Happy Birthday to me!

Aftermath of trying out some freehand 25° bevel honing on some Neiko Chisels. I’m using Shapton Kuromaku stones at #320, #1000, #5000, #8000, #12000. Stones are flattened with a DMT Dia-Sharp Coarse and I use HoneRite Gold on the #8000 and #12000 stones to reduce oxidation.

I returned my Narex Classic Bevel-Edge Chisels to Lee Valley due to unusually poor edge retention. They accepted the return 3 months out of the return period and after a reasonable amount of use. Very classy.

So for now, all I have are these very cheap Irwin Marples OEM/rip-offs to play with. And play with them I shall…

UPDATE: Please see the new DAW Feature Chart for more up-to-date information and a way cooler chart.

If you’ve been following this blog then you’d know that I recently tried 2 DAWS as my 1-month thing. Trying Cubase has been a harrowing experience that has made me rethink using Digital Performer.

Since it was very difficult for me to decide, given how great of a product Cubase is, I went ahead and did a methodical test and rating of both DAWs. I analyzed my projects to figure out what features I used most frequently, mildly and rarely. I looked at features of various DAWs that I thought were nice and considered those as well.

I then created a number of tests and attempted them multiple times with varying circumstances in each DAW. I wrote down a rating, relative to each DAW’s capability. Results were weighted and tallied.

Click through to read more about the tests, ratings and other commentary.

Digital Performer 9.

I’m sticking with it as I feel it’s the best solution for me.

A much more detailed post coming soon! I’ve put A LOT of work in to this.

Using a product like Cubase has really had my mind turning. The idea of having to deeply learn a new program as well as I know DP (or PT or SAW) is painful. There is also the fact that Cubase has its own weaknesses in areas that interest me.

So to help gather my thoughts, I thought that I should make a list of some nice things that would make the ideal DAW for me. It only makes sense to list the ‘dealbreakers’ as well.

So here we go!

Recently MOTU released Digital Performer 9.1 and one of the major enhances was advertised to be reduced latency in OS X with “industry-leading overall latency performance.”

I was very skeptical of this. There’s certain physical realities that can’t be overcome without some sort of misadvertising. So what do we do? We test it!

No pictures today, just words.

Currently I’m still going back and forth about switching from DP 9 to Cubase 8.5. I really enjoy Cubase so far, however there’s a few things that have me reconsidering.

It’s already been over a month now and soon I will be making a decision. Will I switch from Digital Performer to Cubase? A few more posts first…

Over time I’ve discovered some things about Cubase that are particularly annoying. A couple of them are nearly dealbreakers. Particularly the lack of Polar. In this post I will cover a handful of things that I’ve found to be bothersome.

Some hand-carved combs I made out of Peruvian Walnut and Kauri.

I’ve been slack with the Cubase posts. I was planning on writing a post about the things that bother me, but there’s basically nothing so far! The only exception is the lack of multi-track freewarping.

So I’m going to once again go over some features that I like.