Starship Krupa

Well if I had known, you would have gotten free breakfast at Ole's Waffle Shop in Alameda.

Looks like you got it sorted, but the first one that comes to my mind is Boz Digital's Mongoose. With a bit of finesse, MeldaProduction's MSpectralPan can do it in mid-side mode. And it's free.

Download and install Professional to get the bundled plug-ins, but for heaven's sake, download and install Cakewalk by BandLab immediately afterward. That will give you all the features of SONAR Professional, but with 6 years of bug fixes and added features. At no extra cost.

Kontakt Player friendly!

It may be an "installer helper." Even Softube now installs a service for this purpose. I mean, c'mon, a service? And then leave it running? I've stopped NTKDaemon and switched its start up to Manual. No ill effects, NI just starts it up when it needs it. At least it looks as if they no longer install those multiple services that go with their controllers. Every update, I used to have to go into Services and disable those damn things.

For me, it depends. For my electronica stuff, I get a lot of my initial inspiration from timbres. I hear a sound and a way to use it pops into my head and I'm off and running. Arps and pads. I was a ho' for A|A|S' soundpacks before I broke down and snagged Chromaphone and Analog VA in deep discount sales. Their soundpacks sound amazing even just using them in the Player. For other favorite synths, I've paid for banks for Hybrid 3 and XPand! 2, mostly $5 qualifiers for PB BOGO's. I think $10 for a Soundpaint library. All thoroughly worth it. For others, like MASSIVE, there are so many free presets out there that I have too many of them, especially given MASSIVE's clunky preset browser. In the great scheme of things, if a sound bank inspires me to create a song, hey, worth it. I do ask myself if I've truly familiarized myself with all the banks I currently have, and the answer is usually no. Still, A|A|S discounts a soundpack I don't have for $9, it's an automatic buy.

I wonder if this collection has The Right Stuff.

Tom Wolfe? The name got me thinking of Acid House.

IK Multimedia have recently been putting SampleTank 4 MAX on sale for $50-70. It includes Miroslav Philharmonik 2 among a crazy amount of other instruments. It might be worth trying out the free SampleTank 4 CS to see how you like the UI, then wait and pounce the next time they drop the price. It's pretty versatile under the hood, if you use the sounds in SampleTank rather than the Miroslav's own player, you have many ways to tweak the samples.

Low on resources and sound great. The only drawback, if you consider it a drawback, is the minimalist UI. But that has its own charms, sometimes less is more. In general, I'd love it if Kilohearts either improved on the drab color schemes of all of their stuff or allowed users to set them. I'd love a black background with colored highlights. But then again, it may not be the worst thing for a plug-in UI to fade into the background, if that's your thing. I recommend taking an hour or so to go through the bundle and see if there are other things you find useful. It seems like you're into sound design, and there is a reverser and a slow-down (among many other gems) included. Also bitcrusher, and so on. Too many goodies to remember.

I've heard this from others, but it has always gone smoothly for me. I've installed them on at least 4 different newly built/acquired systems and nary a glitch. They released versions with new installers a couple of years ago, so be sure to snag those. Yeah, their website form was useless last time I needed support (lost machine authorization for iLok so I needed to reset all of those licenses). However, one of their support people posted their email address in the KVR AIR support forum and that worked. Yeah, I think that most of the rest of the collection isn't the thing for your kind of music. But for me, though, doing ITB electronica, the ones I mentioned are the bee's knees.

Care to share the preset? I'm an XPand!2 fan. Shoot, multiple AIR synths are excellent deals. Hybrid 3, Vacuum Pro, Boom, Drumsynth 500.... I have powerhouses like MASSIVE, Chromaphone, and VA-3, and Hybrid 3 still gets more action than any other in my collection.

Have you compared it to other all-in-one mastering plug-ins such as bx_masterdesk Classic (free at Plugin Alliance), T-Racks ONE, HorNET Mastertool, etc.? I'm curious how it compares.

I'm partial to Com Truise myself.

Okay, more diving in the Reference Guide yielded this pearl: "If you want to use tap tempo during playback, first right-click the Tempo track and make sure Update BPM Display During Playback is disabled." That seems confusing, as I'm tapping I want it to update the BPM display, but I guess it refers to updating the display to show the current tempo at the playhead.

I just tried to use the Tap Tempo to set the project tempo to match a clip I recorded. When I started the project, tempo was set to the default 120 BPM, but the clip is actually slower. At first I tried dragging it to the timeline, but the detection failed miserably. Then I tried opening the Tempo Track and tapping along with the song while it was playing. No go, because the set tempo (120) was overriding what I was tapping in. Is there some way I can accomplish what I'm trying to do using Cakewalk: manually match the project tempo to an existing clip? Or do I have to I use a 3rd-party app or plug-in?

If there's a way to set it in the plug-in, I can't find it, but Cakewalk's internal plug-in system handles VHS' settings. I have the profiles for each of my headphones in the Cakewalk preset list and when I select one, VHS switches over to the correct settings.

You didn't ask for advice, but speaking as someone who has given up making music for years at a time, then come back to it with greater enthusiasm and a different approach, yeah, don't sell your gear. The expensive mics, well maybe. But at least hang on to the minimum. I approach making music these days like a model railroad. It's fun to do in and of itself, and if someone else hears it and likes it, that's a bonus. To me, it's a way of communicating thoughts and feelings that can't be expressed in other ways. Nostalgia, grief, joy, serenity. I "hear" things in my head, or on the radio (mostly Soma.fm and KALX, the UC Berkeley station) and I want to make those sounds. So I do. When I finish a piece, it goes up on Bandcamp and YouTube. One thing I tossed off half a dozen years ago is up to over 600 views on YouTube. Woo-hoo! It's like dropping messages in a bottle. Before the rock star myth descended upon the world, music making was something that was just a part of people's homes. Have a piano, learn to play it, or have friends over who play, sit on the porch with the guitar, making music because it's something cool to do, like painting. You never know when you'll hear a new (to you) form of music and have it trigger a desire to MAKE SOUNDS LIKE THAT (as happened with messrs. Cobain and Mascis). I'm enjoying your album right now....

Well, you can now get Fallout 76 for free on Amazon and see if it's any good. I love me a good MMORPG, so I'll give it a try. I usually use the handle "Superabbit" these days....

I think they're just busting their hinies getting Sonar ready to ship.

Isn't it kind of a rellik?

I'd like to SEE them do it. I didn't technically say I'd actually buy it. ? I, too have way too many drum machines. Between Boom, Break Tweaker, Tactic (I use it as a drum machine), and the ones included in Komplete Start (not to mention SampleTank 4 MAX and MDrummer), everything I want is covered. Yet every time I spot a new free one, I am compelled to try it. It's a disorder.

Add me to the UnAbashed Unfiltered Audio fanboy list. I think I have their entire line up to this point. Yeah, I'll have it in a couple of years when it drops below $30. The company I REALLY wish would put out a drum machine is A|A|S.

They had me at Walton Goggins. Also Michael Emerson. Haven't played the game, my MMORPG is another Bethesda property, The Elder Scrolls Online.

I'm glad it works for you. I still contend that the stuff from the Insert menu rightly belongs down on the Track View's own menu. Where the action is, so to speak. Those items are in the Console's Track (sic) menu. Should be the same for the Track View. Well, in the Tracks (sic) menu....