Magic Russ

Speaking of forgotten Cakewalk plugins, I was just pulling up an old project where I used the "ob9" patch for Triangle II. It sounded pretty good. I thought I could reproduce that with one of my various Oberheim type soft synths, but I would still have to go with the Triangle patch.

Maybe Bandlab dug up and made Beatscape into the next generation synth Cakewalk originally hyped it up to be!

Of course with Amplitube I can do that, but the time to do that over a lot of projects just adds up. Maybe it was originally a vox preset and I load a deluxe, no big deal, who knows the second patch might even be better... On the other hand, with instruments, just swapping out a sound is harder than it seems. Sure, there will be cases where I might know the original was a string pad or square lead and I have no shortages of those and it won't matter which one I load. On the other hand there are also a lot of cases where I might not be able to tell what I used even if I had bounced the track at some point. I've heard that Reaper has the ability to replace old instruments with current ones. I don't know how much of a burden it would be for Cakewalk to do likewise.

I'd also like the ability to replace old versions of plugins with new versions with little to no effort. For example if I have Amplitube 3 with a Clean Twin patch, and no longer have A3 installed, perhaps give me the option to replace it with a Amplitube 5 and use the same patch if it can find it. Same for Kontakt.

It would be nice if they implemented a tagged system for browsing track templates and effects chains. And while the whole container for the FX chain was kind of cute, for me it just seems to be an extra step to remove it.

Most of my track templates have an instance of MODO bass. It just seems to be a little bit better than any of the sample libraries I have.

I just had a chance to play with these. Cesium is a pretty good Chorus but not particularly unique. Tungsten, however has reverse and granular controls that can create some messed up delays that you won't find from just any delay.

I'd even qualify that to say that the rate of new development for AD is poor. I love RC-20 and the more recent drum kits of theirs are not bad at all. Besides, how many drum kits do you need anyway?

Because VI is also an acronym for Virtual Instrument? That and Gibson involvement.

Adds new compressor and bank featuring it.

I have two or three very simple tracks with it. One is a reggae thing and the other has sort of a spaghetti western vibe. The Strum part in the reggae track is not particularly convincing but doesn't need to be - just some rhythmic mutes. The spaghetti western song uses an acoustic guitar that I ran through Vinyl to make it sound like it was coming off an old gramophone record. This turned out to be a good way of hiding the flaws in Strum's modeling while adding a certain sense of place to the track. I mostly use Strum in the same way as EZ Keys - as a compositional tool. Anything it outputs will either get re-recorded or heavily effected.

It really looks like the samples are the same, with a prettier scripted front end and NKS integration. I can't say the Dimension version was among my most used libraries, so I'm not going to be in at $99. If you like the sounds and don't have the older Cakewalk version (which doesn't seem to be available any more) and can't wait until BF, it might make sense.

In addition to two others, I picked up the Shofuku cartridges by Nori Ubukata. I have mixed feelings about these. On one hand they are marvels of what you can do with a DX7. On the other hand, I don't know that they added that much to my existing palette. Every once in a while I try to mess around with FM synthesis, and these are probably as good to learn from as anything else out there.

Thanks for the heads up on this.

This does seem to load a lot faster.

Don't forget, in addition to all the effects that are there, you have the ability to modulate all these parameters based on the input envelope, or LFOs or step sequencers.

Fuzz Faces are not my favorite fuzz, but I think they did a reasonably good job with this.

I think the usage issues have less to do with the GUI and more to do with GR6 running in HQ mode by default and that the new cabinets are all IR.

I don't think that those are generating enough interest for them to invest resources in creating videos. I've also noticed that for certain manufacturers, Groove3 videos come out very close in time to the software/update they are covering. It could be that the relationships they have with manufacturers affects which products get featured.

That's a fairly good idea. Although if you only have a couple of drum sounds (as opposed to wanting dozens of varieties of snares, etc) it doesn't take a lot of time to sample the ones you want and pop them into Battery.

In for $10 for the two I didn't yet have. Masala is very much what you expect, but Low End Theory with a few nice lead sounds.

Unless I am reading it wrong, it looks like Mixcraft are distributing the Kjaerhus Audio Classic Series effects. If you know, enough said, if not google what happened to that company.

I think most DAWs have had Hall of Shame moments Logic for abandoning its PC users. Cakewalk for the way the add on components around the time of X2 made things less stable. Ableton for looking ugly as anything. Bitwig for offering WASAPI support for output but not input. Also both of them for not being able to audition midi to a track. Project 5 could do that and it's been out of development for 15 or 17 years already. Cubase had people calling their parent company Steinbug, so I'm sure there's something there. Frooty Loops offering lifetime upgrades and then changing the name of the product and everyone having to upgrade to the new version. Mixcraft for bundling software from an infamous *****. I guess that just leaves Reaper and Studio One as not having Hall of Shame moments.

Rainbow started with Dio, had big single "Since You've Been Gone" with Graham Bonnet, also "Stone Cold" with Joe Lynn Turner.

And the only reason for that was that it's huge enough that you need the hard drive it comes on. On the other hand, if I had to do a re-install a good chunk of these would have been updated and need to be downloaded anyway.