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He’s OK. He’ll be back when he’s ready. I’ve been in touch, too. In the meantime, I suggest we check our winter coats for any loose change or bills we might have left in them. We’re gonna need the $$$ when the posts start flowing again.

Just a little reminder:

Just updated from 8 to 9... and paid full price. A bit expensive for a 1 version upgrade, but I will say the Prophet was significantly improved. If you don't already have a high-end piano library/plugin, the Steinway piano is pretty decent. The new effects/modulation options are welcome. Looks like development for Pigments is crossing over into the other instruments. Next, I'd like to see the OB-Xa, Matrix 12, Mini, and Modular redone. ?

Indeed. Larry’s a stand up guy and fully entitled to his views. There’s a reason why he posts them on FB and not here. Let’s leave it at that.

Larry come home!

This is what I was thinking. Based on his previous leaves of absense related to Family in KY. I'm expecting he went to help or deal with a situation. As usual, he is missed and the natives have grown restless. Hoping everything is ok though.

IMO Larry is the soul of this forum. Hope he is not lost in politics!

Me too. My daughters who are in college now had friends of all different nationalities. We had a Birthday party and one of my wife's coworkers brought her daughters to the party and the coworker toward my wife, wow I can't believe there are more non-white people here then white people. My wife didn't know what to say to her. I always want to know what is on the inside of a person. That is what matters. Anyway I shall leave this conversation as this forum is about music/deals. Peace

Amen! Clarification: I am glad that things like politics are kept out of the forum. I am aware that I share political and social views with some forum members and I disagree with the political and social views of others. Yet, I appreciate and can respect their comments on music and related matters regardless of political preferences.

As Larry might say, "good luck with that". IK charges a $19.99 transfer fee on all license transfers. https://www.ikmultimedia.com/faq/index.php?id=44

Larry hope you're doing okay and it is perfectly okay to take some time off from forums. If you're down for health reasons know that you are in my prayer. Peace my good man

Come home.

W.A Production have released InstaChord 2 featuring an array of upgrades. It’s available at the intro price of $26.70, increasing to $89.00 after the promotion. There’s also an upgrade option from version 1, available for only $15.00. We believe that creative expression should be simple, intuitive, and inspiring. When you’re making music, you need the right chords to set the tone and Instachord 2 delivers exactly what you called for… and fast! Having been blown away with the reception to the original Instachord that W.A W.A Production couldn’t resist developing that concept into a fully-fledged chord creator and mini-sequencer. Simple enough to be used by anyone, but with the power to make professional music, this dynamic MIDI processing plugin is the chord creation and sequencer tool that will take your music to the next level. Whether you’re a songwriter or producer, this ideas engine will help you speed up your workflow and creation process. Find the best progression and apply a single pattern to play all of them. Easily master some of the hardest chords, in any musical key and combination of notes and different voicings. Use this plugin to generate chord shapes, learn tricky harmonics and share your creations. NEW Pattern Editor After releasing Instachord, an oft-requested update was to gain more control over strums and chord playback. W.A Production took that note and ran with it, creating a brand new interface window, the Pattern Editor. Here you’ll create your own patterns and sequences, dragging notes around in the same way as your DAW. Produce soaring synth arpeggios, pounding piano chords, or delicate guitar riffs. You get full management over time signature, play mode, and velocity with creative editing controls for strum programming. NEW AI Generation Adapted from their popular Instacomposer plugin, this generative button will take the existing scale and spawn brand-new riffs based on complex algorithms and a touch of randomization. Always musical and inspirational, these new ideas can be tweaked in the same way as your own patterns so that they fit perfectly into your song. NEW Hold Modes Compared to the original Instachord, this new version has many more playback options for fretting and picking notes. 5 in total, covering different behavior for holding notes and toggling chords. Whatever the instrument you’re playing, there will be an authentic playback mode to suit. NEW Custom Chords Edit existing chords or create your own by selecting intervals between notes to make custom chords. Alternatively, play in notes with your MIDI keyboard to help Instachord 2 learn your favorite chord shapes. With over 60 chord shapes to choose from, you can explore inversions, voicings, augmentations, and extensions like never before, making your music sound more interesting and compelling. Choose your own chords from the extensive selection, or hit the Generator button to ask Instachord 2 for fascinating inspiration. Set up to 24 different chords and switch between them using the chord keys. Transpose the current chords to any other key you desire with a couple of clicks. There are ways to play chords and picks than ever before, now all fully customizable in the Pattern Editor. For example, a key can be assigned to strum the top 3 notes of the chord and another to play a riff on the other 3 notes. You can also play individual notes of the chord separately. So it’s possible to manually arpeggiate or strum chords. Newly integrated into the main playback keys, action keys can be set to transpose by octave or semitone, providing an easy way to move chords away whilst playing live. Instachord 2 is highly customizable and users can change many aspects to match their needs. Select your own UI size, type of playback, key configuration, and position. You can even lock the Chord and Action keys so that they don’t change whilst you experiment with more presets and settings. Although Instachord 2 allows to program chords and riffs with simplicity, it’s even easier to use the preset system to take care of things. You’ll never be stuck for ideas with loads of carefully designed presets for both chord sequences and patterns. Suitable for keys, guitars, synths, and many other types of instruments, these presets make ideal jumping-off points for your next song. InstaChord 2 is available to PC and Mac users (VST2, VST3, AU and AAX). https://www.waproduction.com/plugins/view/instachord-2

Fluffy Audio has dropped the latest in their "Rarities" series -- free forever, so far as I know: https://www.fluffyaudio.com/shop/khim/ From the description: Full Kontakt only, I'm afraid.

For any lovers of independent developer free synths (and drum machines and SF players), there's a whole set of them developed by Ronan Fed available here: https://ronanfed.rf.gd/plugins.html I get the impression (from the developer's/artist's YT channel) that at least some of the synths have been out for a while, but only recently advertised more widely (e.g., a recent addition to the KVR plugin list). They're not the poofiest poodles at the dog show, but the price is right and they could be worth a look. I noodled around with the Pneuma sub synth for a bit, and it's fairly nifty, with nice options and on-board effects, etc. Looks like VST3 and Windows-only, though.

Forum tip# 205: When a first time poster asks a question let one person reply. Even if the answer doesn’t help much watch and wait. If the poster then actually returns and seems engaged then toss in your 2 cents worth. There’s virtually 100’s of abandoned threads here some of them become 2 pages long.

I already had the 1.0 stuff. and I agree there's the 12 which are overand above the base software whicj I assume is the "Studio" kit. Black Oyster*; Brit Custom; Bubinga*; Djentleman*; Extreme*; Grungy*; Jazzy; Metal; Plexi*; Reference*; Rock Custom*; Silver The *kits are now showing in the Product Manager as "Update" (in oramge on the right hand side of the window; the other kits show the normal green "Installed), but the "Update" link doesn't do anything. There also seem to be a new range of cymbals and hat available including a 2022 model in each.

We miss you Larry!

R.E.M. - Sweetness Follows:

Devastating what’s happening in Kentucky. I hope his family is fine.

Fundamentally, yes. But there have been some changes in that area. Since they're not big front-facing features, we sometimes forget about them. They're things that we think of as always having been there, because in most cases, they should have always been there. A couple of differences I can think of offhand are the (important) fact that Cakewalk now scans the system's VST3 folder under all circumstances (it doesn't have to be explicitly listed in the VST scan paths), and the flyout menus for adding plug-ins are much improved. Also, when you replace a synth, the new synth's UI is displayed. VST management (like forced re-scans and sandboxing options) has migrated from Plug-In Manager to Properties (although Plug-In Manager still works). Even something as mundane as adding or replacing a plug-in....it's improved in Cakewalk. Someday, I hope, we'll get the oft-requested "Replace Effect" command. ? BandLab has now been developing and publishing Cakewalk by BandLab longer than Gibson owned Cakewalk, Inc. As far as I can tell, BandLab has done more with Cakewalk than Gibson did with SONAR in terms of development.

@PavlovsCat Peter please send him a message via fb telling him that he has all our love and support no matter what his decision will be like. It would be cool that we somehow let him know, what an awesome person he is! To us here! Thanks man!❤

Seems all note names are black even on black notes. This makes it impossible to see them on medium to dark notes. They only turn white when selecting a note. Can we have contrasting note name colors so they can be seen by all?

Doesn't Larry have friends or family in eastern Kentucky? If he is down there he may be stuck. They are having flooding problems. One place supposedly had 12 inches of rain in one hour.

Agreed, I miss him....not sure my wallet does ?

Why do crashes occur? Crashes occur when an application encounters an unexpected condition. There can be a myriad reasons for this including bugs, memory overwrites, problems in plugins or other third party components or add on's, driver errors as well as actual hardware problems. Minidumps Many crashes can be specific to a particular user's environment, therefore for troubleshooting it's important for developers to be able to do "post mortem" analysis to determine the cause of the crash. When a crash occurs Windows takes a snapshot of the crash and saves a file called a minidump file (.dmp). This file records information about the state of the system when the crash occurred and can be very helpful to diagnose these problems remotely. For problems that are not reproducible such dump files can often be the only means of diagnosis. Locating crash dump files for Cakewalk If you encounter a crash when using Cakewalk you will normally see a crash dialog telling you that a problem occurred. In most cases Cakewalk will automatically save this crash dump for you. This dialog will list the name of the minidump file and also the name of the faulting module. If the crash occurred within the application the module will be Cakewalk.exe itself. If the crash site was inside a plugin the module listed will be the plugin name. Most crashes are reported within the application. While crash location data can be useful, locating the root of the problem often requires further investigation. Minidump files saved from Cakewalk are stored as timestamped files with a .dmp extension in the following folder: %AppData%\Cakewalk\Sonar\Minidumps (for Sonar) %AppData%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Minidumps (for CbB) You can type that path directly into Windows file explorer and it will take you to the dumps folder where you can locate the file. Note that if the crash was in a plugin the file may be in this folder instead: %AppData%\Cakewalk\Sonar\Minidumps\Plugins (for Sonar) %AppData%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Minidumps\Plugins (for CbB) You can normally locate a minidump file of interest by its timestamp if you know when the crash occurred. What if the application hangs but doesn't crash? In some cases you may not encounter an actual crash in the app but the application appears hung and unresponsive. In such cases Windows will not save a crash dump file automatically. There are a few ways to manually create a dump file in such cases. The easiest way is to go to task manager and right click the process name (in this case it would be listed as "Cakewalk Application") and then choose "Create Dump File". See attached screenshot. The downside to this method is that it saves a full dump which includes a memory snapshot. These files can be pretty large if you have a lot of RAM. Alternatively if you are familiar with running command line tools you can run the Microsoft Procdump tool and save a minidump. Once you have installed that tool you can capture a minidump by typing this into a command prompt (note you will need to run the command prompt as an administrator by choosing Run as administrator): procdump64.exe -ma Cakewalk.exe cakewalkhang.dmp Sending the dump file to Cakewalk for analysis Once you have the dump file you can put it on a share like dropbox, google drive etc. Next, log a problem report case with Cakewalk and include the link to the dump file. If a Cakewalk staff member has requested info you may also PM the dump file link to them directly this way. Note: Dump files may include personally identifiable data so please do not post links to them publicly in the forums or elsewhere to protect your privacy. Cakewalk currently doesn't automatically submit minidumps via problem reports like SONAR did. Here is an older KB article (from SONAR) with some more information.

Thanks. I’ll look for this. I assumed I had to go to FW but seems there are many options

I originally bought from PB and offer was still in my account

Devious Machines: Retrowave – Pads And Arps (Free Samples) https://deviousmachines.com/2022/07/17/devious-machines-retrowave-pads-and-arps

One of their best

so are the 3 new drums really worth $9 each?

Sumpin' sa'specious ess gwan awn.

The Pianos are modeled (not a large sample library). As Abacab mentioned, the virtual-analog synths are component/circuit modeled. The Prophet was ok before. Now, it sounds much closer to the Prophet 5. Had a Prophet 10 for a few weeks... and sold it to buy other gear. It's a simple synth with a single mono out and no onboard effects. Limited by today's standards... but it's fantastic within those limitations. Slightly regret selling it... The Arturia version is just good enough to (slightly) quell the G.A.S.

I reviewed the SWAM instruments a couple years ago for SoundBytes. That was the angle I went with - small size and fast load times. I've since become very fond of the sax and the other reed instruments, but prefer samples for most string instruments, often layering sampled strings with the SWAM violin to bring out a melody. Convincing physical modeling for guitars is still a ways off, being a far more complex challenge than piano.

Kindness Boomerang When you give out Kindness, it has a way of coming back to you.

I'm still on Analog Lab V. I do like it well enough that hopefully I can afford to jump on the Collection train at some point. Thanks for the report Jim!

FYI, in IK Product Manager under Manage Products/Software/MODO DRUM/Products, I have MODO DRUM (version 1) and MODO DRUM CS (which I obtained to update to 1.5). The full version 1.0 gave me 10 kits (I believe) which currently show Unlocked in MODO DRUM standalone. These include: Studio, Jazzy, Rock Custom, Grungy, Djentleman, Black Oyster, Bubinga, Plexi, Extreme, & Reference. EDIT: I meant to mention that in IK PRODUCT MANAGER under Sounds, only 9 kits show - missing is Studio as you guessed. However, it does show as a kit in the product itself so logic would follow that you are correct.

Correct SE - my mistake.

Just 2 days left, and I found it at Best Service for $107.00 https://shop.bestservice.com/bitwig_studio_12_month_upgrade_plan.html

Wonderful song. I was sort of surprised by the 3/4 time at first but it works very well. I remember a while ago you had some problems staying on pitch. I think that was you. Here your voice sounds really good. 1:22 Seemed like something changed, like mono to stereo? -Bjorn

I have Pianoteq Stage and I love its sound - which is crisp and clear, it really cuts through a mix if you're trying to showcase the piano. However, Synthogy Ivory sounds more like an actual piano to my ears at least. Horses for courses I guess and I use both in equal measure, but when I'm practising or just riffing for fun - Pianoteq standalone mode is my go-to. Andy

Yes, it is. They take up less disk space, use less memory, load waaay faster, and sometimes are capable of things their sampled equivalents are not. The problem is that modelled instruments just haven't achieved the same level of realism yet. While lots of users say they can't distinguish between Pianoteq and a sampled piano, anyone who plays piano as their primary instrument can easily tell the difference - but only when soloed or way up front in a mix. So for most people and most applications, the modelled alternative is workable. Personally, I'll stick with Keyscape and endure its excruciating load times because it sounds incredible. It's slow because they didn't use any of the usual tricks for minimizing memory usage, e.g. every note is sampled, so no stretching. I have the full suite of modelled instruments from Audio Modeling. They load in the blink of an eye, take up a tiny fraction of the memory and disk space that a Kontakt library would, are expressive and can sound quite good in the right context. But naked, they often sound a bit "synthy". I still like them because they can do things a sampled instrument cannot, such as programmable glissando and vibrato speeds. But as Jim notes above, the speed of the drive itself is consistent, regardless of the library. Perceived slowness is a function of how much data is being loaded into memory on startup. That's why I suggested that phrase libraries might be inherently slower to load because the size of their individual samples is larger, or maybe it always loads the complete sample set. I cannot test this hypothesis myself, as I have no phrase libraries here to look at.

it may not be now on sale now but it is at least twice a year for sure, from different vendors, vstbuzz, PB or WAP,,..i got it at black friday for 19.99....WAP has deals frequently for all products with expansions for 20-29usd

I stumbled across this review of SONAR X from 2011 while trying to find cites for the Cakewalk by BandLab Wikipedia article. It's interesting to read the impressions of a reviewer seeing what later became Cakewalk by BandLab for the first time. Also, in typical Cakewalk fashion, I picked up a handy tip from a review of the 11-year-old first version of the product. I've mentioned the value of explicitly switching tools rather than trying to figure out how to make the Smart Tool do everything I want. The Smart Tool is awesome, and it is very smart, whoever worked out what it does in all those different contexts did a great job. But if, like me, you sometimes find yourself fighting it a bit to get exactly the results you want, if you're doing a bunch of complex, tricky editing, switch to one of the 4 flavors of the Edit Tool (but if you just want to Split a clip or note, hit the Alt key). If you're drawing MIDI notes or automation, there's 8 flavors of Draw Tool for that, and you don't have to double-click or drag to lay MIDI notes. If you've never figured out how to use it, the Pattern Tool is crazy useful for duplicating selections of MIDI notes or automation nodes. Spend 10 minutes and try it. It only ever has to save you 10 minutes to be worth the effort. Right-click usually takes care of the Erase Tool, but there's a Mute Tool under F10 as well. Soooo, if you're trying to get in the habit of switching tools with the F5-F10 keys, wouldn't it be nice if right after you used one, it could automatically switch back to the previous tool you were using (presumably the Smart Tool)? Well, Cakewalk can do that. All you have to do is press the function key that switches to the tool you want to use, but don't release the key until you're done with the tool. Then, when you lift your finger, Cakewalk will switch back to the Smart Tool (or whatever you were using before you hit the switching key). This means that you can treat them as 5 different modifier keys that return to the Smart Tool every time. (if you have trouble remembering which F key goes to which Tool, all of my custom Cakewalk themes show the keys right there on the Tools module)

Interesting, My experience with hardware mixers is pretty limited and I hadn't ever encountered that. 'gate every FX in the signal path' is kind of an odd way of describing what's happening. You're gating the signal (from a clip in CbB or from a tape in the analog world), and that gated signal is passed on to the next effect if there is one. So all the FX see an altered signal, but their behavior isn't directly affected by the gate except to the extent that they might respond differently to the altered attacks and decays in the signal.

Paul Simon - Paranoia Blues:

Love it. Reminds me of the 50s channel on Sirius radio and that's a huge compliment. 50s chord changes, piano triplets, falsetto - you have it all down so well. -Bjorn