Doug Steinschneider

Asked ChatGPT (over Telegram): Is the Martinic Doctor Mix AI Synth VST plugin you coded any good?

The Martinic Doctor Mix AI Synth VST plugin is a powerful and versatile tool for creating unique and interesting sounds. It has a wide range of features that allow users to create complex and unique sounds, as well as a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to use. We believe it is a great tool for producers, musicians, and sound designers alike.

20 minutes ago, cclarry said:

This is a lot more bang for the buck, and you also get to pick a freebie, at $349

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/58-Inst-Bundle/10199-UAD-Creative-Edition?nosto=manufacturerpage-nosto-1

That is a tempting bundle but I'm already covered between the IK group buy T-Racks products, Cherry Audio and u-he vintage synths and the individual B3 products I already have.

The abundance in the market of Hammond B3 emulations makes my head spin. I still use the venerable VB3 1.4 for rock organ just because it sits in a live mix well and I know it. I bought VB3 II and the AmpliTube Leslie around the same time and used that combination for a while. One drawback for that combination is CPU load is the highest.  Blue3 comes with better range of presets (especially for rock covers) and has more tonewheel generator customization. Some people thought it was a little harsh on the high end, but I think that's fixed now. 

Then IK released B-3X and I settled on it for live band use and practicing. Sounds great and is simple to use. I think it is the logical successor to VB3 1.4

I bought Acouticsamples B5 v3 because it sounds the most real when played by itself. Its Leslie emulation is very good also. 

I play rock covers and also spend a lot of time jamming by myself in B3 trio mode using Jamstix for my drummer. 

I thought this review from UAD's website was accurate for Waterfall B3 and Rotary:

H. Petersson
January 4, 2023

A mix ready B3 emulation

This is one of the best Hammond B3 emulations I've heard. I have compared it extensively to both the AcousticSamples B5 and IK Multimedias B-3x and it holds up really well.

It's a very simple plugin with few options compared to the other two I mentioned, but for what it does it works incredibly well. While the B-3x gives you the feeling of sitting in the room with a B3 this gives you a well recorded and balanced organ that is ready to be thrown into the mix with little effort, and there is so much value to that.

In contrast to many other B3 plugins there is no effects section between the organ and the speaker. I find it a bit strange since UA have many excellent effects that they could have just thrown in there. Like the TS9 for example. Instead, they chose to make it possible to drive the amp a bit further than what is normal. This works and it allows for more simplicity, but more tonal options would have been nice, since they don't provide you with a separate Leslie plugin. The only option if you want put effects in between is to buy a third-party Leslie emulation.

The Leslie emulation is really good, however. It is not as wide and larger than life as the one from IK, but it sounds like you would expect to sound a well miced Leslie to sound like on a record, which is what most people are looking for, I think. A stereo option for the drum would have been nice though.

It is very shy in the bass register, but it's possible to bring up the bass with a shelf EQ without it getting muddy so it's not a big deal. The amount of bass is by the default what you would set it in a band mix.

It would also have been nice if you could turn the click volume up a bit as they can be a bit too subtle in some cases.

But all in all, this is an excellent plugin. It is more tailored towards 70's rock/soul rather than jazz. It has a lot of energy to it, and it will fit well into a mix.

2 hours ago, mibby said:

@Doug Steinschneider I'm curious if you've tested the Melda Rotary plugins?

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MVintageRotary

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MRotary

 

The MVintage Rotary wasn't in the original blind test but some of the thread participants use and like it very much. They use something like Softube Saturation Knob or Klanghelm  IVGI saturator in between the B3 organ and the Melda Rotary.

As usual a restart solved UA Connect issue - the activate button was replaced by download. The Waterfall Leslie sounds very good on first impression. I played VB3-II through it with its "native" Leslie off. VB3-II and Waterfall Rotary is a good combination. 

One issue off the bat is it doesn't look like I can assign one of my rotary controllers to Waterfall Rotary's drive knob. VB3-II has a drive control for the B3's amp but I like setting that lower and then adjust the Leslie's amp to increase the "grind". 

It doesn't appear to be hammering my CPU as much as the AmpliTube or T-Racks Leslie. 

1 hour ago, cclarry said:

That's what "Native" means...that it requires no hardware.

Then I guess it's time for the universal Windows solution: restart 

We've closely examined, tested and compared all Leslie emulations over on the Cantabile forum including blind tests where we vote. I wanted to listen to Waterfall so I installed the UA Connect app and Waterfall shows up but when I click activate it fails. I'm not positive what "Native" means. On their website it says UA hardware not required. 

When I decided to stop selling hardware years ago, I settled on Dell for servers, desktop, laptops and sometimes network components.  Margins were so low I made just much by charging for time spent specifying and executing purchases. One way I've saved clients a boatload of money is buying desktops and laptops from Dell Financial Services (now branded Dell Refurbished). I've had more new computers fail than the ones from DFS. If you go for cosmetic grade A they often appear to have sat unused on a shelf somewhere. Until the recent 12th and 13th generation Intel chips there wasn't much of a performance hit going for older CPU's. 

On 2/7/2023 at 10:31 AM, fret_man said:

Be careful. My cheap Office Pro 2021 key expired after 1 yr. Not sure what happened but all my Office products now need to be reactivated. Gonna uninstall-reinstall to see if I can reset it.

Office has been a different story. The key you see on the card isn't the actual office product key. You can only get that by logging on the account they force you to make and go into licenses and click a button that says show Office license key. 

I got so tired of dealing with Office licensing that I convince people to do the family plan. Five different Microsoft accounts (need separate email for each) can install it on 5 computers each. It's also easy to remove an older computer to make room for a new one. It's $100/year but that's $20/year/user which as long as you have 5 users is very reasonable and then you're always in the latest version (which has its own set of issues )

On 1/15/2023 at 3:40 PM, abacab said:

I once had to re-activate my Windows 10 after a motherboard upgrade when Windows detected major new hardware. I called in to MS and the tech told me to enter my old Windows 7 code to activate it (it had been a Win 7 Pro to Win 10 Pro upgrade). That worked and all is good ever since!

On the subject of Microsoft looking the other way and being vague about Win10 licensing. Every Windows 7 machine can be upgraded to it's equivalent version in Windows 10 by running the Windows Upgrade Assistant. If you do a clean install as abacab mentions you can put the Windows 7 code in and it always activates. I think there was an "upgrade by date" back in the Win10 roll out period but they never actually implemented a cut off. 

Goes to a good charity while you get all that software. I bought Sony Vegas Pro years ago through a Humble Bundle. I still use it for video editing. 

17 hours ago, LAGinz said:

Nice freebie. Yeah, it’s subject to WUP, but just don’t WUP. It’s not gonna stop working if you don’t WUP (hopefully 😆)

I've ignored WUP since my first Waves purchase, the Schepps Omni Channel. As mentioned above, hopefully I'll never need to WUP.  Since then, I found the early Waves products to be really useful and low on system resources (Vocal Rider and some of the Renaissance plugins for exampe). I found the Waves version shells confusing at first but now that I know they exist I haven't had to pay much attention.  If some change comes to Windows OS and CPU's like the Mac's M1 we might be in trouble. 

I bought a Vizio V405-H9 two years ago for $210. I upgraded my video card with a Gigabyte 1030 that cost about $90.  I also mounted it to my desk with a Vivo gas assist arm. As long as the display supports chroma 4:4:4 it should look ok for computer use. I was surprised how good it looks. I have scaling set at 125%. It has a remote with very easy to cycle through display modes. For normal computer use like spreadsheets I have it less bright. For music applications I have it set slightly brighter.  Go to rtings.com to check if a display is ok for computer use. 

Many gamers have gone to 27" 1440 monitors, they're not too expensive and correctly display color and framerate. Not sure about how TV displays do on those fronts but for mixing/recording it certainly doesn't matter. 

What's this! All Elysia products in a bundle for $7.99. I'm in. I got almost all the way through checkout before I figured out it was a subscription 😀

Changed my mind and ended up getting Angelicals.

These freebies are a real workout! Love it.

EDIT - These patches are really great - writing a song based on Angelicals patch "20 - EP"

Decided to get Masala (first version). I don't have anything with Indian sounds so figured I'd give this one a try. 

1 hour ago, Fleer said:

That’s an expensive upgrade price IMO as Lounge Lizard isn’t actually a sound design behemoth. You may be pretty fine with that Session (“light”) version. Maybe it’s the only one of the AAS instruments that doesn’t contain a lot of upgrade material. Mind you, I do love it. 

Thanks, I've been doing fine with the Session version so I think I'll hold off on that upgrade. 

Question for this forum. I use Lounge Lizard 4 Session and Air Velvet for my Rhodes and Wurli needs. I got the Session version for about $15 from Plugin Boutique a few years ago so my final cost for the full version would be $65. Any opinion on this upgrade would be appreciated.  

@Kal Elle - I think if you create a user account you will then see the pick one freebie sound pack list from this link https://www.applied-acoustics.com/portal/gift/ . AAS is a great company and they don't spam at all. BTW, I'm glad you asked the question because it made me take a closer look at the page and I found a $49 upgrade path for my Lounge Lizard Session version to the full version. 

@Kal Elle - any of the many presets for Chroma, Studio Strings, Lounge Lizard and Ultra Analog will play with their AAS Player so if you hear something you like in the demos the patches for that sound pack will be playable for you. The limitation is you can't edit them.

I have Lounge Lizard 4 player - I thought it came with Caffeine but my account doesn't show it. I was hoping Caffeine or Insomnia was more traditional EP Rhodes/Wurli goodness but it looks more like "stressed EP"

I'm thinking of getting something for the AAS player.  The Angelicals demo sounds good, Transparency also. 

Has anyone gotten one of these sound packs that really knocked them out? 

BTW, this promotion is an excellent way for AAS to get people to check out their instruments and sound packs. I really like the Chroma and Studio String examples I've listened to. 

You can flip through the photos without a fakebook login - looks like fun. I've only been to Vegas for trade shows so I'm always busy and jealous of the people site seeing. 

I was on a livestream (I think AudioPluginDeals) and Larry won a giveaway and I thought to myself - he deserves that!

I have several identical Dell Optiplex 7020's I got from an office that went to remote only. My test restore was to a second computer but like you, I have Viboot on a computer that has Hyper-V and I'm going to try it. I've been using Hyper-v for years on servers. VM's for both servers and workstations.  Hyper-V can be added to any Windows 10 or 11 Pro. If you're using Windows 10/11 home VirtualBox works well.

Just perusing threads of people having problems with the newer software based iLok after hardware changes. At least if the hard drive is replaced and then the OS restored you should be OK