Regarding Acid, yes. Once you have the loops/application, you can create music for a bed, stinger, or television spot, and it's yours. No royalties, no needledrops, no further payments. the only caveat is that you can't distribute a loop as a loop. In other words, you can't make your own sound library and sell it, if it's just exact duplicates of loops. You can combine loops, make them something else, and sell those, however.
Regarding the Sennheiser vs the Sony; Sennheisers are certainly great. The 7506 is an industry standard. You see them on every Hollywood shoot in the world, and you'll find them in every quality recording studio. They sound great, they are heavy duty, and they are inexpensive.

The "Apex" DVD player does have some quality issues as my relatives have found. When contacting Best Buy for repair they said it is a "throwaway".

JJK

I'm sure it does. I'm not having issues, and I know many of the forum members do too, but at 50.00, you can't expect much. It plays a LOT of media my high end, 5 disc changer won't play.

Thanks for that Spot. On the Acid item, I guessed this may have been the position. Just wanted some further Pro assurance. - G

I've got an Apex 1200 and it plays almost anything i toss at it. Oddly enough, it won't play files with .mpeg extensions, although it plays just about any file i've ever tossed at it with a .mpg extension. I have to remember to rename all .mpeg files before burning them to disc. Not a huge issue, but it is a minor annoyance.

The only real issue i've got with it is that occasionally the picture will break up into larger random squares that seem to lose sync with each other and scramble each other. It happens very rarely, although it does seem to happen as often on big ticket name brand DVDs as on home-brew stuff. It may eventually correct itself after a few minutes. Scanning backwards a few seconds seems to right the problem and then it will replay the same scene perfectly.

I'm not complaining too badly though. It only cost me $43 at Wal*Mart.

Just a note: The link for the worldtech keyboards does not seem to be working.

Great list!! -Shon

Sony MDR 7506 Headphones How do they compare to Sennis? I'm considering the Sennis HD280.

Regarding the Sennheiser vs the Sony; Sennheisers are certainly great. The 7506 is an industry standard. You see them on every Hollywood shoot in the world, and you'll find them in every quality recording studio. They sound great, they are heavy duty, and they are inexpensive.

The Sennheisher have better isolation and are more neutral, that is they don't color the sound in any way. If you listen to music with them, they are laid back. If the recording has a lot of bass, they will have a lot of bass. If they recording doesn't, they won't. People who use them strictly for music sometimes complain about lack of bass, compared to the Sony's which has some bass punch. The Sony's are smaller and look better. The Sennheisher are really large which help with isolation, but the band is several inches off your head at points. They completely cover your ear, the sonys lie on top of your ear (depends on your ear size of course.) If you are using them to record on location, I would go with the Sennheisher becuase of the isolation. I lent them to a sound engineer friend of mine and he noticed the difference immediately. The Sonys are metal and the Senns plastic. The sony's fold up smaller.
Either way if you are stepping up from cheap headphones, they are going to sound amazing. Using the Senns I have heard stuff on CD's that I have never heard before using the same CD player. You can notice buried notes in a song or the singer's breath on the mike. It's quite wild at first. If you get the Sennheisher's they need about 100 hours of "burn-in" before their true sound comes out. The high notes will sound harsh at first. When I first got mine I noticed on a Louis Armstrong record, his voice was distorting. I left them hooked to a cd player and let them play for a couple of days and the sound really warmed up with no distortion, the bass got tighter and deeper too.

Of course, after you upgrade you'll soon want more. Especially you, Grazie ;) I was in B and H yesterday and I had to remind myself I was just there to buy a printer as a Christmas gift. I had to walk away from a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770s.

"Don't color the sound in any way?" Can't agree with that at all. EVERYTHING colors the sound somewhat, even my super cool custom John Hardy M1 mic pres. And they're considered the best in the industry by most jazz engineers.
I don't like the sennheisers personally, but this is a personal feeling. The 7506 is indisputably an industry standard, while the Sennheiser, superior in it's paper specs, is not. They indeed are thin on my ear, and while the 7506 is pumped at 100hz or so, it's a more 'natural' feel. Since it's just for monitoring, they are wonderful. (to my ear) I also love my etymotics, they are the best headphone I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot of them. They are not transducer based, and are fairly flat down to very low freqs. But they are also expensive at 400.00 a pair.
Headphones are like life partners; find the ones that suit you and wear em' forever.
Mind you, I'm not knocking the Sennheisers at all. I just don't care for their sound personally. I don't like blondes, either.

Perhaps I should have said has less coloration of the sound and have a flat response. I haven't even finished my coffee, yet ;)

Etymotics are pretty darn sweet. If I had to do a lot of flying, I would own them. When i was thinking of getting the Sennheisher's, Headroom (headphone.com) was doing a travelling roadshow for headphone geeks, so, of course, I went. I got hear a bunch of headphones I couldn't afford. Loved the Etymotics sound, but didn't like having to take them out of my ear canal, to listen to someone. I got to listen to the Sennheisher Orpheus, a $14,000 headphone system that came with a macthing tube amp, all handbuilt. It was insane. It was like entering a different level of consciousness.

I have the Apex-1500. I have had no problems with it at all. It was also one the models that you can hack the firmware to remove region-coding and Macrovision. You can find the hack on the internet.

I have asked for Photoshop for Non-Linear Editors for Christmas, and I think it's coming. Now I have to find time to go through several DV books, get deeper into Particle Illusion, etc....

Grazie, are you aware of the website acidplanet.com? Every week they have some free loops you can download. Also if you get Acid Pro, you are entitled every month to get free loops from Sony.

I imagine the Apex DVD player was called a "throwaway" because the expense to repair one would be almost as much or more than it would cost to purchase a replacement. If they were suggesting something different, consider the source.

I have an AD-1200 and love that it will play just about anything. However, the construction of the box does feel a bit cheap. Considering this does not alter its performance, it doesn't bother me.

> The standard loop packages are royalty free but you can make your own loops from anything. If you used copywrite material, you would of course destroy the royalty free part -- but its fun.

I recently made some loops of gun shots and machine gun bursts for a general war theme. These were extracted from real recordings I had access to. With some basic orchestral loops for the mood and random painting of the gunshots over that (somewhat in time with the music, because they were loops) I was really pleased with the result. I've also played with looping words or phrases with good results.

Sound Forge (the basic version will do) helps with making your own loops if you want to do that. Adds another level to what you can do with Acid.

BK! Phoooarh . . you guys amaze me! I've been out delivery a pressie for my Dad . . while I was away this stuff in - Thanks!

"Of course, after you upgrade you'll soon want more. Especially you, Grazie ;) " - Hah! Am I that transparent . . . Your and Spot's response was exactly the techie response I was after . . .

Did I know about the website? Oh yes. The Acid Pro package sounds [ first Yule pun . . ] good. Acid Pro is a bit too rich for me at present . . saw the Accountant yesterday . . . ughhh.... SB Acid at $70 is more my financial level at the moment . . . . But yes, acidplanet and the loops are good. I've played around with acid express and have been like a kid with a new toy . . .

Grazie

My wishlist:

A Sneek Peek at what Vegas 5 will bring to the table, what new features it will have, and when we should expect to see it.

Grazie,

I got a steal on Acid Pro 3 on ebay when I got it. It included the Learn Acid book for $60.

Again if you are stepping up in headphones, either pair will sound really nice. If you can find a store that carries both pairs, try them out side by side, comfort may also be a deciding factor. It's amazing how much better even a cheap walkman CD player will sound with decent headphones. I am amused that people will spend $400 on an Ipod and still use the cheap earbuds that come with it. For as little as $15, they can upgrade their sound with better sounding earbuds.
www.head-fi.org is a great headphone resource site.

Amen. It's funny how folks take what they are given with those things. A good set of cans will make a tremendous difference in how something is perceived. More folks need to think about the quality of their audio, that's for darn sure. They'll spend 50k on a camera without question, and then use a 5.00 headphone to monitor what the camera is reproducing or recording.
I think they call that a jackass under a silver saddle.

About three weeks ago I was at a place that edits medical lectures in house. They had a nice DVCAM deck, nice SVHS VCR, nice monitor and a pair of behind the ear headphones that didn't even fit on your ear, that you couldn't get decent volume out of and as far I as could tell the brand name was STEREO. The only thing you could say about them, was, well, at least no one will would to steal them.