marcL

2 hours ago, Fwrend said:

I like the looks of it!

Me too, but the preset sounds are really not my taste! Removed it instantly! 😆

29 minutes ago, mettelus said:

I guess for PC users it didn't really have much effect other than to change the version number for us.

That's why I don't understand why iZotope did not mention this in the first place! (Changelog!)

5 hours ago, Fleer said:

Continuing on my path to enlightenment, I’m thinking EZKeys 1 doesn’t need to be authorized anymore, but instruments do. 
This would mean that you can use EZKeys 1 on any number of computers as long as you authorize an instrument with it (while each instrument can be authorized to two computers). 
On the other hand, it seems EZKeys 2 can only be used on two computers as it has two authorization slots. 
Strangely, EZKeys 1 used to have (two) authorization slots before, but they’re now gone. After downloading EZKeys 1, it simply asks for an instrument to be added (and authorized presumably). 

AFAIK this has always been like that. Once I asked support if it is possible to install a new instrument purchase on a 3rd computer and only on 1 of the existing authorized computers and they said yes! That meant you could decide for each instrument independently 2 authorization locations. Regrettably this has changed for EZKeys 2!

I am disappointed! There are 2 things that are a degradation:

1. The EZkeys 2 Core library cannot be installed without the Product Manager anymore! Like that I guess you have to re-download on all your pcs.
2. I have 4 EZkeys 1 packages that I have distributed on 3 computers. It seems I cannot update all to EZkeys 2 (only on 2 computers).

7 minutes ago, enzooriginal said:

first bx_masterdesk then bx_masterdesk classic then bx_masterdesk True Peak then bx_MasterDesk Pro 😵

Maybe they will have even more ideas in the future! 😆

May voucher cannot be used additionally!

By the way, it maybe also a performance aspect if all 100 plugins used in a project access the internet (to check version ...) when I open the project! Is this the future? It is like Windows (I don't know about Mac!) that needs all the power on my laptop if I start it and the internet is on! That's crazy, you are not the master of your own hardware anymore!

1 hour ago, MrFigg said:

And what exactly is it you think they’re spying? It’s an activation. Then you can unplug your computer from the web again and breathe. 

I don't like that too many programs/plugins (try to) access the internet on my PCs! Do you really know what all of them do on your systems? Can you be sure that all of them are programmed safely? I think the risk of fraud grows with the number of programs accessing the internet, that's that simple IMHO!

"*We currently do not support offline activation for our software products. Internet connection is required to activate your license. This is both for security and combating software piracy."

They don't get it! Very weird explanation for spying on customers and also it is surely not for the security of customers! Meh!

Sadly another one without offline activation!

By the way, how does it compare to Boz Digital's Claps? 

I have also noticed that in some situations the exclusive Solo has some issues. After some operations (I guess it were bounces) the solo setting was cleared and then the Solo got somehow confused.

44 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

While floating-point approximations are a real thing, and might be an issue for astrophysicists, they do not affect audio quality.

I was not talking about quality impact!

You are right that a single storage of a floating point number may have a very tiny difference, but I know that it can cause obvious differences after several operations/conversions! And there are so many in audio processing! I don't want to say that one result maybe better or not, I just want to explain why there maybe/are differences! 😉

4 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

This most likely happens because computers are not capable of properly dealing with floating point numbers and have to approximate the result.

There is some truth in what you say, but I wouldn't claim that computers are not capable of dealing with floating point numbers! 😆

Sincerely, there are problems with rounding numbers converted to floating point (small differences), because the number of digits are limited! And it even depends what programming language or system/database you use (e.g. different algorithms to convert simple numbers to floating points). Thus if you make a lot of calculations the order and the choice of computer number fields used lead always to different results in calculations! And music is internally stored as numbers and most operations on it are of mathematical kind. Such things like pan law depend also on the conversion of numbers. Even if the same pan law is used in 2 DAWs the result maybe different, because one uses pan internally as integer and another DAW uses float directly and so on.

Overloud: For me it's just loud, but over! Prefer other IR players that don't involve installation and authorization problems!

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There is also no offline authorization available for this plugin!

9 hours ago, abacab said:

It's been years since I had my hands on a MAC, and I seem to recall that application installs/uninstalls were much more straightforward than with Windows...

To me the install of a simple plugin is not an "application install", vs. a real program like a DAW, an editor or the like! Most plugin installs could be a simple copy of 1 or a few files and not more, really! I appreciate the developers that still support this (Klanghelm, Toneboosters, ...).

20 hours ago, abacab said:

That's surprising! I see Native Access 2 only using 375MB here.

I frequently see my C drive disk usage increase by several GBs after a new install (in excess of the expected actual files installed). I have discovered that Windows usually makes a system restore point when you run an installer, if you have System Restore protection enabled on your system drive. That can easily eat up at least several GBs. 🙄

You can see how much drive space System Restore is currently occupying by opening System Protection from Windows Settings. Alternatively you can confirm this by using a disk space analyzer like the excellent TreeSize Free run as Administrator, and looking at the System Volume Information folder. They are the large files in braces with long names in hex. One of the many mysteries of Windows!

You can delete the restore points if you don't need them by clicking on "Configure" in System Protection, which shows the space used, and then clicking on "Delete". I just scanned with TreeSize and they were using 3GB here, so I deleted all. Then created a manual restore point that only used 1.1 GB. They do begin to add up, even though you can set a max usage of 1% of the drive, but in my case that equals 4.64GB (on a 500GB M.2 SSD).

Bottom line is that I suspect Native Access is not using 3GB of drive space by itself.

This is also the reason why I think that a Windows installer for each little plugin is overkill! It is much overhead and many times there are things installed with it that you never use (Avid, ...). Why not just have a zip-file for simple plugins? IMHO it does not take more time for installation that way, if you have a clear organization.

4 hours ago, David Baay said:

A few years ago I caught the plugin bug (I blame this forum, actually!) and loaded up on all kinds of instruments and FX, many of which remain virtually untouched because I still tend to just sit down and play/record solo piano  which requires very little in the way of processing and mixing. But I'm not as productive as I used to be because I still spend too much time keeping plugins, plugin managers and licenses updated and messing around searching for the perfect piano or accompaniment sounds or just familiarizing myself with some plugin so I won't get bogged down trying to figure it out when I really need it... which might be never!

+1, sadly this is also true for me! 😄 

That's also the reason why I like plugins of some smaller developers, because they just do it right from the beginning, i.e. there's no endless update chore!

I like all the possibilities you have nowadays with music software, it's amazing! But on the other hand I think I was much more productive in the good ol' time with hardware gadgets!

9 hours ago, dubdisciple said:

Automatic transmission on an automobile is to a degree AI.

This is a good example that shows how difficult it is to create reasonable "AI" ! I drive both with manual and automatic transmission. On very boring flat highways I like to use auto, but on small roads that have a lot of bends and that go up and down it seems the automatic transmission is really not efficient, because it cannot act previsional.

It's the same with AI in all other areas, it is limited to the imagination of the engineers! If they forget some (rare) cases, there can happen odd things, sometimes even horrible things (see airplane, rocket history)!

I don't mind if AI is a great help in editing music or mixing! But even such basics like transient detection does not work reliable in any program, how else could we interpret the different results from daw to daw, tool to tool? Frankly, I am still waiting for the program/tool that can do only that with 90% accuracy!

Sometimes I wonder wether AI means something like "Almost Idiotic".

Frankly, I think many that use AI for their products may think they are extraordinary ingenious! Are they really?

10 hours ago, abacab said:

That's some really annoying generic change log info. I really wish IKM would list the items that were fixed or improved!

I think Amplitube changes are mostly about adding new contents! IMO not worth installation if you don't require them!

I don't understand that the managers of those companies don't get it! Did they not hear about the fiasco in the bank sector? Do they not understand that conglomeration in the music sector can lead to similar failures?

7 hours ago, antler said:

UI design seems to borrow heavily from Sonible.

It's more that both of them borrowed from Accusonus ! 😆

Even if Cherry Audio's synths sound quite good, their installation, authorization and update practices are very intrusive! I don't like that at all!

E.g. they do some kind of after-installation during the authorization process. Like that you really don't know what's going on, how much storage is used, very shady! Also the configuration of the update policy is not quite clear. When I wanted to install a new module in Voltage Modular the product itself was updated (what I did not want)! Frankly, I distrust such companies!