Starship Krupa

The Buggles: The Age of Plastic. Flash and the Pan.

The best way to understand it, IMO, is to just try it. For the most part, it only applies to multi-mic'd sources like drum overheads or stereo mic'd acoustic guitar. So if you record such things, next time you do (or perhaps you already have a project that includes a track or two with something multi-mic'd), try either demo'ing one of the popular plug-ins or doing it manually by lining the waveforms up by eye. Zoom in all the way on the waveforms and you should be able to see if there's any misalignment. If there is, nudge one of them so that they line up. If you hear a difference, then you'll know. If you don't hear a difference, then you're doing a really good job of placing your mics! I find that it has the most effect on multi-mic'd sources where I want to pan the resulting tracks a bit, like with stereo acoustic guitar. I use MAutoAlign, and it can make a big difference in the perceived size of the instrument. The 10' guitar effect. This goes for not just left/right, but the perception in other dimensions. I have (pardon the pun) mixed feelings about MAutoAlign. I usually like what it does, but I'm not so confident that it's doing what it says it does, aligning the sources. This is because it's possible to run MAutoAlign's analysis multiple times on the same source and get different results. I mean, if it were working properly, wouldn't the results be the same, or at least very similar, each time I run it? Whatever, I don't trip on it, if it sounds good it IS good and MAutoAlign is either lining up my tracks so well that they bloom, or it's inducing a nice little Haas effect. 😄 I have Neutron, but since I haven't been recording acoustic guitars or drum overheads in quite some time, I haven't been able to compare its results with MAutoAlign's. It is true that back in the analog days, they didn't have fancy high tech ways of getting phase alignment correct. It was managed by rolling a bit of tape, listening back to the results, and then adjusting the mic placement if anything sounded weird. As with so many things, this was more labor intensive than how its done now. Studios were more likely to have multiple engineers so that one could control the tape machine while the other would move the mics. Also, the engineers were more experienced and practiced. The explosion of home studios and recording as a hobby means that the "chief engineer" might go for months at a time without setting up a multi-mic recording. So a purist might suggest that doing it the labor intensive way is the "best," and perhaps it theoretically is, but as I said, if it sounds good it IS good and who cares how you get there. If you like how your recordings sound, there's a solid chance that they ain't broke. I think it's something to be aware of, but not trip too hard about. Of course asking computer recordists not to trip about something is a big ask. Me included.

Ha! When I saw the topic title I thought "Charlie Brooker." I discovered Screenwipe and his other shows several months ago after falling in love with the Philomena Cunk shows on Netflix. For anyone who likes that sort of thing, his shows are all available on YouTube. Brooker is the evil genius behind Black Mirror. An excellent show that while it has done well, would have taken over the world had it not been for its unfortunate first episode, which probably cut its potential audience by about 50% due to people watching it and deciding that the show was not for them. If the show had started with the second episode, the amazing "Fifteen Million Merits," Black Mirror might have its own movie, theme park, and game franchise by now. That episode pretty much made Daniel Kaluuya's career happen (and rightly so, he's unforgettable in it). So when I recommend the show to people, I beg them not to watch the first episode, at least not until they've watched the second one. It's an anthology show, so it doesn't much matter what order you watch them in. As long as you skip the first one. This season's first episode is an incisive commentary on a subject much discussed in our forum here. Given that Brooker started out writing reviews of video games, it's not surprising that he'd have something to say about a current trend in the software industry.

I hoped that with Sonar we might see some progress with this, but it seems to have fallen to the "death to all personalization" edict.

I'm sure this feature has been requested before. When creating new tracks and folders, they appear as already named, you must double click in their name field to edit the name. I would like to have the option to have new tracks and folders appear with their names already selected and ready to edit, as if I had already double-clicked in the field. This would make the creation of new folders and tracks go faster. Secondary request: the option to leave the "output" part out of the names of newly created synth tracks. This applies to synth tracks such as created by selecting "First Synth Audio Output" in the Insert Soft Synth Options dialog. For whatever reason, simple instrument tracks already use only the name of the synth and the instance number. Example: I add a synth track for Xpand!2. The name given to the track is "Xpand!2 1 Primary Output." While this is handy information when creating tracks for synths with multiple outputs, in the scenario where I only use the first output (which is the vast majority of my synths), the "Primary Output" is just clutter. It displays as "Xpand!2 1 Prima" on Console strips. If I create a simple instrument track for Xpand!2, the track is created with the name "Xpand!2 1" No "Primary Output" to have to delete. So for those of us who create our synth tracks using the "First Synth Audio Output" option, please allow us to use the track name that Sonar would use if it were a simple instrument track being created. Yes, I know that all I have to do is double click on the track name and delete the extra text, but for a project with say, 15 soft synths, it's a boring, repetitive task that slows the flow.

John didn't post for months. I, too, am happy that he's back.

The Sansui 1975 styling of the UI's is lovely.

I must do a comparative test between MMatcher and HorNET VHS and ToneBoosters TB Morphit to see which works the best for headphone correction. Theoretically, my K240's, DT880's, ATH-M50's, MDR 7506's, and Superlux 681 EVO's should all sound the same using these products, which should also sound the same as each other. Somehow I expect that such is not the case.😄

Oh, I thought that what you meant by "trying to take a leaf out of Plugin Alliance's book with their freebies" was that they were emulating the practice of giving away a number of plug-ins in order to draw attention to the ones that they charge for. Which is a practice that I've benefited greatly from over the years and which has encouraged me to buy the companies' paid products. Plugin Alliance, MeldaProduction, IK Multimedia, Applied Acoustics and iZotope all have hundreds of dollars of licensing fees I've paid after being given a free taste. It predisposes me to look favorably on their products in part because it suggests to me that the people running things at these companies might understand the importance of good will in successful marketing, that it's not so much about wringing the last drop of money out of each individual product, that the warm fuzzies will result in more than enough sales to offset the costs of producing these freebies. So it's a smart thing for Waves to try to get into. Given their reputation, even among people who like their products, for trying to extract as much cash out of each user as they can with WUP or full-on subscription licensing. It seems with Waves that plenty of people love the products, but few people feel any good will at all toward the company producing them. They have had the practice for many years of giving away licenses around Black Friday, but that seems not to have done much to inspire good feelings.

I've watched enough White Sea Studios YT reviews to look for the non-functional screw heads😄. Rackmount holes I can forgive, after all it is T-RackS. Moreover, as they are at the edges, they don't distract the eye.

I'm going to proceed with using it as if there are no restrictions. I've searched for a licensing agreement and none is disclosed in the usual places.

Kilohearts, Native Instruments, iZotope, ToneBoosters, MeldaProduction, Audio Damage, Cherry Audio and IK Multimedia are just some of the companies whose product lines have included multiple free loss leaders for years. Not having a collection of free products is the exception for plug-in manufacturers. I'm having a hard time trying to think of a company that doesn't. Which is the point, I reckon. FabFilter, Sonible, UAD....

The licenses for the individual modules are specific to TR5 or TR6, so if your licenses were purchased for TR5, you aren't entitled to the TR6 versions. That's how it's worked for me at least. I would think that that is by design, because it would amount to a free upgrade for each of the modules, which I don't think they'd want to do (otherwise why bother making new versions).

I couldn't find a license agreement. Not on the website, not in the download.

Surprise, I also know of a free product that can help out with this until such time as the Cakewalk developers implement the feature natively: DMG Audio Track Control.

What do you mean? If there's some restrictive license for it I can't find one. I can't find any license at all for it.

Thanks for this review. I'm a big fan of the Exponential algorithms, going back to when Phoenix first went on sale for $9.99. I tried a demo, substituting if for my previous main reverb and the difference was stunning. Using a good reverb turned my mix into something that sounded....not sure of the word I'm looking for, "real?" "professional?" I'm apparently very sensitive to reverb tails when listening to music, and Phoenix' tails go on forever without turning grainy. They're just "right" in a way that no other reverb I'd tried before that. Since then MeldaProduction's TurboReverb has proved able to equal if not best it (esp. the Brichamber model), but it doesn't surpass it (for natural go-to reverb that is; MTurboReverb can also do what you call the "color" stuff like SuperMassive). My questions for you: the fact that everything from Phoenix/R2 through Stratus/Symphony is very easy on resources is a selling point for them. iZotope are notorious for the high overhead their processors usually have. How does Equinox stack up to the Exponential reverbs that were coded by Exponential? I have Neoverb, and it just seems to me like an attempt to kludge an iZotope wizard onto the Expo algos. I don't need my reverb to analyze my song and then recommend a preset, I can choose presets myself, I can even adjust the parameters myself, although I usually don't with the Expo reverbs. Second, have they finally done away with the godawful single seat iLok'd licensing scheme and enabled the much saner iZotope licensing and validation? That alone would make it worth the loyalty upgrade price. Otherwise, as with anything iZotope that I want....kick back and wait for the glitch, they usually seem to happen right around the end of iZotope's financial year.

I notice some confusion as to how exactly to install the presets. The location mentioned is the correct one for VST3 presets, and a host that uses Steinberg's canonical VST3 presets can populate their preset list by scanning them. Sonar, unfortunately, while it can load single VST3 presets one by one using the VST3 menu, it doesn't scan the location and populate its own preset manager. Fortunately, with this one plug-in, I found a solution that populates the plug-in's own menu system as well as Sonar's own preset menu: after you've installed the VST3 version per the instructions, also install the VST2 version and let Sonar scan it. After it does, the preset menus should work in the VST3 version and you can delete the VST2 version. I don't know what's going on here, but it works, and when I called up Minimogue VA VST3 in another DAW, the menus were functional in it as well (although I don't know if they otherwise wouldn't have been). I know this is a necro of the thread, but so what. This topic is very high in Google's results when you search for how to install the presets.

It looks like the "Classic" UI wasn't present in the first iteration, but arrived pretty soon after that. I can say that some of the newer IK releases are leveraging the AVX extensions, because MODO Drums refused to install on my old laptop, whose 2nd generation i7 apparently lacked that instruction set. Yes, less eyeball fatiguing colors is good, and they're at least in the ballpark of resembling their earlier forms. Red Opto Compressor looks good, and IIRC, has the M/S feature that I love so much. I wonder when that startedI was surprised to see that the 670 arrived so early. It was actually the plug-in that introduced me to the magic that M/S processing can do. I had been conflating it with M/S micing, so had no idea why such a thing would be included in EQ or dynamics processors. Ohhhh, it lets you process mid and side individually, same as if they were left and right, and that can do magical things to the stereo image. It was one of the presets that had something about widening in the name and that was the lightbulb moment and now I use it on everything. Started using it with the MeldaProduction processors too, most of which also have the feature, and any other plug-in I get my hands on that has it. I understand not wanting to see a stylized tyrannosaurus rex on the face of every plug-in. Especially since IK are, IMO, the best at designing clean skeuomorphic UI's. You don't put in silly things that distract the eye, like non-functioning screw heads or wear marks, the UI's represent what is best about using hardware and that type of UI: you can see knob position and meter movement instantly, and when you move a control, it "feels" more analog. Also, they're just pretty to look at. As I said, you got it right 25 years ago, which is impressive in the software business. I'm thinking of XLN's recent facelift of Addictive Drums. When I first got the product, as part of a bundle, I paid less attention to it than I should have due to the fake brushed aluminum Johnny Space Commander control panel UI that screamed "I'm from the early 21st century!" Then they laid the free update to 2.5 on everyone, with the UI overhaul, and I took another look and saw that it's actually a pretty great product. Maybe I'm shallow. If the UI looks exciting, I'm more excited to use it. A dinosaur silhouette in a purple oval kinda doesn't fit that. He could be on the website somewhere in with the blurbs, though. I found the history of the product to be fascinating, and would also if more of it were described on the IK T-RackS product pages. I wasn't aware of the pioneering nature of the company.

A lot of stuff I have, a lot of stuff I don't have that is covered by other manufacturers products I do have. New T-RackS modules are always fun. Since these are individual licenses, seems like there's a decent chance that I'd be able to give the dupes away....

I hope my research helps you get the most from it. Syntronik 2 and Sampletron 2 are fantastic.

Digital nostalgia time. I happened upon this review of what was then called T RackS 24. I guess T RackS began life as a 4 module mastering processor about 25 years ago? I didn't know that, and I didn't know that the product had been around that long. According to my research, it was preceded by SampleTank by a few years. Another surprise for me. The music software market has surely changed since then, hasn't it? Imagine paying $300 for 4 T-RackS modules. Taking a close look at the image of the UI in the review reveals striking similarities between the parametric EQ module and what lives on in T-Racks 6 as Classic EQ. Distinctive display with rounded ends, 6 black knobs just below it, frequency knobs just below those. Output level knob off to the right. I guess it's been "not broke" for a quarter of a century, requiring no fixing. The Tube Compressor is even closer to the current Classic Compressor that comes with T Racks 6 Intro. I'm not as familiar with Classic Multiband Limiter, but its current incarnation also looks pretty close to the version in this product. It also looks as if the block italic "T-RackS" logo hung around through T-RackS 5 and was only dropped for T-RackS 6. Wouldn't mind seeing that swoopy graphic with the purple oval and black tyrannosaurus rex make some kind of appearance, although it is definitely the most dated looking thing about that turn-of-the-century UI. Gotta hand it to the designer of those UI's. For something to stay so similar in 25 years in the software industry, and not look dated (to my eyes at least) it speaks to how right they got it the first time out. They even used a similar aesthetic for the much later One all-in-one mastering tool and it looks great. List price is still the same, but of course regularly deeply discounted (even without glitches) and you get 15X the number of processors that the original product came with.

I have heard anecdotally that nVidia GPU's can play better with DAW and NLE work than AMD. GPU development has been driven by gaming use for so long that I think that performance and stability in multimedia creation applications can be neglected. nVidia seem to have begun to pay attention to this market in recent years, with their "studio" drivers and NVENC video encoder. I recently experimented with comparing renders in Vegas Pro using MAGIX' own encoder vs. the nVidia one. Rendering a 2 minute project that had no VFX, all it was was editing some scenes out, took about 15 minutes using the MAGIX encoder. When I tried the same project but switched to the nVidia encoder, the project rendered in under a minute and was about 2/3 the file size of the other one. What an improvement. And this is with my not-cutting-edge CPU and GPU. Many years ago I used to run the 32-bit build of Mixcraft because the 64-bit version didn't have the same performance on my system. The 64-bit version glitched and crackled under any kind of processing load. Imagine my surprise when I switched from my AMD GPU to an nVidia GPU (of similar age and spec) and suddenly the 64-bit version ran better than the 32-bit version. I could crank the latency lower and use more plug-ins. It could very well be that I could try a newer AMD video card, or just tweak the settings, and find equal performance to a similar nVidia card, but my past experiences have made me into an nVidia loyalist. I like to game, but I don't play the latest bleeding edge titles and performance and stability for my audio and video creation software is more important.

Never assume that someone else has reported the issue. Other people experiencing the same problem may all be making the same assumption.

I'm actually not a Serum user, but I've also experienced similar with other companies' factory presets. A|A|S for example, like to drench their factory sounds in long-tailed reverb, and I noticed on my older lower-spec laptop that if I just turned off the reverb and used a 3rd-party reverb that they could play all day at lower latency without causing clicks and pops. This was one of my motivations for buying Chromaphone and Ultra Analog VA licenses: I wanted to be able to turn off the reverb. Otherwise, using the soundpacks with A|A|S Player would be fine, as I seldom do any patch editing in them other than turning off the reverb. I can't blame manufacturers for baking so many FX into the factory patches. I noticed after I installed the most recent version of MinimogueVA that it sounded kind of unexciting, then it occurred to me to put the simplest chorus, kHs Chorus on it to give them some stereo width. Bang! It started to sound uh-MAY-zing. So I've become used to factory patches being made HUGE through (over?) use of FX, despite the fact that I often disable them in actual use. Maybe Xfer switched to a reverb algo that's more expensive in terms of processing power. Def. let them know if turning off the reverb makes the problem go away.