MusicMan

SurgeXT synth is quite a good free synth and pretty cool seeing some of the Air Windows effects built into it. Before Vital it was probably the best, now it's still good, but Vital might just have the edge. Definitely good to have though and it still sees use here 🙂

I've generally considered them to have reasonable products, although I'm not sure if I've bought any as of yet. Without getting into the politics side, is it possible to get a summary of what these "interesting" views/comments were seeing how they're now deleted? I can somewhat guess, but I'd like to not assume. If not PM is fine too 🙂

IZotope tools are very capable, so you'll be fine 🙂 With EQ, the best thing I learnt was making space for each sound and dynamic EQ with sidechain, so when a vocal for example plays at the same time as some keys, or whatever, that may share some of the same space, you can duck the keys just in those clashing frequencies to allow space for the vocals. Also comes into programming and trying to avoid that collision, but otherwise try and bring out the main essence of each sound and not have two clashing. A number of EQs like you would likely have with IZotope allow you to overlay them visually so you can see where they're fighting. Can make a much clearer track. EQ is also just highlighting what you like about a sound/instruments, so that's a good place to start 🙂

I haven't personally used Mixroom, but for some weird reason Bassroom is really good at sculpturing the bass, so it wouldn't surprise me if Mixroom was good too. You don't really need any of them, but they're just tools that can help. It's worthwhile spending the time learning the theory and being able to use any EQ. Lots of good free resources to point you in the right direction. It's easy to get stuck in the loop of thinking we need another plugin to solve something, when we've all probably got more than we need and it would be better to spend the time learning and practicing with what we've got 🙂

Well.. if you haven't seen it, then it's safe to say it hasn't been on sale 🤣 The upgrade price direct through them isn't far off just buying the full versy on sale too.. it's a shame though, they would actually sell a lot more of them.. I don't think they get the whole loyalty pricing thing.. Don't overlook Bassroom.. it's a surprisingly good EQ for lower frequencies 🙂

It would be nice to see the upgrade for Expose 2 go on sale at some stage. I don't think I've ever seen it discounted...

But don't they even warn you of that when you're checking out? 🙃

The price you posted was right 🙂 I saw it before they fixed it. Not 100% certain it said "Collection", but it was definitely the compressor at the lower price either way.

Well.. it did take a little while, but Cubase Pro 12 up and running 🙂 Mine wasn't exactly standard though, as I was upgrading from Elements to Cubase Pro with an upgrade I bought back in one of their previous sales so it would qualify for the grace period, but not owning a dongle / eLicenser.. they sorted it all out and first impressions are it looks pretty good!

Thanks Craig. I know it did go on sale at least once in 2021, but that was for €99 instead and I believe that's because they bumped the RRP to €499. It's now been changed back to the original RRP of €399 which makes me think it might still hit €79 in the not too distant future... but then for the sake of €10 it's probably worth just jumping in and getting to have fun with it now anyway 😎

Do you think it's going to get back down to 79 Euros any time soon?

As much as I wish this wasn't the case.. I slightly preferred the Waves CLA-3A. The BRA version was still good though. I might end up getting it just so I can move that one away from Waves.

Nice seeing this one. I already liked the original one, but just on some quick tests, this thing is pretty nice and great to see it's free for existing users.. looking forward to taking it for a bit more of a spin 🙂

Agreed on their piracy paranoia. That's why they stuck to the dongles. But I think in most cases, people that are going to use cracked software, probably weren't going to buy it anyway. I'd hazard a guess to say that their anti piracy protections cost them more than saved. To even need to buy a dongle to trial some software would stop a lot of people from even considering Cubase. As for never getting a reply from support, that's totally unacceptable. Long wait times and useless answers aren't uncommon, but no reply at all would be appalling for any company and they should be called out for that. The forums do seem quite helpful though at least 🙂

They would've known for quite a while if the direction was going to be to get rid of the dongles, so I dare say they've just been hoping the thing wouldn't fall over completely! Totally a business choice and the call was probably wrong back then to not scale them, but at this point in time the spend wouldn't make sense. As for the multiple apps, I thought that was a bit weird too.. almost had an IKM type of vibe to it.. 🤣 The download one is odd, as if you register the download code in there it shows it, but apparently if you redeem the download code on the web, it doesn't, or something along those lines. One app for download, register, authorise would be way better. To IKMs credit, even they have made some headway there 🙂 On doing the flagship first, in ways I somewhat support their choice. They were always going to have a 0.5 release due/expected around then, so to develop and then stick to the old licensing meant it would delay Cubase being dongle free for quite a while. I would think that the majority of the people with other Steinberg products that require a dongle, would likely have Cubase as well. So if they did the others first, the majority of people likely still would've needed a dongle, whereas by doing Cubase many of us that only have Cubase from Steinberg and new customers can use the new licensing without a dongle. So I expect load would likely been similar, or less. That means more sales and new users, which is great for all of us. In software development it often makes more sense to make release as you go, which is what they've done too. For support, can't really argue that.. I've only ever used it recently and I'm still waiting 🤣 But I expected this to be the worst period and I could easily just have waited a few weeks before logging a ticket, or trying to upgrade anyway and the queues would be much better... the support may still suck.. but the wait shouldn't be as long! From what I've heard recently, their dev and support team is surprisingly small. Sounds pretty clear they need to invest more there.

I'm glad these are only 24 hour sales.. the hardware they modelled are some very nice pieces of kit and I'm not sure I could hold out much longer 🤣

That's exactly what they're getting rid of, which is the eLicenser servers that don't scale for that very reason. For a system they're decommissioning it wouldn't be worth the re-development, costs and downtime to make it scale to then simply turn it off. I would hope/expect the new licensing platform are using microservices and scale.

To a certain extent that's what beta testing is for, but it would be difficult to capture the load testing at scale of something like this conversion. The process for the most part likely would've worked fine and for many people did, if their crappy old eLicenser servers could keep up with demand. We know they normally can't and this time was no different. In terms of just emailing out codes, they also needed to cover the existing licence on the dongles. Otherwise it would mean that people would have a full version of below V12 and then a full version of V12 as well. People would've for sure exploited that and been upgrading that as well and selling them, hence them wanting to mark them as non upgradeable. I'm sure there likely could've been other ways to address it, but not everyone would want to upgrade to 12 and have their 11 of whatever version they had upgraded, so they needed an opt in to an extent and I don't think just emailing a code would've been sufficient. Staggering the licence conversion process likely would've been better. So maybe people couldn't download V12 when the conversion was done, but the licence was available for the release date. The new licensing servers apparently handled the load OK, but were hamstrung by the link to the overloaded eLicenser servers.

I haven't really needed too much support before, but I have used NI support and IKM.. I was sufficiently underwhelmed 🤣 I think with this one, the whole licence type conversion created more hassles. I'm inclined to cut them slack this time, as they're ditching their antiquated eLicensing and their server bottlenecks for it.. But on the next major release they would want to hope they're a lot better at getting back to customers by the sounds!

What's the support of other DAWs like out of curiosity? Especially around major version releases. I'm kind of used to constantly hearing of servers and support buckling during a new release, or even just a freebie at times.. A few easily come to mind 🤣

Maybe it's one final hurrah before they give all their customers the bird🖕and say they're not going to update to VST3 ever 🤣

Yes, I did expect there may at least one of those comments 🤣 It's not about whether I think either of those organisations are great, they're more just as an example that it's widely used and is regularly reviewed from a cyber security perspective. I wouldn't recommend it if I didn't trust it 🙂 I use it personally and also for family, etc.

Haha.. I considered that when I first came across it, but he seems to be one of the good guys 🙂 It's often recommended by banks, governments, etc.

Yeah that is the downside of registering for lots of freebies and deals.. I tend to use a more junk email address for small devs and then a main one for the larger more reputable companies. Still no guarantees though.. larger companies still get hacked too at times unfortunately... Very useful site though 🙂

Almost all of my Air VSTi instruments are only VST2.. not sure I have a lot of faith in them actually updating to VST3 either.. They were cheap and even free for a few, so not too major if I lose them, but I wouldn't recommend that bundle price until we know for sure if they're going to update and if it will be for free.