abacab

Bottom line is to have enough physical memory to avoid using this: https://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/definition/swap-file-swap-space-or-pagefile

Believe it or not, a game pad controller works out of the box with the x-y pad in Z3TA+2. I searched around for some Windows plug-in to use a game pad as a MIDI controller, and there seem to have been a few attempts, but it doesn't seem to be a high demand item. I would highly suggest just using a basic wireless Logitech keyboard with the 2.4GHz nano USB transmitter. The specs say it should be good for 33 feet/10 meters. That should be fine for transport control. https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/mk235-wireless-keyboard-mouse I use one from the coffee table in my living room to control my PC based DVR in the entertainment center.

Bottom line is to just watch your Task Manager when you have everything loaded up that you intend to use at the same time. If you still have memory available, then you don't need more. Simple as that. Extra memory serves no purpose, and will not make your computer any faster. If you are maxing it out, then you will notice a performance boot by adding memory, because then you won't be swapping any memory to your disk swap file.

I have and like this AIR bundle a lot, but I wonder how they can justify still selling it with minimal support, and apparently no current announcements for updates or bug fixes. It's been years since a maintenance release has been issued for any bugs. I guess the low, low, prices mitigate some of that... but still...

But 4GB on Win 10, no way!

I find plenty of room to wiggle in with my 8GB system.

I thought we were talking about samplers, and whether they should be bundled or not?

LOL. To each his own. I have all of the AIR bundles. And the Sonar bundles since the beginning of time. As well as a couple of other commercial DAWs, along with their bundled content. Some of the free stuff that I have encountered equals or surpasses some things that I have bought. So you are welcome to your own opinion regarding mediocre. I haven't wasted any money on Kontakt/Halion, or East West yet. You really need to learn to use what you have, and decide what you really need, before you begin to spend money on high end commercial products.

I think that the core CbB, along with the 3rd party free content available today, far surpasses the DAW + bundled content that was available 10 years ago in any single package...

I don't believe that the full Kontakt is required. I was looking into getting Amadeus, and the SonicScores site lists the requirements as: "Kontakt Player 5.8.1 or higher". https://sonicscores.com/amadeus/

Start with some good studio monitors! Those laptop speakers will always sound thin, no matter how many tracks or what VSTi you are using.

I think SampleTank 4 may finally be ready for general release!

The trade-in offer appears to be only good until year end, so if you ignore it, you will have trouble activating or getting support for the old products as they are being discontinued!

Macrium Reflect has a free version, and it works well for for me to do full system disk images. Ir's free and pain level = 0. Set Macrium up once, schedule your jobs, and it's hands free. No booting from alternate OS required! The compression saves you some space on the image drive. Make images of a running Windows OS. It will do differential, but not incremental. Also does direct disk cloning. https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree I used the built-in Windows 7 image for years in Windows 7, and it's still available in Win 8.1/Win10. It's all manual, but no rebooting required, and I still use it occasionally to make images as a fallback to my Macrium images. Pain level =5 I use Clonezilla to image my Linux partitions. Also free, but pain level = 10. And you MUST read the directions carefully and keep them handy... but it works!

The official Dell refurbished store. https://www.dellrefurbished.com/ 100 day limited warranty, and 30 day returns. Wouldn't hurt to browse around and see what deals they have. Free ground ship on clearance items. -> Current clearance deals: https://www.dellrefurbished.com/cheap-computers I bought a refurb laptop from them in 2005. It still works, but it's an obsolete single core 32-bit P4 maxed out with 2GB RAM and Win XP. But it does have Sonar 8.5 Producer installed.

Well that is completely in the hands of inMusic now, which has bought up a bunch of companies such as AIR, SONiVOX, Akai, M-Audio, Alesis, and others... https://inmusicbrands.com/

I have the whole Premier bundle, and as far as I can tell, only the Big Bang Cinematic Percussion samples are unencrypted. The .wav files from its sample folder will open in any media player. The others give errors in the player such as invalid file format, etc.

Thanks for the feedback! On the plus side, the individual samples (.wav files in the Samples folder) for this particular instrument aren't locked down, so they can be imported into another sampler for playback. Build your own percussion kit!

Speaking of Cinematic Percussion, the sounds are great! But ... the kit mapping per patch (.svx) seems to be all over the place, due to the variety of percussion instrument samples available. I have found no way to see what sound is assigned to each pad, in each percussion patch, without playing through the range of notes assigned to the kit. Without some sort of drum map I have no idea what I'm working with. The sounds for each patch are not listed in the brief User Guide. Have you found a solution for this?

Yep, that too! But then, the price...

Or get the SONiVOX Film Score Companion for $39.99, which includes the 3 instruments listed above, plus Big Bang Cinematic Percussion and Eighty Eight Ensemble. These last two are on sale separately for $14.99 each.

Somewhere back in the old daze, someone from Cakewalk mentioned that to update P5 to be a modern 64-bit application would require a re-write of the code. Somebody decided that it would be better to shift the good parts over to Sonar. Like the Matrix View.

Cakewalk with TTS-1 is absolutely the best way to open GM files that I know of!!! The instruments will be automatically assigned to the MIDI tracks, using the multitimbral capability of TTS-1, so you are ready to play the arrangement using one plugin for up to 16 MIDI tracks. The catch is that the sound quality is totally dependent on TTS-1. Some sounds are OK, enough so that you can hear how the MIDI arrangement will be played back. But then I will usually start substituting other virtual instrument plugins for the TTS-1 sounds, track by track, until I get something that doesn't hurt my ears, and then save the file as a .cwp project. But other than that, I rarely use TTS-1.

Maybe start by listing your specs, such as the software version of Cakewalk and TTS-1 that you are running.

Grabbed it!!! Nice bundle for $25. Painter 2019 installed on Windows 10 here with no issues. Painless! I had a 10 year old version of Painter that would have cost $100-$200+ to upgrade, depending on the version, 2019 or 2020. I am not a digital painter, but this program allows you to do a lot of creative editing of digital photos. I have always been curious about PaintShop Pro, which seems to always have a strong following and great reviews, but I have always used Adobe Photoshop Elements for $99 as my go-to quick photo editor. Elements is a powerful cut-down version of Photoshop that is only missing some pro features that most folks never need, My PS Elements is very old as well, but to get the latest version of with the latest features would be another $99 for me. This PaintShop Pro Ultimate 2020 seems to cover a lot of the same ground, so I will give it a try this time around.