Starship Krupa

How odd. So far there are 17 people who have either Liked, Thanked, or Great Idea'd my first post on this topic. Maybe a couple more who have commented without first reacting. I'm assuming that most of them didn't know about this utility either before I called it to their attention. I wonder how many people got the shortcut and how many didn't. Any T-RackS users who are still following the conversation, did you get the Start menu shortcut? Now I want to double check those other systems I was so sure also didn't get the shortcut. I don't want to accuse IK Multimedia of trying to obscure their own utility unless they are, y'know, trying to obscure their own utility.😄 Usually if anything, it's hard to get installers NOT to slap shortcuts all over the place, Start menu, desktop, whatever. Peeve of mine, actually, installers that don't bother to ask whether you want to clutter your desktop with links to their program(s). I thought it was kinda weird that IK would go to all the trouble to come up with this thing and then bury it, but now I look and I don't have a link to the T-RackS standalone either.

The Old Dude's Guide To Color Themes says that Surface 2 foreground sets the color of the Now Time cursor line. Surface 2 is the biggest example of a palette that needs to have its functions split up, IMO. It controls too many disparate elements.

Interesting, you seem to mostly use Ableton Live and Reason. Were you once a SONAR/CbB user or did you discover the forum in some other way? I think there are some people on here who have never touched a Cakewalk product.

I agree. It's just not granular enough. I'd like to see a set of palettes for each of the major views. The categories it has now are actually a good start, it's just that they affect unrelated elements. Please, folks, hit this as hard as you can, because once it's actually released, any changes will likely break previous custom themes. The devs won't want to do that. I think it will be different from the Theme Editor of old, this one is created by the developers themselves and they'll be using it to create the factory themes.

For those who don't know how to do this, the feature is accessible in Synth Rack. Alt+9 to open Synth Rack, then hover the name of the instrument.

I trust our dedicated .STH lords will give it a thorough assessment. So far the biggest issues I have with it are that there is STILL no way to set the color of beat and measure grid lines 🤬 and that too many of the element colors are tied to other disparate elements. That is, when you change one element, it affects something in a completely different area of the UI, and not necessarily something that you wanted to have match.

I think this was @Noel Borthwick's baby. Noel, any insights?

They didn't put it in my Start Menu, which is why I gave the full path in my original post. This is on two Windows systems, one Windows 10 and the other Windows 11. I'd like to see your video when it's done.

The ones you get when you hover the name of the plug-in in the FX bin: It's a percentage, but of what? Is this explained in more detail in the documentation somewhere? I couldn't find anything.

When I got SampleTank 4 MAX a year and change ago, Product Manager installed and authorized Miroslav Philharmonik 2 correctly. Also Syntronik 2 and SampleTron 2. Product Manager isn't perfect, it still has a way to go, but it at least now does what it was created to do. I still ran into big problems when installing SampleTank 4 MAX. I wound up with multiple copies of some libraries and missed about 1/3 of the content I was entitled to. Part of it was that I didn't understand that so much of SampleTank 4 MAX v2 consisted of separate products and add-on content that were otherwise sold separately. I wound up writing a tutorial on installing SampleTank 4 MAX that helps ensure that all of the content was installed correctly with no duplication. When your end users have to write tutorials for each other on how to install your products, that seems like a sign that your install process needs work. They seem to be listening regarding installation issues. Some of their moves may be baffling, but they're at least improving the installation and authorization process.

To paraphrase a great movie, "forget it, Eusebio, it's IK Multimedia."😁 Really, though, at least in the past year or so, Product Manager has come into its own as the unified solution it was originally intended to be. I haven't fired up Authorization Manager in a long time. I no longer have any Custom Shops installed. So I have to hand it to them, they are cleaning up their act. And yes, I had the same impression about there being competing interests within the company coming up with Modules Manager. The ones who pay attention to customer/forum gripes and the ones who think it's good marketing to keep cluttering your plug-in collection with unlicensed demo FX. The fact that I had to stumble across Modules Manager, that it's not even included in the IK Multimedia Start Menu folder, suggests that someone doesn't like it.

Oh man, me too. I didn't realize how much I was going to like it when I picked it up in the previous IK HB. The way you can combine components from whatever models you happen to have is crazy. The controls for string age, picking style, pickup position, active vs. passive electronics, it's possible to put together just what I want. I had underestimated both of the MODO instruments. MODO Drums is a similar laboratory for drum sounds. The ability to combine different kit pieces to assemble what you want is brilliant. Like most drummers, I'm picky about my snare sound.

With great competition comes great deals. The plug-in market has grown so much in the past 25 years. The transition from latest hot plug-in to long tail cash cow now takes a lot less time for companies like IK Multimedia. They get the big fees from the people who want the latest great thing they come out with, then a couple of years later cut killer deals for people like me who have more plug-ins than they can use and are only interested once the price comes way down. Free stuff has improved so much in quantity and quality, even in the past 10 years. I remember when CbB first shipped as freeware, and Noel speaking disparagingly about the reliability of freeware plug-ins. Umm.... TBF, in those days there were still a lot of bedroom-coded 32-bit Synthedit ones around. These days you can get SO MANY great loss leader plug-ins from the likes of Native Instruments/iZotope/Plugin Alliance, Kilohearts, and MeldaProduction. The bedroom coders have much better tools to work with, like JUCE.

I'm more concerned about the resource usage, which IS important at the mix/master stage when the mixing plug-ins start piling up. The comment about waking up to it cooking breakfast was for comedic effect. It looks like MMultiAnalyzer is most similar as far as features, although the different meters aren't simultaneously front-facing. I picked up MPS during the Schroedinger's Upgrade glitch a couple of years back and I'm kind of surprised how little I've used it. I don't regret spending the money, having such a powerful set of tools ready to go is comforting. But iZotope's plug-ins are such HOGS that I find myself not reaching for them. It's not so much an issue on my main DAW system, but when I copy a project to my laptop, I need all the resources I can get. Gotta ask Noel what those numbers really signify. I can't find it in the documentation.

I don't actually know everything about their product line. It's much easier to just front like I do.😂 Really, outside of the FreeFX bundle and MEssentialsFX bundle (but together that's what, almost 50 plug-ins?), the rest of the stuff in my MComplete bundle is pretty dusty. They hold my interest because I think Vojtech is a really smart guy and I like the way he runs his business. It's fun to see what he comes up with. I do remember hearing something about the MB trick at one point. Thanks for reminding me. Have you tried it? Is it fairly straightforward? It sounded kinda over my head. I've tried messing about with the MB versions of MeldaProduction stuff and didn't click with it. Maybe I'll try it some time when I want to mess with some M/S flanging or something. I bet Chandler could come up with a tutorial for it. So far it's come down to whether I want to spend a couple hours trying to get MDynamicsMB to do independent mid/side processing or just throw on Cyclone or one of the T-RackS dynamics or EQ FX that's already built that way. The way that IK Multimedia do it is elegant and simple. MLimiterX is my go-to master bus limiter and I always try flipping it over to M/S just to see if I like the sound better that way. I usually end up leaving it in M/S mode. Any thread that I participate in seems to have a decent chance of going down the MeldaProduction garden path at some point....