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In his guide, Pete sez... <<I beg forgiveness for the marketing-like blurb, but please do check [Edge] out.>> I know he can't shamelessly promote Edge without looking like a shill, so I will. Edge is fast and efficient, and improvements like Collections shows someone at Microsoft is thinking "hmm, I wonder what would actually help users."

Not sure why they decided it`s a leap year. Hope the 3rd code isn't on the 29th. Just saying😁

This guide was written by @Pete Brown from Microsoft who is also an active DAW user. I thought I'd post it since it takes a common sense approach to getting the best performance from a PC, rather than some of the stuff out there with outdated nonsense that dates back to the XP days https://aka.ms/Win10AudioTweakGuide

But where are the $4 deals of yore ...

Got it. I don't agree with the decision to disable Defender, but I get where you're coming from. What you don't end up protected from, however, are drive-by malware installs that use browser exploits to install software on your PC, Mac, Phone, etc. The owners of the sites often don't even know that the malware distribution is happening there, because it comes through compromised ad networks, hacked sites, posted comments, etc. You can still manage a lot of that by being careful and aware, but some of these things can be tricky. I still use Defender, but I've also done a few other things in this house to help keep all the PCs safe (I have a 12yo and 15yo, each with their own PCs since they were 6, and my wife also has her own PC) Ad-block. I felt guilty at first, but ad networks were a primary distributor of drive-by malware, so I gave up, That, and the ads that were pushing content all over the page were so distracting that I just couldn't function anymore. Pi-Hole. I have a pi-hole for the house. Originally, I installed it so I could actually surf the web with my iPad Air. It was otherwise choking due to all the supplemental ad/tracking/scripting going on on pages. It really made a huge difference. I've unblocked the domains for xbox achievements, and some telemetry, but otherwise, it blocks a ton. Before it was mandated, uninstalled and disabled Flash on all the PCs in the house. Way too many exploits Way back, completely disabled Java on all browsers on all PCs. Hot mess of exploits that was. The only reason Java was on any of the PCs was (is) for Minecraft. Since then, there's only been one instance of malware in the house, from when my son was trying to download a Minecraft texture pack, and clicked the wrong download button (I hate those sites). He learned a valuable lesson that day, and no one has had problems since. There's a person on Gearslutz who PM'd me about malware they got. The vector there was their router, which has apparently been compromised. Again, didn't require any bad behavior on the part of the user, other than not making sure the router was up to date (and even then, not sure that would have stopped it). One thing I did recently enable is Windows Defender Controlled Folder Access. The first time you enable this, it's a bit of a pain as file access starts silently failing for some apps. But once you let them through, it's all good. Given the massive rise in ransomware, this seemed prudent. Defender is pretty low-touch and low resource usage. Worth a try if you ever decide to give it another shot. Pete

My home page says 371,592 trackers and ads blocked, 5.2 hours time saved. But they could be just making that up. It's not like I've been keeping track. A more useful metric would be how many hours I've wasted watching cat videos.

I've had some time to play with Legendary Low Strings. Didn't take long to figure it out, as it's one of those one-trick libraries that just sounds great with zero effort. And golly, does it sound good. We're talking animated Disney princess-movie good.

5 March? the sale will be over before I have read the threads title 😳

I finally got bass mint. At $29 it’s lowest it’s ever been as was always an exception to these voucher codes.

For those not old enough to get the reference...

I picked up the bx_console SSL 4000 G. It just seemed too hard to pass up. I wasn't going to let software gas get in the way of saving up for my new guitar amp but here we are. 😆 Rocky

It sounds great, no denying....but I find it sad that fewer and fewer people are playing real instruments. Just sitting down with an acoustic and twiddling around is so therapeutic, just as putting pen to paper beats typing on a keyboard every time, plugging in an electric and pretending to be Hendrix....how you gonna pose in front of the mirror in your spandex with this VST? I guess this is why I gravitate towards 'left-field' music that could not be reproduced on a VST. I'd love to hear someone try and pull off Thurston Moore or the Pixies Debaser on this thing The same with virtual drums or Piano - they sound great for certain genres, but try and do Elliot Smith...nah! Nothing beats a real instrument sound

FWIW I really wouldn't recommend the Realtek ASIO drivers (unless they've been updated/overhauled recently). I had no end of problems with sluggish UI and hangs using it on one of my laptops (it's a pretty high end i9 laptop too). Switching to WASAPI solved all my issues.

I feel that way by 6:00 AM. Most mornings I'm up at 4:00, for no particular reason. Well, actually tbh it's because I have a self-imposed rule of no cannabis until an hour before bedtime. So bedtime has been coming earlier and earlier.

You too can be Ray Manzarek! Very nice modeled bass piano.

Maybe I'm amazed or maybe it's very sad, that people don't need to master real instruments any longer as they can simply draw and readjust rectangles in the dadgum piano roll.

BTW we pushed an update to our installer that detects and shuts down the Waves Local server until this is fixed by Waves. So it should at least temporarily resolve this from our end.

True Trance Sounds V1 - Massive soundbank for Roland Zen Core family, which includes Zenology/Pro, Fantom, Jupiter X/XM, MC707/101, Zenbeat, RD-88, and Axe-Edge. The sound palette of this pack comes from the end of 90' and early 2000'. From beautiful Trance Plucks, powerful Leads, deep and strong basses to smooth Keys and floating Pads. It includes some of the most exciting sounds of those years, like Supersaw, M1 Bass. Of course not without more modern sounds, many of which you can hear here. It's the first true sound library that opens the full power of the Zen Core engine. Soundset contains 64 patches, which: 4 Bells/Clav 19 Synth Bases 13 Plucks 5 AAH/Choirs 9 Leads 9 - Pad/Strings 1 ARP 4 - Synth/Sound FX's 4 - Poly/Keys Buy Link!

Extended DAW Compatibility Ableton Live 10, Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Cubase, FL Studio, Studio One, Reason, Reaper, GarageBand, Bitwig, Digital Performer This may be the best way to collaborate during covid, and beyond.

DAMN YOU NI! I thought I was done with you.... Now I'm going to have to want it for as long is takes to be on sale because I'm too cheap to pay full price

Hello, our CRAZY WINTER SALE just started! Don't miss the chance to save 50% on FIFTEEN of our best seller products for a limited time. https://www.dreamaudiotools.net/crazy-winter-sale/

I listened to the demo. Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!

Enjoyable pop song. great performance and sounds.

Thanks so much @PavlovsCat - made my day Thanks Jack

I think the amount a developer has to pay to NI for having a Kontakt library available to Kontakt Player is just over $20 for each sold item. My guess is based on information at RealiTone who sells the Full Kontakt version of RealiVox Blue for $149.95 and the Kontakt Player version for $169.95. And they say: I might add that RealiTone currently have a deal selling the Full Kontakt version of RealiVox Blue for $99.95 and the Kontakt Player version for $119.95. Also, the Full Kontakt version of RealiVox Ladies is currently sold for $199.95 (regular price $300) and the Kontakt Player version for $219.95 (regular price $320).

i've found even when the product says it requires Kontakt Full, it will run as a demo mode in player so every 12-15 min of playing time you need to restart Kontakt.

Just as an aside, there is no good reason to oversample a delay.

When I make tutorials using OBS I have to switch to WASAPI SHARED driver mode so OSB will capture Cakewalks output as well as my mike. Otherwise you need an external mixer. I end up with 2 input faders in OBS which is great so I can balance the mix between the narration and Cakewalk playback. Only issue is I have not figured out how to monitor this. The other bummer is you cannot demonstrate an ASIO set up in Cakewalk. So for that I use an external mixer. I have 4x4 interfaces but you could get by with a 2x2. I run interface output 3/4 into a stereo channel of the mixer. This will be my Cakewalk playback now.. I also plug the mike into the mixer I connect the mixers output to input 3/4 of interface. and then set inputs 3/4 as desktop audio in OBS. I like the mixer best as now I can also monitor the balance using either the mixer or my interface headphone jack. I can also monitor the signal level more accurately. OBS meters are sort of off the mark.

I too have played the guitar for decades. But in my maturity I realize there is some social and cultural value in others not having to constantly hear me say, “I can’t hear the guitar”.😁

Kid Loco- Lucy's Talking Live

$17 https://www.timespace.com/products/zero-g-pure-rex

Exactly, being able to define what strings and what articulation is played for every beat is very useful. The NI guitars sound good but they are more limited, particularly if you venture into odd time signatures.

I have a self-imposed rule of no cannabis until I want some. Even then, I find myself frequently breaking this rule.

From @Pete Brown's article: This gives me some hope I can upgrade from 1803 at some point.

Tracktion is supposed to be releasing their new FM synthesis instrument F.'em sometime this year. Caught a NAMM promo about it, where they mentioned they've been running a bit behind in development. Letting the devs, including Wolfram Franke (former Waldorf dev and now current Biotek dev) take a deeper dive, or something to that effect. Might be interesting... It's a 13 operator FM synth with 8 operators as classic single cycle wave operators, plus 2 sample oscillators. Plus loads of modulations like Biotek has.

I quite often use virtual instruments for writing, then re-record with real instruments; the exception being drums, as I've only got an electronic kit, and perhaps acoustic "strummed" guitars, cos... well, they sound a whole lot better than my £300 acoustic does! But the beauty of instruments like NI Session Guitarist/UJAM Virtual Guitarist is that they provide some interesting riffs I wouldn't normally come up with. That's not to say I always keep the riffs as they are, but they're a great starting place for getting the creative juices going. In some cases though, they're bang on the money and I'm happy to use them as is.

Then explain to me why a new i5 6 core blows my i7 4 core 8 thread out of the water. (I know why. Just trying to be funny.) 😁 BTW/OT ... Do remember in another thread you were asking about the emoji's suddenly becoming very limited here on the forum? I installed the Brave secure browser today and it's happening to me now too in it but not in Chrome. The Winkey plus semicolon trick works though. So far Brave has blocked 2,600 ad's and cookies and stopped 50MB of data from being sent. And I haven't been on much today at all.

The "prefer background processes" bit can actually hurt you. During the investigation for my tweak list, I looked this one up, because it comes up often. That setting is primarily for servers with background processes (think Database or web server) which need to be prioritized over the interactive applications. Normally, foreground apps get a boost to keep them responsive. Setting it to prefer background services puts foreground and background on a fairly equal footing, with some caveats. For DAW use, when using an ASIO driver setting it to "background services" : If the driver is loaded by a process other than the DAW (like a service), and doesn't use MMCSS threads, this setting could potentially keep the audio driver from being starved by a faster interactive application. If the driver is loaded in-process with the DAW, this will not have any positive effect because the audio driver is part of the foreground application process. If the driver is loaded by another process (like a service), and DOES use MMCSS threads, this setting will not have any positive effect. In all cases, when you set this to prefer background processes, you are causing all those other services that folks put in tweak lists as "robbing" processor cycles, on an equal footing with your DAW app, causing them to potentially use more CPU than you may want. If you are using WASAPI, the calculus is a bit different because there are more moving parts. And, again, if the bit running in the background process is using MMCSS threads (many do now), this will not have any impact because those have a different scheduling algorithm applied. As I mention in my on tweak list, the key is to measure measure measure. And be sure to do so both before and after the change, and in isolation from other changes. In most scenarios, this setting is not going to help performance of the DAW. In some cases, it could make it perform worse. Pete

hi marc! steely dan, i love a lot of steely dan songs, almost all of Aja... so, yea, maybe. thanks for listening!

I like the song. For me less delay on the vocals would sound better. I feel like it fights with the delay on the keys.

I Am an expert water 💧 boiler! at least till Saturday and maybe more amazing how unprepared everyone was considering how much advance notice there was. Power and water companies assured everyone they were ready turned into a fiasco

AFAIK, they call different functions. All plug-ins may be bypassed in the FX Rack. This is implemented in the DAW itself. The bypass button in the plug-in standard header is linked to the VST3 host bypass function. This must be implemented by the plug-in and is only available in VST3 format. Unlike the DAW plug-in bypass, the VST3 host bypass may be automated. IIRC, because this may be automated, it does not cause PDC to be recomputed like the DAW plug-in bypass options.

I've been making music and video editing. I don't know how I ever found time to go to work.

My guess is the mp3 is 44.1k and you’re playing it back at 48k. Check your interface settings. Rarely do I use real-time bounce when exporting, unless I use “audible” bounce cause I just want to hear the track. t

Hmm, I think I've found something - by using smart tool, ctrl + shift, you can just drag the midi clip to twice the size and that does it. Isn't modern technology great!

"Lucky Man" - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Nice and chill, enchanting voice...

@Mark Morgon-Shaw when you say track outs do you mean to capture the output of the tracks themselves or the output including downstream effects and automation on buses? The former is already available by exporting with source category set to tracks. Its the latter case that we are discussing here.

yes.. imo these are better than the cajón libraries by NI