marcL

E.g. can you be sure preset loading, outputs, volume, ... works as it did? The former was one issue with VST3 that happened with some plugins! I agree with you that the change of the instrument in templates may not be as critical as in old projects!

But such automatic replacement is always risky! It was the same with VST2 to VST3 replacement! If there is any interface, parameter, default or behavior change, it may fail somewhere and you may even not notice it in the first place!

There is some truth in your words! But on the other hand nearly all the libraries that I own or are interested in are still K5. There are not many K6 libraries on the market AFAIK. It seems NI is too zealous with Kontakt updates. The makers and most consumers are satisfied with version 5. This reminds me somehow of Apple/Mac. ?

Most Kontakt libraries even don't need K6! So why should I install K7 Player or upgrade to K7 full? IMO wasted time at the moment!

That's what annoys me with Windows, the newer the edition the more registry settings are required to reset good old features! ? Somewhere I have noted a lengthy list of them! Lately when I was working on my W7 recording system I found it so comfortable that hovering over a couple of open Windows Explorers showed a path list instead of a couple of irritating thumbnails! And I have to agree with people on the web saying that in most cases the thumbnails don't represent a lot. But hurray, I found a registry setting to implement this on W10! ?

I have some dozen synths with some 1000s of presets. So it takes hours to choose the "right" preset for my idea (it's a time-consuming pain). Why should I program my synth(s) then? (minor changes to the presets are exlucded to this declaration)

Most of the APD deals are not of my taste! And the only really good ones IMO were plugins that I already owned! ?

^^^this, but Odin2 is one of the synths I really like to use, good sound! And I am also one of those preset users ?!

I purchased Aurora Choir (Aria Sounds), 'cos I thought it would be a good deal. Yes, the price was/is fine, but the product seems to be not worth even $1! I worked a couple of hours on a choir passage (to no avail), but the bounced audio was totally out of sync! Absolutly unusable! (I have begun to align the syllables manually then with crossfades and bouncing, time-killing and mad!) First I noticed that the overall volume of the choir was too low. A look at the samples revealed that the close, ribbon and mid microphones were almost quiet (-45 to -50 dB). Only the room microphone has an acceptable, minor volume. Also, there are a lot of volume inconsistences in the samples, i.e. you have to play with velocities for a satisfying result (time-consuming). Another thing that worried me were terrible artifacts in some syllables at certain velocities. Not to forget that the installation was a nightmare, 'cos the package of 9 rar's could not be extracted with 7zip. After a lot of time I was successful with winrar. After 2 frustrating days I cannot recommend this instrument to anyone, but YMMV! Just be warned!

FX handling and quick group is so much improved now! A real game changer! You can now replace a specific FX module in several tracks with one step! Or clear the FX bin of several tracks at once ... ?

Sorry Peter, I didn't want to criticize your comparison work! It seems you have misunderstood my overhasty remark. I should have thought about before I write my comment! No, in the contrary I just wanted to mention how difficult it is to do a comparison generally! Many I listened to on Youtube were superficial IMHO.

The problem in all those VSTi comparisons is that the instruments do not behave the same at the same velocity levels, i.e. in a "real" comparison you would have to adjust the MIDI file for each instrument and then equal the loudness. This is very time consuming and also difficult! Otherwise the MIDI file may suit one instrument better than the others and that's not fair. E.g. in a drums comparison it maybe necessary that the overall kick velocity is quite different per vendor and even per drums pack! And so on. For non-percussion instruments there are also other things that must be considered in the MIDI file, such as behavior on note overlaps ...

These troubles with all the licensing stuff makes me sad! Everyone says they just want to protect their software, but in fact they do on the cost of the paying customers! The worst thing IMHO are those company specific authorization managers (like IK ...). That's why I weight the authorization very high for my choice of music software nowadays! First are offline keys and auth files! Second I like more and more iLok based authorization, because it is simple and clear to use and with a dongle it is easy to apply on offline systems also (just bought SSD5.5, smooth and fast authorization on all of my systems).

I fairly agree! And aside from the "Entire Mix" and "Selection" problems (that I am used to nowadays) the new Export Dialog made things worse IMHO, because it added a lot of new functionality. Just look at the size of this dialog on a 15" laptop, it fills the whole screen! In this new dialog it happens very often to me that I forget to select/choose something and I have to redo the export. The old one was clearly arranged and simple in comparison! What makes things worse for me, is the fact that values are reset to the choosen preset when I reopen the dialog, although I had overwritten them before. In contrast re-opening the old dialog always had the values as you had set them in the previous call.

In Cakewalk I like that it is possible to import audio files as referenced (out of the project folder). This is great, because I often split the tasks of one song into several lighter projects. I have a central folder for each song where I store the audio files. Like that I have only 1 copy of them and I always reference the newest version of them in all affected projects. But one thing that annoys me is that I have no possibility to save such a project in a reasonable way (new or in another location). If you are using referenced audio files, then any changes that you make (like Gain changes ...) are stored under the project's audio folder and it is fine like this (i.e. you have a mix of local and referenced files). Saving such a project you have only the possibility to store "all" audio contents under the new project folder or everything is referenced (in the latter variant even new audio content is not stored in the project!). Sure, there are some work-arounds to get around the problem: If I have a new (not yet saved) project, then I have to save it before making any changes that cause local files. Unfortunately I often miss that ? and have to proceed according to #2! If I have a new (not yet saved) project, then I have to save it with "Copy all audio with project" enabled. Then I have to delete the audio files that were originally referenced. When I open the project again, then I am asked where the missing file(s) is located. I have then to go to the source directory of this/the file(s) and select "reference from current location" (DON'T FORGET THIS as "move to project" is the default, very dangerous IMHO). Then saving the project completes the process. If I only want to relocate the project as it is, then it is the easiest way not to use Cakewalk, but instead working in Windows Explorer: Copy the folder(s) and files manually. Because this is very inconvenient, it would be nice if there was another check box in the Save Dialog to leave referenced audio files referenced! (Maybe with a better explaining text, my native language is not English).

IMO this deal is not very good! Look at me for example, I have about 80 PA plugins. Honestly, most of them I purchased as impulse buy or to use the monthly voucher. Do I need them? I think there are maximum 20 that I really use and like. If I look at the ones that I don't have, then I have to admit that there are only about 3 or 4 that I am really interested in and about 5 others that I would also buy for a good price. Thus buying the All Bundle would be worse than the montly $29.99 deal. No impulse buy deals indeed! Frankly I am neither a friend of plugin bundles, nor of subscription! Why? Because in both cases you pay for a lot of stuff that you do not need and you as customer cannot define anymore what plugin is worth the price (by selecting the ones you like). In the end this leads to a lesser effort in those companies, they rest on their laurels and don't produce what is required/desired! I think for a healthy competition it is much better if we cherry pick the plugins we like from different vendors, but YMMV!

If you export MONO audio clips with the Export Dialog (settings: Source Category = Clips, Channel Format = Mono), then the volume in the files is increased by about +3dB. This is not very convenient, because you use source category Clips to export the clips as they are IMHO! By the way if you export MONO clips by drag and drop, then it works as expected! But this way you cannot apply the useful naming possibilities like in the Export Dialog (very helpful if you export a bunch of clips)! Please, fix the problem above!

I have Neo Complete and I disagree that their instruments are as bad. E.g. I like the woodwinds, some are very convincing IMHO (better than the ones of some other vendors). But I also like some of their pianos. What I agree is that the sample data is huge, but this is caused by the many mic positions (close, inside, outside, room, room wide, vintage inside, vintage room, ...). Normally I only use a mix of 3 or 4 of them. But with mixing the different samples you can exactly get the sound you like (default only 1 is active!).

That's a fact that most AI (new) technology brings nothing but new problems. The positive examples are the exception. Just look at the last 10 years of software development and you can see a lot of trouble. If I look at the software that I use, then IMHO most software does not meet your "good implementation"! There are so many bad examples not only in music software! That's true, unfortunately! Just if I compare news articles and private messages (e-mails, phone, ...) before and after the introduction of spell checking, then I am afraid of AI development! Other example in aviation: If the flight situation is challenging, then often the pilotes have to go to manual control and this gets more and more difficult, because they lack routine caused by the AI (flight system) handling the usual cases. There are so many examples of catastrophies caused by technical analysis faults. No, I do not reject AI generally! If something is really mature, then it may help (I would also like your tempo recognition/quantization, but I doubt it will be available in my life). I just think some healthful skepticism is better than just a blue-eyed view of this topic. ?

IMHO the target is much to sophisticated! Why is it so difficult to create a real drum part for a song with a VSTi that sounds so realistic as played by a human drummer? Me and 10000s of musicians tried to achieve this for years and I think it is nearly impossible to get the same feel! A drummer has not only "one feel" that is represented by a swing value and some random deviations! He delays/forwards the kick, snare, cymbals in the beat differently in every song, maybe even song part, often he has a different swing with the cymbals, ... And this is only the drummer! If you look at the tempo of a song by a whole band it gets even more fascinating! ? Your AI software would have to recognize all this! If you have Melodyne, then just make some tests how it recognizes (or rather NOT) the tempo!

Well, how I love installer monoliths like Native Access! ? Just now I discovered that it had deleted some of the manuals with some updates (Absynth5, Battery4, FM8, Solid*, ...)! ? Is this user friendly deleting the manuals without user notification? I am 100% sure that once the manuals were there, because there are still file links that I had created!

Nothing really impressing! Install on different PCs is boring as always! Still the big online bottleneck as it has ever been! For me this is no progress at all! It's "modern" dumb processing!

My plugin organization is quite different. I have the VST2 plugins installed under a top folder and then a provider subfolder. But I never reference this top folder directly by my DAWs. Instead a have an FX, an instrument and an edit folder, the first 2 with subfolders (Dynamics, EQ, ...). And then I create file links of the plugins in those folders, the ones I really use. In the DAWs I use then the FX and instrument folders for scanning only and in the Edit programs (like RX, Sound Forge, ...) the edit folder (a reduced FX listing). Like that I can reduce the scanned plugins and duplicates without uninstalling some plugins (and it is easy to include or exclude a plugin again). As the VST3 folder is also growing, maybe I will do the same for it. By the way I create the file links with a script, so that I easily can have the same plugin structure on my 3 PCs (works perfectly).

Are you really sure whether there is no loudness change? In Audacity it is simple and keeping the exact loudness level, in CbB it is tricky, you have to check if there is no loudness change!

Having seen the simple way how you can split or put together stereo tracks in Audacity, I always wondered why it is so painful and fault-prone in most other daws with bouncing!