Starship Krupa

This. Sampletron 2 is great because of the vast variety of samples from obscure analog sample players. Optigan sounds are not easy to find, and they include lots of stuff that the Mellotron tapes had that most Mellotron emulations omit, like the loops and sound effects. They are wonderfully lo-fi. With SampleTank 4 Max v2, the sounds I use the most are from Syntronik and SampleTron. Why they dropped those and kept the antique Miroslav Philharmonik is a mystery. Miroslav Philharmonik's samples are so old and sampling methods have advanced so much since it was created. Whereas the whole point of SampleTron is that the samples are lo-fi, so it's going to be a long time before it's obsolete. Syntronik's sounds are good and add-on packages were still being developed just a few years ago. The samples in the new packages are really good. As I've said before, "Forget it Jake, it's IK Multimedia." Their ways are often inscrutable. Their products are often quite a bargain.

This is supposed to be the latest (and likely last) version of the "CbB Tools" suite, which includes VST Inventory. Make sure you're running the latest. It's a link to Scook's Cakewalk utilities page.

It did, for the Music Production Suite. I picked it up at the time, despite not even having half of the products. One theory is that at some point in the checkout process, there was a Schrödinger's cat paradox where the purchaser both did and did not own Music Production Suite, and that the package itself acted as its own qualifying purchase. Another theory was based on the fact that the "glitch" was discovered and spread by the plug-in addict community within hours of the notification email going out but not corrected for weeks. This theory is that it was a deliberate error designed to bring in some cash flow toward the end of the financial year. I tend to lean toward the second theory, although I supposed they could possibly be complementary. In my case, I paid about $150 for a suite that had never gone on sale for less than about $550.00. Some would say that iZotope "lost" $400 on my purchase of the license, but the fact of the matter is that I would never have given them any money at all if I couldn't have gotten the license at the $150 price. Since there is no cost of goods in fulfilling a purchase, they only "lose" $400 if the buyer had been waiting for a sale and was willing to pay the $550. So in my case, and likely many others, they took in $150 each from a bunch of people who didn't feel that they needed all of those products (I already had licenses for Neutron, RX, and the Exponential reverbs in the suite), but who just couldn't turn down owning the whole enchilada for $150. In the case of this glitch, (and others like it) it came at just the right time of the year for the cash to make them look good to the bank. Also, a problem I think companies have with deep discounts is that they can lower the perceived value of the product as well as pi55ing off people who already paid a much higher price. Some companies go the route of having "educational" prices as a way to shake some money out of people who traditionally don't have enough discretionary income to pay the full price. So what we call "glitches" might sometimes be deliberate, ways to get less well-heeled people (also cheapskates and bargain hunters) to open our wallets, like educational discounts but unofficial. There's also the added benefit of a lot of eyes on the plug-in deals forums. People are usually way psyched to get a glitch deal, and they say so. Good advertising.

It's a good opportunity to get Compactor, which is a new dynamics processor that they added to the free Essentials bundle. I haven't tried it yet but it looks handy.

Hehe, amazing that we used almost the exact same words to describe Jon and the Nightriders! The Eternal Flame of rock instrumental music. Yeah, John can frickin' BURN on the mandolin picking.

Hmm. Turns out I already had this one, but when I open the About box it's credited to Steve "scook" Cook. S is the creator of multiple useful SONAR/CbB utilities and a user who is sorely missed around here. He split not long after the announcement that CbB was going to become Sonar and switch to payware. Maybe he took over maintenance from bitflipper? Anyway, my guess was that I had at least twice the number that @GTsongwriter does, and althought I fell short of that, I didn't fall short of it by much. Over 800. However, that doesn't count individual instruments in KONTAKT, MSoundFactory, and Decent Sampler Does anyone actually care to see my full list? Running this utility was a good thing to do for the sake of maintenance; I saw where there were a couple of duplicate installations.

I checked with Google, and the Adams 7V's were among the ones I tried at Guitar Center. I preferred the JBL's. They just sounded "right" to my ears. Which as I said, can potentially be an issue, but with monitors I like, I will listen more closely. Also, since my DAW computer is my main computer, I listen to everything through those monitors, so I get used to how they sound on every type of audio. Movies, TV, games, whatever. The real issue I can see: other people's tastes are other people's tastes. Especially with fellow hobbyists such as myself. When I was considering the JBL's, I Googled for reviews and determined that they could be a decent upgrade from what I had been using (passive Event 20/20's with a vintage Crown power amp). Despite having done so in the past, I would no longer buy monitors without being able to listen to them first. I don't know where you're located, I hope not too far from a store where you can do so? Especially with the budget you have, gotta listen first. GC near me has a nice setup where you can Bluetooth your phone into their mixer and reference with whatever music you want. One of the songs on my phone is "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" by Mission of Burma. This guy wandered into the monitor room and I got an "Oregon Trail Generation former post punker" vibe off him and switched to that song. He came over and told me that he used to cover it in one of his bands. Then he proceeded to take the used pair of 305p's I had been eyeing up to the counter! I wasn't bummed, I was psyched for him, and sure enough I found a pair for $40 cheaper in the next couple of days. I teased the GC guys about the possibility of getting a commission on the sale, but I guess commissions are not something to joke about with GC employees. Like joking about weapons at the TSA checkpoint. Really, despite there being MUCH pricier monitors in that room, I didn't have the "damn I wish I could afford those instead of the JBL's" experience. I really did like them the best. Maybe someday I'll find some I like better, but for now, I'm great with the cheaper sleepers.

I don't have experience with any of these, but I recently purchased a pair of JBL 305p mkII monitors and DANG I couldn't be happier with them. I figured that with 5" woofers, I'd be using my subwoofer, but I wound up turning it off. I don't know how they do it, but those things vibrated my desk until I put mouse pads under them. The waveguide tweeter seems to be responsible for an amazing stereo image. I see that the Neumann's have waveguide tweeters, so upvote for that. There's also a JBL 306p with (surprise) a 6" woofer, but when I auditioned them at GC, I determined that the 305's were plenty. 305p's can be found for around $200 a pair used. I realize that you're looking to spend 5X that, so they're probably not in your range of consideration. My only concern is that they sound so good that they may be flattering my mixes, so I'll still keep my multiple sets of reference speakers to make sure everything translates. Before I started packing things up I had 4 sets of monitors I could switch between. Now I'm down to 2.

Not known by whom? Back in the mid-90's there was a surf music revival inspired by its use in the soundtrack for Pulp Fiction. My girlfriend at the time and I were way into it, I'd been a fan from way back due to my Southern California childhood. There were some amazing players in the first round, and in the 90's revival as well. One of my favorite bands from back then is The Mermen. Saw them live many times in SF. Jon and the Nightriders were keeping the flame alive as early as 1981. Jon revived the band in the mid-90's and I got to see them at a KFJC festival. Jon is frickin' AMAZING on guitar. KFJC in Santa Clara, CA was having them back in the mid-90's. I see that they just had one in a club in San Jose last week. Likely an annual event to this day. I don't remember where you're located, but if it's near a city of size, you'll like be surprised if you Google for surf shows in the area. KFJC had a DJ named Phil Dirt who had started at the station in 1964 and had a weekly surf instrumentals show up until 2005. He and his show's popularity surged in the mid-90's. Since then, surf instrumental music has never really gone away. Here's an Australian surf instrumental supergroup, I think the only time I've seen a Gretsch used in the genre (recent fave of mine): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf-do84rkKA&t=75s Here are The Mermen (creativity and virtuosity): https://youtu.be/f2XNeeR5iyk?si=EOfsIrGY6-9GsGyL&t=507 Here are reunited Jon and the Nightriders (virtuosity): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41YvSrk5paQ I saw Jon and the Nightriders at one of the KFJC festivals and damn, that boy can PLAY. If you dig those Surf Coasters, there is a world of discovery awaiting you!

How did you generate this list?

You have got to be kidding. That's so absurd that I Googled it to see if maybe your info was out of date. What I found was that apparently Google's AI thinks it's beyond possibility for a DAW not to have level and pan controls in the track headers, because it says that Cubase has them. However, I found a long thread on one of Steinberg's user support pages where people are begging for it, even posting their own mockups. That's a more concrete indication that it actually does not. From what I can make out they have an inspector to the left of the track headers that includes those controls, so in order to adjust the level or pan on a track from the track view, you have to select the track, then make your adjustments in the inspector. What could they be thinking? Isn't Cubase one of those DAW's that's been around since like before MIDI and originally called Pizza and Pipes or something like that? There are so many reasons you want those controls right there in your track header. It's kind of the bare minimum, isn't it? Solo, mute, arm, level and pan. Of course, it's nice if you can get all the widgets that Sonar offers such as phase, interleave, I/O, and the FX rack. Aside from just being clumsy, one practical reason I can think of is being able to see at a glance how multiple tracks are panned. It's this kind of WTF stuff that is the terror of would be DAW switchers: the program looks pretty cool overall and has some nice features that your current/previous one lacks, so you go for it. Then a couple of hours into your project, you get around to setting up the track header controls how you want them, kinda odd that the factory configuration leaves volume and pan off but whatever, where do we find the settings to turn them on. Hmm, can't find it in any config menu....not in global preferences. Maybe ask on the user forum, Reddit or Discord....wait, WHAT??? Or maybe you want to program some beats in this Cakewalk Sonar thing that came with your BandLab membership and you want a MIDI grid that displays the names of the individual kit pieces. To do that in your other DAW you use something called a "drum map." Let's see, does Sonar have a similar drum map feature for its nice piano roll view? In this View menu there's Show/Hide Drum Pane. Nailed it! So how do I get those kit piece names over on the left so I can see what I'm doing? Three hours later, that beat you wanted to program is a distant memory, and you resemble Commodore Matt Decker from Star Trek's "The Doomsday Machine."

I was inspired to do this after observing how many A|A|S soundpack presets are drum hits. It was puzzling to me how I was supposed to use them. Multiple instances of the plug-in and a MIDI track for each? Ugh. 5 MIDI tracks and then 5 instances of A|A|S Player? As it turns out, multiple instances of Player share with each other to help keep resource usage lower. It also occurred to me that one of Sonar's features, one that I've had my share hassles with over the years, might allow me to map notes from a single MIDI track to different instances of A|A|S Player. As Piet Hein said, "Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back." I figured I'd learn a lot by trying it. And I got it to work. To do it, I had to create a track template to go with the drum map. So.... Here is a ZIP with a track template and drum map that will create 5 instances of A|A|S Player and a MIDI track mapped to them. In the templates, There's also a full project template that starts with all of this set up. I have A|A|S Player set to use patches that are found in the free Swatches instrument so that anyone can try it. If you own a few A|A|S soundpacks, you'll have more options for sounds. As I post this, they're having a flash sale on their Kicks and Snares soundpack, which is accurately named. The note/key layout is supposed to resemble GM Drums. 36 is kick, 38 is snare, 42 is hat, and 48 and 50 are tom and effect. In order to use them, copy AAS Drum Map.map from the archive to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Sonar\Drum Maps copy AAS Track Template to whatever directory you use for track templates. By default that is C:\Cakewalk Content\Sonar\Track Templates copy AAS Swatch Drum to C:\Cakewalk Content\Sonar\Project Templates It works on my computers, but that's as far as my testing can go. Please let me know if you try it and have success (or lack of it). AAS Player Drums.zip

I'd love to see Cakewalk give it a surname like Sonar Pro, Sonar Premium, Sonar Full or whatever. I like "Sonar FT" for the free tier version.

Trying not to sound pedantic here, but I think you're probably referring to the new Cakewalk Sonar? The SONAR Platinum product was the version of pre-CbB SONAR bundled with a lot of plug-ins that was discontinued in 2017. And thanks for asking the question and figuring it out. I have trouble getting my head around level automation and these answers help.

Following the link indicates that the SampleTank bundle version is the supposedly discontinued 4 MAX v2. If you've been considering ST4, this is the one to get because it also comes with Syntronik 2 (and all released add-ons to date, most of which are excellent) and SampleTron 2. Both are currently unavailable at IK's website, so I guess the products have been dropped from line, although this is IK Multimedia so strange things are possible. They're at least temporarily unavailable. They still list the antique Miroslav Philharmonik 2 as a current product. My favorite, most used pieces in the bundle are SampleTron 2 and Syntronik 2, so why they would drop those and keep Philharmonik 2 is a mystery.

Why am I not surprised? When my mother was working for the Navy as a civilian contractor (college instructor), and it's probably still the case, The abbreviation for Navy Surface Fleet Command was COMNAVSURF. She later married a retired Lt. Commander, and I've used that when helping them set up their wifi SSID's. It's always COMNAVSURF.

I actually just applauded out loud while watching this. Of course they're going to have a reunion. With the requisite associated film. And the great thing about Tap is that whatever they come up with, it's suck-proof, because even if it sucks, it's part of the legend and they'll surely fix it in the commentary, blaming it all on DiBergi once again. BTW, if you've not watched the DVD with commentary track, that was like getting a whole new This is Spinal Tap. Even if you stream everything now, it's so worth having or renting the DVD. Which raises a question: why have no streaming services (to my knowledge) incorporated commentary tracks? They seem to have fallen out of favor with DVD's, but there are scores of older movies whose DVD's had commentary tracks that could easily be added to streaming movies. Just add it as another "language" option.

Childhood friend of mine worked for a small company that had a contract with the US Navy (aka USN). It was sometimes hard to follow his descriptions of how his contributions were being used. At one point I asked him to slow down and explain the acronyms, which I, naturally, was not familiar with. He said to me, "yeah, the Navy really loves their TLA's." I almost made it as far as asking him what "TLA" meant before figuring it out and chuckling instead. I'd not heard a meta acronym before, but having taken a couple of programming courses, I was familiar with the concept of recursion.

Actually, the Style Dials don't use the Sonitus FX for their processing, they use PX-64, VX-64, and TL-64. I found this out after I discovered that these three plug-ins were included with Cakewalk by BandLab, but in "disabled" (hidden) state.

It's possible to finagle the DAW into doing it via a combination of having it in the correct mode, that is Sound on Sound vs. Comping, and clip selection. I wrote out the recipe and posted it on this forum at one point. But it doesn't happen automagically, it takes some mindfulness on the part of the operator. I'd start by trying throwing 'er into Sound on Sound mode and seeing what happens. I would love for it to be selectable in Preferences. New manually entered MIDI data goes into the selected clip or something. Whatever the logic of it is currently, it seems pretty obtuse.

Enterprise applications are different animals from DAW's and video and image editing suites. They're both computer software, but for different markets. The financial and security concerns are different. I've never heard of a malware exploit for a DAW or photo editing program. Some people are still using SONAR 8, and they probably don't feel they're in much danger security wise. So I don't think one can apply what's true for, say, an operating system or office suite to what's true for a DAW. The office suite is used in....offices, which makes it a target for exploits. I guess someone could theoretically ransom my sample libraries.... Subscriptions are often/usually a good idea for business software and the businesses who use them. This extends to businesses who use audio and video and photo programs. One licensing model doesn't fit all, it's like automobile leasing. Almost always the best choice for company cars, but not for family cars.

This jibes with my belief: software subscriptions make good sense when you're using the software steadily to earn income that you'll be declaring. For hobbyists and even semi-pros, not so much. Adobe seem not to care about the small time market. They want the people who will go from educational license to full subscription. Photoshop has always been so expensive that for people who must have Photoshop, maybe it's a wash. It's telling that in the land of content creation software, the only companies (present company excluded) I can think of who have tried to pull off subscription only, Adobe, Avid, and Waves, all had reason to believe that their products were essential to people earning money with them. And two out of those three have backed off and brought back a perpetual option. As a consumer, I prefer the MeldaProduction truly perpetual model, where you pay once and then never again until death do you part. I guess Image Line (who own a chunk of MeldaProduction) do something similar with their DAW. Both product lines seem to be doing pretty well, so the licensing model must somehow work for them. I guess they do well enough with new sales? In my time as a MeldaProduction customer, they seem to have gone from being relative outsiders to up and coming to preferred secret weapon of many pros. And Image Line's DAW is supposed to have the largest share of the market. But I also understand that companies need cash to stay afloat and that model may not be the best for all of them.

Inspired by @bitflipper's posting the new Styx album, I present the latest opus from Messrs Furnier, Bruce, Dunaway, Smith, and Ezrin:

I'm coming up on my 50th anniversary for that. I got into Styx when the local "free form" FM station played the hell out of Equinox. This sounds like a return to that sweet prog bombast, so I must say "domo arigato" for calling our attention to it. Getting their revenge on Dennis DeYoung by reaching back 50 years and pulling out a success.

You said you'd doff your hat if the process had taken him "seconds." I figured that you'd extend your pledge of cranial nudity to others who had such luck.😄 I'm a fuzzy grey myself. As far as why you had to jump through extra hoops on your system....who knows. It's working now, and I bet it will work in the future.