Carl Ewing

$79.99 upgrade from 1. Facepalm. I sometimes wonder what these companies are thinking. Back to forgetting I own this ancient plugin because a bunch of other ones have already replaced it. And for context, the entire ShaperBox 3 bundle is $99 retail. Same with Devious Machine Infiltrator 2. TugGlitcento 3 is free. Glitch 2 is $50. FXModulator comes with Cubase. But $80 for an upgrade. Ha.

Did exactly the same thing. That card was bigger than my current Nvidia GPU. It was enormous! Example: Remember having to move HDD drive bays to get it to fit lol. Luckily sold it before it lost all value. That photo is from a Reverb listing where it sold for $69!

Also Big Fish Grindhouse: https://www.bigfishaudio.com/Grindhouse Has whistling instrument, solo pipes / ocarina / mariachi trumpet, guitars, harmonica, etc But much of the library is heavily processed for that spaghetti western / grindhouse style. But I actually like a few of the patches more than other libraries (for example the whistling patch), but everything has some heavy processing.

TC Native Reverb Plus - came with the TC Native Bundle. https://www.tcelectronic.com/product.html?modelCode=HE120 Basically impossible to find now - was circa 2002 / 2003, only 32-bit if you can find an installer, but listening back to very old tracks from that era, I really liked that reverb. It had a tone that just isn't available in the subsequent TC plugins (tried them all).

This should be the country-genre-specific libraries available on Loopcloud: https://www.loopmasters.com/genres/141-Country I see the same libraries on Loopcloud under the genre tag, and there's probably more crossover with their blues libraries: https://www.loopmasters.com/genres/120-Blues I find it easier to genre search on the Loopmasters site, audition the sample pack demos, and if it's the right vibe, then go search for a specific library in Loopcloud. Also - don't underestimate how many genre-type sounds / loops will be hidden in unexpected collections. You'll find a lot of cool country / blues sounds in Trap, Hip-hop, EDM or even World / Roots music libraries. But that takes some specific instrument searching, and potentially auditioning hundreds and hundreds of sounds. Might even be some spaghetti western / rockabilly / psychobilly stuff under Cinematic or Rock.

When - in any business, anywhere in the world, at any point in history, was it possible to find success by just putting **** somewhere and hoping people will find it? This is playing the 1 in a million lottery. There are SO many bitter businesses around that just expect people to find their amazing stuff, while doing really nothing at all to draw attention. The quote from that film is "If you build it, he will come", not "they". People - and I mean almost an entire generation of business 'people', used that misquote as a life mantra. And the misquote was intentional. Changing one word meant "omg, the message of this movie means I don't have to do **** except just make something. I just made a ceramic pot. I'll just leave it on this table and "they" will come buy it." The movie is about religious faith, not about selling albums on Bandcamp. So. Yesterday, on October 2nd, how much time did you spend randomly searching for music you've never heard of, and stumble on something brand new that you liked by accident, and threw down cash to buy it? Zero time? Okay. Now multiply that by 8 billion people on the planet. This would be the equivalent of releasing a CD or Vinyl to 1000 stores back in the 80s and waiting for somebody to randomly find it (among the 100,000 other albums), love it, buy it, hopefully spread the news. This isn't a business strategy. Making money from music is business. The art is making the music. Selling music is no different than selling vacuum cleaners. Also, there are ways to play this non-marketing "hope and pray" lottery game and make the odds better. That includes understand search engines, how to correctly tag / categorize / describe music for better ranking / results, knowing your audience and making sure those random accidents happen where that audience is. I do actually spend a lot of time randomly searching for music (there are a few of us around). It's amazing how little effort many artists put into making their music easy to find, or prioritizing platforms that don't cater to their genre. For example - edm artists who just post to Soundcloud and not Beatport. And on the Bandcamp subject. I still find it funny that Soundcloud has incredible technical infrastructure / UX (both front end & backend) for streaming globally, but terrible content & merch support , and Bandcamp has incredible content & merch support but terrible technical infrastructure / UX (both front end & backend). It's like both companies understand only one side of the business and can't figure out the other. Just need to get these two companies in a room.

It's exactly the opposite. I run a studio. Subscriptions are a fixed cost. They go right into the annual budget. They save enormous amounts of money in being able to trial products for an entire year to see what is / isn't used, and never having to worry about buying something at off-sale times, never having to worry about version upgrade cost or compatibility, never wasting money on products that become discontinued / obsolete, or wasting time (money) waiting for sales, worrying about flash sales, or other nonsense. I have access to every product new / old from a company 365 days a year. No stress. Access to everything. One fee, budgeted 1 year in advance. Currently have 17 software-related annual subscriptions for studio. Those include everything from Creative Cloud, Composer Cloud, Loopcloud, Plugin Alliance to Office 365, Arcade, VPN, Spotify, some web services like Dropbox for clients, etc. They total around $2000 per year. It is a relatively fixed cost (goes up a bit each year of course, but some things also get removed / added, so stays about the same.) It covers almost all core software needs, from graphic design to music / audio production, networking, web hosting, cloud hosting, for 3 networked systems in 2 rooms. On top of that, there's a capped budget for additional software like upgrades and sample libraries. This budget cannot be exceeded, and purchases sit in an itemized list until Winter sales season (with few exceptions), and very rarely are products purchased without a full year of trialing, or a substantial review history on Youtube (if the product can't be trialed). You know what budget stresses me out the most? It isn't the subscription one. The day Native Instruments or Spitfire Audio or Orchestral Tools offers something like Creative Cloud (that covers their entire catalog) it will be purchased on day 1. I would much rather have $5K in subscriptions that cover way more than I'd ever need, than half my annual budget assigned to "hope and pray that Black Friday sales allow me to buy what I need". With these subscriptions, it is quite normal for software expenses to remain below $5000 per year. I don't know how long some of you have been around, but for a professional studio, that is ABSURDLY low. 10 years ago, it would not be uncommon to spend well over $1000 just on a handful of UAD plugins, or over $1000 on a single string library. You know what I spend on plugins last year, including PA subscripton? $400. See a difference here? The amount I spent on libraries & plugins between, say, 2005 and 2015 is likely (i have the figure somewhere) worth 30 years of my current annual subscription budget. And almost all those products are now obsolete / abandoned. Shelf life of these products are maybe a few years, unless there's a substantial fee for upgrading to newer versions. You want to talk about waste of money? Buying software is a waste of money. I have a legacy system that has a ton of abandonware worth $1000s of dollars so that projects from 10+ years ago can still be opened if needed. And most of that **** doesn't open. Most of the software can't even be authorized. It's almost entirely pointless to keep the system running. It's like a $10,000 brick of garbage. So much for "owning" software.

What is this? A sample collection for ants? I surpassed Gigabytes in 1998 with my Future Music freebies. Let's talk terrabytes. I think I have at least 1/4 terrabytes of bwwaaaaaams. At least a 100GB of house kick boom-tiss loops I've never even opened. At least 1/4 terrabyte of "Xmas Freebies!" and "Retro-Neo-Soul-Garage" guitar riffs and "Rasta Shouts" in a folder somewhere.

Every one of these I've seen in studios has burned out colored LED lights, at least one wonky key, and some problem with the display. (usually one side has color issues). And the keybeds are all dog**** compared to the competion. ****, the SL88 Studio (let alone the Grand) has a better keybed than the S88 MKII and it's like 1/3 the price lol. I doubt this will be an improvement. And there's no point in comparing what keybed this uses vs. a competitor - the exact same keybed can feel totally different on different controllers depending on the housing. People throw around these "Fatar" and "full weighted hammer action!" terms like they mean anything without context. Believe it or not, there are actual real pianos that play like crap too. Never underestimate a consumers ability to spend money on useless features / eye candy over durability & usability of core components (i.e. the actual keybed!). You know they're all about durability and efficiency when they wire LED lights onto the pitch and mod wheels when a paint stripe has worked fine for decades. These things have "will be broken in a year and have no resale value" written all over it. And they'll sell a gazillion of them. Haha.

I like Warble, but only on mono material. It doesn't something weird to stereo tracks imo - like it collapses the stereo image. Have to spend more time with it, might just be something missing. But I prefer it for subtle degradation effects over some of the competition, just only in mono so far.

I have fallen in love with the Neold U2A. Been on subscription for years, but that I'll be picking that up with the sub vouchers. Absolutely unique LA-2A emulation. That aging knob is like magic on low end, as is the R37 / Drive combination for some instruments. Need more Neold releases, one of my favorite developers now.

These aren't even the same thing. Did you not notice the Mod & Wear modules in the Lifeline Console plugin? It's a multi-effect that can do significant (or subtle) signal degradation / lofi tape / vinyl / cassette effects, pitch modulation and could easily be categorized under "sound design". It has more in common with RC-20, and is basically a fill-in-gaps partner to their Lifeline Expanse plugin which does reamping, speaker emulation, reverb, imaging, more extensive distortion / saturation. No way you've used InfinitStrip Wind and Console and thought "ya, these are comparable". Lol. And no way you used Console and thought "doesn't have enough of anything for me". That plugin has a gazillion features that are totally useable in countless contexts. Although, perhaps you didn't like the sound of it, which is understandable. But imo, it's an extremely useful plugin.

Interesting - impulse response loader seems like it should have been the leading new feature and not at the bottom of the page. If I remember correctly, the only way you could use IRs before was through Reflektor (reverb) module? Don't really like GR - comes in handy sometimes, but perhaps they'll continue putting more resources into it and make it (eventually) more competitive.

Lol.

Do a negative review of an 8Dio product. Post it on Youtube. Resist the lawsuits. I'll believe anything you have to say about products after that.

What's your cut?? 10%? 15%? You're clearly being paid to promote this promoter!

There are some premium rack spacers around that are better I think. The GUI really does effect vibrations / resonance through the entire rack. Specifically - the free Rack Spacer causes weird buzzing noises on my kick drums when it's placed below certain compressors. I think the problem is the bullet holes. Not sure why they added those, it weakens the face plate UI. My favorite rack spacer cost $399 (flash sale) and solved all of these issues, and also improved the imaging in my mixes...almost as well as my hardware rack spacers.

I think this is a cost / benefit type situation. I own an Axe FX III, and I have Amplitube 5 Max. One is for heavy duty work, the other is for in the box on mobile rig, or when I don't have to time to deal with external effects. I have some other sims that came with bundles (Plugin Alliance, Guitar Rig via Komplete), and these do get used occasionally. I like having them around. Now - those two purchases were well over $4K (with other Fractal hardware accessories.) I'll likely never need another guitar related effects or cabinet or amp sim for the rest of my life. But I could have also picked up dozens of amp sims plugins for a fraction of that price, and likely get along just fine. Sure, some will be ****, some will be average, some will great - but I'd still be saving thousands just picking up a bunch of much less expensive plugins. I think this applies to a lot of things in the plugin world. Is it better to buy a $10K mastering comp....where you'll never need another again, or a $5000 Lexicon reverb unit, where you'll never need another one again, or is it more cost effective to buy 20 different reverb plugins and 20 different mastering comp plugins, for a fraction of the cost of hardware, and get along just fine? I think there has to be a realization that many of these plugins are trying to emulation extremely expensive hardware. It's going to be a lot of buy & try till you get something that does the job well. I don't think there's anything wrong with buying a bunch of plugins you don't really need, if you're goal is to have the ultimate effects for your workflow...or to have a lot of different options to cover all your bases. And even shitty sounding plugins can have their uses. I have quite a few crappy distortion plugins that come in handy once in a while.

This shit's getting worse than cosmetics, sneakers and Tequila. Can't wait for Floyd Mayweather Harmonic Impakts, recorded at Madison Square Garden (OMG!), and Albion 8: Kardashian Nordic Nights, recorded live in the Lafoten Islands using Soviet Era ribbon mics (OMG!), and lastly, just in time for Christmas: Metropolis Ark Ø7: The Ghost of Elvis's Footstep and Stomps (AI Edition), immaculately recorded summoning the ghost of Elvis through a Ouija board to reproduce the sound of his shoes striking various surfaces, recorded with way overpriced mics and EVP Recorders, thrown through a fully refurbished Wessex A88 Console (OMG!) at Graceland. Produced with a new Pro-Tools Seance AI application, in coordination with the Presley Estate, Hans Zimmer, Rick Rubin, a little girl possessed by Quincy Jones, and a surprise appearance by Kafka's ghost, who you can hear yelling at us about "shameless sellouts" in the background of some impacts. Truly a remarkable instrument that will be utterly useless to 99% of people who buy it, but you'll still pay $799 for the privilege of telling as many people as possible that you own it. Did we mention AI? You'll buy anything with AI in title. #AI-Elvis

They were all on sale from $14.99 - $19.99 each on ADSR last month. Entire bundle for like $130. Clusterflux was a freebie w/purhcase the month prior. Now a $9.99 sale for another this month. Safe to say these are dirt cheap, sub $20 plugins, and will be on sale regularly going forward.

Considering they basically sell 1 plugin now - and that plugin isn't really competitive in 2023, and they haven't really done proper updates of their other plugins in a decade + (some of these date back to 1st Gen DirectX), and the dev is basically gone / MIA, it's safe to assume this is all abandonware now.

Received a lot of free shit from from Audient, Soundcloud Pro, Focusrite and Loopcloud sub the past year. It's wonderful. Soundcloud Pro was a surprise - 40% off Arcade annual sub, 2 months free Splice, 4 months Sonarworks, 2 months Loopcloud, 10% off waves (haven't tried to stack on sales yet), 2 months Serato Studio, Gobbler plugin deal (12 months of Eventide Micropitch, Instant Phaser, XILS PolyKB, XILS PolyM, Relab LX480, SSL Drumstrip), and a whole bunch of other shit. Supposedly Adobe discount is coming as well. Gotta love oversaturated market and everyone fighting for new customers.

Pfft. No Waves Abbey Road Vinyl? Clearly you don't really care about your vinyl collection. Hipster level 0. Next you'll say you don't have at least 8 vintage tape cassette emulators. Poser.

What does that even mean? "Winnner". Took me over 10 years to find a mastering engineer I liked. It's not about good or bad, or winning or losing, it's whether the mastering suits the music and improves it (this can mean many things to every artist). On a large project - like a soundtrack or album - it's also whether the mastering engineer can find the through-line of all the tracks and either correct inconsistency problems, or find a cohesion that brings everything together. Particularly across large projects that have been produced and mixed in various states of exhaustion, mood, conditions, and sometimes with different gear / monitors. A mastering engineer should be commenting on the mix and overall project, and there should be a back and forth if there are issues that can be corrected in the mix. This isn't expensive - mastering is relatively cheap. I paid for mastering on my first album on a bus boy salary making $2 / hour. You can find exceptional human mastering today for $60 a track. Mastering is extraordinarily important. There's a huge range of philosophies and techniques - you can give a track or album to 20 different mastering engineers and get 20 totally different results, that all have a strong impact on the final sound. And these are differences that are obvious to even the most casual listener - especially on long projects, like a soundtrack, where a listener may be listening to that project for an hour +. Poor mastering can make something exhausting to listen to. Like the endless submission I get of people mastering through Ozone presets - this shit is awful to listen to. Or like any of Arcade Fire's releases - possibly the worst mastering I've heard in popular music in my life -- and they paid a lot of money to have great mixes rammed through tape and vinyl to give it whatever BS "warm" characterstics they thought they would get, which basically meant "smashed to shit and unlistenable on high quality monitors". Seriously listen to this sonic awfulness: But, digressing. It's so strange to have this critical step in the music process reduced down to some kind of "final sheen" or whatever weird thing people view it as today. This shit can't be automated, unless the music so damn generic and dull that it likely gains nothing with or without mastering. I've put my music through these AI programs - they are terrible, treating the music like some kind of product in an assembly line that can either have a blue or red or yellow filter placed on it to make it "mastered". Every algorithm, every single service I've tried sounds like shit. Period. Which isn't surprising, when it completely misses the whole damn point of mastering. Stop treating your music like a product on an assembly line. Your listeners will thank you for it.

Nice! My upgrade price is $1500, and I own 24 plugins in the collection + Sound Design Suite (40 plugins, many of them in Mercury). Only $1500! What a deal.