Starship Krupa

I'm not the world's biggest fanboy for MSoundFactory, but it does have some whompin' pad sounds, and Wishmaster Strings is no exception. Right now I have something that sounds like a quartet of Queens Mary sitting a mile offshore and sounding their ships' whistles at the right pitches. Quite evocative. Since Cakewalk no longer allows me to create themes for the DAW, I'd love to start making my own "devices" for MeldaProduction FX, but whenever I've looked it's just too complicated. I get lost right away.

I was psyched to get PaintShop Pro 2023 when I picked up the Humble Bundle with Painter, PaintShop Pro, and VideoStudio. I mostly wanted it for Painter, but I'd been wanting to get an image editor with more muscle than Paint.Net, which had been my go to for years. Great program, free, but limited. However, while I've enjoyed using Painter with my Wacom tablet, I just can't seem to get with PSP 2023. I used JASC PSP 30 years ago when it was still shareware. It was great for image format conversion. What continually trips me up with the current version is that what I want to do with it is strictly photo editing. I don't care about the vector part of it. But the program won't let me ignore the fact that it can do vector. It seems to default to vector mode, even if what I've opened is a JPEG. There seems to always be some dialog about whether I want to convert a layer from vector to pixel or vice versa, and it usually sends me running back to Paint.Net. Maybe there's some way to set the preferences so that it wouldn't do this, but I don't know how.

It's not often that I come across a description of an engineering phenomenon this spot on and succinct. Having worked on many consumer software packages in the past 35 years, yep, that's a thing. I think that the leaner things are, the less top down control there is, the greater the danger this will happen. Larger organizations have such creatures as product managers, who are not programmers. One of their jobs is to steer what new features will be added and how they will work. At least that was the common structure 25 years ago, maybe it's changed. Programmers, IME, tend to be at their best when presented with problems to solve. People who are good at programming aren't necessarily good at other aspects of creating and marketing a software product. Many are, but it's not a given. One of the difficult things about FOSS is the lack of "adult supervision." Some things work better when there's more hierarchy. There's no authority figure to tell them that the feature should work this way, just a bunch of whiny end users who think they know everything. Also, when everyone works on the modules that they themselves think are the sexiest, more mundane stuff like basic workflow and (especially) documentation can suffer. My favorite plug-in house, MeldaProduction, suffers from this. Vojtech is a genius who came up with a way that he could continue to do the coding as a one man show for a long time. His products are so feature deep that I could spend the rest of my life digging into them and never finish. And one of the reasons for that is that his written documentation is traditionally sketchy. He started out using the same "shared code" concept that the plug-ins are based on, so the documentation for a large number of the plug-ins is 90% boilerplate that applies to all of the plug-ins at the expense of information pertinent to the individual plug-in.

Edited my last post to reflect this at the same time you were replying! Good research. You're right, if that's the last chance to get ST4 MAX v2, that's one to hit. But who knows what they'll do next. Maybe issue the libraries in new form and offer us all an upgrade deal.

So, noise. Sorry, I have nothing but the basics, make sure all bit depths and sampling rates match, go into Device Manager and disable all other sound devices, try a different USB jack, etc. Will it play back Windows sounds? Sounds from other programs? Or is it only ASIO mode that's broken?

I suspect it won't be all weekend. You/we got this. And even if it is, weekend of learning, too. I'm rooting for a sketchy USB cable. They even have them with ferrite beads to get rid of noise. Also, not the worst idea to get a passing familiarity with a second DAW. You never know what will happen.

And there's a big difference between "skim through most" and "pay no attention to ANY of them." There are plenty of EULA's and "Important: Changes to our TOS" messages, but warnings and nag screens? I don't see so many of those, and when I do, I at least try to check/skim what they're warning me about, at least the first time I have to see them. Considering how long CbB/Sonar has been around with the same authorization warnings, and how few times this scenario has come up (first one I can remember where someone ignored the warnings, then worked on a project for hours before "discovering" that they weren't able to save it) on the forum, I'd guess that the warnings work well for most. Anyone who chooses to ignore all of the warnings that pop up on their computer screen....if that's working for them, who am I to say they should change? They are free to do so as much as I am free to regard their behavior as foolish. I've been using personal computers for about 40 years. During that time I've worked as an IT support person, a software quality assurance engineer, and a network server engineer. From the first time that always-on connection to a LAN, then to the Internet has been possible, my computers both at work and at home have stayed connected to them. When appropriate (that is not "on the clock" for someone else), I've used all of those systems for multiple tasks that include recreational web browsing. Since Microsoft began installing its own anti-malware software that defaults to realtime scanning of every disk read and write, I've disabled that realtime scanning on all of my personal computers, relying only on the drive scanning that Defender does during periods of inactivity and ad hoc scanning when I've downloaded an installer (right click, Scan for Malware). The only times I've ever seen malware infect a computer (anyone's computer) were when a user of the computer actively obtained and installed software that contained malware. It's always required the active participation of the user, I've never seen it arrive passively. Download and install a dodgy program, click on a dodgy email attachment, click okay on a dodgy website that wants to install something, whatever (usually the email and website ones). While I have of course known some people who wound up with malware on their systems, I've also never known anyone personally who lost data to it. Time and hassle spent removing the infection, yes. But actually lose access to a file or files? Never seen that, never met anyone personally who's had it happen. Plenty of people who will say that it happened to a friend or a friend of a friend, but still, nobody I've met personally. (I have on the other hand personally witnessed systems rendered practically useless due to the installation and misconfiguration of anti-malware software, but that's another story) Disconnecting my music production computer from the Internet would be such a pain in the * that it would eclipse whatever risk I was trying to avoid by doing so. The need to buy and maintain another computer to use for recreational web browsing being the biggest pain, followed by not being able to download, validate and update software, followed by not being able to access information pertinent to my tasks directly at hand. And so on. We all must determine our own way of assessing risks and what will allow us to feel comfortable. In the case of malware/data loss fear, not doing things that stand a chance of screwing up my computer, doing backups and periodic scans for malware (I never find anything) suffice for me. I'm NOT putting anyone down for whatever safety measures they think they need to take. Anyone who thinks there IS a threat that outweighs the hassles of taking their system offline, go right ahead. Just relating my own experience for anecdotal purposes. Of course, I'd encourage anyone who fears having their computer connected to the internet to step back every so often and assess whether the risk continues to outweigh the hassle. I've got some risk assessment coming up, all of my systems run Windows 10, and October is looming. Microsoft say that Defender will continue to be updated but that the full range of OS security updates will cease. I suspect there will be some backing down from Microsoft, and of course plenty of 3rd-party solutions, but we'll see.

I got the XTD presets when he posted them to the MeldaProduction forum and there are many useful ones. That they're presets and not instruments serves as a reminder that MSF comes with a ton of sounds that are just presets and have no fancy GUI associated with them. The online preset exchange has hundreds of them. These should not be neglected in favor of the fancy GUI instruments. There are some really good sounds among them. I don't know because I wasn't interested in it when it first came out; did MSF come with the GUI'd instruments from the start? MeldaProduction plug-ins didn't start getting those until several years ago.

Nice setup. All hail the mighty Behringer Ultrapatch. I have 2 of them. Haven't used them in a good long while because working in the box, but this may change at some point.

That can actually create issues if the things in the rack are each getting their ground from the mains, then some of them are connecting via their rack mount ears and chassis. This is why some people use nylon washers and the like Ground is weird. Sometimes redundant grounding helps, sometimes it causes problems or makes them worse. I'm not sure how common it is today, but 30 years ago, part of a sound engineer's toolkit included a couple of those 3 prong to 2 prong adapters that are intended to allow you to connect a grounded device to an old fashioned 2-prong outlet. They called them "ground lifts." Sometimes the only thing that would cure hum and other interference was to stick a ground lift between one or the units and the outlet. Here in the SF Bay Area, there were/are so many venues in very old buildings with sketchy wiring, sometimes not even with the 3rd pin available, so they'd end up using the "ground lift" for its originally intended use.

This was the thought that came to my mind. By my count you mention it 3 times. That is appropriate and I hope it got their attention. A USB cable can pick up noise and it can also carry it to the the interface and/or radiate it to the audio cables. I believe that these days USB cables are supposed to be shielded, but there are no guarantees with that, and a shield can become disconnected. If changing the USB cable doesn't help or make it worse, if it's possible to run an extension cord, you might try plugging your new system into a different outlet as a test. Also, as always, it's best to simplify things as much as possible. Disconnect any USB devices that aren't absolutely necessary to the operation of your system. If any of this helps, you can begin to set things back to the way they were piece by piece and find the culprit. BTW, you say that you can't hear the noise until you open a project. How about with other DAW's? Tracktion Waveform is free, REAPER has a generous free trial period. If you don't have them get one or both and see how they do. I recommend REAPER. I don't use it except for testing. "It works fine in REAPER" is an oft heard statement on DAW support forums.

I don't understand what this means. Did the level increase, did noise come out?

Not "presets" but an instrument created in the MSoundfactory framework. I think it's supposed to conceptually be like Kontakt. I found it after running MPluginmanager.

They have ongoing free to play games, and then every week they give away licenses for a couple of not-usually-free games. That's how I got the Elder Scrolls Online, which I've played almost every day since I started playing it.

Well, for anyone who wants them, ST4 MAX v2 can be purchased at Plugin Boutique for $29.99. Strike that, the only place I see that still sells it is Sweetwater, and it's $49.99. The PB one seems to be the later version that doesn't include Syntronik 2 and SampleTron 2. Going forward, I just hope they keep selling the soundsets. My SampleTank 4 MAX bundle would see way less use if it hadn't come with Syntronik 2 and SampleTron 2. I don't know if I'd call Syntronik 2 "essential," but there are some very good, useful sounds in it. I liked it even better once I installed the newer packages. Alien Harbours and that stuff. Doubtless, there are other emulations and sample collections of vintage synths that sound better, but they're also significantly more expensive than the SampleTank 4 MAX package. Well, at $29.99, there are a LOT of virtual instruments that are significantly more expensive.... SampleTron 2 blew me away with how comprehensive the collection of samples is. Not just the Mellotron and Chamberlin tape sets, but plenty other, lesser known analog samplers like the Optigan, and not just instrument sounds, but also the funky weird sound FX and loops. They're all lo-fi to start with, so it doesn't matter if IK recorded them back when technology was holding the size of samples back. The amount of disk space my ST4 libraries takes up is 520GB. Substantially less than the 800GB they claim in the ad copy. I think they got the larger number by adding up the size of all 3 tiers of SampleTank 4 while not accounting for duplicates. Since SampleTank 4 MAX v2 includes everything from the lower tiers, they're really fudging it. Not that value actually comes from how much space the samples take up. Still, the package is/was a good enough bargain that they didn't need to lie about it. But guessing and armchair quarterbacking is so much more fun! It's probably done for the reasons stated earlier: those soundsets work as well or better when played using the ST4 engine, there hasn't been a time for years that SampleTank 4 MAX v2 hasn't been available for less than the individual products. When ST5 comes out, my hope is that the Syntronik and SampleTron sounds will be included. Kind of a drag if it means that there will be no more Syntronik-branded sound packages, but I guess there can still be some branded SampleTank. The continued proud existence of Philharmonik 2 will just have to go into the "forget it Jake, it's IK Multimedia" bin.

Way too many. I've slowed down, but I've acquired plenty of non-Melda plug-ins since I got my MComplete license. I don't recommend this. To be fair to myself, my plug-in lust is mostly confined to "creative" FX. I'm still a sucker for things that mangle audio. Not that I don't already have more of those than I can practically use....

Have you tried their installer shell program? Log in with it and it "knows" which licenses you own and lets you download and install the plug-ins. It doesn't install any crappy services or any of that, just the plug-ins.

Huh? So they kept the name SampleTank 4 MAX v2 but it no longer comes with standalone SampleTron and Syntronik? I bought SampleTank 4 MAX v2 a while back and it came with the whole shebang, standalone Syntronik 2, SampleTron 2, and Miroslav Philharmonik 2. If you look at my review(s) and installation tutorial(s) I find the Syntronik 2 and SampleTron 2 sounds to be the most useful in the SampleTank 4 MAX bundle. IK are so weird that I'd believe it, but how can they keep calling it the same name and even version number? And why on EARTH would they discontinue Syntronik 2 and SampleTron 2 but keep Miroslav Philharmonik 2? Philharmonik 2 isn't worthless, but the libraries are getting really long in the tooth (like 25 years long in the tooth) and the standalone's UI would have looked dated 10 years ago. 15 years ago even. Way worse than Addictive Drums 2, which was looking pretty hokey before its recent makeover. An entire fashion trend in UI design (the brushed aluminum spaceship control panel) came and went since Philharmonik 2 was released. SampleTron 2 and Syntronik 2 on the other hand....Syntronik 2 had new instruments for it come out more recently than 2 years ago I think. Good ones, too. SampleTron 2's soundset doesn't exactly get updated, it's a frozen in time library of deliberately lo fi sounds, but it got some free new patches and an engine update within the past year. The standalone UI's for both of them aren't too dated, they're similar to SampleTank 4, with certain features either present or absent between them. The big difference is that unlike SampleTank 4, neither Syntronik 2 nor SampleTron 2 is guaranteed to crash after you've auditioned 20 or so patches. Since auditioning patches is something I do a LOT of in humongous ROMplers, if I'm sure that the sound I want is in SampleTron or Syntronik, I'll use those UI's instead. Other than that, the sounds do seem to work just as well in SampleTank, maybe even better because you can drill down more deeply into the engine and mess with envelopes and filters and so forth if you like. Trying to figure out what's up with IK is probably pointless, I just snag what I want when it goes to deep discount or glitch and don't worry about whether anything about pricing or packaging makes "sense." Anyone who ends up with SampleTank 4 MAX or hasn't yet installed all of it, be sure to check out my installation guide in the Tutorials forum. I had the bundle for almost a year before I figured out that I had neglected to install a number of rather nice sounds and had multiple space-wasting duplicates from having installed lesser versions of SampleTank and Syntronik.

Why I never use the term "foolproof." Fool resistant is the best any designer can hope for. Just as a truly dedicated attacker can defeat any lock, a truly dedicated fool can defeat any mechanism designed to protect them and/or their work. And the dedication of fools can be awe-inspiring to behold. "You would have had to click away a dialog warning you that you wouldn't be able to save anything." "I never pay attention to those nag screens, I wanted to get to work." I once took a desktop system support call from someone at my company who was complaining that their computer always had error messages that needed to be cleared when they started it up. I went to their cubicle and asked them to shut it down and restart it so I could see the boot errors. Before even closing the program they were using, their finger went straight for the power button....🤦‍♂️ This was at least 15 years before the advent of smartphones and tablets that don't mind being "turned off." When all hard drives were spinny. If someone could have taken photos of the range of expressions on my face as I watched this....Horrified. Pained. Resigned. Patient as if explaining to a child.... Oddly, I have no trouble believing that the mix in question could have been something worth saving. The most elite fools seem to be capable of producing work of enough value that losing it would be unfortunate. What would be the fun otherwise?🙄

Very basic notes on how to launch it in various DAW's. Some eye openers in there, like "Logic Pro supports ARA only in Rosetta mode!" At this late date? Apple's own DAW can only run a certain feature in Rosetta mode? I'm not surprised that compatibility with 3rd party FX is low on the priority list, but that low....

Not to mention the number of people who wouldn't touch Adobe's licensing policies with a 10' pole. Vaguest Pro is already supposedly a pretty capable DAW, it can do multitrack, has full support for MIDI and VST3's. I read that it began life as a DAW before morphing into a video editor. The Fairlight module looks like a nice tool for working with movie audio. Not quite a threat to So Gnar, Cube Ace, Re: Purr, Mick's Craft, Protules and the gang, but I bet plenty of people find it adequate for its intended task. I think that most DAW's have included at least rudimentary video support for a while now. With Mick's Craft, it includes such things as editing, titles, even some simple effects and transitions. I did a couple of music videos where the only reason I had to involve Vaguest Pro was that Mick's Craft's video rendering libraries, at least at the time, created insanely large files. They didn't have much sense of urgency about correcting that situation. People probably don't buy the program to make videos with it, but its capabilities were a pleasant surprise. All I really need from a DAW is to be able to load and play a video file so that I can compose/edit audio to it.

Seems like we hit them so hard during the "basically free if you have a voucher" sales that the only ones we want are on the excluded list. I'll just have to wait patiently for Battalion and an upgrade to alpha compressor. Sigh. I don't even use alpha compressor, I just like having it around for some reason. Why is this "I might be able to make good use of it someday" idea so deeply ingrained with me?

Right, Video Pro X. I got a license for it in a Humble Bundle, but Vegas still feels best to me. Vegas' origins as a DAW help it feel familiar to me. Pro X looked like a really nice program, and I took a good look at it. It was odd for MAGIX to have two essentially competing NLE's. It would seem odd for a company to want to purchase both of them. I've wondered about the structure of their dev staves. IIRC, Vegas Pro was still being developed by the same US team that goes back to the Sony era? I wonder if Pro X is also being developed by a semi-independent team. Legacy programs being developed by legacy developers. Sonar is certainly one. I wonder if some of MAGIX' software development is set up in a similar way, with teams of different people working in different locations. A collection of remote offices. Divestiture surely means the end of the Humble Bundle upgrade plan. Considering the minimal use Vegas Pro gets around here, I think whatever version I'm stuck with will be fine for a good long while. I have the one where they finally got it right with using the GPU to accelerate rendering. I did a comparison of rendering the same project with and without the GPU acceleration and the difference was stunning. The cheapskate world seems to be migrating to DaVinci anyway, so maybe I'll wind up on the DaVinci train if I can't get cheap updates for Vegas.

It didn't occur to me that anyone might suggest Matrix View as a substitute for a phrase sampler and I didn't think you were. Yes, Matrix View has some limitations. It feels like a feature that stopped about 3/4 of the way to the finish line. Adding integrated samplers to Sonar is halfway there at the moment, it does have XSampler. Unfortunately, of Next's two sampler instruments, XSampler is the one that's less useful to me. I want to trigger dialog samples and sound effects and make my own drum kits. Those are all jobs for a phrase/pad sampler. Among the plethora of freeware audio plug-ins now available, phrase samplers are underrepresented. Sitala looked like it was shaping up before it went freeware-no-more.

Given that one of them, Vegas Pro, is for video production. As someone who holds licenses for Vegas Pro and Sound Forge, I'm interested to see what becomes of them.