sarine

It's not the resolution, it's the pixel density. It's why I'm still waiting to upgrade from 2560*1600, because it seems difficult to find a high quality 40"(+) 4K/UHD display (not a tv) with all the other specs in line at an affordable price. They're not as fashionable as smaller 4K displays because the imaginary average consumer wants pixels so small you can't see them, whereas I want maximum amount of information on screen without it looking pixelated enough to disturb me. I don't need nor care about smooth curves without aliasing, as long as pixel count and density are in the right ballpark to maximize functionality.

How do the sound and CPU hit compare to other virtual analog synths?

That has been my experience. Perhaps it is the host that does this - I don't know - but for some reason it's AIR plugins specifically which gave me hell here. Now that I think about it, the parameters might have been retained but thrown away every time I had to load a preset to have a plugin make sounds after reloading a project, or there was some other problem(s) with state. Not sure anymore because it's been a while - suffice it to say my relationship with AIR products was not productive due to problems that should not and need not exist, and were unique to AIR.

Just to join the echo chamber here... These would be such cream of the crop VST's if this was 2005 or earlier. Remember Hypersonic? It was made by Wizoo, sold under Steinberg's brand until version 2, then discontinued as Wizoo was acquired by Avid at some point. Steinberg was acquired by Yamaha and expanded their sampler HALion into a sampler/synth hybrid to replace Hypersonic. Wizoo became AIR. The question on my mind for many years had been; What happened to Hypersonic? I really missed this one instrument which always sounded fun and fit into the mix. Depending on viewpoint, you could say HALion 4-6 are the reincarnations, if you look at it from point of view of the Steinberg brand. In truth, Xpand! is closer to "the real thing," as Hypersonic was Wizoo's (AIR's) baby. Structure has a lot of Xpand!2 originating sounds too, and I would absolutely use them both were it not for the usual complaints about the minuscule GUI's and bugs. For instance all of my AIR plugins either forget adjustments I've made in the last session, or won't make a sound at all until I reload a preset, and there are a bunch of smaller annoyances relating to the horrible GUI's. These plugins are good at heart, and I wish they would let me give them the love they deserve, but ultimately I had to wave a sad goodbye to my abusive partner that was everything AIR. As Hypersonic replacement I now use HALion 6 and SampleTank 4. ***** AIR, why did you not let me love you? I was ready and willing, but you just kept kicking me in the nuts repeatedly.

If you have a iOS/iPadOS device, there's plenty fun to be had. If you're not apt with keyboard instruments and/or theory, ChordMaps2 is great. I can name more apps if anyone cares.

Well, first impressions; I'm damn happy about these sounds. I've only tried TBO and ST Harpsichord so far, and to my ears they sound crisp and spacey. The harpsichord was dirt cheap too... I will only find out how expressive the sounds are in longer run, but the piano seems to respond quite well to velocity, although leaning towards bright. The harpsichord lacks the release sound, and I don't know how to get it (HALion 6). But damn it has a satisfying sting to it, tense in the centre, soft on the sides. Like silk made out of tin foil. I'm pretty sure I already got my money's worth and I haven't even touched the other nine packs yet.

Snagged these: Black Grand White Grand TBO 7CG ST Harpsichord ST Virginal ARP Solina Worra's Prophet Pump Organ BOB Brass Renaissance Flutes Would've snagged a few others had they been available for HALion. I just acquired an Ensoniq KS-32 from 1992 (!) for a modest price of 120€ and was blown away by how good this old lady feels and sounds all things considered. Also went ahead and got twin pedals and an expression pedal to go with it. The biggest complaint is the keys are quite noisy and I have and prefer semi-open headphones that let the sound through. But I just imagine I'm sitting at an antique harpsichord while playing. Also the synth doesn't have an option to assign the left pedal as una corda, only start/stop (sequencer?) or sostenuto (which I don't use much). Excited to have a decent keyboard after a long break, and can't wait to be past the downloading & installing phase and try these sounds!

Good job, whoever came up with that name... Also, this gave me a chuckle (because I need to consult dictionaries for definitions of poo): Ain't that... I have no idea what other talents their products might have, but with a name like that the world is their oyster.

You can get an older iPad (Pro) and Apple Pencil relatively cheap. I would recommend them over anything else for everyone except the person who doesn't need recommendations (e.g. a professional who already knows what they or their company needs / requires), but especially for kids. Just be aware of Apple Pencil compatibility (1st or 2nd gen.) if you go with iPad. The experience on a tablet computer and apps is so much faster, more immediate and more fun when the interfaces are designed around touch input and seamless hands-on experience. iPad Pros have a laminated display which reduce the "parallax" (i.e. the offset between the stylus tip and pixels on screen) to a minimum. The latency on at least the newest iPad Pros is better than Wacoms. Also, you can use an iPad similarly to e.g. a Wacom drawing tablet via wifi or USB on both Mac and Windows. Software support varies, but technically pressure sensitivity should work. It's probably not as good as Wacoms as such, and Wacom has rotation sensing which Apple Pencil lacks (and most people don't need).

BreakTweaker was one of my big disappointments. I had been drooling for it for a good while, but decided to go with Nerve instead. Good choice if your (like mine) intention is to create beats fast. Nerve was great fun until my needs grew beyond its narrow focus. BreakTweaker finally went on sale, so I got it along with Iris, Stutter Edit and Trash. Like pretty much all iZotope stuff, the GUI feels like an afterthought, is laggy and unresponsive, and eats CPU cycles like Garfield eats lasagne. I scratched my head over the sudden poor DAW performance, turns out closing just the iZotope GUI's made it go back to normal. Really annoying to use if you're trying to be productive. BreakTweaker... Nice for experimentation and generating (or arranging) rhythmic background loops and effects, simple breathing beats, breaks/transitions/risers (shockingly, although I doubt that's what they literally had in mind), and random-***** "I have no idea what I'm doing" happy accidents with polyrhythms and modulation. Absolutely horrible sequencer for building anything slightly more sophisticated. Stock sound content (and expansions) seemed high quality, and the microediting facilities could have been very useful if iZotope had a clue about GUI design and optimization. The simple synth component did its job. It is very pretty like most of their stuff. The sluggish GUI, the awkwardly split pattern view, awkward interface for editing functions and the interface hiding detailed information programmed into individual steps, were what killed the product for me. If it wasn't for all of those, I'm sure I could think of more positive things to say.

Me too. In my experience SSD's silently lose files more frequently and don't like hard resets (including power outages). Out of all the storage media I've used one stands out as the most consistently unreliable, and that is SD cards. I'd never store anything of value on them longer than is absolutely necessary before backing them up on a hard disk. HDD's fail too, but usually it's gradual and you get some warning signs such as occasional read/write errors and then "bad sectors" where those become chronic. If the HDD "blows up" and suddenly and instantly becomes unusable, it may just be the driving circuit board which can be repaired or replaced. If the fault is in the mechanical parts you probably need the services of a specialized lab. I would never use a 80TB HDD with its insanely fine machinery and bit-density as a final storage for any precious data. I would buy tape for that. Or carve the ones and zeros onto a block of marble or granite with a hammer & chisel.

Kontakt 5.

Just leaving this here.🌻

Yeah, don't get me wrong, they're programmable synths, albeit unconventional. They have refreshing approaches to the process and workflow, which I wish other developers took some hints from. I've just been quite unsuccessful at programming them, but that fault could for a large part be attributed to my own rigidity. I use mostly FM and samples, and am covered so well in those areas - besides a few specific voids I'm working on filling - that I simply feel demotivated learning my around an obscure (no pun intended) synth that gives the initial impression of "What the ***** is going on?", then leaves me studying the manual and screwing around for hours when I could be well on my way to finishing the sound set of a project with what I have. Overall I get the feeling that Aparillo and Obscurium are best suited for generative music, sound experimentation, effects, evolving pads and ambient. I'll give Aparillo another serious try one of these days. Because when I was somehow able to make it do my bidding, I got some nice wide and fat FM buzzes out of it. Currently too busy with Tone2 Nemesis which is quite possibly the best sounding synth I've had the pleasure to torture.

I have a love-hate relationship with Sugar Bytes. On one hand I think their GUI's are stunningly beautiful and mood-eliciting. On the other I fear they direct too much of their effort toward surface polish and activities of an advertising studio. The UI's are certainly "unique", "novel", "exciting", and many such things that can all be substituted with "gimmicky". It sometimes makes sense, other times nonsense. They can make nice sounds, but the visual aesthetics and user experience are the most positive things I associate with Sugar Bytes' stuff, rather than the sound quality. There is always some crudeness and harshness in their sound that I can't pinpoint. Their products often look and feel finished and polished (apart from the sound), but they've traditionally not been too concerned with updating them after they're out. There was probably some ridiculous rounding or type casting bug just recently in Aparillo that caused some parameters or their graphical representations to accelerate from just letting the VST instance run idle for a few hours. I don't know if it's been fixed and whether they even know about it (I often try to do bug reports but I can't be bothered to report everything to everyone all the time, or someone better start paying me). I have Aparillo, Cyclop and Guitarist. I don't use Aparillo much, and I don't really enjoy the sound design process in it. I passionately hate the "orbiter" and similar apparatus, and Obscurium to me looks like a cultivation of exactly that type of crazy. More fun than useful, in my eyes (and hands). But I love the filthy Sugar Bytes sound coming out of Cyclop, great for smashing base with mid-to-high grit, and Guitarist is pretty fun and useful.

I like what they're trying to do with Waveform, i.e. theoretically it's the kind of DAW I always wanted. In practice, I felt they took some of the streamlining too far and the UI ended up feeling like a minefield due to all the non-conventional, great-on-paper usability features (including context-sensitivity) that mostly reflect the development team's suffering from ostrich effect. I could have looked past that and tried reconditioning myself if it weren't for the horribly sluggish performance and instability. All-in-all the "work"-"flow" effectively felt like running in quicksand. I'll definitely revisit when the word is out that they've gotten their shit together, until then not going to waste my valuable time with a bad demo of a good philosophy.

I've been checking these: http://appstore-discounts.com/ https://www.iosnoops.com/iphone-ipad-app-deals/ Some I found just now but haven't used: https://appshopper.com/ https://appsliced.co/apps?sort=latest For reviews I mostly use: https://appgrooves.com/ Buyer beware of some antics of iOS app publishers on Appstore: Sometimes prices are discounted just to get listed on sites like these and make the price more appealing. Typically the app is either constantly priced well above the discount price but discounted very frequently to get visibility on these deal aggregators -- you know how that is -- or the prices are bumped right before the "sale". It's bullshit but achieves visibility Although occasionally legit good paid apps go free for a period of time, often when an app goes "free", it may simply mean that the payment model has changed to in-app purchases. Some apps are "paid" apps just nominally and are in fact available for free most of the time. When someone constantly does this you should probably stop to think why, and what these apps actually do, and for whom. There are straight-up charlatans whose apps are crud and they know it. Example: https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/han-chang-lin/id1074348727#see-all/i-phonei-pad-apps -- Look at that list of complete garbage and their ridiculous prices. Look - do not buy. I wouldn't take any of it for free, let alone the asking price. So if you don't know better and/or are demented, when this crud is discounted it may seem appealing to you, "oh, that must be useful". I'd love to know some statistics on how much that actually happens, because it likely does. If you click on the app name in iOSnoops it takes you to a page that has price history in the left margin. This is sometimes a good indicator of what kind of a deal you're actually getting, but it seems a bit limited and I'm not sure how accurate it is. Perhaps there are better price trackers on other sites.

Yes, Strum GS-2 doesn't sound like a real guitar. The synthetic sound is precisely the reason I like AAS stuff, like Strum GS-2 and String Studio VS-3. I have not owned Chromaphone but I'd imagine it to line up with the others with regard to "realism". Because the sounds are synthetic and can be effectively purer than real instruments, they can be easier to fit into a mix or processed further without blowing up the spectrum. They can be used to layer with more realistic sounds as an additional spice or to glue them together in the mix. But they also stand on their own as all the aforementioned instruments are capable of creating very aesthetic, lively and usable synthetic sounds. Just brace them for what they are. However the physical modeling implemented by AAS comes with some caveats, such as the possibility to model absolutely horrendous combinations of impacts, excitations etc., in other words; you can create some ugly sounds with these instruments. Sometimes tweaking just one parameter slightly may turn an otherwise nice sound into a glitchy firecracker, and understanding what to tune and when comes with a learning curve. There is also no real "init" preset just like there isn't a factory default for how a guitar is constructed, what kind of strings it uses, how and with what the strings are touched, and how the body resonates - so to "init" you essentially start with some arbitrary model of all those. The unpredictability and crackling sounds is what most puts me off from using AAS stuff, or I would probably use them more. I sold String Studio VS-3 and slightly regret it though, because occasionally I could get some sweet cutting & piercing synthetic bow sweeps out of it that I've been unable to reproduce elsewhere, and sometimes a track just screams for that specific sound and there doesn't seem to exist a "close enough". If you're looking for realistic guitars, MusicLab is another option to add to the list.

Same experience here. I just can't help but think am I doing something wrong. Then again I don't know much about the math behind, I've always gotten by just twiddling knobs until I get the sound I want (and most times it's not something like Blackhole anyway).

I'm not sure what all these bazillion different reverbs are supposed to add to the table. I mean, I like Blackhole, but is it really anything more special than a really reverby reverb. Reavverblly. Are we actually just shopping presets? Honest question. 4reavrblz.

$50... awesome... Your princess is in another castle.

https://www.iosnoops.com/2020/01/15/iphone-ipad-app-price-drops-january-15-2020/ Under... "Music". Not sure if everything is listed, it isn't always the case.

In my experience every iteration of Windows has been an improvement over the previous, with one exception. I'm not talking about Vista, but Millennium Edition. I think the biggest factor in making Vista a fiasco was an innocent timing error / over-optimism by Microsoft; people were still rocking 32-bit single-core CPU's with 4GB of RAM, whereas some new backbone improvements in multitasking, e.g. multithreading, memory management and aggressive application pre-loading only began to make sense in a multi-core system with 8GB or more RAM, whereas much of it wasn't visible or was outright detrimental to performance on current hardware. The transition to 64-bit also made the experience better (early adopter here) and the contrast to 32-bit XP starker. Out of all the different Windows versions from this millennium, my absolute worst was 64-bit XP; it just wasn't meant to be. Windows 8 was at least as smooth as 7 except for the input hang-ups (some issues with interrupts? I don't know.) and compatibility issues. Windows 10 also does this from time to time (simply stops responding), whereas I don't recall this ever happening on 7. In most other aspects Windows 10 has been the most stable Windows to this day, even if I can think of a dozen things to complain about right off the bat.

Yes, Steinberg seems a bit backwards in some respects. But to me the conservativeness may well be one of their major attractions. Stability has also been top-notch. What I don't like - and this is not just a Steinberg problem but a general trend - is how the increases in pixel count on our displays seem to inversely correlate with practical utilization of said pixels, i.e. the more we get, the more bullshit gets drawn onto my workspace (in proportion to useful things). I don't want round corners, smooth gradients and touchable-sized buttons - I want more useful information on the screen at any one time. Sometimes I swear the UI's have devolved to a point where I used to have more functionality 15 years ago on a 1680x1050 screen than I do now on 2560x1600. Steinberg seems to be guilty of this trend, although many players are doing much worse. Dear UI-designing hipsters, please give me back my non-metrosexual bureaucratic 90's desktop.

When tempted by Nuendo remember the recurring [optional] upgrade costs. I think that is a reason Cubase license is not included in Nuendo, it's a trap designed to keep you paying for Nuendo upgrades or [re]purchase Cubase, as many new Nuendo users probably would figure Cubase already did everything they need and is cheaper to maintain. Whatever, I really love Cubase and I doubt Nuendo is any worse if you need the surround audio or video editing facilities and can afford it.