marcL

4 hours ago, Craig N said:

tmpc on VI Control contacted Waves and was told "they are moving to a different company to handle the actual license generation and management"

I still think I might be right about them getting rid of WUP. Maybe moving back to iLok. It made sense to use their own license manager when creating new iLok licenses comes at a cost and new Waves versions covered under WUP required generating new licenses. But what an error prone mess Waves licenses are. I'm terrified of updating Waves plugins because half the time everything disappears and I have to do some kind of deep clean to get them back. It must have been costing Waves a fortune in support dealing with all the issues. Whereas iLok, for all the hate it gets, works pretty reliably these days. So if there's no more WUP, then there's no reason to maintain their own licensing and copy-protection regime when iLok does it better. 

Anyway that's just my guess... partly fueled by wishful thinking 🙂

That would be great if they went back to iLok IMO. No more hassle of an additional non-iLok USB(**) and a clear, reliable authorization path! This would be one of the 2 most important steps for me to buy Waves plugins again (the 2nd one would be the drop of the shell plugin).

(**) E.g. lately I forgot to insert the USB with the Waves licences and accidentally opened a Waves plugin. There was no other way to stop it, than killing CbB!

On 2/21/2023 at 7:24 PM, sjoens said:

May not matter but Audio or MIDI metronome? Buffer settings?

Sometimes MIDI buffers get out of wack causing some instruments to play out of sync until transport is stopped and restarted.

I just use the standard Audio metronome. And as I have no issues with audio playing/recording, I guess there should not be a problem with the metronome. But maybe I am wrong?

But it is a good idea, I could try to use the MIDI metronome.

2 hours ago, jngnz said:

What's wrong with a proper plugin manager that handles updates for you? It's the best thing ever. Would you rather be on 12 billion mailing lists and download every single update yourself?

Most plugin managers

• Give you no OPEN chance to save the downloaded files for the use on another machine (thus redundant downloads on every machine)
• Don't give you full control over the installation (what to install (for each plugin), paths, claims you have a broken installation if you remove Avid/Vst3, ...)
• Have themselves always updates (very annoying if you have just 1 or 2 plugins of the vendor)
• Tempt the vendor to omit full changelog information (it gets more and more misty what has been changed)
• Has its on logic that you have to learn
• Don't support offline installation

I am sure there is more that could be listed that I have missed at the moment!

1 hour ago, cclarry said:

Manage your plugins in a single app, download, version, license check, demo.

Oh no! Not ANOTHER plugin manager! ☹️

I just hope that it will still be possible to avoid it, else Nembrini is dead for me! Maybe those central managers are cool if you only own plugins from 1-4 providers, but if you like to have a varicolored plugin set, then this is mostly annoying IMHO!

3 hours ago, LAGinz said:

Drat!!! Just bought the MPS 5.2 upgrade! Now I have to decide whether, in effect, upgrading from RX9 Advanced and RX10 Standard…..to RX 10 Advanced,  is worth $199! Grrrr….

I don't think so! You gain almost nothing if you have RX9 Advanced and RX10 Standard (it is also my situation).

Edit: I had checked the differences of RX10 Advanced vs. RX9 Advanced and they are all included in RX10 Standard. Thus they want us to pay $199 for nothing! Very odd!

Instant Flanger/Phaser $24.36 in JRRshop.com with code "group"!

It would be cool if it was possible to exclude the selection range to be saved with export tasks and instead use the current selection, because:

1. I often have a couple of clip selections that use the same export settings and I don't want to create that many tasks.
2. The selection range is not clearly visible in the task list (even with recall task settings). I had quite some trouble when I had saved a task with an invalid selection to change this one.
3. If you have to create for each selection another tasks, then the list of tasks might be growing and it is getting confusing (what task is for what).
4. Now if you want to change the selection for a task, it is quite complicated. You have to 
   • Open the export dialog
   • Recall the task settings
   • Close the export dialog
   • Make the new selection
   • Open the export dialog again
   • Change the task with the current settings

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

On the flipside, one can easily make the argument that it creates a near monopoly for NI.

That's the reason why I talked about sample standards that could be used of multiple providers. Me too, I don't like that NI has such a monopoly position in sample playing, even if I own Kontakt Full! I think common, open standards could help to provide more competition and would reduce absolute monopolies like this. 

14 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

Here's a direct link to the Rhapsody player landing page: 

https://librewave.com/rhapsody/

Thanks!

But I dare to say this is just another sample player! There are now so many out there! The problem is if I am in need of an instrument I only look up in my vsti catalog and in Kontakt! Most of the time I forget about the samples in other players! That's why I avoid adding more samples that are out of the most common players.

It is sad that there are not, say about 3, sample standards so that any player could use them and you would be free to choose 1 single player (yeah, I am dreaming of a positive future, but I know that it goes exactly the opposite way! That's progress in the 21st century! 😄).

3 hours ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

So overpriced, even on sale

And it requires the terrible CodeMeter authorization!

34 minutes ago, abacab said:

Panagement 2 is quite cool!

How is it authorized? How many installations are allowed?

Nowadays it is really painful that many plugin developers hide this crucial information. The last week I was searching this for several plugins without success.

11 hours ago, Last Call said:

Maybe some kick drum is salvageable.

For me the kick is the most weak point of AD2. There is almost no old style pure kick sound available. Everything sounds hippi hoppy 😄! Short, hollow and too much room in the direct recordings!

I tried to improve several kicks with volume envelope and FX. I did not really succeed. You cannot heal poor recordings! If I compare the kicks of NI or SSD, they sound much more realistic! At least as I remember the kick sound of our drummer's kit many years ago! 😆

What I can tell about Aurora Choir:

Definitely it cannot be used for short notes! I bought it for the usage in one song where they should sing a short 2-voice melody (mostly 1/8 and 1/4 notes, tempo=100). It was unusable because of the stretching artifacts! Maybe for longer notes (1/2, 1/1, ...) in a more cinematic style it can be used, but this is not my application area.

2 hours ago, Zo said:

i have some redundancy ...

Some? I have a lot of redundancy! 😄

3 hours ago, ALC said:

Are there any compelling features GS-2 gives over Strum Session just using it as a front end for amp sims?

As far as I can see it's only that the preset library is larger and that the add-on packages are installable. But I managed to install the MIDI (loop patterns) also in Strum Session (made links manually), but you cannot access the guitar sound presets of the add-ons. Other than that I have not seen any differences.

IMHO Strum GS-2 is much better than a lot of (most?) sampled guitars regarding rhythm playing! I don't mean the sound of Strum! I only use Strum as DI playing in combination with other amp simulations that are better! I agree that the amp sounds are not that strong.

Also, it maybe that the playing is best with direct MIDI input using Strum GS-2 in "Guitar" mode. "Loop" mode is more for sketching something. But then the loops can be dropped into the daw to be altered. I am no keyboard player, thus I cannot judge how good it can be used with direct keyboard input.

For me things like this induce more and more a reluctance to buy from these dinosaurs like IK!

I was thinking of buying T-Racks 5 Max yesterday, but then I remembered all the hassles installing and activating IK products and thus I abstained from purchase. These big companies make it so elaborate to install on more than 1 pc and keep it up-to-date. For example I like Amplitube, but I hate those pseudo-updates that just add new packages to it that I don't own! So why update? And there are even those companies that don't show a full modification list (back in time), so you are not able to determine which version is enough for you! I don't know how many hours I have installed updates for Apple Silicon and Co., although I have only Windows computers! Also some vendors have these all-included installers that are so inconvenient if you just have some of their plugins. It is totally intransparent what is required for your situation.

1 hour ago, abacab said:

This is a typical change log for many of these plugins. Of particular note is that the minimum OS required is now Windows 10 or macOS 11.

As far as I can see the installers still run on W7 and in a short simple test the plugins run with these new versions. I guess that the note means that NI just don't test on W7 anymore (like many vendors).

IMHO the most interesting update note is: FIXED The plugin now runs again on X64 processors that only support SSE3 and below.

It seems that the developers had gone too far and then they had to step back! 😆

6 hours ago, John Vere said:

When I'm closed to finished a project I make a "save as"  copy  with date in the name.  I open it and then I export all the audio tracks as stems 48/32 bit no dither, no effects. I then delete all the originals which are probably broken up into a zillion clips and replace those with the stems by dragging from the export folder as complete tracks end to end.  I then close the project and delete all the audio files except for the stems which will have different names or I could use the date. Now that back up copy is nice and tidy, way smaller in file size as well as could be easily transferred to another DAW. I also back them up as Midi files.

I do something similar. But I save the track stems in a separate, song-specific directory. I do this as soon I think that a track (without mixing FX) is okay. Like this I can create multiple projects that reference the finished tracks. In the end I create a mixing project that has almost no audio contents as it only references the finished audio tracks. The advantage of this is that I don't have dozens of copies of the same finished tracks and that the projects are really light. And last but not least it is easy to backup!

2 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

I have to say, though, as painful as that first week was

One week only? Lucky guy!

My last system set up (2019) took about 1 month until most of the plugins and other software was properly working! Most trouble was caused by the motley authorization and installation ideas by many developers! It took some time to find out how to do it! How I was glad about all those plugin providers that had  a simple offline authorization (none, file, key or registry) or the ones that had iLok! But many of the others with machine dependency were a nightmare!

The same thing with the installation: The worst are those like NI that require to re-download a lot of the stuff (the cool installation managers)! NI alone took quite some time!

That is also the reason why I push the W10 update of my recording pc along. It runs fine with W7. Why to fix something that isn't broken?

14 hours ago, John Vere said:

What works for me I  as just use a”Save As “. And put it in a different location. It will only save stuff that was being used and all the garbage is left behind. 

7 hours ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

This 100%

Just make sure you've got "Copy audio with project" checked.

You can then delete your original project folder with impunity

This works as long as you have no audio files that are only referenced. If you have some referenced-only files, then they are also copied with the project's audio file. And usually there is a reason why you reference those files, i.e. you don't want them to be copied! 😉

34 minutes ago, abacab said:

I assume NI believes that "latest and greatest" (including fancy graphics) sells more software products.  But that means it runs better on the "latest and greatest" hardware.

It's like an arms race...

Believe me, it is possible to program the same product with the same fancy graphics using even less cpu than Guitar Rig 5! Often it has a lot to do how a software is constructed and what kind of tools are used to program it. This can easily make a difference of 1:10 in the resulting resource consumption!

This was also the thing that surprised me in my plugin comparison (described above) that some products that look old and simple are real resource hogs and others that look modern with cool resizable graphics are light. So it seems to be possible! 😉

16 hours ago, Tezza said:

 

 

This is what forced me to upgrade the computer in the end. I had an i5 3rd gen with 8 gig of ram. Komplete ultimate 10 ran ok with it, gr5 etc although I could never get latency really acceptable with amp sims and instead, ran through pedals with direct monitoring. It was almost there, but on fast guitar parts, the timing just wasn't right. Same thing with VST keyboards and pianos etc, although i could "get by" with these. But when i put KU 13 on everything ran slow, like really slow, sometimes taking 1 minute or more just to open GR6 or the new massive etc. It was bad.

Then i got a new computer, an 11th gen i7 with 32gig ram. Basically, all of these problems just went away. Latency is a non issue and running the KU13 instruments and GR6 etc is fine. Also, the VST pianos etc are all great now, i can play really fast parts without timing issues. The only annoyance with the new computer, is the noise it makes, not too bad on cool days but turns into a revving motorcycle on hot days. My previous computer was dead silent, all the time.

In terms of guitar though, i swapped out the mexican Strat for a player series double humbucker Tele (with push/pull pots for single coil function) and this change really helped with the overall sound. I've got more of a respect for the amp sims now. My previous Strat was too harsh and grainy for the computer but the Tele sounds warm and fat, with all the harshness gone, much better for direct recording with the computer, even when i switch to the single coils. The Strat sounded great through an amp, just not with direct in to a computer, I thought it was the interface DI, but it was the guitar. So in terms of getting a better guitar sound using amp sims, changing software = meh!, changing guitars= MEGA! and upgrading the computer = SUPER MEGA!

The only thing left to change now, is the interface. The UR44 has been good but it is old and i don't think i'm getting the best sound from it. Also, I've only ever used 1 input at a time really, occasionally 2. For an even better amp sim guitar sound, I think i might switch to an Audient id4 mkii or id14 mkii. Maybe, this will upgrade my sound to SUPER DUPER MEGA!

 

This is exactly the problem, such plugin developers like NI eat up a lot of the hardware progress! We all have to upgrade and upgrade the hardware that in the end we can just run the new versions of the same plugins! This is the future!

Recently I compared the cpu consumption of a lot of plugins of the same kinds and I was really surprised of the differences between various producers. I did it on my laptop, cos it is quite weak and thus you can see the differences better. Some vendors' plugins ran quite fine against my expectations (e.g. Softube, older bx stuff, Boz Digital, ...) and others shocked me about their consumption! NI's Guitar Rig 5 was quite good in comparison, but GR6 is very bad. In general all newer NI plugins are very heavy!

I have RX Post Production Suite 6 and RX 10 Standard. My offer for RX 10 Advanced is $399 !!!! Even with 25% reduction it is too much for almost nothing (nearly all updates of RX 10 are already included in Standard!).

35 minutes ago, locrian said:

 

After upgrading to version 5 I thought I'd use Melodyne frequently but to date have used it only a few times.  While it does a good job of correcting pitch, timing, and amplitude excursions, I find it's much faster and easier to use Cubase's native VariAudio and AudioWarp to fix the first two issues and plugins (compressors, limiters, and volume levelers) to correct the third.

I also thought it might be useful to generate MIDI data from audio files, but the result required so much work that it was just easier to play the part into a VI and create the MIDI data that way.

So, I'm curious as to what others are doing with Melodyne, and why they find it so useful.

In the past I was using Melodyne quite a lot for vocals, fixing pitch and timing issues. Today I only use it sparly for pitch corrections. Why?

Regarding pitch there is a real issue in Melodyne, because it only uses the center pitch (average) of a note as orientation. This is okay for a lot of instruments, but not for vocals and lead guitars that have a lot of pitch drift! Sometimes it sounds definitly wrong if you trust Melodyne! That means if you correct the pitch that way, then you have to flatten the pitch drift that it sounds correct. The result is a lifeless performance. Thus I only make pitch changes by ear and by pitch curves ignoring the blobs' center pitch value!

For timing issues I use almost only CbB's Audio Snap these days. Though I do a lot of manual transient detection/correction in vocal clips! Cakewalk has a very good zoom display of the wave form that reveals the possible syllable/transient starts. This is also great for aligning 2nd or choir vocals. Furthermore there is the Radius Solo Vocal algorithm available in CbB and this one is quite superior over Elastique Pro that is used of most software today. Just compare the same clip bounced with both algorithms completely zoomed in and compare it with the original and you will see!