Matthew Sorrels

So I take it the Cabal 8: Cinematic isn't part of this bundle. The other two elements are included with this flagship but not the Cinematic since it appears to be a different instrument (soft semi-acoustic guitar). I'm not sure I really need another heavy metalish string guitar. What is the included MIDI like? I really like Heavier 7 Strings not just because of the tone/instrument but the included MIDI library of guitar riffs.

I don't think the English version of this new issue is out yet. Zinio doesn't show it and it's not on Readly either.

I do think I've seen some new LABS instruments show up in the Spitfire Audio app that I don't think I added to my account on the website -- which you did have to do. But I'll admit after a while all the LABS stuff starts to blend together and I might have added something and just forgot to install it. I've not seen anything formal about it.

BBCSO core update as well.

Gear of the year for 2020 won't be published until Dec. No mention of them/this in the last four issues of Music Tech (I have a sub).

Inside Cubase when you drag audio from a track it doesn't drag a .wav file (like CbB or most DAWs) instead it drags a text file with a VST-XML record inside it. That XML file has all the details of what exactly you dragged, including the path to the .WAV file, tempo, start and end times, a bunch of stuff. The EzBass didn't support this as a valid drop source before this 1.0.5 update. If S1 works the same way and drags audio clips from tracks like Cubase then I'd assume this new version of EzBass would work with it. It's pretty easy to check though. Inside the DAW have an audio track and drag the audio into the Windows Explorer. From Cubase you get a text file (named something like DroppedText-20200628.txt) and if you open that text file you'll see something like If S1 drag&drops audio like that, it will now work with EzBass. If it does something else though, all bets are off. When I did the Toontrack update that started this thread I only had updates to Latin Percussion EZX and the two parts of EzBass. I try to run the manager at least once a week to make sure I catch things.

It's in the list above "Added support for dragging audio from Cubase." and it seems to work for me.

Looks like there is an EzBass update (to version 1.0.5) long release notes:

Years owned Stutter Edit: 5 years, 4 months, Number of times I've used Stutter Edit in an actual musical piece: 0 I'm waiting for them to fix BreakTweaker's awful performance (and make the UI resizeable). That I actually might be willing to pay $79 for. But Stutter Edit, while cool, is not worth more than $29 in today's market.

The VST 64 binary inside the Windows Hybrid2020_Setup.zip is identical to what I already had (the bytes themselves, not just the reported version number). There is no update here.

This happens often with EastWest. They rarely/almost never put upgrades on sale. So several times a year some of their products with upgrades actually become cheaper to buy new due to the endless sales they do offer on full priced products. With the subscription focus and since you can't re-sell their products, they don't seem to care.

The latest issue of Resolution Magazine is free on their website. There are a handful of back issues that are also free (but you have to click through the years to find the free ones). Click on the link for "Latest Issue" on the home page to read the current one. https://www.resolutionmag.com/

Mind Control can be pretty useful, not very often though, but every now and then you run into something and bang it's a great work around.

It doesn't really have enough articulations for most real productions (the legato is a bit goofy too). The ensembles are all very broad (hi/mid/low for brass and winds for example), you can't really write for one traditional section all that easily. The sound is pretty good though and it's very easy to use, which may make it useful for some uses where say a full on BBCSO or VSL wouldn't be so easy to use. I definitely like Albion One much more, but you could use Da Capo for lots of things you'd use Albion for. I got it mainly to match the other Sonokinetic phrase libraries. I've gotten no real use for it outside of that.

I submitted my Ableton 10 Suite receipt to get the competitive crossgrade. That way I can keep my Cubase 10.5 and add Nuendo. At least I hope it works that way. $420 in the Steinberg shop, but I have to wait for them to verify my submission before I can finish the check out. Doubt they will do it fast since I ordered on Friday. I couldn't find any retailers that sell the crossgrade version. Long term I suspect I'll just switch to Nuendo. It's video and game development features match up what I do better than Cubase. But the fact they don't lead with new features in Nuendo makes no sense to me. Of all the DAWs I suspect Protools is going to take the most damage from the COVID-19 shutdown. All the studios that haven't been able to book clients for months are likely to fold. Everyone is going with home studio rigs and Protools doesn't seem like a good fit for that. I suspect Logic will have picked up a lot of new customers. Maybe Avid may finally have to rethink their subscription/permanent license model. I can't imagine what they offer now working out well. Lots of people will just stop updating and realize there are at least a half dozen serious DAW contenders that don't need a $200/year support contract. Apple going ARM will only push that even harder.

I've owned particle Illusion since the dark ages. Seen it go through a few different companies. And I have a paid license to the Boris FX version (though their yearly upgrade fee is making me think twice about keeping it updated). It's pretty cool even just the standalone version (which was all there was in the early days). I'm glad Boris brought it back (the standalone was dropped when it got merged into Boris). But I'm not sure how I feel about some of the changes. The old standalone had really weak load a background support and this new one they seem to have removed that completely, even if you have a paid license. Though for most uses you can just setup the effect you want, render it out with alpha channel and then do the composite in your own app. I rarely used the broken background stuff in the old standalone, not sure it being missing is that big a deal here really. Mostly I'd setup small effects (a single explosions/smoke whatever) and then do all the heavy integration in After Effects. I've been meaning to see about moving over my own PI emitter libraries, but they claim they already did all that work, though I can swear lots of stuff I remember having aren't in the list. While it's pretty fun to play with, none of the effects really do quite get to photoreal quality levels. Which I think makes a lot of people upset. Smoke/fog type stuff though it's pretty good with. Fire is fine if it's not very close up. Some of the mograph and special effect stuff was always fun but I'm not sure what use they have. If you need geometric shapes animating they always had a bunch of nice ones of those. Build a Iron Man HUD kind of display stuff. But without the ability to load a background still (which even the old standalone would do right) making a working computer screen drop-in might be kind of hard. Though again, render out each emitter to a file and then use the pieces in Resolve/Fusion/etc. I'd say the free version can be useful if you ever do video compositing kind of work.

I've actually been wanting Fanfare for a while now. But I won't buy it without a deal. I really wish this was a deal on the full Marching Bundle. But for $30 this seemed like not a bad thing. My download finished while I was eating. Just about to dive in and see what it has. Looks like it includes a bunch of stuff to hook up with Finale and Sibelius too. Which is interesting, since I've been considering getting a pro scoring app. Having this might push me towards one of those two. My first impression is it's basically some of a high school marching band. Older style Kontakt instruments but not awful. No legatos for the brass. Each articulation is a separate Kontakt instrument too (no keyswitching). The brass that is there is nice and makes me wish it was the full Fanfare. I'm not really sure what kind of music this would be useful for really though. It may be one of those fun to play around with but doesn't really fit into any music you might actually write.

I registered mine on the UVI website, not in the UVI Portal app. You might want to try that. Login to your account and choose register product.

My Synths Legacy showed up today. Was packed with a ton of bubble wrap. The code registered just fine but RAR file on the DVD is corrupt (maybe I should have tried the installer instead of just opening it directly) so I ended up just downloading it, that worked out OK. Pretty nice actually for $5. I really should get Synth Anthology 2 and upgrade my Vintage Vault 1.

Strobe2 finally showed up today. UVI Synths Legacy is supposed to be here tomorrow. I really love how I had to put the serial number in all upper case to get it to work. And it was impossible to tell an O from a zero.

The keyswitching choices in EW Hollywood are kind of weak. It's really setup for each articulation being on it's own track. And yes that could mean lots and lots of tracks. You can try and use the keyswitching instruments but you are likely to find the choices don't cover all the articulations you want/need. Might be better to just start with multiple tracks for each instrument from the start. If you do go with keyswitching I recommend having a separate MIDI track to hold just the keyswitches and a main MIDI track for the notes. That way you can transpose and or otherwise work with the note data separately from the keyswitches. In theory you could load up Play instances with a collection of articulations each on a different MIDI channel and inside CbB switch the MIDI channel mid-track/per-note to change articulations. I've never done it that way, but it might be worth trying. I usually just keep each MIDI track on a single MIDI channel, but in theory you can build a template with MIDI channel changes triggering different articulations. Changing MIDI channel per-note has always seemed painful though.

You can actually choose one of three skins (light/dark/legacy). But there is no rescale option, which would have been nice.

Mine still haven't moved/changed at Musician's Friend. The USPS number they gave me for Strobe 2 still hasn't been received by the post office. And Synth Legacy is still processing. Seems like last of the boxed music software is going to die with an ugly whimper for me. That already used serial number on a shipped product is a real problem. I've had it happen before with emailed codes but those are easy to fix. iLok authorizations can be removed if the user logs into the iLok License Manager, but I don't think they do it very often.

Yeah it has new UI.

I opened a chat with MF today and they claim they are behind with shipping but they will tell me when things really ship. I guess that ship notice for Strobe 2 wasn't real, the tracking ID isn't in my account, was only in the email they sent and the post office says they are still waiting for the package. I still think there are good odds this will never show up.