Starship Krupa

53 minutes ago, Lemar Sain said:

Probably uses wav impulses for some of its distortion types.

Ahh, yes, for convolution.

13 hours ago, paulo said:

Maybe you'll be less pleased if you ever want to sign out of it.

Not sure what you mean by that, but I finally did find Beat via Libby newsstand and snagged another pair of soundpacks to add to the bestiary.

If you're referring to data collection, well, no, I'm not going to search Libby for anything that would flag me with the NSA. 🙄

I also noticed that Beat has freebie lite versions of Chordjam and Speedrum that are worth picking up. It seems to be exactly similar to Speedrum Lite but comes with a useful bunch of samples and pre-rolled kits.

Chordjam is a good thing for fans of MIDI generator-ish plug-ins. Those seem to be dropping left and right these days, I have Loop Engine and now Chordjam Beat but will be letting the smoke settle before looking into any more.

11 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

Is Movavi any good?  Fanatical has a Movavi Bundle. This is all I know about it (only because I Googled "vegas pro v. movavi."

From the ads, it looks more consumer-y than Vegas Pro. Which may not be a bad thing, but every time I try something that's in that vein I get annoyed by the step-by-step handholding they all seem to have.

I want to open to a clean, ready to edit interface, not a "friendly" series of screens asking me to add clips, etc. It makes me feel like I'm filling out forms at the doctor's office.

I'm most concerned that I may no longer be able to regularly update Vegas Pro via Humble Bundle.

15 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

They use to do group buys. It was on KVR that I first heard of D16 and asked why people were so into that group buy.

I picked up both Drumazon and Sigmund as either PB freebies or magazineware. Another reason to be fine with kicking them a few dollars.

1 hour ago, Hillmy said:

Expect similar treatment to Iris as well. So there is that and nothing to be excited about.

Iris could actually benefit from some simplification, IMO. 😄

I wouldn't have picked up Trash 2 if it hadn't been part of a very nicely priced bundle I wanted. That said, it's a classic effect and it never hurts to have something like that on hand if someone I'm working with wants a destroyed, abrasive NIN sound on some element or other. As a crusher, it's the crushiest, and it doesn't hurt that it has those modulators.

It looks like they're taking a cue from what AIR did with Hybrid, Vacuum Pro, and Drumsynth 500: flatten the UI and remove features.

Makes me wonder if we'll be seeing a Break Tweaker 2 with a similar approach (and which I would also pass on, though I love Break Tweaker).

Warning: I went to CAD's page on it and the downloads page only had a spec sheet.

That means no ASIO driver unless I missed something.

3 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

Derailing a thread is mandatory

Really though, how far is a discussion about a product derailed by talking about whether it's worth the money to upgrade to it from an earlier version and comparing the company's upgrade policies to similar companies'?

First glance review: I coughed up the $19 for Sigmund 2 and consider it a worthy purchase. The factory presets for Sigmund have always been strong, and there are way more of them. In an existing project where I was using a Sigmund preset, I swapped in Sigmund 2 and had no trouble locating the same preset in Sigmund 2, so either they are compatible or they went to the trouble of duplicating the sound of the old presets in the new product. The visual arrangement of the modules is clearer as far as signal flow. The UI is now resizable and there is a VST3 version.

I haven't delved deeply enough to know about the other new features, but the ones I mentioned are enough to make the product worth the $20.

If you, like me, can never get enough Glitchmachine-y Unfiltered Audio-ish soundbendering plug-ins, you'll drop the price of a Burger King meal on it and not regret it.

13 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

How did we go from D16 to Waves?

Forum rules. Any mention of plug-in licensing must include a mention of Waves either in the first post or a subsequent post. Similarly, any topic that contains the name of more than one DAW, or a DAW other than Cakewalk must include a mention of REAPER, either in the first post or a subsequent post.

If these conditions are not met organically, the forum software will insert a post with these mentions under a user name chosen by algorithm, although this is rarely necessary.

7 hours ago, Craig N said:

D16 wants upgrades for every product I've purchased from them

And you are under no obligation to buy them unless you believe that, for instance, there is $19 worth of new features in Sigmund 2. Sigmund will continue to work just as well as it has since you bought it.

IME, D16's policy is as standard as it gets: minor releases (bug fixes, minor improvements) are no cost for existing users. They want money (a fraction of the cost of a new license) for new major versions that substantially extend the feature set. This is the way for the majority of the software I own. A|A|S, Magix, Corel, W.A. Production, PreSonus, iZotope, Mixcraft, Mastering the Mix, Glitchmachines, Plugin Alliance, Ableton, IK Multimedia and countless others.

Companies whose policies differ from this (MeldaProduction, Image Line) are very unusual. The most popular variation on this that I've seen is one where the user is entitled to one or more future major releases along with the interim bug fixes. The license for REAPER is like that. Buy a license for 7, you're also entitled to 8 whenever it comes out, but you must pay again to update to 9.

Why people complain about Waves' policy is that Waves typically don't add any new features, even for releases that increment the version number (the only new features I've seen in all the years I've had licenses for Waves products were the half-a55ed preset browser and resizable UI), their licenses are single seat unless you keep up the maintenance plan, and they relentlessly hawk the maintenance plan. The only reason I would have for keeping their plan up would be to maintain the second seat, which would amount to having the second license under a subscription plan, and subscription licensing doesn't work for me.

Again, nobody is forcing anyone to maintain their Waves update plan. I bought a year of it years ago for 2 products because I wanted to update them from 9 to 11 or something. Then I let it drop because there was no reason to maintain it. In effect, I paid once to upgrade my Waves software. Since then, no WUP, and none has been necessary. I'm a Windows user, so I don't care a hoot about whatever tortures Apple is inflicting on its users in regard to losing compatibility, and Waves products have been, IME, bug-free and rock solid. They usually fix any issues within the first year of the product's life, while it's still under the initial WUP, and after that, it's smooth sailing.

Ah, okay, got my answer:

If you already have Sigmund (maybe like me you got it as a PB freeB, those were the days), check in your User Area at the D16 website. There should be a coupon there that will allow you to get v. 2 for  €19.

I've never gotten into programming the thing, but some of the factory patches are wonders for trippy sound design. I have some heavy hitters like MTurboDelay, Objeq Delay, and Sandman Pro, and Sigmund is right up there with them.

I'll be dropping the 19 for the upgrade.

Looks like it can be had for €59 at D16's own site.

I'm an enthusiastic user of Sigmund; it would be nice to get an upgrade price.

17 minutes ago, oscarreece said:

....either way the most my computer can handle is a buffer size of 256 at a sample rate of 96khz or 128 at 48khz. My question: is there any reason why it would be preferable to run the VPC-1 into the Apogee vs. straight into the computer, or should there be no difference at all?

Since you're getting the same latency either way, it seems like there's no difference. If you run into issues in the future, then you can experiment with switching. At this point, the only criterion would be how you prefer to do it, going into the Apogee at least saves a USB port on your computer.

If you're really curious, ask whatever support there is at Apogee. Their forum if they have one or email tech support.

Brut

22 hours ago, John Vere said:

I will make a guess that you’ve been sneaking around in Gearspace which is very dangerous!

I go back a bit further than that. When the boutique stompbox wave hit in the late 90's and early 00's, I was something of a figure in that scene. I had my own small company with a line of loving recreations of specific vintage fuzz boxes. My products were reviewed positively in Guitar Player and Guitarist. I don't talk about that phase of my life much around these parts, it doesn't usually come up.

I first became aware of the 500 rack craze about 15 years ago, watched it grow, knew a couple of the early movers, etc. There was of course some cross pollination between those scenes.

Which is all to say that I understand and am sympathetic with people who want to add some analog sauce to their productions. And the people who are into this kind of thing are not afraid to spend some money, which is always nice when building a user base.

It's a crowd I would hate to have alienated from using Sonar. They're good people to have around.

14 hours ago, norfolkmastering said:

I do use quite a lot of mono hardware gear on mono tracks during mixdown

So from that list of tracks and processors, I, with my pair of Saffire Pro 40's would easily be able to accommodate all that hardware only if  Sonar would let me use my outputs individually. Otherwise, I'd not be able to pull it off, and half of my outputs would be useless,

That sounds scary.

Can you describe in more detail how your projects (I assume you meant "projects" when you typed "programs") are having trouble opening in SONAR? The projects I have done in CbB open fine in SONAR, although there is a popup warning that the newer features won't be accessible. Obviously, if I use Arranger sections, those won't come across to the old program.

Although I think that being proactive is a good idea, on my systems, Cakewalk by BandLab has not stopped working, nor have BandLab announced a date after which Cakewalk by BandLab will stop working. So you should not be having any problems with CbB at your gig on the 22nd.

17 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

are folks asking for something like a matrix option in the external insert rather than the simplistic L-R-Mono on the outputs (send)?

I think that at a basic level, what Norfolk wants to be able to do is: if an audio interface has 8 outputs, use 8 different external mono processors on 8 different channels. So if you have a mono sound source on channel 1, you can send to your interface's output 1, then also send a mono source from channel 2 to your interface's output 2.

The way it is now, a send can be configured as L+R, L, R, or Mono. The problem (as I understand it) is that if you put the External Insert on Channel 1 and set it to L, you can't put another instance on Channel 2 and use the leftover "R." Assuming that output 1 on your interface is half of stereo pair 1 and output 2 is the other half, you lose an entire output.

On 3/7/2024 at 6:46 AM, John Vere said:

my guess that this one is both hard to implement as well as very few people are asking for it. 

My observation is real studios that use a lot of hardware would probably never use Cakewalk anyhow. 

I believe that the use case for single mono sends is not "real studios that use a lot of hardware."

The theoretical pro studio will likely be using: 1, interfaces with plenty of stereo pairs and, 2, stereo rackmount processors. They'll also likely have 3, Waves Mercury and/or iZotope Everything subscriptions.

The target market I see for this functionality are people taking part in the current craze for "500" rack boutique processors. Here's an article from a few years ago about this phenomenon: https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/choosing-500-series-modules

I have a couple of friends who have these, some built from kits.

These things tend to be mono because of the modular nature of putting together a system (if you want "stereo," you buy 2 of them) and because their small size may not allow for more than one channel of analog goodness.

If you are working with a lot of these things (they seem to be rather addicting), you'll be aware of what the DAW needs to be able to do to make your life easier. Some DAW's don't provide for it at all, some provide for using as many outputs your interface has as sends, and at least one, Cakewalk, ties up 2 outputs per insert whether you need stereo or mono.

For instance, I have an interface with 10 outputs, 2 of which are dedicated to monitoring. With Cakewalk as it is, that would mean that if I had 2 vocal tracks and wanted to use external hardware compressors on each of them, I'd already have used up half of my interface's capacity and only be able to use 2 more compressors, which would mean choosing any 2 of bass, snare, kick, left overhead, and right overhead. Or maybe put a stereo Fairchild 670 clone on the master bus. But I would quickly be all out of sends.

On the other hand, were I able to use all of my sends, I could have mono processing on all of the aforementioned mono tracks and still have one send left over.

I personally mix entirely in the box these days. I have a few stray pieces of rackmount stuff that I rarely use. Cleaning up this feature isn't my personal fight. My wishes are for a nice software sampler ported over from Next, and/or some love shown toward Matrix.

But I do believe that this boutique hardware processor enthusiast market is worth accommodating. And it seems like an artificial limitation. There's no reason I can see for treating each hardware output as half of an inseparable stereo pair. It's a waste of resources.

I like Sonar and I would like to be able to recommend it to my friends without caveats like "but it's not the best if you want to use a lot of external sends." And if someday I get into 500 rack toys in a big way I'd like to be able to use them with Sonar with no restrictions.

Hybrid 3, Vacuum Pro, and Xpand!2 are all synths that I would not wish to be without. I think I have about $30 invested in them, not counting various $5 expansion packs purchased to qualify for PB BOGO's.

If you're into building songs around arps, as I am, Hybrid 3 does things that no other synth I've tried can do. Very versatile arpeggiator that can be stacked 2x for very complex arpage. And it just sounds great.

Xpand!2 is a crazy capable ROMpler with some great sounds.

Vacuum Pro is a great emulation of a subtractive analog synth, especially nice if you aren't interested in recreations of specific instruments.

IMO, Harpsichord holds up, but I'm with Peter on the rest of them. If you want a nice harpsichord, get Harpsichord next time it comes up for under $10.

$29 for Trackspacer is a "go directly, do not pass GO" purchase.

On 2/29/2024 at 10:43 AM, Asato Maa said:

What do you think?

I think I'm interested to know more about what you think is missing from the Matrix as currently implemented, vs. Project 5 (and Bitwig, FL, Ableton Live, and so forth).

What features should be added? What features should be changed?

14 minutes ago, Xoo said:

These two statements are quite hard to reconcile.

Only if you believe that Cakewalk's inability to send a single stream of audio at a time via its external insert feature without also tying up a second audio stream is somehow down to a limitation of WASAPI. In my years of following this issue, I don't remember anyone else suggesting that.

While the introduction of WASAPI may have made it more difficult for Cakewalk's coders to change the external insert feature for whatever reason, it wasn't that WASAPI somehow only allowed I/O channels to be used in stereo pairs. SONAR introduced the ability to output individual mono channels with the same release it introduced support for WASAPI: SONAR 8. (source: Noel's blog)

The bottom line for me is that if Studio One and REAPER can do it, it is possible to do. And they're just the programs that I personally know can do it. There are probably more.

8 hours ago, Xoo said:

I gather it's because of how Windows exposes driver channels to Sonar/SONAR/CbB, at least in some driver modes

Keep in mind that the Windows versions of REAPER and Studio One can handle mono external inserts no problem (or so I'm told). If anyone tries to tell you that the issue is some limitation or other of Windows.

I hold that if Windows program A can do something, it calls into question the credibility of claims by developers (or dedicated users) of Windows program B that they can't make Windows program B do that thing due to some shortcoming of Windows'.

The reason that some audio programs don't support WASAPI and instead either supply or recommend ASIO4ALL is that the people developing those programs are simply put, lame-o's. There is no other explanation or excuse for a Windows DAW not supporting WASAPI.

Cakewalk is in no danger of dropping support for WASAPI, and one of the many reasons is that the CTO worked closely with Microsoft when they were developing it.

Been going through Theme Editor withdrawal and kinda liking the new look of Sonar (mixed-case), so I whipped up a facelift for Session Drummer 3 to give it a look inspired by Sonar's Dark color scheme.

Files and instructions are in the link in my sig. It only replaces 2 files, so easy to try.