Tim Smith

True story. When I met my wife online I was within a month of my birthday. She told me that if I had been a year older she would not have looked at me. She is 6 years younger than me and we are both now older than @Sander Verstraten In fact, my son is now the age I was when I met my 2nd wife. It's scary how fast time flies.

I though you were a young dude lol. Man we gotta get you a girlfriend.? Hi Dave, I'm all over the place musically or depending on who you talk to I might not be anywhere musically. I usually like to do that sort of thing around Christmas. What I really wanted to do was use my Iron Guitars on this but I had some issues. I really like that track you posted. It has a nice feel to it. I'm getting more excited about O2 by the day! I guess my biggest concern was spending all of my time seaching for a sound. I imagine the meta data in O2 is pretty well set up. I will often go for a sound that I intend to change later and end up with what's there. Like the cheesy 90's horns in that track that are slighly off in timing. I used synth horns from Arturia because they seemed to fit that Manhiem Steamroller sort of feel. MS is really just old tech people still like, and for something like that I considered swapping it out with nicer horns, but if it works it works. And I'm the only judge of it, then it works. The human voices are very realistic in your track. Overall a nice mix of elements.

Thanks. I guess even though this is an older package it's still pretty amazing. Thanks for this. Thanks @TheSteven. I sort of mish mashed a bunch of Arturia and IK synths together for this in an afternoon. I didn't spend a lot of time on it yet. There were some amazingly realistic bells in the Atruria synth collection. I will check that link out. I think LABS had some decent free jingle bells if i remember correctly. Maybe I'll use those in something else. Can't wait to get O2. I know I might need a month opff to check it out though.

Yeah, I know about 10 years too late. It hasn't come yet as I ordered the usb drive hard box. I kept waiting for them to lower the price but I only managed to get 20.00 off plus a Christmas 15% discount at Musicianfriend. With tax it still wasn't inexpensive, but maybe for what it is, it's ok? As I understand it, it's great for movie tracks which really hasn't been a main forte of mine. Just always curious about what it really was aside from it having 14,000 sounds. I get sidetracked on 100 sounds. Looks like Skippy makes some nice stuff for it. I really hope it doesn't sit idle on my hard drive. Like so many things I had to see what it was about. I guess i'm wondering if those who have had it a long time ever really ended up using it. ...and if anyone needs a movie track composer. I'm loaded for bear now with this and all of the other stuff those capitalist pigs persuaded me to buy ? I made another jazz track and realized it's almost Christmas. I guess I should load up a few of my sample libaries and look for some bells to come up with something. Everything has been done to death on Christmas...almost.

Have fun...and take video if you can. Second thought scratch that suggestion.

Hi Mark. Thank you. It's Addicitve drums 2. Thanks Tom. I will go back and check this. Unfortunately I'm still in a temporary space and might be here for awhile. I suspect this is part of the problem. Nigel, I appreciate your thoughts You come up with some wonderful stuff, so I really respect your opinion and that of others here. Addictive drums 2. Thank you for comments and taking the time to listen.

Gen Y be like, " Nice..................uh, what is that"

With certain substances you might make that train to Monaco, but I don't do said substances, so this makes a wonderful 2nd choice. The kind of thing I would love to hear in the summer driving in the country with the top down. That is, in my imaginary sports car. No substances involved.

Still sound relevant after 22 years! Nice work on this. I like the way you manage to bend things to fit in a jazzy sort of way.

Hey Freddie this is great! Do you double track those vocals or is is some kind of a doubler? Christmas is over done IMO. Better off spreading it throughout the year. Not the decoration, the spirit.

I see a lot more going on than a typical pop write and the change was rewarding! Not that there is anything wrong with 'typical pop', but something slightly different is nice. Part of it reminded me of the Beatles, but maybe I'm just odd. Certainly not the vocals or necessarily the chord progressions. Probably more the introduction of those other instruments and the general feel of it.

Wow, this one came across very solid. Nice message. I'll take joy if I can get it! I hope you have a good holiday and thanks for sharing!

Feel free. The title probably does have some wondering. It's the old story you know? He will bruise your heel but man will crush his head. It's deeper than that, but for now I'll just leave it at that. Oh the Bobbit thing! ? I remember that. She dismembered that.

It got me by in very clunky fashion.

My son gave me one of those 'ok' turntables with the built in amp. Not anything close to audiophile quality. Not bad either. It has phono outputs to feed an amp. I found an 8 record set of old radio comedians and it was perfect for that. Very mid range. Very little bass.

MB are out TB are in.

Mesh is back too! I thought I stumbled onto an old page.

Glad to see you back Larry!

I have known him to take breaks, but it looks as if maybe he quit this thread? If the intense investigation into plugin deals was getting to be too much I fully understand. I really don't think anyone did it better than him. The deals thread has managed to still keep going pretty well. I dunno, Maybe spreading the load around is going to work best? No need for one person to feel pushed and stressed. I appreciate the efforts of all here who continue to bring us great deals almost daily.

I have read admissions that some DAW makers are making a few tweaks we can't necessarily see or do anything about at just beyond the sound engine level. Since I don't have this info readily available to me I won't attempt to cite a source. Most admissions of this type are very vague but you know they did something. Since most people don't get on well with certain frequencies in the screechy mids, I suspect maybe some gentle roll off might have happened. The differences are not something apparent until more tracks are added and busses are loaded up with multiple sends. I believe I notice the difference though, even on a single guitar track. Nothing a tube plugin couldn't smooth...but that seems to be the thing with DAWs. Everything is additive to the mix bus, including the DAW's personality. I don't know why but Cubase never struck me as particularly weird, although I do remember at least a few times having to go on the web to figure out something that should have been very simple to do. Doesn't happen often. For me though, most of it couldn't be simpler for basic recording editing. Especially in midi. The nice thing about most of their updates is they don't mess with the established workflow, so I could use a training video from 3 versions earlier and that function is still there and works the same with a few exceptions. On the sound end of things. I went middle ground with Focusrite. I think it's a great interface for the working man. Maybe just a tad under the RMEs and similar. If I had the money I would likely just update and get a new interface if it was quality rather than try to use the Analog ins of my old interface. I believe the end results would be better. In a pinch though it's probably somewhere in the middle to do so IMHO. I am still in between remodels and I don't have a good place to record acoustic instruments right now. I might still buy myself a better interface in the near future, but as long as I am not recording real acoustics it probably doesn't matter much for me. I can still get a decent acoustic recording on the Scarlett if I had to.

I had my mind made up it was going to be CbB and Cubase. Since they did away with the dongle things are so much better with respect to using Cubase..........but then I realized some of my better projects were done in Ableton, so I had to scratch my head and wonder why? These were NOT loop based projects. To be clear I am NOT selling Ableton over the others. I think there are several reasons it works for me sometimes. I became familiar with Ableton when I was building accompaniment tracks for a church I once attended. At that time I had ordered some templates for Ableton already made, watched a few videos etc. Unlike other DAWs Ableton has a dual construction approach. Segments can be loops or instrumentals/vocals, entire verses, choruses etc., so the idea of it being for only electronic music is not really accurate. I was one of those guys who never had the very best sense of time, so my stuff would often be 'almost' there, maybe a 1/2 beat off, that sort of thing. I would go into other DAWs to make corrections, bumping measures, clipping time etc. and it was often very time consuming. Trimming segments or making them fit a time or key is probably easiest in Ableton IMHO. Not that it can't be done in the others. Things just seemed top 'fit' better for me using it if recording my own segments. Many DAWs have some kind of an arranger view, but I still think once you get the hang of it, there is no better than Ableton for arranging. CbB has a great arranger, but Ableton's visual layout is second to none on my opinion. You simply drag recorded sections into the places you want them. Then you NEVER have to commit to the linear mode which is more like recording tracks on a regular DAW until you have the arrangement you want. Having said that two monitors make this process a bit easier. Up until you commit to recorded tracks you are simply firing off segments of audio in a pre arranged fashion. After you commit to the tracks in linear mode, you can still erase, modify, re record like any other DAW.....so I guess it's that process I like in addition to ideas I seem to be able to get easier if I'm coming up empty, since I can use a loop or clip as a baseline to other ideas. This method is much cpu lighter than other methods. I have Acid pro 9 and even bought a few of the loop packages for it, it is similar. I keep getting the pop ups to upgrade it to version 11....and for 115 quid it looks tempting, but nowhere near as intuitive as Ableton. I will sometimes update a program just because I like it and I want to support the company. I thought Acid was going to be like Cakewalk and die a slow death, but they are keeping after it and I want to support that. If Cakewalk still charged I would also support them. For less than the cost of an expensive plugin I can do it and probably get a better value in the included things. Studio One is a very functional program....but I always seen it as the Cubase wanna be. Cubase floundered there for a long time, but now they have their act together. I think that program has finally returned to greatness after all of the corporate BS. They can hold the title as DAW for those also involved, or composing for video. Cubase 12 pro offers more options to incorporate video PLUS being a state of the art DAW, I can see myself continuing to use it extensively. CbB is king of DAWs for the masses. All the way from beginners to pros. If it ran on Mac as well as PC there probably would not be any stopping it. As things are now, CbB has established itself as the very best way for ANYONE to get into a great DAW and begin to learn how to use one. You really aren't trading quality in any way up against the others. If I would have had CbB free when I was 16 I would have been on cloud 9! Us old timers remember slow computers and software that you couldn't depend on and paying a lot of money to have and keep the latest DAWs.

You know I have to admit the new M Macs are impressive and when my old laptop goes belly up, it might be tempting to go that route and use it like a desktop. Logic would be an obvious choice to have around, For only 200 quid to get in, why not? There is also Reaper, Studio One, Cubase and Ableton. I wonder how easy a DAW file transfers between platforms? IOW if I took a Cubase file made in a PC and wanted to continue to work on it in a Mac?

Honestly I don't use the software enough for me to even consider owning that many recording programs. If I had a paying studio, then yeah maybe then. I tried Reason and didn't get on with it. Same with Reaper. I knew I could get Reaper to do anything I wanted it to do, but the time involved for me to learn it was prohibitive. Mixcraft mostly just lays on my hard drive unused. CbB is tough to beat for workflow and has come a Long way since the X days and before. I have been known to upgrade Studio One every time it was offered. This time was a little different though. Not much of an upgrade for me. Maybe next cycle. If SO was my main DAW I would seriously consider the subscription.Why not? You probably spend the same or less in the long run and get all of the other percs. I am not that invested in the program and if they don't continue to offer us upgraders a decent deal, I'll fade away from SO. It's odd, but sometimes one DAW will work for me at getting things done better than another will. Sometimes that DAW is CbB. Other times it's Ableton or Cubase...I can't really explain why they don't all always fit. I made a jazz recording the other day on a whim and in Ableton and it just all worked right away. I got a drum and a rhythm guitar going and the rest seemed very easy. I didn't bother to change keys or do anything extremely complicated, but I know I could have in Ableton. Where some might pull up band-in-a-box for backup, I can pull a band up in Ableton probably faster. For many of these DAWs the ecosystem around them can make things easier. My rating for Studio One so far as accompaniment material is I think they are sub par and the included instruments are nothing special. CbB comes with some decent material to get started. Material and instruments that come with Cubase are a good value For lack of a better way to say this, some DAWs do have a 'sound' to my ears. Ableton is softer, SO is in the middle and CbB seems in contrast to be more up front. Technically the sound engines are all supposed to be the same, but I think they way the DAWs are made creates a certain feel. I find that with CbB mixes I need to always be toning down harsh frequencies. Things begin in the mixer 'up front' and have to be notched back and track volume can easily get out of control when adding sends to efx. Reaper OTOH seems to be more neutral in this respect. There was a time when I would have argued against this point but I can HEAR the difference. I am usually later to the party with upgrades, I mean Ableton 11 has been out for what 2 years? But since I have a controller that maps well to it I am finding I like to use it for some things. The main thing with Ableton is is isn't logically laid out the way most other DAWs are, nothing the average person can't figure out. Especially with all of the training info online.

I don't know what got into me the other evening. I upgraded my Ableton to Live 11 Standard from Live 10 standard. I almost went with the suite, but since I had a bunch of plugins I decided I didn't need it. Not long ago I updated Cubase. Studio One 6 isn't real appealing to me TBH.