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Matthew Sorrels

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Everything posted by Matthew Sorrels

  1. None of those really -- they all are from "Image Sounds". Only things from ACID would I consider worth buying: https://www.producerplanet.com/us/audio/loops-samples-250/?label[]=acid And make sure you get things with a commercial license, otherwise what's the point.
  2. That's exactly what I'm seeing. Mono notes are fine and even a chord is OK for the first note, but if you play another too fast/overlap them it breaks up big time. I think it's just Phase Plant/the patch. I guess Phase Plant isn't very CPU efficient. It doesn't seem to have any controls for multi-threading either. I did fine some Microsoft telemetry that I had turned off running (I suspect thanks to the latest Windows updates) but it didn't make any difference. Getting tried of turning off things multiple ways with every Windows update.
  3. Using the third preset in this gratis pack "Additivity", if I play some chords the audio in Phase Plant breaks up horribly. And that's at a crazy 2048 sample size on the ASIO driver. I see this in both Cakewalk and Nuendo 11 (so it's not just Cakewalk). I even tried 44.1khz (I normally use 48khz). I'll admit I haven't played much with Phase Plant since I got it, but this isn't the only patch that seems to have broken audio. May be a CPU thing (though the Cakewalk meters aren't showing anything crazy. Nuendo's audio performance meters do redline. Could be just me, but I thought I'd ask if others are seeing this kind of performance before I go chasing it.
  4. Until they either add new products to a bundled product you own or release version 13 there isn't any reason to WUP. You can get updates without WUP, just not new plugins and whole version changes. So if they fix bugs you still get those fixes, until the next major version. If they added new plugins or release a new major version be sure to check if there is an upgrade deal. For example Gold to Gold+Renaissance Maxx is cheaper than WUP and includes a year of WUP. Same with jumps from other metal levels too. Even Mercury has a single upgrade to Mercury+Studio Classics. Never plain WUP without a reason and in that case wait for a WUP sale. Some reasons include: You want to sell a Waves plugin (has to be covered by WUP to re-sell it) They added something you really want to a bundle and the WUP cost is less than the plugins on sale (rare, but can happen) They release a whole new major version that you must have The major version WUP thing is kind of tricky. I don't like mixing versions anymore but you can. So I just avoid buying anything from the new version release, that way I don't have the problem until I'm ready to bring everything to the new major version. But for example the resizable GUI was enough of a reason for me to say it was time to WUP. And Mac users may have no choice because of OS issues (Windows usually doesn't have this problem). Unless you are at Mercury+Studio Classics though an upgrade during a sale will almost always get you the new version and new plugins at a price at or less than WUP.
  5. Xfer has a no sale policy and they have been pretty hardcore about it. The good news it means you can buy their stuff anytime. The bad news is it's never cheaper.
  6. I have BBC Pro and to be honest it can be a bit demanding in terms of memory usage (and disc and CPU). But Core and Discovery don't really suffer the zillion mic/zillion articulation eating all your computer resources problem as much though. The Spitfire player has a kind of crazy loading resources issue. It takes forever. And (this actually bothers me more) it takes for ever to unload too(I guess they free all the memory they allocated in little tiny bits instead of giant blocks). But most of the issues with using it, besides loading and exiting, have been fixed (more or less). And with articulation maps it's really pretty nice. It has a great and usable sound, but it's not exactly very inspiring. I have a lot more fun with the two Drama Toolkits (British Drama Toolkit and Contemporary Drama Toolkit) and Bernard Herrmann Composer Toolkit. I also have found I'm a lot more fond of the Spitfire Solo Strings than using the solo instruments in BBC, which kind of surprised me. All of the Albion libraries are great, but having all six(some aren't available anymore) of them I rarely can remember which is which. You should definitely watch/listen to the walk through on them, they are all pretty different. Also don't buy more than one of any of these at a time. I made that mistake, with a complete the collection deal, and I'm pretty sure it meant I've missed a lot of the rich detail in some of the Albions. Which is maybe why I still see Albion ONE as the most useful. Because I had it for a long time by itself. Personally I really dislike eDNA Earth. I has always been one of my regrets (it was the first Spitfire thing I bought a long time ago now). And I'm not getting along so well with the swarm stuff either. Something about the grid UI and I just don't mesh well. But I'm guessing it's just me. If you do get eDNA Earth I do recommend the Unfinished add-on. It did make it better for me. They will have better sales towards the end of the year. Including a new Ton (which will be a good deal assuming you like/need what they bundle in it). And they are likely to do the spend above so much and get this library we won't sell at all otherwise deal. Might be best to hold off for those offers. And again don't buy more than one if you can avoid it (bundle deals are kind of a curse and a blessing).
  7. Scaler 2 is a nice improvement over Scaler 1 (had to load it just to refresh my own memory). But I think the real question should be "Is there a great deal?" At some point all these MIDI plugins kind of start to blur a bit. I'm pretty fond of Scaler 2's performance mode options and style choices (which version 1 had). ChordJam seems to be a bit more random within a range/from a set of things. Which doesn't work so well for me. I have this problem with their Riffer also. Random isn't music really. I'm not really sure what good choosing a new key on every note from a list of keys is (ChordJam feature). But it may also depend on how you are using it. As a playground both are pretty nice. In the end I do think Scaler 2 is worth an upgrade if you can get a good deal on it. ChordJam is also worth getting, again if you can get a deal.
  8. I have both. Scalar 2 is definitely the more powerful/complex/useful (to me) of the two. ChordJam is nice but not really in Scalar 2's class as far as features go. I do like ChordJam's basic setup, though I had to watch video to figure out how to use it (the PDF manual which I started with isn't really usable as a guide). I did get it confused and constantly sending MIDI data at least once while playing with it. Though who knows if the problem was routing in Cakewalk or it. If you could only buy one I'd say Scalar 2 is the better choice.
  9. So I played with it for a bit, though I couldn't load any of the HO Diamond instruments. The UI is slightly nicer (but the instruments own UI are the same) and resizable. But the engine part doesn't appear to be any better at handling the very difficult balance between loading everything into ram and streaming from disc. Something other samplers seem to be much better at than EW. Play 4 didn't have problems but starting with Play 5 it's mostly been a "oh sorry I'm cutting that note off and not playing the release sample". Opus doesn't seem any better in that regard, at least not with older libraries I tried. This did let me kick the tires though and unless they reprice the HO Diamond Opus upgrade to something in the sub $250 range I don't see me ever bothering to upgrade. The technical chops just aren't there.
  10. Their support emailed me back and my Opus license was added to my iLok account. Not sure if it would have happened without opening the ticket or not.
  11. I had 60 JamPoints and just went ahead and got it for the crossgrade price. Was close enough to $100 after the JamPoints. Sounds nice. I wished I had caught that deal on the G-Force Complete though. If it goes on sale I guess I'll bite. Till then Sampletron 2 will have to do.
  12. That's what I was thinking too, but nope. Nothing in installation center and nothing in my iLok account. Just like you I can (and did) install Opus but it won't let me license it. I sent EW a note, will see what they say. This was one of the libraries I used a lot during the year I had Composer Cloud and can't work with any of those projects anymore (yes I rendered them to audio so it's not the end of the world but Play is not very friendly when you don't have a library anymore).
  13. So I picked up one of the Play libraries I still wanted (Voices of Passion) from Audio Deluxe. Got the code to register it but don't see any sign of the free Opus license. Perhaps that doesn't apply when buying from a re-seller?
  14. My SampleTron 1 is registered in my account (in 2009) but no 30 JamPoints.
  15. Because Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition is really just Hollywood Orchestra with some fixes and some new samples, but they want to charge $500 bucks for it. So they had no choice but to make the new Opus player not work with the old libraries. Otherwise no one in their right mind would pay $500. They might pay $60-$100 for the Opus or buy a new library that comes with Opus (like this sale) and be very happy with the new engine and the old samples/libraries. So they made the Opus player not work with old Hollywood Orchestra libraries. It only works with the Opus Edition. For their other libraries Opus Player works, except for the solo instruments which they bundled into Opus Edition and the guitars which I'm guessing doesn't work because of technical reasons. I think. At this point I don't really care. I upgraded to HO Diamond a while back but oddly enough never use it. There are still a couple of EW libraries I'd like to get, but they are now very long in the tooth. Paying $500 more to make Diamond better is a huge ask. I can't tell if the new Opus engine is better at the crazy not playing the release samples because it didn't load everything into memory issue that Play 6 has.
  16. I think it's only the pre-Opus Hollywood libraries that won't work in Opus. Everything else does.
  17. That's not working, and yes your anti-virus most likely broke the driver install. Might want to try disabling it completely before doing the install.
  18. I'm running 5.0 on my UMC204HD and it's works fine. I don't remember any pain upgrading to it even. But I deal with stuff like that so much it kind of all blurs. Behringer's used ASIO4ALL only for the entry model in this line, all the rest had real audio drivers. And yes that was a bad call. Uninstall and/or disable every audio device on your computer (including the old Behringer drivers). So for me that means I turn off the Realtek in the BIOS and I disable the nVidia HDMI audio device (and always use the custom option when upgrading so I can deselect the audio driver). After uninstalling all of this (and especially any ASIO4ALL instalations) be sure to clean reboot (without the audio interface connected). Then install the Behringer driver. Reconnect the device. You may also want to remove any ASIO drivers you aren't planning to use. Instructions are here: https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/206633450-How-to-delete-old-ASIO-device-entries
  19. Audio editors may be one of the few apps that lower latency ASIO isn't a huge win. But having it as a option can be really important depending on the quality and compatibility of your audio drivers. Otherwise you may not be able to run both the audio editor and your DAW at the same time. It would be really good for the world if Steinberg would change their licensing so that GPL software could work with it. It would also be nice if they could open VST2 and VST3 up. Never going to happen though.
  20. I was curious and I think it's Kontakt that is spewing this when I instert it: I may have authorized Kontakt to collect data though. Can't remember. I usually say no but I make exceptions for companies I want to help. Update: Nope, it's turned off in Kontakt but it's definitely spitting that to the debug output when I start it. And that is a Google Analytics tracking code.
  21. Because Audacity is GPL there is no way it can include ASIO support in the published binaries. In order to get that you have to download the source, have a compiler and build it. Kind of kills it's value. I have the tools and can do this self compile, but even I won't waste the time to do it. I've seen what looks like Google Analytics telemetry output when running Cakewalk in a debugger, coming from some plugin no doubt. Not sure it's that big a deal really but I think it's more common than most people think.
  22. Loops are in. It's the 2021 theme. Bunch of new video games is about looping/groundhog day/etc. I guess Tenet is kind of about looping. Loops, it's the theme of the year.
  23. I think I've managed to get 12 but stopped trying. I'd buy more if they would let me.
  24. It might make sense if they want to get into the selling loops/samples/sound fx business?
  25. They seem to have a sale pretty often these days. I think they are a tad over priced, with way too many pieces you need to buy. Which is a problem I have with VSL too.
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