Suspended E-Store

I have suspended my E-store on this site with immediate effect. www.nebulapresets.com will continue to do business so please check that out.

Errata – Blood Sweat and Treason

Henry_Olonga_ERRATA_Blood_Sweat_and_Treason_My_Story.pdf
Hi guys,
There is a factual error in my book ‘Blood sweat and treason – My story’ that requires correction. Unfortunately my memory failed to accurately recall what happened on one particular occasion. I apologise for my unintentional inaccurate representation of the facts. The incident did happen 14 years earlier and I was going completely on my own recollection. I have since been pointed to footage that corroborates exactly what happened and feel that I need to correct the record.
On page 106 of the original hardback version, I incorrectly wrote that I ran Nick Knight out in the drawn Bulawayo test match of 1996.

The facts are that prior to the last ball 3 runs were required to surpass the total and although a boundary was required, the ball was fielded by Grant Flower who duly ran Darren Gough out to leave the scores level. Nick Knight was stranded on 96. So to
Bring clarity, I was not the one who fielded the final ball although I had still made a mental miscalculation by one run.
I apologise to cricket lovers and in particular to Grant Flower for this misrepresentation.
Sincerely
Henry Olonga

Fender Passport blown speaker……or not

I grabbed my gorgeous Fender Passport PD-250 to see if I could fix one of the speakers that had developed some distortion. Now it is getting on in years – almost 10 now. I though perhaps it was in need of a new driver or something. You see this little beauty has served me well over the last few years allowing me to travel all over the UK with amazing sound for all my gigs and not have to rely heavily on local sound systems that can be very, very unpredictable. Problem was that one of my speakers had started seeming to distort and was now annoying. I had to look under the hood and see if I could see any obvious tears in the diaphragm or cone. Would you believe it. Nothing. Not even a hint of it. I stand in awe of the workmanship by Fender. It is one beautifully crafted piece of kit. The Speakers look like they can last a lifetime as well actually. Then it occurred to me that perhaps some speaker wiring was vibrating against the speaker enclosure. Well what do you know. A few screws taken apart, a little bit of adhesive pads and all is much improved. Not perfect but ten times better. It seems it was never a blown speaker after all. Just a lot of cabling pressing against the sides. Now Fender to their credit glue as much as they can to prevent this but some guys could get lose after many years. So there ya go. Before sending it back to Fender for a costly repair bill – check your cables.

A tip for Nebula users

If you find you are constantly bouncing down due to lack of CPU here is a tip for you to prevent you having to buy a new super duper computer.

One of the greatest tips I worked out for using Nebula so it isn’t a pain in the butt is to go into the master page and take the harmonics slider from 10 to clean. Mix as usual and then prior to export turn it back to full, close your DAW, restart and reload the project – render. Gives you tonnes of CPU back. Bit like mixing in draught mode. Sony Vegas does this for video and there you have it. No more complaints about CPU and nebula. Also – experiment with that DSP buffer. It doesn’t always need to be at max if you mix this way.Hope that helps.
Happpy mixing
H

Nebula presets emulation list

I get requests once in a while about which hardware was sampled in my online shop. For those wishing to get their heads around what I sampled for Acustica Audio’s Nebula download the PDF list below check it out.

http://www.henryolonga.net/Nebula/Nebulapresets_Emulation_preset_list_04-10-12.pdf

Best wishes
Henry

Volume 2 of Henry Olonga Tape Sim released

The first tape sim pack is already garnering some widespread use and hot on the heels of that release is the second of eight packs.

This is a package of the first machine but a different tape emulation.
Tape sim is a series of eight packs aimed at simulating the sound of tape. Sampled at 192 khz and 96 khz it gets you there without the hassle.
Get the package here on my new dedicated website for Nebula presets.

Get it Here .On special at HALF price for a month from today.

Any issues let me know. Best wishes. Henry

Vienna Suite personal review

Vienna suite is a host of plugins made by the superlative samples producer VSL. I have been a VSL user since the early days when they only had the full library in Giga format and since having moved to Vienna instruments I must say the company has remained at the forefront of the most realistic sample libraries and also innovative software solutions for orchestra emulations.

The Vienna suite is comprised of in their words – ” ten high-precision audio processing
plug-ins for mixing and mastering on all major 64-bit and 32-bit
host DAWs”.

These plugins are of the highest quality if transparency and total respect for the integrity of your audio is paramount. Make no mistake, just because these plugins are made mainly for VSLs own orchestration packages does not mean that they are useless for general mixing. They are laden with highly useful presets and great starting points. I shot them out against my Sonnox dynamics plugin and IMHO the compressor came up trumps although Sonnox is more feature laden. The VSL comp has a clearer rendition with no distortion in opto mode.

Both eqs are wonderful in their resolution and the mastering EQ rivals many plugins costing many times the price of the whole package. They seem to neither add their own character nor distort the signal. Simply massaging it in the chosen direction. My GML 2032s are getting jealous because they cannot work ITB and sound as transparent.

The panner makes true stereo liberation a possibilty in my Sonar DAW. Channel tools may see less work from now on.

The Hybrid Reverb is the best convolution reverb I have in my arsenal. I have waves IR1, Gigapulse,Reverberate, Perfectspace and others and this reverb sounds incredible against them.

The rest of the tools are icing on the cake.

The best part about the Vienna suite is that you get THREE licenses on purchase. In other words if you buy three Vienna keys ( USB elicenser by Steinberg – £20 each ) you can put a license on each key and have one for a workstation, one for the laptop and one as a spare in case anything happens.

Highly recommended. € 475 download. £ 420 boxed. VSL site

Test post from wordpess android

This is to test whether I can post using the android app on the move

Our Zimbabwe 2011 sneak peak

I have been working on a re-issue of Our Zimbabwe for a while now. This is an unmastered very rough version for those wondering how things are going. Final mastered release will be early/mid December for those who cannot wait for the 10th anniversary in 2011.

Our_Zimbabwe_2011_Sneak_Peak

Nkosi_Sikelela_2011_Sneak_Peak

New Q-clone libraries

All my presets are now here

Just posted a short ten minute tutorial on using q-clone for those interested.

Q-clone tutorial from Henry Olonga on Vimeo.

Demo of samples

I have updated my Webstore
with a few new Q-clone libraries including a whopping with all my libraries. About five and half thousand presets in total to cover almost all colour additive mixing conditions. Used with a regular high quality eq for notching like the Sonnox eq you should be able to create very analog like sounding mixes. Used in conjunction with nebula, your mixes will just shine.This is a generous £40 for all my presets which is a 20 % discount.

I also have also added another six products A subtle Neeve eq, Colour mix pro which is an expansion of my original free set to 2000 presets.Two Pooltechs, Silky mastering and mixing shelves a Passive eq and my original Smooth and Superlative eqs remain.

Enjoy