Tim Smith

I had been looking at this product because even though I'm a guitarist I can't quite pull off those very fast math metal runs. I can somewhat but not like the pros.

I never bought it because well, 299.00

Went to Amazon and found it for 149.00 from a Japanese vendor.

Emailed Prominy to validate the link and the vendor.

Long story short , Prominy said that due to a strong dollar against a weak yen, the price and the item was legit.

I had to pay an additional 18.00 for what basically amounts to an empty box with a number in it.

Still a good deal on this. 

There were 4 four left when I ordered, so now it's three. Just sayin'

About 21 gigs, but I don't think there is another program out there that emulated those tunings and guitars the way this does. It's a Jackson they sampled. The same Jackson all the metal guys play.

4 hours ago, Shane_B. said:

I love all those wifi gadgets. I was slowly converting my house over to wifi control. All of my outside lights, ceiling fans, heated floors in the bathroom, cameras, heat/ac, even the electric fireplace I put in our bedroom, even my Lionel train was wifi controlled. You could control the heat, color, brightness on the fireplace. It's really amazing what you can do with these gadgets now.

One thing I learned about all this wifi stuff is, all the apps are the same. I had one app controlling everything even though some of the stuff was different brands. For the inside outlets I used the plug in wifi adapters.

They were great, especially at Christmas. I used weatherproof ones for outside.

I set everything inside and out to come on 15 minutes before dusk. The wifi followed sunset and sunrise via the internet. Inside was set to go off at 11pm, outside set to go off at 15 minutes before dawn.

I hear ya about getting them to fit in the box. This pic is the worst one I ran in to. It originally had a 2 gang box. I had to cut out the drywall and install a 3 gang. I tidied up the wires and tapes them before I stuffed it all in. I also didn't have a big enough nut for the ground and I had to run to Lowe's and get a box of them.

Looks like you are into it too. I have maybe three different brands of smart home products. Most of the main things in my house are all smart devices. There are some quirky things, like my ceiling fan is on an alexa voice controlled switch that turns the fan on or off, but to turn on the fan light you need the fan control. Since I don't use the light very much, it usually isn't a problem.

Everything else is great which is mostly lights and thermostat. If your wifi goes out though it's odd. Like when I drive our ICE car and get out of it and  forget to turn it off because I usually drive a Tesla and all you do is get out of it and everything shuts off lol. My wife has to remind me, uhhh...the car is still running. So when the wifi goes out, it's like Oh I guess I better find the light switch. Luckily the wifi doesn't often go out. We are all probably a little bit spoiled by technology.

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

I used Omnisphere on a laptop for a few months, as well as VB3. It didn't work out as well as I'd imagined it would and I eventually gave up on the idea.

I hate to give up Omnisphere because there are some unique one of a kind sounds in it I haven't found anywhere else, some of them specifically for solos, so they stick out. If I was only planning basic keys sounds I guess it wouldn't be as much of a concern. If I give it up I feel my performance sound will hurt. The house system runs in stereo so that could be a killer sound live. 

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

The first issue I ran into was getting audio out of the laptop. I did not want to complicate the setup by adding an external interface, so that meant taking output from the headphone jack. I wasn't concerned that the audio might be less pristine than from a proper interface - it's live, after all. The biggest issue was that the connection was unreliable or intermittent, with the cable often falling out due to the weight of the adapter, requiring that it be taped down.

I probably can't do that  because of playing through a DAW and latency. I have a secondary Focusrite I plan to maybe use. You're right though. It's a pain.I can't tell you how many times either myself or someone else stepped on the audio jack and pulled it out.

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Second issue was where to situate the laptop.

I've got a little folding table maybe 18 x 24 and plastic,  Probably need velcro in case it gets bumped.

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Then I realized that Windows is just not friendly to real-time applications.

I agree macs are probably better for this. 

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

You really need a separate programmable MIDI controller, one more thing you have to figure out where to put. 

I think for me this might be the answer. I have Ableton. Apparently you don't need a computer as you can load projects into it. I would be playing to backing tracks with live instruments. I have seen backing tracks done well and was impressed with it. I need to be able to toggle and start songs. If they are Ableton projects I just put them into PUSH. There might be a caveat though as I'm not sure it just plays through songs as opposed to individual chunks of audio. In some cases it would be cool to play a verse or chorus again, or add another element and I know it does that. It's also an interface, but I need to play my synths live using my controller with it. Still checking this thing out.

For monitoring , I seen THIS  used by a professional touring act as a reference monitor, so I'm considering something like this . It sits high enough to hear and is bottom heavy. This would be maybe no more tha 5-6' away.

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

As far as special MIDI concerns, my first challenge came when I wanted to use a single sustain pedal for both keyboards. At first, I tried making a Y cable, but that never worked right. The solution was to pass CC64 events (and only CC64) from one keyboard to the other. The second challenge was switching between layering the two keyboards versus playing them independently. Fortunately, one of the keyboards provides a fairly easy way to do both, so it became my master device even though it was my secondary instrument. The third challenge was controlling a vocal effect via MIDI from a keyboard, which appears to be impossible due to the lack of MIDI options within the effect, e.g. no way to disable troublesome CC events. Every time I'd switch the Leslie speed, the effect treated it like a patch change. I'm still looking for a solution to that issue that doesn't involve more devices (you can buy an inline MIDI filter, for example). In the same vein, you also have to make sure that your laptop-hosted soft synths are configured to ignore patch change events unless you have a separate keyboard dedicated to soft synths.

Yikes that looks scary. I am hoping to use one controller and have my synths changed up as the programs run. Easier said than done.  If using Omnisphere, I would need those commands for each sound and would need to have a computer booted on that instrument ready to play. Sounds easy in the studio. Probably not so much live. IF I could get that into the Push it would be great, but might be asking a lot. Alternately I could use substandard sounds on one of my stand alone keyboards. I don't really like that idea. plus it's another audio feed to route and mix.

My setup is going to be computer based ( or PUSH) but I want to play synths and guitars. Sometimes it seems like trying to juggle with three arms. I have Guitar rig 7 which I love and it would save dragging amps and efx to a show. I will certainly need to submix and route the main feed to the house. Doesn't sound simple any more does it? 

I am evolving wih this as I go and trying not to go broke in the process. I think I would rather run a show on PUSH than a lappy. 

I have a bunch of Waves plugins but it's kind of scattered  .What happens I guess when I nibble on those sales I didn't have a unified package other than Horizon.

None of that has been wuped in forever.  To WUP only Horizon is 240.00 and that leaves probably 30 more plugins. The upgrade may cover a few and leave holes for the others.

Having said that, as someone else commented. It all works. Never had a Waves plugin crash my DAW. They are good plugins and I don't think it's fair to imply they are all dinosaurs.Many have updated interfaces and functions. Prolly the biggest hurdle for me is going through all of them. Waves needs a meta search.

It seems 3 way switches should be easy to install or replace, but I sort of found out the hard way it isn't always that straight forward.  In addition I was repacing regular switches with smart switches that used wifi and they are larger than the other switches. I still don't know how I managed to stuff that wiring and those swtches into that cavity and even make it look normal from the outside. No more puns. Craig has me covered

I have been 'popped' several times. It really gets your attention.

On 2/11/2024 at 1:49 PM, bitflipper said:

I started a fresh project last week, hand-planted a click track in the PRV to drive the TTS-1, and chose a Kontakt library to serve as the voice for a basic guide track. But when it came time to record said guide track, I couldn't record any MIDI.

I switched to a different keyboard controller to see if I'd screwed up something in my main synth's configuration (I have a special setup for live music and have to reconfigure for recording). Still no MIDI coming in. Checked my Sonar MIDI settings but couldn't see any problems there, which was expected given that I never change it. Tried a different soft synth just in case it was Kontakt being weird, but that wasn't it, either.

Could my trusty Focusrite be at fault? Geez, I hoped not. But this is my third interface, the previous two having died, so that was a possibility. But I needed to exhaust every other possibility before making that leap. I am running a beta version of Sonar, so as with a brand-new car anything's possible. But an older version yielded the same results, so it wasn't that, either.

So I did what I always do when I'm stumped: lit up a bowl and stared at the screen while drawing a MIDI flowchart in my mind. At each potential point of failure, I mentally drew a red X over each one that had already eliminated, until almost every possibility had been accounted for. Almost. The only thing left was the line drawn between the synth and the interface. "No way", I said to myself. MIDI cables don't break.

Well, it turns out that sometimes they do.

 

So it was something simple. Go figure.  I have had a few midi cables go bad. 

I might need to take notes from you or look up some of your info as I'm maybe preparing to play live again running a DAW and a midi synth controller playing Omnisphere. Omnisphere is a big program but the patches are light. Running my old i7 quad core lappy.

7 hours ago, Bridget Murphy said:

Well good luck and I hope you get the best tool for your job.

The main tool is me and I think it needs sharpened

8 hours ago, Bridget Murphy said:

It sounds like you made some thoughtful purchases during the sales period and are considering future upgrades to your setup. 

I am pretty indecisive at the moment on when to upgrade the computer. I am a long way off looking at this I suppose.

Bolder sounds bagpipes was my go to, still is but apparently  they don't sell it any more?? I can't find it in his catalog.

Best Service offers some things that would fit well into a single instrument mock up or for a celtic arrangement.

I have some of Eduardo Tarilonte's celtic librarys and they are pretty impressive.You may need to  download free ENGINE player, especially with his older libraries. 

Here is one Celtic ERA 2

It's 25 gigs . Maybe something to consider.

I have a real one, but it's small. None of the vsti ones seemed to fit for me. The bodhran wasn't hard for me, but then I never added a bunch of the fancy stuff.

I didn't go crazy over black friday like I generally do. I'm not bapu in plugin count but I know I'm close. Anything I wanted I pretty much have and anything else I didn't really need. I was waiting for Fabfilter Pro Q 4.

I updated my Melodyne and bought Arturia Pigments ti add to my V collection. I am using a fully functional but going obsolete computer, also thinking about maybe a Mac lappy in the future, so tossing that all aound. I'll prolly still build another PC, but one of my buds is mac and I might like to work with him possibly. 

I bought a Universal Audio 4/76 and picked up an Alvarez on discount at my local Guitar Center. Not quite Yairi but some of that DNA , while Chinese, my Martin X had a bag in the sound hole that you have to put a 9 volt battery in. What was Martin thinking? So the Alvarez is perfect as it has the smaller body, has decent electronics and the battery can be changed outside the guitar, also has a tuner. I love it. Action is slightly high but it builds my calluses.

I haven't had the time to download the EZD3 I just upgraded to. I have a friend who, no joke, uses Digital Performer and upgraded Garage band  and has made numerous CDs and has them out there. His mixes are stellar. Also uses GB to make accompaniment tracks and has NEVER bought another plug in. He has taught me a lesson in minimalism. I just never follow it if I come here

15 minutes ago, DeeringAmps said:

@Tim Smith I’m not a drummer. So the search function in EZD3 is really useful for me. The caveat here is this, I’m deep in the ToonTrack eco system. Lots and lots of their midi pacs. When I do a search it returns tons of options. For those that don’t have tons of their midi the options are limited. The progression from EZD>EZD2>EZD3 has been great; for me. For someone who AD is working well for; maybe not so much?

HTH,

t

Well I sprung for it. Now I have overkill on my overkill lol.

The guys at toontrack were very helpful with me when there was an issue with EZD 2. I have a few of those paks. EZD3 is about 15 gigs, so not a light download. I can't download it right now, but hopefully this afternoon. Not sure if EZD 3 uses some of the EZD 2 samples? There have only been a few programs where I went back to the older version because I preferred it better. Since it needs to probably see EZD 2, I probably should not consider dumping it just yet. I know they have record of that in my portal as well. You know how computers and programs are. Everything has to be done in the right order.

Thanks for the FYI on the search function. Demoing 300 drum loops is similar to me demoing 300 string patches. No joy. Thankfully these programs have gotten better at metadata and search functions. I bought 3 drum paks over the holidays and I don't remember the program I bought them for . I believe it was AD. I don't think we should have to buy 100 midi paks to get something decent out of these programs and for the most part, unless it's something very odd, the staple loops are pretty good.

Part of me thinks that having two drum programs at 15gigs each, maybe I should have thought more about Superior drummer instead, but I do things to the bass drums and acoustics anyways, so those base kits can be 'tweaked'.

I wonder how many here are still mapping each track in Cakewalk? I seldom do that any more.

Believe it or not Addictive Drums seems to fit a lot of my mixes best and I haven't used EZ as much.

I admit a lot of that could just be what I've gotten accustomed to. I'm not even a drummer but this suff fascinates me. 

I am looking at this as a possibility although I must have like 10 other drum kits. I think my upgrade would be 99.00 and then the 20% through Febuary.

Has anyone used the AI features in EZD 3? THat seems to be the improvement with maybe a few more samples added.

Interesting. Nice mix.

Nice track jack.

You software guys, have you ever had the thought that maybe all of this free software coming from a certain country or associated countries as free for all kinds of things could harbor bad stuff? Or is it just me?

Free is free right? As in no  i.e. pop ups or verifications necessary. There was a time when a version of Cakewalk was this. No more.

This is all AI embedded stuff they can use to capitalize on our systems when the big AI takeover happens.

I am kidding.

Or am I?

Great guitar tones here. It's nice of you to help those guys out!

Thanks guys!

I used mellotron in the beginning. The rest wasn't as mellow, so I didn't.

I believe there may have been some advantages, however I much prefer the present way things are.

So long as I can mold my thoughts into something I envisioned I like it. DAWs are amazing. I'm not smoking anything, I swear.

19 hours ago, Bapu said:

...for paperclips

too Munch?

Now where's my magnet?

Thanks for comments.

I have a couple of recents but decided to put this one up first since it has vocals.

I sang this one in German.