Tim Smith

Thanks @jack c. for listening and comments.

On another subject, something I only recently began to do was check "hide Related VST2 Plugins" Located in Edit>Preferences>VST Settings I don't like having two of anything in my scan lists. It is convenient CbB colors the plugins in the list to identify what they are. If I have a VST3 plugin with a VST2 twin, I will either opt not to load the VST2 or I'll hide it just in case the VST3 is somehow acting up and I want to go back to VST2. The older plugins generally install to c:\program files\(x86). The more recent somewhere in c:\program files under various alternate files. Voxengo has a file, Steinberg has a file that curiously other plug in vendors use as a shared location sometimes. Spitfire LABS gets kinda heavy if you loaded a lot of those sound banks, so I put that location on another drive. I must have 4 different Kontakt selections. Several have multiple outputs in K5, Kontakt 6 has NO designation calling itself version 6 which can be confusing. CbB plugin scanning is one of the best around. You just have to get it set up right and point it to the right places. I can scan and use a few of the instruments in Mixcraft 9, but the flipside of that is I get annoying QuikQuak pop ups for a few of their payed plugins by that company. I was going to just buy them, but for what they are I think they are pricey. Having the ability to use plugins in other DAWs isn't something that usually works. I suspect the ones that scan in Mixcraft were free to begin with. -Tim

Comments welcome.

Got it. I have a brother by that name. No one knows where he is right now.

I enjoyed both of these. On the first I liked the synth bass? Almost imperceptible what it actually was but I guess it was a low synth. It played well with the other part. Oboe would not have been my first choice in a compo but now you have me thinking about using it more. The second one was equally as good in a slightly different style. You have the VSL libraries down pretty well IMO. -Tim

Excellent rendition of the original Zargg.?

This one was quite nice Wookie. I could easily zone out on it.

Thanks guys. I'll have to revisit this one.

Thanks for your comments and listening. t @Larry T. Thank for listening and comments. I probably need to be more concise sometimes. @DeeringAmpsThank you t. Is it Tom? I appreciate you listening to this and your comments. @David Sprouse Thank you for listening. I noticed the strings a bit forward as well after another listen.

The last version of CbB was not seeing my bitbridge. This leads me to another thought, how much longer do you think we will continue to use 32 bit plugins? I have seen them as unstable at times . Many other DAWS have already dropped them. It might be a good idea to have a list of plugins that always cause crashes in CbB. I was having issue with ST4 for awhile. I believe a recent update fixed that issue, however it continues to crash Cubase on occasion. I haven't had issues in Ableton or Studio One.

Who would have imagined that in 2022 we could claim bragging rights on a Tascam Portastudio? You have a DAW. PFfffffft. I have a Tascam portastudio

I know where my old Sonar projects are but i try to forget them.

Congrats! That's an awful lot of midi programming.

You have the Irish bouzouki or the middle eastern one?

I thought these bobbies were pretty much harmless.

I would be interested to hear what others think as well. I have one of their synths and was considering upgrading to more. This *might* be more responded to on the instruments section of the forum.

About the only thing I don't like about the DX is the poorly made DI. I mean, it's strapped using velcro inside the guitar. That's why I usually track it with mics only. As a stand alone acoustic it's a nice little guitar. True story about the Nazareth factory. We were driving close to it while going somewhere else and I decided to drop by and take the tour. I get there and the place is closed that day, so I never went. We ended up in a nice Brazilian steak house for lunch while there. If you've ever been in one of those you know they just keep bringing the food around until you pop. Being the kind of person who likes to get his money's worth I really packed it in. I probably didn't need to eat for the next three days. Sadly I never got to the tour but I ate very well that day. Yep, that's what I should have done. I buy too many things mail order although the DX was purchased at a local GC. Never heard of Eko. Glad you found a winner. I have some unusual instruments. I have a baritone uke re stringed to play in D. Many people see them as light hearted party instruments. This uke sits in an acoustic mix very well with a more serious sound. I also have an Irish Bouzouki. It's 4 courses of strings tuned DADG. It has a long reach scale, so I often use it for backing to other things. You can play fast on it but it takes practice. Not as easy as a mandolin where everything is close. I sometimes capo it and can get some interesting ideas out of it. I want to put a nice pick up put in it so I can take it out to play. I bought one but it's not "nice" and I hate to cut a hole on a gamble it will work.I mic it up sometimes and track it. And i went through 4 or 5 violins before I realized you have to buy a good one. Knock offs don't cut it on the violin. It's frustrating to play in a band with one sometimes because the guitarist decides to change the key and capo. You can't capo a violin. -Tim

I have guitars too, can't play any of them lol. Knowing a few simple things about how each kind of chain behaves is key. Clipping is different in solid state than it is in analog, or I should say, it responds differently. 99% of everyone reading this is probably using solid state digital conversion. Even the guys sitting in large studios don't often use all of that gear any more. It's all for looks mostly. A serious home recordist might have a decent front end pre amp, maybe combined with a compressor and an EQ all on one box for tracking vocals and guitars. After that it's all solid state into the computer. Guitarists probably play with analog more than anyone if they use a real amp with tubes in it. Emulations are so good now though, why even bother with that? I sold my last tube amp. I think some gear helps, but yeah, it's 99% the person who mixes and plays that makes a difference. After buying a bunch of guitars including a variax guess what my favorite is? My old Martin DX acoustic. It's a 500ish guitar. Not their more expensive models. I also picked up a nice Epiphone Masterbuilt DM500MCE acoustic that sounds wonderful, has multiple outputs for the pickups but I don't particularly like it. Why? It's too big for me. That was an expensive lesson.Feels awkward to play it so I mostly don't. I'm not really big on Les Paul. Too much dirt for me. I prefer Fender because the tones are cleaner if you want them to be. One I haven't tried is the telecaster. I like the sounds it can make. All the way from super clean to distorted. For me a Les is a one trick pony. I still have the first electric guitar I bought. A Laguna HSS. I like that pickup layout that allows me to get a wide variation of tones. But as a lefty playing right handed instruments. lets just say I'm a clumsy finger picker who hates a pick. I'm mostly keys, bass and violin. I once told my violin teacher my violin wasn't playing right. She picked it up and flew through some Bach or similar with it. It wasn't my violin after all.

You want me to blow the smoke off your gun there Jim? ?

I guess it all depends on the lenses we choose to see things through. I believe most mac users who crossed over did it back in the pre win 10 days and so they rate their experiences on older models that had occasional issues. I can't say I blame anyone who became frustrated with product A and went to product B. I think it went both ways. I once had a Mac. New Macs with M1 are a huge improvement in almost every way. As I mentioned, The reason isn't just economic for me, although I am known to be frugal. I don't like the company models and strategy. If Apple were to change and begin to make their computers open to service by others besides just them or offer their OS legally on Hackintoshes, I would probably be more inclined to look at their products. Their way of thinking has actually locked them out of business they could have had and made them more of a niche machine. A more expensive niche. I don't see the argument for user experience holding water because I can buy any monitor or keyboard I want to buy for my PC. What I think has probably hurt the PC more than anything are flooding the market with low end PCs which was bound to happen in the free market. One organization I work for buys only IBM Thinkcenters for work. These are good computers. I'm still on the same one after over 5 years. These computers are easy to service. Push two buttons on the side and the top flips up to reveal all of the components which mostly plug into sockets.

I think I would feel a little more confident with SSD internal. Platters would make me nervous. You can't look too nervous at the airport. They will think you are carrying coke. You'll end up getting one of those 'special searches'.? I guess there is a way around everything. If I had to do it I would make it work somehow. Redundant drive always helps. I bought a gamer laptop a few years ago thinking I would use it and it mostly sits now. I'm spoiled on a desktop. -Tim

As a Mac user I thought you were supposed to argue with me not help me make my point That's a lot of moola for me. I'm glad you're not paying for it.

I still have an older 6 core Intel build and I loose track of how old it is because it still works for anything i do with it. Probably coming up on 5 years now running win 10 zero issues. I did OC it to 5ghz. This did not make it any louder for cooling and it bumped my performance up a few notches. Someone else might buy a Mac and have the same experience. Most Mac users could not figure out a computer and think Mac is easier to use. For them it probably is. The difference here as I see it, is that Mac keeps changing things on their users. This has happened for the last 20 years at least. They also demand in house service. This all translates to $$ for them and less $$ for us. One of my friends already bought an M1 Mac. He uses it for video and photography. He commented that it can't handle everything he wanted to do with it which I found surprising. His demands are not professional demands. Apple is always saying, we are changing things follow us and spend $$ or get lost. This is no different. They made a new chip but most DAWS are not coded to run on it. Who does this cost? Not Apple. If you like Logic Pro maybe it's a winner and apparently some DAWS are beginning to run on it. Most of what the audio recording world is hearing right now though are impressive specs compared to their old machines. Not compared to real world use for the average user in audio mixing. I'm sure they will get others to follow them. The question is, when will they change something up again that makes others scramble to catch up to what they are doing and spend even more $$ in the process. And I mentioned this in another thread I think- I'll make a comparison to a car I just bought. The cargo is rated a few mm smaller than some of the competition but it's still a great car and it still does everything I need it to do. I doubt very many people ever notice. Same here. So I guess the way I see it is, we have a company with a history of planned obsolescence that costs users more $$ offering a new system they hope everyone will follow with new coding for their new chip. Not an easy task BTW for those who have to re write DAW programs or anyone esle making programs for Apple. Who are they initially looking out for in the short term here? APPLE not you. Who are they looking out for in the long term? By more closely controlling what they make they are better sealing their highly enclosed system. Who are they looking out for here. APPLE. Wanna see the same business model eslewhere? Look At Tesla. Tesla owners tell us what happens when the car needs repair. Where can you take it? Tesla only. This is probably my primary reason for not gravitating to Apple. -Tim

No doubt Apple has a winner on their hands. While I expected a higher price for a Mac, the pricing does not seem to have gone up with these new chips. I pulled up a MacBook Pro loaded with 16gb memory M1 10 core cpu,16 core neural engine ( whatever that is?) and 16gb unified memory- 2699.00. This would not be the end for me though because one hard drive is nowhere near enough even at 1tb and there would have to be monitors for the studio. That drives the price up. IMO the choice is still balanced between economics and what you want or need to do. I can come away with a very nice Intel or AMD build that has no problem with 100 tracks for less. If I had to work portable that might tip the scales a little in favor of. Toting around a 100 track project from a paying client would make me a little nervous. All it takes is one mistake. Then what? The lappy has to go to Apple to be fixed and hopefully recover the tracks. That lady on the bus accidentally sits on it, or it gets dropped, then what? I seldom have more than 50 tracks in a mix. For me it's probably overkill, and I feel pretty sure they will have some competition in the future.

And that's a good thing. I hope.