Last song produced on old computer - made with Ardour and Rakarrack

[cabsi]

Moved to a completely FOSS workflow in 2018. But my PC died January 2019, so I had an enforced break until just recently.

This song uses the Black Pearl drumkit, EQ10Q and Calf compressors and reverb. The bass guitar is a soundfont created by Gary Campion and licensed under GPL (FS Ibanez Electric Bass Guitar.sf2). The guitars were done using some Rakarrack presets.

https://soundcloud.com/gobackww/murder-is-meat

[Basslint]

As a fan of The Melvins, I liked it a lot!

[Rainmak3r]

Not my genre, but quite cool!

I'm surprised by how good guitars sound: I've never managed to get a good (semi)distorted sound out of Rakarrack, it always seems to be either too muddy, noisy and/or saturated/loud, which is why I usually only use it for its gorgeous clean sounds and leave anything else to Guitarix instead. Do you remember which presets you used here?

[cabsi]

As a fan of The Melvins, I liked it a lot!

oh wow, that means a lot to me. Thank you. Melvins are my #1 artist on last.fm \m/

[cabsi]

Do you remember which presets you used here?

Probably Live Punk Show for the intro with the Reverbtron wet/dry dialed back to 32. Hard Rock Amp is another go to sound for me.

either too muddy, noisy

I find a hi-pass eq helps for this, dialed around 75-150Hz - I place this on the Ardour side rather than use the Rakarrack EQ.

[milo]

I used to be a big fan of The Smiths back in the day, and I remember working the grill at McDonald's when I was a teenager singing "Meat is Murder" to myself. Good times.

[cabsi]

I've never managed to get a good (semi)distorted sound out of Rakarrack, it always seems to be either too muddy, noisy and/or saturated/loud,

I was wondering about this - have you tweaked your oversampling settings? That makes a huge improvement to the overdriven/distorted presets. The default settings are fairly conservative to support older systems. I've got a 9th gen i5 and managed to get no xruns at 5x upsampling and x2 waveshape resampling. I also tweaked the downsampling sample rates (32000), Down: Fastest, Up: Linear. Check the Rakarrack doco for help/explanation with these.

[Rainmak3r]

I've never managed to get a good (semi)distorted sound out of Rakarrack, it always seems to be either too muddy, noisy and/or saturated/loud,

I was wondering about this - have you tweaked your oversampling settings? That makes a huge improvement to the overdriven/distorted presets. The default settings are fairly conservative to support older systems. I've got a 9th gen i5 and managed to get no xruns at 5x upsampling and x2 waveshape resampling. I also tweaked the downsampling sample rates (32000), Down: Fastest, Up: Linear. Check the Rakarrack doco for help/explanation with these.

I only used presets or tweaked some of their properties, but never changed the values you suggested. Thanks for the tip, I'll give those a try!

[jdfight]

That was fun! The Melvins comparison is an apt one!

[turbidh20]

Good stuff, enjoyed it I liked the guitar parts, very good.

Edit: Just listened to your stuff on bandcamp - nice guitar work. "With my mashed potato I like a little gravy,
If you cook it for me you can be my baby" I like your style!