mettelus

I am pretty neutral to it all as well. One of the bigger complaints by new users has been curb appeal, and it is definitely getting attention now. I expect this to evolve similar to how the theme editor in CbB did. I am pretty tolerant of growing pains; the stagnant issues are what tend to bother me. 

Melda has been pumping out updates in rapid succession in the past couple of years, and they are pretty receptive to user feedback IMO.

Not knowing anything about Komplete, I had to go digging for info and it seems that the HDD is USB 2.0 and cannot be used as a sample drive. It doesn't cost anything, and would definitely counter slow internet connections, but seems at the expense of activation time (you have to wait for the HDD to arrive before anything can activate).

https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/210271705-Can-I-use-the-KOMPLETE-ULTIMATE-Hard-Drive-as-my-Sample-Library-Drive-

It is sad that it is easier to find things on NI's site searching Google than trying to navigate the site itself.

I was going to respond to this thread earlier, but then it sort of exploded. Some of these comments are already mentioned, but worth repeating.

First and foremost, if music it is something you enjoy, then do it for that reason. Doing it for any other reason is something to reconsider.

Vocally, in addition to advice above, know your range and limitations, and leverage those. A chromatic tuner is an awesome tool to practice with and will help you with determining your comfortable range as well - the reason I say this is that while singing to a piano note is great, you also need to know where you are. Practicing duration for notes will yield a lot of insight into what is most comfortable for both range and duration of passages (esp. for your own lyrics). Once you know your normal range and capabilities, you can choose songs in a proper tuning for your voice. One big reason 432 tuning is used is to remove stress from the vocalist... there are many options for this. The focus here is to leverage the true range of your voice, not to "force" it to where it doesn't want to go.

With asthma, takes lanes and comping can be your friend. If running out of air, rather than strain yourself, leverage this tool. Do passages multiple times individually if necessary, but over time you may find you can do more and more in one pass. Practicing is like exercise, so simple things like "karaoke" where you sing to a recorded track (in your range), then mix the commercial track down (or even mute it) will yield a lot of insight. Again, these are tools to know yourself, adapt, and improve.

In-ear-monitor (or headphones)... people sound differently (higher) when recorded than they do to themselves because the bones between the vocal chords and the ears actually dampen higher frequencies. Listening to the mic in real-time allows you to hear and adjust your singing dynamically. Once you get used to this, you will condition yourself to sing the way it gets heard (by the mic and your audience). As was mentioned previously in this thread, a lot of this comes from singing technique and learning yourself.

If you have never seen the movie "The King's Speech," it is worth watching... but will leave this with a simple scene from it:

53 minutes ago, Ryan99 said:

What is the recommended package to get?

 

Grem has a very important point... Until you actually get your feet wet, understand it, and use it, the Pro version will give you the functionality of everything, plus the DAW plugin. You can always upgrade later and even create your own presets, so until you get to the point that you want more, the Pro version will give you enough material to play with to learn what the program can (and cannot) do.

Not sure why, but that video made me think of the leeches scene in "Stand By Me"... maybe the reason for the dress change when she got out of the water.

On 6/4/2019 at 9:00 PM, Billy86 said:

 So, when you log onto your account page and look at your products, the products aren’t there? I don’t know what third-party products qualify for a crossgrade  price, all I know is that one of mine did.   When I clicked on the higher price to put it into the cart, that was when it suggested I check my products for a potential class grade lower price. 

I think that was the kicker to the whole thing. I rarely log into my account, and wrongly assumed that the  "My KOMPLETE Offers" was for everything (i.e., Kontakt as well), which it is not. My products all show in Native Access (my primary interaction with NI), and I checked my account again after your message (show there too), but all pricing deals are invisible until actually clicking on the Kontakt product. At that point is when the crossgrade offer showed up (even before adding to cart).

Then again, iZotope is on the opposite end of the spectrum... they show you deals for products you already own, and multiple versions of deals for the same product at different prices. Difference is their customer service is more than happy to update issues with your account and put another deal coupon in that list for you.

There have been reports flying about that ntoskrnl is causing the latency in 1903, but I have not seen anyone call out if that was due to a reset of settings or a difference in the kernel itself. I am still on 1803, and a quick search of issues with it seem to stem back to 1809, but not sure what the real situation is.

[OT] Glasgow gives me a chuckle... one of the strangest travel experiences ever for me. After flying into Heathrow and telling them I need to get to Glasgow, the rep gives me the deer in the headlights look (came across that they had no clue where Glasgow even was), then runs into the back and brings out someone with a map. They point to Glasgow and ask, "Here?" "Sure thing." "But the train doesn't go that far... it stops down here (several miles away)" Getting there took 17 hours total, but once in Scotland, the folks were awesome. (This was about 6 months after "Braveheart" was released, and was one of the most hospitable places I have ever been.)

Does NI even have a support email? I had to chuckle since I have had products that qualify, but they never showed, and I won't chase anyone down to give them money. I have only been on the support page a few times, but never found any way to contact them. Not only does that cost NI, but every vendor that relies on them - I just see "FULL Kontakt" and forget I ever saw them.

There is also a free Martin from AmpleSound (AGM2 Lite), but I forget offhand what the limitation of it is.

6 hours ago, Zo said:

Ahaha thks , what's so big about Ara 2 ?

PreSonus and Celemony are joined at the hip, so the most functionality is reflected in Studio One (Chord track functionality is a big one, but you can Google ARA 2 for more details). Cakewalk was neck and neck till Gibson yanked the rug out from under them, but CbB is recovering from that event. Unless you are in the "ARA 2 now!" mindset, I think CbB will pick up the gambit sooner than it would take to learn another DAW.

^^^^ Please take note of this. In addition to the help in this forum, Noel is one who can definitely run things to ground if you give him enough detail.

The Baker's monitor this forum, so more detail and specifics are much more likely to be addressed. Details of what plugins, workflow that caused the crash, dmp files, and even the project in question will get significantly more attention toward resolution. Typing forum posts take time, so including those details has merit toward your own time.

I do realize some aim at sensationalism, but those posts will roll off into oblivion.

Since it is new, it may have drivers that need updating. ASUS is pretty good about posting updates on their website, but "new" machines do not always have those installed prior to shipping. The demo song should play with WASAPI (shared) on the Realtek without issues.

It would be good to also run through standard tweaks and disabling unnecessary startup apps and services. When running in DAW mode a lot of that stuff can be a menace.

10 hours ago, Grem said:

12 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I thought it might zoom centered on the Now Time, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

This is what it does. Zooms in on the Now Time as Center. It does for me. That's how I work. 

This is correct with one caveat... when there isn't enough lead material to the left of the now time, the now time will drift center while zooming in, and left while zooming out, but the center of the zoom is still on the now time. That repositioning is the awkward part.

+1, you can also install CbB via the Bandlab Assistant (which is how it activates CbB for 6 months), then uninstall the Bandlab Assistant. That handshake is only required once.

CbB is basically the continuation of SONAR, so it has a lot of program updates. Just to verify things, it is also good to walk through the preference pages side by side when first installed.

Another trick is that the Matrix View is a 2x2 grid, so depending how "all over" the clips are that you want to use, you can drag/drop snippets into the Matrix View as a repository (think of it as a visual browser). You can also sort and easily preview them there before drag/dropping them to their final destination...and can drag them out multiple times if you have repeating parts to save multiple copy/pastes.

[The "Lego block" version of arrangement 😀]

That Auto-Tune Access is very rudimentary (2 knobs with 3 settings each) and locked to Waveform as mentioned above. I did a quick test of it on a few things and it doesn't seem to do anything that MAutoPitch cannot (which is free).

Ironically, what I immediately did not like about Auto-Tune Access had nothing to do with its function, but it has a forced handshake to use (via WIBU Systems), and also forces you to allow Antares to collect usage data - it will not install without this enabled. Just installing the WIBU app created a handful of auto-starting services and registry rigamarole that isn't my cup of tea.

From what I saw with Revoice, it seems geared more toward video, to allow a second take of voice to be replaced so it matches the original frame for frame. You can even replace one voice with another which is used in several commercials lately. I cannot think of how to do that in Melodyne.

In the mean time, there is a "Spin Down" button on iZotope's free Vinyl plugin.

I didn't get the scan issue some noted, but when initially opening projects MIDI would randomly disengage on patch changes then come back. A reboot solved this, so I would recommend creating a restore point prior to and a reboot after installation. Not gotten to fiddle with it much yet so the jury is still out on the new content.

1 hour ago, Starise said:

Have you ever been working on a large project and somehow you hit or tap a key  accidentally and everything goes wonky.

I think we all have, one of the best for me was thinking a dialog box had popped up that hadn't and I typed "SONAR"... this was back when offset was still linked to the O. Luckily, it changed visually so that I could back out of it immediately.

On 5/14/2019 at 11:23 PM, Starship Krupa said:

Regarding Meldaproduction plug-ins, I asked Vojtech about this, and he said that for whatever reason, he had neglected to do this from the start with his plug-ins, which made it impossible to go back and fix it, so it's a feature that will apparently forever be missing in Melda-Land.

Vojtech responded quickly about the feature request with "we actually removed the 32/64 option intentionally, because people generally don't understand what it actually means and it led to all sorts of confusion and needed support," which I understand. So for the OP, the available options have already been mentioned above:

1. Reinstall VST3 only.
2. Install to a path that won't be seen by the VST scan.
3. Manually delete them after installation.

If you have a DAW which may require VST2s, the only real option would be #2, which Steve mentioned previously.

You can try Dependency Walker with CbB installed to see what files are being used with those DXis running. 

3 hours ago, Chuck E Baby said:

Could indicate Windows went into sleep mode.

My experience has been (with any software) is if im not using for more than 5 minutes, shut it down.

Windows is notorious for not coming out of hibernation/sleep properly. The quickest way to check this is save your work and reboot the machine. *If* that resolves it, start digging into the power options you have set. Be aware there is more than just "never sleep"... in the "advanced settings" section (via change advanced power settings) there are things like "USB selective suspend," etc. Be sure to walk through each of those if a reboot fixes the issue.