Starship Krupa

What is the current asking price? I must have missed that....

Not at this time. You mean if it continues to not be officially released? Uh, yeah, easy prediction. Yes. Unfortunately, no.

Given that they withheld the information and have never been direct, why do you think it's likely that they were waiting to spring a subscription model on the userbase? Wouldn't it be just as likely that they were going the other way? By this I mean testing to see how users would react to a perpetual-only model and to cause people who prefer to buy subscriptions to jump ship early? Why one and not the other? I mean, subscription licensing means that you only get $8 (or whatever) a month, whereas a one-time license nets a company many times that, especially at launch time. BandLab, a company that had to buy the old company's code for cash and has been giving it away for 6 years while paying the programming and support staff with it bringing in zero income all that time might be eager to get some money back on their investment. You say that perpetual licenses "don't provide the instant profit shareholders demand and fail to keep users tied to an ancient piece of software." So let's break that down. If we conservatively estimate that Cakewalk Sonar would have 500,000 people who would want to get licenses as soon as it comes out, and we assume that $8 gets you a monthly sub, $8 X 500,000 is only $4,000,000.00, whereas $80 for a perpetual license (another guess) X 500,000 is $40,000,000.00. I'm no accountant, nor am I a shareholder, but $40,000,000.00 looks better to me than $4,000,000.00. As far as "keep[ing] users tied to an ancient piece of software," once people paid their $80, even if they decide they hate the new program with its fuzzy graphics, hard-to-read lettering, and lack of new features beyond the "vector-scaling" buzz term, BandLab gets to keep their entire license fee. But if they buy it on subscription, dissatisfied people will let their subscriptions lapse, which means all BandLab would ever see is their $8 (or maybe $16 if they try it for 2 months). So isn't it just as (or even more) likely in your scenario that the perpetual model is the one they're going to try to force on their whittled-down user base?

So your theory is that BandLab's strategy was/is to announce the product early and with scant information regarding pricing (including no mention of mandatory subscription licensing) so that by the time it's actually released, enough users will have given up on it that there won't be enough left to join together in protest of the licensing being subscription-only? In other words, jettisoning a large percentage of the user base in order to have a smaller, subscription-accepting user base. That would certainly be a novel strategy. It would bring them in line with the other DAW's out there that have gone subscription-only. Like....um....trying to think here....Adobe Audition? Pro Tools I guess is one DAW whose developers could have pursued that strategy, seemingly doing whatever they could to whittle their user base down until it was mostly comprised of industry professionals and diehards who favor or tolerate the subscription model. Yet even PT still offers a perpetual license. If true, one would have to admire their commitment to subscription licensing. Most software manufacturers seem to be more interested in keeping their users rather than driving them off.

I was lucky enough to get Sonible proximityEQ+ as a freebie. It works pretty well for reverb and room ambience removal, lets you apply the effect to only whatever frequencies you choose.

Corrected, thank you. Still a bargain for such things as BYOME and TRIAD. I paid more than that for them and was happy to do it. When I first got BYOME, I was just getting into making the really weird glitchy warpy sounds and I felt like I'd been handed the KEYS. If you're into modulation, there ain't nothing quite like BYOME/TRIAD with those virtual patch cords, every control modulateable at whatever rate you want.

You are correct, it isn't a beta by the usual definition of that term. If I had to put a term to it, I'd call it a "preview." It's feature complete or close to it, and all that is supposed to change between now and release should be cosmetics. A beta is usually a closed release or series of releases to a select group of testers. IIRC, Microsoft kind of pioneered the "open beta" or "preview" release being a more public affair back with Windows 95 (under the code name "Chicago").

Hmm, you can get any Unfiltered Audio plug-in for $19.99. I like Unfiltered Audio plug-ins. Thanks to these voucher and MEGA sales, I have their entire line except for Tails (don't need no more reverbs) and LION (a synth that didn't inspire me). But if you like Glitchmachines and the like, Unfiltered Audio's stuff is crazy cool.

Well, overall I like the new flat look. It's still an unreleased work in progress, so I figure there will be some stuff about it that's still rough. It's not the vector-ness of the UI that people are disliking, merely small easily changeable things like button art and text. I see it as just another theme at this point, or rather a set of 6 of them. Have you tried downloading a copy of it messing with it to see what you think? Your opinion is the one that really matters, not the early critiques on the forum. People are criticizing certain elements that they don't like because the new UI is really by far the big change. It will kick just as much asterisk as the last version of CbB. 😆

This discussion as to whether SampleTank 4 MAX v. 2 is worth dropping $49 on got me to fire it up and run through some of those Sampletron sounds I hadn't tried yet, the oddball ones like Optigan SFX. There's a huge collection of delightfully lo-fi rhythm loops lurking in those old Mellotron tapes. I guess the idea was that these loops could also function as a rhythm machine for people performing solo. I tend to think of the 'tron as a prog rock machine, but I suspect that it may have been originally conceived as a way for someone to play live as a one-person band. So if yer into lo-fi loops, it's a great collection. And again, there are lo-fi loop libraries that go for the price of the entire package. Yeah, I forgot about the collection of MixBox FX that it has built in. I'm not an IK sales rep either, just a happy SampleTank 4 MAX user. 😄 When I got this product 6 months ago, multiple installer packages were broken; I wound up having to manually download some of the Mac versions and convert them. They've since fixed most of these issues. That is one area where SampleTank and associated products still have room for improvement: installation and authorization. But I find it worth a bit of slog given the results. BTW, when you install it, make SURE that you select only the products that you want to install, one at a time. Otherwise, if you choose to install the main product it will install EVERYTHING. Between the downloaded files and the installed ones, your drive could wind up full. I made this mistake and had to abort the installation once I saw what was happening. Cleaning up after that was a pain.

His post-announcement videos definitely shook things up around here, but I neither thought of them as disrespecting Cakewalk nor thought of him as a "traitor." I grew up believing that any system/institution needs people to speak the truth, no matter how uncomfortable that truth may be, and that systems/institutions are actually harmed when people don't speak up about things that aren't working for them. Keeping quiet out of a sense of loyalty is misplaced loyalty. (I'm an American, that principle is kinda ingrained. Canada went the loyalty route back in the day, Quebec notwithstanding.😊) So even though I was bummed to see someone I considered the biggest supporter and promoter of my favorite program expressing doubt as to whether he would continue in that role, I welcomed his critical input. Believe me, the developers paid attention. Read the list of new features carefully and you'll find at least one really cool one that was inspired by Mike's infamous "que es mas clunky" comparison video: in Sonar, you can drag an effect from the Browser directly into a track's Sends rack and it will create a send bus with that effect in its rack along with a new send on the track, routed to that bus. That's a great thing on multiple levels. In addition to being a slick feature, it shows that the Cakewalk devs aren't averse to being inspired by other products. Over the years, I've noticed that publishing a YouTube video is hands-down the best way to get a developer's attention in regard to bugs and "missing" features. I've fantasized about doing one where I go through trying to set up the Drum Pane in PRV with instrument names and eventually rage quit. 😆 The feelings and opinions he was expressing were also held by me, albeit with less at stake in my case. I have been an advocate of CbB in my own way, here on the forum as well as being the author of the Cakewalk by BandLab Wikipedia entry. I go on board with CbB in large part because I found the transition to freeware fascinating and wanted to see how it played out as far as the quality of the product (my predictions were dead-on, as it turns out). I've set up multiple friends with CbB on their systems, always with the expectation that they would be able to continue using it indefinitely. I did finally update my Studio One Artist to v. 6, largely so I could compare it with Sonar. And, sorry, but S1A compares favorably in several areas. And S1 Artist is a cut-down version of Studio One. And hey, y'know what, there's room in both my budget and my programs drive for both of them. The DAW world isn't an us vs. them thing like it used to be. Compose in FL Studio, mix and master in Cakewalk. Horses for courses. I've said it myself: CbB is hands-down the best free DAW for Windows. Sonar will be playing in the "best Windows DAW for the money" leagues, which is way different. IMO, the competition is now Mixcraft and Studio One Artist, both of which have long-requested features that Sonar does not yet have (integrated samplers being the most prominent). The Cakewalk team have been around in the DAW market for a long, long time. I have faith that they will be realistic about pricing models and new features. The Waves debacle showed the industry that while subscriptions work for some people, they definitely don't work for a significant number of people. They're most appropriate for professionals, and IMO, the more casual hobbyist market is really where the growth is.

I dispute the "4 core" part of that unless you're including virtual cores. My 2-core i7-7600U (16G RAM) notebook can run projects with multiple soft synths, including Chromaphone 3 and Ultra Analog VA-3, neither known to be light on CPU resources. Exponential Audio Stratus, etc. And it doesn't seem to be on the hairy edge of performance with that either.

I don't know about its friendliness as far as sampling or working with samples; I can only speak for my use of it as a ROMpler. I've not found it to be any worse than Kontakt Player for that, yet considerably better than Zampler or Halion. "Tiny" UI? On my system each of its UI views scales as big as I could want, larger even (it can be resized to fill the entire screen, and all elements scale with it). Here's what it looks like, although the forum will shrink it somewhat:

Unquestionably there are better orchestral collections out there, and probably better acoustic pianos, but for the rest....it's an incredible collection of instruments to have access to. I haven't installed any of the acoustic pianos, from Art Deco to Shipwreck, because I already have Meldway Grand in Sound Factory. Similarly, I haven't installed all of the drum stuff. But you only have to want a handful of the instruments in the bundle to make it worth the price. Other than the orchestral libes, the plums for me are SampleTron and Syntronik. Here's my review/comment from VI Control....

Sir Freeze-a-lot. If I were recording solo acoustic guitar music with a vocal, I wouldn't find a Core 2 Quad with 4G of RAM restrictive at all. EQ, compression, maybe a little reverb. That's it. Could do it just fine without freezing or bouncing or any of that.

It seems that one person's "did not look like" is another's "hardly any differences." Yes, the graphical elements have had their 3-D illusions (false shadows and reflections) removed. They no longer mimic physical controls in that way. There are no longer gradients anywhere. However, all of the controls are in exactly the same places they are in Cakewalk by BandLab. So functionally, that's "hardly any difference." Aesthetically, no, it does not look like either Cakewalk stock theme. I have created multiple flattened themes for CbB and came to prefer that look over any sort of fake 3-D, so perhaps the difference doesn't seem to be as much to me. And to me, as well as anyone else who has been using heavily modified themes, the only part of the GUI that's "classic" is the control layout, and that hasn't changed at all. To us, it's as if now there's only going to be one theme, a flat one, with variations between the various elements only in color. It's a difference between flat images and ones that imitate 3-D objects. At this point that's all it is. I like it. It's crisp and its clean, and after using it for a while, going back to CbB feels busy and cluttered, with my eyes getting caught on what look like physical objects.

Kinda surprised this hasn't been posted already; I looked back a few pages and couldn't find it. https://blackoctopus-sound.com/product/sampletank-max-4-v2-2/ Larry will be amused to see that there are 2 prices. For the full license, it's $49.99, but you can crossgrade it from any other IK Multimedia product for only $199.99. 😄

The Talos Principle and the DLC are some of the most fun and brain exercising games I've played in addition to just looking beautiful. Also, for fans of TTP, I can't recommend Portal (and Portal 2) highly enough. It was kind of the starting point for that style of game.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned my biggest issue with the new UI so far: reduced type font size in the Transport module. I'm hoping this will be addressed before release, but for now, the reduced size of the time, tempo, time sig and sample rate text make me squint, where that isn't an issue with CbB. At these small sizes, just a single point increase in font size can make a big difference in legibility. Aughhhhh! Sonar caught cross-platform cooties from Next! I'm glad that you're working on a cure.

At least it's nice to know that it works pretty well.

You might get better responses if you typed out MIDI Guitar 2. I had to Google to see what you were asking about. I'm not familiar with the product at all, but with other virtual instruments that support multiple audio outputs, you select All Synth Outputs when inserting the instrument:

Keep in mind that those are suggested specs. I've run the early preview quite successfully on my Dell laptop with a 2 core i7-7600U. I do have hyperthreading enabled so it appears in Sonar to have 4 cores. In comparisons, I haven't found it to be any more resource-hungry than CbB, which I have run successfully on a Core 2 Duo system with 4G RAM. It very much depends on what you're doing and how you use it. Obviously, with a Core 2 Quad, you can't can't run a big pile of resource-hungry mixing plug-ins and/or VI's without doing some bouncing and freezing. So, not to worry, if CbB runs fine on your system, Sonar should run fine as well.

The new look is, at this point, mostly just that, a new "look." The point of doing it is to lay the groundwork for enhanced scaling support and future enhancements. At first glance, the new look is basically similar to using a custom theme in CbB. Everything still works the same way, everything is still in the same place, it just looks better and scales better on higher resolution displays. My hope (and expectation) is that in the not too distant future (next Sunday A.D.?) we'll see things like being able to stretch different elements of console strips to (for instance) give a longer throw on the faders. But yes, as others have said, it's important to know the difference and distinctions between Next and Sonar. Next is a whole new program entirely.

Also, when exploring Analog Lab banks, one of the things I've discovered is that many of them make use of aftertouch, which seems to me to be little-used in other synths.

Oh man, Past To The Future is SO much fun. It's a collection of sounds from famous songs: CMI V : Art of Noise - Moments in Love DX-7 V : Berlin - Take My Breath Away CLAVINET V : Stevie Wonder - Higher Ground Mini V : Kraftwerk - Autobahn Modular V : Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Lucky Man CS-80V : Vangelis - Blade Runner Blues ARP-2600 V : Jean-Michel Jarre - Equinoxe 5 Prophet V : Kim Carnes - Bette Davis Eyes Jup-8 V : Duran Duran - Save a Prayer SEM V : Doobie Brothers - What a Fool Believes Wurli V : Queen - You're My Best Friend VOX Continental V : The Doors - Light My Fire Solina V : Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart Matrix 12 V : The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds Synclavier V : Michael Jackson - Beat It B-3 V : Booker T Jones - Green Onions Stage-73 V : Led Zepplin - No Quarter Farfisa V : Pink Floyd - Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun Piano V : Mungo Jerry - In The Summertime Analog Lab 3 : Yazoo - Don’t Go I'm nutzo for noodling around with stuff like that, just for fun.