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old meme, still true

I suppose the time having to replace all your apps cuz they don't work anymore don't count huh?

The assignment in this scoring competition was to make music for a short film, "Haunted House," by the group Darkstar. https://www.spitfireaudio.com/haunted-house-scoring-competition/ All the sounds in this came from Spitfire Audio's $29 Darkstar Haunted House library, with the exception of the vocal, which is Bronte from the Evolution Series. I was going for a "Twin Peaks" vibe. This is also my second binaural mix, so please use headphones. I'm not crazy about Spitfire's player, so I loaded everything but Bronte in Unify. This made something that was very frustrating to use into smooth sailing.. I may do a video on how I set it all up, but I will wait until I officially lose this contest. 😄 This was good to do because there was a brief video I could use without being concerned with rights, plus the discipline of trying to do it all with one library. That was something I did before with the Evolution Series with my video NAIAD.

Apple is cheaper? On what planet is this?

We've known for years there were speed gains to be had with reduced instruction sets and newer architectures. But Intel has been maintaining compatibility with x86 architecture for the sake of their users. They've never been so bold (reckless?) as to expect every developer to revise their every existing application to run on a new generation CPU. Whereas Apple already had this in its wheelhouse, having transitioned from Power PC to Intel, then a similarly radical shift from MacOS to OS X. I'm no fan of planned obsolescence, walled gardens, hardware lock in, or bravery as it applies to ditching headphone jacks, but I'm also no fan of unnecessarily massive boxes, high power consumption, excess heat during summer, fan noise, and fan failures! The iPad has been an astounding technological marvel and I'm keen to see what they can do with Apple silicon in the desktop space as long as they don't get too greedy.

I was much more impressed with Arturia's Tape MELLO-FI, fwiw. Wouldn't pay $99 for it, but grabbed it at the much lower intro price (free) and have been enjoying it. Even used the 'tape-stop' effect in one of my tracks.

These discussions will go on forever. The reality is that years ago when I went into a New York design studio, it was 100% Macs. Everybody I knew who wasn't using Avid for film editing ran Final Cut on Macs. And musicians used Macs. I'm not knowledgable about special effects and gaming, but I expect it was similar. The PC market owned the office market. Apple competed by going aggressively for the creatives. The machines were beautiful and they worked tremendously better than the PCs of the day on creative apps. Windows software was shit; Mac OS worked like a dream. It was truly a joy to use after the frustration of the PC. No viruses! And you couldn't get the programs you wanted. Apple owned the creative market, and rightly so. As with New York real estate, everybody wants to live near artists or look like them. So you would also see banks of Macs in offices of all kinds. I think that over time, creatives have abandoned Apple, not because they suddenly thought the products weren't beautiful any more, but because they can get more bang for their buck out of a PC. Not everybody who wants to make art is rich--far from it. They don't need the fastest processor any more than they need a Lamborghini--they buy what they can afford, and try to get the best they can. Windows OS is fine nowadays. Totally does the job. Apple going after creatives with computers is ancient history. They make trillions now with a wide range of products. They have totally lost the battle for creatives to the PC. And that's why such a large amount of creative software is PC only--it's the market where the money is. The war is over and the PC won. Next. From my experience in the film industry, nearly all of the best independent films of the last few decades were made with regular computers, both PCs and Macs. The budgets on those kinds of films tend to be very, very low. It's not about processing power--it's about talent. And honestly, I think you could make Marvel movies without buying the latest things. Just because you can afford it doesn't mean you'd have to abandon the film without the latest processor. STAR WARS did pretty decent business. The exception is creative software on tablets which is still owned by Apple. If you want to play music on a tablet, most of the best stuff is iPad only. But Apple stuff is very beautiful and that's why they can charge a premium for it and people will happily pay for that beauty. It is truly art sitting in your studio and you can't put a price on that. I read that the stand for one of their new monitors was a thousand bucks. It must be a hell of a stand. You should sell tickets to let people look at it. I bought a great 4K Monitor for $600, stand and all. The image is way is way better than the Apple monitors I used to drool over years ago. But I admit, the stand is just a freaking stand. It holds the monitor up and that's good enough for me. I still have an old desktop Mac, the fourth Apple computer I bought. I spent what was a fortune for me at the time, and It sits unused on the floor because I can't get ten cents for it. You can't put current OS on it. Not worth selling and who knows? I may find a use for it because it is still a powerful computer with the old OS. Maybe I'll go in there and output some stems from an old Logic project. It's just lost all of its value unlike a PC of the same vintage that can easily run Windows 10. When there is a conversation about price between PC and Apple it is always about the most expensive thing you can buy. If you compare how much computer you can get (and the price of upgrading RAM, hard dive, etc) for a thousand bucks or less, there's nothing to talk about. The war is over. Which doesn't mean that these conversations won't go on forever, because reality is tribal. Everybody sees what they want to see, and finds ways to make facts fit into their beliefs. Human, too human...

Can we censor the people here who are advocating censorship? Perhaps when it is done to them, their eyes will be opened.

Since I can’t sing in tune, I make it lo-fi and sounds amazing. i like this trend hahha

My experience doesn't reflect that. Uprading Mac hardware such as RAM and CPU costs more.

By the time you pay for new versions of software due to Apple dramatically changing the OS and making them incompatible, I'd say not 🙃 Also super easy just to upgrade components with PC, so the second build is often quite a lot cheaper. AMD in particular is good in new ranges of CPUs traditionally being compatible with older motherboards as well, so people can sometimes get away with very decent upgrades, for crazy cheap by the time they need an upgrade. Internal storage is so overpriced with Apple as well that if you're matching internal for internal, there's even less chance of Apple competing on price. Apple has some advantages, but price for me isn't one of them. I went from producing on PC to trying Apple for a number of years, then back to PC and couldn't be happier 🙂

I'd like to apologize to Music Software Deals. Had no idea there is a serious company behind it. Should have looked more in details at the project; the silly crawling thing is what made me react, it's my mistake and I ask apologies for all my behavior. I hope my sincere apologies are accepted and wish you good luck with this project.

Get back issue for 99 Cents at Pocketmags https://pocketmags.com/us/computer-music-magazine

To quote that famous 1960's British spy: "Yeah, Baby!"

You still sing ? Lol lofi solves this problem with zero singing or just small phrases here and there , or movies dialogs ... and next ....

If you happen to bite on this, be advised that there are quite a few free patch sets in the shop waiting to be downloaded.

I’m starting to feel the same about these $25 PA vouchers as I do about the NI ones.

I did so earlier and they gave me an NFR for 4. Pleasant experience.

Buy an issue and you get their extensive collection of plug-ins along with it. Some real gems in there.

I'm not going to argue with people not able to understand the fundamental issues or able to engage intelligently and in a civil manner. I'll just make a final point. The problem that Young has isn't about someone's right to free speech. His issue is with commercial interests profiting from actively engaging in disseminating disinformation. Young simply took a stand that he doesn't want to affiliate with an organization doing that. Several years ago a popular news network tried to recruit me to be a commentator on their network. I refused them. Not merely because they're a hyper-partisan network but because they profit off of spreading disinformation and exploit and further hateful biases of their viewers (research makes it easy to appeal to thus group using those biases; it's 24/7 confirmation bias manipulating q poorly educated viewers and I won't be part of that), bogoted tropes and racial and cultural division to their non-college educated audience that eats that stuff up (I grew up working class and despise billionaires or anyone with power / a voice manipulating this group). I've taken money for speaking engagements for groups that are on the same side as them politically, but my line in the sand is organizations that willfully engage in disinformation. So I greatly respect Young. You don't have to agree with the guy's politics to respect that this is someone who doesn't want to be affiliated with an organization that actively engages in and greatly profits from the dissemination of disinformation. He made a decision that will cost him 60% of his annual income. IMO, that's character. Regardless of whether or not you share Young's views on anything else, that is character and I think that any person of integrity can respect that. That's the end of this thread for me. Try to listen to each other and show respect. We can disagree and still respect one another. Otherwise, there's no point to having a discussion.

Yesterday's over mined samples and over used sounds are today's throwback, retro and cool nostalgia libraries. Companies are literally reproducing/cloning 20, 30, 40 year old gear for this same reason. Roland somewhat recently released the D-50 and JV 1080 and Korg their Triton in a vst. Easily 3 of the top 10 most overly used sound libraries in popular music . The same reason many people stopped using them is the same reason those sounds are so sought after today.

My reaction was exaggerated no matter what so I recognize it and feel sorry about it.

Just wait until you want to upgrade (just) the GPU, or RAM when you've got an SoC - I know; it's not really something you could do anyway with a Mac.

Run the HP to update

Wow! The last time an apple caused this much commotion involved Adam, Eve and a Snake. 🙆🏻‍♂️

You should really check out Unify. Since it is a plugin host you are able to load 3rd party plugins such as Spitfire Player on multiple layers, and never need to open or look at the native plugin UI. They are still there in the background and are accessible if needed, but can also be ignored. Great idea @Reid Rosefelt!!! Edit: You can insert 3rd party plugins in Unify layers regardless of whether or not they have already been "Unified". You just select the patch in the native plugin GUI, and set any desired effects in the respective Unify layer, then save it in the Unify user library yourself. Once you have done that, the preset is "Unified" and available to load directly from the Unify browser. All "Unified" presets will appear in the Unify preset browser, allowing you to completely bypass the native plugin UI.

I was checking the official Cakewalk Instagram page (which is looking kinda dead) and saw that someone had done a German flag in this way to congratulate the German team for winning the World Cup, IIRC. Figuring out the fastest path for doing this, including setting the clip colors, slip editing, Groove clipping, copying and pasting, etc. was really good for honing editing/comping chops on a project with nothing musical at stake. Made in America, adopted by Singapore, currently developed in multiple nations.

Correct, V-Vocal documentation does not have any bearing on recorded MIDI data. To Cakewalk, pitch bend is a series of numbers from 0 to 16,383. It is up to the plug-in/hardware synths to determine what those numbers mean.

At least there is some consistency there, Paulo.

Seems instead of the pitch bend you should simply transpose the part by +1 - N opens transpose dialogue. It's common to modulate in the middle of a song or for the last chorus. I would do this in Track view so I can highlight the timeline of the section for all the midi tracks minus the drums. If you want a slide into the key change then only draw it in the measure where this happens.

A bit over-blown. Win10 needs properly configured once. For someone who knows what they're doing, that process isn't lengthy (probably about 15 minutes). We have Apple machines here to support VE Pro clients. I tweak OSX as well (disable power-management, etc).

I feel the force is weakening in the Intel camp.

I don't think you get what is this section for 😎

For me, the Country Rhodes version really takes me home, to a place . . .

Your vocal sounds to me, a little like the late Joe Cocker , absolutely the most impressive vox I've heard on this site .. ever, and musically excellent so ... DO NOT MESS WITH THE MIX it works fine. Just my opinion but 10/10 👍 Steve

I wasn't referring to the M1 change, but more even just a number of the yearly OS updates that quite often render applications incompatible because Apple decided to change something without caring about the impacts for their customers. But that's OK, because the applications they sell, which let's face it are the only ones they want you to buy will be compatible. Unfortunately some of the developers are no longer in business, so they will never be updated. Windows PCs often support things almost indefinitely. Hell 32 bit plugins from 10 years ago still install and run perfectly. My DAW doesn't natively support them, but some DAWs still do and most importantly the underlying OS does. Apple OS updates often break them so they don't work in any DAW, or even install. Back on the parts, for HDD, looking at the Mac Mini to upgrade FROM 512GB to 1TB is about $200 or so I believe. To buy a Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 2TB NVMe hard drive outright for a PC, is about the same price. Not just to get an extra 512GB, but to buy from scratch. I looked at the Mac Pro to check the upgrades, but when I saw the starting from prices, the argument for Apple being cheaper/similar is already lost, even if they paid you for a hard drive upgrade 🤣 As for CPU, no, I'm not talking old parts. Brand new parts, just a more current generation. Like we know, often a couple of generations ahead, the cheapest CPU will be faster than what was the flagship at times. So in a few years, you could simply buy a much better performing CPU and drop it straight in with AMD. That's where Apple just can't compete. Even if people go for the lot and upgrade the CPU, Motherboard and RAM, then it's lightyears cheaper than a new Apple, so your TCO over the life of your PC DAW just gets further and further ahead. I still can't see it being anywhere close to even. If I spent the same money on a PC build as a Mac Pro, it would be ridiculous.. I'd just be buying the most expensive best parts just to get there!! Or I could easily buy the same spec, for less money and even still have money left for a new instrument, some awesome mic pres, or other bits of audio hardware. I do agree on the screens. I like their screens 🙂 But even then, with all the money saved, I could buy a couple of top end non Apple screens and still be in front. Apple looks better from an aesthetics perspective I'd say and marketed amazingly. But I can't agree that they price similarly and I've owned both.

Software developers got spoiled by the ever increasing speed, efficiency and lowered cost of CPUs / hardware. Why bother writing efficient software when the consumer can just keep updating their specs? But now...with costs & efficiency plateauing...especially on the price front... I specifically choose developers that maximize existing tech. No tolerance for horribly optimized plugins, or absurdly bloated sample libraries taking up needless drive space on expensive SSDs. (Opus strings is half a terrabyte - I could rant about this specific bit of developer nonsense.). Some of these recent bottlenecks were finally forcing developers to think carefully about software design if they wanted to appeal to a larger audience who can't upgrade their specs every 6 months. Unfortunately, these recent CPUs may halt that progress, although affordable hard drive space is still going to be a problem for a while.

Mark, your voice is incredible in this one ! . . . so much character and expression, you obviously know this tune very well, and totally got inside it here. The instrument arrangement is very special also, I am transported to that jazz club ! . . . can almost smell the cigarettes, Lol Now, don't monkey with that mix too much, sounds very balanced and convincing, maybe you nailed first time ? I've only heard it on headphones so far, but will let you know how it translates to other systems.

There's really nothing wrong with sound fonts per se. Like any sample-based format, it largely depends on the quality of the samples themselves. I think perhaps soundfonts have gotten a bad rap from their association with crappy Sound Blaster cards, but there's some pretty decent stuff out there including much of the old E-mu and and Ensoniq sstuf.

Thus kinda proving my point....

If you have downloaded the Muz3um patch set for Rapture, I invite you to download my Magic Russ in the Muz3um set of patches which I have posted to the Rapture Patches page on KVR. I will also post the 30 for 30 set there tomorrow or so.

Okay, one more. The vaccines don't stop people from getting the virus completely. There's no vaccine of any kind that has ever been able to do that perfectly. What the vaccines have tremendous success at is reducing the possibility of hospitalization and death from the virus. From memory, and I'm usually pretty good at remembering research, I've launched and edited a bunch of publications in my career, including in the areas of science and technology. But the rate of hospitalization and death for the unvaccinated is more than 11 times worse than it us for the vaccinated. The estimates are that more than 90% of those in US hospitals for COVID-19 today are unvaccinated. I've had three friends who went to the hospital, two almost died (a musician in a band I used to play in) and one died (technically, my friend's brother). All were unvaccinated, reflecting national statistics. Vaccination also has an impact on transmission which is not insignificant, but frankly, I can't recall that stat and I'm on my phone getting ready to watch "Book of Bobba Fett" with the family. As always, we can agree to disagree, but we have to respect one another and respect facts if our conversation is to be of any value. Peace.

If you can even do that....

well, they did include Rosetta 2. Pretty much all my software worked right out of the gate. I think they did about as awesome a job with the transition as could be done. The fact that, via Rosetta, you can use software written for x86 on an M1 chip is pretty cool.

There is stupidity and misinformation from both sides of this topic from laypeople to medical professionals. There are also FACTS that support both sides. However, you're naive if you think big corporations and governments are without improper and unethical motivations that can and do influence their decisions and PR. That being said, this is really NOT worth damaging relationships with friends, family, and each other. I have many nurses and doctors in my family including my wife, daughter, sister, nieces, etc. Interestingly, the majority are not vax'd. Do we all agree on everything? Seldom. Do I always defer to their recommendations? Mostly. However, it's ultimately my decision. We (my immediate family) are not vax'd and don't plan to be. We've all had Covid, wear a mask when required, when around the vulnerable, and adhere to proper personal care and hygiene. The vax'd can and do get Covid. The vax'd can and do spread Covid. Covid is not going to go away and while they may someday (God-willing) come up with a proper vaccine that does what other vaccines do and are intended to do, I personally don't think that time is now. Nor do I think I should be cancelled/censored for that view. I've had a lot of loss in my lifetime (a few recently with but not necessarily from Covid). All five of my wife's patients last night had Covid - both vax'd and unvax'd. She's cared for more Covid patients than she can count in three states over the last two years. I value her knowledge and attention to truth. However, neither of us REQUIRE of the other a particular treatment. Our decisions are based on gathered facts, medical knowledge, as well as religious beliefs. One size does not fit all and no government should have the ability to force unwilling participants to be injected without their consent. EDIT: I know this has drifted a bit off topic so I must say that Freedom doesn't come all wrapped up in a neat and tidy package. It is a two-edged sword giving an individual the right to live and speak as they desire to a healthy and safe extent but also gives those of differing views that same right. Love y'all!

This was mine.. with mtc timecode unit to stripe the tape so I could sync up with midi and my Atari ST. 🙂

OMG, we used one of those 688's back in the 90's. All the punching in and out we ruined the heads and kind of barely salvaged a years worth of band recording. I do think certain things sounded better recorded to tape, rhythm guitar sounds were great, vocals were better too. Don't remember mine being midi, just a cassette.

More and more we need faster systems, because a lot of software gets heavier and heavier (plugins, especially from the mid and larger companies). But if I take Reaper and some older excellent plugins I can run with the same speed on a 10 years old system. Will the mix be worse than on a new potent system with "modern" plugins? I doubt!

So no improvement for you either. Typical. 😜

The same person I am here.😀