abacab

27 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

So much for speculation about the incipient demise of Massive. If they were going to set it adrift, I doubt they'd go to the trouble of porting it to Apple Silicon.

NI, now just make the GUI resizable please!

24 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

Maybe other prepared pianos like the ones mention already have macros that can do these kinds of things?   

Interesting question. Prepared pianos are typically prepared by human hands before a piano is sampled with microphones. The results are a "prepared" sample library.

Simulating these effects with macros could allow you to blend in the dry samples with the prepared ones. AFAIK using algorithms to simulate them would be more like physical modeling, although not aware of any pianos that are currently capable of this in real-time. I might be wrong, and if I am surely someone will point it out.

The NI Noire piano has a pure grand piano and a "prepared" felt grand piano library, as well as a "particles engine". https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/keys/noire/

"Use the innovative particles engine to automatically generate clouds of pulsating, swirling harmonic elements based on what you play. The particles engine instantly adds motion to your playing and pushes you to explore new possibilities."

2 minutes ago, InstrEd said:

My only problem is the small screen if I don't have the external screen hooked up.  

I didn't buy my laptop for use with audio programs, and if I use it at home it's always hooked up to a 24" external monitor + wireless mouse & keyboard.

I use it as a mobile office when I'm traveling, and can barely tolerate the small laptop display panel. But it serves its purpose as a mobile device.

Well the 3 4 Mac users around here should be pleased! 😉

1 minute ago, InstrEd said:

I see it in your Future

Yep, but only if I save the $49 now they want from me today, and apply that to the $99 upgrade to V Collection 9 that I'll be looking for next year.

6 minutes ago, simon said:

then really focus on making some great music instead of worrying about missing out stuff you don't really want and will never use.  That sounds awful and goes against everything this forum stands for.

I guess it's not really GAS that keeps pulling me back in here, it's more like FOMO.

There might actually be something here really new & unique that I DO NEED!!! 🤣

1 hour ago, kennywtelejazz said:

The past couple of years have pointed out to me that even though I have done "my best " to stay  pretty much current on a lot of my recording software  , I may have started to hit a brick wall about 2 years ago when I started noticing how much strain  my computers experienced while trying to run much of the new software I had upgraded to.. For me to get the full benefit of using the software I have now  I suspect a much more robust computer upgrade would be in order .

I started to notice that effect in 2020 with a computer with a 3rd Gen Intel that I had been using since 2014. It started out with Windows 7, then was upgraded to Windows 10. Adding a SATA SSD helped, but the CPU, motherboard, and memory seemed to be the bottleneck where the newer software started choking.

Fast forward to a new build in 2020. Intel 9th Gen Core i5-9600K (6 cores at base clock 3.7 GHz,Turbo to 4.6 GHz) with 16 GB DDR4-2600 RAM and a GeForce GTX 1650 GPU.

Bought a new power supply and motherboard, used the existing case, fans, and drives. All the new software ran on the new build without straining! Yay!

This year I doubled the RAM to 32 GB, and swapped in a NVMe M.2 SSD drive for the boot and program drive. All of my plugins live on the M.2 boot drive as well, but otherwise all program content and sample folders are on a separate internal SATA SSD. All software starts up and loads in a flash!

There eventually comes a time where the need to upgrade the hardware becomes apparent. Hope to get another 5 years out of this one... 👍

6 hours ago, simon said:

For me it was only 29 euro - and I like Arturia as a company - the products are good and upgrades a reasonable price.

They tend to credit you with any extra purchases you've made when/if you upgrade a bundle so I'm happy to give them some money

LOTS (most?) companies don't seem to do this (NI, I'm looking at you!)

I have most of Arturia's instruments, and a KeyLab MkII controller. Totally an Arturia fan!

Let me rephrase my question... would I need this even if it was free? Will it be useful to me in a way that other things are not? I have the full Augmented Strings and find that unique.

It's not a financial decision for me. Actually I'm trying to scale down the number of tools (toys) on hand to a palette of essentials in order to avoid unnecessary distractions. Duplication is distracting for me, and more options doesn't equal more productivity, at least for me. I probably need to avoid the deals forum for a year or so! Not just to protect my wallet, but for my sanity! 🤪

15 minutes ago, Paul Young said:

I never understood the outside of the box piano - I thought those were synthesizers

Never heard of "prepared pianos"? A technique in use since 1938...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano

13 hours ago, HOOK said:

For those that don't know this one, you could change the size and shape of the room and place a performer in certain places with room mics in certain places....all adjustable with a GUI where you could just grab the performer or mic with your mouse pointer and very quickly drag them around - resulting in reverb settings changes that would roughly mimic what would happen in that room that you set up. Was really cool. 

I had the Cakewalk FX3 back in the day, but my computer struggled with it at the time. Great concept though!

Not trying to be cynical, but I have Arturia Piano V that you can layer with any other synth in Analog Lab in a 2-part layer. I have NI Noire and The Giant, which both have some "augmented" pianos that are quite nice.

And also the free 1928 Steinway piano in Soundpaint that you can morph with another sound, such as anything from the Free Angels or Free ASMR libraries. Some great piano pads to be explored in there! Plus now that you can drag and drop your own samples into Soundpaint, the creative possibilities become endless. And Soundpaint also has a decent on-board FX section. So the morphing and FX can only be limited by your imagination.

So I'm wondering if this is really worth $49 for me to crossgrade to Augmented Piano. Augmenting a piano is not really that difficult if you have some cool sounds to layer it with, and some reverbs to finish off with.

So just asking for a friend... do we really need this?

6 minutes ago, pseudopop said:

I think a lot (if not all) of the video tutorials are on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/c/ComputerMusicMag/videos

It makes more sense to put the video tutorials on their YouTube channel. Much more user friendly than having customers digging through File Silo! Not to mention that those video file downloads probably use a bit of bandwidth on their back-end.

18 minutes ago, Doug Rintoul said:

Punch cards programming in Fortran IV with WATFOR and WATFIV was my gateway drug to the computing world. I really was excited to be able to use a dumb terminal when I hit university because I could play Colossal Caves and Trek. 

We had a CP/M micro computer (ran some network management software) in the data center, with a very addicting text based adventure game installed on it. I cannot remember the name, and most of the details are fuzzy (nearly 40 years ago) but it involved seeking treasure that eventually involved caves and trying to stay alive. Great fun on a boring 3rd shift!

1 hour ago, mibby said:

Slice EQ and Carve EQ were both CM freebies at one time.  Can you get them through the newly opened FileSolo Portal?

I tried those a while back without luck. Expired. Eventually bought Slice EQ 2nd hand over at KVR for $7.

6 minutes ago, Doug Rintoul said:

Just tried it with Carve EQ (Issue 295)

Those single issue freebies are usually time limited, and expired long ago...

Unlike the standard CM plugins.

Go. Buy. It.

1 hour ago, Doug Rintoul said:

I was a long time Linux user,  mostly Ubuntu. I did not find Linux maintenance any more onerous than Windows maintenance and in some cases easier.

I have set up a few Linux computers starting with Red Hat 9 in 2003, then expanded to Fedora a few years later by installing it at work on some spare PCs.  In 2014 when I started taking some online programming classes I set up a dedicated Ubuntu system at home to be my development machine, and also my daily driver PC for a couple of years. So my Windows PC was reserved for DAW use at that time. But in the end I decided that I didn't want to spend the effort to keep both Linux and Windows PCs running. Sure I could have, without issue,  but no longer desired to. I would rather just struggle with Windows.

My career started with mainframe computers, punch cards, and dumb terminals before the PC, mouse, or internet. Those dumb terminals only used command lines, so yes that experience made it easy later to get under the hood of PCs. Nobody that I knew outside of work at the time really had any idea what computers were all about. My first personal PC at home was a Windows 95 machine, although we had micro computers at work in our data center for years, even starting before DOS and the IBM PC XT/AT.

I would have to say that early Windows up through the 9x series was a little bit like Linux in the sense that you launched the Windows desktop as an extension on top of the DOS operating system (but nowhere near as stable as Linux). The Microsoft migration to a full Windows NT based kernel (non-DOS) is what began the modern Windows architecture that we have known since Windows 2000/XP.

I think that a well configured Ubuntu PC, or a Google Chrome OS (Linux-based) PC could easily be used by "grandma", as long as they only did basic tasks like web browsing, email, Faceboook, etc. In fact, I set up a ChromeBox for my Dad in his 80's for basic online access in his retirement home, that he did really well with. But all he had to do is turn the thing on.

I have nothing against Linux, but the bottom line now is that with audio software you would have to pry my Windows 10 Pro computer out of my cold dead hands!!! 🤣

Linux is a bit too fiddly for non-coder type end users. If you are comfy with a command line and a text editor for most of your system tweaks, go for it.

Linux is the 800 lb gorilla of most server and mainframe operating systems. But the desktop OS ecosystem is quite fragmented for standards and support.

Sure, some of the newer desktop GUI environments may look like you can mostly do it all from the GUI, just like with Windows. But wait until something stops working, or doesn't work as expected...

You will probably end up Googling a dozen websites, to find some which recommend typing in prescribed text strings into a command line to repair said issue. Or open up a text editor to modify a configuration file. Or load another driver. Or install more software.

Rinse and repeat until you become a so-called Linux guru.

Basically same UI as Augmented Strings...

1 minute ago, antler said:

You know, I love Arturia but their website falls over every time they announce a new product.

Right! Just got a gateway timeout. It seems all new Arturia product announcements break their internet. You would think by now that they would give their ISP and content providers a heads-up!!! 😂

It will be interesting to see a demo of this product. Layered Piano pads in not a new idea, and there are tons of ways to accomplish this. Starting with a good sampled piano, some prepared piano samples or other sounds as pads, and some reverb.

So the question is really what has Arturia done to make this one stand out!

Don't miss Larry's link for the kHs Convolver. It's cheaper at JRR with code "Forum, $16.91, instead of $19.50 at Kilohearts.com.

No discount codes accepted for Faturator ($29) at JRR, but Disperser is $25.81 with code "Forum", and Slice EQ & Carve EQ are both $34.71 with code "Forum".

Time to Save on Premium Plugins!

All our Premium Effects plugins are half-price for a limited time only. Until October 31st you can get 50% off Convolver, Disperser, Faturator, Slice EQ, and Carve EQ. Just pop along to our site and add them to your cart!

https://kilohearts.com/

1 hour ago, Doug Rintoul said:

The "empty" zip file is not really empty. I was not able to open them directly in Windows Explorer but I was able to extract them with 7Zip.

That's really weird! They are not 0 kb zip files, so Windows should not be reporting them as empty, but it does. 7Zip does just fine though.

In any case, quality control at CM is all over the place with this change. I want my money back! Oh, wait... 😂