John K

Hi Guys, Tip from my sister in law, a nurse out there somewhere on the front line about home made masks. She sews a double layer cloth covering where you can insert a coffee filter in between. After use, dispose the filter and wash the mask. Got to add a couple thoughts. The masks will stop big blobs of slobber from hitting you in the face, but the micron size of the virus can get through the weave, so a mask may help, but does not confer invincibility. Second thing about the coveted N95 masks. It's not that the weave can filter out nano particles better than a hardware store dust mask. Fit is the difference. You can have the best protection in front of your nose but about useless if you are breathing in around the sides and have just been nuked. The N95's have a thin metal ridge that is easily bendable and can conform the fit to the face, especially around the upper nose and eyes. You can cut a thin strip of a tin can, sew it into the rim of a home made cloth mask and bend to fit. Everybody stay safe. John

Mettelus, Also curious as to where you info is coming from. Makes sense except that given the vast number of timed demos and the number of uninstallers, industry would be hard pressed to keep up with each other to protect everything coming off the press. Agree with you that the offline stuff has to be hidden in the registry somewhere. Remote past for me, wanted to understand how uninstallers missed the time stamp because was a zombie working stiff and never got to the demo before it timed out.. Really wanted to see if I should to buy the thing, but crap, has it already been 15 days... Trajectory ahead, credit card only. Direct process given to me by Sonivox was to do a complete uninstall of SoundStage. This would wipe out everything and I could start a new 5 day trial upon installation if I absolutely needed to use the lush strings GM preset in a project. No go. Demo expired and no way to activate since Sonivox refuses any transfer or further activation of what I bled the yankee green for. Forked again. John

Thanks guys, Thought this as well. The ilok non dongle thing likely has to sync to a connection with the online license that contains the time stamp. Makes that beyond our control. Mystery for me still remains as to how offline demos can shoot something past a logger program that claims to record and reverse any and every change to the hard disc. Hope all are well and dealing with the virus lockdowns. Be safe. You are all so important, loved by so many. John

Agreed, and have no clue as to where the balance is. Fully accept community wide condemnation for this, but I get every crack I can for any program I have paid full dollar for that holds me in their power to shut off activation at their leisure. Usually evaluate a purchase requiring ilok or whatever if I can crack it in a meltdown. If I got a solid crack, keygen, whatever, will open the credit card to give what is required to support the developer. Thank god for some 14 year old kid somewhere leveling the playing field. All my software is morally paid for, no pirated stuff on any of my rigs. I got to face Allah in the next world, and piracy is not an option. If I can't afford it, do without and seek an alternative, but got a bloody warez backup for about three fourths of what I bled the yankee dollar to pay for. Just in case, as I have witnessed too many times and been the victim of. The little guy is always the loser either through a blatant middle finger or through some fine print legal jargon that tells you are screwed without recourse. What I still can't figure out is where the ticking time stamps are hidden. Reference again Iobit Uninstaller as well as other failures. Claim as usual is that the MS uninstaller leaves debris all over the place. Iobit however logs every change on the hard drive to insure that every trace of the installation is removed. Sill the demo expires on target. Just wondering where they hide the clock and why nothing is capable of doing a complete uninstall. John

Hey Guys, Probably nobody knows or has the tech knowledge to answer, but asking anyway just in case. Isolated issue thrown to the wind. Scenario is that you download a 15 day trial of something. You never get to it and the trial is expired. You uninstall and reinstall and the trial is still expired. Was once important to me, but gave up the curiosity until wanting to run Sonivox SoundStage. Old tech program but some great GM sounds I would like to still use, and had moral and legal activation left. In the compassionate ***** spirit of Waves, Voyetra, others, we are screwed when the company tells you that they changed their minds and will no longer activate your purchase. Funny they never tell you this when they beg for your dollar up front. Sonivox gave me the middle finger and would not tell me how to reactivate the synth, but told me they would allow me to uninstall and reinstall every 5 days if I really needed the product. So I do that, and the thing still comes up expired. Sonivox followup says to suck it up, but they feel my pain and I can always open the credit card for current products that still work as of today. But what about tomorrow when they change their minds and hold you for ransom for a working update like Waves did. Shades of what is happening with Native Instruments cancelling access to activation for a lot of their older products. The old BII is about their best organ product and still want to use it, but NI says I'm screwed when I move to a new computer. Even using current logging installers to uninstall without a trace, I'm toasted. How do they get around sneaking in some time stamp beyond any installation reversing portal available. Curious, but like Jefferson Airplane said, "doesn't mean s**t to a tree" in the bigger picture. So many worthy replacements even for free if shafted by some greedy company. John

Same experience here, though not near the computer to verify the NVIDIA card or driver version. Older Intel quad core Dell Vostro. First time it went down, was after a driver update via Iobit Drive Booster. Second time was with a MS update that installed the latest driver. Fix was to search the net for older versions of the driver and found one that restored the display. Second time was able to roll back to the working driver.

Hey, grounding issue... Did you know you can make one of the best macho guitar cords by using the coax cable designed for TV. Cheap 50 foot Walmart TV cable, the DIY material for many pro level connectors. The braided ground is usually over an uninterrupted aluminum core for ground. Nothing gets through this stuff compared to the best guitar cords. Have silenced studios using this approach. Bummer often in my experience is that the braid is made out of some alloy that is very very hard to solder. Had luck with acid core (instead of rosin core solder) and at times wrapping copper wire around the ground braid to secure a good physical contact if not merged. As advised earlier, if you are getting radio interference, attack grounding weak points to see if this helps. Don't have cable TV here. Painful at first attempt to filter out the garbage our short life wants to dump on us through accepted and required hypnotics. Does not need a chemical to result in addiction. Took a couple months to get over the TV withdrawal symptoms, but free now and way better off for it. Forces me to make better usage of life when not vegetating over the next episode of "Days of our Foot". Can't argue however with the materials they use to suck you in. John

Jim Thanks for this tip on multiple lower reduction passes. John

Friends, Throwing in another option. Have used by default Audition, but stopped upgrading after ver 3 so don't know if they got it any better. Totally igorant about other pathways suggested. Reaper DAW has a native plug called ReaFir. Has several functions, but after loading the offending wav onto a track in Reaper, select the "subtract" option. Then make sure the "Automatically build noise profile" is checked. Similar to the Audition approach as far as I can tell. Go in and take out the background noise. As with any others, more time to analyze pure noise makes the result more accurate. Problem as most know is that noise shares bandwidth with valid audio you want to keep. More noise you take out, the more wanted audio is taken out as collateral damage. There's where you have to back off any analytic noise reduction algorithm to a compromise of noise reduction versus losing the good stuff.. Have had some moderately good results by stripping out a nominal amount of noise and then going back in with a harmonic exciter to toss back in a bit of selective high end lost in the noise extraction. Also has to be done carefully and with craft to not sound like you got some slapback hi freq distortion on the track. Last thing I used as a freebie after tearing up a file with Reaper was this free plug. Thrillseeker XTC Somewhere on the page. https://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/vst-effects/ Best I know about how to deal with really forked up restorations. Couple step process but possible as good as we can do currently. Fully envision up the line a near perfect noise abstraction software. Most of us will probably be pushing up daisies before that happens, but will happen. John

Hey Starship, Just saw this and thank you for your information, if correct. Always thought the DCB vs MIDI was a war and had no idea that Roland was in the MIDI development phase. There were articles at the time about the standoff, battle for supremacy. Was a coin flip at the time while the peanut gallery waited to see what side the dime would fall on. Attended a Roland presentation by a rep on the Juno 60. The unveiling was mind blowing because a synth could actually do 6 notes polyphony. ELP albums were the standard with synthesizers only mono, because it was all we could do to process a single note. May remember that for a couple years, any new video for anyone who was cool, had to have a Juno 60 on board. Got the rusted hardware beast and still makes some beautiful sounds. The Rolland guy said that MIDI was a passing fad. Defective and full of flaws. DCB as hard wired into the Juno 60 was the future, and that DCB would bury MIDI. He predicted that within 5 years, no one would even remember MIDI. Every high end hardware synthesizer built on the planet would be DCB. MIDI was a flawed temporary distraction from the Roland vision that everyone would adopt. Off topic, but so bloody old, had to join the musician's union back in the late 1960's when they had a mafia control over what you did or could not did in public. It was illegal and you were fined severely if you used a synth on stage. Reason was that a synth playing strings denied employment to a group of physical violinists. Hope all are well, John

Friends, Honorable mention to what has been going on with the Wusik family of synths and programs since the end of the 2019 group buy. Those who joined should keep current on your download link. Dev William has been cranking out new betas and stable releases with Reaper speed. I think there may still be really good sales on individual synths even if the group buy is over. Of importance in the latest Feb 7th upgrade, the ability to change the A440 reference frequency from 0 flat line to 99,999 Hz has been added to all the synths. This was in response to requests from musicians wanting to experiment with alternate base frequencies while maintaining the 12 tone scale. There is still the ability to work with scala tunings for anyone who can understand them. Reason this is important. You may remember an old Cakewalk thread about alternate tunings and the claims around them and the interest, input it generated. Got to reserve my judgement, but claims are that A 440 reference causes discord and unrest and that the old symphonies and guys like Mozart and Haydn composed in A 432 for restoring tranquility, insight, balance, etc. Then you got the 444 guys that’s claimed John Lennon composed in to achieve a higher transmission of universal stuff. Then you got the Solfeggio holy tones from the old Gregorian monks. Pretty much outrageous claims of healing and miracles available for music in the specific Hz reference. Problems exist big time for anyone trying to nail a specific frequency down to the exact Hz. The Wusik synths make this possible. Link to William’s site is as follows. Note you can download the whole 16 plus gigs of sounds and install demos that only don’t allow saving changes to presets until registered. https://www.wusik.com/w/index.php Have fun, John

Friends, No way I could avoid diving into this one. I can remember music before there was Elvis, and the cultural chaos that ensued with the birth of rock. Nostalgia was such that I had to go downstairs to the trophy room and dust off my MSQ700 midi hardware sequencer. Think it cost me $375 at the time. Some ironic passages in mind. MIDI was mind blowing, but not the only keyboard language around struggling for recognition. In the same arrogant way ProTools told the world to fork off with vst protocol since RTAS was immortal and ProTools ruled, Roland told MIDI developers to fork off. They were Roland and ruled the planet. MIDI was already dead under their power, and Roland's DCB protocol was the future. Roland's DCB interface was already built into their hardware synths. Have a Juno-60 with DCB output. MIDI however took over and DCB was abandoned. The worst bitter pill for Roland was to have to release a hardware DCB to MIDI converter after it was apparent they lost the battle. I got that too. Buggy piece of crap, but works kinda if you do a couple controlled false start sequences. MIDI for me was a revelation, a tool on the new horizon. If I tried to play something that was too fast, I could slow it down, then speed it back up so was like I had the chops. Bach on steroids with a fraction of the effort. Hit a sour note, and edit it out. Couldn't figure out a note, there was the step mode. Snort a line or two of cocaine and walk around the block a few times til I had it figured out, then edit it in. But you know what... It made me weak. Have realized that for every progression, there is a penalty. Not that we should not progress, but to be aware that there is some times a dark side to the latest and greatest. You may remember the contest at the 40th anniversary of the Beatle's Sargent Pepper album. They had some heavy hitters in there. Challenge was to recreate the album using only the technology available at the time. Meant overdubbing with a Teac 4-track among other limitations. Some group finally did it, but it was impossible for most seasoned recording artists of our newer digital age. Reason after the fact was that many of the ancient masters had to contend with a one shot attempt. Heavy pressure to get in the studio, pay hi dollar per hour, get the thing done before they went broke from the studio time. They had to have their act together and play a song flawlessly (or acceptable) from start to finish. The 40th anniversary challenge was an eye opener as to how soft we had become. Read an article years ago that may or may not be accurate, but was in a respected digital music rag of the time. Said that the final universal acceptance to MIDI was carved by the Michal Jackson Thriller tour. The promoters had spent mega bucks in promoting the tour. Everything had to be perfect. They claimed that parts of the cast and crew would show up late, hungover and could barely drool on their keyboards. Rather than jeopardize the performance, they went with MIDI to pre program the keyboard parts. Thus they could dress up the musicians, put them behind the keys and have them dance around like they were playing. Not a note missed. Still think MIDI is cool. John

Revisiting this for a minute. Indirectly off topic, but have used Iobit's Advanced Windows Care free version for a long time. About as good as any of the generic windows tuneup programs available. Can review it here: https://www.iobit.com/ The freebie tries to download other stuff and there are the annoying popups to fire up the plastic card, but if you watch the installation carefully, worth getting. Focus here is on the "Speed Up" panel. Four or so sub menus to increase efficiency, critical one aimed at gaming mode to turn off wasted processes and free up needed resources. Turning on the machomatic default, I was able to get another 5 minutes out of Aquamarine before the terminal crash. Got to say that there are a lot of excellent possibilities, especially when digging into the deeper menus. Got to reverse course and say IMHO that it is worth the download and disc space if you have the power to use it. According to Zinc's good benchmarks, if you got 16 GB RAM, you should be able to handle Aquamarine. Another observation is that if you purge all samples (Kontakt tab) before loading the next preset, less likely that you will deplete all your RAM. If you are a peon like me with 8 GB in the arsenal, don't bother. More grief than it's worth. John

Think you are right. Limited number of sounds and already got lots of similar instruments. Plenty of presets but many sound too much the same. Raspy quality which I guess is meant to be there. The pointer in the circle allows a lot of modulation so it isn't that good sounds can't be gotten. Problem is it is an unacceptable resource hog that builds up over a few minutes until it locks up the computer. RAM is the issue, not so much CPU. My rig an i5 windows 10 with 8 GB RAM. Not the fastest toy on the block, but should be able to handle a single track with a single instance of Kontakt. One can wait several minutes until things settle down long enough to close the program. My system can't handle it but maybe others can. For me, not worth the 9-10 GB of space, but had to try it. John

Well, good news and bad news. Good news is that grapes are on sale for a dollar a pound at your local Thriftway grocery store. Bad news (at least here) is that Kontakt in Reaper froze solid. Aquamarine loaded very slowly to begin and played maybe 4 presets before the big crash. 8 GB of RAM to 97%. Screen went black. Oh wait, screen is coming back but still frozen. Use at your own risk, I guess. Sounds are okay but the program like a wrecking ball on my rig. John I guess they mean for professional computer repairmen...

Painting roofs white. Incredible idea that could really work if enough people got on the same page.

The machine should be the same in all the tiers. The 8.2 GB free version is about all I have the patience to download. Will report back later if it was worth the effort.

Have not tried this. Still downloading the 8.2 GB offering. Demo's sound good. Can't beat the price. https://www.muze.shop/en/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=58 John

Uh... I for one live on the rim, which was an okay idea 20 years ago while things were falling apart below the radar of our perception. Ocean front dwelling, and being pounded to crap and back currently... Everything record breaking and out of sync. Wish I could spread some of the atmospheric bliss more evenly. Bad signs here over the last five years, though what are five years in eternity or even statistic meaning. Can only report what I see to be changing, and it is not good. Really weird patterns of birds, vegetation, insects, mushrooms, mosses, molds. Ain't know meteoroligy guy but don't take much more than my few brain cells left to realize something not right. And the discrepancy is progressing quickly. Here's my limited understanding on a couple of items that may only affect our grand children and generations forward, so we are safe for a few more years before we turn over an imbalanced hell to them. This although our US government tells you I am an idiot. Maybe I am an idiot. I can only pray that they are right. CO2 emissions that reflect back radiant heat. Deforestation rips out the ancient buffer to mitigate climate extremes. Melting of ice caps that reflect back heat are diminishing and thus we absorb what we were not meant to absorb raising temperatures. Argument may be that a few degrees warming is no big deal. I guess we will see. Seems to have screwed up the migration and navigation of coastal life forms. Whales, seals fried and beached. Jellyfish dumped by the millions on the beaches here with changed currents. Your only remote blessing is that you don't have to put up with the smell. Not to worry though. We have a lot of destruction still ahead before we hit the tipping point. John Bayoubill... Blessings to you dear brother and may you survive the winds. John

Ashay, Thank you for getting your experience out to the forum. The group buy ends today, and a big miss for those looking for a best deal when this offer is closed, slammed shut. Note that new betas for Station and 8008 already in the download link. Feast of new programs to come over the next year, so like the gift that keeps on giving. Not a lot of opportunity left, so had to bump the time line for those on the fence in this late hour. John

Bump because the end is near, as in a few hours. Hell of a lot of good programs, including a solid bridge, 32 to 64, backwards etc, lot less hassle than J-Bridge (though J-Bridge is great). During EVE 5 beta testing, a big problem was splicing in a bridge. Lots of problems but these have been elegantly solved and now available as a separate vst as well as upgrade in the romplers. Check out Wusik ZR for neat pads and others. Synth not requiring the library. Library needed for four other programs. Group buy includes 17 programs, some of which not yet released but will be in your download login. ETA's given. Note, can download the 16 GB sound library and demo any of the products, though not much time left before one unit alone will cost more than all 17. No brainer, dear brothers. John

Followup... This is bloody cool. Warning, rompler like stuff for the most part, so can't get 20 levels of articulations like in Kontakt or whatever, but a real feast of sounds and flexible import options. Some presets do have velocity fired (limited) articulation, but not constant across the spectrum. Haven't dived into the utilities (chainer, bridge utility, etc) but a happy camper so far. Price in perspective, 50 yin yangs for a new user, 40 if you already have a previous Wusik products. Had the elegant EVE 3 (EVE 5 in the package) and older WusikStation so got in for 40. Auditioning the Ben Hur brass preset in EVE 5 sealed the deal for me. Blessings to all, John

Guys, this is a no brainer. Was supposed to crash and burn on the 20th Dec, but extended to Jan 1. Too many beers yesterday to get in a late post that there were only hours, maybe minutes left til the Dec 20 deadline... So many good things in the package, and software in the development stage that will be added to the personal GB link as they are developed through the next year. Me for one looking forward to the vst ARP machine. Check this out... http://wwww.wusik.com/w/index.php/purchase/Group-Buy-2019-c38233004 And happy holidays to all. John

Another thing to be aware of if you are relying on home owner's insurance. My company covers everything personal property that could be lost. Advised by the agent to keep photos and serial numbers, etch identifiers on the inside as well as outside. Catch is that although everything is covered, about 2500 is payable, so I guess I could pick what items to max out on. Catastrophic fire loss, theft would get me back 2500 dollars on losses many times that. The agent says that this coverage limit is about standard on most policies and not advertised as the downside of content loss. Was told of course that if I want to start paying much higher premiums, I could cover about anything. My point here is to look closely at your policy and know what the replacement amount is if you were to lose everything.

Was in the shower today. Why there, I don’t know, but brings out the best in my creativity for some reason. Singing profane blasphemous variations of Christmas songs. Composing lyrics that probable could not be posted in polite society. Doo Wop crazy chants and rhythms. Sublime cool stuff worthy of any Zen koan. Realized from a long time ago that I had this mental affliction, but wondered how many others were in the same boat. Then realized probably most of us are if there is a grain of artistic talent. Thought of the late Al Jerreau (anybody remember him?) What a freak out would it have been to live in his head for five minutes listening to the insane blast. God help the mental state of rap artists. I really think that some of the best lyrics, poetry will remain unsung over the insanity of it. Have some suspicion that you guys are like me. Something inspiring in the morning shower or elsewhere will never see the light of day although it should be appreciated in auditoriums. Any feedback as to where you are at with really sublime but hidden creativity that will never see the light of day. Not ready for prime time. Inspirations that may not be quite politically correct but still state of the art. John