Amicus717

I switched to Cubase during the bleak days when Cakewalk was drifting abandoned, and I think it's an outstanding DAW, especially for me. Completely stable, seriously rich in features. I'm virtually all midi in what I do, and Cubase's midi tools are the best I have ever used. Period. I still use Cakewalk regularly, too -- I find it comfortable and intuitive for when I'm doing final mixes on my music, and I have a serious addiction to the ProChannel and its plugins, as well as the L-Phase EQ and Multiband. All my music that has been posted in the songs forum here was built in Cubase, and then exported and -- for lack of a better word -- mastered in Cakewalk. Even if I was not still a Cakewalk user on some level, I'd be on this forum, though. Great group of people, with lots of knowledge and a pretty good sense of humor, and in Larry's case an unerring ability to make me poorer. And hey, maybe one day Cakewalk will evolve its midi tools and give Cubase a run for its money! I'd switch back full time in a heartbeat. But if that did happen, I'd probably never know without hanging around here.

I'm still trying to figure out if that is true legato I'm hearing in the demo tracks...

Boy, do I like this one. Just a great song all around -- really catchy, great playing and vocal work. Totally enjoyed it. To my ears, the refrain evoked the slightest hints of America (the band, of course), especially in the vocal work. I do agree that the storm fade-in at the beginning is rather abrupt. A more deliberate fade in might work quite nicely, here. But that's really a minor quibble. Really grade A stuff, IMHO. Rob

Composer Guy Rowland has some good walk-thrus of various ProjectSAM libraries, including the above mentioned Orchestra Essentials. Pretty good overview of what they contain and how they sound. He also covers Lumina and some of the earlier Symphobia libraries in his other videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl7d6jBTab8

And Play 6 is a definite improvement on previous versions, fwiw, although that's not saying a huge amount. I found that my total usage of EastWest libraries went way down after I got a full version of Kontakt. Access to all the Kontakt libraries was quite a game changer for me. The only EW library that I fire up on a regular basis is Hollywood Brass. HW Percussion gets a bit of use, and occasionally HW Strings (mainly to use the playable runs patches). I have a bunch of other EW libraries (EW Woodwinds, Voice of Passion, Pianos, etc), but they rarely see any use at all. But the HW Brass library is, to my ears, still a very good library. Excellent horn patches, etc, decent trumpets. I've been searching for reasonably priced NKI alternatives to the HW Brass patches, and haven't really found anything I liked, yet. The NI Symphony Series brass certainly don't sound as good, and the combination brass patches in Albion don't turn my crank either. The VSL libraries are very nice, and I like the flexibility of the VSL ensemble player, but I'm having second thoughts about getting too deep into the VSL ecosystem, with their draconian licensing issues, etc. So I'll be using Play for the foreseeable future.

So far, it's been a pretty modest roll-out of free content from the ProjectSAM catalogue, and the patches are somewhat narrow in their potential use, at least for me. So you're not really missing a whole lot, at this point. But I have to admit, all of these free samples are gorgeously recorded. And I understand that ProjectSAM's general programming and scripting is pretty solid. So I have heard, anyway. Makes me think their products are worth taking a good look at -- assuming their style of library will fit into my workflow, with their emphasis on arranged ensembles and lots of baked in sounds and ambiance, etc.

Release your inner Chuck Mangione here: http://www.cmusic.pro/product-cat/solo/solo-flugelhorn/

Available here: https://projectsam.com/library-category/the-free-orchestra/

Until March 25th: https://www.bestservice.com/deals/up_to_40_off_vienna_special_editions.html

Various drivers updates, mostly from Feb 2019... http://www.rme-audio.de/en/downloads/driver/uc.php

I've been waiting for this one to go on sale again. Anyone have it? Be curious to get some opinions...

Gotta admit -- I'm curious what the Epic Orchestra sounds like, and how good the patches are...

Until March 18th: http://www.cmusic.pro/product-cat/solo/solo-trumpet-2/

I think the writer was being hyperbolic. I could hear a bit, but the difference made by removing the ring was still pretty impressive, especially when you consider the ring wasn't blocking the tube opening at all.

I can think of a few interesting applications for this: https://www.fastcompany.com/90316833/scientists-have-discovered-a-shape-that-blocks-all-sound-even-your-co-workers

Really enjoyed listening to this one. Very entertaining lyrics, tight performances and great vocal work. I don't feel qualified to offer advice about the mix -- I don't work in this genre at all. FWIW, nothing in the mix distracted or detracted from my listening experience in the slightest.

I'm a bit skeptical of them, myself, and have heard mixed reports about them. But apparently they are intended to avoid the boxy ambience that leaks into the recordings made in small, home studios.

Two days only, according to the email: https://www.editorskeys.com/collections/vocal-booths/products/portable-vocal-booth-home-edition

I'm getting the same thing, James. I suspect it's a configuration problem with the site and the ad tags. For me, the obscuring ads are related to folks' signature. If you close their signature, it clears the banner away. At least, it did for me.

I'm getting ads blocking content, also - usually banners showing up at the bottom of a specific post, obscuring the signature and the bottom part of the posting. Something is not configured properly with the ad tags, I would bet. I suspect they are only supposed to show up at the top and bottom of the page, and maybe in between the occasional post.

Honestly, I can't see it generating a ton of revenue. Forums are traditionally not a great place to run ads -- too many views from too few unique users, and very few people actually click on the ads.

I am seeing them on a desktop PC, in Windows 7 using Chrome.

All the best, Mudgel! Hope everything goes well. As for the OP -- happens to me all the time. Two things I have done that help: 1) I work on more than one project at a time, all the time, and I try to mix up the genre/styles as much as I can, so that when I switch back and forth its refreshing and I don't accidentally copy ideas over from one project to the other. So, I'll have a classic, old school orchestral piece going on, alongside a sketch of Celtic ethereal folkishness, and/or maybe a hybrid, synth heavy trailer type thing. 2) Since Christmas, I have been trying to write and record music fast as I can, at least for the first draft. It gets the initial composition portion out of the way so that I get down to crafting the polished version. It cuts down on the overall time a project takes, and so far hasn't affected how the music turns out - to my great surprise. This is a total change of approach for me, and has been really helpful. I can be very painstaking and deliberate in what I do, and I'm a perfectionist -- and my own worst critic. So, I can get really easily bogged down in a project and grow to hate it in no time flat. I've headed that tendency off at the pass, to a certain degree, by just writing music in a white heat and ignoring mistakes. The first product is usually complete crap. But surprisingly the general shape and vision of what I was trying to create is usually there in some form, along with a few happy accidents and unexpected pleasures. And you can build on that pretty easily, I have found. All this helps a fair amount. But there are still days I have to close a project up, and go do something else -- like grab a can of cider and go watch The Orville for the rest of the evening, or something. Rob

They have a contest featuring Super Cluster, also: https://8dio.com/2019/03/01/score-this-constellations/

Hi folks, A question for our more tech savvy folks: I have 16gb of RAM in my PC at the moment, and I'm aiming to double that to 32gb. My current build is: Gigabyte X99 mobo with Intel Core i7-5820K Haswell-E CPU, and the RAM is a pair of 8gb Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4 2666 DIMMs. System is utterly rock stable, but I think more memory would be beneficial. I can get another set of Dominator DIMMs, and they are premium components, but they are also really pricey and have to be ordered in -- no local retailer stocks them as a regular item. I don't mind doing that, and I will do so if needed. However, Corsair also has their Vengeance line of RAM, which also seems like a very good product and is both less expensive and much more readily available. It is apparently a tier down from the Dominator series, but all reviews I could find suggest it is first rate. Does anyone have any experience with it? Or with other brands of RAM that might also work well? Am I really going to notice any difference in performance or stability adding two Vengeance DIMMs into my setup? I'm not really tied to one brand, although I've had a lot of success with Corsair memory products and usually gravitate to them first. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks! Rob