Starship Krupa

Yer tellin' me. According to Steam, Last week I spent 40 hours playing Obduction. Which, BTW, was really amazing. I loved it. Haven't dug a game like that since MYST. I scored the entire Cyan catalog for $25 in a Humble Bundle thanks to this forum. Obduction was a true return to form.

I know, right? My first thought was "why are they embedding a distraction into the plug-in??"

I dunno, after I read this I looked for something in SliceEQ and CarveEQ and couldn't find any game. Did you know that the Bandcamp Artists site has a vintage arcade game in the menu? I think it's based on Defender.

I agree that adoption will have a huge uptake once this happens. For me, doing my 90's ambient stuff, I really look forward to being able to more easily load and trigger dialog samples and glitch accents. Little Fluffy Clouds, bay-bee. The way I do it now is by using clips in an audio track, but that has its drawbacks. A real sampler with editing, looping, and reversing would be sweet. I'm sure that an integrated sampler is in the pipeline. Big new features like that take time, and we want it done right, right?

With the Smart Tool, yes. You can also double-click, which is also fraught with possibilities to mess it up. 😄 However, I discovered that if I switch to the Draw Tool (F9), all it takes is a single click with no dragging. I'm not saying that it shouldn't work better with the Smart Tool, but you might like the Draw Tool for drawing notes in the PRV. It has fewer options than the Smart Tool, but it does let you right click to delete notes. You can't drag to make notes longer, what you get instead is a series of notes of the selected duration. But that makes it great for drum programming, where you usually want a 1/16 duration for every hit. Speaking of which, let's say you're bashing in a 1/8 note hi hat pattern, doing the usual copy and paste dance. Instead you can use the Pattern Tool. Ctrl-swipe across whatever set of notes you want to copy, then left click and drag and it will paint those notes in. Draw Tool (only Freehand and Pattern modes work) is very handy for drum programming. Since the Smart Tool works well for so many things, I can sometimes forget about the other, dedicated tools, which come with fewer quirks since they don't have to "guess" what operation I'm trying to do. And in the case of the Pattern Tool, you can do some fancy things that you can't do with the Smart Tool.

Also, SnapHeap has an Asteroids-y game built into it. I am not making this up. I just found it by clicking on a button I couldn't identify. Click on the odd little button in the upper right and it will start: Observe this warning: $29, and I bet there are no Waves plug-ins with Easter Eggs this fun.

I'm going to have to try this to see if I can get it to do it. It seems like maybe one of those things that happen more or less often depending on individual mouse technique. The one that plagues me is trying and failing to grab the lower edge of a track so that I can resize it. I'll swing and miss 3 or 4 times in a row because apparently I click it "just right" with a moving mouse. Part of it is because the hot spot/cursor change ain't quite right in that area, but still, I seem to have a special talent for it. 🤨 The appropriate authorities have been notified in detail but have yet to comment.

I, too somehow wound up with a free license for Snap Heap. Now that I have so many modules, must check it out.

This is the latest graphic change from the more stock Cakewalk iconography. Revamped Tools module buttons. Two goals: make the icons as large as possible for greater legibility (the stock themes' buttons don't use all the pixels), and try to make what's on the Tool button resemble the cursor that you see when you switch to the tool. Ever notice how the Draw Tool's cursors all have the line shapes at the top end of the pencil but the Tools module buttons have the line shapes at the bottom? Also, the Edit buttons look nothing like what you get when you select them. Maybe there's a better choice for the Mute Tool than just the letter "M." How about the usual symbol for "mute?" And what's up with the wrench for the Edit Tool? I've thrown more spanners into the works with the Smart Tool than the Edit Tool. 😄

I'd like to be able to customize the colors, even if it's just the module backgrounds. As you can see from my sig, I love to customize my tools. Especially when I'm doing orchestral stuff, I like to use sends for reverb, so versions of the presets without the convolution would be a convenience.

Maybe trying the Meldaproduction (and BandLab) ploy of free licensing a package of goodies to build brand recognition and loyalty? I don't know how many of Vojtech's current loyal userbase downloaded the MFreeFX bundle before spending however many hundreds on their pay licensed plug-ins, but I bet it's a lot. It hooked me, for sure. The replies here and in the thread I posted in the Deals forum show that it draws attention and interest. If you Google "freeware fx for Cakewalk," this thread is the top result. Every forum has people who just lurk, never post or react. If a YouTuber like @Xel Ohh or @Creative Sauce puts this information in one of their periodic freeware roundups, that's even better reach. Whenever a manufacturer does this, I think it's a cool thing, so I try to do my part by spreading the word. I'm a hard sell on compressors, I collected so many of them that I now have a lot to weed out. With Meldaproduction alone I have MCompressor, MModernCompressor, MTurboCompressor, Mdynamics, then elysia mastering, elysia mpressor, Shadow Hills Mastering, T-Racks Opto, and the Lindell 76-alike. Not to mention the ones in ProChannel. Those are just the ones I'm keeping. It also omits the multiband ones. I'll keep it and try it because it's probably part of some good SnapHeap presets, but if it weren't, I'm done with introducing new compressors into my workflow. Same with EQ's, I have too many top quality ones as it is. Since I acquired my favorites kind of recently, now that I'm building a new(er) workstation, I'm in the (probably not uncommon) position of having to keep a whole bunch of stuff I'd never use in new projects on my previous system just so I can open the projects that are on it.

Back in late May, Kilohearts greatly expanded what's included in their collection of Kilohearts Essentials freebies, adding 24 new FX to go with the half dozen that originally came with the package. It looks like they're taking a hint from the Meldaproduction marketing playbook. They have the very minimal ("essential," one might say) UI's associated with these plug-ins. Where there's overlap, they're no threats to the ones in MFreeFX Bundle, but sometimes you don't need/want that level of power/complexity, right? With Meldaproduction, some people never want that overdose of control. 😄 Where they don't overlap, there are some useful goodies in the collection, especially Reverser, Tape Stop, Pitch Shifter (freeware pitch shifters are hard to come by and this one sounds pretty good), and Ensemble. I haven't tried all of them, but the ones I have tried have the typical kHs great sound quality. These are the new ones from May: Bitcrush Comb Filter Compressor Nonlinear Filter Distortion Filter Flanger Frequency Shifter Gate Haas Ladder Filter Dynamics Phase Distortion Phaser Pitch Shifter Resonator Ring Mod Reverser Reverb Trance Gate Transient Shaper Tape Stop Ensemble Formant Filter

As always, Ilir, thank you so much for bringing us ORCHESTOOLS. They've mostly replaced my use of Sonivox Orchestral Companions.

This may have already been posted, although I did my usual search. Back in late May, Kilohearts greatly expanded what's included in their collection of Kilohearts Essentials freebies, adding 24 new FX to go with the half dozen that originally came with the package. It looks like they're taking a hint from the Meldaproduction marketing playbook. They have the very minimal ("essential," one might say) UI's associated with these plug-ins. Where there's overlap, they're no threats to the ones in MFreeFX Bundle, but sometimes you don't need/want that level of power/complexity, right? With Meldaproduction, some people never want that overdose of control! Where they don't overlap, there are some useful goodies in the collection, especially Reverser, Tape Stop, Pitch Shifter (freeware pitch shifters are hard to come by and this one sounds really good), and Ensemble. I haven't tried all of them, but the ones I have tried have the typical kHs great sound quality. These are the new ones from May: Bitcrush Comb Filter Compressor Nonlinear Filter Distortion Filter Flanger Frequency Shifter Gate Haas Ladder Filter Dynamics Phase Distortion Phaser Pitch Shifter Resonator Ring Mod Reverser Reverb Trance Gate Transient Shaper Tape Stop Ensemble Formant Filter

Incorrect. The article says that the new motherboards may not support Gen 5 M2 SSD's, which are themselves still in the prototype phase. What it would mean in practical terms is that if they do forgo full support for Generation 5 drives, and you want to be able to use Generation 5 drives, you'll have to wait for the next generation of motherboards.

Maybe it's a crutch, but I'm pretty attached to using a snare on the backbeat. Right now I'm in the process of building a new (new to me, it's all used parts that are higher spec than my current rig) DAW computer, and rather than throwing every mixing plug-in that I've acquired over the past few years on to it, I'm slowly adding only the ones I want to focus on. So much stuff I've installed just because it was free for the downloading or came in a bundle.

I was referring to this. I don't keep the views in sync because I do want to see MIDI tracks in Track View, while I never do in Console View.

Huh. Weird. I didn't compare the gut shots, but they are indeed different. I wonder why they would use the exact same model number. Maybe get in touch and ask them what the differences are. I like the gut shot of the orange one better because the transformer is mounted to its own PCB rather than the one for the front panel. I like getting heavy components down off of highly-populated boards. They can wiggle around and cause other components' solder joints to break (a fault you have experienced). It looks like a layout and power supply change. The power supply components are on their own PCB in the black one and mounted on the input board in the orange one. It looks like the orange one is AC wall-wart powered whereas the black one has a self-contained power supply (that's what the big toroid donut is for, the audio transformers look the same). Whether one thinks that is a good thing depends. Yeah, ask them. My guess is the black one is a newer model with those layout and power supply changes. The changes may be for reliability, cost, or noise floor reasons.

I like this one better because it's $180 less 😁: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/WA12MKII--warm-audio-wa12-mkii-microphone-instrument-preamp Looks like it has a nice fat input transformer sitting in the middle of the box.

Oh this, for sure. Thank you. Not many seem to be aware of it, even in the audio engineering world. I'd expand that to "poor reproduction of transients by any part of the audio chain." I usually describe it by saying it sounds like a poorly-encoded MP3. I have long stories about this, but the first time I became aware of it was 20 years ago when I read the term "bit-perfect" in regard to digital. I had been doing 44.1K DAT transfers into the S/PDIF port of a Soundblaster Live. Then I read about how the chip on the Soundblaster operated only at 48K did a resample to 48K then back down to 44.1. It would actually resample 48K for whatever reason. There were also plans for a little adapter board (about 5 components) to enable non-resampled S/PDIF input on cards that used a CMedia chip. Those could be had for under $20, so I put together the adapter circuit and tried a transfer of my girlfriend's album to see if I could hear any difference. I had already done the transfer into the Live, so I would have the two to compare. When I hit play I was knocked out, I mean, emotionally. Previously it had sounded fine, no issues, clear. But now it was like there was a hologram of my girlfriend floating between the monitors. She was away on vacation and I had been missing her, and the experience was so emotional I started to tear up. When she got back from her trip, I played it for her, and she started crying, because it was the first time she had heard the album the way it sounded in the studio, and the sound took her back to when she recorded it. Once your ears learn to perceive it, it's not subtle at all. My 61-year-old ears have no trouble. Neil Young, and god knows that guy has played some LOUD gigs, is a big advocate for hi-res pure digital reproduction for this reason. It affects the emotional response to the music. I've heard it in recording/playback interfaces, even in power amplifiers (I have an Alesis RA-100 that sounded constricted in that same way until I modded the circuit). Electronics engineer types don't like talk about this because it's not something that's easily measured with test equipment (or at least it's not part of the usual frequency response and harmonic distortion tests that they rely on). They'll try to assert that it's "placebo effect" or whatever. I've learned by this time what to listen for, it's usually spatial information and things like reverb tails. If you follow the link, you'll see a bit of back and forth between me and a doubting electronics engineer. With A/D D/A converters, the culprit seems to be jitter. It was a much bigger problem before the introduction of phase-locked loop technology in around 2009, so you really need to be careful with anything produced before (or even a little after) that time. So I don't doubt that something along the chain, the preamp, the A/D and D/A converters, any of those can mess up those important transients/detail. It's documented. The idea that all interfaces (and amplifiers and even DAW audio engines) sound alike is a fantasy. Theoretically they should, but we don't live in a theoretical world. Design choices and corner-cutting and mistakes happen. As for your preamp issue, it does sound like you could benefit from putting a good mic preamp in front of your interface. The less work the inputs of the interface have to do as far as amplification, the more neutral they're likely to sound, and preamps have their own characteristics as far as sound coloration. There are plenty of choices in the under $1000 realm. Due to your concerns about tubes, look into one that uses FET's. Me, I'm thinking of building a mic preamp with transformer inputs because I know that the human ear likes what transformers do to color sound. I would like a preamp with a transformer front end. Not that I'm unhappy with the ones in my Focusrite interface at this time. Focusrite's preamps have a good rep in the prosumer world and I know that they pay attention to them. I've also been eyeing that FMR Really Nice Preamp. I use Audio Technica mics (AT2020 and AT3035) and AFAIK there is no difference in their output level to other condenser mics. Please try an A/B between your Behringer and the RME once you get it back. I'm very curious.

Yes, all good ideas that would make Loop Construction much more useful. When Xel Ohh speaks, the devs should listen. 😁 Srsly, I don't think I've ever seen you suggest a "yeah, whatever" feature, it's always something that would be really useful for a large group of users (those of us using Cakewalk for electronic music production).

I would like to be able to show/hide Console strips based on their folder membership, with the idea being that I can easily and quickly hide everything but what elements of the mix I'm currently working on. For instance, hide everything but the drums, hide everything but guitars, etc. And yes, I know that using Track Manager I can show or hide anything I want, but it doesn't recognize folder membership in Console View, so it has to be done on a track-by-track basis.

Great idea. I'd love for Cakewalk to include a sampler. I understand that the purpose of doing this would be for an aspiring producer to have this important feature ready to go as soon as they install the program, but I'm curious about Cyclone's feature set and integration. Would it have any advantage over Sitala other than the (important, I understand) fact that a person wouldn't have to download and install Sitala or Speedrum or Tx?

Also no pop-up message from 4 years ago telling me about how Cakewalk is now free. 🙄 I found the online documentation system too clumsy to use. Only good for the first hit, then any searching sent me to outdated pages about SONAR. I love having the documentation local on my system. I have to remind myself that it's there, because I've gotten so used to going to the Reference Guide when I want help. But the Reference Guide is nearly 2000 pages of detailed information, therefore a lot to wade through.

I think the question here is "have you been bad enough to be plugged into the stocks?"