mettelus

It is worth noting that MConvolutionEZ (part of the MFreeFXBundle) is also a (free) IR loader.

There is always some gimmick out and about, but unfortunately the common limiting denominator is human hearing, which rarely gets discussed.

"Now it seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table, but you only want the ones you can't get." - Eagles

MS has had "Home Use Programs" for years that were $9.99 based on employees needing to use Office at home. IIRC, that program ended with 2019, but I thought they were forcing 365 on everyone. I didn't realize there was anything after 2019, so these might be a return of the HUP variety.

This is a pretty significant update. Bear in mind that Rebelle got its start being the most realistic watercolor app, so a lot of features in Painter were not there. The new fractal resizing is impressive. I have been working with scans of 8.5x11 drawings done years ago at 300 dpi, so default to resizing them before painting, but when zooming you get the pixelated effect at some point. The fractal resizing interpolates (also with liquify/warp tools) to alleviate that. Painter doesn't have the liquify tool, it is actually in Paintshop Pro, so Rebelle adding that directly to the app is a one-up on Painter (or porting it to Photoshop from Rebelle). Brushes are more detailed and you can add them to favorites (huge deal). I opened work from Rebelle 3 and brush specifics used are long since forgotten (Painter had this issue as well). Overall, they added a lot of things you would need to bounce into Photoshop for. This video is from a guy who doesn't really use Rebelle but reviews it. His presentation is better and more critical of the new changes. He mentioned that people who got Rebelle 5 after Nov 1 get 6 for free, so made me wonder when the deal in the OP expired (I assume it was before Nov 1).

I just realized why they did this. Rebelle 6 is out on the street now. Some of the new processing features are impressive, especially the nanopixel tools. Watching that video now.

https://www.escapemotions.com/products/rebelle/about

5 hours ago, bitflipper said:

This dialog is a great opportunity to add little features and more information that will help the user solve his own problems, or to give experienced users something to go on when attempting to help a beginner.

This is a big reason for this feature. Something as simple as "[plugin] expected at [this path] failed to load for [reason]" would allow for quicker troubleshooting (both solo and on the forums).

45 minutes ago, cclarry said:

I actually lost weight...I bet I walked at LEAST 500 miles LOL!

OMG, you should have taken a plane there instead of walking to Vegas!

Not sure, but it has been included in the Samplitude Suite. If you bought that during the Gibson debacle, you would own SpectraLayers Pro 4.

9 hours ago, Brian Lawler said:

I have not used the stem separator, other than to observe the function out of curiosity.  I've only used RX 9 Standard for "fixing" problems (usually some kind of noise) in old recordings.  It is called "Music Rebalance" and you will find it referenced by same in the manual.  When you click "Separate" in the Rebalance window, it splits the audio into four stems vocal/bass/percussion/other as new tabs in the RX Editor.  Each tab can be edited, exported, etc. 

Thank you for posting this. I did a quick test of this (RX 9 Advanced versus SpectraLayers Pro 9), and the unmix stem results were comparable on the same song using default presets. Both of them took roughly 90 seconds to unmix stems from a song 7:30 in length. From that perspective, RX Standard would match that feature. SpectraLayers (Pro) will also drill down two more levels of unmixing, but it is very dependent on the reverb usage in the master to get a pristine (or even suitable) track. If mixing back into the same master, it is pretty transparent since the material missing that caused the phasing is in another stem. In many cases it can also be mixed into another composition. SpectraLayers Pro 9 also includes features of RX Advanced (Ambient matching and some of the more precision tools), so it really comes down to what you want to use it for (and if you already own RX Standard/Advanced). The display resolution in Pro 9 (and responsiveness of the GUI) is better IMO, and they are obviously monitoring each other's products (navigation is identical in many regards between them). As with all things, they each have a trial version to test out (highly recommended), and the comparison charts for RX and SpectraLayers are available.

1 hour ago, abacab said:

I've not needed to unmix anything yet, but Music Rebalance is interesting in that it might be useful for creating a backing track minus one part for practice or jamming. Has anyone tried that?

This is primarily how I use it; either for practice, covers, or to redo a friend's work from 20+ years ago that only existed as an analog master. Drums can be redone with drum replacer (or similar) if not used outright, other tracks can be re-performed and matched as necessary. Depending on frequency content of a song, content belonging to one stem may end up in another, so a little surgery may be required for a jam track. This is often best done by bringing the stems into a DAW and moving that content to an additional track (also alleviates phasing issues from reverb in many cases), then muting the track(s) you want to remove.

I have RX 9 Advanced, but really cannot speak to a comparison because I rarely use it. Over the past few versions SpectraLayers has added repair features seemingly identical to RX, but I use SpectraLayers to unmix stems more than anything (then tear into them). RX to me is more of a repair tool and I am not sure if it can unmix stems? Hopefully someone who uses RX regularly can speak to this better (I cannot).

This has also been included in the Samplitude Suite, but not sure prices (something to check as well). v4 was included in the Samplitude Suite at the time of the Gibson debacle, and when I got v7 it was the same price to upgrade SpectraLayers individually as to upgrade the Samplitude Suite to get it (plus Convology XT). If buying only SpectraLayers for the first-time, I am not sure if it will get better than the $179 (but check the crossgrade too!). As with a lot of these packages, the on-ramp is fairly brutal (then they bleed you slowly over the years to keep it updated).

2 hours ago, Grem said:

You knew someone would do it!!

LOL, of course! Ironically I updated SpectraLayers last night and used Highway to Hell to test drive it (the vocal cleanup after unmixing stems is better than it used to be). I have copies of HtH (one tuned to 440Hz) on my desktop so I always have something to grab in a pinch.

I have to drive too far to use Costco conveniently, so will continue to stay away! AC/DC is a better experience.

I updated SpectraLayers to Pro 9 last night and the GUI response is significantly better, but Unmix stems takes twice as long.

One thing I did not realize until last night is that even the Elements version has the noise-removal feature most are looking for in posts here. Adobe Audition and iZotope RX also have this as well, but they both cost more to get this level of surgical accuracy.

A pretty good litmus for this is starting with keeping things that are 64-bit VST3 and then cherry picking the rest. More and more apps that will use plugins are starting to lean toward VST3 only. I have been looking more at things that take up MASSIVE amounts of drive space that I rarely touch. Even though they were deals, 500+ GB of "stuff" will come to a reckoning at some point.

Quick insight to add to the above. Firstly, doubling power (duplicate tracks feeding same bus), will add 3 dB, and this occurs on every doubling. If you double tracks 6 times (64 tracks), that is an 18 dB increase. Granted, not all tracks will have sound at the same time, so lowering them all to -18dB (or even -21dB) should give you enough headroom to begin. If they are hot by themselves, you may need even lower.

Bear in mind, in the digital realm signal-to-noise ratio is everything. With noise level low enough, mixing at lower levels will not affect anything adversely (you can use the master fader to achieve monitoring volume). Be cautious of making single tracks too hot as they feed into the rest.

Similarly, you can do the same with busses, each doubling is +3dB. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc. (tracks or busses, depending on approach) will add 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, etc. dB respectively. You can also take the approach of each buss hitting -9dB to keep their combination in check (work tracks into busses with that being the target). In a situation where tracks are hot, but you want ones to stand out either 1) lower volume on others or 2) mirror EQ unnecessary content out of the other tracks.

Another trick to achieving volume control is that once content repeats so the listener "gets it," it can often be safely lowered -6dB so that new content gets focus. The listener still recognizes it because they have heard it already.

Mixing is challenging, but also fun and rewarding. Best of luck!

Ctrl-S helps with a lot of programs, bugs or not. Specifically for software with "undo history," it is prudent to set that to a realistic number (I use 10 on most things). Most are set to a massive number that just consumes RAM. IIRC, CbB defaulted to 100, but forget now.

The Step Sequencer has such a function, but might not be suitable for this application (will add variations to looping material).

If the end result will be a printed master, randomization loses utility at a certain point and may become difficult to replicate, but not nearly as bad a oscillators out of sync on some synths.

13 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I had one of those! The filmstrip part broke early on, but the record player lived for a few more years. Until I started....experimenting on it.

LOL, I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of it and took a while for me to look it up. I got all the hand-me-downs from my older brother and sister, but I really liked the fact that turntable had 4 speeds to it (not sure I have ever seen a 16 1/2 rpm record in my life, but playing records on the wrong speed was fun as a kid).

The one I am using atm is the MK710 set. It already has 3+ years under its belt and still fully functional. Historically I am abusive to keyboards, so the spring under the larger keys (like the left ctrl) give out over time or I tear the contact mat between the keys and the circuit board. The mouse is the factor I like most with them for the heavy wheel and extra buttons. I don't recall ever having one of those mice fail (the mouse is the M705).

Ouch, I didn't catch what you were trying to do before you did it... I tried their unifying software years ago and it was an utter fail (not sure if it has been improved). The keyboards and mice are chipped similar to a garage door opener, key fobs, etc., so the signal is specific to the dongle (what the Unifying software is supposed to solve). It was when I was on Win7 that I tried their unifying software, but that messed up Windows drivers on me completely. The keyboard has a bunch of buttons I never use (why I never load their software), but the metal wheel in the mouse is a feature I use a lot, especially scrolling though massive documents. In all honesty, I consider the sets consumables and end up replacing them every 4 years or so (as a set).

1 hour ago, abacab said:

Cons: Too many pages and tabs for me. I'm a visual person who prefers to see everything on one page, or at least as few as possible.

I only ever got Wavestation for this same reason. Navigation on hardware with limited controls is not fun as it is, but to replicate that in a GUI just comes across as lazy to me. I didn't get it to relive the frustration of paging through menus with buttons but for the the sounds. Maybe I have become jaded from the hardware manufacturers whose supporting software makes them significantly easier to tweak than from the hardware alone.

Not all instruments have all variations sampled; the Hellrazer is bridge only as well. Read the info on instruments to be sure, but they are fairly easy to tweak.

If you can find an old vintage Show'N Tell, that has the filmstrip display too!

Their software is not required if you use Win7 or better. The ONLY thing that does is allows customization of the keyboard/mouse at the expense of always running. All of the special keys/buttons are exposed to running applications via Windows automatically, so you can assign them in the apps themselves.

Their software has been flaky for a while for me. I have not used it for a few years now.