Zolton

Not for nothin', but in case anyone was hoping to squeeze this in around twenty bucks with the code, the linked page also sez, in stern red letters: "PLEASE NOTE: This product is already heavily discounted. You cannot use the Ethera Loyalty code above when purchasing this product. The new newsletter subscriber $15 discount code will also not work when purchasing this product. To use this code the minimum spend must be $40." Personally, I'm waiting for ZG to decide that Sahara Voices released in April isn't "new" any more, so I can use the newsletter code next time it's on sale as an entree into the Etheraverse.

I took the plunge and did a bit of testing this evening, so I think I can answer this for Cakewalk, at least. (And what other DAWs would anyone care about, anyway? Are there even others? Who can say?) For instruments, nearly every plugin seems to work in Cakewalk. Some of these are 32bit, so compatibility with some other DAWs is dicey, but here's the rundown: Acoustica (minimal GUI, basically ROMplers/preset lists): Instruments, Expanded Instruments, Studio Drums Acoustica (full GUI): Pianissimo GSonique (32bit): Alien 303, Renegade Kastelheimer (32bit): Veldberg XD Memorymoon: ME80 (32bit), ME80 v2.5, Messiah (32bit), Messiah 2, Memorymoon Synth The separate registration for Cherry Audio (Voltage Modular) Ignite works independently, and the modules registered are included when running VM standalone or in Cakewalk. I believe the included VoltKitchen MinimogueVA also works, but I already owned that, and I didn't retest the version from Mixcraft. Ditto AAS Lounge Lizard Session and Journeys bank, GSi(?) VB3, Martinic Combo Organs F / V and Acoustica Nightlife (32bit), which I had previously installed (and some of which are free) and didn't test the versions from Mixcraft. Unlike these, QuikQuak Glass Viper is locked to Mixcraft and won't work outside it. Most of the bundled effects also work in Cakewalk, and many of these are also 32bit: Acoustica: 31-Band EQ, Pro Studio Reverb, VocalZap Epralux (32bit): ORB7000, POD4500 Online Mastering Studio EU (32bit): EU ProMixEQ-10A G-Sonique (32bit): DTC-1, Dubmaster Liquid Delay, Dubshox H8, FAT+, FSQ1964, GSXL 4070 EQ,M/S Envelope Follower+, M/S Harmonics Vitalizer+, M/S Stereophase Filter+, Pultronic EQ 110P, TrebleCream, Twisthead VS-206, VTD-42 Psychedelic Delay, XBass 4000, Zener Limiter LM-2Z Pentode Audio (32bit): PSEQ-1, TRW-1, VBE-1, VTC-1 ToneBoosters (all v3, so previous versions to those on the TB website, and mostly "demo" versions, which I believe remain functional indefinitely, but perhaps others can comment on the specifics): Barricade, Broadcast, BusCompressor, Compressor, DeEsser, Dither, Equalizer, EZQ, Ferox, FIX, FIX4, Gate, MultiFX, Reverb, TimeMachine (I can say that most of these from Mixcraft work in Cakewalk, though I happened to have a couple [Barricade, Reverb, etc.] previously installed, so I didn't test those.) I already have Melodyne Essential, so I didn't try the separate registration for that, but my best guess is that it works independently of the DAW, similar to Ignite above. I also had previously installed GVST GSnap and GTune, Voxengo Boogex and SPAN, AcmeBarGig Shred (32bit), all of which I think are free, and I didn't test those. The effects locked to Mixcraft include QuikQuak Fusion Field and Studio Devil Virtual Bass Amp. There are also plugins available under directories called "Legacy" and "Pro Studio Legacy" that appear to be earlier versions or outdated precursors of various TB, Acoustica and perhaps other plugins, but I didn't test any of those in Cakewalk. (Or in Mixcraft, for that matter. Leave the past in the past, eh?) Hope this helps! Edited to add: So far as I could see, the Alpha and Omni samplers are not among the plugins in Mixcraft 9 Pro's VST directory, so those may be even deeper "baked in" to the Mixcraft DAW. (Or I just missed them.) Also, as best I can ascertain, Cakewalk ignored the iZotope "Mastering Essentials" plugin included among the effects plugins. This may be because I have some other iZotope plugins installed, complete non-M9 DAW incompatibility or some other reason.

I did about a B/B- job of buying only the things I'd planned on, with the theme of helping me learn, organize and/or be more efficient: Atlas 2 Scaler 2 Sononym Unify ...without getting tempted by other shiny discounts -- except for upgrades to SynthMaster and LiquidMusic, which were on my list, but could have waited, and a nifty $7 accordian from Polkasounds (which is really nice, and incidentally includes a bonus deal if you're also on VI-Control, through tonight, I think). But my real once-in-a-millennium Black Friday coup was being awake at 3am Thanksgiving morning to pick up the item displayed below:

I definitely had to do the same, mostly (I think) for some or all of the older SampleTank libs. One odd detail, in case it helps anyone diagnose the issue: after registering in Program Manager and downloading, the libs in question were locked in ST4. But IK had unlocked ST3 for me earlier (so I could import a legacy library a while back), and the same libs worked fine in ST3. But until I ran the serials through Auth Manager, I got no love for them from ST4.

Sorry, sorry -- I was distracted by shiny objects and noisemakers. Here's the latest thoroughly scientific analysis of how the IK GB is going:

I think you'd probably feel right... https://www.pianobook.co.uk/packs/trumpetuba/ ...at home: https://www.pianobook.co.uk/packs/pandemic-pad/

One more for old times' sake -- but I'm not sure you're going to like it: Suddenly, the home team has to play a leeetle bit of catchup.

I dunno. Undiagnosed OCD, or some sort of childhood head trauma, maybe? I'm not touching it, whatever it is.

I mean, since you asked (and since I'm bored, waiting for some work stuff to finish up): I added a couple of other group buy-discussing sites for extra spice and context. You may extrapolate from these numbers various conclusions regarding "quality", "quantity", "community" or "cacophony" at your leisure.

But it's still number one in our hearts overall page count:

Just in case anyone's still watching the count update to update in October like a plugin-starved hawk, that translates to an hourly rate of ~7 -- minus whatever the 28 September hours after hitting 20k bring. This seems like a good time to thank IK and @Peter - IK Multimedia for a full quarter-year of fun. I fiddled around with the numbers a bunch, because it's a hoot -- but I appreciate the promotion, the support and all the hard work that goes into both. And as someone who had only ST4 SE and a handful of freebies before the group buy, I scored an entire slew of new goodies to learn about and play with. I wound up with four entries, all with fortunate discounts, and somewhere around 22k, I'll run out of wonderful things to discover, for something like 1/80th of the combined list price. That's absolutely mindblowing. It should be a fun winter.

I've taken Peter's direct quote of "Eastern" (many pages back in this thread) as official, which would make the "end of September" the rest of today and all of tomorrow away, around 36 1/2 hours now. I've seen others use the "Days Remaining" counter on the website as a guide, but (a) I've never seen Peter or the site itself claim that's an official "day-turnover" clock; (2) if it were, the GB would end mid-morning on a weekday (aka a "heavy" buy-in day) in the target time zone, which seems unlikely; and (iii) I've assumed they initialized the fancy website numbers at start-of-business on the day they announced it (August 5th), so the countdown counter started countering down then, but they didn't think to readjust it to reflect an end time of midnight.

The pace slowed a bit overnight (from 30+/hour to 20+/hour), but has usually picked up a bit midday (Eastern time). If things stay roughly on course, it looks like the count should hit 20k around midnight tonight, with a full day to spare. If things jump unroughly off course, then it's already down to less than 9/hour needed, which is basically "coasting speed": There are 37 hours to go. If the run-up at the end of August is any guide, the count added 1200+ in the final 36 hours of the month (though it was 700 away from 10k at that point, so there may have been a little more "oomph" behind the final push). At any rate, it seems fairly likely the count may be halfway to 21k by the time October rolls around. Huzzah!

Welp, that's how you flatten a curve (and then twist it backwards like a paper clip): From noon yesterday (hour 84) to noon today (hour 60), a cool 720 signups went in, good for 30/hour. Hitting 19k by midnight tonight would've been a nice pace; as it is, there are 10 hours left to pile the numbers on. The rate needed now is ~16/hour and falling fast. Even if the influx wiggles a bit, going from 18k to 19k took 46 hours and didn't pick up the pace until around 18 hours in. There are 58 hours left for 20k, and a ~5% head start on the last thousand. Numbers are fun!

It's not just you. (At least, I hope it's not just you, or you'd have earned several thousand freebies to sort through today.) Since 9am this morning, the count has averaged about 27/hour. In total, 499 signups were added on the 27th. That's excellent news -- the beginning of the 27th marked four days left in September, with a little over 18.1k signups at the start of the day. So if 500/day is repeated (or 499/day, if you're truly bean-counting) on the 28th, 29th and 30th, the count would coast over 20,000. Here's how things look from the "amp cab half-empty" point of view, where higher values are actually bad: When the "race to 20k" was announced on the 21st, there were 225 hours left in September. From then, a signup rate of ~14.4/hour (blue line) would have reached 20k by the end of the month, but the actual rate was lower than that through this morning. So the "rate needed" crept steadily up, passing 20/hour early this morning. The number of signups "short" of that initial 14.4 ideal rate also grew (orange line), topping 500 additional "needed" signups to get back on course. With around 87 hours left (i.e., 9am this morning), the rate jumped, and by noon was higher than the needed average-- so those lines took a steep turn down. When/if the orange line reaches zero, it means the count has "recovered", and ~14.4 signups/hour the rest of the way would suffice. If the orange line goes negative, the rate needed is even lower. If the blue line hits zero, the count is 20k -- and if it goes negative, then it's bonus time and the count is working toward whatever milestone is revealed for the 21st freebie. TL;DR: As of this morning, the "bump" has arrived. Time to strap in and see how fast -- and how long -- the carousel spins.

Peter said Eastern in August, and I'm assuming it's still the same. I don't think he ever nailed down midnight/11:59PM as the final deadline, but I remember at least one post where his counting logic (e.g., saying "four hours to go" at 8pm Eastern) made it seem that's the case. I haven't seen any official-ish info that's inconsistent with that theory, though there are people who appear to be counting down differently based on other (non-Peter-provided, to the best of my knowledge) hints.

In case anyone's interested in a more "holistic" view of where we're at in the plod toward 20k, here's a picture of the absolute nerdiest way I've looked at the September data: It's sort of a poor man's probability map. The rows represent 12-hour intervals from midnight on 9/1 to midnight today, and the columns are rates -- from 6/hour to 24/hour. The grid itself shows the projected total, given the count at each time point (e.g., 10537 at the top, or 18132 at the bottom), if the signups average each rate for the rest of the way. Each color represents values within intervals of 1000 -- the light green is 18k, medium red is 19k, medium yellow is 20k, etc. I've put a little box around the range where the September count has been -- from around 9/hour to 14/hour. If that rate doesn't change, there's a good chance the count will hit 19k (i.e., most of the values in the bottom row are colored red for 19k), but not 20k. Right now, reaching 20k would take an average of at least 20/hour. If the rate falls back to 9/hour or less, the count is in danger of falling short of 19k. Anything outside those possibilities is currently literally off the map -- or outside the 6/hr - 24/hr range shown here, anyway. It's interesting (to me, at least) that a 14/hour average -- the last column within the box -- would have been enough to reach 20k until just a few days ago. The rate hasn't changed so much since then (other than not being "bumped" for a while), but those yellow 20k squares have been veering off to the right of the chart of late. It'll be pretty cool if they get dragged back in the eight time windows left.

It's not quite that dire, if I'm tracking correctly. We've got about 100 1/2 hours until 11:59PM on the 30th -- four full days, and four-plus hours tonight. That means just a shade over 19/hour to reach the mark. We haven't been very close to that rate (for a full day or more) since mid-September, but things are trending upward a bit, which is encouraging for the weekend: The last number gets an asterisk because it's 256 so far -- there are still the remaining four hours to top that off. The "Per hr" number in the table above is for each day separately, though the cumulative rate since the "race to 20k" was announced (around 10.6/hour) is close to the high water mark so far. Using just the latter data (from the afternoon of 9/21 until now), the total would currently project to around 19,150, if nothing changes. The count has been over 20 at least three hours today, but it'll need to get there and stay there for most of the week to hit the 20k mark. (Edited to correct that we did hit 19+/hour for a full day in September -- actually, twice. Just not since the 15th.)

For anyone curious how the group buy signup rate is looking as we wind down the workweek, the answers are "better" and "not (yet, at least) better enough". With 150 hours remaining in September, the signup rate since the "race to 20k" announcement on the 21st has crept up to just about 10/hour. Two days ago, it was only around 8.5/hour, so that's good! On the other hand, the pace needed from the 21st to hit 20k was around 14.4/hour. Since the rate has been consistently below that so far, the rate needed now is 16.6/hour. In terms of individual signups, the current count is around 330 "behind" that 14.4/hour pace. So that's bad. If history is any guide, the weekend is likely to be a little slower -- though there's a good chance the count will hit 18k sometime before Monday. That would leave around 100 hours to gain 2000 signups. In the last 100 hours of August, the count rose by 2875 -- or nearly 400 more than we need right now, with an "extra" 50 hours to spare. So that's... inconclusive? But pretty fascinating, if you're into that kind of thing.

The (educated) guess in another forum, based on other recent SampleTekk sales, is that the 90% voucher will work for the first stage of the sale (maybe until 9/26), then for the rest of the sale (which may go to 10/26), everybody will get 80% off. No guarantees, but that would fit the recent pattern.

So, the numbers from the first day-plus chasing the 20k carrot are... not superb. If there's to be a bump, or a multi-bump bump, in the numbers following the extension teaser, we haven't seen it yet. Here's the average number and rate per day since the last big surge on 9/15: Starting around 3pm on the 21st, 14.4 signups/hour would have reached 20,000 on the 30th. The actual rate of signups since then is 9.1/hour, and it would now take an average of 15.6/hour the rest of the way to hit the mark. The news isn't all grim, though. Since the website glitch around 11am yesterday, when the "20k race rate" bottomed out below 8/hour, it's been steadily, if sloooowly, rising. And 15/hour -- even 30/hour -- has been achieved over the course of a whole day. Over the last three days of August, in fact, and twice in September. Another, possibly better, way to look at the current state is that the count has fallen "behind" the pace needed to reach 20k by around 220 signups. A smallish surge in the next day or two would close that gap. The bigger question is whether the between-surge rate would stay high enough for a final push to the finish line. But first things first, assuming the weekend will slow a bit as others have.

It appears the Multimedia Mothership is back online. The downtime, sadly, does not appear to have been a result of hordes of users signing up to the group buy at once, though.

Wednesday should provide a big hint about how realistic hitting 20k by the end of the month is. If you compare the situation to the "race to 10k" at the end of August: On the afternoon of August 26th, the "10k by 8/31" promotion was announced. At the time, the August signup rate was around 14.6/hour. To hit 10k in 5+ days, the rate needed to increase to 22.3/hour. The rate didn't change much until the morning of the 27th, but jumped to > 28/hour the rest of the way, coasting past 10k. On the afternoon of September 21st, the "20k by 9/30" promotion was announced. At the time, the September signup rate was around 12.6/hour (but around 9/hour since the 17th). To hit 20k in 9+ days, the rate needs to increase to 14.4/hour. The rate hasn't changed much (as of midnight on the 21st), but... we'll see what happens. The 64-thousand-VST question is: who's left in the tank? Without a surge or two, it looks like the rate would fall short. The pace is currently 50 signups behind the required average, and (counting just from 3pm Tuesday) projected to come in under 19k. On the other hand, the rate didn't jump last time until the next day, and the goose needed this time is far smaller -- or put another way, there's almost twice as much time (9 vs. 5 days) to get about as many signups (3150 vs. 2925). If the 9/hour recent rate is the "baseline", reaching 20k requires just about 1100 "extra" people to come out of the woodwork in a week-plus. Are they in there? And do they need oodles of amp sims? Will someone octuple up? We may find out soon.

Unfortunately, the possible "bump" turned out to be just a decent hour or two that inched the PM count a little higher than this morning: There's still time for another flurry or two -- and it seems likely we'll see one in the last day or two, at least -- but the trends have settled over the past few days such that the total projected with 10 days left would be somewhere around 19.6k (if you use the rate from all of September, with four major bumps included) or around 18.5k (if you expect the current lower rate to coast to the end). In graph form, it looks something like this: Maybe those emails will help over the next couple of days. The time, she will tell.

Things appear to be picking up a bit tonight, after a slow-ish weekend. Not yet back on pace for 20k, but inching upward. For anyone concerned about the really important number in this group buy period, though, don't fret. Things are going just peachily: