Starship Krupa

16 hours ago, paulo said:

Marketing people..... each and every one of you, please take a look in this special mirror next time you have an idea...

I dunno, looks like it got a bunch of people here talking about the products and fired up to maybe get some.

Frustrating issue I am sure. Fortunately it sounds as if it was a unique occurrence, only in this one single project?

4 hours ago, craigb said:

While that's nice, I don't have ANY video card installed.  Just the onboard graphics (which, I must, do handle normal work at 3840 x 2160).

I can play Outer Wilds on my 2017 notebook with the onboard UHD620 (although not optimal, it's playable) so my guess is that your system as-is, with onboard graphics, would have no trouble at all with Quern.

With all the dialog samples I like to use in my 90's ambient-influenced stuff, I jumped at $19 (at least I think it was that low, in any case whatever I did pay, it was worth it and helped me finish a song faster).

It's a relatively easy one to wait for, it's really a collection of FX in one integrated GUI. Anybody reading this, can, I'm sure, duplicate what it does with a handful of freeware plug-ins and samples. But if you regularly have the need to turn pristine audio into distressed audio, it's the best tool I've tried (although I've not yet tried LO-FI AF). It's nice to have all the processors in one place.

2 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

Putting my referral discount code out there again in case anyone wants to jump into the Melda pool.    

MELDA31209027

To spell it out for those not already familiar, if you're a new MeldaProduction customer, making a first-time purchase, using Brian's code will get you 20% off. And if you sign up for their newsletter, you get a 10 euro credit.

Brian will get credits in the amount of 10% of your purchase.

So for instance, let's say you wanted to upgrade your MFreeFX Bundle to the "pro" versions (which is very much recommended; if you like what those pups can do in their standard configuration, the pro upgrade is when you start really being able to enter Meldaville, with access to the modulators and multiparameters). With the newsletter credit and a referral code, you'd get the 37 plug-ins in pro form for about $11. Brian gets a credit. Even these small ones add up.

For the MEssentialFX Bundle, doing the math....which, BTW, my math on this tends to come out overestimating the cost, maybe due to the euro/usd exchange rate....you'd pick up the bundle for just under a hundy. $98 or so. And Brian gets $10 in credits.

Then once you have an account, you can start sharing your own referral code if you want. Right now, I feel like (a modern day) Tom Sawyer when he was trading his classmates for the bible verse tickets: a few weeks ago I idly checked my credits balance, not expecting to find anything, and found that someone (probably at VI Control) had used my code to the tune of 99 credits. Now, during the sale, my price to upgrade to the MComplete bundle, which includes everything that MeldaProduction makes or ever will make, is $118. So I'm less than $20 away from never having to pay a cent for a MeldaProduction plug-in again, ever. Another genius marketing move from Vojtech: get your users to ***** the product. Thing is, you'll notice that there's no financial reward for me posting this rundown. I just think their stuff is great, and want to share the joy.

While MEssentialFX says that it includes 10 FX, it actually goes to 11, because MTurboDelay, which is an insanely deep effect, also throws in MTurboDelayMB. MAutoAlign was one of the first Melda FX I bought, MSpectralDynamicsle can do a whole lotta stuff (see @bitflipper's review in SoundBytes), MLimiterX sound great, especially when I switch it into M/S mode. MTurboReverble is among the best-sounding reverbs I've heard, which is a small group consisting of MTurboReverb and the Exponential Phoenix/Nimbus/Stratus bloodline. Try the Bricasti clone device and you'll hear what I mean. MAutoDynamicEQ is a go-to, a dynamic EQ with the ability to analyze for resonances, and also analyze another track via sidechain for collision elimination.

If you've had issues with the spartan GUI in the past, know that especially in the Turbo line, this issue has been addressed with custom "devices" that include nice graphics (although you can switch over to the "nuts and bolts" UI if you want to get under the hood). Also, and I can't stress this enough, go into the Style preferences and look through the available styles. Then when you find one where you like the graphics, go into the color preferences and set them to something you find more attractive. As follows, maybe not so homely after all?

24 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

I just updated Kilohearts and it automatically reinstalled the *.aaxplugin files which I had deleted.  Of course, they are only 260 KB each, so that's not too bad.  Just mentioning this for those of you who like to delete them.

Yeah, a couple of Megs of .aax is nothing compared to what an A|A|S Player installation used to spew around, which was into the GB. Still, I do like to keep a tidy system.

10 hours ago, craigb said:

Went for it!  Now I just have to wonder how long it will be before I can play it!  ?

With these 5-year-old indie exploration games that don't really need high FPS, a used GTX 1080 or even GT 1030 (which is what I use) will run them lickety-split. My GT 1030 is even passive, for extra-quiet PC operation.

The only one I've played where I would like to have a little more under the hood as far as GPU is Outer Wilds, which is a space exploration game. One in which I have been immersed for weeks. And I'm not even sure how much it would help, because I get similar results even when I turn the graphics quality down.

The rest of them go like the proverbial flying mammal exiting Hades.

I've even been able to play some of them on my 2017 Dell Latitude with its built-in Intel H620 GPU.

That's one of the fun things about "catching up." With any indie "walking simulator" or puzzler from a few years ago, even my not-leading-edge systems run them well.

Kinda like Cakewalk. When a lot of its code was new, the idea of having 16G of RAM and a multi-core CPU that can clock up to 3.9MHz was crazy. And since Noel And The Gang have been optimizing the engine and graphics, I find that it keeps running better, even on way too old hardware.

I'm not usually one for this kind of suggestion, but as a blue sky fantasy, Kilohearts Essentials would be a really sweet collection to bundle with Cakewalk.

It ticks most of the "bread and butter" boxes, but where it pulls ahead of say, the Dead Duck collection, is in the more exotic sound design-y special effect-y ones like Ensemble, Tape Stop and Reverser.

3 hours ago, djpuzzle said:

The creator of Mixcraft is a friend of mine. We both worked at Sonic Foundry in the 90s. He was programming Vegas and I was working in the sound development department editing the Loops For ACID product line. The company downsized after going public and 200 employees lost their jobs on Christmas break. We were among them. Dan moved on to create Mixcraft (and later on Cherry Audio)

Cool. I have a great amount of respect for Dan and the rest of Acoustica. Beta testing for them was the first time I'd been exposed to the nimble development model. Their commitment to shipping a bug free product is like nothing I've seen. Cakewalk in the BandLab era is great, but with the advantage of a more modern (and considerably smaller) codebase, Mixcraft still has the edge in this regard.

They sent me feelers about a QA gig years ago, but I have no desire to be a pro QA engineer any more. Beta testing is fun, lets me keep a hand in it.

Vegas as it is today could benefit from Dan's commitment to quality! It's still my NLE of choice, but man can that thing hang if you don't have it all tuned up.

Odd, a freeware clone of a freeware processor.

OTT itself is freeware, and works on MacOS as well.

16 hours ago, abacab said:

If you are referring to Chromaphone 3, then using both the "Layer A"  and the "Layer B"in a patch essentially doubles the CPU load right away. The older versions only had a single layer. A + B is like running 2 synth engines in parallel.

Using all the bells and whistles, it's quite possible to create a patch that overwhelms your CPU. Turn off a layer, take a look at unison voices, as well as polyphony, where you might be able to dial a patch back a bit. I realize that is just a basic workaround, but a math intensive physical modeling synth like this is going to require some extra CPU horsepower... comes with the territory, I suppose.

I also found when I demo'd it that the lush (often too much so) reverb and delay tails in the factory patches sucked up a lot of CPU. Turn off some FX and use your own reverb and things settle down. If I bought it, I'm not much of a synth programmer, so it would be to have more control over the baked in FX than I get with A|A|S Player. If Player just let you turn off reverb, I'd have much less desire for the full version, which is most likely why Player doesn't allow it.

I do love the way that Chromaphone sounds, but I already have so many great synths! $79 is a very tempting price (I almost pulled the trigger on it for $99 a while back).

8 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

rhps was quite a thing in its day, worth a watch

It was an important way for "freaks" to connect and bond back in what was a dark time for being unusual. For my generation (that would be Jones, 1955-65), it was one of the last vestiges of 70's-style liberation when the buttoned-down 80's crept in.

Nowadays it's so much easier for like-minded people to connect, which is great.

5 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

Any Mixcraft users?   I like to have a simple DAW now and then.

It was my choice when I got back into DAW use a dozen years ago. The lower system requirements, the price, and the company's motto is "Software Should Be Easy To Use." I had a Pentium D system at the time and SONAR's requirements were at the edge of my system specs, although I still had a SONAR license from the early 2000's that would have been upgradeable.

When DAW shopping, one of my tactics was to look at the support forum to see what people are complaining about and how the company responds, and at the time, Mixcraft won that one hands down. And it was correct, it was some of the most stable, bomb-proof software I'd ever seen. I was so impressed that I joined their beta team and even got my name in the credits for the next release.

I happily stuck with it until BandLab released Cakewalk as freeware. My first experiment was importing stems from a Mixcraft project to do a new mixdown, using as many native Cakewalk plug-ins as possible. I fell in love with the Console View and the flexible routing. As well as Cakewalk's silky-sounding playback engine. Mixcraft does gapless playback better, but I suspect that it comes at the price of this difference in playback sound. I'm not sure that everyone would notice it, but it was immediately audible to me. Mixcraft's recording and mixdown engines are the equal to any.

For the "all DAW's sound the same" crew, I have found that to be mostly true when it comes to recording and mixdown, but not playback.

It's great for getting ideas down quickly, but has some drawbacks. The aforementioned MIDI routing, the wasted real estate by not being able to collapse lanes. However, the way they handle folders is brilliant. Folder=submix. Clip grouping only affects moves, not other editing, so that's a pain in the editor.

It includes some nice features that CbB lacks, such as a pair of integrated samplers, and some interesting internal routing for modulation. They have a Matrix-like feature called Performance Panel that includes the features that Matrix users wish it included, such as the ability to record directly to cells. This is said to make it a better compositional tool, although I've not used it as such. I love the markers, which have "tails" that extend all the way down the track view. Makes it so much easier to line things up using markers.

At $20, it's a heckuva deal. As previously mentioned, upgrades to the next version are usually very inexpensive, and they are working on version 10. The Pro Audio version only differs in that it comes with more plug-ins, so if you're reading this, you're already covered in that regard.?

The bundled plug-ins are a selling point, but it's a mixed bag. Too many of them are old 32-bit versions of plug-ins that are now available in 64-bit. The A|A|S Journeys/Entangled Species soundpack that comes with it is what got me hooked on A|A|S' products, but they're the original single-layer String Studio 1 versions.

It's very much influenced by SONAR, so getting up to speed is....a cakewalk (sorry).

Getting Mixcraft 9 at the $20 level is pretty sweet.

2 hours ago, craigb said:

After catching up on back-rent, I'm hoping to get a nice video card so I can play games again!

Quern is on sale right now for $7.49. I suggest picking it up now at that price.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/512790/Quern__Undying_Thoughts/

8 hours ago, jackson white said:

i have peeps with "content" on bandcamp that get hit up for film placement with the pitch that "you'll get great exposure" = we want to license it for free. standard response is "do you work for free?"

I've seen it said that "people die from 'exposure'." I'll license all day long, with the fees dependent on the licensee. Sometimes that could be zero, like music for fan-created ages in MYST Online: Uru Live. But for commercial use, gotta get commercial fees.

9 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

chances are he's using the version he got on steam back in the day? and if it's working why try fixing?

i once took a summer job in felixstowe looking after dodgems and bumper-boats at the prom fairground (don't ask)

Cakewalk by BandLab has at least one feature that someone doing a game soundtrack would find very useful: Arranger Track. In addition to the smaller take-it-for-granted ones like Ripple Edit Indicator. Moreover, for something so mission-critical, why use abandonware when a newer, better, supported version (that is 100% workflow compatible) is available for free? It's not as if installing CbB breaks SONAR.

I know there are still SONAR holdouts for whatever reason (some people still think that it requires you to participate in BandLab), but I don't know that I've seen a SONAR user try CbB and reject it.

Cool summer job! I once worked as rides and shows supervisor at a theme park in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

2 hours ago, craigb said:

That's DEFINITELY my kind of game and something I've wanted to help develop for years....

These days geography is hardly a stumbling block....no need to give yourself reasons not to try. ?

What games other than MYST pique your interest?

I dug the MYST series in a big way and my interest was rekindled in a big way a year ago December when I snagged a Humble Bundle of every Cyan title ever for $10. Played through all of the MYST series and then Obduction. 

Since then I've been exploring how many games MYST influenced in one way or another. Probably the closest non-Cyan title I've played was Quern-Undying Thoughts. then Zof (demo), Pneuma, Dream, Firewatch, and Eastshade.

I also discovered puzzle/platform games like Portal, Lightmatter, The Turing Test, and The Talos Principle,  all of which also have interesting storylines.

Now finishing up Outer WIlds, an amazing space exploration game.

His name is Aaron Gwynaire, his company is Defy Reality Entertainment, the game is called Neyyah, and he's using Cakewalk SONAR (I'll have a talk with him about that?) to do the soundtrack:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1289720/Neyyah/

2 hours ago, User 905133 said:

When you say layout, if you mean the UI layout, you might want to look into using custom Workspaces and maybe Screensets.    

Yes. @Dave G, can you say exactly what it is about your templates that you would like to apply to your existing projects?

If it is the layout rather than routing, FX or other nuts-and-bolts audio things, Screensets can be applied from one project to another, as can Workspaces (using the window layout feature). I use Workspaces to quickly switch themes but not for anything else.

Here is proof that just about any random thing you can think of is already available on the Internet:

Your best bet might be to get familiar with Track Templates. They're meant for use with existing projects. You can save the tracks as you've set them up in your new project template and then use them in your existing projects.

On 4/1/2023 at 11:17 AM, Old Joad said:

....it probably doesn't take much to put together a Justin Bieber record. a few doobies and a couple of hours on a keyboard in a sweet studio setup.

Guy like that has songwriters, engineers, producers and musicians lined up around the block begging to work with him. Many with way more musical (and pruduction and engineering) talent than I have been refused, not a doubt in my mind.

As for the terms in popular use these days...."content creator" seems to fit as a description for someone using software to make music and video and games. A marketing term that describes the people being marketed to, who do have similar needs: powerful, stable computers with specialized peripherals like audio interfaces and powerful graphics cards (not always the case with music creators), as many plug-ins as they can get their hands on. I might find "multimedia creator" to be more accurate, but it sounds a little archaic, like they're making learning CD-ROM's with animated slides. "My latest title, Ranger Rick's Reading Ranch earned a Gold CD award from the Academy of Electronic Courseware."

Maybe I'll start referring to myself as a "contentment creator."

"Producer" sounds weird and pretentious to those of us of a certain age who grew up hearing Phil Spector and Bob Ezrin and Tony Visconti and George Martin being called that, but that one itself had a pretty flexible definition by the time the 70's rolled around (it could include arranging, engineering, playing, any number of roles). But is there an alternate term for someone who (as I do now) uses their computer as their primary composition tool and instrument? "Computerist?" "Laptopper?" "Computer musician" sounds old-fashioned to me, like it evokes CANYON.MID playing on a Sound Canvas being driven by an MPU-401 when someone uses the term. "It sure is easier now for us computer musicians than when we had to encode every note on a punched card and set up patches with 1/4" cables."

5 hours ago, Sidney Earl Goodroe said:

Downloaded, installed, and tested. Latency issues, sticking notes, uninstalled!!

I was interested in this because I have been looking for an alternative besides TW16x for building my own sample libraries. 

Sorry! I am very happy with TW16x and will stick with it for now.  I hope they continue work on Freetakt as it looks to be a winner.

The ones I would check out if I were seeking to do this would be Decent and Soundpaint. This isn't due to any experience on my part as a creator of libraries, but from a user viewpoint.