aidan o driscoll

Just a heads up - Thursdays ( tomorrow ) 2nd semi final may unfortunately garner headlines not related to the spectacle that is the Eurovision. This semi includes Israel. The EBU ( European Broadcasting Union ) over the years tries to keep the EV apolitical and has banned acts in the past for being political. The Israel track originally had overt political lyric content about October 7th but were told to change same which they apparently did: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/mar/07/israel-to-compete-at-eurovision-song-contest-after-changing-lyrics-to-its-entry But now in recent weeks as we approach the semis and final things have ramped up a knotch with calls to boycott Israel, or other acts being pressured to step out of the competition ( inc Bambie ), which I think is unfair. If a call is made for a country not to partake then its that countries local broadcast union to make that decision, not the artist. So across social media, newspapers etc - its covered in hate and bile inc toward the artists competing. This threatens to cause difficulty at the 2nd semi final tomorrow night. There is huge security at Malmo in Sweden for this. As it is the security to enter the arena is extremely tough and hardened. Hope this all goes without incident .. but I fear the opposite perhaps. An FYI re EBU Rules. No political songs/lyrics allowed, no political emblems or iconography on persons or elsewhere allowed. these are examined pre contest and the artist / union needs to sign a declaration explaing the iconography or emblems and remove same if political. Bambie does use ancient Irish OGHAM text on the face and arms etc. They had written in Ogham on their face PEACE or similar, they had to remove this. In general, Bambie does tap into ancient Irish & celtic myth and symbolism .. the country is rich in this. So alot of the influences and things included in their performance comes from this history

So for the uninitiated the Eurovision 2024 is this coming Saturday 11th May. Before that we have two semi finals where 30 ( 15 per night ) acts compete for 20 places to appear in the final this saturday. Last night - Tuesday - was the first semi final. The 10 countries through to the final from that are: Serbia, Portugal, Slovenia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Finland, Cyprus, Croatia, Ireland, Luxembourg Now i am biased as i am Irish ( and from Cork, not too far from Macroom where Bambie is from ) and have posted here about the Irish act called Bambie Thug, first non binary act to appear at EV finals and pretty unique. Also last time Ireland got to the finals was in 2018, so a bit of a drought since. Below is video on de Youtube of Bambies performance last evening to get through to final. Remember now a days the EV is gone beyond just a song contest - it is now Spectacle and huge performance and DIFFERENT that gets you there. Bambie, i think, ticks all the boxes? Bambie is a prolific songwriter inc for TV/FILM & for others. Started out as a ballerina. WHO IS BAMBIE THUG? https://www.corkbeo.ie/culture/whats-on-news/who-bambie-thug-irelands-eurovision-29129462 Other standout acts last night were CROATIAs Baby Lasagne with "Rim Tim Tagi Dim" and FINLANDs Windows95man with "No Rules!" .. all live performances are up at Eurovision Youtube channel, you will find via the bambie youtube link above Thursday is the next semi final - another 15 compete for the 10 places.

So another one bites the dust. I was a VUE user and upgrader up to 2014. Found I was notb making enough use and with other software I was not using much, couldnt justify upgrade costs I dropped. Sad to see it finished up, its been around a long while in the niche 3D are it was in. But I suppose the silver lining is the latest edition 2024 is now FREE for everyone. Great piece of software, do enjoy e-on software products have served the media and entertainment industry for over 27 years. Following its acquisition by Bentley Systems in 2015, e-on software’s technologies have been integrated into various Bentley products and have been used by valued customers and partners world-wide. For over 39 years, Bentley’s focus has been to serve engineers and other professionals responsible for designing, constructing, and operating sustainable infrastructure. To keep our focus, we have decided to end sales for VUE, PlantFactory, and PlantCatalog. These products will not be further developed, and support will be limited to critical security patches. However, we are offering free downloads and usage of VUE, PlantFactory, and PlantCatalog as perpetual versions to anyone interested in continuing to utilize these products and technologies! Simply download the product and acknowledge the new end-user-license-agreement (EULA) agreeing to using the software without support. https://www.bentley.com/software/e-on-software-free-downloads/

Those sales OVER around mid march and were at Audiodeluxe. So full price again now .. best price tho, at $80. I still standby that GFORCE dont have discounts as much as other plugins over a year, that from GFORCE Newsletters I get https://www.audiodeluxe.com/products/virtual-instruments/gforce-axxess

This is not the list price, which implies a notional price that a product rarely sells at. It is THE price of that plugin synth at the moment: https://www.gforcesoftware.com/products/axxess/ ST£66 + VAT there ( VAT for me in Ireland would be an extra 23% onto that price ). https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/12022-AXXESS €97 at plugin boutique 3rd party seller ( including VAT ). It is currently NOT ON SALE and these are the actual prices you pay now to buy it. I have found that GFORCE Plugs are rarely on sale / huge discounts

And loopclouds OWN plugins Like Play and Drum etc .. I mean this new loopcloud freebie - GFORCE AXXESS - is €100 to buy normally and each year there is a good few of these, so you are getting well more back for the €30 annual sub. I think loopcloud is great value. Like you I have amassed a huge amount of points - about 10k - I do use alot of drum loops, single shots and synth loops for ideas. Interestingly now CAKEWALK NEXT has a built in sampler which can be used with these.

Just grabbed it and installed .. Keep in mind that LOOPCLOUD sub do frequent enough sales like recent one @ 50% less per annum sub at the mo .. so the Studio Annual sub around €50. So far over the last 2, 3 years I have got that cash back in spades via some really good FREE plugins like this one. I think you can also just do a trial FREE for 30 days and get the free plugin too??

I realise its a thing brought up about IK constantly. Too much installing with Product Manager, likes of Tracks then custom shop and all this. Got the serial, may use it at some stage but I cleared my system of IK stuff, can take up lots of space also. Did same with UVI recently. the synth data files that came with there stuff added to pretty much 100GB. And i already have Arturia and NI stuff .. so why As a FREE alt to IKs quad image you have: https://www.izotope.com/en/products/ozone-imager.html OK - it is not multiband, but free and less hassle install wise

Polaris has both sample and synth engines and offers a groovebox-style workflow across six tracks. The 4x4 grid on each track enables you to input steps into the sequencer, and step modulation gives you an easy way of adding variation to your patterns. You can also adjust the step duration on a per-track basis (from 1/32 to one bar) and set the triggering conditions so that each step doesn’t sound every time. https://www.musicradar.com/news/polaris-android-music-making-app

Hi Guys, I have a track in latest CW with 4 midi tracks using likes of Arturia VSTs etc. I converted these to 4 wav/audio tracks, saved as a separate file and deleted the midi files. I then went to FILE MENU, Publish to Bandlab. Changed Upload settings to AUDIO TRACKS ( ticked ) only. Then clicked UPLOAD. Here are the tracks in CW: It uploaded BUT when I opened it online at BANDLAB / Edit - I have track 1 twice and then track 2 and 3, track 4 is missing. Whats up there? Is there a limit to the number of tracks you can upload perhaps? I also notice over at Bandlab / Library, when I delete a project it goes into Deleted Project BUT in there I cannot find a place to permanently delete from there. Only option is Restore

Hi Noel, Here is a screenshot when it opens on the RECENT PROJECTS tab: The projects listed to the right - some of them would have been opened yesterday over the peer to peer network via my router from another system. So that might be it? Is there a way to clear that list? Also is there a way to clear the list in the FILE menu? Cheers Aidan

Hi Guys, When I open CW ( Latest version ). By default the START SCREEN is set to open. CW gives me a "Not Responding" and takes a while to present the start screen, does eventually. So I went into PREFERENCES, Display, Other and unticked SHOW START SCREEN. Apply i then closed CW and re opened it. All good, CW loaded as expected, nice and fast. Open a project nice and fast. Closed the project went to File menu, selected Start Screen .. same issue. Up top hard left by the Cakewalk Logo - NOT RESPONDING. So issue is with the start screen window it seems. Any way to sort this I wonder? My system spec - Core i5, 8GB Ram, 1TB SSD, Windows 10 with latest updates

@Asato Maa Add me to the list for this request. Over atthe NEXT Beat Discord channel I mentioned similar in the Next Suggestions section: "In NEXT we have the PAD CONTROLLER which is similar-ish to the Matrix View in Sonar? Here I would love to see a CAKEWALK take on Abletons Session View. To maybe expand the PAD CONTROLLER so you can add samples, instruments, midi etc to the cells/columns. Then be able to play rows as well as columns .. great for creativity" Below is the ableton session view with sample track - 2nd row being played by pressing the play button over right under MAin / 2

@Tim Smith Hi Tim. RUSH fan here I say that as the Rush guitarist Alex lifeson ( Classically trained ) uses a sort of major chord "Cheat" inversion up and down the neck for barred chords like F etc. I learned this from an Iron maiden & Camel session guitarist back in the day. It looks like this: So You can bar just the A D G B string with 2nd finger ( thumb is first in my language ), then use 4th 5th finger to hold down G string at the 5th fret and B string at 6th fret. This cheat also helps your finger stretch with a bit of practice. Dont need to play the two outer E strings. Slid this up and down the fret board to get F F# G etc etc.

You would have to ask WHY Facebook isnt policing this particularly as there advert got elevated to Sponsored which they would have had to pay for.

Just be aware of this guys. Popped up on my facebook feed as a sponsored link. Most of the comments on the post recognised it as scam at least

I have been beta testing it and so far I really like it. Its simplicity I really like, it has more than enough for what I need. And where our band is concerned the cross platform aspect is a great advantage because two members are on MAC. I could really see myself moving to NEXT tbh. Sonar is as always excellent, but the simplicity of NEXT appeals to me tbh .. we will see

So yes it appears CANVA did spend over $1 billion for Serif ( including Affinity ). Serif is 37 years old https://www.afr.com/technology/canva-s-billion-dollar-bet-on-a-37-year-old-nottingham-company-20240321-p5fea0?fbclid=IwAR3ZdWZ4vx2omKyawGQAU-N7bH4tZNLiBdiIEhgqnuG48OxAkRsyUteuQKM Canva has 4000 staff globaly. Serif has 90 staff in Nottingham, the UK. The acquisition is the second time Serif has been sold. In 1996, a now-defunct US software company called Vizacom bought Serif. But it sold the company back in 2001 during the dotcom crash for $US1.1 million to Serif management. Serif founders Jim Bryce and Gary Bates are no longer actively involved in the business, but remain directors and will receive a major payout from the Canva takeover. Here maybe a reason why CANVA bought Serif: Canva has made several acquisitions in the past but is building up to an eventual public listing in late 2025 or 2026, where it will be measured against companies like Microsoft and Adobe, which can bundle numerous products together for enterprise customers.

Maybe of assistance @Kirean €94 to upgrade at the moment with the offer & includes a large creative collection: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/store/upgrade-offer/ Like I said is it worth that to have the V2 installers rather than v1

I agree re subs. From a biz perspective it makes complete sense but from a hobbyist perspective I can see why it doesnt. The price Affinity is at was always going to be an issue. My thought on that is Serif knew they had a good thing, sold cheap to build a large user base relatively, make it saleable and then flog it on. I heard in a youtube vid ( maybe the one I posted above ) that Canva paid $1bn for Serif/Affinity. If that is the case, from Serifs perspective its a great day at the office. I think it's a no brainer for a bigger company to take them to subscription - so hold on to your installers! Agree 100% - Perpetual licenses will not make you money these days, only way to go if you want to make decent money is to go monthly / yearly subscriptions. The success of subs is in the area of streamers - Netflix, Prime, Spotify, Sky and so on .. small monthly amounts that people dont notice much. In biz terms it makes sense because you can spread costs over a financial year rather than playing 100s 1000s on perpetual licenses Q is if you dont yet have v2 is now the time to upgrade with the sale so at least you have the v2 installers instead of the older v1

@Kirean I understood that if you buy v3 (or v2), you can use that forever. Yes .. at the mo its cheaper to just buy a new v3 lic if you have v1 ( like me ) otherwise you need to pay to upgrade v1 to v2 then pay again to upgrade v2 to v3. Once you have the version 3, my understanding is you get regular updates BUT you dont get anymore feature updates unless you buy an annual UPDATE PASS You can see this here: https://www.clipstudio.net/en/purchase/ Click on PERPETUAL LICENSE and it says - Pay once and use Ver. 3.0 forever Available only on Windows/macOS Update Pass available separately to get feature updates As I said its very confusing in my view. Trying to please all and not making a good job of it

@Kirean Celsys payment model is most confusing now with both sub and perpetual. But even with perpetual you still have to pay and annual sub for the upgrades from the time you buy the license. You can now also pay annual sub to upgradeyour v1 to new v3 but if you dont pay the sub next year you are reverted back to v1. Its crazy confusing Oh and you can only use a license on ONE SYSTEM at a time

Quiet a few people with thoughts on this cropping up on Youtube also

Alot of activity over at AFFINITYs own forum on this subject https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201413-affinity-is-joining-the-canva-family/ 16,400 views already and 304 replies

Yip - my exact thought. In the world of 3D something similar happened with MODO 3D. Excellent standalone 3D software, breakaway from Lightwave. Had a great community and the CEO constantly in touch on forums etc and with videos and so on .. it was a very personalised type community setup. Then they sold to the Foundry, things after wards were not the same vibe at all