Shane_B.

I can't find the video now but I remember seeing an A/B/C comparison of SSD vs HDD by Linus Tech Tips on YouTube. He set up 3 gaming rigs side by side and didn't tell his staff what type of drive was in each one and had them try them all. They all said the one with the HDD was faster and more responsive. I tried to find the video but he's done several SSD vs HDD comparisons and I couldn't find the specific one I was looking for. What I took away from it was yeah they are fast for large file transfers and installations but in real world applications like gaming HDD actually performed better. I'm not sure how that translates to the DAW domain. I'm running 2 250GB SSD's in my DAW (See sig). Previously on my old i5 750 I had 2 HDD's and one died. I ended up running off of external USB memory cards from an old camera. The roughly inch long rectangular ones. I saw no difference in performance with the exception of installation speed. I could have more than quadrupled my drive space for the same cost if I would have went with HDD's this time. I regret not doing that now. My system seems to go through phases depending on what Microsoft does with Win10 at any given moment anyway. Sometimes it's snappy and lightning fast, then an update will come through and it will be sluggish until the next update, then it's snappy again. I hate everything about Windows 10.

iLok activation has always been optional since I've been using Melodyne 2 thankfully. When I did a search for that error [user privileges insufficient to start a low level driver] a ton of hits came up regarding iLok and how to update their Pace drivers. But it does seem like a very generic error message that could be related to just about anything.

The whole iLok thing scares me. I just ran in to a little iLok related hiccup myself and I don't even have one of the darn things on my system. Melodyne Studio 4 was giving me a low level driver error when I scanned for VST's at startup in Studio One 5. That error means the iLok Pace drivers need to be updated but I don't have anything that requires an iLok and I don't have the Pace drivers on my system. There was an update to Melodyne Studio 4 that I didn't know about and when I did that it fixed the problem when I do an auto scan for VST's at startup but it still happens when I do a manual scan. What threw me off is when you click on 'Check for updates' none come up. I just takes you to a website where you can buy Melodyne Studio 5 so I assumed the update life cycle was over. Tech support said I had to manually go in to my account and check. So much for the 'Check for updates' button. 🥴 Gotta love PC's and software and developers.

There, it does get cheaper than $149. Sweet.

And not one mention of Gloss. I'll grab my bicycle and be on my way . . .

Bethesda games are the only ones I play. What is it with buggy stuff from that area? Must be the dirty water and the Jet. Hah! I've recently had some unexpected mandatory down time and wanted to try Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, and Skyrim modded on a PC but it didn't happen. The GT1060 is the lowest card that will handle a respectable framerate at 1080p but I just can't bring myself to pay $300 + for a 5 year old used card. I currently have a PS4 Pro just for playing Fallout 4 and Skyrim but mods are extremely limited due to Sony's no external asset and no external script policy. Plus even the PS4Pro can barely maintain 24fps in Fallout 4, especially the downtown area. Basically you get God mode, a couple cheap tricks, and some new area's made from in game assets, but that's it on the PS4.

Another thing that really bothers me about this is you can buy pre-made gaming rigs for not much more than the cards alone are going for. It's not right. I just read that Nvidia is making chips to mine with now so the video card market stabilizes. That may have been in the link abacab posted, not sure, but I just happened to see it on my cell news feed this morning.

The transient tamer reminds me of Paul's Noise Harvester he developed many many years ago. I love tinkering with this kind of thing. I'll look up Craig's idea and give it a try. There has to be a way you can simply make a box to house Craig's tamer in and use it as a line device.

Sorry, for some reason I missed your reply the other day. Thanks for making that clear (ish) :). I can't make heads or tails out of any of it. There are an awful lot of people on YouTube making video covers. There is no way they are contacting everyone and getting permission. It's frustrating. I used a still picture of a fireplace in a bunch of Christmas songs I did. Some of them got flagged others didn't. Simon & Garfunkel songs don't get flagged but The Avett Brothers do. Which one has most people heard of? None of it makes sense, to me. Those examples I gave are all covers I've done and posted on YouTube as private. None of my S&G stuff gets flagged, but Avett Bro's do. And how can they tell me I can make public and monetize a vid of me playing the lead to Hotel California. None of it makes sense. I'm just going to go on like business as usual until they take my private channel down.

And yet, they want to tax us to death to stop it. Gotta love those mitten wearing, no, I hadn't better.

I know you asked Jim, but I have one of those Fender passive style basses he's talking about. I'm pretty sure he means the pickups. They are not active like EMG's that take a battery. The lesser expensive ones just doesn't have the oomph to drive a DI Box. Probably a combination of the lighter body and pickups. I've never played it through an amp but I imagine I would have a similar experience. When I'm not being lazy I always run mine through the Hi-Z Instrument input on my tube mic pre, out to my tube compressor, and in to my DAW. Fret noise is my biggest enemy. No matter how hard I try when I fret I always get a clacking sound. I love playing bass, hate recording it. I have a Made In Indonesia Fender PJ Bass. I'm right handed but I play left handed so my choices are very limited. It was the best feeling neck I ever found on a bass so I pretty much had to get it. My brother has an old Ibanez bass with active pickups and that thing is heavy and thunderous. I used to record with it even though he plays RH. Played it backwards. Uhg. Not easy on a bass. I actually learned how to play guitar with the high E on top. He bought me a LH guitar for Christmas one year so I'd stop messing with his and I had to relearn how to play, but it was quick.

It's about time. This whole crypto thing has sent PC part prices skyrocketing. This should have been done from Day 1. Or at the very least, Day 2. 5 year old GT1060's are going for that much used. Glad I waited it out. Of course, 30 days after it's released someone will release an unofficial firmware update for it to unlock it.

Another thing to keep in mind is when you are checking out samples of strings and piano and any real instrument, what you hear isn't necessarily what you want in your mix. Don't disregard something free that may not sound very good solo until you try it in a mix. You can pay a lot of money for great sounding sample libraries only to EQ and Compress the living daylights out of them to sound right in a mix with other instruments, but when solo'd they sound bad at that point. CbB comes with an excellent starting base. It includes Studio Instruments: Electric Piano, Strings, Bass, and Drums as well as TTS-1 which bitflipper already mentioned. Also, there is a set of FX VST's called PX-64 Percussion Strip, VX-64 Vocal Strip, and TL64 Tube Leveler. They are disabled by default. You have to go in to your plugin setup screen in CbB and enable them. You can really manipulate your samples and anything with those and get some excellent results, especially drums and vocals. There are a lot of youtube vids about them. You'll also see Boost 11. IIRC it's a 32bit version but the 64bit version is already enabled by default so don't enable it. 99% of what I do I use SI Strings, SI Bass, and TTS-1, and a ton of free synth's. There is more free stuff out there than you can shake a stick at. https://plugins4free.com/ is a good site. Sonic Anomaly makes some really good free mastering and FX VST's. Their website seems to be gone but you can still get their VST's here. Here is a good free piano put out by The University of Iowa of all places. Another suggestion is, create a folder named FreeVSTs or something like that and put your free stuff there to keep it separate. Makes it easier to backup too. You can give each one it's own subfolder. Most of the free stuff from sites like Plugin's 4 Free come without an installer and just a .dll file and you simply put it where you want and rescan for VST's at startup. It helps keep track of things and if you have one that crashes you can easily get rid of it. Kontakt Player is different, it embeds itself everywhere. You can get a few cool free things for it, but there's equal and better by random people out there.

All I have is a cheap MII Fender j/p bass. A lot of times I'll end up converting what I play to midi and use samples because no matter what strings I put on it or how careful I play I always get a clacking sound from the strings hitting the frets and it really stands out in the mix. When I do use what I have recorded I use a free VST called Bassprofessor MarkII. Their website is gone but you can still download it here for now. They made several good plugin's. It's a shame they're gone.

If anyone's interested to hear a sample of my analog adventure I just added a hardware master test to the thread of a song I posted in the song forum. It's pretty significant comparatively. I did remix it too I didn't just run the original master through the hardware. Here's a link. You don't have to comment or anything unless you want to. Not plugging the post, just showing a comparison. I did a lot of testing and reading a long time ago and found that Soundcloud converts songs better at a specific RMS and Peak level. It still seems to be the case. I forgot and mastered the original post to K14 iirc but I did the remaster to -18 RMS/-6 Peak which seems to be roughly K20. That seems to be the sweet spot. The volume is significantly different between the two so use caution if you listen to both. 👍🏻

Bob died!? Oh my God!

That used to be in your sig didn't it? 😄

I hear it's legal in the 3 southern states. Not the one I live in though. Nope. 🤪

Sorry to hear that Bill. Hope the power doesn't go out again tonight. 🤞🏻 I heard they are doing rolling outages all across the midwest grid because people are using too much power to stay warm. Repair guy is coming tomorrow morning to look at my stove that blew up when the power went out here last week. I had to plow the road and my driveway so they can get in tomorrow morning and it was -17F when I started. My outside temp thingy said it warmed up to 8F when I was done. Took me 3 hours. 🥶 This weather is crazy.

A Cakewalk hover car? Yeah, nothing could go wrong there except maybe go crash in the loudspeaker. 🚗🔊🚑

I hear Sonar Producer 8 is on sale though at Musicians Fiend. I mean, Friend.

Holy! I would think that would be illegal to sell wouldn't it?

I was going to say we're frozen and can't move. It's -17F here right now. But I think I'm getting him mixed up with BobF. He was from MO. I don't remember. I got hit in the head by a 12 ton bus. My memory ain't what it used to be. Back on track, @aidan ... this is interesting. I'll check it out. As soon as I thaw. 🥶

Pro Channel did the same thing though. And they were stripped down versions of full blown VST's. I do agree with you that it's not a good idea to do that. I was very disappointed when I first started using S1Pro and found out the VST were locked to it. On the other hand, they were pretty crappy until version 5 just came out. They really updated all of their VST's. My biggest criticism of them is they are excellent at telling you about the things they want you to know and even better at avoiding certain things they don't want you to know. For example, in a subforum here I was talking about how it took me 4 days to set up routing external hardware on my Presonus interface. What it boiled down to is you have to disable their virtual mixer and only use the inputs that have gain control knobs with the built in mic pre's. That's not in any manual anywhere or in any of their setup video's that I could find. What that means is, all those extra inputs I paid for are rendered useless in my setup because I wanted to set up all of my external mastering and processing hardware so it's always on and ready to go. You can easily route external hardware through S1 via a special VST they include with it that compensates for latency. Nobody that responded to me on their forum knew that either. In that regard they are very bad. They make great equipment and software but you are kind of on your own setting it up and figuring it out. And their forum is all but dead. CbB has the most helpful user group I've ever seen. Always has.