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The Return of the Newsletter [Week 41]
8 years ago
Welcome to the forty-first edition of the Fortnightly Furry Musicians Newsletter!
This week ACTUAL JOURNALISM. Yes, eat your heart out Buzzfeed, I’ve done some proper investigative journalism.
There’s a website which has been batted around as of late called LANDR. This site states that it can master your music for you. So, I decided to find out and present you with my findings so you can make your own mind up. For absolute transparency, I am NOT being paid by LANDR or have any connection to the company whatsoever. I have no correspondence with the company other than the email sent to confirm me registering for the account required to do the test.
So, let’s begin.
You upload one track to it, so not all the stems for the song. I used an MP3 file at 320kbps (link to that is further down the page)
In the, very limited, options, you can adjust how much dynamics vs "sophistication" you want in the mix, presumably how harsh the limiter and compression is done on the track. I used the "medium" settings, the middle of three options it gives you.
You can export for free once you sign up a 192kbps version, but if you want anything higher in quality, you have to pay for it. For a 320kbps version, it’s £3.99, for a 16-bit 44.1kHz WAV, it’s £9.99 and for a 24-bit 44.1kHzWAV it comes to £19.99, per track. For context, a Judas Priest CD from HMV usually costs £15. You also have to upload a base file which it deems to be 24-bit in quality for it to give you the option of the 24-bit WAV. They do offer memberships as well, where if you give them £4 a month, you get 10% off the 24-bit Wavs and 5 free of the 16-bit ones, which then cost £8.99 a pop. For £9 a month, ya get the same 10% off on 24 bit ones, and 15 free 16 bit ones and then they cost £6.99. And if you give ‘em £25 a month, you get everything unlimited and free.
Is that worth it? Well, we’ll see in a minuet.
It doesn't actually... tell you how it's done it. It sorta has loads of "Ooh, we're using filters defined by what we calculate to be the song’s genre" but doesn't actually say "Oh, we've detected a rock song, we've done XYZ". I suppose limiters, filters, EQ and compressors are somewhat all it can work with as we can't give it individual wav files. You also can't customise each "filter" or anything similar to give you fine-tune over how it sounds. You kinda get to choose level of compression and limiting from three options, and that's sorta it.
The file I put into it had no limiter, no external compression and was mastered down too not clip organically without trying to squeeze out as much volume as possible. Basicly maxiumum dynamics. It also had no EQ in it. The only slight part of mixing I did was to reduce the volume of some parts so they were as loud/quiet as I wanted them.
Here are the results.
This is the original mix I made, the literal file I submitted to the service. I actually downloaded it from FA where I’d uploaded it to put into the website.
This is the version LANDR gave me. It’s only in 192kpbs and is completely unmodified from how the website gave it to me as a download.
And these are the two waveforms in Audacity Just to allow you to see exactly what’s been done to the waveforms. From what I can see it’s done some limiting, but has also made the drums more prominent in the mix in the intro, but attenuated and compressed a few things to make room for the synths in the middle and latter parts. Weirdly, it’s given the drums more presence where there wasn’t as much before, and less presence where there was more… which is strange (about a quarter of the way into the song where the chord-change is).
It seems to have some mechanics for "releasing tracks" and it claims that you keep 100% of royalties and the first two you release are free. It’s also implied that the ones after these are paid for, but it isn’t outwardly open with how much that costs. But it does seemingly let you put music on Apple Store, Google Play store, Spotify, Eldora etc all from one website.
I’m going to let you folks come to your own conclusions and I’d be interested to know what you think, but personally I feel that, while the master I got actually sounded pretty neat, personally however I don’t think it’s worth the price they charge for them as I could probably get nearly the same results with fiddling around with stuff I have built-into FL Studio or even the aforementioned Audacity, with greater control and customization of the master, as well as the ability to learn how to master as well. I can understand why they don’t tell you how they do the mix (trade secrets I suppose), but I think that learning to master yourself is probably the better way to do it, if you have the time to sink into it. I do also wonder if different genres of music well yield different results. But seeing as this newsletter is already very long, I didn’t want to try out a billion different bits and clog it with stuff.
But I’m interested to hear your own views on the matter, if you think the master it gave was any good and if you think that site (or another site like it) is worth using. Again, it does offer a music distribution service that I haven’t attempted to use yet because I’m not sure quite how it deals with charging on releases (since it allows you to structure releases into albums, singles and EP-like sets of tracks), nor do I have the infestructure (PayPal, a spreadsheet for expenses etc) to make money on music. I also found the website kinda difficult to use. As I was trying to learn more about how things are released and priced, it kept trying to re-direct me all over the damn place back to the “app” part of the site.
And no, I'm not trying to use this to promote my own music either. I'm only using my music because it'd be rude to use someone else's.
And now, normal service will be resumed.
Only the Adverts Know…
--- New Releases ---
===Albums===
Aniwix, also known as 
highreachoffical, has released the “State of Dance” album which is now available to purchase on Bandcamp
Available Here
--- Musician Commission ---
Canis_03 is looking to remix someone’s track. They require wav files and the MIDI for the song
More info
--- Upcoming Events ---
4th and 11th of August 2017
Zack_Gray and 
zomgshiny will be performing at Megaplex 2017 on the 4th of August between 2:30pm and 3:30pm in the Main Ballroom and at Indy Fur Con (IFC) on the 11th of August from 4pm to 5pm in the Salon 4-5.
25th-27th August 2017
Three furry musicians will be attending FA United as guests of honour, those being 
FoxAmoore, 
PepperCoyote, and 
hali (aka Matthew Ebel). hali is performing the “Piano Dance Pop” show on Friday the 25th at 10PM, and FoxAmoore and PepperCoyote will be doing two shows on Satarday the 26th, the first being at 4PM with hali as a special guest, and then the After Dark (18+, X-Rated, Too Hot For Fur…y) show at 10:30PM the same day. There is a jam session on Sunday hosted by Etsu that people can bring instruments along to or your hands and feet.
Applications for DJ’s are still open until the 11th of August and you can apply for it here and if selected will get sponsor-level registration that’s generally worth about $75. But that is the only financial contribution you will be receiving.
More info on the con in general is here
If you'd like something featured in the newsletter, drop either me ( 
PascalFarful ) or the FA musicians page a note with details or drop a shout on the FA Musicians page! I would add that sending me notes increases your chance of me not losing your message.
Aniwix
highreachoffical
Canis_03
Zack_Gray
zomgshiny
FoxAmoore
PepperCoyote
hali
PascalFarful
PascalFarful
~pascalfarful
I mean, when I compared the two files linked above, I did notice an improvement, but not an improvement I'd deem worthy of the price, if I wanted it in 320kbps. I think in this case it's worth trying the free masters and seeing how you get on, but for the files I sent in, I feel like I could accomplish the same thing myself without having to pay money for it, and having the benefit of learning. But again, it'd dependent on it's user. I personally can't see the monetary worth in it, though it's possible you might. I will look into trying the multi-track stuff, maybe not next week, I'd like to space things out slightly.
PascalFarful
~pascalfarful
Might also add, due to notification glitches, these comments might disappear and the journal may be re-upped, we'll see.
