sarine

So, no discount?

The whole GUI looks like they forgot to create the graphics until the night before launch. Normally that would be a humorous exaggeration but not here.

The price seems typical for [low] mid-end studio monitors. What I'm not comfortable with are the "hand-crafted wood bases". When I go shopping for tools I look at the looks just enough to evaluate their utility, e.g. build quality (materials, mechanics, finish) or user interface comfort (speed and clarity). The more it looks like something you could hang on your wall and make hipsters go "ooohh", the faster I walk away from it. Because things like "hand-crafted wood bases" suggest to me that a considerable amount of money went to luxury when it could have gone towards enhancing the chamber, drivers or electronics. I get it if your speakers cost $200,000 and there's no technical aspect left to refine further and you want to blow more money into it, but for a monitor in this price range it seems anti-utilitarian and consequently excludes me as a customer. It may also in a matter of seconds stain your brand in my mind for years to come, because there's so much stuff on offer that simply glancing at the fundamentally flawed is a waste of time. I'm not saying they need to look ugly to be high quality, because it's not the case. Sometimes great engineering by nature leads to construction that requires the least effort in molding it into an aesthetic finish. But function wins over form when it comes to nearly anything to do with tech, and monitors are tools first and decoration last. /rant...

You might think so, but I expect nothing less from these guys than a must-gaming brain-change no-haver. Unless they do something even more unexpected. But that would be insanely ultimate.

Trumpet VI with a Tron skin featuring 179 Inception horn presets by leading sound designers with most accurate analog modeling to change the music world and shake things up

I actually don't care about presets for other purposes than learning about the context they're in, i.e. the environment to which they belong. I got this thing to put it to use, and to be frank the price was steep for my simple needs but I decided to pay the "extra" as investment into Unify's potential as a sampler, MIDI router, organizer of my stuff and streamliner in using the stuff. Perhaps a modular sequencer with which you could construct something like a guitar strumming MIDI machinery. Honestly I think most of this functionality should be enabled by the DAW but since it's mostly a shitfest all over this is the next best thing.

It's safe to assume that's almost certainly the truth at this point. Abundance of tools and stimuli can be a detriment to creativity. If I want to draw I usually have to shut down everything else except the drawing app for at least one full day. Likewise, when making music it more often than not takes me a good while before I find creativity, and it almost always follows actively shutting yourself off from stuff rather than actively going through the stuff (in desperate search of a creative spark). It always requires labor and tunnel vision, which is the exact opposite of the mindset reflected in the habit of obsessively trying to acquire all the stuff out there. It's a symptom of cultural AD/HD. Good for generating ideas but not for cultivating them. Count the stuff that you own in every category - what are the chances, statistically, that the next thing you buy will be a... game💥changer.

Price on release: 39€

I actually liked Mixcraft (8, demo) so much I was almost going to buy it, but frequent crashes made me throw it out.

The word is that the price will jump to $79 in February, so unless you want to put it to use immediately there is plenty of time to decide.

Who would've expected them to announce an incoming unexpected announcement? I, for one, did not. Because who's Output and who gave them permission to shake things up in 2020? I hope it won't contribute to escalating the Iran conflict - that would be unexpected... which is the new probable!

I'm not sure what's missing but you could try enabling loopback on some channel. That's how I was able to stream Cubase (using Hammerfall ASIO) over network although the remote desktop protocoli could only stream Windows audio. Maybe there is some trick I've forgot that enabled me to control level from the Windows volume slider but I've forgotten as I went through quite a few iterations of configs before I got the streaming to work. But TotalMix FX is your friend (and the Hammerfall DSP CP of course). Not the solution you were looking for, but if nothing else you can control TotalMix FX remotely e.g. using MIDI. I've long been wanting to build a dedicated input device just for a handful specific tasks, global volume adjustment being one of them. I've been using the mouse and keyboard for 20+ years but aside from typing prose and programming I don't really enjoy using keyboard shortcuts. EDIT; There is also AutoHotkey.

One of these days I should fire up MXXX and create a living dirty piano.

Thanks for the tip, although I don't use Kontakt but am considering getting a handful of these for HALion. Any ideas for generating pitch drifting and over/undertone peak level variance with some managed randomness?

I enjoy pianos like I enjoy women... drunk and dirty... In all seriousness I like them best a few bangings and ambient temperature & moisture fluctuations after tuning, slightly off-tune. Possibly because that's the ballpark where they spend most of their time anyway. I also like clanky saloon-style pianos, the vulgar variety of tonally suffocated uprights whose body can't facilitate the burning passion of their spirit. So much to say, but an ugly mouth. It takes me places.

RME HDSPe AIO (PCIe) here, paid something like 230€ without the breakout cable. Tinkered together a breakout cable from a VGA display connector and random parts. The card is overkill for my purposes but my rationale was that RME would likely be a future-proof investment. The DAC seems decent but honestly I have little to compare to as I went from an external Soundblaster Live 24-bit USB interface to the RME, so I expected nothing less than night & day difference and I got that. Before the SB Live I had Onkyo Wavio SE-200PCI LTD which I loved, but it started BSOD'ing and my later PC's didn't have PCI slots (which is a shame - lot of perfectly usable PCI cards still around and alive) so there was no point in trying to fix it, otherwise I might still be using the Onkyo. Latency, driver stability and the software like TotalMix FX bundling with RME though, are lovely.

I too bought into the Ableton Live hype back when Bitwig 1 was rolling out. I thought all those people can't be wrong and the Live workflow must be fantastic. So I got Bitwig and sat down to study the ways of the mystics, to find the flow. Well, I didn't find it. I tried using the clips launcher for creating phrases and arranging, but I was unable to produce anything interesting and after finding the most basic functionality unpolished I just tossed Bitwig. Years later I watched some nimble knob-twiddler create a cheesy track quickly using Live and Push on YouTube. So I got Push and tried Bitwig again. No dice. It just didn't and doesn't work for me and only after wasting a lot of time did I realize it's because I simply don't work that way. And trying to use Bitwig 1 like I had used Cubase was a traumatic experience which still evokes vivid memories of suffering to this day. Not dissing Live/Bitwig. If it works for you then more power to you. But if it doesn't, there likely is nothing wrong with you. I sure took my time figuring that one out.

What's most difficult to stomach about teasers is that something akin to the following took place:

I asked them about the difference between the initial and the upcoming "pro" version, raising my concerns about buying an inferior version and likely availability of upgrade to the "full" one. This is from the horse's (Mr. Lehmkuhl) mouth: Goes without saying this is marketing talk, but his enthusiasm seems candid and I believe he really wants to work on this thing. I also think that best tools are developed by tool users, and given his background he's right where he should be in this project. I didn't jump in yet but his response did reel me in a length. I do layering a lot and while I manage to get by it's always a chore and habitually an anti-pattern sort of thing. Investigating whether this might alleviate the pain.

I made the mistake of buying Serum solely because of the hype, and I learned my lesson can't believe I bought this thing. 🤦‍♂️

Also discounted on their site: https://vengeance-sound.com/plugins.php I can't believe I'm considering this after just having sold a bunch of stuff I didn't use, including Serum. P.s. Selling Virus TI.

For a budget analog alternative consider Plugin Alliance. Same price range and tactics: overpriced just so they can pretend to have discounts all the time, which effectively means the plugins are affordable and fairly priced but the bastards just stop selling them at the fair prices arbitrarily, so if you want any you have to keep both eyes and ears open for the "bargains" all the time. The money subtracted from their full prices on sales you will be paying back by giving them more attention than your own mother.

I'm glad I recognized Waves for what they are (a trap) relatively early on. To their credit the fact that their plugins were really annoying to use to an extent that I at some point realized I began feeling irritation from the mere thought was a great aid in deciding against falling into their continous "bargain" lures. And because somebody will want to ask; I found their GUI's to be trashy both in logical arrangement and functionality. Buttons that had misalignment between hotspots (areas) and their graphic renderings, miniature fonts and dials that were probably dope on 800x600, sluggish knobs with awkward velocity curves when adjusting them with mouse, and overall general feeling of bit rot. Good sounds though. But nothing more precious than my time and sanity.

A little bit hyperbolic? It's a question of "rep for cred". I always demand F&F from the buyer on PayPal if they have a new or low activity account. If they're well established in the community or perhaps moreso than myself, then I will give them the option to deal under buyer's protection (them covering the extra expense). Have done numerous successful transactions both ways. It all comes down to trust and a lot of that is based on face value. Pertaining to online trading, I have a good track record in investing trust in people, and I think it's realistic to say at this point that my success can't be attributed to lucky dice rolls. On the other hand, if all you had to work with in making decisions were the dice then I might give them the same advice.

This may be an unpopular opinion and improper place and time for making it known, but regardless, IMO, license transfers make little sense economically. It is usually made clear (with varying success) that software license purchases are final i.e. non-refundable and "caveat emptor". I can totally understand vendors who impose fees on license transfers so that some of the money from the transfer flows their way, because it should have been a more substantial amount of money to begin with (paid by the new licensee). No software vendor makes the promise that you'll be using their application every day of the rest of your life gaining great benefits from every hour of use, and as the chances of that happening are virtually zero the buyer should accept the risk of low personal value when making the purchase. I don't know, but I guess, that resales are bad for the developers. But I haven't deeply thought about all aspects and effects, so... change my mind. Then there's the consumer and end user me, who shakes their fist whenever I find out that a vendor may be so vicious as to charge heftily for license transfers or God forbid outright deny them. I get it, I just don't like it. But I feel inclined to think it's not these unlikable policies that are wrong and need adjustment, but my spending habits and the deal-chasing brain wiring. I see people on this very forum considering paying hundreds of bucks for a handful of virtual instruments a series of "no-brainers" (really makes you think sometimes what the "no-braining" actually stands for), while some stuck-up hipster has a rage fit over a developer having the insolence to charge $10 for their brilliant app - and he has the rage fit on his $1400 iPad Pro. What can I say is, I think we bipedal apes have got some issues.