Cristian

On the one hand, this is good stuff, great prices and integrated in Native Access. OTOH we're in 2021, who knows when I'll need the money. 🥴

Since I've been working on a 4+ year old laptop for quite a while (i5-7200U) an upgrade and a return to a desktop PC was a welcome change.
Pretty content I managed to build a new PC  with a Ryzen 5 5600X  (only €14 above MSRP) and 32 GB of RAM (only €16 above MSRP).
I did manage to actually save €31 on the motherboard so it evened out in the end.
Then again, all this was at the end of November, just before PC parts prices went up everywhere.

Yep, looks like it's all gone.

Don't worry, you pay that "additional 45% off" right back when upgrading to Studio One 5. 😀

Now I feel a bit dumb having bought K11U -> K12CE during the summer of sounds sale 😂

I could have gotten a Komplete 12U / CE upgrade for even cheaper AND a K13U/CE for free...

40 minutes ago, DalaiTom said:

According to that article, one of the main computers having problems with this version is the Microsoft Surface. Seems to be a bit of irony there

It would be ironic if Microsoft hardware hadn't historically had lots of compatibility problems. The PlaysForSure and Zune fiascos to name just two of them that are relevant to this forum.

As a rule, by the time MS figures out its hardware it's either obsolete or on the 4th/5th gen (except for their mice & keyboards).

Update 2004 bluescreens on me because of Intel HD video drivers, the official ones.

One of the intel updates made a mess of the drivers, and now there's some BS somewhere deep in the registry (no idea where it is) and I can't cleanly uninstall them.

There's a bug in the forum. I've also encountered it. Seems to happen when you login to the main bandlab site and then come back to the forum.

2 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

When working at smallest ASIO buffer sizes, clock-speed is the single most important factor.

ie:  Working at 96k using a 32-sample ASIO buffer size isn't something that lends itself to being heavily multi-threaded (spread across cores).

In this scenario, the 32-sample buffer size means the CPU has 1/3 of a millisecond to process the next audio buffer and get it cued for playback.

If anything interrupts this process, you'll experience a glitch.

More cores is beneficial, but not at the expense of significant clock-speed.

Performance increase from adding cores doesn't scale 1:1.  IOW, Doubling the number of cores doesn't double performance.

Generally speaking, the more cores... the harder it is to achieve highest clock-speed (especially across all cores).

In a perfect scenario, you want highest clock-speed... and most cores available.

 Thanks for the breakdown.

I had to write a mobile app that dealt with video streaming around 2012, so I have a (tiny😄) bit of first hand experience with anemic CPUs being unable to fill up the audio buffer in time.

Yeah, increasing the core count won't come close to a linear performance increase because the lion's share of any modern application still runs on a single thread, and splits up tasks among cores wherever it can. And while you can do parallel signal processing, the synchronization can be a nightmare. Even then it still falls on the main thread to fill the audio buffer.

After reading a bit more I think NI's choice of CPU might also have to do with them going with Linux as the Atom has been in a LOT of Linux devices.

And unlike my initial thoughts, cost may be an issue too since N4000 only supports DDR4 (preferably dual-channel, as it has more memory bandwidth).

The unit enclosure is also a great point, does the Maschine+ even have a fan?
If they went with passive cooling then yeah, that base frequency will matter more.

Also LOL the thought of even trying to compare the i9-10900 with these embedded CPUS 😂

15 hours ago, Zo said:

Give it some time , studio was 990 euros at start , i bougth it 750 becaus ei knew distributor , and it went down finally ... i think we can expect a price lowering unless covid 20 comes lol ....

I'm not really complaining. To be fair to NI, the price is competitive to MPC Live and MPC X.
And obviously the price is never going to be just the price of hardware: there's R&D costs that NI has to make up for as well.

In my case, I'm not really their primary customer given music is just a hobby for me and I haven't even really used my Mikro to its full potential.

Besides if I need it, in 6-7 months it'll be 25-35% off on the second-hand market, from richer hobbyists who bought it as an impulse purchase and now want their money back.

TBH my only question would be why NI went with the Z8350 and not the N4000 as a CPU, which is newer (2017 vs 2015) and better with similar costs.

So, buy another Komplete 12 upgrade on top of the one you already own? 😂

The Maschine MK3 is $ 600 and the PC board (with NI's published specs) is about $ 140, totaling around $ 740 in terms of raw hardware cost.

So $ 1400 feels a biiiit pricey. That said, they did port the Maschine software to Linux.
And they brought back the metal finish from Maschine MK2, maybe it helps with heat dissipation.

As far as performance goes I actually tried out Maschine on a quad-core atom with 4 GB of ram and windows 10 and it actually ran pretty well, even with 3 or 4 instances of lighter vsts like Monark or Super8.

So the Maschine+ should actually work out alright with its custom linux distro running nothing but Maschine.

17 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

3)  Some less disposable income overall - but honestly not as big of a percentage as many people would suggest.  The percent of people actually unemployed (in the USA anyway) is what 8% or so right now?  And those that were unemployment getting more unemployment benefits than ever.  There was even a report that suggests the majority of the unemployed actually got a pay raise by being on unemployment than actually having the job they had before unemployment.  

A lot of modern musicians come from a background of working retail  & services while studying, both of which have laid off a lot of people.
And IIRC around a quarter US small businesses are pretty much on the verge of closing up shop.
Federal "keep people employed" money just ran dry and September has just started.
Several airlines have massive layoffs just around the corner.
That 8% unemployment is at risk of going up pretty fast.

On 9/2/2020 at 3:44 AM, Zo said:

Supported is one thing , but it won t even install ...and as you know windows retro compatibilite is way more solid thn osx for exemple , also most dev support actual os and os -1  .... presonus is one of the few that done that ...

and we re talking a DAW , professional , they should know people don t change system specially studios that often ...

 

if you know how to get the dependencies missing , that would be cool ...

Unfortunately, as of today os - 1 actually means windows 10 1507 which was released in July 2015, around 5 years ago.
This isn't really the choice of the developers either. Management is the one that decides which OS versions are supported.
The update for the C runtime can be found here
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2999226/update-for-universal-c-runtime-in-windows
It will help a lot of programs install under windows 8 and 7, but it might also not be enough.

As far as 8Dio strings go, at least from what I've seen, Agitato Grandiose Ensemble Violins, Adagio Cellos and Adagio Violas seem to be considered pretty good.
They stand well on their own and even complement other orchestral libraries nicely.

1 hour ago, Zo said:

Oncle L wake me up when windows 8 support is back ....

Windows 8 is no longer officially supported by MANY apps.

Working as a software engineer, even our team's flagship product is no longer officially supporting windows 8 starting this year. And we're talking software that started being developed in the early 90s. Sure you CAN STILL install it under Win 8 (even 7) AFTER you install the dependencies (which come with Win 10).

Part of this is a lot of software is moving to Visual Studio 2019 whose dependencies are not installed on older windows by default.

Eh, it's the typical flat UI that's found in many modern apps.
I mean, ultimately it does what it says on the box.
Squareheads' NORA is another similar plugin, with a slightly better organized GUI (but don't expect a miracle).

3 hours ago, Fleer said:

Well, $250 on sale is a good upgrade price, considering you’re getting Cremona violins, cello and Arkhis for only $50 more than the KU upgrade at $200. Those are great libs. 

Yeah, $250 (on sale obviously) will be a very good upgrade price with all the new stuff that's included. Props to NI for not forcing us (yet) to subscribe.

TBH, if I was made of money I'd be tempted to preorder,.. 😂

It's either a scam, a knockoff or a shipment of stolen goods.

I got a license for the full MPC 2 software for $20 off e-bay about a year ago.

3 hours ago, telecode 101 said:

do you need the MPC touch kontroller to use this?

Nope, you can even use the Maschine Controller (at least MK2, though by now they should have MK3 support), or just the mouse and keyboard if you don't have a supported controller.

I got my links about 24 hours after applying.
Haven't installed it yet but it looks like a light version of the full MPC software v2 (which I have installed).
Basically it's similar (but not quite the same) as NI's Maschine.

On 7/16/2020 at 6:58 PM, Tezza said:

I don't understand what you are saying. Your saying in your first line that you don't need an internet connection to your DAW in order to run Native Access but in your second line you are saying that if the DAW is offline, then there is no solution.

[...]

Can you tell me how you are using native access without an internet connection to your DAW? It has to be on the DAW and it has to connect by the internet. Past K10U you cannot install anything from NI onto your DAW without having to constantly and consistently run Native Access (connected to the net). Even if you are loading from the hard drive, it needs to be connected to the net just to load the programs.

 

By DAW I assume you mean Ableton or Cubase or Studio One. Native Access has nothing to do with the DAW itself, it's a standalone program.

After I've activated the licenses for whatever I've installed, I can take my PC completely offline and have no issues running NI VSTs.

If you have a weak internet connection, one (true, pretty dumb) suggestion would be to take your PC to a friend's house (and if you have a laptop, just go to a local library or McDonald's). Though 100 GB of updates honestly sounds very weird, given you already bought the HDD version of K12U.

Maybe Native Access prioritizes online downloads for you, in which case I'd recommend installing from the HDD by hand. 

As for what I did: when you download an instrument once, Native Access doesn't immediately delete the setup files, so I just copied those setup files to an external drive. Next time I need to reinstall for whatever reason, no more downloading.

And given you have the HDD already, even better, install Native Access and log in then close it.
Then you install everything you have off your HDD manually.
Then you can start up Native Access again and let it activate what you installed.
Even if it prompts you that it has updates, you don't NEED to install all those updates, especially not the bigger ones.

6 hours ago, Tezza said:

Native Access requires a strong internet connection direct to your DAW which I don't have, so it's the end of the line for me with NI products, not a problem though as there are many other VST manufacturers that fill the void.

Uhhh... that's not really how it works. You don't need an internet connection to your DAW.

I'm assuming you mean your music computer is not online? In which case, yeah NI offers no real solution there.

But if you have even only a limited internet connection, it still works. For example, I have a bunch of NI installers backed up (because the downloads are large).

On the few occasions I needed to uninstall & reinstall a library (say to a new HDD or SSD), Native Access just picked it up afterwards. And on the (even more rare) occasions it didn't, it asked me to point it to the library on my HDD.

Intro price is $249.99 but I got an e-mail with a code for another $50 off, so check your e-mails if you want this.

Quote

Introducing SYMPHONIC AI - Animated Intelligence: An awe-inspiring fusion of orchestral samples and synthesis driven by motion that results in intelligent, elegant and dynamic symphonic instruments. Created in collaboration with our friends at Sample Logic, Symphonic AI is an extremely versatile platform for unlimited creativity combining real world organic performances with algorithmic synthetic perfection.

As a special offer for Red Room Audio customers, enter this unique coupon code at checkout to receive an additional $50 OFF the intro price:

RRA-pwrv-cQJo-MoFm-SAI

Thanks as always for your support!
Red Room Audio

Personally I can't afford to spend $200, right now, on yet another library I have no time to use. 😂

So, if anyone wants this code, go right ahead and use it 👍 (assuming it's not account-bound or something).

SongWish's reMIDI and Squaredheads' Nora are quite interesting "sequencer" VSTs, that basically let you plug in MIDI files and then allow you to "key-shift" that MIDI data in real time. Both have demo/trial versions available.