Shane_B.

@SteveStrummerUK Yes, 8.5.3. I still have the update backed up. As well as Dim Pro and Rapture updates. I also have a bunch of free add-ons for Dim and Rap too. I really need to back all this stuff up. I'm playing a risky game with these old HDD's. But if I went out and bought everything I needed today to backup and update my PC it would total in the thousands. Prices of this stuff is getting out of control. I'd rather not see that screenshot. My BP is already elevated.

@Bapu I just roll with it and carry a travel sized spritz bottle of Febreze.

I still have my original 8.5P installation discs. Paid extra to get a hard copy. It was the last stable version for me until CbB. I also have a slipstream XP install disc I made with the final updates and drivers on it. I would have no problem going back to that if I had to. I miss a lot of things about the pre-X versions. I had a ton of old projects I did in 8.5P. Lost them all in a HDD crash. It just flatlined with no warning at all which is pretty rare for an HDD.

Depends on who you are.

That's me at the top. My wife next one down. July 23, 1998 @ 3:47am according to the timestamp.

I just wanted to surprise you to make your day. 🥰

👉🏻 <-- Pull.

Hey, I'm old skool. I got no time for fancy black borders. 😁

*with one raised eyebrow* Fascinating. As I was downloading it through S1 it said the file size was 149MB. I just looked at the actual downloaded file and it says something very different. I'm still shocked at how fast I got it.

I liked the video. Thanks! TTS-1 also has 4 outputs so you could for example have your drums, strings, piano, and bass all go to their own bus and process them separately. I like to have even greater control and separate out the drum tracks to individual midi tracks and add a different TTS-1 to each individual drum in the kit. I've gotten in to the habit of using a separate instance of TTS-1 for every instrument. It makes it easier for me to work with individual instruments and bounce them to a wave to edit and use VST's. I was actually working on the I'm A Believer challenge but got sidetracked at home and never finished it. I think I'll try to finish it and find the thread and post the CWP of how I use it. I was intentionally using only VST's that come with CbB so anyone could open the CWP file and see/hear exactly what I did.

I hate them too. My lack of faith in software and PC's is the reason why I hung on to my ancient Tascam 488 cassette based 8 track. You can still get NOS Maxell UDS-II 90 tapes which were excellent. Last year I recorded a bunch of acoustic songs on it and transferred them to my DAW to mix. I had a great time doing it and I had to do almost no EQ'ing or anything else ITB. Got some faux analog warmth and my levels all just seemed to be right. I say faux because I know it's not the same as reel to reel, but it's still better than nothing or a tape emulator.

*Putting on my Spock ears* Only 149MB to be precise Captain. What amazed me was I had it downloaded and installed in about 90 seconds. That was a first for a Presonus download for me. Probably because at the point I got it it was Sphere members only and there wasn't much of a hit on the servers. Plus I just happened to fire up S1 right at 11 and I think read somewhere afterwards that it was released at 11. IOW, I didn't rush right on at release time. It was just coincidence. I may have been in the #1 slot on the server. I'm going on about this because they are notorious for server problems during update time and I was so shocked that I had no problems at all. I was fully expecting a half day long ordeal.

@Bapu You sure do Have a lot of software. @Wibbles I can't warm up to Reaper. I tried. A lot. My brain has been hardwired for Sonar and I'm only just now starting to get that way with Studio One. And now that spring is here, all my stuff is going back in the basement, and I'll forget everything again, and start all over in the fall, and finally get good by spring, and the cycle will repeat. LOL. I know I sound like a broken record but they really blew me away with this last update. And it was free to current owners of 5. I've seen reports of it being unstable for some people but it actually runs smoother on my system than 5.1 did and I can still honestly say I have never had 1 crash. I've had VST's flake out, but Studio One always gives me the option to save rather than just CTD and Studio One itself has never crashed in any version that I can recall. I'm convinced that whole crashing and instability thing is directly related to your Mobo/CPU/RAM's compatibility. 99% of my instability problems have gone away since I took Jim's advice a long time ago about using RAM the Mobo manufacture's have tested with the Mobo you are using. I just always assumed that you could pick and choose any RAM to go with a Mobo and you were good. That is 100% not the case.

If CbB ever went back to the Sonar days with an initial purchase and then paid upgrades, would you jump on board? Right now I keep switching back and forth between Studio One and CbB but with the latest updates to S1V5.2 I don't think I would financially support two DAW's if they ever started charging for CbB. And I definitely wouldn't even consider another DAW that currently charges. I can see people in a working studio who had to collaborate with others on a daily basis having every DAW there is available but would a home user shell out money for more than one DAW? Especially seeing how in depth they are and how much effort it takes to learn one well enough to be proficient at using it. Right now I have all of my projects exported out of Sonar and although it would be a pain to load, remix, and remaster everything in another DAW it can be done and I have done it before.

The only thing I picked up on that was linked to Sphere was sharing tracks via their Cloud service which makes sense to me. If you want to use Cloud storage beyond the 15G you get free from Google you have to pay. But maybe I missed something else. I opened up a large song I was working on in 5.1 in 5.2 last night. Without a doubt it loaded quicker and seemed to work better. This has happened before with their updates on my system. A new version will be noticeably better then the next will seem sluggish. 5.2 is definitely working better than 5.1 on my system in my opinion. The midi and virtual instrument features do not really apply or appeal to me much but it is amazing what they are doing with it.

TTS-1 has a really good upright bass named Acoustic Bass iirc. If you want to do a basic bass track you can play it on a guitar and convert it to midi using Melodyne and then drag that midi file on to an instrument track such as TTS-1 set to Acoustic Bass. I use TTS-1 in an unconventional way. I layer the Acoustic and Electric bass using different instances of TTS-1. It's a lightweight synth and takes zero resources so I just use a different instance of it for every instrument. It makes using VST effects and bouncing individual instruments easier. I have BiaB 2020. At the time I didn't have good internet access so I paid for the audiophile version that comes on HDD. It's a really nice program but overkill if you just want to do bass lines. It also has some excellent steel guitar capabilities also and you can import your own midi song into it and use it's samples. I bought it mainly for the steel guitar because the steel guitar VST's out there require fancy keyboard work to express all the variations and I couldn't wrap my head around it. If it's a simple bass line without any slides or fancy fret work I will play the bass line on the E and A string of my strat and export it to midi using Melodyne and drag that to TTS-1 or SI-Bass. Works like a charm and you can easily fix any clunkers in Melodyne or Piano Roll View.

And that's why I use Gimp and Blender. And the last hard copy version of Lightroom.

I'm surprised you went with the Gigabyte HD 5450 Fanless Video. Jim's site indicates it's ok to use the embedded GPU. And I would imagine it's even faster than the 5450. I know my C/Gpu is faster than my old GeForce fanless. Looks like you should be future proof till at least April. 😋

You sure do Have a lot of headphone stuff. I personally can't use them for long. Flares up the ol' rin tin tin.

Presonus Studio 1810c audio interface. ART Pro MPAII Reference Series Mic Pre - The 'Reference Series' means it has factory upgraded tubes and blue backlit VU's. ART Pro VLA II Vactrol/Tube Leveling Amplifier. Blue Bluebird condenser mic. AKG K240 MKII headphones. Korg X5 keyboard. I'd like to get a new controller/drum pad/keyboard combo some day. My X5 is really old. It works perfectly but it's just a basic midi keyboard. It's so old I had to replace the internal battery. I soldered in a battery holder because the new 2032's do not last like they used to and I figured I'd be replacing it in another 5 or so years.

Wow! Studio One runs on a Mac too?! Man it's such a great DAW. I love it.

*Gasp* non-Sphere?! You just had to be different didn't you. (Am I allowed to say that?)

Without going OT (we all know that never happens here), how the h e double hockey sticks are your mixes so good? I guess I was right when I said the magic is in the midrange eh? Do you strictly use meters, have a someone else double check? Pay Craigb to do it for you?

One of my favorite movies. I watch it at least once a month.