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I have the whole AIR collection. There is a lot of value in there. It was once an exclusive for Pro Tools users, but now available as VST and AU plugins. Obviously needs a facelift, but for the price hard to quibble over details... Buy them piecemeal, or as collections, which is the best bang for the buck!

Yup! Exactly! ???

You can get Reason 11 Intro at JRR for $88.11 with discount code "forum". Plugin and standalone. 10 instruments. https://www.jrrshop.com/propellerhead-reason-intro

iZotope VocalSynth 2 is 75% off for $49 at PluginBoutique. https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/54-Vocal-Processing/4413-VocalSynth-2 Of course Waves Morphoder is on sale for $29.99 but not at PB. https://www.waves.com/plugins/morphoder And the TAL Vocoder is still a free download. https://tal-software.com/products/tal-vocoder

I think that for that price everyone should get a copy. Nice sounding hybrid synth, that comes with a large preset library. But it's no longer "The Next Generation in Synthesis". Interface needs a facelift, and a scalable one at that. But otherwise it's still a very good sound tool. ?

I ran across those a few years ago. ? Very cool for experimental sounds. It's amazing how you can mangle sounds with them. For example, just try running a drum track through them. You can get some very weird spacey effects. Also try with some normal instrument sounds and you can get some very unpredictable results. Fun stuff!

Good idea! I decided to grab another sound pack for Chromaphone for $19. Was planning to do that anyway. Thanks for reminding me that the sale was still on! Will take a look at the Reason Rack plugin for free.

I got a free code for Reason Lite last year that was bundled with a piece of hardware. I ended up uninstalling it. If I was really interested, I would step up to Reason Intro.

I have always wondered about that. Since Gibson shut down Cakewalk, I don't believe that it's been possible to register legacy Cakewalk products. BandLab has not released anything but the DAW to this point.

The issue with XLN is that if your Windows machine ID changes, then it looks like you are using a different computer that has not been activated with XLN yet. Usually a quick fix, Nothing running in the background like some other protection schemes. Just the XLN Installer that you run on demand. But you will need to sign in to your XLN Audio account on the web to adjust your computer activations.

Apparently the XLN license activation is tied to the machine ID. This changes with every Windows 10 version upgrade, i.e. 1903, 1909, 2004, etc. Maybe they should use Pace iLok instead? I have had no issues with that!

The bang for the buck deal on Addictive Drums is to buy an official "custom" bundle from a 3rd party distributor. Funny, but they don't sell that at their XLN store. You get AD2 with your choice of content. So pick any 3 kits (ADPaks), plus any 3 MIDIPaks, plus 3 additional kit pieces. You don't have to select them all up front, as XLN will show unused credits until you select all the parts you registered. For example take a look at this at Audio Deluxe. You have to sign in to see the member discount in the cart. https://www.audiodeluxe.com/products/xln-audio-addictive-drums-2-custom With code "SUMMER2020" you get a discount of $23.97 so your order total would be $125.98. Highly recommended, and the only way I've bought their kits! Plus once you have started with AD2, you might be interested later in the occasional XLN sale, when all their stuff goes for 50% off. That's when I've stocked up on extra "custom" bundles.

PaintShop Pro: How To Disable Messages in PaintShop Pro https://support.corel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012807447-PaintShop-Pro-How-To-Disable-Messages-in-PaintShop-Pro#CUH How to change your preferences for the Corel Update Helper https://support.corel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012433607#p0

I would add, get both if you can. Live is a great secondary tool to have with ANY conventional recording and production DAW. It is a different animal from those. Great for creative and experimental sound design, the session view is unparalleled. And it was built for live performance, as some have found that conventional DAWs are basically intended for studio recording only. Try it for free while you can!

I still use an old copy of Photoshop Elements as my current go-to editor for quick edits. I know my way around it and can get a lot of stuff done quickly. Also have a current copy of CorelDraw Graphics Suite, and have been rather fond of the included Corel PhotoPaint raster graphics program like forever. It's a good toolbox for some serious editing! Does CMYK, while Adobe Pjhotoshop Elements is limited to RGB. I also have a very old standalone copy of the full Photoshop if I ever need some serious lifting... I never really got into Paintshop Pro, but I do have the latest edition due to a good deal from Humble Bundle. Probably need to spend more time with the tutorials, but in general the workflow is a bit different than I'm used to. The popularity of the program begs me to check it out some more.

My next project is the sample drive. Changing my system drive to SSD was a big game changer! Got my secondary SATA hard drive split into two partitions, one for samples and one for archives, and its nearly full. Going to add another SATA SSD exclusively for the samples, and dedicate the spinner to archives. Then I can buy more sample libraries. Which is out of the question at the moment, and I'm afraid I might miss a good deal! ?

Ah! "Knives Out". Good whodunit flick!

Well I am running an audio interface in Win 10 with manufacturer drivers that were last updated for Win 7. It works. The device is end of life and no longer supported, but I can live with that until it stops working. My choice. But I can understand why application developers only support the currently supported Windows operating systems, because in this case their tools are totally dependent on Microsoft. It's fine if you wish to run end of life operating systems, but you should focus on DAWs that were were developed and tested on them. If you wish to run the latest DAW, you should keep up with the latest OS for best results. That's where it was tested.

I have the AmpleSound Metal Ray bass. The riffer does output MIDI if you select that in options. So you can route the MIDI to any other VSTi in your project. The Metal Ray only has picked samples, and I have sent the riffs live via MIDI over to their free P-Bass for fingered samples, while muting the audio output from the Metal Ray. You just have to ensure that you don't use the low string on the 5-string when you send MIDI to a 4-string bass. Or at least transpose up. ?

Doesn't it kind of tick you off a bit that Cakewalk/Gibson didn't really partner with a hardware company to make a dedicated controller, except for when Roland owned them previously and released the A-PRO series. I got the Cakewalk/Roland A-300PRO and it works, but using ACT in Cakewalk isn't exactly intuitive. A bit fiddly to set up. But even that's fairly old tech now. It would be nice if Cakewalk implemented a more universal standard that would work fully plug and play with more modern controllers.

Spoiler alert!!!

I agree with the issue of sound preview with Syntronik. I have the same beef with the instruments in SampleTank 4 Max. The load time kills me when auditioning sounds. I think that the sounds are excellent in both products. Was even thinking about upgrading my sample drive to an SSD to improve that. But in comparison, I recently picked up Arturia's Analog Lab for the massive amount (6500) of preset analog synth sounds provided. And they load instantly for me. Would probably consider jumping on the full collection, but the amount of tweaking in the Lab is sufficient for most performance needs. Sound designers or hardware synth lovers might disagree with that last statement.

Cakewalk by BandLab will see them if they are properly installed. You may want to contact support@cakewalk.com for assistance.

TH-3 Cakewalk probably has plenty of guitar amp sim, cabinets, and processing to get you started. Just start with a decent clean guitar virtual instrument sound and run it though the effect. Also, IK Multimedia offers AmpliTube Custom Shop for free. https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/amplitubecs/index.php?p=info You get 24 free pieces of gear to start, including 9 stomps, 4 amps, 5 cabs, 3 mics, 2 rack effects. And then you can add on more by purchasing additional pieces.

You could run LatencyMon to see if you are getting excessive page faults. Windows might be swapping memory in and out to the page file on disk in an "unfriendly to audio samples" manner. Also you can open Resource Monitor from Task Manager by clicking the link at the bottom of the Performance tab. Then look at the Disk tab. It will show the open files being used. You can sort views there by clicking on the column headings. For example I can see all processes that are actively using "C:\Pagefile.Sys". As scook mentioned though, CbB will be reported as a whole, not by individual plugins. I have also never tried to run samples from an external drive. YMMV. That performance might differ by the plugin design, and how often the samples are read by the plugin, i.e., sample streaming. Bottom line for the page file issue is that more RAM reduces the need for page file usage. I suppose some folks may even disable it if they have massive amounts of extra RAM (through Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Virtual memory).