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So far I have bought a total of 4 WD Elements, all of them worked great until I finally had one of their funky USB 3.0 micro cable sockets on the drive case mess up on one, rendering it useless. Not a cable problem, but is a fault with the socket on the external drive case itself. Crappy design. From now on I'll stick to the new WD Passport Ultra, with the USB C connector on the drive case. That's my latest WD external drive purchase, and I must say the USB C is a much better design... Ultra is only a little bit more spensif than the regular Passport. Example: https://www.amazon.com/WD-5Tb-My-Passport-Ultra-Portable-External-Drive/dp/B07X46C64N/?th=1 Comes with a USB C to USB 3.1 adapter for your PC side if you don't have any USB C ports.

The KeyLab 61 is worth every penny! I bought the Alesis VX49 version of the AKAI Advance a few years ago (the one that was AKAI VIP integrated), and AKAI seems to have end-of-lifed the VIP keyboards and software.

The original Roland XV-5080 hardware was a multitimbral synth. I have heard complaints from Roland Cloud users that Roland did not completely emulate the originals. I have the original hardware JV-1080 and that is 16-part multi-timbral in "Performance" mode, and includes a decent GM instrument bank. The XV-5080 hardware is newer than that, and is 32-part multitimbral in "Performance" mode. Don't know much about the Roland Cloud plug-ins, though, except a quick glance at the manuals tells me that Roland has removed the multitimbral "Performance" mode from the software versions of both of these synths, leaving only the patch and rhythm sets. So it's a definite no-go at using the either the JV or XV software synth like a TTS-1. If you are a Roland Cloud user, you may want to check out the Roland Sound Canvas VA: https://www.roland.com/us/products/rc_sound_canvas_va/ "Each plug-in instance supports 16 parts and up to 64-note polyphony"

I installed 4.2.1 recently. I haven't used it extensively enough since then to declare it bug-free, but it does launch and load instruments and play them. So it isn't broken.

I got the emails today (again) for the recent Amplitube 5 and SampleTank 4 updates.

Right, but as Larry confirmed, you cannot enter the T-RackS group buy with an IKM freebie, which was the expressed purpose for acquiring the IKM T-RackS freebie. For the group buy, you would still have to purchase, or I suppose transfer, a qualifying license. It's fine if you just want a freebie IKM license for your kit, but that freebie is normally going to run you $19.99 because of the transfer fee. Unless somebody was holding onto an IKM redemption code from a 3rd party deal that hasn't been registered to any account yet. But those are pretty rare.

You do realize that if any IKM product is already registered, then it is subject to a $19.99 IKM license transfer fee? Plus correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think actual freebies qualify as group buy entries.

I read some confusion in this thread between Lo-Fi Glow and Neon. This thread title was about the Native Instruments free Lo-Fi Glow offer, available now until October 6th. You redeem the code at NI and install it with Native Access. Lo-Fi Glow is a Kontakt Player library that also comes with Komplete 13, and is 575 MB in size. It's got some interesting sounds and effects in it. Also discussed here was the previous, now expired offer from Plug-in Collective, that was for a Neon Library that uses the Capsule plug-in. Neon is a 743 MB library that only plays in the Capsule plug-in. No sub required for this library.

Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 and A Game of Thrones: The Board Game Digital Edition, free until June 30th. https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/car-mechanic-simulator-2018 https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/a-game-of-thrones-5858a3

That new AKAI keyboard looks interesting. But I wouldn't trust a big purchase like that for AKAI to support it long term as part of inMusic. They tend to keep moving on to the next shiny thing...

Alrighty! I already had the Lo-Fi Glow that came with Komplete 13.

$1,899 at Guitar Center https://www.guitarcenter.com/Akai-Professional/MPC-Key-61-Production-Synthesizer-1500000377153.gc Cheaper to build a very strong PC and add just add MPC software...

I’ll trade you my Native Instruments Lo-Fi Glow serial I got from Focusrite.

I see this as still a version 1 UJAM virtual guitar, and the v1 guitar is a more limited feature set. I am comparing this to my VG-Sparkle which was my first UJAM product. Wait for v2, like the basses are at now, as well as the newer guitars such as VG-Iron2 and VG-Carbon. For V2, UJAM has added an instrument mode in addition to the virtual player mode, plus MIDI drag and drop for the phrase patterns. Plus a few other enhancements to the FX, such as the "Finisher".

^^^ This

I'm still seeing the new preset browser in the plugins that I updated to v14.

I'm sure that was a reference to "These go to 11".

You could try this method first instead of a completely clean install, after migrating the existing Windows image to the new hardware build. This can preserve all of your applications and data, while replacing the operating system. The In-Place Upgrade Repair Install "It’s little-known and underappreciated, but one can install the same version of a Windows 10 OS onto an existing copy. This uses the Windows installation files in ISO format." "It will systematically replace every operating system file (and move the previous version to a Windows.old folder to which you can roll back if you like (Start ? Settings ? Update & Security ? Recovery ? Go back to the previous version of Windows 10/click the “Get Started” button)." https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/fix-windows-10-repair-install

The original Massive became the de facto industry standard soft synth at the time (2007). But NI unwisely decided to replace it with a completely new synth called Massive X rather than improving the old one, and that disillusioned a lot of loyal Massive fans. No backwards compatibility... Not a very smart move by NI. ? https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/native-instruments-massive

Just to be safe, deactivate and move your iLok and Waves licenses back to the cloud, unless you are using hardware dongles. The other software apps that depend on email/password activations shouldn't be a problem.

Not necessary to reinstall with Windows 10 or above!!! The new hardware abstraction layer allows any existing modern Windows system to boot on any compatible hardware, without any major bumps! All your programs and data should survive the trip! Just clone your drive, plug it in, connect your other drives and boot up! Windows will take a few moments to configure its drivers for the new hardware, then all you will need to do install is the manufacturers custom drivers for your ASUS motherboard, your graphics card, & audio and MIDI devices. Meanwhile the system should be up and running with Microsoft's generic drivers. I did this a couple years ago with an upgrade to my new motherboard, CPU, and RAM. Works great! Good luck!

Which applications are most likely to benefit from recompilation for Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX)? "The performance benefit from recompiling an application for Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX, Intel® AVX2 and/or Intel® AVX-512) may vary greatly from one application to another. Applications containing floating-point loops that can already be vectorized using Intel® SSE instructions are likely to see significant gains just by recompiling for Intel AVX due to the greater width of the SIMD floating-point Intel AVX instructions." https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/which-applications-are-most-likely-to-benefit-from-recompilation-for-intel-advanced-vector-extensions-intel-avx.html

Massive X is the only instrument that I'm aware of that has a hard requirement for AVX. Other developers may make their software AVX or AVX2 "aware", in order to take advantage of that instruction set when available, but can still run on older CPU architectures.

Yep, and the the disillusionment with Massive X will just be a bittersweet afterthought as you install the other gigabytes of content in Komplete 13!