dubdisciple

2 minutes ago, abacab said:

Is RX 8 Advanced really worth $400-500 more than RX 8 Standard?

I was speaking in terms relative to normal price   .  I think the answer to that is individual in the same way the price difference between standard and advanced versions of most products apply.  For me, the difference, regularly , or as part of this sale are not. In one of my previous jobs, it would have been.

RX 8 advanced alone makes his a big discount.  Just not not in budget at the moment

I hope my replies are not coming across as contrarian or antagonistic. I think this has a lot of potential but in use it feels like a beta product . if I did not have other ways to do the same thing , I could certainly see use for it. I just attempted to test actual application and found it not quite ready.  I do encourage others to try it and give feedback.  The fact that there is a better quality setting that is currently not working tells me they are aware the current version needs accuracy improvement.  I suspect that might be a paid upgrade when it happens

I tried to like loopcloud but when i found out i couldn't use my credits unless i subscribed again, I was done.

3 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

From what I understand, Samplab is more than just an audio to MIDI converter. If you drop the MIDI on the Samplab track, you can modify the original audio by changing the MIDI notes. It breaks up the audio and allows you to pitch shift each portion independent from the rest of the track.

This can be done in Melodyne as well but I think this might be a little more convenient. 

I'm not sure if convenient is right word. Based on my experience so far it is less convenient if you already have melodyne and cakewalk or ST1.  The midi editing feature sounds better in theory than actual application at this time. The interface to do so is less than full featured and does much less in terms of midi editing than what you would have access to once you brought midi file  into DAW.

I think this has potential but felt very beta like in actual usage.

so accurate

as an FYI, i did this very quick and dirty.  I grabbed the 1st piano loop I saw that had a midi i could use as a reference. I am already convinced i could have gotten a better result if I was more selective about audio source

Results  Part 2: Sound and conclusions

I assumed it would be the case that the cakewalk and Studio one would yield identical results since, as pointed out, they are using same melodyne generated result

attached are 4 files:

1.The original audio

2.File made from Composers supplied midi

3. File made from melodyne midi

4. File made from Samplelab midi

My conclusions are that the only one that is true is obviously the one the composer created . i don't find the other results useless, but the yare far from earth shattering and certainly not an instant  type of workflow thing.  I have thought of ways it can be useful, but imo , at this time no more so than what is available to those who own similar products already.

Composer MIDI.mp3 Meldodyne MIDI.mp3 Original Audio.mp3 Samplelab MIDI.mp3

51 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

I believe the point he was making is that both applications/DAWs require the 3rd party app (a version of melodyne) to be owned and installed for this to work.  

I bought Studio 4 to get the best polyphonic offering in this area (at the time) and personally didn't live up to my own expectations.

I understood what he was saying and i believe I acknowledged that it is being done via third party. From the consumer perspective, since this has been bundled with Studio one for years now,  as of today, this is part of what any studio one user already has even if it was not made by presonus personally. After testing this , I have concluded that this gives you an even lesser version of that capability. It has potential but is far from magic. The presonus model underwhelms for me as well,  but I have discovered that like most things melodyne , the "magic" tends to work better with more work. 

Results part 1: Cakewalk process and visual differences

Installation was straightforward.  It installs as VST3. Cakewalk places it in synth category by default. 

For sake of simplicity, I used an audio piano loop that came with a midi version of same loop as control.  I created 3 instances of Addictive Keys.  One for midi file that came with audio, one for melodyne essentials generated midi, and one for Samplelab generated midi.

Registration is required. That was done with no hiccups.  I did get a warning that there is a time limit for samples, so it only converted up to the limit. This makes this pretty much useless for anything but super short loops.  The limit is , however based on time rather than musical measures, so I may experiment with speeding up samples at a later time.

Here is what files looked like: Top pic is samplelab midi compared to melodyne and bottom is samplelab compared to original midi file version of audio that was provided

The random nature of the file made source less than ideal but more realistic in terms of not knowing what results would yield.

Observations 

The melodyne one generated in cakewalk looked more like supplied MiDI file.  It did however have a slight sustain issue with some notes that cut them kind of short.  I hypothesize that better results would be had using melodyne editor since notes could be edited before converting (the essential version of melodyne  will detect and convert but you cannot do anything in melodyne except select between two poly algorihm choices and export midi. Overall, less than ideal, but results seemed tweakable

The samplelab one stalled on first attempt.  Also, there are features not yet working like ability to use higher cpu usage mode that i assume would yield better results. Second attempt it took about 10 seconds to convert. Looks wise it did not appear to  look as similar to control midi as the melodyne one, but it did do a better job on sustained notes.

Coming up....... audio resultts

12 hours ago, Fleer said:

Anyone tried it yet?

for the sake of science, I will install today and compare it to same process in cakewalk and studio one (which theoretically should be the same) and report back

13 hours ago, Jeslan said:

Just curious, what DAWs are supposed to allow conversion of polyphonic audio to midi without the need of a third party plugin or software ? In fact as far as I know there is still plenty of DAWs that don't even have monophonic audio to midi conversion.

Studio One does it and so does cakewalk is you have melodyne installed. For those of us who had cakewalk before bandlab, this was included and celemony has continually updated that version for free. Although the essentials version will no edit polyphonic material, it will detect and convert to midi. 

works great.  thanks!!!

13 minutes ago, aidan o driscoll said:

Going way back with Cakewalk and Sound forge I have always done this:

https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013099/Adding-third-party-audio-editing-software-to-SONARs-Utilities-menu

It adds SF to the UTILITIES Menu via simple registry edit. After that you just select an audio tracks waveform ( along the track ) and click on UTILITIES/Soundforge ... That audio track wav you selected opens directly in Soundforge for you to edit and then save, live updates inside CW

I have not tried yet for this version. I was thrilled that the elastique timestretch still works in cakewalk.

8 hours ago, Philip G Hunt said:

This is a great summary of the situation.

I was using Cool Edit for batch jobs up until Windows 10. The only reason I got Sound Forge was to replace CE for these jobs. 

It's amazing how good Cool Edit was for it's time. Such a shame Adobe killed it.

They totally made the focus on video production.   I did love the integration with other adobe products but I loathed using it for music after Adobe got their hands on it.

i got it.  Thanks people. *as he realizes he has not used H-Comp even once * lol

4 minutes ago, antler said:

If you want to help, buy something - nobody said you have to use or even install anything you buy.

this is true, but my concern is trying not to spend more money lol. I would definitely use whatever i got.  they offer quality plugins. Bettermaker has been on my maybe list for awhile

I have been trying to purge myself of GAS, but the more this grows the more tempting this is, I have rediscovered how underrated Sampletank is and have been using my library for 3 inside CS4. I'm this close to upgrading my arc 2.5, sampletank and t-racks and amplitube in one shot

I'm caught between "I don't really need any more plugins" and "I want to help"

silly question.  My wupwhateva for the h-comp i already own is set to expire next week. Can i just replace it with this one?

9 hours ago, marled said:

I wonder why the plugin companies mostly launch nothing but compressors, saturation, distortion, equalizers and synthesizers! IMO they should better invest their manpower in such helpfull plugins like the one above (there are almost no competitors in this area)! Yes, all this editing stuff could also be done straight in the DAWs with plugins (if there were any, except iZotope/Acon Digital ones!), 'cos most DAWs allow also destructive changes with plugins on a selected area (like in an external editor).

the market for products like Soundforge got reduced by:

1)Free Alternatives like Audacity for basic editing. No audacity is not as good, but for a budget conscious musician who is mostly hobbyist, the expense on top of DAW became less and less appealing

2) Competition from specialized products strictly for mastering (ozone, t-racks, etc) and audio repair/processing (Izotope RX) that left people with choices that favored competition

3) The acquisition of Cool Edit Pro and subsequent change to bundled cloud model which left a lot of us with Audition whether we wanted it or not.  Until I dumped Adobe for good, a product like Sound Forge seemed redundant even though i preferred it to Audition.

4) Guess on my part, but  I think it is easier to market "miracle" compressors and other things that can be pitched as " instant gooderizers" than to make a wave editor sound anything but what it is . I couldn't tell you what the differences were between most of my versions of sound forge over the years because I often followed same workflow.

5) Attempts to do so have fallen flat and younger consumers are less apt to use them.  I remember every interface used to come bundled with either a lite version of wavelab or sound forge. Pretty sure my first versions of either were bundled. They don't bother even doing that anymore because This generation doesn't seem interested. They grew up with audacity and don't see much reason to go beyond that. I have never seen one kid in my studio even open a dedicated wave editing app outside of audacity (and even that is rare) or on their phones.

Unless some trendy gimmick comes along that can only be done in a product like this comes along, I don't see that changing. I missed Sound Forge, but a big chunk of that was nostalgia. I obviously go along fine without it, but i missed the more efficient workflow when editing single wave files. Maybe hit up the suggestion boxes of developers in places like KVR.

has anyone tried this?

13 minutes ago, scook said:

IIRC, Sony had the same high upgrade pricing.

I have used Humble Bundle to upgrade SF a couple of times.

Best audio editor at their prices.

the last couple Sony upgrades were flash sale deals.  otherwise i would have skipped 2.  nice to have Sound Forge back

1 minute ago, scook said:

SF12 is 64bit too but the scanner bundled with it is a little buggy.

The problems I had with the SF12 scanner are fixed in SF13. 

Thanks for clearing that up. I skipped 12 and was under impression it was not truly 64 bit.  By the time 12 came around, I was not interested in upgrade at price Magix wanted

2 hours ago, tom said:

2 days left on this bundle, I have SF Pro 12 so not sure if worth. Anyone who's been using pro 13 notice any significant reason to upgrade apart from faster VST scanning? I have RX standard but do prefer the batch processing in Pro 12, only reason I keep it around along with more export options

If you are trying to purge 32 bit. For 25 it is worth it.