Starship Krupa

Bought it from Guitar Center. The usual iZotope routine, but in this case it's supposed to include Yet Another License For Melodyne Essentials, any quick hints on how I obtain that?. I think I already have 2 of them. I'm starting to think I could perhaps defray some of my cost of Nectar 3? Wow, this feels like an iZotope graduation. Even though I own licenses for Iris 2 and Breaktweaker, as well as Phoenix Stereo and Excalibur, this is the first non-Elemental iZotope suite I've obtained a license for.

And what city?

I thought this thread was going to show a photo of a woman at a Rush concert at first. Wow, Absolute Music is a retail palace, innit? Really happening drum department. I need a new pair of Vic AJ3's and there's nowhere to get them. I was hoping the camera would, uh, follow...keyboard lady around the entire place, but following main guitar room lady around was nice, too.

Okay, Adam, I just looked over your posts in this forum and 10 days ago you had to have someone tell you how to download the Theme Editor. Sorry, but you're not allowed to get this good in a week. I've been at this for over a year and a half and my buttons still look like someone ran over a jelly donut with their skateboard. I think we have a Lord of the Sth here.... It's people like you who make it so that I'll probably never "release" a complete, finished theme of my own. By the time I'm 3/4 done slogging my way through it, one of you Sth Lords will drop a group of 3, one of which will be very close to the one I've been working on, except yours will have a custom graticule for the Quadcurve EQ or something.

Whoa, duuuuuuuude, I see you did change the flyout! You are a madman of the first stripe! There are so few themes that bother with this....you have done it.

Wow, you have really gone to town on this theme. It's a good one, I like dark themes. I've been putting together one of my own, a mod of Tungsten with turquoise/aqua accents. Since it looks like you're wading into the deep waters of things like the virtual controller, and I didn't know where else to post this, over the years I start noticing when there are certain things that theme authors just never seem to touch, that always alike in every theme. So I used the sort of retro trapezoidal fader knobs because nobody else seems to have used them. One of the dowdiest and hard-to-read (for me) dialogs because it's all shades of grey is the Add Track flyout, so I decided to make one for myself that was at least more legible and had some color to it, although @Colin Nicholls hasn't yet been able to suss out all the text colors. I finally got around to it and it makes things much cheerier: The "Create" button is still dire, with its dismal spirit-crushing grey-on-grey motto snuffing my urge to create every time I press it, but I managed to put some color in the number of tracks, and the background at the bottom, and made the whole main window "none more" black, which since I couldn't change the text color, at least makes it legible. I bet you could do something cool for your Dark Aqua, with a translucent blue-green band across the bottom and the theme text color in the number of tracks counter. You seem ambitious enough to maybe even work on the "Audio" and "Instrument" tabs at the top, but they each have 4 states.

Yes, thanks, the Master bus. That is one place where agglomerated single-source plug-ins seem to shine. As in iZotope Ozone.

Since I've never preferred the "rack within my rack" paradigm (perhaps someone will one day explain the advantage(s) of it), I've only ever used my T-Racks processors as regular plug-ins. Weeding the unregistered demo plug-ins out of my VST3 folder is a chore that I have performed willingly because I've gotten so much top shelf processing from IK Multimedia for free over the years, but if I were more of a paying customer, it would start to bother me to have so much unusable software cluttering up my plug-in menus. It's fair to shovel some demos in with my freeware, but I can see where it would make for a negative user experience with some otherwise excellent software. IK have certainly come through with some amazing processors. I'm usually a bit dismissive of the whole thing of plug-ins chasing after the sound, look, and feel of old rack hardware. Why should we, with all this computing power, constrain ourselves to what was possible with 1972 physical components? Give me one of my Meldaproduction compressors so I can make my track sing and breathe. But then IK Multimedia had to go and put a freebie of their Fairchild 670 emulation in some magazine, and I had to throw it on my drum bus just to see what the fuss was about. ??? Nice compressor, that. Very nice.

How about BandLab? I mean, the DAW that runs on Android and iOS phones and tablets. BandLab had years of developing and marketing their other DAW's before they picked up SONAR and dusted it off. A friend of mine bought an iPad and Apple app-blocked him from installing Garbage Band because his iPad could only take iOS 12, so I mentioned BandLab, and he's loving it.

I'm just glad I could help clear things up for anyone who may have thought that Theme Editor was for film scoring.

Seriously and sincerely, snark and sarcasm aside, to the OP, you seem to be of a cautious nature about what you install on your computer, and rightly so, and so am I. Rather than going through what was obviously an upsetting experience and then ranting about how BandLab should have protected you from all that uncertainty, how about doing some research ahead of time? That's what I do. It seems like you actually did, at least enough to know that Cakewalk was now freeware. It didn't have to stop there. Whenever I'm looking for a program to do whatever task, a small utility, preferably freeware, I check out reviews to see if they have offers in their installers, adware, etc. Makes for peace of mind. You could have paused your installation at any point that you were concerned, opened a browser, and Googled "does Cakewalk by BandLab install adware?" and gotten your questions answered right away. Same with any questions about the add-ons. Google "do I have to use BandLab if I want to use Cakewalk?" if you want to know about that. These questions have been answered endlessly, over and over. You're upset about not knowing all this ahead of time, well, the solution is to find out. Look before you leap. It only takes a minute, if that. No need for the angst and confusion. The information is readily available. Since you seem upset about having to create an account on a website that offers other services besides the specific one you wanted to access, I also suggest having an email address that you use just for the purpose of getting free offers. I have three Yahoo addresses for different purposes. That way I need not be concerned about junk mail clogging my main account, nor the company's user list being stolen, misused, etc.

Thank you! That was the phrase I was trying to remember....

On there now. Thanks!

Me, too. Does anyone buy W.A. Productions, SoundSpot, SONiVOX, or AIR plug-ins during the brief periods when they are at full price?

This is so confusing, isn't it? I don't know why they don't put it in the FAQ: SI-Bass Guitar is a virtual bass guitar instrument. It is for when you want to use the sound of a bass guitar in your music. SI-Drum Kit is a virtual drum kit instrument. It is for when you want to use the sound of a drum kit in your music. SI-Electric Piano is a virtual electric piano instrument. It is for when you want to use the sound of an electric piano in your music. SI-String Section is a virtual string section instrument. It is for when you want to use the sound of a string section in your music. And the other two optional items: Drum Replacer is a tool for replacing the drum tracks in your project with well-recorded and in time drums. Theme Editor is a tool for editing Cakewalk visual themes. (where do they come up with these names??)

At this point I doubt there's anyone under the age of 50 who hasn't been on the other end of a phone call with a frustrated computer-using parent that sounded like the OP. "Now the damn thing is asking me if I want to install some kind of Drum Replacer! How the hell do I know if I want to install a Drum Replacer? It's probably something I'll have to pay for or some of that spyware crap I heard about on the news. Theme Editor? Is that like that AOL Toolbar that kept taking over my computer and you had to come over and get rid of it? Why can't they make it so I can just install the program and use the program? And now I have to be on this BandLab thing. Aren't our lives complicated enough with all of this electronic noise? Next I'll have to give 'em my email address to take a dump! Oh look, Jerry just sent a picture of the kids, hang on and I'll forward it." I'll explain a few things. Cakewalk (along with other BandLab services) is licensed via free subscription, like a trade magazine. The user gives them an email address and in exchange, BandLab grants access to Cakewalk and a variety of really cool other music-related services, which they may utilize or not as they choose. In order to access Cakewalk and some of the other features, they must first download and install a small program, BandLab Assistant. BandLab Assistant takes care of downloading and installing Cakewalk and some of its add-ons, and provides a connection to BandLab's servers for the purpose of license validation/renewal and transfer of files when using Cakewalk's Export to BandLab feature. BandLab Assistant may be kept running or shut down as the user chooses, but must be run briefly at least once every 6 months to renew the user's Cakewalk subscription license. Most choose to run it more often than that, as the Cakewalk developers usually update the program with nice surprises about every couple of months. There's nothing the least bit unusual about any of this in 2020. The free license, the download manager, the email registration, none of it. If any part of the experience is just too confusing to handle, there are plenty of other DAW options available. I can't think of a single one that won't require registration, and most will have some kind of download manager, and their license will not be free, though.

Cakewalk is supposed to handle this for you and if it isn't, please report it in the Feedback forum. The devs did extensive work on plug-in settings retention a few revs ago and will want to know if you have a plug-in that is not cooperating. Are you saving your settings as a preset within the instrument, or as a Cakewalk VST preset, or just exiting the project and reopening it? Any of those conditions should keep the settings, but they should be noted when you report it. As for taste in Rhodesalikes, my current fave is A|A|S Lounge Lizard Session, which is on sale for $24. Before that, it was the freeware Dead Duck EPiano. I must have bark and growl when I lay into it. I used to own a Stage 73, so I know what the real deal sounds like and how it responds, how the tines "bark" when you hit harder, and I have to have some of that in an emulation. Both Lounge Lizard and EPiano are hybrid modeled/sampled, which seems to work best for my playing style.

You can set up an account at W.A. themselves and they will send you freebie deals. They also partner up with PB at times. I have a nice cache of W.A. giveaways to my name, along with a couple of deep discounted items and consider them to be a force for good. If you are into off the hook temp sync "creative" FX, lay in wait for the Sphere bundle to go on sale. The compressor is okay, nothing to write home about, covers the various flavors of compression, but oh man SphereQuad and SphereDelay are weirdzballs. Not quite Glitchmachines weirdzballs, but they can surely do odd things to sound.

The UI designed to make you feel like a doofus. "Umm, let's see, I think vocal not have enough TONE. Me add TONE. Oh no! Now it lack CLARITY!! But now I ran out of CLARITY. $160 wasted on iZotopes!"

Very nice. I think the one place that I got super lucky with my "okay dining room, you're it" studio was the fact that it has a 10' ceiling with coffer beams, a bay window, and several bookcases. One of the corners has a fireplace at a 45-degree angle. It's all dumb luck, but let's hear it for idiosyncratic Victorian architecture. When I'm tracking drums, my right elbow is next to some really great literature, in case I want to read some Mark Twain or Robertson Davies. For my "vocal booth" I did something I've never read in any budget studios article. I got my camcorder with its decent quality stereo mic and had my friend speak and we walked around the room shooting video. Then we played it back on the monitors and noted on the video where I was standing when it sounded best. Bang, that's where I set up my vocal mic. Crazy, but then a few years later my buddy visited Sun Studios in Memphis, and they show people the "sweet spot" in their very live, untreated room, where they had their artists stand. There's a hole in the linoleum floor tile that is said to be from the peg of Bill Black's bass (swoon). I like my idiosyncratic setup and the sound I get, but it sure is nice to see a room and workstation that's done "right."

If your mixes are transferring well, then who needs it? You have what we all want. I was being funny anyway, because if you saw my setup, well, look in my sig. I can at any moment flip between 4 sets of monitors. I finally set up a reasonably flat response mic (Oktava MK 012) at my listening position and ran some sweeps and pink noise, and the Events are the only ones that are on the same continent as "accurate." The Monitor Ones don't even have the same curve between left and right, and it looks like a mountain range. Both they and the Point Sevens have a huge dip and spike around 150. I was pleased to discover that my hearing still goes up to about 12,500, which surprised me. Age 59 and veteran of many live shows. The A70's are really 1980's bachelor pad speakers. The price on the Events was pretty insane. One channel didn't work, so I got them for free. Replaced a fried chip amp and they were fine. My studio is a friggin' hodgepodge, which is why I love how yours is set up. Everything in its right place.

I'm sure this is an endlessly requested feature: can we please have Undo apply to mixer knob movements? This is so essential. I know I'm not the only one who slips with their mouse, or accidentally clicks on the wrong channel strip and screws something up in a hard-won mix before they notice that they tweaked the Reverb Send for the Left Overhead instead of the Snare or whatever. And yes, I know how to safeguard against this with mix recall and automatic backups and whatever. I really shouldn't have to. These moves are critical and there is no reason for them to not be Undoable.

Ooh, nice desk you have there, Josh. Very nice. Really a beautiful workstation. Mine is....funky by comparison. Sort of a Millenium Falcon. But I do have more monitors for referencing mixes.? My first thought was whether a Workspace might be able to handle this, but Workspaces and I don't get along very well so I have no specific suggestions.

It is unlikely, but not impossible that such features could be added to Cakewalk. While you are waiting, there is a plethora of great 3rd-party freeware metering plug-ins available. MVMeter2 is an excellent VU meter, and the same company has another LUFS meter I use for mastering. Meldaproduction's FreeFXBundle comes with MLoudnessAnalyzer, MStereoAnalyzer, MAnalyzer, and a couple others. The first two are in every project I do. Voxengo's SPAN is another popular spectrum analyzer. If you try these and they are still not enough metering for you, remember: mix with your ears.

I have the word from on high. There are two behaviors, "Insert Track" and "Add Track." Insert puts the new track right above the currently selected track. Add puts it at the bottom of the list. The user is supposed to be able to access both behaviors depending on which menu or button they use, but as noted here, it's not working 100% as described. Currently there's no way to create an instrument track and have it appear just above your currently selected track, and there should be a way to do that. So the "option" is designed in, it's just not implemented correctly at the moment. Also, tracks that are added via a couple of methods that are labeled "Insert" (Global Insert menu and INSERT key) result in the "Add" behavior, which also may not be correct. I suspect this will get sorted in a future release, so hang tight. Prognosis is good.