Tools We Use for Kalvos and Damian

Updated April 5, 2004

Here at K&D, we've been using a variety of recording and manipulation tools, some for the show, most for our own work.

We presently run all Windows 98SE systems with DirectX 9 in our K&D home studios, using Athlon 1.4GHz processors on Iwill KK266 boards and 50% overclocked Celeron 300 and 600 MHz processors on Abit BX boards. We run a WinGate 5 network.
CD burners include one Yamaha SCSI, two Sony, and two HP, with all Maxtor 7200rpm IDE hard drives and Iomega and NEC Zip drives. We also us an LG Electronics DVD burner. We get our CDs and DATs from Art Munson.
Our main scanner is an HP6300 (we have another HP and an old Relisys 3-pass unit) and a Nikon Coolscan IVED for slides and film, and we have Xerox P12 and Brother laser printers, an HP1220C large-format inkjet and several Canon utility printers (our first inkjet was a BJ-5, and before PCs we used the very custom TRS-80 about which the book was written).
Our sound cards are two Egosys WaveTerminal 2496s with Dr. D universal signal converter, and one SoundBlaster 128.
The outboard mixer are Mackie 1202 and Behringer 1604A with Alex Reverb.
We use a Stanton ST8-80 turntable with digital outputs to convert and clean LPs, 45s, and 78s before broadcast.
We record in the field on Sony M1 and D8 DATs and two Sony MZ-R37 minidiscs using Studio Projects C-4, Oktava 012, Coresound binaural, AKG AT-822, single-point stereo, Nakamichi CM100, and Radio Shack PZM microphones. (In studio, we always record to hard disk using Sonar.)
Our studio monitors are Roland RSM-90s with hand-built subwoofers, powered by two Samson 120 power amps.
We still have a pair of Proteus MPS Orchestral synths and a Proteus FX, plus enough old equipment to outfit a museum.

Collectively, here's what software we use at K&D's studios:

Music/Sound Creation and Production

Not a Tool?
Bert Klunder sets up in Studio Z.
Bert is K&D's sound architect of choice.

Finale scoring software from MakeMusic. We started with version 2.2 in 1993, and now use version 2003. Attention! The latest versions of MakeMusic products are now on our BANNED list of challenge/response viruses. Please read my essay about this issue.
Sonar multitracking software from Cakewalk. We started with Cakewalk 2 in 1993, and now use Sonar 2.2.
Cool Edit Pro recording software from Syntrillium. We started with the first version, whenever that was, and now use version CEP 2.2. This has been replaced by Adobe Audition.
Ozone mastering software from iZotope. We started with the first version and now use 3.0. Attention! The latest versions of iZotope products are now on our BANNED list of challenge/response viruses. Please read the PACE FAQ and my essay about this issue.
DX plugins:
- sfz+ software synth from LiveUpdate.
- AnalogX plugins for vocoders, gate, phase, etc., from AnalogX.
- Vinyl effects generator and Spectron analysis/synthesis software from iZotope. Attention! The latest versions of iZotope products are now on our BANNED list of challenge/response viruses. Please read the PACE FAQ and my essay about this issue.
AudioMulch sound generation tools set from AudioMulch. Version 0.9 beta.
Analog Box synthesizer from AndyWare. Version 2.31.
MIDImage image-top-MIDI converter from Brute Force Programming. Version 2.3.
The Voice image-to-audio converter from Seeing With Sound. Version 1.44.
a Musical Generator object-to-sound converter from MuSoft Builders. Version 2.0.
Spectrogram visualization system from Visualization Software. Version 6.6.
Coagula "industrial strength color-note organ" from Rasmus Ekman. We just started using this, version 1.4.
We do like and use also: Aleatoric Composer, Audacity, Audio Compositor, Buzz Machine, Quasi-Fractal Composer, SMS Tools, Svelte, SynthEdit, Tangent, and Will Play Anything.
We have, but do not much use or like: All in the Score, Awave, Csound, Finale Notepad, Lime, PD, Prie, ProTools, SimSynth, SMoRPhi, Soundforum Synth, The Playa, Twizla, Virtual Sampler. Soundforum Synth keeps crashing or we'd use it; Virtual Sampler is just a memory hog and the LiveSynth Pro DXi is much more useful (though Virtual Sampler does convert Akai format to SoundFonts).

Conversion and Utilities

Real Producer from Real Networks We're not fond of Real as a company anymore, but have a seven-year history with this format. Version 8.5
LAME for wav-to-MP3 conversion from The LAME Project, with a licensed Fraunhofer MP3 codec and LameBatch 0.99 front end available from Audio Melody.
RA2WAV for RealAudio-to-wav conversion. Apparently no longer available.
MMWave for MP3-to-wav conversion from Sound Bytes. Version R5. No longer available.
MP3Pro from Coding Technologies for testing the new format.
Exact Audio Copy from Exact Audio Copy. Version 0.9b3 for ripping CDs.
CDRWin from Goldenhawk for CD burning. Version 4.0. Support is getting lazy; it crashes with our new burner, so for the moment we use B's Recorder Gold B.H.A. Version 3.12.
We do like and use also: CDR Identifier, WaveZip and VVMic B-format decoder.
We no longer use: CDeX, Music Match, On-Demand Producer, WinDAC32, Xing MP2 Encoder, Zwei-Stein.

Players and Encoders

Windows Media version 6.4 and 7.0
Real players 1, 2, 3, 5, G2, 8 and RealOne
Winamp 2.5
Thompson MP3Pro 1.0
DivX 2.0 alpha
FLAC 1.7
Due to its system invasiveness and instability on all our computers, we do not use any version of QuickTime. We encourage Microsoft to include these codecs in the Windows Media Player.

Graphics, Media and Miscellany

Video Factory from Sonic Foundry. Now using version 2.5. This is one of the best values availalble, worthwhile as an audio as well as video editor.
Paint Shop Pro from Jasc. We have used this since version 3 or before, now version 8.
Photoshop LE from Adobe. Not big fans of Adobe, we've used this freeware that came with Pagemaker for some tasks. This is LE version 5.
GIFCon Professional from Mind Workshop. This is our GIF animator, mostly used for its good compression capabilities. Now using version 2 with its bazillion patches.
ScreenCorder from Matchware A/S. Now using version 2.1 of this poorly supported but very useful screen-animation-capture tool.
Virtual Dub video editor from Virtual Dub.. Version 1.4.7
Pagemaker from Adobe.. Now using version 7.
Webber32 from ExperTelligence for HTML editing. No longer available. This is really a text editor that shows HTML in various colors; we hand-code at K&D and like this old tool.
For text of various kinds we use MSWord 97, Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.1, Acrobat Distiller 3 and 5, 5D to PDF, Font Creator Program 3, American Heritage Dictionary 3 and 4, Search and Replace HTML, Babylon Translator, Wintran and Systran Personal Translator.
Our net work is done with Opera 7 (browser of choice), WS_FTP Pro 7, Teraterm Secure 2.3, NetLab 1.4 (no longer available) Wingate 5, VNC, and Eudora Light 3. Our pages are tested on Opera 7, Internet Explorer 5.5, Netscape 3/4.7/6.2, Mozilla 1, Lynx 2.7, WebTV 2.5, and IBM Home Page Reader 2.5 and 3., and once it's stable and using Windows Media instead of QuickTime, we'll resume use of MAGpie accessibility tools.
Other software we use for K&D for one reason or another is McAfee Virus Scan, Axialis AX-Cursors, AVIedit, and AOL IM, MSN IM, & ICQ.