dubdisciple

2 hours ago, cclarry said:

I was just thinking:

Now that Cakewalk (Sonar) is FREE, I wonder why some REALLY SMART developer hasn't
jumped into the "Pro Channel" Pool?  I'm sure the market would be BOOMING!  As it stands,
we have Boz Digital and Softube, and then only a few of their plugins are PC capable.  Just seems
that it would be quite the lucrative market...but hey, what do I know?

I suspect the market isn't large enough to devote the resources for something so limited when they can pump out vsts, audio units and AAX plugs with more universal appeal.  Even Boz, Softube and Overloud paused after a small dip in that pool. 

31 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

Sonar/Cakewalk

  -Cyclone seemed like it was ahead of its time.  It's still in there. Not really sure how to use it

   -The hidden plugins like the Percussion strip 64

  -Sonitus Plugins

 - Beatscape was a useful Rex player at one time.

  FL Studio Everything

 - Harmor and Sytrus are their flagship synth but after going through all of them I didn't realize you can create music with them. Their effects are overrated and seem to add new ones.

 

Cyclone was not bad and definitely ahead of time.  Beatscape was trash. The only useful thing was included sample. It had some ok concepts deceptive felt like a product in alpha stage.  For rex files, cakewalk had a designated rex player which I forgot about until now

Cakewalk

The matrix view in cakewalk is a decent feature I forget about

Channel emulation. With the glut of channel strips available now, people forget cakewalk was ahead of time and did a decent job.

Studio One

Impact XT is a good drum program that often takes a backseat to my third party drum plugs despite the fact that i tend to finish songs quicker when i just go with Impact

I completely forget about the analog channel strip

This is tempting at this price but i absolutely do not need this lol

6 hours ago, Philip G Hunt said:

Totally agree. I'd even go as far as saying AAS Strum is useless as a production plugin. It just sounds artificial, like Christmas card music. 

I agree it can be useful for writing, or just mucking about, but I'd never use it in a mix, unless it was deeply buried under distortion and effects.

I respectfully disagree. I believe it is useless as an attempt to replace a real guitar. I don't think any of is believe technology is at a place where replacing a real guitar is well executed or desirable. What this plugin is good for is creating the artificial "guitar" sound design that is common in pop music I production.  Like many artificial sounds that are not even close to the instruments they are named after, this particular sound (especially when processed heavily) is present in tons of top 40 hits these days.  Using it as a straight guitar is asking for disappointment, but treating it as a synth patch for pop/EDM\Lo-fi and various other genres is another story.

With that said, I have never found reason to upgrade because I already have enough artificial synth sources that make similar sounds. I believe AAS's marketing flaw with this is trying to sell this as proper emulation of a guitar when it's not very good at that. I never found string studio as having any value until I stopped trying to get it to sound like a string section and started using as a way to make odd sounds that have string like characteristics unique timbres.

I forgot i upgraded to vs-3 after getting lighter session version free

I'll pass. I find there products to be ok but all seeming like Great Value versions of Scaler. I am still trying to find more than novelty valie with instacomposer.  The amount of work that goes into making instacomposer not sound absolutely sterile is not worth it.  

Izotope nectar elements.  I jumped on the upgrade offer. I now find myself using suite

Sonar lite edition( forgot exact name). It was bundled with an emu interface long ago.

Studio one prime. It was an easy choice to upgrade. 

MPC Beats- the free version is very usable, particularly for subgenres like Boombap and lo-fi.  When I discovered how Akai seems to have the swing function mastered better than most drum programs (at least for making hip-hop) , it was an easy decision. 

Quiet Classical Guitar lite- the free one is quite usable and full version was only $8 during sale. Well worth it

1 hour ago, Fleer said:

Yeah, that was a mighty fine SoundToys freebie. Got some of their other little ones for free to way back then. 

I'm mad i missed the microshift

4 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

I own Turbo and MADEQ, honeslty Turbo could have easily been an add on feature to MADEQ rather than selling us another plugin.  I'm positive they both are basically the same backend with a customized GUI and limitations.  

I suspect as much. It's a testament to how powerful MADEQ actually is. Hence why I am going to have a look at it with plugin doctor.

10 minutes ago, sarine said:

Isn't MTurboEQ just a clean, simplified interface (i.e. a bunch of macro knobs) to the overwhelming Melda DSP spaghetti beneath?

By the way, I really dig the spartan, generic Melda GUI's. Not an aesthetic pleasure, but everything looks and feels uniform and familiar when you jump between plugins, which kind of helps me concentrate on the task. 

Melda interfaces have grown on me, but having the same interface for EQs modelled after specific units was somewhat jarring at first. They have fixed that. This thread does remind me that I was planning on running this through plugin doctor

My list of freebies i have not used is super long but a few highlights (or would that be lowlights?):

Eventide Ultra Channel, which is actually a good plugin with an ugly, cluttered interface. 

Melda TurboEQ/Comp- aside from tradional melda ugly UI, so many choices felt overwhelming. I did open it just now and see that updates have given each module unique GUI now . In the past it was stock melda look 

Traction Waveform- really wanted to like, but unintuitive workflow( although some things are good in theory).

I forgot little plate. It has been my plate reverb since it was initially launched for free

3 hours ago, Fleer said:

Valhalla Supermassive is one of the best plug-in reverbs, free or otherwise. 

It really is powerful and unique

Supermassive

Vital

Quiet guitar lite

Chow tape

Mpc beats

I am not buying anything from them again until they adress customer service issues. No response. Even when ADSR forwarded email on my behalf, not even a form letter response.

11 hours ago, sarine said:

Yeah and just to clarify, those are mixbuses which you use to sum signals from multiple other buses. The master bus where everything comes together would be the 13th.

11 hours ago, sarine said:

Not to contradict, but skeptically inquire; what makes it so great for making beats with specialized tools? Granted that if you're sequencing within the specialized tool you're to some degree avoiding having to deal with Mixbus's sequence/track editor, but I don't see the greatness - unless you refer to the mixer, but I personally associate "digital audio workstation" with something that covers more ground than a channel strip. For instance, Audacity isn't a DAW in connotative sense of "DAW" even though denotatively it definitely can be regarded as a digital audio workstation.

I'm nitpicking on this because when I think of Mixbus/Ardour (or a dozen of certain others), "a great DAW" is not a label I'd use. Rather, it's a bad DAW that comes with a great mixer. I admit I didn't work much with audio tracks in Mixbus as I was mixing in realtime, so I can't say if it's as bad as working with MIDI and VST's.

What I liked about the mixing experience itself was that it just worked for me. I have never touched an analog console, so it seems to me that the layout and workflow are products of cultivation, while more or less arbitrary software mixer interfaces without the historical roots may or may not make sense from efficiency standpoint. I also liked the sound although I was never quite sure if there was actual "secret sauce" in the channel strips or summing algorithms, or if I was just getting better results due to the workflow, or to what extent the effect of "Mixbus sound" was a psychoacoustic illusion created by the hype around and high expectations towards it, and the "feel" of the GUI. In the end I didn't care what, how and why, because shit got done.

Interesting counter to a point I wasn't trying to make.  I don't consider Mixbus a great DAW at all. I described a couple of situations that it might be a viable solution for some people. I will give two examples:

1) A gentleman I worked with last year had never used a DAW. He is im his late 60s and very set in his ways. He would prefer to use the equipment he used back in the 80s but that is not practical, especially considering he is broke.  He has simple needs. He mostly was recording guitar, vocals and basic mixing at most elementary level. He was using his own outboard effects pedals. I presented him free options ( cakewalk and studio one prime) and lowcost options ( reaper and mixbus). The console like appearance of mixbus in default state appealed to him the most. He's never going to add a VST . Anything not visible on initial opening is not getting used. Psychologically, the illusion of familiarity worked for him, even though I believe studio one prime would be easiest for most im his position. 

2) A friend has been creating hip-hop using hardware MPC for decades.  No interest in learning a DAW except on most basic level.  His complaint was that he wants to mix stems in DAW, but wanted it simple and cheap and wanted an analog type sound.  I won't get into the marketing claims of how mixbus sounds other than to say that people claim they hear something reminiscent of analog.  Weighing the truth of that for $19 or even $49 is better than spending more to test marketing claims. 

By no means am i claiming Mixbis was BEST  solution for either.  It simply was one they felt fit their needs. 

This is an awful pickup for someone looking for guitar sounds. As a module for "sounds" to be used in trap it is ok for free I suppose. Just not something I would buy. It offers a sound too easily achievable with freebie products or even stock DAW plugins.

1 hour ago, jesse g said:

What the heck!!!  Folks just making up words now

Aren't all words technically made up?

For me the 8 bus thing was never a major limitation. My soul issue with mixbus is I NEVER find myself wanting to transport an entire session into another DAW. I create templates and stuff to speed up workflow. This seems counter to that, but I always flirt with the idea mentally without ever following through.

16 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

Well, you originally argued that this was loops, which is an entirely different point..

But I  think your second argument is also off. I'm a former pro drummer and I  absolutely want  very detailed samples, layers and round robins for most performances -- I love Superior Drummer libraries,  they're absolutely well suited for me 90% of the time. However, if we're going for an effect like this library does -- that funky drummer vibe -- this library easily has the level of detail, layers and round robins to do the job. Take a serious look at the specifications and I can't imagine this library wouldn't be able to handle your needs if you're using it for that funky drummer vibe. If you disagree, provide something with the level of detail you need. 

Again,  I'm comparing it with the other libraries this developer has released,  the ones through Past to Future and the various choices on the market. I own funk kits from Toontrack, XLN and several other developers. If I was doing the drum part on a funky song where I  had a bunch of ghost notes and dynamics,  this wouldn't be my first choice,  but there's no library out there for even twice their price that can deliver that. 

I think we are misunderstanding each other and i sill start by clearing up the initial point of confusion.  First, I never said "this was just loops". I said it seemed like a stretch for ONE loop because that was impression I got.  I wasn't arguing anything since I made it clear that I was not 100% clear what the product actually contained. From my initial impression it seems like one drum loop chopped with a midi file variation of funky drummer. I could be completely off on that. I already have several variations of funky drummer with midi file within addictive drums along with god knows how many raw variations ranging from rex files to mapped kits in geist and mpc. Again, I am still referring to what value it would be for me and everything you are saying seems to be confirming that. I am not trashing the product or claiming it has value for no one.

16 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

 They're not meticulously detailed samples that have the kind of detail you'd get from the likes of Superior Drummer or even Addictive Drums, but for someone who likes the sound of their demos, IMO, at $15, they're a pretty good value.  

I think that's kind of my point. If these are not meticulously sampled, for many this is beyond redundant.  For me(and of course I realize others are not in same position), $15 is not a value for something I already have equivalent versions of.  If someone finds value in it, I certainly would not dissuade them. I just could not find value for myself and was seeing if I was missing something. Thanks for confirming it's exactly what it seems to be.

14 hours ago, telecode 101 said:

This sort of makes a lot of sense.  Thats where I saw mention of it in some  indepth audio engineer forums where most of the people I guess are former tape engineers.

The reason I am starting to look at this is, I am starting to get a little worried where Cubase will go. Plus they are an American company.. it's nice to support someone local.

 

 

I have thought of buying just to support them despite being unlikely to use.

I see this as a great solution for:

1)people who grew up mixing on consoles and have little to no interest in midi. It is a virtual equivalent of a Harrison Console recording to a multitrack tape machine with as many tracks as your computer will handle. 

2) Contrary to what was said, this is actually a great DAW for beatmakers but for the type that prefer specialized tools or hardware to do so. Some of the biggest names in hip-hop and EDM use hardware workflows ( Kanye still uses MPC hardware and sometimes even ASR10). For the hardware or for someone creating in something like MPC software ( not an environment you want to mix or arrange in) or even Geist, this might pair nicely and give the exact warmth these kind of producers seek but sometime struggle to obtain in more popular DAWs.

3) singer/somgwriters who are simply tracking things to be mixed elsewhere.

I own v4 of this and have not thought to upgrade because I have never used the previous 4 versions i bought. I do think it's worth fwr more than $19.

Can't go wrong with funky drummer, but even on sale, $15 seems like a stretch for one loop most of us have 100 versions of already. Unless I am misunderstanding what product is, hard to see the value.

I have never been able to get it to install in cakewalk by bandlab