mettelus

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

To be sure, the ability for a plug-in to pass things like articulations and instrument names (a la drum maps) to a host would be reeeeeally useful.

What may or may not play into this is the ones I asked about have dedicate/proprietary playback engines. VSL onboarded with this even before the release of SO5.2 (what is demonstrated at the 8-minute mark in the video above), but it didn't seem to catch on unfortunately. From my perspective the marketing potential for VSTis to include Sound Variations (they could even say "Your DAW may call them Articulation Maps") would be huge for potential customers.... rather than the "Hey, figure out how our playback engine (or your DAW) works and you are good to go!" it would be "Get our cool instrument, and you will be composing to its full potential by just drag/dropping it into your host!" (all articulations and controls are exposed and labeled... contact your DAW if you cannot see them!).

DAWs will give access to things that are exposed to it by the plugin, but then a lot of manual work is (often) required as long as they are exposed (some proprietary ones are not). This is something each and every user must trudge through (sometimes for hours), and still may not be "right." I had a hunch when asking that some vendors would prefer forcing their playback engine on users, rather than let the users drive the playback engine seamlessly with their DAW... if Sound Variations were included, the user only needs to load an instrument and (could then) close the engine window, so users might never actually look at "the awesome GUI" created for it.

6 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

Many of these are very questionable. Some make absolutely no sense. Who picked Volcano 3 to replace Mondo Mod?  Some are $200+ effect suites to replace a $20 plugin. lol. 

This was exactly my reaction. Not sure what some plugins do from the name only, but some of the obvious FX have free versions readily available. That replacement list just comes across as product promotion to me (and some pretty expensive ones at that).

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

A big chunk of it came from the PreSonus extensions,

An interesting side topic from this was their implementation of Sound Variations (very akin to articulation maps) since SO5.2. While users can create these manually, it provided the ability for the vendor to embed them into the plugin directly so you can just open a plugin and boom, they are all there and mapped 100% accurately. I have reached out to a few vendors on some plugins with complex mappings and essentially got back "too difficult to implement" even though the vendor has the precise mapping in house to benefit the user tremendously (i.e., the vendor knows the "full map" while each and every user must fumble with creating one manually... although these can be shared, they are often lackluster in many cases). The intent was to save users a lot of time, but being linked to only one DAW it took off like a lead balloon.

As mentioned above with the VST3 spec, there is no requirement to implement the full feature set, which has also led to instances where a VST3 version may not work properly, but the VST2 version does. So much of this falls back onto the vendor side.

Quick Edit: The 8 minute mark in the above video demonstrates the ideal case for how Sound Variations can load if embedded by the vendor... simply open the instrument, and they are loaded automatically.

+1 to the above. Ideally you want your active project's data inside the machine you are working on (even on the C drive if you must). External drives (especially large USB 2 spinners) can have excessive seek times, especially when fragmented. When working with that many audio files, the drive needs to find each one, and may only be loading enough of each to fill the buffer, then repeating. If you have the option to get large sets of data off your internal drive (move to the external), that will be the best case. The contents of your "C:\Users\[username]\Downloads" could potentially be huge and can be moved. Contents of both "C:\Users\[userame]\AppData\Local\Temp" and "C:\Windows\Temp" may be huge if you have never purged them (you can also clean many files with Windows "Disk Cleanup" and selecting "Clean up system files" after choosing your C drive). There is a truckload of temporary files on the C drive that get put in place when apps are opened, but rarely get purged. Anything "in use" will not let you delete them, but the rest can go in both of those Temp directories.

Another option that may help (with slower drives), is to enable Read and Write Caching in CbB itself... Preferences->Audio->Sync and Caching (need "Advanced" at the bottom checked to see that option on the left). Typically, 512KB for both the wirte and read I/O buffers can help in that situation, but is also system dependent.

Hmmm.... Right at the top of the Coffee House it states:

"This is an inclusive discussion area, intended to promote music-related discussions that do not pertain specifically to Cakewalk software. Users of all experience levels and backgrounds can ask questions and share knowledge. By making your posts music-related, you help preserve the quality of these discussions.

As with all of our communities, we encourage mutual respect..."

There is a contradiction here.

For the OP, rather than type the same thing and have it deleted again, I sent you a PM. I am assuming you didn't see the replies yesterday.

If someone asks a legitimate question, they deserve a legitimate answer. As simple as that.  

6 hours ago, craigb said:

Never have to deal with negative numbers either!

Yeah, those really screw with ideal gas law equations.

Re-read this thread so another quick comment. It seems "music theory" gets a lot of attention, which is a nicety for sure, but there is significantly more to Scaler 2 than that. The performance features are also of note, although they are also classified in musical terminology so they sort of force you to learn terms (e.g., Italian). These can also be used to directly drive another VSTi (great for noodling around), or even dragged/dropped into a MIDI track. Although there is a performance engine internally, I find that more overhead than the drag/drop method (too many mouse clicks and you can work faster in the PRV). I also have an affinity for anacrusis, which seems to be the bane of many VSTi sequencing engines.

As mentioned early on, definitely worth the trial. Also recommended to check the tutorials first (to understand the full feature set and GUI) before the trial to get the most out of that decision period.

43 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

it can bring advanced chord substitutions

+1. This is a feature that rarely gets mentioned but can be very useful. Even though piano was my first instrument, I consider myself predominantly a guitarist. A lot of chords and inversions get lost in the "reality" of finger dexterity on a guitar (either difficult or impossible to fret properly), so those options can get blown off for simpler alternatives. Scaler 2 has been a nice tool for me to regain some focus on the sheer versatility of the piano.

There are numerous tutorials online. The GUI is a bit more complex than it appears at first glance, so learning to navigate that right away helps to accelerate the learning curve.

+1 With so many free FX out there, it is often simplest to apply an audio FX to the output of whatever you are doing that doesn't have that feature internally (it is actually fairly common to find missing features you want to use). Automation tracks (for panning) are probably the simplest solution for what you want in this case.

Melda has MAutopan as part of their FreeFXBundle (you only need the free version of that), which is worth considering if you want extreme precision on panning (such as every other beat, or even ramping pans around during playback). An FX similar to that allows real-time adjustment to "test things" without having to deal with automation tracks that might not have the granularity you require.

It loads all of the accessible data into the new project. Tracks, busses, etc. Start a new project and drag drop that suspect cwp from the CbB browser onto the track view.

51 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

by having the MS-approved .sys file read and execute code from an external script

+1, this particular tactic has been employed for years. Macros, batch files, etc., that use a "trusted" program to execute can cause serious issues. As they get discovered/quelled there always seems to be another exploit in the pipeline behind it.

1 hour ago, jkoseattle said:

So I created a new project and am painstakingly recreating every track with it's bus chain and FXs and everything

Did you try dragging the potentially corrupted cwp file from the CbB browser into the new project? If that works it could save you a lot of time.

Depending on format used, a video is often only the video and audio track. Many video editors will allow multiples of both, but DAWs tend to only work with one video track, and you would need to bring in additional audio tracks manually (broadcast waves preferred for simplicity of import). 

Markers will not be recognized by a media player, so you will only get one "song" from doing that. If doing CD's you can use any free CD burning software to create an album, and if simply using wav/mp3 files, it is better to export each individually. The metadata associated with those wav/mp3 files will allow you to specify album and track information that the media player can then use (so you can jump to tracks, etc.).

2 hours ago, Ben Staton said:

However, there's a way to avoid the issue altogether. In Windows display settings, select the monitor and choose "Disconnect this display" (as opposed to "Extend desktop to this display"). Alternatively, physically unplug it from your PC! In either case, your plugins will appear on your primary monitor even if they were positioned on the disconnected monitor before.

Thanks for the response. Quick question, does this behavior occur when shifting from extended back to a single display in Windows, i.e., shifting Windows itself from Extended mode to Display 1/2? In that situation the unused display goes into standby mode (with power), but I forget now if the plugin windows pile back onto the single display or not. I seem to recall that was the "quick fix" but wanted to verify when you get a moment.

Quick post so I remember to follow up on this.

Is this similar to Reallusion where the brunt of things is focused on third-party sales? My biggest gripe with Reallusion has been issues with bouncing models in and out of Blender, so wondering if this is pretty much the same in that regard.

Update to the above: The video below has a nice summary of the final release of Poser 12. I had never heard of Poser so was curious about it. Blender still gets a lot more recommendations on 3D-specific material (and is free).

2 hours ago, Shane_B. said:

there's more content available than you could ever watch in your lifetime

Ain't that the truth. I grew up in the boonies so never had cable. I think I watched MTV all of one weekend when visiting my great aunt during their first 8 years. 

+1 Don't over complicate things. You can work with and fire off samples probably quicker than finding an "instrument." There are free samples all over the internet. You can either MIDI fire them or construct audio groove clips for each song section (so you can drag the right edge out once you have a bar or two).

If a disc is close to full, definitely consider transferring about 10% of that to another drive (even temporarily). There are system and app temp files that need places to go, so that will stress your system if you get over 90%, especially on the C drive.

I think MConfusion and MBaffle were added, but I am not quite sure what they do?

The mic flub in that was a perfect anecdote of a happy accident, and they tend to be more common than some would think. Not only does tone chasing involve the gear, but also the recording setup (which could be a one-off situation you can't "quite" replicate later on).

Not that it was spectacular, but the sheer duration stunned me. Each year there are 2 concerts at USNA (seating capacity of only like 5700), so often older bands would come. Senior year we all voted for one concert... "Nine Inch Nails" won, but then backed out at the last last minute. Tesla said, "You need us, we will be there," and they kept their word. Opening set went an hour (Firehouse), then Tesla went on to play 2 1/2 hours. I was never a big Tesla fan before that, but afterwards told someone, "What made that truly impessive for me was they get 'stuck' with a concert to maybe 4000 people and poured their all into a 2.5 hour concert." Never seen anything like that before or since.

The singular one-off comment that was memorable came from working the crowd... Bangles show and Susanna Hoffs comes out wearing a midshipman cover. Plebes were required to attend in uniform, so she comes out, surveys the crowd and the first thing out of her mouth, "Ooooh, we just LOVE seamen!!" That play on words was priceless.

5 hours ago, Grem said:

Never heard of this. 

+1 to what Shane said above. The heater is another "radiator" in the dash of your car, so when the radiator isn't effective, it gives you another means to pull heat out of the coolant (the heater loop is also always "online" if you have a situation where a thermostat valve fails and the radiator never comes online). This works, and I have resorted to it, but what totally sucks about it is that you will only need it when it is hot outside, so it makes the passenger compartment a miserable place to be, even with it blowing on the windshield with all of the windows open.

There was a thread years ago discussing similar regarding the frequency collisions on the lower end during live performances (I seem to recall @Bapu and @bitflipper were in on that). One of the punchlines in that was, "We had the piano player sit on his left hand." (to avoid over-driving the bass player).

Due to the tuning and string configuration of a piano, it is a very rich instrument, so your example above is a valid approach to adapt. Definitely a case-by-case basis assessment. Another "trick" commonly employed is using frequency masking (where a signal 1-2dB will tend to dominate) to your advantage. If a part is repetitive, once the listener hears it, they anticipate it, so it is also common to take that part and reduce volume 3-6dB... the listener still "hears" it, but it is deep enough that it removes most of the collision issues. That repetitive part will then often ramp in and out of focus (volume automation) as the song progresses to keep it relevant, yet not dominate each and every song section.