I am on twitter and facebook
I post a lot of stuff on twitter and facebook so check out the pages if you have the time
Jul
12
Jul
12
Blood, sweat and Treason – Henry Olonga Autobiography – One week left to pre order
Well guys – one more week to pre – order and the free mp3 download ends I am afraid. I may run another promotion but we will wait and see.
Buy it now
Blood sweat and Treason - Henry Olonga
Jun
11
I am now on twitter
Still don’t see the point of it all but maybe I will fall in love with the tech.
http://twitter.com/henryolonga
Jun
10
Blood, Sweat & Treason, My Story. To be released July 19, 2010 – Preorder now
Blood sweat and Treason - Henry Olonga
PRE ORDER now and recieve a FREE Aurelia download.
Sports book meets real-life thriller in this sensational autobiography of Henry Olonga, the former Zimbabwean cricketer whose black armband protest against Robert Mugabe at the 2003 World Cup saw him branded a traitor, accused of treason in his absence and forced to dramatically flee his homeland and his family.
Blood, Sweat And Treason tells the story of Olonga’s childhood, of his gradual realisation that he was living in a country ruled by a dictator, of his battle to reach the top as a black cricketer and, ultimately, how he sacrificed that position to do something that he hoped would make a difference.
Henry Olonga put his life at risk, but he got the chance to make a new life in England. In this incredible book he tells his extraordinary story in pin-point detail, leaving nothing to the imagination.
ISBN: 9781905326815
Format: Hardback
Pages: 288
Size: 325 x 150
Weight: 740grammes
Illustrations: 8pp Plate section
Apr
22
Mammoth EQ from ANALOG IN THE BOX!!!
Well guys – it is finally here. The most anticipated release of 2010 in the nebula community is here – it is called the Mammoth EQ and it is released by Analog in the box. This EQ is the nuts and it is the sweetest thin I have ever heard in the box if I may so. I have been beta testing it and it is the best emulation/sampling bar none that I have ever heard of this make of eq. Never harsh and always respectful of the audio.
If you own nebula and are a mastering/mix engineer who works ITB – this is a no brainer – in fact – at 15 Euros, it’s a steal.
Long live Nebula!!!!!! What are you waiting for go and buy it…… you won’t regret it.
http://analoginthebox.com/mammoth_eq.php
Feb
19
Songs from film
Now I was going through the archives and found these two songs I did a while back. There are from a film called the sky kingdom and I reckon I was in my early twenties when I sung these two songs.
I’ll still believe
Duet was sung by Prudence Katomeni
Jan
22
Smooth Eq Q-clone expansion pack by Henry Olonga
‘Smooth eq – expansion pack for Waves Q-clone’. The smooth mix….
Get the DEMO here
I am very excited to offer the second expansion pack of this nature available anywhere to my knowledge.
This package is modelled on an EQ that has true NEVE pedigree. The man himself made this one in other words. It can be described as well – smooth and sweet perhaps – never harsh and never really shrill it has a pillowy sound that works well when you do not want a hard sound. This release works well in tandem with my first release Superlative EQ . Superlative Eq is a slightly harder sound, glassy perhaps or diamond topped as they say.
This package took me five days to put together so I hope you will appreciate the time and effort put into making this a tool for your super fast mixing.
This set of presets is sampled to the highest specifications such that the difference between the sampled hardware and the sample you use is in the magnitude of negligible. This is truly analog sound in the box with no compromises. This set is sampled using Orpheus by Prismsound and is considered by some to be among some of the best convertors in the world. I have used short DIY gold tipped cables to connect the hardware to the box so there is virtually no loss in quality.
Don’t settle for emulations costing far more and sounding inferior. Get great quality presets from my blog in the coming months.
Welcome to a new way of mixing. Basically I have taken the hard work out of your hands by spending hours studying recordings to find settings on my hardware that are generic enough to be used by a wide range of people on a wide range of instruments. But you might say – what if I don’t like your mixing decisions……don’t worry – I have given you plenty of wiggle room as each folder has numerous presets with subtle and also vast differences.
Next unzip the package and place the folder anywhere but in the Q-clone folder as it slows down the loading and the menu system is not that intuitive. I suggest you place them anywhere and use the load dialogue. On windows set the open dialogue explorer window to ‘list’ so that all the presets are visible without the need to scroll. The way to do this is to right click – go to view – and choose list. Not sure of a Mac.
The package contains 862 presets. They are grouped by instrument but please note that some instruments
from the same family differ so much in timbre that no preset is perfect every time. However because there are so many you will find that some presets overlap in their usability. A preset made for a piano may well suit electric guitars and those made for kick drum may well work on bass. There are no effective rules so please just go ahead and experiment with what sounds work for you.
At this point perhaps you may want to download my other free offering that compliments this library perfectly from my blog http://www.henryolonga.net/Blog/?p=266 . This package you want to unzip- and place in your q-clone presets folder which is in the Waves folder in program files. This is because you want to have this available to you in the preset menu. This will come in handy when you like a preset but wished it had an adjustment somewhere such as less bass : in that case you could use the high end tracking eqs low shelf to remedy this or use the other eqs in Q-clone. Simply use the add feature in q-clone to add the adjustment using this high end tracking eq. And it also allows you to mix just with that particular eq and avoid my decisions altogether – but what’s the fun in that hey…..
You may also want my other presets library ‘colour mix’ which adds even more flexibility to mixing.
http://www.henryolonga.net/Blog/?p=478 . Some eye opening stuff there. Again – probably best not to place it in your q-clone presets as it is a vast library.
Once you have unzipped the ‘Superlative eq expansion pack for Waves Q-clone’ and placed it in a convenient location such as the audio drive you use, you will want to take this package for a test run………..q-clone is so simple that even a novice could mix with it………just click load, chose a preset and off you go.If you like it ….great – if you don’t, try another until you smile……..
I suggest you use these first in your chain on a track. Obviously the buss stuff is exempt but I find that with the tight kits for example – if I compress after the Q-clone preset with a good compressor like CL 1B or Sonnox dynamics, it sounds crazy good. The full mix and drum folders may help lift your mixes to give them a more polished sound. You may want to use these sparingly as the polished sound of the eq may begin to build up and you can go way OTT quickly and it becomes a harsh brittle mix quickly. So use if you have material that is dull or flat. But on the right material these can be incredible. Once in a while there is a bizarre bug in the plugin that may either make the volume 12 Dbs or – 48 Dbs. So if you get your head blown off or hear nothing – check the level meter. All of the presets were sampled at unity gain so simply get things back to zero and re-save the preset.
Also because of this please make sure you trim your track input by maybe 15 – 20 Dbs. In Cakewalk Sonar I just go all the way to minus 18.This is good audio gain staging anyway. There are also some really loud presets so please take care when loading them. Never run the plugin into the RED – it does not saturate so clipping is hard digital clipping that is very unpleasant. Please leave a comment on my blog if you enjoy the use of these samples and if you really dig them it will be of great encouragement to me to sample more stuff.
http://www.henryolonga.net/Blog/?tag=q-clone-impulses
The other thing you could consider is sampling your own gear and sharing that too…..
Good luck mixing with this, it is my first Preset packaged eq for Q-clone and I hope it gives you absolutely first class results.
Best wishes.
Henry
Jan
22
Cineform VS AVCHD first generation files
I did a few Cineform vs AVCHD comparisons a while back ( here and here ).I have also done an HDMI capture tutorial to help build a rig and highlight the benefits of bypassing in-camera compression to get a clean image from cheap camcorders.Now I have been asked again to do some kind of torture test.I have no time for that so I will just place some first generation files for all to see what the big fuss is all about.HDMI capture surpasses AVCHD in the areas of colour,sharpness and freedom from codec artifacts bla bla bla.Don’t believe – download my sample files below and try them – you will need the Cineform Codec which you can get here.
The proof is in the pudding so I have made available some first generation files for your perusal.Three of them are a comparison of the same scene shot simultaneously.One long AVCHD file and the two Cineform files – sorry – it was snowing here.The rest are well – hopefully a nice selection of different subjects that I hope will put this argument to bed.If you think AVCHD can look this good then sample these.As for me – I think the quality speaks for itself.These are large files so be patient when downloading.
Hope this helps some of you to ascertain the quality.I suggest that for the ones with cinemode (The flat/low contrast Canon in-camera setting) you take them into Cineform’s first light and play with them.Especially the horses in the field.Not the snow field….he he.You will be amazed at the leeway you have with a 10 bit file.It colour grades beautifully.Oh and yes – I know the HFS10 has aliasing and yes the start of each file has some wierd interlacing lines (because Cineform has to guess the cadence and it takes a second or two).A better camera would give better results………but come on – this is turning a relatively cheap consumer camera into an expensive one without forking out the thousands right………………………it’s still a consumer cam…..remember it’s only just on a grand now for an HFS10.
Dec
21
Binaural headphone recordings.
A guy called Hugo Zucarrelli recorded some stunning recordings in the 80s of what he called and trademarked as Holophonic sound.
Pink Floyd’s dark side of the moon is an example of the technique creating a very spacious 3D soundstage which is amazing on headphones.Unfortunately all the music I have heard associated with the recording technique seemed to be dark rock or weird esoteric recordings.I would like to have a more mainstream approach to the recording style.It took me years of research to get a decent sound and I think I have become very close to capturing what he did.
These examples are just mp3 snipetts of some tests I did a while back.I will keep adding to the database as I get more material that is guaranteed to fool the senses.
It was very impressive at the time and also very secretive.All we ever know is that he liked to study bats and that Ringo the holophonic head was a closley guarded secert.Tell me how close you think I got with these.
I have made some binaural recordings in the past.This is a taste of things to come – these are the most natural smooth sounds that IMHO can be humanly attained.The orginals are recorded to my MR-1000 at 5.6 mhz so in a nutshell – cannot tell whether I listening to the live microphone feed or the playback it is that good.Get some headphones out and enjoy.
May
26
Next few months
busy busy busy.
New album,new music videos,new gallery,new cricket season.Stay posted and we will keep you updates right here.