Starship Krupa

Hmm, yeah, I kinda love Pluginboutique as it is, so I hope they stay hands-off.

Well, I did say flattER response. I, too, believe that anything that goes between the air and the eardrum is going to affect the frequency response. I should have put quotes around "high fidelity." However, as I said, I've personally experienced increasingly better response from these things over the years. It's not a joke, it's (for me at least) empirical. Playing and listening with these vs. the foam stoppers is better (for me). I don't play or attend shows to have it sound like it's coming from the next room. Maybe they'll never sound like pulling the fader down, but in matters of technology, I don't say "never." It used to be considered futile to attempt to emulate audio hardware with computer code, but not so much any more. Actually, those look kinda like the Earos I'm going to be trying. You are my hero! ? The hitch in even this strategy (seldom been successful for me) is that it's hard to turn drums down. Yes, the drummer can hit more softly, play with rods, but it does affect the feel and energy. And these days, I'm most often the drummer.

I'm getting some weirdness where the checkout page says that I need to confirm that my stated billing country and actual location match. I click on my IP address and it shows a Google map of my town, but also pops a message saying that the map has an issue. I'll try again, but do I really need a Voxengo SPAN-alike when I already have Voxengo SPAN?

I'm 100% with you on that. One wonders how some people obtain plug-ins if they are so adverse to connecting to the internet. Having said that, while grumbling about the need to download and/or use a download manager to get the software is olde tyme, complaints about the bugginess and unfriendliness of a given download manager are entirely fair game. The Bandlab Assistant, which is not developed by the same team as Cakewalk, has not been the smoothest ride. Having said that, the slowness or unreliability of downloads via a manager may in some/most cases not have anything to do with the download manager itself, but rather the servers on the other end. There's no guarantee that a "direct" download would be any faster or more reliable.

Are you suggesting that a resolution for the OP's issue may be found in that page?

Starting with my first set of audiologist-fitted Etymotics 30 years ago, I've been searching for the best flatter-response earplugs. The Etymotics were an improvement over those squishy foam logs you'd wear to a shooting range, but not by that much for me. But since I'd like to keep my hearing as long as possible, I wore them at gigs and shows. I don't know if I'm more sensitive to response curves than most (I have my thoughts about that), but nothing I've tried has actually lived up to the advertising hype, they never sound like just turning down the volume, always have a big rolloff above 2K or so. About 6 years ago, when I took up drums, I went looking again and found Earasers, which I got at Guitar Center for $35. After swapping them for the small instead of medium size, they were an improvement. I wore them at a Winter NAMM Show and playing drums, and they were good at stopping loud sounds, but still not perfect as far as roll-off. An unfortunate lapse of having my act together resulted in their taking a trip through the washer and dryer, and they've never been quite the same. This year Santa is supposed to be bringing me a set of Earos Ones, and we'll see how they compare. My hope is that every few years sees an improvement in technology and these things get great reviews and look like they have a good convenience factor. Next birthday I will be 60, and I suppose I am glad to have whatever hearing I have left after all the years playing in rock bands and now drums. Any wisdom/experience from the Coffee House? Brands and types that sound true? I know that active in-ear monitors have been a thing every since Sinead O-Connor's famous ear-slapping-and-grimacing pantomime on the Grammys 30-some years ago, but I have no need for such fancy things (I don't think I do, anyway).

You didn't mention whether you were looking for something you can use in the DAW or on your phone or what, but as luck would have it, I have both covered. Meldaproduction's MTuner is a VST that does this, even polyphonically and with MIDI out. It's also part of their MFreeFX Bundle, which is free to use with the restriction that you can't use their preset system to save your tunings, although you can just use the DAW's. If you spring for the Free-to-Pro bundle upgrade, it unlocks that feature. The bundle comes with 36 other very useful plug-ins, some of them I consider best-in-class at any price. Wait for one of their 50% off everything sales, and If you're a first time buyer you can sign up for their newsletter and get 10 euro off, and use someone's referral code (mine is MELDA1923165) to get another 20% off and wind up with the license for about $12. In smartphonelandia, Fender Tune is my favorite, has many alternate tunings built in, and I just got a popup telling me that all I had to do was sign in to my Fender.com account and they would unlock the Pro features, which include, again, storing your own tunings.

Have you been contributing to the delinquency of Am?

"'Deserve's got nothin' to do with it!" ? Actually, it seems not to. After I got mine, a friend of mine re-subscribed an existing account and got a license almost right away, and she's only ever collected the freebies. Maybe they lost people's addresses, or there was some deal with subscriptions lapsing or whatever, but make sure you're actually still subscribed. Explicitly re-up, and if you don't get a license, take it up with A|A|S and tell them you feel shafted.

Have you tried dragging and dropping clips from Cakewalk directly onto your sound editor? Works a treat with Sound Forge, at least. If you read the other posts and topics about this proposed feature, people have started to clarify what we mean by "sampler." It's occurred to me that in the context of integrated "sampling," it's kind of a collection of features under that umbrella name. Even the form they would come in is different: Cubase's sample track vs. Studio One and Mixcraft's pair of sampler instruments. Here are the features I want: I want to be able to start with audio, either recorded or imported to Cakewalk, and from there, manipulate it either in the Track View or Loop Construction View, and then either right-click on a clip (or selection) and send that to either a sampler pad or a sampler that can stretch and pitch the sound over several notes. Once I've done that, I want to have tools in the sampler(s) to reverse, pitch, trim, filter, choke group, etc. After I've done this, I want to be able to save what I've done as a patch or scene for later recall, and have all information I need saved to the project's folder. Then I can either play the samples live with a controller or trigger them from a MIDI track. I also want to be able to load the "patch" or "scene" in other projects with the option to copy the audio to the other project's folder. To me, this covers it. I understand that it might not for everyone and maybe augmenting it with something like Kontakt or Sampletank would be best for them. At some point you have to draw a line at feature creep. The idea isn't to replace full-featured samplers but to allow an integrated workflow (as in, it does it within the program using techniques and menus and keystrokes that the user is familiar with from using the program) and not have to find a 3rd-party solution for the basics. All these abilities to record and process audio are already in the program, this is just another way to present them. It already has algorithms to record, stretch, pitch, reverse, trim, filter, etc. I doubt that all the other companies who do this write all new code for each of these things. Maybe some do. None of my business. But it may be less of a chore than some think.

These have been requested multiple times, and I heartily agree! I'm forever "losing" new plug-ins unless they get put in "Uncategorized." Preferences/VST Settings/VST3 migration: both Hide Related VST3 plug-ins and Replace if Possible on Project Load are available options. Having said that, such replacement depends on the plug-in vendor assigning both versions the same VST ID, which only about half of them do, IME. In that case, you'll need to either delete the unwanted VST2 .DLL's or open Utilities/Cakewalk Plug-In Manager and use the Exclude option on them.

Let me know if you figure out what caused this behavior, because I want it to happen on my system. ?I seldom wish to move the split point around, rather I want to do slip editing of one or the other clips, which requires me to hold ctrl or hit the F8 key. j/k, it does look like there is a bug of some kind. Right now on my system, the hotspot selection is acting weird. I tried this to duplicate your issue, and at first it worked as you say, as if you had held the ctrl key, but then I did a couple of undo's and tried it a couple of more times, going back and forth. Now, for me, it's behaving the opposite way, where the ctrl key will no longer make it so that it will drag one side or the other.

Well, as you know from your earlier contact with them, they have a reputation for having some of the friendliest, most accommodating customer service in the business (Canadian, so not surprising.) I'm sure they'll be happy to switch your license to the pack you actually wanted.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1552748-REG/earos_eo_bv1_bc_one_high_fidelity_acoustic.html/ "The EAROS ONE is a pair of acoustic filters designed to meet the demanding needs of industry professionals, audiophiles, music lovers, entertainers, and club goers seeking to protect their hearing while preserving musical fidelity. They offer over 17 dB of volume reduction, helping to protect your hearing in situations with dangerous decibel levels—preventing irreversible ear drum damage and allowing you to enjoy loud performances longer with less worry. In addition, the ONE has been specifically engineered to attenuate the sound volume while preserving the full sonic spectrum of the audio, letting you experience the music in full clarity—the way it was intended." Haven't tried them yet, but I asked Santa for a pair this year.

Yay, Glitchmachines are my favorite for electronic destruction/randomness-assisted creation. Something to call up when I want inspiration, or just a sprinkling of glitchy ear candy. They have another freebie plug-in called Fracture and and handful of sample packs for free. The rest of their plug-ins are on deep discount at Pluginboutique. $5-10, collect 'em all. I have everything but the Subvert distortion, and there's not a single one I regret. They're a great way to make inexpensive individual purchases and collect this month's freebies.

I fiddled with it for a while. The "Shaper Box" line seem to be a bunch of tools that let you draw curves that will control the amount of the effect. So if you have an otherwise smooth sound and want it to grunch out on the 2 and 4 you can set that up by drawing the appropriate curve. I am so far unimpressed by the distortion algos, but then I'm a shoegazer guitar player who likes his distortion thick. Haven't tried all of them.

I haven't noticed that, but I have noticed that when I stop playback I get a single click, which registers in the Performance tooltip as 1 late buffer. Perhaps I should alert the developers.

There are MIDI loops that come with Cakewalk. In the Browser, click on the tab at the top that says "Media." From there, the MIDI loops are in Cakewalk Content\MIDI Library.

I actually save them to a spinny storage drive folder that I have shared on my home network so that I can install them on my other systems. However....iZotope Product Portal does save all of its installers to your Downloads folder, so unless you've remapped your Downloads folder elsewhere, get those outta there. They are not surprisingly, huge.

Okay, here's the full tutorial, including the A|A|S safety copy folders:

(Note: The following assumes that you know where your default VST2 directory is. If for some reason it's on this list, do not delete the files in it unless they are duplicates of plug-ins that are installed as VST3's) Some of my favorite plug-in companies use installers that unfortunately, install versions of their products that I won't use and/or duplicate versions. I only ever wish to install 64-bit plug-ins, and I give precedence to VST3's if they are available. The installers will install 32-bit versions, VST2's alongside VST3's, (Pro Tools) AAX (and RTAS!). I can be persuaded to party like it's 1999, but I do not wish to produce like it's 1999, so I have no hosts that require 32-bit plug-ins. Nor do I use Pro Tools. Why clean up these directories? If you've never deleted these redundant files, it can free up as much as 2 or 3 Gigs of space on your system drive. I do it after every A|A|S install/update, and most Meldaproduction and iZotope as well. Native Access will indicate an error condition if you remove their 32-bit versions, but this won't affect anything in the actual use of the software. Typically, NI's duplicates take up almost 400M, and the rest can make it add up to about 750M, so if, like me, you have a system disk you'd like to keep clean, this is a good thing to do. For the 32-bit VST3's and any other duplicates that Cakewalk and your other audio programs scan, scanning them can slow down program startup times while the plug-in subsystem sorts out the duplicates. Some programs, Cakewalk included, will only hide duplicates if the manufacturer has given them the same VST ID, and only about half of developers do that. So you run the risk of using the wrong version in a project It's low risk, if you delete a redundant version of a plug-in and it stops working, just reinstall it and it should work fine. Otherwise, opinions are only those of me and if you are the sort that complains, delete nothing and move along This is a list of directories where A|A|S installs copies of its software that I have no use for. I use A|A|S as the example, but Meldaproduction, iZotope, Native Instruments, and IK Multimedia are all guilty of installing redundant versions of their software. First, the ones I find least necessary, the Pro Tools versions. A couple of them are also 32-bit, so doubly useless to me. If you don't use Pro Tools and have no plans to, you can delete everything any manufacturer puts in these: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Digidesign C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Avid\Audio\Plug-Ins C:\Program Files\Common Files\Avid\Audio\Plug-Ins The next are where they install 32-bit versions. If you use 32-bit plug-ins, heaven help you, but you probably know what to leave alone and what to keep: C:\Program Files(86)\Common Files\VST3 C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg\VstPlugins C:\Program Files (x86)\Native Instruments\VSTPlugins C:\Program Files (x86)\Cakewalk\VstPlugins C:\Program Files (x86)\Applied Acoustics Systems\VST Plug-ins (A|A|S and NI put copies of their VST2's in their program folders, presumably so support staff can restore them from that location) Clearing out the above will gain you back the most space and eliminate the scanning of redundant plug-ins. Do the below ones if you are the ornery sort (like me) who just doesn't like installers cluttering up their drives. The following are quasi "standard" locations for VST2 .DLL's so the installers put them in these directories as another "just in case." If one of these is your own VST2 directory, or if you have plug-ins in it that Cakewalk scans (that aren't in your default VST directory), then leave them alone. Otherwise, they're just duplicates, and you can get rid of whatever .DLL's you find there: C:\Program Files\VSTPlugIns C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VstPlugins The next are manufacturer specific and likely only exist so that their support staff can copy them over in case the user deletes them from the main location: C:\Program Files\Applied Acoustics Systems\VST Plug-ins C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\VSTPlugins Last, A|A|S, maybe due to their former bundling relationship with Cakewalk, stick extra copies of their .DLL's here: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\VstPlugins (do NOT delete the folders you may find here, they contain Cakewalk's own bundled plug-ins. Only A|A|S' are likely to be safe to delete, to my knowledge) Post how much cruft you've gotten rid of, and especially post if you know of any other locations where installers put redundant plug-ins.

?Good heavens, this is why I wanted to write them all out. Well-spotted, sir. Also, this just in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Native Instruments\VSTPlugins This is ridiculous. The list now actually goes to 12. I'm going to compile all this and post it in Tutorials.

My favorite for the first is Cinémathèque. For the last, any of Masala, Masala 2, or Journeys would likely yield hours of fun. Fortunately, they have Swatches so that you can demo a dozen or so of each, so make sure to get the latest version of Swatches and give 'em a listen.

Wow, I just download the latest version of Surge Synth. It now comes with a nifty multieffect that can be used separately from the synth itself: I haven't checked out all of the modes, but dang, there are lots of them!

If you tell us what kind of music and sounds you're into, maybe we can make recommendations. I'd love to see this. My corner is ambient downtempo, so I know which ones of those I find most useful.