Matthew Sorrels

The DLL must be in the directory above the samples. Just like it is in the zip file. You put the DLL into the same dir as the samples and that won't work. Move it up one directory (leave the samples the .mse file in Iowq Piano - 64.instruments, move the DLL)

Radio Silence

No solos. And I really don't recommend the HO Solo's, they are not that good. OK the harp isn't that bad I guess. Not really sure I have much insight on what makes a quality harp. But for the violin and cello there are much better choices.

It's crazy they have no way to merge in presets so they are added to the menu. I looked at the files that drive the factory presets and I think it would be possible to merge the presets in, but then when they change/update the factory presets it would all be undone. They are just XMLish files though. I think you could build something (Python maybe) to do the merging though you might have to build a mapping from the directory names in the free presets package and the actual plugin names. Given how Waves like to be the reference standard you'd think they work to make their presets a bit more manageable.

I've had Synthmaster (and Synthmaster One) for a while, but the expansions do help take it someplace new. It's a pretty complicated synth to puzzle out presets yourself on. Now I have a ton of very nice presets at a pretty decent price -- can't beat that. I have a ton of synths but I think Synthmaster may be one of the most underrated of the bunch. It and Melda's MSoundFactory both have amazing potential and don't seem to get the press they deserve.

Well at least it's not just my computer. Lets see what happens.

It's only better in a narrow way. But it now has a super giant memory leak. I just spent an hour writing up a trouble report. The new version doesn't use as much ram on load as before (20gigs for my test vs 64gigs before 1.0.4) but it still takes 12:53 (so 13 minutes) to load fully. The last 8 of them it stops allocating ram and just sits there flashing the LED. For 8 minutes. No disc and no CPU activity. Then when you start playing my test 2 bar loop, every time through the loop it allocates another 2gigs of ram. Loop it 10 times and run out of ram. At this point I did what I didn't want to do (write up a trouble ticket). I attached a ton of data, screenshots, system info dumps, their logs, the project file, etc. But I fully expect them to tell me I need to reinstall something or otherwise ***** off. If they didn't notice it's leaking that much ram when fixing their issues, I feel their development team isn't up to it. I've put my Cubase 10 test project here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iBVWN4No4olyl6chlH4vluKBFu0sDK-k

I managed to buy all 32 expansions by just copy&pasting the checkout page after I added the expansions. With all 32 in the cart it lowered the price of each expansion to $3.32, then with the $9 coupon I think I got a pretty good deal. But no free upgrade to version 3.

My coupon is in my account on the Coupon tab. With the $4 price buying all 32 expansions is cheaper (a lot cheaper) than the Everything upgrade. But their cart won't let you scroll down and press the checkout button if you add 32 expansions. lol

The NI Symphony is a bit of a mixed bag. The essential versions are kind of weak and that's all you get with Ultimate. The full versions (if you get the collectors edition or upgrade) are better but only the strings and percussion would I consider good. I used the full version of just the strings for a while before I finally jumped to the collectors edition. The strings auto-divsi is really nice and NI did finally fix some of the bugs with repeating notes not playing. I still like how the strings sound even if I've mostly moved on. I'll still pull them up because I like how they sound and how it works, but the brass and winds I've never bothered to use much at all. The percussion is good, but I have at least a half-dozen high end orchestral percussion libraries so it doesn't get much play. Ultimate has some nice stuff, I've never regretted jumping to it long ago, but I'd always wait for the upgrade sale to get it (spring or summer I think, can't remember for sure). It has a few pieces the normal Komplete doesn't that is helpful (Session Strings Pro 2, Session Horns Pro, Action Strikes, Rise and Hit). But I don't think I'd compare it with the EastWest, Spitfire or Berlin Tools stuff. By the time you got Ultimate and then the upgrade to the full Symphony you could have bought just about anything else. It's not the cheap way to a complete package. Hollywood Gold right now with the sale price isn't a bad deal though and you do get a complete package. My problems aren't with the sound but more the way the player works. It's really painful for me even if the sound I want is in there somewhere.

Hollywood is newer than Symphonic. It also is available in pieces (unlike Symphonic). Symphonic and Miroslav are pretty much the same generation. I haven't used Symphonic in a long time (when I had a year Cloud sub), but it didn't seem as good as Hollywood (which I ended up buying after my sub ended) though it did have solo instruments as well as ensembles which Hollywood didn't. Since you can't crossgrade from Symphonic and you can't resell EastWest libraries, it's generally better to get what you actually want from the start. Hollywood Gold is decent, but Play v6, their sampler is garbage. It streams data very poorly and they seem to have no interest in changing that. As a result it's kind of hard to recommend either of them. Can you make it work? Sure, maybe. If you only store libraries on a fast SSD, configure the player to load all samples into memory, and never do a fast bounce. Buy a month of Composer Cloud and try them both. Don't buy either one until you try them. Both are better than Miroslav but not by all that much really, but it also may depend a lot on what you want to do. Sadly to get something in the same class in Kontakt format or VSL is going to cost you a bit more, even with sales. Or you end up with something not as complete but perhaps better.

One license, hardware iLok required.

Those free presets have been out for a long time. But you have to load each one manually, it's a very painful to use collection.

Before 10, WUP was a waste of time except for a few very narrow cases. Namely you wanted to sell a Waves plugin you owned or they added something to a Waves bundle you owned and you felt the WUP cost was worth it for what was added. The reason WUP was worthless in the V9 era was V9 lasted a long, long time. And you could get all the updates to V9 plugins even without WUP. But once V10 shipped, the upgrade train stopped. Your V9 plugins wouldn't be updated anymore. And V9 and V10 didn't co-exist very well. So I moved to V10 using a combination of WUP and upgrades (where you buy an upgrade to a bundle/plugin that gets you a new bundle/plugin and also WUPs everything). I had believed V10 would have a similar life span as V9, several years. If your reading this thread you know It didn't. I should have just stuck with V10 at least until there was a WUP sale, but I decided I didn't want to mess with it so I WUPed everything and jumped to V11. Windows users don't really get anything out of this at all. New GUI on the Renaissance plugins and a plugin I already owned added to Mercury. I just didn't want to deal with the version mixing headache but honestly this wasn't a good deal. Should have stuck with V10. I did get a voucher for what I spent on the WUP but I'm not sure I'll be able to use it.

It gives no options or controls, just removes everything (or claims to, looks like it left a few files behind though). Usually with Wave's the only way to uninstall one plugin was to either by hand delete things or uninstall everything and then reinstall the things you actually want. Doesn't look like they have changed that at all.

I think if you never launch a V10 version of the standalone apps you should be fine, just only launch the V11 version and point at the V11 plugin dir when it starts. That did seem to work for me, even before I cleaned the V10 apps. I just didn't want to have those V10 apps sitting on my computer (and perhaps being launched by accident). I guess I could have just deleted the EXE's manually as well.

On my system the V10 apps are still there but they won't work and shortcuts I have still point to them. If you actually start the V11 version (from C:\Program Files (x86)\Waves\Applications V11\Bass Slapper.exe) it asks for the plugin directory I point it to C:\Program Files (x86)\Waves\Plug-Ins V11 and it then seemed to work. But all my shortcuts are launching the V10 version in C:\Program Files (x86)\Waves\Applications V10\Bass Slapper.exe but I have no V10 plugins to point it to. And running it clears the setting for both versions so V11 will then ask again. Not sure how exactly to fix all these problems but I'm starting with using the Wave Central option to uninstall V10 plugins. Then I guess I'll go and change any shortcuts I have that point to the old V10 ones. Update: That seemed to work. On Wave Central's Settings panel I picked Uninstall V10 Plugins. That removed the V10 versions of the apps. I then manually cleaned up all the shortcuts.

I've done a full file search and none of those presets appear to have been installed. Usually with Waves you have manually load presets into the plugin (from XPS files). It is maybe one of the worst preset management systems even built for this many plugins/presets. If they had fixed that for V11 it would have made it worth it. But no. None of these new V11 presets appear to have been installed at all. And their website is no help.

They have been releasing updates, but it is slow development. I have Omnisphere and yes it's a bit expensive resourcewise. But MME is pretty much a dead end for latency reasons, but if it works better for you I'd say use it. The problem with MIDI processing plugins (not just the Captain stuff) is how it really delays the data that synths need until much later, it's a giant computation that has to be completed before every other plugin and synth gets to do their work. That pipeline stall kills performance. In theory CbB is supposed to get the delay the MIDI generator needs and then delays everything else by that amount. But there are lots of issues with plugin delay compensation. It doesn't seem to work well with MIDI generating synths/plugins all the time. You might want to make sure PDC is enabled, but even with that you may not get the right results. In general you may get better results doing initial work with only the Captain plugins and then export the MIDI out and use that to directly drive synths. Most of my Captain plugin problems involve it talking to other Captain plugins. That inner-plugin communication often seems to break. I save often when using it.

Electric Grand 80 Piano come with Gold. When you upgraded it WUPed your Gold and so you got the full current version of Gold, which (if yours was older) would add the Electric Grand 80 (and most likely a few other things). You can go through the release notes to see what was added to Gold in the past https://www.waves.com/downloads/release-notes#v10

iLok plugins always blacklist the first time they scan for me in Cubase 10. But they all work after I manually enable them. Been like that for a while now.

Chilled Trap 2 with the MIDI files is the only one I'm considering (because of the MIDI files). Did anyone get it? I have some Loopmaster points or something so it would be even cheaper I think. Might be worth it just for the MIDI.

VI forum is pretty much a must read. I don't really post much (if ever there) but the content is pretty good. And it is the place for BBCSO talk. They are claiming to have a fix coming soon. So I'm hopeful. If they can manage to fix it perhaps I'll finish my CbB template. I do get a kick out of the fact that Cakewalk runs it better than Cubase 10.

When I load my test ostinato project (with 40+ tracks and every instrument), it takes forever to load but claims to only have 11gigs loaded. But Task Manager shows 32gigs Private Bytes and 54gigs Working Set size. Which is crazy.

I've been using them for a long while, though I've mostly switch to Cubase. MIDI plugins like Captain can require you set your ASIO buffer very, very high. In fact I'd say 2048 is almost required. If my interface went higher I'd use that. But that's mainly if you are using the Captain plugins to drive other synths. If you just use the built in stuff it seems fine mostly. The Captain plugins can be kind of buggy though. I don't think they develop much on Windows. Sometimes there are issues with the plugins talking to each other. But it's never been a big problem for me. If you are more specific about the audio issue your having we might be able to help you. But try increasing your ASIO buffer to maximum first.