Mánibranðr Studios

Are these any good? I've been hearing things about their libraries being inconsistent in quality, and I am worried about dropping cash on something that may not be better than what I have.

You're barking up the wrong tree there, because even if you may be right about it being non-essential. That doesn't mean that anti-consumerism shouldn't be pushed back against, and well, souring deals in the middle of a pandemic-induced economic recession is just not a smart idea.

I have a Fender Jazz Bass, maybe one day I will pick that up for real beyond noodling for just a few minutes.

...and I feel that with every song I work on, I get better at playing on the keyboard. There were also times when I just fire up a standalone synth and play some the instruments for practice and to grind out some musical ideas. One of the things that really stood out to me is that prior to all this, I had absolutely no experience playing on keyboards, and yet playing it for the first time, it just felt like I had done this in a past life. There's also the bittersweet memory that I flashbacked to of my abusive mother flat out saying no to helping to save up and helping to purchase a keyboard. I've always had a passion for music, and all this time I had been expressing it through manually entering notes on a sequencer, until now. It feels really good. Does anyone here have had one of those moments when they held an instrument for the first time?

I mean, my HRT is doing me well, but I don't think my boobs are that big...

Yeah you're still leaving a lot of details out there, and since we've been at this for a while it's safe to assume bad faith here. You can keep believing that a company that is doing its layoff cycle, and a change of ownership, while making anti-consumer decisions for the sake of gaining more money, because they needed it is doing well. I am going to continue helping my colleagues get better deals for what they need. I mean what is it, are they doing well enough that they do not need to change their model, or are they doing so poorly that they are resorting to pulling anti-consumer moves in order to squeeze more money out of prospective customers BeCaUsE dEvElOpMeNt Is ExPeNsIvE? And companies aren't entitled to more money out of a prospective customer's wallet than what the market can bear. If hearing the complaints of poor folk gets under your skin that much, then chances are, you're well off enough that worrying about making ends meet is something you'll never have to think about. You'll get over it in time.

Look, you can save the excuses. The fact is, we're in a global pandemic, less people are able to afford things. Sure, people can throw in $130 during the summer sales, but if people have been using free libraries to get to that during the summer instead of having to pay $199, and that is suddenly taken away because they "need money" that is not a good look, and it is one that erodes consumer trust. That was my point. For the record, I already own the full version of Kontakt. This isn't about me, don't deign to make it about me.

Now that's just quitter talk. I have been seeing more and more developers creating their own bespoke engines, and move to engines like UVI Workstation/Falcon. And keep in mind, the restriction to use 3rd party libraries with the free Workstation isn't as rough as with Kontakt Player and the whole demo thing. And you know, sometimes, you don't really need the massive glut of features that Kontakt offers, and it would be better to use something simpler.

Again, you're missing the point. The point is that they are resting on their laurels, and this move is just going to remind producers that looking for alternatives is a good idea, actually.

...and chopping off $150 from that gate would help get more people started. Far less people can afford $400 compared to $250. (If people could just fart out $400, they'd be buying Omnisphere sooner than Kontakt anyways)

This is less true this year than it was 5 years ago.

But that will turn people off from sales. If they want to stay competitive, they should be sweetening the deal for customers, not souring it. If the problem is that people are getting crossgrade pricing for free, the solution would be to keep the libraries Kontakt Player compatible, but also make it so that free Player libraries don't qualify for crossgrade pricing, and make the de-facto price for a full license of Kontakt $249, with crossgrade pricing reduced to $149. The $399 price tag has been a point of contention and complaint for everyone I have known who makes music for a living, and it's what had been turning people off from NI on the whole, and pushing them to look for alternatives. If they want to win customers back, they should make their flagship products more affordable. Especially in this day and age when affording things is more difficult thanks to COVID shutting income down for a lot of people.

So I added it to my cart and it offered to include FrozenPlain's Phoenix for $15 more. So $20 later, I now have Amplitube SVX, Phoenix and Phoenix:Mirage! Good times!

Yeah but RGC does more than just SFZ, they also did synthesizers, and it would be nice to have them fixed up and re-released as a classics collection, much like how the Cakewalk Classic Effects Suite just got re-released with the latest update.

That's exactly why I mentioned it.

It would be nice if someone is able to convert and update RGC's synths to work on modern DAWs without problems. So many headaches from using those 32-bit plugins would be gone.

To be fair, Bandlab could use a lot of improvement when it comes to how it previews, downloads and manages loops from the cloud. I'd like to be able to preview loops without having to download them, be able to choose lossless formats when I do decide to download, be able to batch download an entire pack, and decide where it downloads instead of it being hardcoded to download to the documents folder in the C : Drive.

I already have a controller keyboard, the Arturia Keylab Essentials 49.

Yes they are, and I am gonna test it in a moment. EDIT: Yes, it still crashes Cakewalk whenever I tried to load a program within it. Though I discovered an oddity. So earlier today, I installed the free Psytrance MPC Demo pack from Drum Depot, and I was able to load the programs under "Programs > Psytrance > Bass" but nothing else. It should be noted that I am still running under Windows 7, so that might be a factor. Running the 08/2020 build of Cakewalk too. So I guess we still gotta wait?

I am in the market for an interface that will allow me to record hardware synths, use my mic for recording and voice chatting/streaming and recording a guitar, as well as handle the MIDI setup for talking to my HW synths. I had been using my SD-50 as an audio interface for a while, and I plan on retiring it so I can dedicate its function to being a MIDI tone generator module. What would you recommend? I am looking at the Audiofuse series by Arturia, the AudioFuse studio seems to fit my needs, but the price....ouch. The 8pre also seems nice in terms of recording options and expandability, but it lacks any form of MIDI interfacing, or direct monitoring/loopback

The Hybrid Tool series is also on sale for a pretty low price. I'd get it if I am not filled to the gills with hybrid scoring options.

Basically people who are not straight, or don't identify with their birth *****. In other news, hi, I am ace, trans and non-binary.

Okay so after some tweaking and messing about, I have figured out how to get the best experience with MPC Beats when using an Arturia Keylab series keyboard, I have the Keylab Essential 49, so I am not sure how well it will fare with other similar models. So the first step is to go to the MIDI Control Center and copy the DAW preset to the User templates section, and then in the copied preset, change all of the encoders to Relative #1. Make sure that the pads are all set to channel 10. It might be a good idea to also have a specific channel set for the faders and encoders too, though that is optional. My advice would be to hard-set the encoders and faders to channel 1. When done, save the template and store to one of the user preset slots. In MPC Beats, select the Arturia Keylab Essential mapping while you have the map select on the keyboard set to the preset slot. Then go to Edit>Preferences, and then go to MIDI/Sync and set Arturia Keylab/Essential to "Master", "Control", "Track" and then set the controller port, which is sometimes called "MIDIIN2" to "Control" and "Track". it should look something like this: Now go into the MIDI Learn panel and set the mappings for the pads and Q-Links. The final step here is important, because otherwise, you will get problems with keys colliding with some of the button assignments. So you know how most of the mappings are set to listen to events on either channel 1 or 10? Well, by default, you are in User Channel 1, and that is why you will get collisions where pressing A4 will accidentally undo instead of play a note. The great thing about MIDI channels in MPC Beats is that it doesn't care as long as you're inputting the notes in the right track. So what you need to do is set the User Channel on the keyboard to 2, or anything other than 1 or 10 by holding the "MIDI CH" button and pressing the key that is assigned to your desired user channel. Now all of your notes that you are playing from the keys are at Channel 2, and won't collide with the button assignments, which are on Channel 1. Happy beatmaking! Dorian Splash(D Dorian - 132 bpm).mp3

It seems like it's already been done, and I don't like waiting. So I'll just work around it, and frankly, committing to a sound helps the workflow better.

I guess I'll just use it in standalone mode and import stems to Cakewalk