The Ensoniq PARIS Blog proudly welcomes Mike Audet!

*update 04/06/08 - Mike's plugin installation guide now available in Acrobat format (112k pdf)

This blog is extremely pleased to announce its very first frontpage contributor, a name familiar to all - the redoubtable Mike Audet, to whom we're extremely grateful for "taking up the torch" of 3rd-party PARIS FX development, passed on by Chuck Duffy's "Chunkworks".

Look for Mike's posts on development and FX issues starting in June.

And to kick his residency off with an extremely fresh "scoop" - fresh as in today - Mike just might have some extremely interesting news soon. And no, it's not about a new plugin on the drawing board.

It's about a discovery he's made concerning an annoying little peculiarity of PARIS', a peculiarity so old and so ingrained (and so presumably unfixable) that working around it has become habit, and we've all pretty much forgotten about it, considering it to be "just part of the fabric of the PARIS universe".

In Mike's hands - maybe not.

Stay tuned. And once again - welcome, Mike - take a bow!

PEPI - PARIS Effects Presets Initiative

I used to wish there was a better stock library of FX settings included with PARIS, and a better system of saving, organizing and exchanging them.

To that end, I hope to maintain a repository of PARIS effects settings in some form or other (text right now - but I'll find something less Stone Age when I'm "hands on" again and eventually arrive at a standard way of packaging them). Until I get my own rig running I'm relying on the work of others, for now chiefly scavenged from previous FAQs. I'm going to assume that their previous wide public posting was a de facto grant of permission for non-commercial personal use and retransmission, but if anyone has any objections contact me and I'll remove them - similarly if you have a refined "version" of your preset you'd prefer used instead,

Feel free to grab what's up here if you don't have them already. And if you've got a good 'un - or if you know of places that previous efforts have been stored, in whatever form, that I appear to have missed - or you just want to leave input - feel free to post in comments.

[Browsing the FAQs to scavenge presets, I suddenly realized I hadn't specified "EDS" presets, which these obviously are. I briefly considered changing the thread title to specifically state "PARIS EDS Effects Preset Initiative". Then I considered the resulting acronym; never mind, I'll just stick with what I've got; consider "EDS" to be assumed - K]

9/10 Kindergarten Children Agree

My 6-year-old's absolute favorite joke right now?

"Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Interrupting cow."

"Interrupting c-"

"Moo!"

Slays 'em. Twelve or so times a day.

The current vision.

I have a 12 x 18 garage that I converted into a mix/edit/overdub facility a couple of summers ago and "rented" to the music editor for the TV series "The 'L' Word" (strictly speaking - he and his family and I swung the hammers, so it was a thought-out "quid pro quo" rather than real "rent"). Pretty soon I'll be taking the facility on myself, and populating it with gear from the ground up with the intention of -

1) expanding the desktop productions I'm currently doing out of a bedroom in our house.

2) expanding my "bass tracks over the internet" business from "word of mouth" via internet marketing.

3) writing my next solo album (what's that, you say? you already have a solo album for sale? Heh - I'll save pimping it for another time)

Now - it's as competitive a market for producers in Vancouver as anywhere. I've had a successful career as a musician in the terms that matter to me; in the production world I know I'm a little fish. My goal this time is keeping the sound quality high while keeping the overhead low. I'm not going to kill my own business by expanding too fast - purchases have to justify themselves fiscally rather than emotionally. This time I'm older, and hopefully smarter.

[more after the fold]

New PARIS Tracksheets/Worksheets

I created these sheets years ago to smooth session workflow, and I thought perhaps some might find them useful. They fall into two categories.

PRODUCERS: for each project I create a production binder and insert an overview page (.PDF) with all songs listed so I can keep track of where we are overall in the project. This helps me maintain a good picture of where we are in the project so I don't miss something in the heat of tracking. It also helps spot similarities in keys and tempo which is handy for a bunch of things, like song sequence in mastering, or pilfering material from one song to use in another. 

Next, for each song I create an individual song sheet (.PDF) that lets me track data for that song. I also made vocal comp sheets (.PDF) to help me keep track of the best sections of "takes". I'd write in the beginning of lines/phrases before we started and then use the boxes on the right to indicate good or problem areas in takes.

ENGINEERS: I threw together some PARIS tracksheets - a multi submix (.PDF) and a two submix (.PDF) - for Dubvibe (they originally had the Dubvibe logo in the blank space at the top; contact me privately if you've got a logo you want in that space).

I used them for years, with PARIS and other DAWs, so I'm probably blind to their deficiencies. Propose refinements in comments and I'll address them and post new ones.

Open Thread

Have fun! No politics/religion/platformwar, please.

Q & A

Got a PARIS question? Post it here.

PARIS on Mac

This thread is for discussion of PARIS on Mac hardware. 

PARIS on PC

This thread is for discussion of running PARIS on PC hardware.

General Music Biz

Got some music business news? Share it here!

User Gallery - mixes

If you've got a piece of work you've done wholly or partially on PARIS that you'd like to share, or to ask for feedback/input on, post a link here (we can work on file uploading when I've got more resources in place). Let us know if you'd like to have it included in the sidebar.

Tips And Tricks

The comments area is open for your top PARIS tips. Have at it!

Greetings all!

The purpose of this blog is to provide a place for those who still use, or even fondly remember, that rare and beautiful beast - the mid-nineties Ensoniq PARIS Digital Audio Workstation, a unique blend of hardware and software that still to this day can hold its head up amongst its peers for "what comes out of the speakers".

What's driving this is my own return to the PARIS fold; I will be taking delivery of a two-card system shortly and - being an utterly selfish type - decided to take advantage of maturing internet technologies by setting up a community blog and accompanying website (in progress) to augment the NNTP version (also accessible by Web) of the PARIS community with more modern technologies like styled text, tags, greater searchability, file storage and media galleries. Should it interest nobody but myself I'll still consider the exercise in collating all the resources as time extremely well-spent.

Current plans include an already half-built website that will collate and organize as many of the remaining PARIS resources as possible so they won't suddenly some day "go dark". I will try to keep the front page reasonably low-bandwidth for those who are still logging in using steam-powered, coal-fired, 1200 baud modems. :D

This blog will be centered on audio and computer issues - PARIS, general audio, and music-related chat are all welcome -  and will focus on expertise and experience rather than dogma and argumentation on irrelevancies. There's no rigid prohibition on topics outside those spheres but emphasis on our commonalities as PARIS aficionados, rather than on our differences, will be maintained and enforced. 

This site is in no way affiliated with Ensoniq or Intelligent Devices; it is purely a private site for fans of this great piece of audio hardware. The information that has been assembled here is believed in good faith by the site administrator to be public domain, and is posted for non-commercial educational use only. Please don't post material here that you have any doubts about in that regard, and if you see any material that you think should removed on that basis, please notify the site administrator immediately.

A lesson that has been driven home again and again and again is that our commonality and our connection to each other as humans vastly outweighs mere ideology - a theme we ignore at our peril, both in microcosm here and in the broader world around us today. In our own microcosm - if we go forward with PARIS it will likely be as a community of users with a common vision or not at all. So what will not be tolerated here is divisive, demeaning or abusive discourse involving race, religion, nationality, political persuasion, sexual orientation, choice of computer platform or OS - or anything else. The posting of comments or links that are calculated to annoy or provoke others, or that are otherwise objectionable, is prohibited.

Have fun, and welcome!