engine Projects, and Open TL Files. You can also find a list of recently created & opened files, songs, projects and you are also able to set up default artist information and setup your audio devices. On the right hand side, if the computer has an internet connection, you will receive news feeds from PreSonus and you will also find the demos and tutorials here if they are installed.

I want to start fresh so I click on New Song to start working with Studio One, as you can see there are a lot of different song templates to choose from, here I will choose to start an Empty Song.

Setting up Studio One is easy and one of many great features in Studio One is how PreSonus have looked at the key commands / Keyboard shortcuts in Studio One. For new users you will soon get into the default key commands and you can find them all in the help section of Studio One. For users coming from other DAW software, PreSonus have thought of you as well and have hooked up presets so that you can load the key commands from Cubase, Logic and Pro tools. If you don’t like these key commands you can customize them to your liking and you can also export them for backup.

Pages 123456

On the next page we take a look at working with MIDI in Studio One Professional 2

Getting started and Working with MIDI
For new people the great looking GUI is simple to understand and using the browser makes it so easy to get going in Studio One Professional. With the browser you have everything close at hand and you will get a hang of things quickly.

 
Most DAW Software can be a bit tricky and doesn’t always have the most effective way to add tracks and hook a virtual instrument to that track.

But not Studio One!
Click on the Instruments tab in the browser, choose the instrument you want and drag it out to the main window then you’re good to go

So after I loaded Studio One and created the new empty song I looked into the browser and found a bass guitar sound that I wanted to use. I added the bass sound by dragging the preset to the main window of Studio One, A new track is automatically created and the virtual Instrument Presence is loaded with the bass sound that I wanted to work with. After everything is loaded I open the MIDI edit window by clicking Edit below the browser, or you can also press F2.

The midi editor comes with a standard piano roll, but it also has a drum map editor that I will show you in a moment. Studio One contains all the common MIDI tools and functions so that you can easily adjust length of a note, velocity, sustain and many other midi controls.

At first the piano roll is attached to the lower section of the screen, but a new feature in Studio One Professional 2 is the ability to detach the window by clicking the arrow on the top right corner of the piano roll, I find this feature to be great, particularly if you have 2 or more display monitors connected to your computer.

A side note is that detach is also available for the mixer, audio editor and Melodyne.

As I mentioned before Studio One has a drum map editor, to show you how this works I am going make a drum track using Superior Drummer 2.

After looking around the web, the friendly users over at the PreSonus forum gave me a working drum map for Superior Drummer 2. This is a feature that you may recognize from Cubase and I believe Sonar has this as well.

All drum pieces get listed inside the edit window and it makes it easy to create a drum track for your song and to activate the right drum pieces at the correct time. Adjusting quantize value is simple, from inside the window and there is some cool swing quantize values that makes the drum feel more realistic. If you want to work with straight quantize but want to make the track sound more realistic afterword’s you can do that as well.

This feature is called humanizing, and adjusts the timing of midi notes to make it hit the drum or midi note with a small inaccurate timing making it sound more realistic.

Let me illustrate this feature with two pictures

Before humanize

After humanize

As you can see, the timing is adjusted with a small amount on the second picture.

I have to say that this feature is fantastic; it is the one thing that can be the major difference to the realism and feeling to your songs.

Now working with MIDI is not only making music.

I have an M-audio Oxygen 49, a keyboard with additional controllers I can use if the DAW software allows me to. PreSonus has made it extremely easy to set up these controllers to work with control elements inside Studio One.

Here is a small video showing how simple it is to assign one of the control knobs on my Oxygen 49 keyboard to control the Gain knob on the instrument plugin Presence.

I recommend you watch this video in full screen with high quality.

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On the next page we look at the working with audio in Studio One Professional 2

Working with Audio

Studio One has one of the most advanced audio engines on the market, and it gives you the control to adjust your audio files to perfection.

Let’s take a brief look at the recording workflow and some of the audio features.

Recording audio in Studio One is easy and straight forward, so new users should not have any problems understanding how to record an audio track in Studio One.

New in Studio One Professional 2 is a feature called Multitrack Comping.
Let’s say you are recording vocals for a section in a song, set start and end position for that section and activate loop mode.
As you record a new take is created for each loop, and when you are done you can pick the best parts from each take to get the section in your song perfect.

Just like MIDI, Studio One comes with excellent tools to record and edit Audio, it also comes with state of the art time stretch, transient’s detection, slicing, beat detecting and audio bend features.

Now I must admit I haven’t used these tools much in the past but since I started digging into the features of Studio One I have become amazed at what you can do with audio.

Adding the normal cut, move, automation fade and crossfade tools, you also get an excellent quantize feature that is one of the best I have seen.
Studio One professional 2 brings you everything that you will ever need to clean up and adjust your audio files just like the big studios.

And to top this off, Studio One comes with Melodyne Integration to enhance the audio tools and features to a new level.

This image shows some of the audio tools that you get in Studio One

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On the next page we will look at Melodyne

Melodyne Essential

Included in Studio One is Melodyne Essential

Melodyne essential is the smallest version in the Melodyne family from Celemony. It only offers you Melodyne’s main tool, bringing the basic editing of pitch and timing.

For more information about Celemony and Melodyne please visit their webpage. http://www.celemony.com/cms/

Impression and thoughts

PreSonus did an excellent choice when they implemented Melodyne Integration, Melodyne is one of the best and fun Pitch correction tools on the market.

This is how PreSonus explains the strength of the Melodyne integration.

Melodyne is widely accepted as the best pitch correction solution available
today. However, there are two major workflow killers that Studio One 2 solves:
Transferring audio into Melodyne can be slow, and editing in Melodyne is a oneway street where you must bounce audio out when finished editing. Returning to
previous edits involves a lot of file-management hassles.
In contrast, Studio One 2 integrates Melodyne directly into its workflow using
new, co-developed technology. Select an audio clip and choose Edit With
Melodyne, and your audio opens instantly in the Melodyne edit view, already
analyzed and ready to edit. While making edits, you will hear your audio in
context with the rest of the mix. When done editing, hit the Render button; new
audio is bounced, and Melodyne is removed, saving CPU resources. Need to
return to previous edits to make further changes? No problem: Click on the
Restore button, and Melodyne is back, right where you left it.

The integration of Melodyne changes things completely and thanks to the co-developed technology you now get this great tool always ready to help you fix that mistake you did on a vocal track or a instrument part.

Not only that, you can change notes on an audio track and create midi tracks from a audio track and this opens a new dimension for the users.

Let’s say you have a cool guitar intro that you want to add some effects to, create an instrument track with a synthesizer or some nice strings.
After that mark the guitar audio track and load Melodyne (Ctrl+m). Now set the Melodyne algorithm to melodic and let it do its magic.
After that just grab the audio track and drag it to the instrument track and you will have a MIDI track created with all the notes. You can then adjust velocities and midi note length and you will soon have added a dimension of effect to your once dry and somewhat boring guitar track. As you soon will learn Melodyne is not only a tool for Pitch correction and quantizing.
It is a utility for song writers to widen their songs, It is also a way to speed up the work and can give you inspiration to create music in a fun and effective way

Pages 123456

On the next page we look at Mastering In studio One Professional 2

Mastering in Studio One.

I must admit that I have never done any kind of Mastering in my 15 years of music creation.
But after some solid assistance from the friendly people over at PreSonus, I am able to show you how working with Songs and a Mastering project inside Studio One makes life so much easier for people who master their own CD´s.

To show you this I am going to load up the three demo projects that comes with Studio One.
But before that I have to let you know a most interesting fact I was told when it comes to having multiple Songs loaded at once within Studio One Professional 2.
“You can leave a bunch of songs open without using much CPU “

Let’s see why having Mastering within Studio One Professional is such a time saver.

This first image will show you the songs loaded inside of Studio One

I create a new project and I name it test, then in the browser I locate the folders for the three songs and drag each Studio One song file to the project.
Studio One will now automatically render each song to a wave file for you to work with.

Now let us say that you find that a guitar solo on one of the songs is way too low and sounds bad, you have to adjust the volume and EQ to correct it. If you were using any other DAW software like Cubase, then you would probably use Wavelab to master your CD with. Well then you would have to start up Cubase, adjust the guitar Solo and then re-render a new file and import it to Wavelab losing the crossfades you had done in your master project, so you would have to redo them as well.
In Studio One Professional 2 you don’t have to worry about this at all.

I borrowed the demo Da Guv’nah by Phat Hat to show you how Studio One handles this.
I just changed the EQ on one track and then re-saved the song, so a newer version then the one in the mastering project is created. Now when I return to the mastering project I notice that the Guv’nah track has a red indication on the track.

Studio One automatically detects changes done to any song that is loaded in the project and reminds you that there is a change to the track. Now if I click the red indicator Studio One renders a new audio file but keeps the Crossfades intact for that song in the project.

Now that my friends is a real timesaver!!
One more thing I want to mention is that Studio One Professional comes with DDP Export.
This industry standard protocol is supported by all major CD replication plants and ensures an error free transfer and manufacturing of your CD´s

Pages 123456

On the next page its time for our conclusion.

Conclusion

It’s been nearly 3 weeks since I opened Studio One Professional 2 for the first time and I cannot say anything but wow, I mean W O W.

Not only do I love the GUI, workflow, utilities, plugins and instruments. It is easy to understand, with a fast learning curve, helpful community and is well documented.

PreSonus have done an outstanding job with Studio One Professional 2; it is a complete DAW at its finest and has given me back the joy of working with music. I have to be honest and say I even went as far as uninstalling Cubase 6!

I find myself smiling each time I start Studio One Professional 2 and for the first time in ages I feel inspired by the software to work with music.

The plugin bundle is probably also one of the best I have seen, you get all the plugins needed that is low on the computer resources but still have top sound quality. Filled with Presets and complete channel strip settings, Studio One Professional is awesome for both novice and professional users.

PreSonus have looked at the features people around the globe point out as the reasons they like THAT DAW, implemented it in Studio One and if you ask me made THAT thing better.

But I have to state that Studio One does not feel like any old DAW.

PreSonus’ approach to every aspect of a DAW is great. The software is complex beneath the surface and does everything a musician, songwriter and producer ever could ask for. However, due to the nature of how PreSonus have implemented features and still kept it easy to work with,

I see Studio One Professional as one of the best sounding, easy to use and powerful DAW software on the market.

PreSonus have taken the concept of DAW Software to a new level, bringing a complete package of tools, plugins, instruments and Sounds. It is the only DAW that comes with a complete integrated mastering suite, giving you everything you need to create, mix, and master your songs and cd´s.

Hands down there is no competition at this point, Studio One Professional 2 is by far the most affordable DAW software on the market. I actually don’t see any of the other DAW software being able to get close in the near feature.

If there is one thing I could ask more of in Studio One and that is the sampler Presence.
It does sound amazing and has a library that is outstanding but it does not have multiple instrument slots and outputs.

The ability to create your own sound by combining two or more sounds is completely left out here, and that is a feature that would make this complete package perfect.

Pros
+ Awesome looking GUI.
+ Easy to use.
+ Powerful.
+ Great plugin bundle.
+ Easy setup for MIDI controllers.
+ 20 gig of sounds and loops (if we include third party library´s).
+ Drag and Drop.
+ Loads and Loads of presets.
+ Complete channel strip presets.
+ Drum map editor.
+ Melodyne integration.
+ Complete mastering tools and features.
+ THE PRICE
+ Great customer support and friendly contacts.
+ Low on computer resources.

Cons
NONE!!!

The verdict

”PreSonus has taken the concept of DAW Software to a new level,
bringing a complete package of tools, plugins and Sounds and at an amazing price.”

A huge thanks to PreSonus for letting me do this review.

And to all my readers…

THANK YOU!! 

Pages 123456

About FabFilter

FabFilter Software Instruments was founded in 2002 by Frederik Slijkerman MSc and Floris Klinkert MSc, and is based in the center of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

In their roles as professional musicians and studio engineers, Floris Klinkert and Frederik Slijkerman have always loved the sound of old analog gear but also kept up with new software synthesis developments. However, none of the available software instruments met their high quality standards.

Many plug-in developers try to emulate old analog gear, or stuff their plug-ins with as many features and (often mediocre) effects as possible, diverting you from the real issue: the sound.

Both also being professional software engineers, Frederik Slijkerman and Floris Klinkert decided to do things differently and create the software instruments they dreamed of, resulting in the release of FabFilter One in early 2004, followed by FabFilter Volcano, Twin, Timeless, Simplon, Pro-C, Volcano 2, Twin 2, Timeless 2, Pro-Q, Micro, Pro-L and most recently FabFilter Pro-G.

To accomplish our goals, we have put a lot of effort into developing highly advanced filter techniques, superb digital oscillators, smart parameter interpolation methods and innovative user interface solutions. The highly optimized FabFilter plug-in design results in very little CPU requirements.

FabFilter strongly believes that musicians don’t just need more knobs, faders or options on plug-ins: they need better sound quality and usability. That is why FabFilter creates easy-to-use yet powerful plug-ins, with innovative interfaces and superb sound quality, for a reasonable price.

FabFilter will expand their range of plug-ins in the future, supporting both Mac OS X and Windows, providing the best possible sound quality and filter designs.
Source

The FabFilter Pro bundle

FabFilter pro bundle is a combination of FabFilter Pro-L, FabFilter Pro-C,
FabFilter Pro-Q, and FabFilter Pro-G.
the plugin comes in both mono and stereo version, however the VST 3 version can be used on both mono and stereo channels.

All plugins has 32 and 64bit support, with a nice GUI and smooth controls that is easy to understand.

FabFilter Pro Bundle is available in AU, VST, VST 3, RTAS and AS formats for Mac OS X and Windows.

I am going to test these plugins inside PreSonus Studio One Version 2, the project is a drum mix based on a bounce i have done with Toontrack Superior 2 and it gave me 18 audio tracks to work with.

Lets have a look at the plugins and in the end of the review i will have a sound file comparison for you to listen to.


 
On the next page we will look at the FabFilter Pro-Q

FabFilter Pro-Q

“FabFilter Pro-Q is an allround EQ plug-in for mixing and mastering, with up to 24 bands and a gorgeous interface for easy and precise editing.”

Pro-Q loaded on on the mono kick channel.

The first thing i notice with the FabFilter plugins is the great looking GUI,
It has the right colours and i got a sense of high quality.

The first button sets mono or Stereo mode, since i am using a mono plugin this button is dimmed out but the stereo plugin can set plugin to act as mono or stereo.
The second button sets behaviours for the highlighted band, You  can set the behaviour to Bell, Low shelf, Low cut, High shelf, High cut and Notch.
After that we se control knobs for Frequency, Gain and Q followed by the ability to bypass the highlighted band.
Next we can delete the highlighted band and last is arrows to jump between nods.
Midi learn is possible inside Pro-Q, this is a handy feature but i rarely use it. 

Pro-Q has 5 Processing modes, Zero Latency, Linear phase – low / medium / high and maximum latency.

Channel mode sets the plugin to left/right or mid/side, so you can set different EQ for left and right channel within the same plug-in.
You do this by right clicking the Band nod and then set it to ether Left/right or mid/side Depending the channel mode you set, This feature gives so many options to the EQ and is extremely useful.

Pro-Q also comes with a analyser function, giving you the ability to view graphs Pre-EQ,
Post EQ and Pre+Post EQ.
we have global bypass button and last output adjustments.

Another cool feature i found is the Headphone icon, during playback you can solo out that frequency so you can fine tune a EQ nod/band to perfection.

Conclusion

Pro-Q is a truly amazing EQ that raises the bar of how a EQ can work.
It has an outstanding GUI and the processing is done without any unwanted colouring
of the sound, it is easy to understand and has some interesting features.
With flexible controls, up to 24 bands within one plugin and not to forget the Channel mode that gives the user even more options i highly recommend you give Pro-Q a go.

The bad side of Pro-Q is that it did not come with many specific presets, giving the customer a start point increases the value of a plugin.
Not everyone knows the basics of EQ, and presets is not only a start point but it guides new people in how to think when applying EQ to a specific track.

On the next page we will look at the FabFilter Pro-C

FabFilter Pro-C
“Pro-C  is a professional compressor plug-in with versatile routing and side chain options, high quality sound and an innovative interface.”

This image show Pro-C on the same kick channel as before.

Pro-C follows Pro-Q when it comes to great looks, i love the GUI colours and the layout.
Browsing through the presets i found a drum preset i like ,so i had a good start point for the compression i wanted and i did not have to adjust the compressor much to get a good kick compression.
I notice that there is more presets in Pro-C then in Pro-Q and that’s nice.

Looking at the controles of Pro-C we find two buttons for Knee options (Soft,Hard).
Then follows Style selection (Opto, Classic or Clean), Input, Threshold, Ratio, Attack, Release, Output, Dry mix, Side chain.
Other options is Auto mode for Release and Gain, and you can also control the transparency of the different compressor curves. 

Side chain is nowadays common in the arts of mixing, and Pro-C comes with a
side chain feature that is of real high class.
Inside the side chain section you can set the input as detection signal or Ext to use an external signal to sidechain the plugin.
We also find frequency filter feature, and if the plugin is in stereo mode you get additional controls for panning.
Note that the plugin named Pro-C (mono/Stereo CS) needs to be loaded for Side chain to work since some hosts does not support side chain.

midi learn is also featured inside Pro-C.

Conclusion
Pro-C is a great looking, flexible and powerful compressor with a huge amount of control and adjustments, it does the job extremely well with low system resources and with no unwanted colouring or distortions.
The Side chain feature gives you a most excellent all in one compressor that can be used on anything with great results.
Pro-C processing is done without any unwanted colouring of the sound.
i am willing to say that Pro-C is one of the best and feature rich compressor plugins i have ever used used.

On the next page we will look at the FabFilter Pro-G

FabFilter Pro-G
“Pro-G is a professional gate / expander plug-in, with beautifully fine-tuned algorithms, highly flexible side-chain control and precise metering.”

Pro-G follows the rest of FabFilters plugins when it comes to great looks
I Keep working the kick as the main channel to show you and i now ad the Pro-G
to get some of the bleed from the other drums away from the wave file.

Pro-G have a decent amount of presets as well and i found a good preset
so i did not have to tweak the plugin to get the results i wanted.

The controls for Pro-G is Threshold, Ratio, Range, Style (Classic, Clean, Vocal, Guitar, Upward and Ducking), Attack, Hold, Knee, Release and look ahead.
In the Expert section we have options and controls for Side chaining.

Pro-G also have midi learn, Oversampling (off / x2/ x4), input and output adjustments.

Conclusion
Pro-G does an outstanding job and even though I’m working on a kick drum i can tell it filters out unwanted sounds and keeps the sound i want untouched,
I did not have a vocal track at the moment but i am confident that the Pro-G will do a most excellent job on anything you use it on.
Like the rest of FabFilter´s plugins Pro-G it is very friendly on the system resources.

On the next page we will look at the FabFilter Pro-L

FabFilter Pro-L
”FabFilter Pro-L is a feature-packed limiter plug-in for mastering and mixing, with multiple advanced limiting algorithms and precise metering.”

Pro-L does follows the great GUI of Fabfilters plugins and is very nice looking.

I load the stereo version of Pro-L on my master bus before i start working with the rest of the drums, and once again i found a preset i like.
I notice directly how well Pro-L processes the Master buss without adding any unwanted colours or weird sounds.

Looking at the controls of Pro-L we can se Gain, Style (Allround, Dynamic, Punchy and Transparent), We also find control knobs for Look ahead, Attack, Release and
Channel linking (Transients and Release).

Note that midi learn is also possible inside Pro-L.

You can also set Oversample (off, x2, x4,) we find a Dither option (16-24bit) and noise Shaping (none, Basic, Optimised and Weighted).

In the graphic window there are also different graphical adjustments.
last we find a global bypass option and output adjustments.

As with all the other FabFilter plugins Pro-L has midi learn.

Conclusion
Pro-L is a most impressive brickwall Limiter that does an outstanding job without unwanted shaping or colouring of the sound .
It has a great GUI all controlls you need and is sueted for both mixing and mastering.
And Like the rest of FabFilter´s plugins Pro-L it is very friendly on the system resources.

On the next page we will round up the review.

Roundup
I went through the 18 channels of my little drum mix and used only FabFilter to process the different channels so i got the sound i wanted.
I loaded 36 FabFilter plugins in this project and the CPU usage was outstanding.

Here is the raw mix of the drums without any processing made.

 
If you can not se the soundcloud player click the link below.
http://soundcloud.com/jesper-studio/superior-raw

And here it is Processed with the use of the plugins in FabFilter Pro bundle

If you can not se the soundcloud player click the link below.
http://soundcloud.com/jesper-studio/with-effects-1

Pros
+ Low resources
+ Great sound
+Easy to use
+ lovely GUI

Cons
- lack of presets on Pro-Q
- Price is on the higher side.

Final words
The FabFilter Pro bundle is a awesome plugin package, with most tools you will need to get the sound you want.
Since The Pro bundle comes in AU, VST, VST 3, RTAS and AS formats it can be used in most host applications.
The Pro bundle is well suited for both mixing and mastering, and does the job without adding colours weird hissing or distortion to your audio files or song.
The lack of presets on Pro-Q might not be that bad, but i think that adding more presets would give new people in the world of music creation a idea of how to do things.
give the customer a bit more for the price they pay.
Speaking of the price, i feel that 539,00 $ is a bit high for a bundle like this.
But i have to say that the plugins are excellent  out and you get what you pay for.
At the end of the day plugins can sound good but eat the system resources,
and then they are of no use course you cant finish the song.
FabFilter on the other hand sounds outstanding and is friendly on the system,
making the plugins perfect for both the high-end system as well as the portable recording computers.

The Verdict

”i feel that 539,00 $ is a bit high for a bundle like this.”

I hope i have managed to give you a good idea of how the FabFilter Pro bundle works, and if you feel i missed something out pleas leave a comment and i will look into it.

Thank you for reading and hope to se you back again soon.

About Fxpansion
FXpansion has been one of the industry’s foremost independent music software developers since 1999. Headquartered in London, with a worldwide team of creative engineers and passionate musicians, the company has established a growing range of plug-ins and applications which consistently win press awards and inspire a large and devoted user base.
FXpansion’s mission is to push the boundaries of audio software. Its products introduce fresh ideas and new musical possibilities while providing intuitive, usable interfaces for creative people to harness technology for artistic expression.

Brief history: Founded in 1999, FXpansion’s first products included plugin format conversion utilities and DR-008, a powerful drum synthesis/sampling instrument years ahead of its 2001 release date. In 2003 it released BFD, a revolutionary acoustic drum sample instrument which brought studio-grade multi-channel drum mixing within the reach of everyday musicians & composers. GURU was the company’s next major release in 2005, a sampling drum machine and loop slicer with a fast and creative work-flow that spawned a slew of imitators.
BFD2, released in 2007, and its ever-increasing library of compatible expansion packs built on an already wildly successful platform, making it the most flexible and feature-packed software drum solution on the market. 2009 saw the release of FXpansion’s first full-scale synthesis product, DCAM: Synth Squad. In development for 6 years, its included instruments typify the ethos of the company: forward-thinking technology, cutting-edge sound quality and new sonic possibilities, alongside innovative user interface ideas to make sound design easier and more intuitive.
Source

BFD Heavy

FXpansion is proud to present BFD Heavy, a BFD2 and BFD Eco expansion pack containing a pair of immaculately recorded Yamaha birch drumkits, supplied with a set of presets perfect for heavy rock, metal and other styles that require powerful, weighty drums.

The Recording Custom is the kit that signalled Yamaha’s arrival as one of the dominant forces in the world of drumming. This all-time classic birch kit comprises 2 powerful kicks, played with felt and wood beaters, alongside 4 toms featuring superb attack and sustain, and played with sticks. The Birch Custom Absolute, meanwhile, is the culmination of Yamaha’s 25 years of experience in crafting birch shells. Offering a great alternative to maple, birch shells feature excellent mid and low end, with a sharp and vibrant attack. The 5 toms are played with sticks and mallets, while the kick is provided in wood and felt beater versions.

A bonus ‘lite’ Yamaha Jimmy Chamberlin signature snare is provided to complement the kits. This steel-shell snare is provided in 4 versions played with sticks and mallets, with the snare strainer on and off. Full-detail versions of this snare are available in the Yamaha Signature Snares vol.2 expansion pack.

BFD Heavy’s expressive articulations include rim shots and rim clicks on the Birch Custom Absolute toms, while the bonus snare kit-pieces feature half-edge samples for expressive programming and electronic drums positional sensing support. The recording sessions took place at Omega Studios in Maryland, USA, using premium mics and preamps by Neumann, ATI, Neve, API and Violet, amongst others. Recording conditions were identical to those for other Yamaha-based downloadable expansions and the BFD Jazz & Funk, Percussion, B.O.M.B. and JEX libraries. BFD Heavy is also designed to sound great with BFD2′s built-in sounds as well as with BFD-compatible libraries recorded in other locations.

What’s included
This download-only BFD v2.1 expansion pack includes the following kit-pieces:

Recording Custom 10″x10″ Power Tom
Recording Custom 10″x12″ Power Tom
Recording Custom 16″x16″ Floor Tom
Recording Custom 16″x18″ Floor Tom
Recording Custom 18″x22″ Kick Drum
Recording Custom 18″x24″ Kick Drum

Toms played with sticks, kicks played with felt and wood beaters.
Featuring Remo heads (Toms – Clear Pinstripe / Kick – Powerstroke 3)

Birch Custom Absolute 8″x8″ Tom
Birch Custom Absolute 9″x10″ Tom
Birch Custom Absolute 10″x12″ Tom
Birch Custom Absolute 14″x14″ Floor Tom
Birch Custom Absolute 16″x16″ Floor Tom
Birch Custom Absolute 18″x22″ Kick Drum

Toms played with sticks and mallets, kick played with felt and wood beaters.
Featuring Remo heads (Toms – Coated Ambassador / Kick – Renaissance Powerstroke 3)

Bonus snare in 4 versions:

Jimmy Chamberlin signature steel 5.5″x14″ Snare (Sticks, Strainer on)
Jimmy Chamberlin signature steel 5.5″x14″ Snare (Sticks, Strainer off)
Jimmy Chamberlin signature steel 5.5″x14″ Snare (Mallets, Strainer on)
Jimmy Chamberlin signature steel 5.5″x14″ Snare (Mallets, Strainer off)

Equipment used for the recordings
Kick In – Shure Beta 52 / API 3124 preamp
Kick Out – Neumann FET 47 / API 3124 preamp
Kick Resonant – Yamaha Sub Kick / Neve VR console channel preamp
Snare Top – Shure Beta 57A / API 3124 preamp
Snare Bottom – EV N/D457 / API 3124 preamp
Snare Side – Violet Design Flamingo Jr. / ATI 8MX2 preamp
Toms – Violet Design Globe / ATI 8MX2 preamp
Overhead – Matched pairs of Nuemann KM184s or Violet Design Black Knight mics / ATI 8MX2 preamps
Room – Violet Design Globe with protoype omni capsules / Focusrite Red preamps
Amb3 – Nevaton MC404 stereo mic placed in the center of the room / Metric Halo ULN2 preamps
Source

As usual Fxpansion has a nice page to listen to the kit pieces —-> KLICK

Impression and conclusion

Before i go i need to say that writing a big review on a expansion is hard this is why i made a mini review.

Making an expansion is probably a hard task?
It has to be new, it has to have a target group of users and not just be extra drums that you feel have kind of the same sound as the default drums did.
Toontrack has been very good at making this reality, i know that The metal foundry felt like a complete new drum sampler.

So how did Fxpansion do with BFD Heavy?
I have to say that Fxpansion did not let me down at all.
BFD Heavy stands out allot from the default kits in BFD2, There is a bit of bite in BFD HEAVY.
A specially the kicks and toms stands out from the default library, The kick drums do not sound as round as the default kicks do and you can much easier achieve a modern  new metal click sounding kick or a fat rock bite kick.
The toms i fell in love with, now i can achieve that more close to Toto sound i like.
I will not go for Pros and cons with an expansion if its not tied to the default set like with Superior drummer 2.
Its either you like or you don’t,
my impression of BFD Heavy is that Fxpansion gave us rock / metal people a nice ad to BFD2.
One thing to ad is that the issues i had with not all toms mapped in the default library keymaps was sorted with BFD Heavy, some of the presets uses all tom slots and that is an extra bonus point.

So if you have BFD2 and you are in to rock, blues or metal.
I would recommend that you grab the BFD Heavy expansion.

The virdict

I give BFD Heavy 4/5 since i feel that one of these kits should have been in the
default library to give the users a bit more choice.

Thanks for reading and i hope to se you back soon

I also want to Thank Fxpansion for hooking me up with BFD Heavy

About Fxpansion
FXpansion has been one of the industry’s foremost independent music software developers since 1999. Headquartered in London, with a worldwide team of creative engineers and passionate musicians, the company has established a growing range of plug-ins and applications which consistently win press awards and inspire a large and devoted user base.
FXpansion’s mission is to push the boundaries of audio software. Its products introduce fresh ideas and new musical possibilities while providing intuitive, usable interfaces for creative people to harness technology for artistic expression.

Brief history: Founded in 1999, FXpansion’s first products included plugin format conversion utilities and DR-008, a powerful drum synthesis/sampling instrument years ahead of its 2001 release date. In 2003 it released BFD, a revolutionary acoustic drum sample instrument which brought studio-grade multi-channel drum mixing within the reach of everyday musicians & composers. GURU was the company’s next major release in 2005, a sampling drum machine and loop slicer with a fast and creative work-flow that spawned a slew of imitators.
BFD2, released in 2007, and its ever-increasing library of compatible expansion packs built on an already wildly successful platform, making it the most flexible and feature-packed software drum solution on the market. 2009 saw the release of FXpansion’s first full-scale synthesis product, DCAM: Synth Squad. In development for 6 years, its included instruments typify the ethos of the company: forward-thinking technology, cutting-edge sound quality and new sonic possibilities, alongside innovative user interface ideas to make sound design easier and more intuitive.
Source

About BFD ECO

BFD Eco is a streamlined, fun and affordable software instrument for acoustic drums, based on the award-winning BFD2 engine. Supplied with a selection of the best BFD2 sounds, it can also be expanded with the wide range of FXpansion and 3rd-party add-ons.
BFD Eco’s versatile mixing and EQ/FX section allows sculpting of the kit and the lush ambience for any musical situation, with a multitude of genre-based presets to get you started. Meanwhile, the integrated Groove player delivers diverse, ready-made drum patterns full of flavour and realism.
Featuring an interface perfectly balanced between ease of use and flexibility, BFD Eco is provided as a standalone application and as a plugin for conveniently injecting realistic and powerful drums directly into your projects.

• Highlights of BFD ECO
• 5 kicks, 6 snares, 12 toms and 3 hihats
• 11 cymbals and selection of percussion
• 15 built-in effects including EQ, filtering, dynamics, drive, reverb and more
• Groove section with over 1500 patterns, by Groove Monkee, and advanced humanization
• Customizable keymaps and electronic drum support
• Built-in Stereo audio export
• Over 40 great-sounding presets
• Full plugin integration for your digital audio workstation
• Compatible with FXpansion and 3rd-party expansion libraries
• Upgrade path to BFD2

Installation.
BFD ECO was downloaded from the Fxpasion page, and was divided in 2 installers.
Installer 1 contains the Application and the plugin files. installer 2 contains the samples.
The first thing i notice is the size of BFD ECO, the 2 files together has a weight of 818MB.
Installation is quick and when you install the sound files you can set them to be installed where ever you want.

First impression
A neat feature with BFD ECO is that it comes just like the big brother BFD2 as both plugin and standalone.
activation is a breeze and starting up the standalone is done in a matter of seconds.
The GUI is a optamized version of BFD2, and this is mainly due to the lesser options given by BFD eco.
But all in all the main differences betwene BFD2 and BFD ECO is not to big its just different , and BFD ECO is easy to adapt to if you’ve been into any of the most common drum plugins.

The main window (Kit page)

As you can se, BFD ECO does not look allot like BFD2, but the clean main window does not mean less control.
I am actually impressed with the GUI of BFD ECO, and there is allot of nice features even though it has less controls in the main page the added static mixer is a great feature, this would not work in BFD2 due to the extension and functionality of the mixer page.

On the top left you se the buttons for the  three pages in BFD ECO.
The Kit page, The Channel page and the Groves page.
There is also two small buttons for some additional Program engine options and a support button.
On the right hand side you have three preset windows.
The top one is for complete preset, the bottom left is for kit presets and the right is for mixer presets,
Fxpansion continues to give allot of preset options and this is a very nice feature.

In the middle you see a big drum kit, and as in most drum samplers this has a main purpose to pre listen to the drum kit and pieces to hear what they sound like.
Below the drum kit you find the mixer, where you can easily control the volume, pan, and activate fx1 and fx2.
It is nice to have the Mixer like this,  you always have it close at hand.
On the lowest section of BFD ECO you find controls for bleed, tune, dynamics,
Human velocity and V2A (amp controls) for the specific drum piece. midi assignments, system usage a transporter section and tempo/Timing elements.

The Channel page

The Channel page is where additional Tweaking take place, you might have thought that BFD ECO would have had less control? well to be honest so did i.
But when you click around in the Channel page you realise it is all there in one way or the other.
This makes BFD ECO even of its size very easy to tweak for your own sound.
BFD ECO gives static EQ plugin for all busses and channels. and you can ad additional 2 FX per channel.
You also have on OH, one room two AUX and a master channel. 

The groves Page

The Grove page is probably the thing i did not like in BFD ECO, I’m sad to se that Fxpansion
decided to make it more or less a player with some small options.
The reason i feel like i do about the Grove section is that the Grove Section in BFD2 is the best there is around,
and it would have been great to se it in BFD ECO as well.
A nice thing though is the ability to export a complete groove sequences to an audio file directly from BFD ECO.

As usual here is a small sound demo –> Click

Pros
+++GUI
++++Great starter plugin
+++++ The price, (Its at the moment sold for only 29$)
++ the size.
+ the sound

Cons
— the groove section

Conclusion
BFD ECO gave me a mixed feeling.
The idea and sounds good at the size BFD ECO comes in.
If Fxpansion had given each kit piece and the room / OH a little bit more samples the sound would not feel so static as it does when you do more speedy beats.
But at this size and price I’m very happy with what BFD ECO does and sounds.
So who is BFD ECO for?
Well BFD ECO does its job very well and with the current price i recommend everybody to get it.
For 29$ it is well worth it and it does give some more sounds to your collection.
And if you have two computers (stationary and laptop), then this is great for your laptop.
For songwriters on the road,or a band who just need a quick recording done its a great little toy.
But don’t expect the high end sound you will get in BFD2.

The Verdict

“BFD ECO is a good starter plugin.

Thank you Fxpansion for giving me the chance to review BFD ECO.

And to all my readers.
THANK YOU!!!

Hope to se you back soon.

About Fxpansion
FXpansion has been one of the industry’s foremost independent music software developers since 1999. Headquartered in London, with a worldwide team of creative engineers and passionate musicians, the company has established a growing range of plug-ins and applications which consistently win press awards and inspire a large and devoted user base.
FXpansion’s mission is to push the boundaries of audio software. Its products introduce fresh ideas and new musical possibilities while providing intuitive, usable interfaces for creative people to harness technology for artistic expression.

Brief history: Founded in 1999, FXpansion’s first products included plugin format conversion utilities and DR-008, a powerful drum synthesis/sampling instrument years ahead of its 2001 release date. In 2003 it released BFD, a revolutionary acoustic drum sample instrument which brought studio-grade multi-channel drum mixing within the reach of everyday musicians & composers. GURU was the company’s next major release in 2005, a sampling drum machine and loop slicer with a fast and creative work-flow that spawned a slew of imitators.
BFD2, released in 2007, and its ever-increasing library of compatible expansion packs built on an already wildly successful platform, making it the most flexible and feature-packed software drum solution on the market. 2009 saw the release of FXpansion’s first full-scale synthesis product, DCAM: Synth Squad. In development for 6 years, its included instruments typify the ethos of the company: forward-thinking technology, cutting-edge sound quality and new sonic possibilities, alongside innovative user interface ideas to make sound design easier and more intuitive.
Source

About BFD 2.0

Customized 10, 18 or 32 piece kits are at your fingertips, with full control over tuning, damping, ambience levels, velocity response and more. Layer parts of the kit for powerful hybrid sounds perfect for modern productions and flick through preset kit-piece profiles for quick access to dry, damped and other useful settings. BFD2 lets you configure your sounds like a real drum kit instead of pushing buttons on a sampler.
You can even import your own stereo sample-sets with multiple velocity layers so you can mix and layer your own sounds with BFD2′s for experimental kits and ‘drum-replacement’ production tricks.

Normally i would now tell you about all the drums included in BFD 2.0,
but Fxpansion has a very nice page for this so get over to it and listen.   click to se the Kit pieces

Lets get going…

The BFD package

Inside the box i found 5 dvd´s, this is a huge sample library, lets se what it can do.

Installing BFD does take some time, even when installed to a Velociraptor dedicated for samples.
After some updating of sound files and the program, i had BFD 2.0 running as 64bit vst.

First impression.
The GUI of BFD 2.0 seamed to have allot of tweaking potentials, That will in most cases be a good thing,
it all depends on how the tweaking behaves and how easy it is to understand what all things does.
With a plugin like this i really do recommend reading the manual.
All in all the first impression of BFD 2.0  was good.

The Main / kit window.

The BFD 2.0 GUI is divided in pages, and the pages is divided in sections.
On the top you will find a static section selector that will take you to the main / kit page, mixer page, Grooves page , key map / automation page and last is the Preference page.
On the top right you have another static part with  load and save options and a gain knob.
A common feature with drum plugins nowadays is that there is a complete drum kit showing where you can
pre-listen the different kit pieces  by clicking them and it will show what slot its loaded in.
This feature is also included in BFD 2.0, but there is a big difference to how this section works,
The kit image changes and expands the drum view if you click the 18 or 32 tick boxes on the left.

The lower section have slots for each individual drum, Alt click a slot also lets you hear that piece.
You can do some minor tweaking here for pan and volume, you can also use quick swap arrows to brows pieces for that slot and you can double click to get a window showing all pieces for that slot.
These slots will also increase if you chenge the sice from 10, to 18 or 32 kit pieces.

On the left side there is a small pane that holds a link tool for linking kit pieces, Note learn for applying midi notes to pieces. A clear kit option and a move tool so you can move pieces around.
As i mentioned before you can here expand the kit (default is 10 slots) to 18 and 32 slots.
Midi selection shows the kit piece that you are trigging with a midi note and info will show extra info
like memory usage of the loaded kit piece.

The right side is divided in 3 parts.
On the top you will have more tweaking options for the selected kit piece.
A nice feature is presets for some elements on that kit piece this is a very sweet thing to toy with.
Here you can also control volume, panning how much you want the kit to be sent to the room ambient and overhead channels.
Below that you will find knobs for damping, tuning and dynamics control,
I have to say that this is very easy to understand and a cool approach to the tweaking of the drums.
You can easily tell BFD if you want a kit to bleed to kick or snare.
Below that you also find tweaking of the articulation and velocity.
and the lowest part is level control of the microphones.

The mixer page

Fxpansion has approached the mixer window in a real world mixer way.
There is bus channels, inserts and sends for each channel.
The mixer also contains 21 high quality plugins, all from eq, compressors to distortion and reverbs.
They all sound really Really good and i don’t think there will never ever be a need to buss each channel
out to separate tracks in the sequencer.
Not only that.. they are very easy on the cpu.
For me who loves Presets, BFD comes with presets for allot of different ellements in the Plugin ,
This part is something i  feel is a bitt week in many plugins and sequencers.

The key map / automation page

They Key map window seams to be a god idea, however i found it very hard to use and iv been trying
to get it to work as i like but i always end up with using the default settings.
Sadly if Fxpansion did very good with presets throughout BFD 2.0 i feel this was left unfinished.
I do believe i will get it to work but i feel the concept is fuzzy or even a bit to hard for regular users,
musicians and songwriters to get a full featured drum kit set it up in a proper way.
I tried loading a GM key map that was included and it did not fit to the GM Drum map in Cubase 6,
the default key map only holds 3 toms, yet there is at least 2 kits that can load 4 toms!!
I am a big fan of Toto just listen to the Tambu album and you will hear some amazing drum mixes.
Using toms to gain more strength in the Beat and flow of the song can do sweet differences,
so i wish Fxpansion would have made a key map or 2 that uses all tom slots and double kick.
Remember not everybody is a Drummer.

The beat page

The beat page on the other hand is flawless, i fell in love with it at the first minute.
And even though i complained about the key map features in BFD 2.0, the beat section is so great
that issues with Cubase drum maps can be overlooked when you start using the BFD beat editor instead.

You can actually do everything inside of BFD 2.0!!!!
Load a kit, Adjust the drums do some tweaks in the mixer to get the sound you want
and then go into the beat page and start making beats.
When you have a beat ready drag it out to your sequencer and start recording,
or make the complete drum track inside of BFD and sync BFD 2.0 it with your sequencer.
Or you can drag the complete drum track into your sequencer and Walla.. your ready.
If that’s not enough, you can actually assign beats to the keyboard as well .

And if this still isn’t enough..
Another feature most common drum samplers / plugins has is included drum beats.
and BFD 2.0 has that as well.

Premade Beats window.

Another thin i usual i do is to make a small sound sample for you using the included midi.
I did two this time 1 with only drums and one with some guitar and base guitar.
Remember this is just with minor tweaks and a some mixing compression on the master channel in Cubase.
BFD sound test and with instruments Rock test

The last page includes allot of settings for the BFD engine.
I am not going to write much about it since BFD runs stable direct out of the box as 64bit vst.

Pros
+++++ Sound quality is the best i have heard.
+++ Good and feature rich GUI
++++ Drum library has sound for all music styles.
++++ The mixer.
+++++ The built in plugins.
++++ Low cpu demands for this kind of plugin.
+++++ The drum Beat editor.
+++ Up to 32 kit pieces.
++++ Presets
++++ Has a standalone mode.

Cons
— The size ( if that really matters, like on portable computers)
— The key mapping… No true GM support and no 18 piece key map.
— I have to point it out again. only 3 toms in default key map.
— Long learning curve.
— Would have been nice to have seen a bit more percussion sounds with the library

Conclusion
So after a few weeks of using the BFD 2.0 i am very pleased with it.
BFD 2.0 brings a Killer sound library for nearly every music style… if not all!
The GUI  has everything close at hand but it has a bit of a learning curve,
once you get a hang of it BFD 2.0 is very nice to work with.
The sound you get from BFD 2.0 is state of the art and you cant go wrong with it.
It amazes me that i can get so many different sounds out of this monster.
The downside of this plugin and the main reason that Addictive drums is my recommended drum plugin is the huge size f BFD, its not suited for portable situations.
But all in all I’m very happy to have the BFD 2.0 and I’m looking forward to se what Fxpansion will change in BFD 3.0.
If Fxpansion can somehow squeeze the size and still deliver this sound quality, make the Key mapping a bit more user friendly i am sure that BFD 3.0 will be very hard to beat.
So if you have the space (hdd´s aren’t that expensive nowadays) and want the ability to tweak the drums to oblivion, and want to tweak the drums getting the sound you want? then i do recommend BFD 2.0
If you are in a portable situation or you have very little space at hand  you probably should look at Fxpansion´s BFD Eco that i soon will review here on Dawfreak or Addictive drums .
Me.. I’m going to look into my wallet for BFD Heavy

The verdict

”The downside of this plugin and the main reason that Addictive drums is my
recommended drum plugin is the huge size f BFD, its not suited for portable situations.”
But all in all BFD 2.0 is a Killer drum plugin.

Again thank you Fxpansion for giving me the chance to review this nice plugin.

And to all my readers.
THANK YOU!!!

First of a little info about the concept and ideas of Fractal design

THE CONCEPT OF FRACTAL DESIGN

The concept of Fractal Design is to provide products with an extraordinary design level, without compromising the important factors of quality, functionality and pricing. The computer of today has come to play a central role in most people’s home, creating a demand for appealing design of the computer itself and its accessories. Our main product areas are computer enclosures, power supplies and related accessories

DESIGNED AND ENGINEERED IN SWEDEN

All Fractal Design products have been thoroughly designed, tested and specified in our Swedish head quarter. The well known ideas of Scandinavian design can be found through all of our products; a minimalistic but yet striking design – less is more.

VISIONS AND GOALS

Our vision is to have a constant, healthy growth together with our partners worldwide. Our goal is to be widely recognized for our designed products and to have them available in all major market regions within EU and US and Asia. We should be a good alternative to the already established retail brands of today. It’s of great importance for us that our partners understand the values of Fractal Design, therefore we are putting great effort into choosing the right partners from the start. We will work actively to maintain sales territories and profitable business for our partners.

THE WAY TO REACH OUR GOALS

In the competitive market of today, it’s not enough to just provide excellent products. Regular and well planned marketing activities in close cooperation with the channel and the available media, are key points to succeed. We are well experienced in marketing brands in the IT business, and we will use this to create efficient marketing tools – to gain a bigger market share and good earning possibilities for our channel.
Source

The Define xl Case

Key features

• Stylish design
• Pre-fitted with noise absorbing material
• Configurable thermal chamber design
• Great cooling possibilities, 3x fans included (2x 140mm, 1x 180mm)
• 10x HDD slots
• Unique ModuVent™ design in side panelSpecifications
  • 4x 5,25″ bays, 1x 5,25″ to 3,5″ converter included
  • Mini-itx, micro ATX, ATX and E-ATX motherboards
  • 10x HDD trays. 4x HDD trays in the HDD cage in the main chamber. This HDD cage is removable and rotatable.(Space ~330mm with HDD Cage and without ~480mm) 6x HDD trays in the lower HDD chamber. These HDD cages are fixed.
  • A total of two 140mm fans and one 180mm fan included. Front 140mm fans are mounted with removable, washable filter. A fan controller is included, for mounting in one of the rear expansion slots.
  • Pre-fitted with dense noise absorbing material in both side panels.
  • ModuVent™ feature, allowing the user to choose between an optimal low noise level, having the cover mounted or optimal airflow by removing the cover and mounting a fan for intake.
  • Maximum PSU length: Supports PSU’s with a depth of maximum circa 180mm
  • Maximum Graphic Card length: Supports graphic card lengths up to 330mm when removable HDD-Bay is in place
  • Maximum CPU cooler height: Supports CPU coolers with height of 180mm
  • Expansion slots: 7+1
  • On top of front panel: 4x USB 2.0, 1x eSATA and Audio I/O
  • Case size (WxHxD): 232x560x561.3mm
  • Net weight: 17.95kg
    Cooling system
    • 2x 140mm fans (one 140mm included, one optional) with removable and washable filters, in the front. Recommended for intake of air.
    • 1x 120mm fan optional with removable and washable filter, in the front. Recommended for intake of air.
    • 1x 180mm fan included in the top of the case. Recommended for exhaust of air.
    • 1x 140mm fan included in the rear of the case. Recommended for exhaust of air.
    • 1x 120/140mm fan optional in the side of the case. Recommended for intake of air.
      Source

First impressions
The box is huge and it´s heavy but i knew that so i was ready for some physical training .
at a first look on the case i fell in love, iv never been a fan of design and colours.
The first impression gave the feeling that this case was well thought through,
and every part of it looked felt and smelled quality!

i wanted to ad some pictures of the Define XL box and
what came inside the box so here it goes

A nice neat BIG box

All screws you will ever need, Fan controller and a front bracket.

Alright so after the case was unpacked i had to take a rest
This case is heavy but hey that does not mean a bad thing.
I opened the front door to se what was hidden behind it.

Need to apologize for bad image quality, still need a system cam

Hidden behind the 5.25” brackets is a easy to remove 120mm fan holder,
The brackets are also very easy to remove just pull a lever and they are out.
This is an excellent feature giving the option to get cool air
directly over the ram and CPU.

All intake fans have a nice dust filter.

on the lower section of the front there is a push door, revealing yet another
easy to remove fan holder for 2 x 140 mm fans with dust filters.
 

I took of the side panel to get a look inside this beast.

Lots of space, a black and white finish… awesome looks

Wanted to show you the 140mm back fan and the 180mm angled top fan.

The side panels have a thick sound damping material that is the main reason to the weight.
The left side panel also have an optional 120/140 mm fan slot.

Image not as clear as i wanted but here is the sound damping material used on the side panels.

Test setup
Motherboard:Gigabyte x58a-ud3r rev.2
Cpu: Intel i7 930 @ stock 2.8ghz
Cpu cooler: noctua nh-u12p se
Ram: 12gb Corsair Dominator lately swapped to vengeance DDR 3 1600mhz
Graphic card: msi 560 ti twin frozr
Hdd´s: System disk Kingston SSDnow v+100 128 gb,
Samples disk Western digital 300gb velociraptor,
Files Disk  1TB western digital caviar black.

Motherboard installed and i feel the audio cable for the front panel is a bit short.

Cable management on the back, allot of space so no force is needed  to get the right sidepanel back.

The complete setup.. a bit blurred image i really need a new camera.

Thoughts around the installation

The installation itself was very smooth, but i noticed some things that i wanted to point out.
The Cable position from factory was not really thought through, like the 180mm fan cable is coming out in the corner of the motherboard tray but the fan controller is if i understood everything right meant to be on the extra slot on the back of the case.. hmm then why not have the cable on the far left side instead?
Another thing, the plate between the lower chamber and the main chamber should have some way to attach the cables for better cable management in the main chamber.
Also i feel that the cables from the front panel was a bitt short, 5 more cm would have been lovely.

Testing the case cooling.

Alright so the system was setup, it is nearly the same as i had it in my Antec p183.
However I swapped out the Asus p6t se motherboard for a gigabyte x58a-ud3r rev.2
The memory slot´s whas closer to the CPU then on The P6t SE and that gave me issue´s with
my Dominator ram so i had to set the fan on my  Noctua nh-u12p se as pull.
Sadly i have already had bad luck with the heat sink on the Noctua nh-u12p se but a new is on the way.

Antec p183 temps with 4x Scythe gentle typhoon.
CPU idle, 50 load 72 with prime 95 (i will soon explain about the temps.)
motherboard peaked at 50c
The graphic card was when playing world of warcraft running at 56c (im no real gamer i make music).

Define XL with stock cooling + one 140mm 600 rpm Fractal design fan in the lower fan slot.
CPU idle, 48 load 69 with prime 95 (i will soon explain about the temps.)
motherboard peaked at 51c
and the graphic card was when playing World of warcraft running at 52c

Noise and cooling.
As i mentioned earlier the Antec had 4 Scythe gently typhoon that has a max speed of 1450rpm
And with a fan controller if i had them running at 1000rpm and it was very quiet.
But then my CPU temps would be to high when gaming or when loading a huge Cubase project so i never could have them running below 1250rpm.

The Fractal Design stock cooling is good but not as quiet as i hoped.
Compared to the p183 i could run the fans at half speed before i got the same temps on the CPU.
I do believe this has allot to do with the most excellent 1800mm fan on the top.
The 140mm fans still was a bit more noisy then the gentle typhoon even at half speed when used as exhaust.

For optimal cooling at low noise i swapped out the back 140mm fan for a gentle typhoon 1450rpm  and it made a  huge difference in both noise and cooling.
And since this is closer to the p183´s fan setup i must ad that the Sound damping material does make a huge difference, i have a hard time hearing my pc after changing the exhaust fan to a Gentle typhoon 1450rpm.
I must ad that the angled 180mm fan is so awesome i just connected it directly to the motherboard so it spins at max speed  and it is dead silent but i can feel the air it pushes out and that’s awesome!!

Some sidenotes
Using the Fractal design 140mm fan in the front with the fan controller to run them on the lowest speed does work great so you don’t have to swap them out completely to get a very quiet pc.
Adding a fan to the extra 120mm fan slot hidden in the 5.25” bay will give you more cooling and with the right fan like a 1450 rpm Gentle typhoon you will get no additional noise.
If you get a second fan controllers like a Fanmate 2 you will be able to adjust intake and exhaust separately, for optimal Airflow in your case and with you ambient temps.
A side not, if you plan to ad a Gentle typhoon you will however need to use washers to get some distance from the fan filter or the blades will hit the dust filter and you will have a very bad noise .

Pros
++++ Build quality
+++++ Sound damped
++++ Airflow
+++ The size
++++ Fan options
++++ Easy to remove and clean fan holders.
++++ Nearly tool free assembly
+++++ The angled 180mm fan
++++ The price

Cons
— 140mm fans a bit to loud specially when used as exhaust.
– Cables from the front panel a bit to short
- The fan controller is a good feature but 1 knob does not give any options for air pressure.
- – Fans mounted at the factory with the cables in the wrong way..
— No space behind the door so adding a fan controller with larger knobs is out of the question.

Conclusion
The Fractal design Define XL is at this moment one of the most excellent cases iv seen.
The case is robust, its well thought through and is the perfect start point for a cool and quiet DAW.
Sadly the 140mm fans does not seam to work well when pushing the air out through the small holes in the back. This could maybe be fixed by changing the hole shape and size on the exhaust why do they always have to be so small? Why not cut out bigger sections that follow the frame of the fans?
But in the end I only needed to swap one fan out to get a nearly dead silent pc now that is most impressive.
and since the 140mm fan that came with the Fractal Design Define XL is reused as an intake fan who cares .
The idea to send a fan controller with the case is absolutely great but a 1 knob fan controller does not cut it. Balance is everything if you want a quiet pc with accurate airflow, and i would have liked to se at least 2 knobs
for a better control of intake and exhaust air.
The idea of using a angle on the 180mm fan is outstanding, its silent and does a great job specially if using a tower CPU cooler like the Noctua nh-u12p.

All in all The Fractal design Define XL is outstanding, and the quality you get for the price of around
120,00 Euro tag is just outstanding.
There is not much to complain about even though there are some small things that could be changed,
and these small flaws you can easily get around without any hustle .
Fractal design Define XL is a most outstanding computer case, with great features it is standing up to the top high-end cases but with this price tag it is much more affordable.
a small side note i have to ad that the support at Fractal Design is extremely good and professional.

And a last little image of The cool look of the Define XL front panal.

The verdict.

Thank you for reading and i hope to se you back soon

Oh ye i nerly forgot..

A side note about the weird cpu temps!
I managed to get a rounded base on my Noctua nh-u12p se so the temps was not as they should.
Noctua has sent me a new cooler, which should arrive soon.
And i will get back on how the results are with that cooler inside the Define XL.
I am at the moment using a Antec kühler h2o 620 and the temps is  59c in prime.
But this Cooler has a small ticking from the pump not to annoying but it tend to get picked up by my studio microphone so I’m swapping back to Noctua nh-u12p se when it arrives and i am going to set it push/pull with low spinning fans.
And the Antec kühler h2o 620 will be in my friends overclocked gaming rig  

ABOUT KINGSTION.
Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s independent memory leader.
Founded in 1987 with a single product offering, Kingston® now offers more than 2,000 memory products that support nearly every device that uses memory, from computers, servers and printers to MP3 players, digital cameras and mobile phones. In 2010, the company’s sales reached $6.5 billion.
With global headquarters in Fountain Valley, California, Kingston employs more than 4,000 people worldwide. Regarded as one of the “Best Companies to Work for in America” by Fortune magazine, Kingston’s tenets of respect, loyalty, flexibility and integrity create an exemplary corporate culture. Kingston believes that investing in its people is essential, and each employee is a vital part of Kingston’s success.
Kingston serves an international network of distributors, resellers, retailers and OEM customers on six continents. The company also provides contract manufacturing and supply chain management services for semiconductor manufacturers and system OEMs.
Source

SSDNOW V+100 Features

• Innovative — uses MLC NAND flash memory components.
• Silent — runs silent and cool with no moving mechanical parts
• Shock-Proof — no moving mechanical parts so the SSD handles rougher conditions
• Supports TRIM¹ — Ensures maximum performance on compatible operating systems
• Supports S.M.A.R.T functions
• Garbage collection feature — ensures maximum performance on Operating Systems not supporting TRIM
• Guaranteed — three-year warranty, live 24/7 tech support

SSDNOW V+100 Specifications

• Form factor — 2.5″
• Interface — SATA 1.5Gb/s and 3.0Gb/s
• Capacities ² — 64 GB, 96 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB
• Dimensions — 69.85 x 100 x 9.5 mm
• Weight — 128 – 151 grams
• Storage temperatures — -40 ~ 85°C
• Operating temperatures — 0 ~ 70°C
• Vibration operating — 2.7G
• Vibration non-operating — 20G
• Sequential Read Throughput ³ — 230 MB/s
• Sequential Write Throughput ³ — 180 MB/s
• PCMARK® Vantage HDD Suite Score ⁴ — 64 GB – 35,046
  96 GB – 34,971
  128 GB – 35,073
  256 GB – 34,795
  512 GB – 34,697
• Power specs — Active – 3.4W (TYP)
  Idle – 0.05W
• MTBF — 1,000,000 Hrs

My system

Fractal Design XL
i7 930 (2.8)
Noctua NH-U12P SE2
Gigabyte ga x58a ud3r Rev2.0
Corsair vengeance DDR3 1600 cl9 (12gb)
msi 560 ti twin frozr
Western digital caviar black 1tb (Files disk)
Western digital velociraptor 300gb (Sound and project disk)
Kingston SSDNOW v+100 128GB (System disk)
Corsair 650w PSU

The SSDNOW v+100

Image taken from Kingston homepage.

Installation of the Kingston SSDnow v+100 is the same as any hdd,
but remember to get the full speed you should use the AHCI drivers.
The installation of windows only took amazingly 13 minutes.
And lets just say i don have the fastest dvd reader so this is just amazingly fast.
All in all setting up my system was fast it normally takes 4 hours now it was done in about 3 hours.
I know each install is different but windows 7 sp1 was done in 20 min, this is normally a 30 min setup.

A small test
So i am no big fan of Benchmark tests, since they only show numbers and not Real world behaviour.
But here is a crystalbench test i did.

These numbers are just amazing… right??
well I also did a more real-world test.
I Setup cubase 6 to auto start and boot up.
Cubase is set to load last project by default.
on my old Western digital caviar black 750gb it took 1min and 49seconds to completely restart my system and boot cubase with my test project.

Low quality vid showing WD caviar black vs Kingston SSDnowv+100 128 gb

Sorry for the bad video Quality.

On the SSD now v+100 it took an amazing 1 min and 26 seconds.
That is only 23sec faster, but loading more then one app wont make any
difference to the load times so the speed of a SSD really pays of.
And after using the SSDnow v+100 for about one week i am really amazed with the speed of this monster.
I can really feel my system being way faster and cubase is really loving the ssd speed.
SSD is the best u can get for your system drive, i am sure you will gain a serious boost.
There is many reasons to get an SSD for sure, but speed is the biggest!
You can have the fastest cpu, the fastest RAM or even the most awesome motherboard on earth if your system disk is slow you wont se all the difference.
So when planning a system you should really take SSD into consideration and maybe not get that super motherboard, or go for a 3.2ghz cpu instead of a 3.6ghz.
All in all you should balance things out, and a SSD is a boost to the system that is very nice and in most cases beats them extra 0.4 ghz on a cpu or even the 1 cas on a ram.
There is more then one reason to not take the highest cpu.
If you take a cpu at a lower ghz the temps will not be as high and you don’t need to push the fan at
max speed and that will make your cpu stay cool but your system will be less noisy.

Pros
+++ Speed
++++ no noise
+++ wont ad any temp to the system
++++ 10-20% system speed boost.
+++ The Kingston warranty

Cons
— The prices of ssd is really high
–  No one really knows the lifespan of a ssd

Conclusion
Ssd is the new system drive for sure.
The Kingston SSDnow v+100 is rated at 180,00 EURO and that is still a bit high.
But at the end of the day a fast system drive is well worth it!
Installing the ssd is no different then a normal hdd and your system gain in my opinion is 10-20% performance boost
If you can afford a ssd. go for it.. Cubase gains from it, surfing gains from it.. well everything gains something from the speed of a SSDnow v+100
I am well amazed with the Kingston SSDnow v+100 and i recommend it to
anyone who wants a SSD boost to their system.
As i said before the only downsides of a ssd is the price and since SSD still is a bit new, no one knows the real lifespan of SSD disks.
But no matter what SSD is a joy to have, specially when you do music, image editing and video editing.

So all in all i am going to give the SSDNOW v+100 128g

The only thing keeping the Kingston SSDnow v+100 from 5/5 is the price,
but i have to add no SSD would have gained more due to the high prices of ssd.

Thank you for reading my mini review of the SSDnow
Hope to se you back soon.

Its time for another review, and it’s a real treat.
From the Swedish company XlN Audio I give you…

First of I want to thank Xln audio for giving me the opportunity to wright this review.
So are you ready? Well then lets go.

About Xln audio

XLN Audio is a Swedish music software company located in Stockholm. Since the company was founded in 2004 by Niklas Möller and Lars Erlandsson, XLN Audios’s main goal has been to develop and produce market leading music creation tools for all levels of users.
By 2009 the XLN crew has grown to a team of 6 full time workers, all with a background in music production and creative work. XLN Audio’s main product is the award winning virtual instrument Addictive Drums. Addictive Drums is currently considered one of the leading tools for drum production.
(source xln audio Homepage)

A Little about Addictive drums
Addictive drums comes with 3 full kits, Sonor Designer / DW Collectors / Tama Starclassic.
There is also some extra Kit pieces included and you can also download a nice extra kick named Woofer wonderland.

Insert & Send Effects
Compressor / EQ / Distortion / Tape Saturation / Filter / Limiter / Reverb

100+ Presets
Clean / Distorted / Electronica / LoFi / PopRock / Rock / Soft / Vintage / Xperimental

3000+ MIDI Files
4/4 Straight & Swing / 3/4 Straight & Swing / 6/8 Straight & Swing /
Bundles (Blues, Jazz, Funk, etc) / Songs (Rock, Disco, Reggae, etc)

The Review
I don’t have the dvd installer, I got the download version from the xln audio web store
The installer comes as a zip file at a size of 1.09 gig, when extracted it has a size of 1.23 gig.
Wow only 1.23 you might think?
Superior drummer is nearly 20 gig.
But hey don’t let the size fool you,
as you will se size does not matter .

Since the downloaded version holds the latest update as well, Installing is a real breeze and you don’t need to update.
However Addictive drums does not have full 64 bit support at the moment.
For windows users with a 64bit Sequencer like me, there is a beta version of the 64bit VST plugin that you can find information on how to download and install Here .

Since I run Cubase 6 in 64 bit I decided to hide the 32bit plugin from cubase and just use the 64bit plugin.
It all was loaded fine and activation is done in 30 sec.
After that the plugin loads up and you are ready to make some beats.

Here is a the main window with individual drum slots.

The GUI in addictive drums is very well thought through, after just a couple of minutes you get a hang of it and are ready to start making drums.
As you can se the AD Gui is divided in 3 sections.
Top section holds on the left a roll down preset frame as well as speed dial arrows and on the right hand side you will find a play button as well as the buttons that will take you to the drum edit, the effects and the beat window.
The main section of the Gui will be where things actually change depending on what window you load.

In the drum kit window you can se 12 slots, one for each drum.
Addictive drums comes with slots for 1 kick, 1 snare 1 Hi hat, 3 Cymbals, 1 ride, 4 toms and an extras slot that holds a cowbell. and each window has drum piece selection and speed dial arrows for the specific drum.
Here I find one thing that I feel could be changed.
The extra slot can only hold specific drums so with addictive drums it can only hold the cowbell, I know that with adpacks you will get more into this slot but since I don’t have any adpacks yet I cant show you this.
I plan and hope I soon can get money to get the retro, funk and of course metal adpackbut that’s when my budget allows so I can review them for you as well.
But as I said this slot could be opened for the user to load any drum into, so if the user would like to have a additional kick, snare or tom he/she could load that into the extra slot to get even more out of Addictive drums.

In the lower section you will find the mixer, a basic yet all you need mixer that you also will se some small changes in depending on where in Addictive drums you are located.
You have one channel for each individual drum, and you also have channels for overhead, room, one buss and then you have the master channel.
You can run addictive drums as stereo track or as multi out, To get multi out just click the on each track.

The Edit window

A nice and easy edit window is essential for speeding up your production and addictive drums has a outstanding edit window with all tools you need.
It holds controls for each drum that you highlight, such as overhead and room control.
you can also tweak Specific controls like in this picture you can se Mics, A lever to move left and right to adjust the balance between the Beater and Front mic.

In the snare section this Lever is for top / button mics
and you also have buzz control that I really like.
It controls the amount of buzz you want bleeding to other drums.
This is very handy if you ask me,
course I don’t like to much noise on my kick

The edit window also holds the EQ, compressor, Pitch,
Distortion and saturation Plugin that you can use with each individual drum.
If the master channel is highlighted you will also find a Tape plugin.
On the far right you will find output volume and levers to adjust the two send effects.

The Fx window

The FX window is very simple to understand.
You have two very nice sounding reverb channels with separate control for reverb type,
timing adjustments and EQ.
Having two reverbs is really ideal for drums as you get a loot of tweak options and control.

When you are in the FX section the mixer gets a small change as well.
You get two levers to adjust the amount of fx you want for each drum. You can also add reverb to the overhead channel, the room channel, the buss channel and the master channel.
This whole fx/reverb section is something I missed in Toontrack superior drummer 2.0

The beat window

Beat windows are more common nowdays and Xln audio also scored top on this.
As you read in the beginning of this review there is over 3000 midi files to toy with.
Simply scroll the window or make a search and there is midi files that will cover most music styles.
If not there is more midi to get from Xln audio.
But Addictive drums comes with more then just plain beats. You can actually change speed and length before you grab the midi file and pull it to your sequencer and the adjustments will be copied into the created midi file in your sequencer. after you imported the midi you can adjust them for even more variation.
Not only that. you can use the filter to filter out stuff within the midi file and this feature is awesome =)
you will also find map presets. that is able to run Addictive drum as Native AD drum map, Gm drum map and you can also load V-drum maps as well.

Conclusion
With Superior Drummer and BFD against it I must say Addictive drums really stands out strong.
All in all I Addictive drums is an awesome drum plugin, and with the small size you start wondering what magic XLN audio put into Addictive drums.
AI said in the beginning of this review don’t let the size fool you!
I would actually turn around and say, this is by far the best you can get.
Since it is lightweight but really good sounding, and does not like the bigger Superior drummer 2.0 take hours just to get a descent sound and even more hours to get a pro sound.
I have not worked with BFD but I know it’s a 4-5 dvd installation which putts BFD around the size of Superior 2.0.
Addictive drums sounds awesome right out of the box, and with additional tweaking it will sound pro but wont take forever to get you the sound you want.
Addictive drums has everything, A great GUI that makes the tweaking not only easy but very fun.
And compared toontacks expansions for superior 2.0 any Adpack you get can be combined easily with what you already have.
Compared with Superior drummer 2.0 where you have to ad an X-drum and then go through a long process
with mapping and mic routing to get it to work.

Addictive drums comes with 2 reverbs on the Fx channel and that is is just awesome!!!
The other small things like Buzz and the very easy mic controls for mic balance
on kick and snare just makes me love this plugin.
The sound of Addictive drums is very nice and realistic, as I mentioned before
listen to some demos on Xln audio Demo page and you will understand what I’m talking about.
Janus by Morten, Collision with Plan Three, progressive jam by Dimitri Nalbantove
and Gaddictive by Henrik Hansson really sounds nice to me.

If you are in the market of getting a drum sampler for your music, look no where else.
Xln Audio addictive drums is the most bang for the buck.
and will fit most music styles and you don’t have to have the latest computer to be able to use it fully.

Pros and cons for Xln audio Addictive drums
+++ Gui
+++ Adpacks is a breeze to mix and match to build your own drum kit.
+++ System resources
++ the mixer
++ the price.
+++ Fast load times.
+++ Realistic and awesome sound.
++ v-drum support.

- No native 64bit for pc and mac, (only win vst 64bit beta at the moment but you have to do a extra
activation if you want to use both 32bit and 64bit)
- The extra slot can only load specific drums, I really wish that all drums could be loaded to this slot.

But these two things are minor and one is soon corrected and one can always hope for the other so for Dawfreak points its full out.

The Xln audio Addictive drums is a Great Drum Sampler.
but it lack some features that Toontrack Superior drummer have.

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you back soon for more Dawfreak reviews.

The Pro tools Mbox 3 mini package looks realy awsome, you get the feel that even though this is the smalest version of the MBOX 3 series it is quality.

Inside the box is a Installation guide, the MBOX 3 MINI , USB cable and the Installation DVDs.

The Mbox 3 mini front and back Panel.
(I Borrowed this image from http://www.jeejuh.com)

Specifications

One of the first thing i noticed when i picked up the Mbox 3 mini is how well built the unit is, steel cover and really sweet knobs gives a professional feeling to the Mbox 3 mini.
There is realy nothing to complain about here at all.

Installing the software took a while but it was not a to hard process even though i must say the installation guide was not much of a help .
After the installation is complete comes  the first to me fail,
updating anything from AVID is seriously to problematic.
finding the driver for the mbox3 mini might not been to hard.
But pro tools it self does not send you directly to the latest update….
It actualy took me 3 days to know that there was something called 8.0.4cs2
and i found that in the user forums.
Seriously there should be dedicated well informative sections on the AVID homepage for this.
And another thing! Customers that buy ANY Mbox3 atleast from the end of  November and so one should not have to pay that much for the Pro tools 9.
Compare the priceing to upgrade PT8 LE to Pro tools 9 with say Cakewalk sonar. where if you buy sonar 8.5 you get x1 for free.
I Feel AVID could have done a bit more on the upgrade price for people who buy Their hardware specially after they took away hardware requirements in pro tools 9.

next up..

I have tested and used most of the common DAWs out there and Pro tools is by far the slowest to boot up,
I do not know if this has to do with windows 7 (64bit)  but 2 min to start up an application in the year 2010 is way to high.

Pro Tools LE 8
When it comes down to a DAW
Pro Tools is a industries standard and there are some verry nice things in here.
The workflow is really nice and it did not take me long to get rolling in Pro Tools.

Here is a overview of how the edit window look.

The over all feeling of Pro Tools for a new user is really nice, but then if you know your ways around in one sequencer  u wont have trouble getting around in any of them.

Looking at the Plugin section i have to say you have most you need, and there is some very good presets to use as start points  for people who still are learning how to process when mixing.
Pro Tools and Cubase have 1 thing in common.
They both miss out on a good sampler, And after 1.5 years in Logic i wish more would give the customers something like EXS24.
looking at the CPU usage specially when using Instruments there is still allot i think they can do.
using Instruments in Pro Tools on my i7 930 will very fast start eating cpu, compared to lets say logic and cubase RTAS instruments are heavy on the CPU.
But over all Pro Tools from my 2 weeks of using this program, is a well good program and the AUDIO engine is one by far the best iv heard.

Now back to the MBOX3 Mini.

Using the MBOX with Pro tools is realy easy and fun..
The Mix knob works wonderfull and the preamps are just awsome
there is nothing i can complain about at all, the MBOX 3 MINI has all inputs and outputs i need and more.
The sound quality is nothing more then awesome!
And the complete package $329.00, for an awesome sound card and Pro Tools LE is not bad at start,
BUT if you want the next gen of Pro Tools you also have to ad $249.00 to the price and i feel that is a bit to much specialy for new customers.

Mbox 3 mini  Pros and cons.

+ Well built
+ Awesome preamp´s and hardware.
+ The mix knob!!!!!!!
- For what i do.. ther is NO cons what so ever..

Pro Tools LE 8 Pros and cons.

+Very nice plugins.
+ Loads of presets.
+ The audio Engine.

- Very long boot up time.
- RTAS instruments takes allot of CPU compared to other sequencers
- for people that buy the MBOX 3 family now after the v9 of Pro tools is out $249.00 for the upgrade  is overpriced
Conclusion

The MBOX 3 is a true pleasure to work with, the sound quality is freaking sweet and the build quality is outstanding.
i cant do anything but to give the MBOX 3 mini 5/5 Daw poins

Seing that Pro Tools 9 has arrived, i cant se the point in the price tag on upgrading from  Pro Tools 8, when u buy it NOW.
There has to be something AVID can do to customers who like me bought this product now, Just look at cakewalk !!
Pro tools 8 is realy sweet to work with but on my system when i star using Instruments i tend to very fast get cpu warnings and that feels weird since i have a I7 930 CPU
But the workflow is realy nice and i wish i could have had version 9 from the start since im saving up for a mac pro i feel that pro tools 9 sadly have to wait (unless AVID want me to wright a huge review on Pro tools 9).
The AVID homepage needs better sections for each product, its not easy to find updates to the Pro Tools / Mbox u use.
So all in all i will give Pro tools 8 LE 3/5 Daw points.

Over all this package is a good package but as i stated the lack of a sampler, and the upgrade price for customers who buy the MBOX 3 series after the Pro Tools 9 release brings down the Daw points.
The long start up times and the huge CPU usage of RTAS instruments is not fun at all
I hope this is somewhat fixed in Pro Tools 9.

Thanks for tuning in
// Dawfreak

AKG is a well known Company, and during the years AKG products have been in both home and high end studios.
As all know once in a while you need to upgrade your headphones,
For me the situation came some weeks ago when my old beyerdynamic DT770 pro died on me. After reading on the web i took a shot in the blind and bought the AKG K240MKII.

When it come to headphones there are many things to think of before you make the buy .
Comfort, specs, Usage and depending on your wallet price, is the most common to look at when  buying headphones.
I mean whats the point in having the best headphones in the world if they are a pain to ware?

Specifications

Inside the box is A 3 m single-sided and 5 m coiled cable (99,9% oxygen-free); plug-in cable on headphones (mini-XLR connector)

gold plated stereo mini jack, gold plated 1/8″ to 1/4″ screw-on adapter and an extra pair of Pads. The extra cable and pads is not a to common treat so this is something that has to be added as A + extra.

I have when writing this review used the 240MKII for nearly a week and i have to say compared to the DT770 pro these Headphones really is a true bang for the buck..

To my ears the DT770 did not have the low frequency boost for mixing, so to me getting the kick drum right has until now been a tricky situation.
The mkII has a way better feal to the sound and mixing to me now is way easier.

One of the tests i do to any headphones or speaker is listening to the Toto Tambu album, the songs Gift of faith  and i will remember has a really sweet mix , and the drums in I will remember realy sitts perfect in the mix.
I know that headphones as with speakers takes a couple of 100 hours to play in… but listening to the two Toto songs gives me a picture of how good the AKG k240 MKII will sound.

Conclusion

The AKG comes with a price tag of around $199.00 witch realy is around what you should pay for some good headphones, and the MKII is really good.
The content of the package is really nice, 2 cables and a extra pair of pads is a nice bonus that adds extra bonus to the customers.
The sound to me, compared with the DT770 is perfect for geting the mixes right and i specially love the bass of the MKII , its not to boomy but its there so the MKII to me  is perfect for rock, blues and pop music.
the comfort is also really REALLY sweet. you nearly cant feel them on your head.. and that is awesome for long sessions in your music production and mixing.

I am going to give these 5/5 DAW points since compared to the DT770 pro the AKG MKII has way better comfort, sound and extras.

Thanks for rading my first Review .. stay tuned for more.