Matthew Sorrels

PDC is for audio track/plugin compensation. For MIDI tracks (and sample libraries) you can adjust the offset in the Track Inspector by setting the MIDI Offset Controls Time+ The units for this is in ticks, which the conversion requires using the current projects BPM. As a result I've never bothered trying to use it.

I think for a beginner FabFilter is way overkill. There is no way you will get anything close to value out of having it early in your musical journey. That doesn't mean it isn't excellent stuff, but jumping into the Mastering Bundle is a bit much. The same is also true of the iZotope advanced versions. The extra things the advanced versions bring aren't going to be all that big a deal either. But the better answer is the question: What do you want to do? If you just want to eq mixes, Fabfilter's Pro-Q 3 is much better than any iZotope Eq. If you want to mix a track, Neutron is a better toolset for someone without a lot of experience. To mix a track using Fabfilter tools requires you know how to use a lot of tools, none of which will hold your hand even a little bit. Neutron has a lot more hand-holding/AI. If you want to master an album or a track, again Ozone is the better toolset for someone without a lot of experience. Mastering with Fabfilter requires really knowing how to master/what you want. Ozone can help you more. My advice if you must get some Fabfilter plugin, would be to just get Pro-Q 3 and not the Fabfilter Mastering bundle. The other Fabfilter plugins in the Mastering Bundle are still a version behind the flagship EQ (and the upgrades won't be free) and you aren't ready to use them just yet. Upgrade the iZotope plugins to advanced based on what you want to focus on, or just stand pat with the standard versions. Get a year of experience and then re-evaluate. Since Pro-Q 3 isn't on sale, I'd say you should wait till you can get it on sale (I think they will have some sale price on single plugins around xmas). Adding a bundle of tools just will make learning harder, I know this one from experience, since I love bundles. At least with iZotope you are talking about single tools. OK very complex bundles of tools all tied together, but still just two things. I bought the Fabfilter stuff in bundles and I know I've gotten less out of it because of that.

BBCSO/Spitfire's plugin isn't a multi-instrument/multi-channel system. So yes, you need a separate instance of it for every instrument. It's not like Kontakt where you can load once copy of Kontakt and it can contain multiple instruments.

I do know there have been reports of more issues with 6.3.1 and some Kontakt scripts on a few forums. I suspect another patch is coming. But I've not had any problems with multi-instrument Kontakt setups with any of these updates (and I'm using that a lot). Generally problems with multi-instruments/multi-channel are project specific configuration/setup issues. There are a lot of parts that have to be setup correctly or it doesn't work right. You might want to start an empty project and add everything one track at a time by hand using simple instruments (the Kontakt library instruments) and see if you can reproduce the problem. If you can't then it's something specific about your project. Could be anything of course, MIDI routing in Cakewalk can be complicated.

For the pitch bend I didn't do anything. I loaded the Guitar (any of them, though I mostly used the two with amps already included which don't seem to have the slide range selection) and loaded say Midi-4 [155bpm].MID and set the instrument to velocity mode, set my DAW to 155 bmp and hit play. The pitch bend in that MIDI file plays back very synthy. Here's Midi-4 with the Cabal 8 Crunch instrument. Cabal8CrunchMIDI4.mp3

I went ahead and picked it up, because I didn't feel at all offended by the imagery (my music needs all the paranormal assistance it can get ?), but I have to admit I'm kind of disappointed with it. There are only 7 MIDI files included, just a few bars in each. So kind of a let down there. The graphic/text is a bit hard to read at 4k, some more contrast would have been nice. I don't think it is doing the pitch bend all that well either (based on the included MIDI files) compared to some other guitars (Orange Tree Infinity and Shreddage 3 Jupiter) using the same MIDI. It does do pretty nicely with Heavier 7 Strings MIDI riffs though. Better than H7S does with Cabal's riffs (odd that). Of course MIDI guitars all have issues -- I'm not sure MIDI really captures a guitar performance correctly. It's even harder to share MIDI clips with them. You pretty much have to write to the instrument. Cabal is not the worst Kontakt guitar I've bought, but it's not the best either. Kind of blah really.

It appears NI broke something important in the new Kontakt 6.3.0 release the other day. They have released a fast update to fix this problem. So if you did update to Kontakt 6.3.0 you really need to get the new 6.3.1. If you haven't updated, well now it's even better. Run Native Access to get the update.

Note that if you are both a Red Room customer and own Cinemorphx/Morphestra you will get two different coupons, but can only use one of them -- yes, I tried. It also requires the full version of Kontakt. Which seems to be SampleLogic's new thing. The sale price is $249.99 and if you get the discount coupon you get $50 off. The coupons look custom (they aren't generic) but if anyone want's to try here's the one I didn't use: RRA-4gh4-4OfR-omd2-SAI

BOOM Library is celebrating 10 years and have marked their Cinematic Metal bundle (includes both the designed and full construction kit) to $10 https://www.boomlibrary.com/sound-effects/cinematic-metal/ Not sure I need 4000+ metal impact sound effects, but I couldn't pass up the discount. Their site also seems to indicate their will be other celebration deals.

Given the state of the world I think it's fair to say that past sales patterns are unlikely to hold this fall/winter/Christmas. Which certainly may help get a reasonable deal out of EastWest, but I wouldn't hold my breath. They seem to be focused on selling the subscription (and overpricing everything to make that more valuable).

So few EastWest sales include upgrades, you really shouldn't be all that surprised. I can only think of two in the last 4 years.

I'm sure there is some lag in order to do the English translation. I don't think they are making actual separate editions, they are just translating the content. Even with perfect translation software they would have to deal with layout issues. And I don't think any translation system is close to perfect, so figure a good bit of editor work. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a 2-3 week lag between the German and English editions. I hope they at least give it a try for a year.

So I take it the Cabal 8: Cinematic isn't part of this bundle. The other two elements are included with this flagship but not the Cinematic since it appears to be a different instrument (soft semi-acoustic guitar). I'm not sure I really need another heavy metalish string guitar. What is the included MIDI like? I really like Heavier 7 Strings not just because of the tone/instrument but the included MIDI library of guitar riffs.

I don't think the English version of this new issue is out yet. Zinio doesn't show it and it's not on Readly either.

I do think I've seen some new LABS instruments show up in the Spitfire Audio app that I don't think I added to my account on the website -- which you did have to do. But I'll admit after a while all the LABS stuff starts to blend together and I might have added something and just forgot to install it. I've not seen anything formal about it.

BBCSO core update as well.

Gear of the year for 2020 won't be published until Dec. No mention of them/this in the last four issues of Music Tech (I have a sub).

Inside Cubase when you drag audio from a track it doesn't drag a .wav file (like CbB or most DAWs) instead it drags a text file with a VST-XML record inside it. That XML file has all the details of what exactly you dragged, including the path to the .WAV file, tempo, start and end times, a bunch of stuff. The EzBass didn't support this as a valid drop source before this 1.0.5 update. If S1 works the same way and drags audio clips from tracks like Cubase then I'd assume this new version of EzBass would work with it. It's pretty easy to check though. Inside the DAW have an audio track and drag the audio into the Windows Explorer. From Cubase you get a text file (named something like DroppedText-20200628.txt) and if you open that text file you'll see something like If S1 drag&drops audio like that, it will now work with EzBass. If it does something else though, all bets are off. When I did the Toontrack update that started this thread I only had updates to Latin Percussion EZX and the two parts of EzBass. I try to run the manager at least once a week to make sure I catch things.

It's in the list above "Added support for dragging audio from Cubase." and it seems to work for me.

Looks like there is an EzBass update (to version 1.0.5) long release notes:

Years owned Stutter Edit: 5 years, 4 months, Number of times I've used Stutter Edit in an actual musical piece: 0 I'm waiting for them to fix BreakTweaker's awful performance (and make the UI resizeable). That I actually might be willing to pay $79 for. But Stutter Edit, while cool, is not worth more than $29 in today's market.

The VST 64 binary inside the Windows Hybrid2020_Setup.zip is identical to what I already had (the bytes themselves, not just the reported version number). There is no update here.

This happens often with EastWest. They rarely/almost never put upgrades on sale. So several times a year some of their products with upgrades actually become cheaper to buy new due to the endless sales they do offer on full priced products. With the subscription focus and since you can't re-sell their products, they don't seem to care.

The latest issue of Resolution Magazine is free on their website. There are a handful of back issues that are also free (but you have to click through the years to find the free ones). Click on the link for "Latest Issue" on the home page to read the current one. https://www.resolutionmag.com/

Mind Control can be pretty useful, not very often though, but every now and then you run into something and bang it's a great work around.