Starship Krupa

Today's multiple free instruments come from Electronik Sound Lab. They have 8 different freeware instruments, including a variety of vintage drum machine emulations. Their other specialty is atmospheric keyboards, as they make Darksichord and Creepy Piano. They also are now the keepers of one of my favorite ambient instruments, ATMOS, now in version 2. Tracktion have issued WaverazorLE, a lighter edition of their Waverazor synth. Nice graphics on this one. They also have a collection of vintage video game sounds. Sega, Nintendo, Commodore SID. Ironically, I haven't been posting in this thread as much as I once did because I'm getting so many freebies! I don't always have time to make note of them here, so I'm catching up.

Today's batch of freebie FX comes from igorski.nl. They actually have 4 of them, but the one I like is HomeCorrupter. It has 3 functions in it, each of which has its own adjustable LFO. You can reduce the sample rate, bit depth, and the one I found most appealing, "clock speed," which is a slow down effect. An LFO'd slowdown effect is a nice thing to have. It sounds sikk with Dumpster Fire. If I ever start reviewing plug-ins on a more formal basis, I think I should put each of them to the "how does it sound with Dumpster Fire?" test. Except that everything sounds pretty awesomely weird with Dumpster Fire. And that's okay. In the case of Home Corrupter, I put together a sound I called "Dead Souls on a Tilt-A-Whirl" by sticking Cakewalk's own Modfilter first in line, then Dumpster Fire, then HomeCorrupter. The other 3 are not quite my cup of tea, but if you're into degraded sounds, you might like them. One is a delay with a variety of manglers in the loop, the other is supposed to be a reverb, although I couldn't get it to sound the slightest reverb-y, and the last one is a harsh formant filter.

It should come with a warning that users may become disappointed in one or more of their favorite sweeteners. "I put this thing on my drum bus and it makes everything sound so much phatter while also enhancing clarity!" Well, yeah, it jacked up the level by 3dB, thereby hitting a sweeter spot on the Fletcher-Munson curve. That's how that works. It sure saves having to continually turn the effect's output down when I'm auditioning presets. I wonder what it's doing between the time you insert it in an FX bin and the time you see the UI, it takes the longest of any effect I've seen.

I'm sure that many of the original factory presets are indeed the result of a random name generator. My metaphor for Meldaproduction's wacky preset names and sparse documentation is that it's as if I found an artifact from an advanced civilization, and it does certain cool things when I press the obvious buttons, but then if I open a panel, there's all this other stuff that I have no idea how to operate. They're like the TARDIS, maybe that's why geeks like me dig 'em so much. ?

Good lord you weren't kidding. That's all I can say. MTurboDelayMB on the other hand, seems like it was abandoned at some point. It has the same complement of presets that the non-MB version does, but none of them work properly. In other news, I tried MSpectraldynamicsle briefly, and although I'm still having a hard time getting my head around it, I managed to come up with a preset that I liked enough to upload. It uses the bitcrusher device and it's called "Phantom Flautist." It adds a flute-y overtone to your source. I need to get in the habit of using the "description" field in my preset uploads. Some of the presets are baffling, they don't show the devices on the easy screen, so I can't control them. All in all, it's pretty fab to get 8 new high end plug-ins for free, thanks to those who used my referral code.

This would seriously harsh my mellow. Phoenix Stereo is The Answer.

Actually, there was Cubase, too. Cakewalk/SONAR suffered from being Windows-only and from getting kinda buggy. I don't know how it compared to all other DAW's in the crashing sweepstakes, but I started with Mixcraft, which is solid as a rock, and the first version of CbB (which was also sort of the last version of SONAR) didn't work very well on my system. Crashes, freezes, etc. I felt like I was on thin ice with it, saving way more often than I was used to. And I found the comping workflow to be confusing before they made the changes to it. I think it's great now, after 3 years of repair and renovation, but I don't think I would have been comfortable with it if it had stayed as it was. They could innovate all they wanted, but what gets and keeps an important tool in my place is basic usability and dependability. SONAR, IMO, had issues with both (which, happily, were and are being addressed).

Whoo, time for a bump on this one. What we have up this time is HY-Plugins. The deal with them is that for each of their products, there is a free version with fewer features. They specialize in step sequencers of various flavors, there is also a sample slicer/sequencer, and a very nice subtractive polyphonic synth called HY-Poly. HY-Poly Free avoids some of the clutter that other synths add in order to stand out. It has really good-sounding oscillators and filters.

Here's a new discovery, great for anyone into sequenced rhythms and slicing. HY-Plugins have a variety of sequencers and a sample slicer, also a delay and filter. Slick, well-laid out UI's. Each of them comes in a feature-limited free edition. The free editions still have plenty of usefulness.

Here's an "inspiration in a can" effect, kinda like the notorious "Drip" is aspiring to be, except this one is free. Many modes, one knob for more or less of the effect. If a sound is not quite "there," you throw this on and see if you can get it there. It could also be considered equivalent to 25 Waves One Knob FX in one UI. Switch it to whatever effect you want, then turn the knob to alter parameter(s). It's a lot of plug-in for signing up for their newsletter. ujam Micro Finisher

I'd love for them to be licensed in the usual iZotope fashion, but they're re-badged versions of the products they bought along with the rest of the Exponential IP. Exponential was using iLok 2/PACE driver, single seat, so that's how it is. If we want those sweet Exponential algorithms in iZotope form (with licensing and sweet UI), it's Neoverb.

No markers? As someone who flubs a note every so often, I'd be so worse off without having markers I can lay down to remind me where I need to edit of punch in. I'll go out on a limb here and say that you've probably not used Lyrics View, at least not more than once. It's one of my favorite features, not to actually use, but just to remember it every once in a while and ponder that someone had to suggest it and then it was implemented in that fashion. It is....unique, I daresay. It's a workflow like no other.

John's layout is bog standard for Track View, and he even goes over to the Console View to show what it looks like there. The only possible hitch I can think of is that he has his Bus Pane showing at the start of the video and I'm not sure if that is open by default. If not, there is an arrow button at the lower right corner of the Track/Bus headers that will open it. The Cakewalk Reference Guide, downloadable from this forum, has good information about setting up Send tracks, too. If someone still can't figure it out after all this, the next thing I would suggest is that they check the program's title bar up at the top and make sure they're actually running Cakewalk. If so, maybe Cakewalk's not the best fit.

Event List menu abides still within Cakewalk yet workspace may hide

Those are some great-looking presets. Have you shared them to the Preset Exchange? It occurred to me: for those looking for "air" from the Melda EQ's, I wonder if adding harmonics would accomplish that.

Excellent. Psyched to try it out. Personal Meldaproduction tips: it's hidden in plain sight, but the saturation knob in MEqualizer is one of my favorite saturation effects. It's smooth, not as grainy as I find most saturation FX to be. At about 2:00 it generates the right amount of harmonics without turning fuzzy. Also if you, like me, were starting to get resource drain using their stuff (which is usually resource-friendly), go into the upsampling settings and turn off High Quality Upsampling. Especially in things like compressors and modulators that aren't as likely to generate unwanted aliasing. I set my upsampling to 2X, although I wonder if I even benefit from that with Cakewalk's built-in upsampling. How much upsampling do I need in a well-designed plug-in anyway?

MVocoder is the best vocoder I've tried. I spoke (favorably) of MTurboreverble earlier in the thread. I got MTurboComple as a PB freebie and it is useful (a vintage emulation by and for people who aren't much into vintage emulations). I have the non-MB MRhythmizer and dig diggity dig it. I got MSpectralDelay as a gift when they introduced it, and since then it has been used on exactly none of my tracks because I find it rather unfathomable (but not in a "whoa, that's messed up and cool" sense like Dumpster Fire). The rest of them....haven't tried them. MTurboDelay came with the Essentials bundle, but I've only had that for about 24 hours. My collection of delays is already crazy, so it will need to bring a lot to the table in order to inspire. Many of them are "MB" versions, and their fascination with multiband processing has never caught my imagination. Something that leaps out at me: if you feel you need two different rotary speaker simulations, they are present in the bundle. MRotary and MVintageRotary. I had thought that the rotary speaker itself was by nature a "vintage" effect, but who knows? Why is there no MRotaryMB? Why isn't MVintageRotary called MTurboRotary? Was it because with the much beloved industry workhorse MModernCompressor, they needed something "vintage" to provide balance? The world of Meldaproduction can be as inscrutable as it is comprehensive.

I really like Wavesfactory Trackspacer for this kind of thing. It does what it does so well and so easily that it feels like cheating.

Yes, in the thread I gave you the link for, you'll see a full explanation. The core Cakewalk by BandLab program has all of the features of SONAR Platinum/Professional, only with fewer bundled plug-ins than Platinum had. Your bundled Artist plug-ins will work with Cakewalk by BandLab.

Actually, I believe that the VST spec allows developers to declare the category, which a host can query. Cakewalk is the only program I've seen that bothers to query and sort accordingly.

Cakewalk by BandLab has the feature set that SONAR Professional had, including aux tracks, patch points, and the ProChannel. It has further features that have been added in the past 3 years. It's still supported and in active development. Also, free of charge.

Oh, right, it would be 6 euros. I screwed up the math again. Percentages trip me up sometimes.

If you go there and click on the "Steal" button, you can "underpay" and get a license for a variety of prices from $15 down to $5, also, reportedly, other prices depending on how you answer their question as to why you want to Steal it. Caveat: they say that the "steal" licenses are not eligible for support or future updates. I also don't see a way to upgrade a "stolen" license to the full one. I read that they had a half price sale last Friday 13, but there's no Friday 13 this year. I thought about waiting for a sale, but they'd probably rather have your $10 now than have you waiting for it to drop to that price.

I know we have a separate Deals subforum, and I hope this isn't violating the rules (if it is, mods please remove), but I know that not everyone checks it or knows about it. tl;dr: new users can upgrade your FreeFX bundle for less than $8. I've recommended the Meldaproduction FreeFX bundle many times to people looking for free FX to go with our free DAW. They're great, 37 plug-ins. The upgrade enables features found on their other plug-ins, like scalable UI, native preset system, upsampling, access to modulators and multiparameters for plug-ins that have them. It also removes the little banner at the bottom of the UI. Meldaproduction have an upgrade for the bundle to the "pro" versions, which usually costs 45 euros. This weekend they are having a sale for 60% off all bundles, including the FreeFX bundle. The price to upgrade the FreeFX to pro is 20 euros this weekend. Their other bundles also have the largest price cut I've ever seen them offer. If you are a first time Meldaproduction customer, you can get a credit of 10 euros for signing up for their newsletter. Also, you can use someone's referral code to get 20% off your first order. My code is MELDA1923165. (If you buy the bundle I get exactly 1 euro credit, so I'm not grubbing for free credit with this post. I just think it's a great deal that anyone who uses plug-ins in the FreeFX bundle should jump on.) All together this brings the price down to 6 euros or $7.17.

On my system, the only changes were to Element and adding presets to CLA Echosphere. Live 11? That's crazy. You have to test with Live for heaven's sake.