Matthew Sorrels

And when you do click the drop down it silently switches you to the Mac version, from the Windows version. So if you don't catch it you'll end up downloading the Mac version by mistake.

It's been awhile since a plugin managed to completely block out all UI interactions in Cakewalk forcing me to kill process it. But this new version of reMIDI 2 did. Funny thing is I could still play the keyboard and it kept playing, just all the rest of the UI was locked with their about/info box open. Their PANIC button also doesn't seem to work all the time (like when you need it to). I like the new UI, but it's so buggy I give up. The VST2 version seemed slightly less buggy but still unusable.

This (overlap) only applies to the MIDI drums. The EzKey's MIDI content is only in the packs. And you can put in a serial number, see what you don't have, and abort the redeeming.

Even if you buy all the plugins that make up a bundle, there is a upgrade price to "get "the bundle. And if you don't pay it then you won't get future products that are added to the bundle. Long story short, buying single Melda plugins are never a good deal if you will ever want to upgrade to a bundle. But what is important is what the products do (or don't do) and how they do it. The fact you can't get a crazy good deal on Melda is just one of the factors. I think a lot of the newer Melda plugins are overpriced due to the weekly 50% sales. And the bundles are overpriced due to the every major holiday 50% off sales. Their entire product line is priced assuming a 50% discount. And that's really all on us. Right now the most (only?) adverting these small software niche software developers have is via offering a sale. They can't buy enough exposure but if they overprice the product and then offer a 50% off sale dozens of web sites and forums like this will promote their product, for free. We made this beast.

The upgrade is computed based on what you own vs what is in the bundle. So when you own the mixing bundle, that is one entire unit. And isn't part of the mastering bundle. So no discount. But if you have any single plugins, those will count. The smaller bundles do apply discounts to the two larger bundles, but that's it. So having the mixing bundle does give a discount on MTotalFXBundle and/or MCompleteBundle but not other bundles. And that's why having a bundle doesn't help you buy an upgrade to anything in that bundle (which is the case here). I'm not sure if you can choose to omit some single plugins when doing an upgrade deal, which might have been better here. But I'm not 100% sure if/how that works. The upgrade deal may not let you pick and choose what is included (Waves does let you do this for example). It is one of the things I wish they would reconsider. For a long time I wanted to get the mixing bundle to go with my mastering bundle. But with no discount due to the cross overs I just waited.

Bundles only give discounts on the larger "final" bundles. Any overlap between two bundles don't result in a lower cost. So having the mixing bundle doesn't help you getting the mastering bundle, even though there is some overlap between the two. And the 50% assumption on anything not purchased directly, which is then discounted when computing what your upgrade discount is can be a bit disappointing. But while not exactly a deal paradise, Melda is reasonably consistent.

I logged into the Ubisoft Connect app that is their downloader. There was a link which had a dialog about binding it to your account. I may have already had it in my account though, can't remember. You might need to run the app to get it, but you don't have to install it.

There is little to no money in studio hardware. Even the best manufacturers barely are able to make ends meet. And lets face it, new studios aren't exactly a booming business either. So that whole field may not be getting much bigger. While making a custom piece of hardware as a model for software may be complex, it isn't crazy and may produce good results. I would say it may produce amazing or great results, but all too often software versions of real hardware tend to not be great software. Just like books don't always make good movies. Movies don't always make good video games. Etc. They can, but it's not guaranteed to happen magically.

Not that I've found. It's been a long running issue with them. They have improved the scanner a bit for Next and 10 (unlike 8 and 9 where it was really bad). And 10 now seems to have some crazy extra scanning I've not seen before once the UI opens. Usually the only way to work around that kind of scanning is to create a specific for the app VST folder, with only the plugins you want. So it can scan a much smaller set. But I'm not sure I recommend anyone do that (I think there is a commercial product that sets up those kind of directories for you but I can't remember the name).

So for reasons I can't really explain I decided I did want to upgrade my ACID Pro Next to ACID Pro 10. Yeah not a smart idea, but I still am very fond of ACID. So I bought the upgrade and go to install it. And it tells me I'm missing the Visual C++ 2013 Redistributable (x64). Which of course is not correct. Then it tries to install it and then claims it fails. There are some forum posts about this problem (I guess it's not super common but does happen). The only advice to fixing this is to uninstall all the Visual C++ runtimes and then try running the installer. Which of course doesn't work on my workstation. Then I try running Pro Next, which tells me I there is an update but that installer has the same problem. So I can't install 10 or even update Next. So I did some digging. Their downloadable installer places the actual setup into %USERPROFILE%\Documents\MAGIX Downloads\Installationsmanager and then runs it. When it starts it makes a directory in your TEMP drive SonyInstall_1 where it sticks the files and works from there (but you can't launch those files directly). The installer directory has a file setupcfg.xml that has the tests it uses to determine if the three Visual C++ runtimes it needs are installed. For the first two it looks at registry keys. But for 2013 it looks for an entry in the Windows Installer Database. A specific key. One that isn't guaranteed to actually be present. Which is why it doesn't work on my computer. And faking that is kind of difficult (it's not like a registry entry). And since I can't launch the install from the SonyInstall_1 directory after modifing that .xml file it looked like I was kind of borked. I sent them a support note (but I don't expect them to be able to fix this). So here's how I worked around this. The download installers in the MAGIX Downloads directory take a few command line options, including one for the temporary directory. I made a dir on my d drive called d:\tmp\magix and ran the downloaded installer with This puts the SonyInstall_1 folder into my tmp folder. Then install opens up and asks to pick a language. When that's up, I copy the setupcfg.xml file out of the Sony dir and into the directory above it. I then exit the installer (which deletes the Sony dir). I modify the setupcfg.xml file to not include the last check for the 2013 runtime but removeing the last section between the <REQUIREMENT> tags (I left the checks for the first two since those pass). I then wrote a batch file that would constantly copy my modified setupcfg.xml into the SonyInstall_1 directory and started it running. The idea being as soon as the ACID installer created the install files my batch file would overwrite their extracted file with my fixed version, before they read the file. I then started the installer with the /t flag while running the batch file. And sure enough it worked and let the installer work, since it wouldn't check for the 2013 runtime. Because I do actually have the 2013 runtime installed everything worked just fine. Might also want to point out that both ACID Pro Next and Pro 10.0 both report you don't have enough disc space if the directory your ACID temporary file is set to use a directory that has more than 2TB of disc space. But other than that bit of annoyment, at least I was able to get it installed. And it does look like they changed the one thing I hate about Pro Next, if you double click to add a loop it places one full copy of it in the lane, with 10 it works the old ACID way of just making an empty lane and waiting for you to paint the loop. I'm posting this on the off chance it might help someone else. I don't think anyone should have to do this kind of insanity to get software you paid for to run, but if there was a better answer I sure couldn't work it out.

I'm pretty sure if you ever find you can't auth their stuff, the support staff will fix it for you. But that's almost true of every music software vendor. It's mostly just a factor of how annoying it is to get it sorted out vs support for do it yourself management.

I thought each plugin has a de-auth: But nothing in the portal? I have all mine on iLok so I'm not sure .

Just a optional subscription offering. Move along.

Google found this: https://www.guitarworld.com/news/is-universal-audio-about-to-launch-its-first-guitar-pedal Seems like a reasonable guess.

I do a plugin scan on Cakewalk startup so it has to be related to that, since Waves shell plugins get scanned every time I start Cakewalk and that's when the WavesLocalServer loads Cakewalk's sndfile.dll. ProcExplorer also seems to think that the WavesLocalServer's current directory is changed to Cakewalk's C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\. I'll see if I can narrow it down some more. Figure out what exactly is causing the directory change and the sndfile.dll load. You might be able to change the Cakewalk installer to just kill the WavesLocalServer.exe process. That seems bad but it might be better than the constant fails. Rebuilding/renaming that dll would be a huge pain. I see lots of Innosetup installers that do a kill process as part of their install (so if the app is running it is forced to exit).

The funny thing is, if you start it outside of Cakewalk it doesn't even load a sndfile.dll until Cakewalk starts. But this kind of crazy happens when your background server app includes a full copy of Python and a ton of things you don't really have control over. Yesterday doing a Visual Studio 2019 update, it uninstalled Python 3.7 and then installed it's own version in it's own directory. Breaking all my Python stuff. I think this Waves thing is just the same kind of issue. Forum posts from Waves says you can kill the WavesLocalServer and it will restart when it's needed, but you can't stop it from running or you lose the new preset browser in Waves V12.

When trying to update to the final 2021.01 release (from the preview) the installer gave me this error: Using proc monitor I found that the WaveLocalServer.exe appears to have locked the sndfile.dll And it keeps running even after you exit Cakewalk. Perhaps they are doing a loadlibrary while running as a plugin and getting Cakewalk's sndfile.dll and not their own and keeping it locked preventing the update. I killed their process and used the retry button and the install continued.

A few key bits from the text version of the product page: So no hard release date yet. They are merging the Solo instruments, so you can count on the upgrade price for people without them (like me) to be even worse. Gold users are not going to get MOODS. For subscribers download features are important, but if you're buying the libraries the advantages of Opus may be slightly less awesome. If they don't fix the disc streaming I'm pretty sure I'm going to give up on them. Having to full load everything into memory to play back without glitches is just crazy and makes Play 6 unusable. It's a separate product, which I'm guessing means expensive. Once again pushing everyone to the ComposerCloud Plus subscription package.

I have to admit I really like this Teensy 3.2 module, it's so easy to make MIDI devices with it. I'm sort of following this article: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/1240121-diy-midi-cc-controller-w-100mm-sliders-under-100-2018-edition.html But I'm using smaller faders and my box is a lot taller (so it better lines up with the height ofmy keyboard). I've also added a three way switch (not in the photo above) so that I can have different configurations for the controllers. I think I've found a nifty trick to making the project box. I've got it printed out at 1:1 size but to keep the dremel in the groove I picked up a metal sewing gauge (for $1.50). I think it may be a good guide for cutting the fader slots. If I can clamp it down or tape it down I think it will help with making the project box. Have to find out this weekend. I have morotorized faders on my keyboard but they are all in Mackie control mode (so can't drive Kontakt) and my 16 fader doepfer pocket fader is just too big to put beside the keyboard by the mod wheel. I tried to find something like this commercially but just gave up. So many Kontakt libraries now really need more than a mod wheel. I have a nice expression pedal (a Moog) but it's not so easy to use. I'm hoping a 3 fader mod wheel setup will be an improvement. Though I guess not for Contemporary Drama Toolkit, which just finished downloaded. Sounds nice. I like British Drama Toolkit, this seems like a nice addition. And while it may not be mod-wheel based , it does seem to use the mod-wheel after all.

So I spend the weekend wiring up a DIY 3 fader MIDI controller (doing the project box this weekend) and this is the first new library I buy? A library designed to not use the mod wheel.

I can't give up Kontakt. I mostly try and punt the VST2 versions but there are just too many products that are still only VST2. If I have a choice I'll skip the VST2. I suspect VST4 will be here before VST2 really dies. I've also been punting 32-bit version. But again there have been a few exceptions. I always punt the AAX stuff and have a script to delete them all when I don't get a choice.

Sure the pricing has been "interesting", but PercX is a really good epic drums engine and with the most recent update may be a really good normal drum kit. I may hate the company's marketing/sales effects but I really do like the product.

And now you may have re-authorization hell to look forward to. This is why I never use hard drive/computer authorizations if I can avoid them. Hopefully it won't be that bad.

The Pro version really does have too many mics. But it has just enough other things that slightly tips the balance to making it worth it. The odd thing is that had they presented all three versions during the pre-order and explained all the differences, I'm not really sure what I would have picked. If it were just the extra mics, I'd have an easier time. But it never is just mics. Update still isn't in my account. Guess it's going to be a while.

I may give them a lot of flack about it, but it is a great sounding library with a ton of very usable articulations. It's only real problems are the 558GB of SSD disc space it's currently taking and their player engine. I have hope the player engine will continue to get better. The disc space problem though seems like a lost cause, with them adding even more.