Matthew Sorrels

I picked this up. At first it wouldn't install, kept saying my (copy and pasted) serial number was invalid. Then it suddenly worked. Looks like their installer connects to their website to "verify" your serial. So if the site goes down (or changes) your old installer won't work. Not sure I really like that all that much. They also don't ask for permission/tell you it will go to the net to validate your serial number during the install either. No drag and drop, which is kind of a bummer. Also the GUI isn't resizable. Still may be useful though, just has a few rough edges.

Looks good, passed all my initial tests. ? I was kind of surprised I can't download the sound updates anymore though. If I had missed that "window" I'd be shafted about getting the new guitar/etc. Used to be the updates would be available for longer (always available?) and just the core would time out and require paying to re-download.

What awards did their plugin win? Also no cowbell. ?

I wouldn't count on ReWireing ACID Pro. I sure couldn't get it work right and I'm pretty good with stuff like that.

Looks like they are dropping rewire completely too. Not sure I'll upgrade my Reason 10. I bought it because it was on sale. I don't think I've used it at all though. If the $129 upgrade isn't a special/limited time deal I'll wait.

I built a new machine at the end of last year with a Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C Blackout case (product code is FD-CA-DEF-R6C-BKO) got it from Amazon. It has everything you mention except no Thunderbolt on the top. The blu-ray drive (one slot) lives behind the front door. I'm using air cooling (Noctua) the end result is very quiet. Don't get the glass side so you can get more damping material (the sides are padded) and less flashing lights. The only thing that disappointed me about it was how tricky it is to get to the back of the power supply through the power supply cover (which isn't removable). I was always feeding cables into the modular power supply and having to wedge my hand in there to get them through and connected. If I had removed the lower drive bay it would have been easier perhaps though. I only had to deal with it a few times but it was my only real issue. It's a pretty nice case and a good size. I ended up using a different fan controller (that came with the ASUS motherboard) that didn't fit along the back panel like the one included with it but it's hard to fault them for that.

Do you have Sonarworks Reference installed? They just sent out an update that talks about an error like this. Might be related. I don't use Systemwide so I never saw this but perhaps it's the source of your problem? https://www.sonarworks.com/blog/release-notes/

You might be able to use this free Kontakt multiscript: https://cinesamples.com/product/cinemap To remap the keyswitches and the key range.

I'm way too busy thinking about fixing TextFX to work right on 64bit Notepad++. I really should just lock myself my office until I do it, how hard could it be?

Thanks to this, for this brief moment in time I now have no "Not Purchased" gear listed under Amplitube and T-Racks in Custom Shop. And no left over bonus picks! Until they decide to expand this. ?

You can tell if a loop is ACIDized because it will have the word "acid" near the end of the file if you "strings" the binary .wav file (use a unix-like utility app to extract strings from a binary file). You can also load them into Sound Forge and check. The problem is that acid section doesn't tell you if the transients and key/bpm were set correctly, just that it is there. Every file I've checked has an acid signature at the end. And everything has seemed to have correct settings in ACID Pro 9.0. Here's an example:

All their older pedals are $49 full price, so I guess the subscription adds a 3x markup. So the new math to figure out what a PA product should really sell for is take price, divide by 3 then take 50% (expected basic music software sale discount) which is the same as 16.6% of the full retail price. So I guess that means the new discount level for PA needs to hit 83% off before it's a good deal.

Run Native Access to get it. This is the full string ensemble. They finally (after more than a year I think) have fixed the bug where it wouldn't play exact repeating notes on the grid if you turned off auto-divisi. A bug that made the entire library nearly worthless for me (since I never play things and always use exact notes/grid/scoring software). 1.4.0 -- 2019-08-13 FIXED hanging notes in certain scenarios FIXED an issue that prevented two or more adjacent notes from generating an individual bow ADDED The release knob has been improved to respond to previously excluded articulations ADDED Several improvements to the auto-divisi mode

You can't go wrong with Indiginus. It's a whole better class than the old Zero-G content.

It's pretty decent. Not just a bunch of percussion, includes lots of regional instruments loops. Fair number of vocal loops from the various regions. The loops are loops though, no way around that. I'm pretty fond of using loops with ACID so I don't see that as a problem. It does have a directory called "World Pack Instruments" which seems to contain various instruments used for the loops as wav samples. So for example the "Celtic Norhern Pipe" directory has the following files: Northern Pipe Multi 1-G#3.wav Northern Pipe Multi 2-A#3.wav Northern Pipe Multi 3-C4.wav Northern Pipe Multi 4-D4.wav Northern Pipe Multi 5-D#4.wav Northern Pipe Multi 6-F4.wav Northern Pipe Multi 7-G4.wav Northern Pipe Multi 8-G#4.wav Northern Pipe Multi 9-A#4.wav Northern Pipe Multi Drone-A#2.wav These samples could easily be mapped in Kontakt, though I think the quality might be a little lacking ( you really can't make a good instrument from a handful of samples). Oddly enough these instrument samples don't seem to exist in the Garageband/Apple Loop version. The old Zero-G titles aren't quite like modern stuff though and it's usefulness is always going to be kind of iffy. But with the AcidWav versions I'm pretty happy with what I got vs what it cost me. I feel the same about the AcidWav version of the Pro Pack (which I'm not really sure you can even buy except at T&S). If you have an interest in the Celtic, Deepest India, Sounds of Polynesia, etc products I think this is a better deal at a better price. If they are cut down I'm not really seeing it (my Deepest India directory is actually larger than the single product's size). The content lists from the full packages seem to match what is in this World Pack.

I've mostly worked out some of how it works but that doesn't change the fact it's kind of unfriendly and not always really helpful. The presets that come with it are also kind of a big problem (and I don't have the expansions since I bought it earlier on). If you think about your keyboard instachord splits it in half. The lower half is for selecting a chord (and there are two halves to that, Chords A and Chords B), the upper half is for playing that chord (Picks A and Picks B). If you load the preset RF 01 C Major Chords you get this: But I'll tell you right now, this setup is kind of crappy. Here's why. Ignore the Chords B and Picks B section, just focus on the Chords A and Picks A. If you press one of the keys on the Chords A section it selects a chord. It's setup with this preset to select the chords that make up C Major (C, Dm,Em,F,G,Am,Bm5) using only the white keys. It also selects them with basic voicing and a few are an octave down. That's actually fine. So if you want to play a song using only C Major chords you press any of the white keys C3-B3 and it automatically selects a chord in the C Major scale. The problem is the Picks section. The way this preset is rigged, if you want to play the notes of the chord you are selected you have to hit a TON of white keys all in a row, all at once. And yes that's not natural at all. Or at least not at first. The white keys starting at C5 are all set to each of the notes of the chord, so to play that C Major cord as a triad you have to hit D5 , E5 and F5. What you say? Why did I skip C5, that's because C5 is mapped to the bass note which isn't the first note of the triad. In order to play the bass note and all 6 notes of the chord you actually have to hold down 7 white keys in a row to trigger all those notes. Which seems crazy and requires more hands than I have. So instead change the preset so that it's simpler. Change the Action at the bottom from Bass Note to Hit 1-2-3 (to play the triad for the chord) and clear out all the Chords B section and the Picks B section). So it looks like this Now you can select a chord using the white keys in the Chords A area (C3) and play it by hitting just one key (C5). And the chords you'll play are all in C Major. Playing with this you can start to realize that all the rest of Instachord involves more complex ways of selecting a chord (and it's voicing) and then playing that chord (by strumming for example) But unlike trying to play normal piano, to use instachord you are mostly going to be using keys as triggers, so you will often press 3-5 of them all in a row at the same time. Something you'd normally never do playing. With the right preset though you can easily two finger and stay in scale. Note I should point out that I've never read the manual (if there is one) and I have no idea if this is really how it's supposed to work. This is how it seems to work for me. I also know just enough music theory that I only know I know nothing. I also can't play piano at all, so I may be missing large bits of that as well. So take this with a grain of salt.

Their support sent me another Connect code and download links for the AcidWav version. I think they don't give this out version often though, because the RAR files (and the directory it makes) are missnamed (ZeroG_World_Parck_AcidWav without the dash between Zero and G and pack misspelled). So I'm happy but kind of sad. Apple loop format isn't documented (publicly anyway) and no one supports it but Apple. I think a Apple Loop to Acid wav converter that translates the BPM/Key/Transients is possible. One of the handful of projects I may someday get around to hacking up. I know the advertising copy talks about taking selective parts of the included products but for Celtic the wav files come to 834.8MB, which is very close to the 862MB they claim the full Celtic is. At least with the Pro Pack the included packages are the whole thing, they say it's not but I've had some overlaps and they check out 100%. Of course most of those older titles are actually audio CD's (or a mix of audio and wav files). Looking at the content's PDF I think everything listed is included.

Bought it, but the download is only the Apple Loops. No Acidized Wave Formats at all. I've sent them an email. They used to have Acid versions of this and the Dance Packs and the Pro Pack. The Pro Pack I bought (long ago) on disc from Time&Space and it is Acidized, but they seem to have punted Acidized in favor of Apple Loops.

The big difference is the Soundiron one (which is part of Voices of Gaia) has legato ah/ee/eh/mm/oh/oo instruments (that are pretty nice) in addition to a bunch of other playable articulations plus a bunch of song-like phrases. The 8Dio version is more short songs and chants, think small phrase loops. Soundiron is definitely the better vocal library with far more flexibility and range of use.

I have all the Soundiron libraries except Mimi and Adey. They are all pretty decent and I certainly paid a lot more for them. Wish there was some way to get those two I'm missing very cheaply. After watching the videos the Genesis Choir is the only library that looks like it might be worth it for me. Voxos and Men of the North don't really seem that great. Mosaic Voices will be cheaper later, Heavocity is great but 16% isn't a discount. Ruben's video on HOW TO: SCORE WITH VOCALS at the bottom of the order page is pretty good, worth watching even if you don't get any of these libraries. Might just be me, but I generally find that using vocal Kontakt libraries rarely works that well. Not that I don't keep buying them, but to be honest none of them would be on my list of desert island libraries.

I don't have the Master Bundle but I did update my EQuivocate to 1.5.12 and didn't have any problems with CbB or Cubase. Scanned just fine, no admin mode. I've got the most recent iLok Manager (5.0.3.2569) and I'm using a hardware iLok (not sure that matters). Most recent Windows 10 ver 1903, fully patched. I even deleted the CbB registry entries for it to force a rescan without any problems. VST2 and VST3 versions. And I do have UAC mode enabled/etc but nothing is running as admin. Might be more to this. Going to make it hard to track down though, iLok doesn't consider us customers or important. They will force you to go through the plugin developer for support.

Just one. If it is the second monitor you should be able to disable it and see if that solves it.

I just tried 150% scaling on my 4k monitor (I normally always use 100%) and didn't notice any problems with the CbB control toolbar (latest release). Do you perhaps have some of the High DPI settings enabled under Compatibility? It could also be something to do with your video card driver and even your mouse I suppose. Cakewalk reports to Windows that it's unware of high DPI settings. I think that means you get whatever your video card/Windows can come up with for scaling. Might be something Cakewalk could fix, but I wouldn't hold my breath, fixing apps to support high DPI settings may require a fair bit of re-working.

You have to buy a new product (from the list) to qualify for this promotion.

I think the mention of lowering prices was more marketing hype than an actual plan to do anything at all to the pricing. I think a handful (less than 10) of plugins did lower their price, but in general no. And all their new products have to have crazy high pricing and tiny (if any) intro discounts in order to feed their subscription model. If they were to do flash sales and $29 deals on new plugins it wouldn't be long before the subscription would look over priced. I don't think they can balance both economic models and still manage to keep all their partners happy. I'm guessing next up for them will be exclusive subscription only things. Might be add-ons, might be whole products, but no direct sales. I used my voucher last month to get Mono Upmix for free (had an upgrade price for me). I don't think I've ever added it to a track though.