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Found a list of the VIP factory plugin maps that should be available here: https://inmusicbrands.force.com/akaipro/s/article/VIP-Everything-you-need-to-know-about-Plugin-Maps

That archive could be useful. VIP still works as it is, but future development, bug fixes, etc. are not very likely. They stopped short of adding VST3 support, so looking like VST2 only forever. Regarding the user map share, that concept really never took off and had rather low participation. Most of the maps that were posted were for plugins I did not own. But there are quite a few factory maps that are available after you scan for new plugins. In addition to the requisite synths from AIR and SONiVOX, I was quite surprised after I acquired the Arturia V Collection 8 and the Korg Collection 3 last year. Many of those instruments had factory maps available for the factory presets. Obviously instruments released in the last few years will not appear. And even NI synths such as Absynth 5, Battery 4, FM 8, Massive (original) are covered. Also PluginBoutiqe Virtual CZ, Tone2 Saurus, U-he Bazille, Diva, Hive, TyrellN6, Zebra2 & Zebralette. Plus a number of the Waves FX seem to be well represented. A lot of folks likely assumed that VIP was just intended to compete with Native Instruments and their Komplete Kontrol and NKS ecosystem. I have and use Komplete Kontrol, but VIP can do so much more. KK never could, and still cannot, layer more than one instrument. KK is mostly just a very fancy preset selector. But VIP allows you to layer up to 8 instruments in 8 channels as a multi, similar to a DAW, with 4 plugin inserts per channel, 4 aux buses, and multiple sends to them via a mixer section. So the total flexibility to use any VST2 plugin without the lack of enforced compatibility for 3rd party plugins, such as employed with the NKS ecosystem, pretty much ensures that not all plugins would play nicely... YMMV. But it's still cool for what works! You just have to lower your expectations from it being the holy grail, and expect to hit a few bumps.

You are welcome!

I just took a another look at CPU performance using Augmented Strings, this time in standalone mode. It's about the same here as with the plugin, just without the DAW overhead. Big difference though is with minimizing the GUI to the taskbar, the graphics process keeps running full blast until you exit the standalone instrument.

This also appears to be dead, along with all of the former KB articles for VIP: http://www.akaipro.com/support/kb/articles/vip---how-to-build-a-plugin-map

http://community.akaipro.com/akai_professional/topics/advance-vip-plugin-map-thread-share-yours-here Good luck!

I took a first look at the CPU usage for Augmented Strings in Cakewalk, using the Windows task manager, and compared it with the Engine Load in Cakewalk Performance. One thing jumped right out at me immediately! My NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 was running at 30-40% just idling with the Augmented Strings GUI open. The plugin audio process seemed to be done by one core, and another core seemed to be used by a graphics rendering thread, using around 50% of a single core! However just by closing the plugin window, my GPU dropped back to a more normal 2%, and the CPU core supporting that also dropped back to baseline. The audio engine load seemed to average around 10% at idle, but jumped to 20-30% during playback. So performance would probably depend on how your graphics are configured with integrated or discrete GPU, and how fast your CPU is. This thing sounds great, even with the GUI closed! But it's fairly obvious to me that there is quite a hardware price to pay for Arturia's latest pretty graphics!

This ^^^ How did you access/hack Cakewalk's preset list?

Thanks! I have located the folder, but now the Cakewalk plugin window only allows me to load the presets one at a time, directly from the folder. It doesn't seem to remember any presets that I have already loaded. The preset pull-down in the plugin window just says "no preset". A current preset can be loaded from the folder, but then it's completely replaced by the next preset that I load, and so on. By comparison, Studio One keeps track of the presets loaded from the host side, in fact you can import them all at once, so then no need to dig back into the folder every time that you want to load a preset. Am I missing something here in Cakewalk?

Thanks! That worked in S1. Except only the "import preset" option took me to the correct folder path. The "load preset" took me back to the songs folder for some reason. No biggie. So I ended up selecting all presets using the "import preset" and all presets were imported from "C:\Users\[username}\Documents\VST3 Presets\Plugin Alliance\Black Box Analog Design HG-2". I figured out that the presets for this plugin are only available via the host DAW, as there is no internal preset management. But in Ableton and Reaper no importing was required, as they were already available from the host plugin window. Been a while since I used a plugin without on-board preset management, LOL. Not a regular bx user, but this is a good un!

Even when using CCC? I performed a clean install of Win 10 in 2016, and CCC installed and authorized all of my Cakewalk stuff, Sonar Platinum and all the extras.

Just a question here about Black Box HG-2... The HG-2 manual references these presets, but I'm unable to locate them, and the documentation offers no further details... Appreciate anyone who can provide some further insight into this! INCLUDED PRESETS Presets 1 - 28 were contributed by Eric Racy, co-owner of Black Box Analog Design. A platinum selling Recording and Mix Engineer, he lives and works in LA in a wide range of genres and with clients ranging from indie bands to Grammy winning pop artists. His clients and credits have included Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Pharrell, Tyga, Jonathan Davis, 2NE1, Troye Sivan, Alessia Cara, Kelly Clarkson, Divinity Roxx, Kelly Rowland, J. Cole, Janelle Monáe, Mario,Missy Elliott, Zendaya, Lil Wayne, Big Sean, Busta Rhymes, Photek and many more. Presets 29 - 38 were contributed by Trevor Case, an industry veteran of twenty years. He got his start composing, remixing and producing music for artists and corporate clients. His focus over the last decade has been mastering. Trevor has had the pleasure of working with indie artists such as Friends of Foes, Embracing Abomination, Divinity Roxx, Flatland Sound Studio and Jesse Brown as well as mastering projects featuring Missy Elliot, Troye Sivan, Kelly Clarkson, Mario and more.

Exactly! Hopefully the new blood at NI and iZotope will shake things up in a positive direction!

And FYI for any Plugin Guru fans, many of the bx_oberhausen factory patches were created by John "Skippy" Lemkuhl (PluginGuru.com).

It seems that the new "investors" have decided to drop an entrepreneur into the middle of the mix. It's been years since NI or iZotope have shown any real signs of innovation. They have apparently just been satisfied with their existing cash cows, and the profits trickling in each quarter. This move is probably intended to light a fire under them! For reference, consider Apple after Steve Jobs left, and the Apple after he returned...

They're still available if you missed Larry's post... as did I ...

Just go to your IK User Area and click on "Redeem". The 20 extra points will be added to you account!

You are sending the EZdrummer audio output to the Cakewalk mixer channels. But you still need to do one more thing... To record your one shot pad claps in a Cakewalk MIDI/Instrument track, use these settings in EZdrummer: Settings > MIDI Events > MIDI Out (Enable MIDI routing to other software). Then your MIDI output will be available to record in Cakewalk.

^^^ what he said. MIDI .mid files cannot contain proprietary Cakewalk project specific info, instrument track, and/or audio tracks, etc. That's what Cakewalk .cwp files are for. They contain all of the MIDI data, plus all of the additional project settings. When you save or export as .mid, you are only going to get the MIDI data. The rest gets stripped out. Not a Cakewalk shortcoming, that just how MIDI works. Tip: the first thing you should do after opening a MIDI file in Cakewalk, is to immediately save it as a Cakewalk .cwp file. Then all your work is saved whenever you hit the file save button.

Don't quite follow this part. What steps did your workflow take here?

Haven't heard, but should be available in v3. Regarding NKS, I think the preview feature is more helpful with sample based instruments due to their often long preset load times. I haven't noticed that big a difference for pure synthesizers to actually load a preset or to play a NKS preview. But the preset tagging system is quite helpful in any case!

Whatever, was just trying to help. They have always been responsive to me regarding tickets. A support ticket is always the best way to get official help from a developer, and for them to track resolution. KVR forum members frequently just tend to rant about issues with products and the devs really can't properly troubleshoot in an anonymous forum environment. KV331 Audio is a very small company, although not always perfect, they do try hard to get it right.

If you are having problems you should probably contact support.

Richard Devine is one of my favorite sound designers. I have factory and/or expansion preset banks that he has created for many synths like AIR Loom II, AAS Chromaphone and Ultra Analog , Arturia Buchla Easel V, DX7 V, Matrix 12 V, Waves Flow Motion, and a few effects that I own such as AAS Objeq Delay, Eventide Black Hole and Quadravox... Good stuff! From some videos that I have seen, Richard's man cave is dominated by a wall of modular rack synth hardware!

Possibly mastering the tempo map feature in your chosen DAW is one key to unlocking a natural groove. For example, if someone sends you an acoustic recording that was made without a grid or click track, and you want to import it into your DAW and add to it without altering the feel. You could record to the grid in your DAW if the tempo adjustments were all accounted for.