Consider checking the follow-up post, written 11/30/12. 

I love Nebula. It has changed everything about my recordings by giving me access to tools that I would in all likelihood never have otherwise. It also required me to get a whole new computer, changed my workflow in a way that might not be considered beneficial, and caused hours of aggravation learning its ins and outs… and I’m still pretty new at it.

I’m not going to explain what it is or why it rules cause you can do that very easily yourself. Go to http://www.acustica-audio.com and read. The purpose of this post is to help those who are new to Nebula get started as quickly as possible. The installation procedure is kind of weird, registration is weird, tweaking is weird, usage is weird. But the results make everything worth it.

So first, some basics.

You should make sure to understand all of these before moving on.

Nebula is the platform in which your libraries are loaded. By itself, it doesn’t do anything. Think of it as a container and the libraries go inside of it to make it do something.

The default location is c:\nebulatemprepository on Windows. I believe that Mac creates a folder of that same name either right in the Applications folder or in your home directory. Someone will have to check on that for me.

The free version of Nebula 3 is not as powerful as Nebula 3 Pro. Just buy Pro in the beginning and save yourself some trouble.

Some libraries will not work with the free version. Buy Pro in the beginning and save yourself some trouble.

ALWAYS USE THE REVERB VERSION unless you want to track with effects and latency is an issue. Really. Always. For everything. Stupid misnomer.

Installation

1. Download the version that matches your DAW software. 32-bit Cubase, 32-bit Nebula. If you’re running 32-bit software in a 64-bit operating system, invest in a VST Bridge (I use jBridge) so you can leverage more than 4GB of RAM.

2. Install Nebula. Accept all defaults.

3. Insert the Reverb version of Nebula on a track. The big difference between the standard and reverb versions is that reverb allows for longer tails and has greater latency. The standard version uses a shockingly higher amount of CPU. Use reverb. Always.

4. After you run it for the first time, it creates a .SER file in your nebulatemprepository file. Get this and email it to Giancarlo to register your copy. Do yourself another favor here and immediately post to the message board or PM him to give him a heads up that a registration is waiting in queue. This will probably speed up the process.

5. He will email you an EXE file. Run this and it inserts a few files into your folder that tell the application that you registered.

First Run

Once again, always start by using the Reverb version of the plugin.

Start by clicking on the word “Init” to bring up the libraries menu. Pick an EQ. The word “Init” changes to whatever patch you selected. Directly below that is a description if one exists. Directly below that it says something like this:

FRT: 96000 Hz -> 48000 Hz

The first number is the frequency at which the patch was sampled, the second number should be the frequency at which you are operating. The arrow in the middle should be solid, not flashing. If this is all the case, than all is well. In all likelihood, the two numbers will be the same and the arrow will be flashing, which means that it is not changing the sample rate correctly and will therefore not sound right. Click the MAST button at the bottom of the pseudo-LCD and change the RATE CNV to something like 7000. Hit the SAVE button (top right on MAST) then go back to PROG (your program controls) and then RELOAD (top right again.) The two numbers should be the same. Make sure to check this, very important!

Next, actually using it. The key to getting the most out of Nebula is gain staging. We kind of get spoiled in the digital world because clipping doesn’t occur within our DAW, so a single channel can hit +7 or greater and it really doesn’t matter as long as your output channel doesn’t clip. Because Nebula libraries are essentially clones of hardware devices, they do clip, so you need to ensure that you never go above 0db. Not ever. With some libraries, clipping will result in a really BRUTAL digital beep that can hurt your speakers and ears.

From the PROG page, you can tell the input level by looking at the INPUT L value. The magic number is -18 DB. Try to keep an average gain around there with peaks between -12 and -6. If it’s too low, use the INPUT nob. Too loud, use OUTPUT. I use the Sonalksis FreeG plugin if I want better gain staging control, one before and one after Nebula.

Something to watch out for is the confusing NORMAL vs ECONO thing. On the PROG page is a button that says ECONO when everything is working normally. If you click it, it changes to NORMAL and has a flashing dot. If you see this, you are operating in ECONO mode, meaning you are not operating the way the patch was intended. Some libraries mistakenly have ECONO mode enabled by default (cough 165a cough) and you might not notice. The effects of this differ from program to program but run in NORMAL mode by making sure it always says ECONO.

With that all said, the rest is rather self-explanatory. EQs are typically one band per instance of the plugin. This is because of the greater resources that are needed for multiple bands within a single patch. Need another band? Add another instance of Nebula. There are some libraries with multi-band EQ — Fate EQ and Mammoth EQ both have some. Fate’s Kick EQ in particular is killer! I’d say that in terms of worth, Nebula’s biggest assets for me are consoles and then EQ. The consoles alone are worth the entry price.

Don’t expect to use a lot of these plugins while tracking or editing. Get in the habit of applying settings, bouncing files, and importing with the effect burned to the track. Specifically console inputs on your channels and tape saturation.

My Favorite Libraries and Some Notes

Buy these.

COMPRESSORS: Fate Compressor and Snap Compressor (this one ESPECIALLY! SSL buss comp, sound better than Waves and The Glue) from Analog in the Box, Rhythm in Mind’s 165a.

EQ: AlexB’s CLeQ and MLeQ are my go-to, Analog in the Box’s Fate and Mammoth EQ are both fantastic as well.

CONSOLE: AlexB’s CLC, MLC, MWC, and MBC are all amazing, find one that works for you. CLC is a good place to start, especially if you’re doing rock.

TAPE: CDsoundmaster.com’s R2R and Tape Booster+ are absolutely essential. I also suggest their VTM-M2 VST plugin, which is probably my choice for favorite plugin ever.

REVERB and DELAY: I’ve never been a big reverb guy though this is an area that’s supposedly one of Nebula’s greatest strengths. I use one that has a name I just never remember… It’s a Plate Reverb. VXNT-something-or-other. I also just a minute ago discovered this, which is likely to get a TON of use by me. You’ll see one particularly enthused comment on that page… 😉

That will set you back a couple hundred bucks and arm you with practically everything you could ask for. I find myself using a few other compressors cause Nebula can be a little weird with fast transients but everything else is unreal.

The recommended usage of consoles and tape saturation looks like this:

CONSOLE MIC INPUT

R2R (depends on the source for me – almost always for drums, usually for guitars, sometimes for bass)

TB+ (again, depends on the source)

VTM-M2 (always)

CONSOLE LINE INPUT

I’ll very often just do VTM-M2 and then console mic input.

Buss groups have the appropriate buss group console program. Master always has a console master buss program. While some of these might be subtle by themselves, they make a huge difference when put together.

That’s it for now. If you see mistakes, please correct me. This will hopefully get you going.

Thank you, income tax return. My goal for the next few months is to get enough outboard preamps that I can get rid of my aged Soundtracs PC MIDI 16. A big part of that is (well, was) having a few channels of API and now that has been accomplished. Pictured above is the API-6b 500 lunchbox with three channels of preamps. The first two on the left are genuine APIs racked by OSA before they did their own production line of 312 clones and the third is a Classic API VP-26, a 312 clone that by many reviews sounds better than a genuine channel. In my very brief tests, I’m liking the VP-26 better than the OSAs. A bit punchier, a bit more presence, though that isn’t to say that the OSAs are bad by any means — all sound awesome. I sampled my drums and played with Drumagog to replace hits in existing recordings since my next session is a few weeks away. I’m gonna buy a fourth channel sometime soon, probably another VP-26, so I can do snare and three toms simultaneously. I’m still not feeling APIs for kick, at least not for metal.

I also just ordered a Tech21 Sansamp RBI. It’s a bass preamp and DI that many engineers and bassists, including my dear friend Shawn Riley (of Rumpelstiltskin Grinder and Woe), absolutely swear by. I love bass. It’s so under-appreciated in metal and I’m glad to have another tool at my disposal to make it sound even more awesome.

What a fun day! I awoke to a call that all of our server’s VMs were down and inaccessible. Remoted in to find that the VMMS service wouldn’t start.

The Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service failed to start due to the following error:

The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

It took literally all day but I finally got it fixed and wanted to put notes in about how. I wasn’t able to get ANY help from this from Google but I have to assume others have had or will have this problem. This post will hopefully shed some light on the situation.

The troubleshooting was an epic process. At a number of different times, I thought I had it beat and realized I had made a lateral move. Rather than going through the whole story, the bottom line was that a failed installation of SP1 left our system in an inconsistent state. Some files reflected the RTM version, others reflected SP1. In our case, the first indication that something was wrong was an error when I launched vmms.exe from a command prompt, a long error (that I’m kicking myself now for not writing down!!!) referencing a procedure not found in VID.DLL. Comparing the dates of VMMS.EXE to VID.DLL showed that the EXE was SP1, DLL was RTM. I copied the DLL from another working server, put it in place, but was greeted with what appeared to be a permissions error when opening the Hyper-V manager. I fixed the failed SP1 install by using the earlier post I made on the topic — the same exact update was preventing the install. Repairing SP1 did not fix it. I uninstalled and reinstalled the Hyper-V role, also didn’t fix it. At one point, it gave an error about WMI components, which I fixed by Googling something along the lines of “reinstall hyper-v wmi” though that didn’t fix it, either. After all that, I was able to get the list of machines to display within the Hyper-V Manager but they failed when I tried to start them, saying that “one of the hyper-v components is not running.” Google gave me nothing of use.

What did fix it? The Event Log for VMMS showed this error:

‘Virtualization Infrastructure’ driver required by the Virtual Machine Management service is not installed or is disabled. Check your settings or try reinstalling the Hyper-V role.

That error didn’t tell me anything. Since it spoke of a driver, I checked Device Manager and under System Devices, there was “Virtualization Infrastructure Driver” with a yellow exclamation point. Its properties indicated that Windows couldn’t verify the signature of a driver file. I went to the details tab and then looked at the files that comprised this driver: VID.DLL, which I knew about, and VID.SYS, contained in c:\windows\system32\drivers. VID.DLL showed an SP1 version but VID.SYS showed RTM. Copied the SP1 version from a working SP1 machine, backed up the RTM and replaced with the SP1, disabled the driver, enabled the driver, and everything was good! …With that driver, at least.

Hyper-V machines still wouldn’t start. They were all in a Saved State and I theorized that with all of my attempts to repair this, including a removal and reinstallation of the Hyper-V role, those Saved States would be no good. I deleted the Saved States using the link in Hyper-V Manager at the bottom right when a machine was selected, tried to start, and got a NEW error about the virtual network adapter! This is because of the removal/reinstallation of Hyper-V, for sure. Right-click on each VM and the network adapter read as “Configuration Error.” Changed to the new virtual network, started the VM, and everything started up normally. What a day.

The other day, I posted here with some tips and a really basic overview of setting up an RDS gateway and session host. While this worked for the first site, I ran into some trouble when trying to make it work in my own office. As I was troubleshooting, our sales guy called and said that his Outlook Anywhere wasn’t working. Related? Hmm…

Went into the IIS console on the RDS Gateway/Exchange server. The Rpc folder was set to allow Basic authentication but not Windows auth. Enabled Windows auth, IISRESET, problem solved… for now.

So the bug? Here goes.

Create two users: give one permission to use the RDS gateway and but don’t give them permission to login to the RDS Session Host. Give the other permission to only login to the Session Host but not use the gateway. The first user is misconfigured, but this is a common mistake that is very easy to make by failing to put your user in the right group. On the session host, add a link to an app, any app. I used Wordpad for my test. Now from an external system, login to your RDS Web Access page as the first user and follow the RDP link on the page to try launching that remote app. What happens? You click the Options button and see an error that the user doesn’t have permission to login to the server, as if they were RDP’ing directly into the server. Click OK, click Switch User, and login as your user who is not allowed to access from the outside. You just broke in.

In the real-world, this requires two things to be exploited: your first user is misconfigured and your second user knows their password. This isn’t that impossible, though; after all, I found this in the first place because I misconfigured a test user — it’s easy to put someone in the wrong group, not test, and give them their login info. If the two users are friendly, it’s totally reasonable to think that one might mention it to the other. There should be an option on the session host to immediately terminate sessions for users who cannot login when using a web app. The error message should be shown to the user from their desktop, not the server’s login screen!

FOLLOWUP: http://blog.subvertallmedia.com/2011/03/25/rds-setup-for-n00bz-followup/

A client of ours, a non-profit with two old Citrix servers, is finally taking our advice to get some new equipment in there. We got a used by still very good server from another client, maxed out the RAM, and today I installed Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and Hyper-V. I offered two scenarios: one in which we use Server 2008 R2 VMs with RDS, the other in which we P2V their existing Windows Server 2003 machines. The first solution is obviously the better choice but with old programs, you can’t be too sure what will and won’t work, so I had to test them out. I also hadn’t configured an RDS farm before and wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t lose the easy accessibility offered by way of a web portal.

The basic details really aren’t worth getting into, nor am I going into a whole explanation of what RDS is and how it differs from TS. Use Google, dude. If you want to configure RDS, there are tons of great blog posts that will walk you through it. What might help you, though, is a really brief walk-through of the key components. I mean, knowing how to do something is great but it’s hard to find directions if you don’t know where you’re going. This would have saved me quite a bit of time but I have to admit that it was kind of fun to dig through it and figure out exactly how it all worked together. So… here we go.

The equipment: one physical box running Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition, one Hyper-V machine also running 2008 R2 Enterprise. The Hyper-V host, against best practices, is also my web-facing RDS Gateway machine. Yeah, I know, shouldn’t do that, shut up — the server, while better than what they had, is still sort of old, RAM is at a premium, and I don’t want to waste resources on another VM. Once I have proven that all of their apps will work in Hyper-V, I will build a second RDS virtual machine.

The goal: web-based login to remote desktop. I also wanted their key apps available as remote apps so they don’t need to login to a full desktop. We needed multiple RDS machines available with automatic load balancing. Simplicity is key.

Shit you need to know! (For my scenario.)

First, some basic definitions.

The remote desktop server, formerly known as the terminal server, AKA the machine where all the apps actually run, is now the Remote Desktop Session Host.

The web-accessible portal is the Remote Desktop Web Access.

The load-balancing component is the Remote Desktop Connection Broker.

The component that allows external users to access RDS resources behind your firewall is the Remote Desktop Gateway.

So with all that said, how does one do this? It’s not all that hard.

First of all, both machines need to be in a domain. In my test environment, I was trying to do it in a workgroup. Once your roles are installed, you need to add your machine accounts to a few different local groups, so the Session Host needs to go in the Broker’s “Session Broker Computers” group and your broker needs to go in the “TS Web Access Computers” group on your RDS session host. This can’t be done unless you’re in a domain! In my case, I complicated things dramatically by joining both machines to the domain over a VPN. This caused a snag at a later point but we’ll get to that soon.

Next, I installed different RDS roles on both machines. On my web-facing machine, I installed the Connection Broker, Gateway, and Web Access components. On the RDS host, I installed only the Remote Desktop Session Host role. At this point, you can add the machines to the proper local groups. Knowing this ahead of time doesn’t really matter because the configuration tools do a very good job of telling you to do that, so pay attention to error messages.

Make sure everything is registered properly in DNS. If you want to use an RDS farm, you need to register it in DNS, one entry with the name of your choice for each RDS Session Host. In my case, I had one RDS Session Host with plans to add more so I only created one DNS entry for the farm but when I add my second server, I will need a second DNS entry.

Configure your servers to look in the right places. Because I was using a Connection Broker in a farm, I needed my Session Host to know this. Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration, then “Member of a farm in RD Connection Broker” under the “Edit settings” heading in the middle of the screen. Your RD Connection Broker is the internal DNS name of the machine with that role; your farm name is the internal DNS name that you created. It will not check if these are accurate so don’t mess it up!

The web-facing server needed a bit more work. In “Remote Desktop Connection Manager,” add your farm as a RemoteApp Source. I wasn’t using Virtualization Hosting so none of that stuff really mattered. The RD Gateway server can be set to automatically detect or a static entry — I used a static entry. Licensing is rather self-explanatory. Make sure to specify your RD Web Access servers on this screen as well — it wants an internal name though I have a hunch that your external name would work if you were doing everything through a single server.

Configuring the Web Access component is a breeze, just enter your broker or stand-alone server address in the web portal. I ran into a snag here because of my whole domain-over-VPN nonsense. There is a service, “Remote Desktop Connection Broker,” that will not start if your machine cannot authenticate with the domain. In my case, I was logging in using the VPN, but the service already failed at that point and I didn’t realize it! Because of that, the Web Portal did not want to accept a server address and the error message was vague. The solution was to ensure the VPN was connected and then start the service, at which point it worked perfectly. Don’t forget to forward 80, 443, and 3389 to this server!

You need to configure RemoteApp settings or your web portal won’t show anything accessible. Simple thing here: open RemoteApp Manager and make sure to go into “RD Session Host Server Settings,” “RD Session Host Server” tabm and add in your farm name and click “Show a remote desktop connection to this RD Session Host Server in RD Web Access.” If you want web apps available, you do that from the RemoteApp manager as well.

Finally, you need to do some basic configuration on your gateway server. The Remote Desktop Gateway Manager is pretty easy to figure out if you want a very basic setup, probably the easiest part of this whole thing. Right-click the server in the left-hand column, go to “SSL Certificate” tab, and do what you need to do. For my testing purposes, I used a self-signed cert but would never do this for a production server because it requires the cert installed as a trusted authority on each client machine. Creating the self-signed cert is done right from this window, which is quite convenient. You also need to go to the Server Farm tab and specify the internal name of your RD Gateway. It does verify the name so make sure you’re connected to your domain using your VPN… (grumble grumble…).

Seriously, that’s it. It took me all day to figure this crap out. I realize that this was hastily written and quite vague but it’s short enough and covers enough ground that it might save someone some time. I know that it would have saved me a few hours! It’s a very cool feeling to connect over the net to your new RDS Web Access server and launch MS Word through the browser, knowing that it’s using the gateway to access resources that aren’t publicly available to the web. Good luck!