Hi Guys

I wonder if somebody can help me (ironically, I'm useless with technology)...

I've recently bought a desktop Mac OS X and installed Reason 5 on it. I've noticed when I'm building a song in the sequencer there are sudden dips in the volume of certain tracks...

An example:

My song is made up of (1) a beat in Kong, (2) a loop in Dr.Octo Rex, (3) a bass in Maelstrom and after four bars, I want to drop all these tracks and introduce a (4) lead synth from Thor at Bar 5. That's all fine, only when I re-introduce (1), (2) & (3) (say at Bar 9, for example) the volume of the lead synth (4) drops massively - so much so that it's barely audible.

This didn't seem to happen when I had Reason 5 installed on my old PC. Also, I've checked the Audio Preferences and they are as the Reason Manual states they should be.

Is it my Mac is just not powerful enough for the tunes I make? If so, do I need an external sound card?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers
Andy

Hi there Andy,

Just a suggestion, but it's unlikely to solve your issue. Make sure the compression on your MC class (between your mixer and hardware interface) isn't set at such a level that it's compressing the sound of your lead into oblivion.

Like i said though, it's unlikely to be this though, as you would no doubt notice heavy compression in your other insruments.

Maybe someone else can shed light on this problem for you, but at the moment i don't have any further ideas, though you might want to double check that you havent written any volume automation on either your mixer or your synth to cause the drop.

As for your other questions;

It's unlikely that your mac isn't powerful enough with so few instruments playing (unless they are HIGHLY complex). Besides, a computer struggling usually manifests itself with popping, clicking and stuttering audio and really sluggish response. You can always check to see how hard your CPU is working by checking the DSP lights just to the left of your transport bar.

External soundcard:

If you are going to get into music production on your Mac, I would highly reccommend an external soundcard that uses ASIO drivers. There is no ASIO4ALL driver for the Mac, as this is for PC only (microsoft's own drivers suck so asio4all is the PC equivalent of core audio in my opinion).

My external firewire device does just the job, and there are cheaper options available for those that don't need as many ins and outs.

That's just an example, there are plenty of other manufacurers around.

Hope this helps.

LEM

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Yeah, you definitely have some unwanted compression going on. The lead is weakened to accommodate the dynamic range of the mixdown. The culprits are:

- bad mastering in Reason (make sure your channels aren't clipping, the compressors aren't maxed out, etc.)
- cheap/misconfigured sound card
- cheap speakers

However, if the same track sounds good on your PC and bad on your Mac through the same speakers, the answer is that you need a better sound card, preferably an external audio interface like Lem suggested.

Thanks for your help! I'll go out and buy myself a sound card.

Cheers
Andy