John Bradley

Which was handy, given that the synth’s simple architecture was pretty much only capable of basic patches. 😏 If they’d have glued on some sort of built-in reverb they’d have ruled the world!

Related. One of my fave videos, in which Mr. Synthmania demonstrates a BigSky on a number of synths, including the (crap) Casio VL-1 toy. With predictable results. Delicious reverb can fix anything!

I don't get the Juno love either. Had a Juno-6 back in the '90s and gave it away for free at some point after I got my Quadrasynth. Don't regret it in the least. Like most of the '70s & early '80s synths, it just didn't sound all that good unless you had the outboard effects to add the 'yum' factor. Like, say a Strymon BigSky that had magically fallen into a wormhole so as to appear 40 years ahead of time. And if we're talking VSTs, which I assume we are, why bother with the budget model when Jupiter 8 VSTs exist?

I've had the issue where I've used the freebie demo of a product (Steven Slate Drums), and then bought the full version of same - which removed the demo (they can't coexist on the same machine) and broke the projects I used it on. But that's another matter entirely.

That’s why I love the Arturia synths and just don’t ‘get’ Syntronik.

Anyone tried it out yet?

Y'know, for a free forum in support of a free DAW, this place sure does cost me quite a bit of money! 😃

I’ll note that I misspoke in my explanation above. A “clean click” with zero movement of the mouse doesn’t draw a note at all. You have to drag to the right slightly to get a note to appear (with the current default length). If you drag right a little further, you get the wierdness where the note snaps to near-zero length. If you haven’t released the mouse already and keep dragging right, the note length snaps to where the cursor is, and eventually snaps to the next grid position if you keep going. This is all dependent in various ways on the snap magnetism setting, and how far apart the grid lines are in pixels. I’m often editing/creating drum parts, and as such want 16th note snap (if not higher) and want to see at least 4 bars at a time in the PRV, so my grid lines are fairly tight, and I run into this issue all the freakin’ time. Your mileage may vary. But preventing the notes from ever snapping to “to short to edit” would be most appreciated.

See the video below. I've got snap enabled, and the grid set to 16th notes. I'm drawing notes that are roughly a 32nd in duration. If you do a clean click, you get a note of the desired duration aligned with the grid. But if you move the cursor slightly to the right while clicking – because you're entering a bunch of notes and you're in a hurry – the note snaps to a tiny line (duration = 2 ticks). Once you've released the mouse (again, because you're quickly entering notes) it's not possible to stretch it because you can't grab the right edge. Pretty much all you can do (mouse-wise, without involving the Quantize command, etc.) is lasso them to select, delete, click one of the good notes to reset the default duration, and get back to note-drawing.. I can't imagine a case where having the note snap to a well-nigh uneditable 'zero duration' blob would ever be desirable. In any event, it's odd that the note does this snapping when the cursor moves into the rightmost 1/3rd (or 1/4th) of the blob, but if you keep dragging right it unsnaps to where the cursor is, before snapping to the next grid line as you keep going. Hardly fatal, but it's annoying and it happens frequently enough. At least for me. cakewalk prv.webm

Those would be known as “good developers”. 🙂

My biggest complaint with Massive X is that while I own it as part of Komplete 13, it’s the only VST out of over 1000 on my rig that I can’t run. Because it requires some instruction set extensions that showed up a few gens after my i7 CPU was made, rather than quietly falling back to generic x64 code and slightly worse performance. So, happy to hear it’s not all that. Pigments 3 (and this Phase Plant, presumably) run just peachy for my purposes.

But Waves is having their big Day That Ends In A 'Y' Sale!

T-Bone 2: $19 Big Beautiful Door: $29 Big Clipper: $29 Transgressor 2: $29 That Transgressor deal might be good for anyone who missed out on picking up Eventide's SplitEQ for $49 recently. They appear to do the same thing. https://www.audiodeluxe.com/category/brands/boz-digital-labs?f[0]=bm_field_on_sale_now%3Atrue

Yep, that juicy OME50OTC code just sitting there was too much to ignore, so I picked up SplitEQ for $50. Eventide has now extracted $90 from me that otherwise wouldn't have happened. Quite the 'screw up' on their part! Tried to get Physion for $25 as well, but the code only worked once. Just as well. Upon reflection, I can do everything Physion did (and more) by just routing audio to 2 tracks, putting SplitEQ on each at 'transient only' and 'tone only' settings, and then putting whatever VSTs I want to effect the two halves as desired - not limited to the few FX within Physion.

You got $25 off instead of 25%, were able to use it on sale priced products, and could use it over and over again. Other than that, it was a flawless promotion. Someone should lose their job over this. (Yes, several of us benefited greatly, AND Eventide got $40 from each of us that otherwise wouldn’t have happened, so win-win. But I’m not cynical enough - yet - to believe this massive screw-up was deliberate.)

Macrium Reflect Free Edition. Do a full backup. Generate the Macrium Restore boot disc/usb stick. Remove your boot HD and put it somewhere safe, replace with SSD. Boot the Restore media and restore the full image backup to your new drive, extending the partition out to the maximum size. Note: this is assuming your SSD is as large or larger than the HD it's replacing. It can grow the primary NTFS partition during the restore. I don't know if it can shrink it. Google that, if relevant.

UPDATE: The code is still working for me at least. I can only buy one plugin at a time, and have to keep going back to Groove3 to hit the Redeem Here button, but I've gotten a couple of them at $4 so far.

I was able to Claim the Perk via my iPad - neither desktop browser worked, for whatever reason. Redeemed it, and was able to add MangledVerb to my cart for $25 off. Quickly added the other 9 to the cart, and the code had been fixed to knock $2.50 off each, rather than $25... So, I've just saved myself $40, kinda. Worth noting that the Groove code knocks $25 off the full H9 Set (from $199 down to $174), which isn't a bad deal for 10 plugins, but it's not like I need them. Update: $40 successfully spent, $4 at a time...

Called it! Oh well, I suppose the $20 ebook I bought will still be of some use.

Well, I apparently broke it. Bought a thing on Groove3 so I'm now eligible for all the various Perks. Clicking Claim Perk on any of them puts up an "Error: Invalid Data. Reload the page and submit the form again" pop-up. In both Chrome and Edge, with all the privacy extensions disabled.

Huh. I also got a free year of Groove3 last year when I bought MPS 4.1, but in the Perks it says I need to purchase something from Groove3 to unlock the deal. Tempting to drop $20 on some videos I don’t need just to take advantage of this bug, but I’m pretty sure that the moment I do so, Eventide will have fixed it to be 25% off, not 25$, which would serve me right.

Recently got promo email from the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City announcing an upcoming Chubby Checker show. I mock Elton John for taking a 2 year period of admittedly top-notch work and pretty much coasting on that for the next 50 years, but Mr. Checker has been living since 1960 on the strength of a single song, God bless him! That said, to be 81 and have people only remember you because of a hit you recorded when you were 19… that has to be it’s own special form of Hell. Who wants to even be reminded of anything they did when they were 19?

I could happily go the rest of my life without hearing or playing Hard To Handle or What I Like About You ever again.

Note, if you have Native Instruments KOMPLETE, I'd also recommend adding process exclusions for Komplete Kontrol.exe ScanPluginsApp_x64.exe So that Komplete Kontrol doesn't take forever to launch. It'll still scan all your VSTs on startup - doesn't seem to be any way to prevent that - but not running a virus scan on each one every time speeds up the process dramatically.

...thanks to the over-aggressive Real Time Protection offered by Windows Defender (MsMpEng.exe). Some people suggest adding exclusions for all your VST folders, but that seems dangerous to me, given that VSTs are the only executable code I routinely download and run on my rig, and "check out this great new free VST from some guy" seems like a pretty good attack vector. Note that adding folder exclusions excludes the files from being scanned ever, even in scheduled/manual Quick or Full Scans. Instead, in Windows Security's Virus & Threat Protection settings | Exclusions add a pair of Process Exclusions for C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\VstScan.exe C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Cakewalk.exe The latter is probably unnecessary, but what the heck. Anyway, Cakewalk startup happens much more quickly (over 1000 VSTs scanned/installed on this system), and any Defender system scans will still check all the VSTs for naughtiness.