Starship Krupa

Yeah, gotta remember that pro studios don't geek out over plug-ins the way that we do here. Waves make solid products that are well-known, respected, and established. A studio has a Waves subscription, my imagination says they'll have a collection of plug-ins that the pro engineers who come in will find sufficient to their needs. If I were going to go into a pro studio to mix, I'd probably bring my iLok in case they didn't have Phoenix or Nimbus (unless I could find a reverb in the Waves catalog that I liked as much as Phoenix/Nimbus/Stratus or they had an actual Bricasti) and that would be it for mixing plug-ins. Could I assume that they'd have Trackspacer?

No, I wouldn't. In the 10+ years I've been using their stuff, I've never had a bug or a compatibility problem that wasn't taken care of within the first year of a plug-in's release. And, speaking theoretically, if I were to buy this bundle for $75 today, and then 5 or 6 years down the road ran into trouble that updating would solve, I'd wait for a deep sale and buy it again rather than spending $240 on WUP. You don't spend 3X the purchase price of a new car to have the old one fixed.

One caution, about XPand!, Cobus: it might disrupt this part of your workflow. I and others have found that sometimes, the XPand! sound winds up working better than something from one of our "fancy" synths. Y'know, I wanna use Chromaphone or Analog VA just because I paid more for them, but sometimes XPand! just has it in the context of the whole song.

Nah, it's only 4-track multitimbral. But it's pretty lightweight, multiple instances don't challenge the resources. It's a virtual ROMpler like TTS-1, so there's not much the plug-in needs to do in terms of number crunching, it just has to play back audio and throw some FX on if you want. It's pretty old these days, which helps it to be resource-sippy. It was believed that AIR would never do anything to update it, but a couple of months ago they announced a public beta of a VST3 and Apple Silicon compatible version. I've been testing the Windows VST3 and so far it runs solid. They screwed up the installers, they don't install the presets in the right location, but that was my first bug report, so it'll likely be okay by the time they go full release with the new revision.

I do like MeldaProduction, but I don't believe that every one of their plug-ins is the best at what it does. Past the FreeFX bundle and MEssentialsFX there are lots of gems (MDrumLeveler, MPowerSynth, MRhythmizer), but there are also plenty where I prefer other companies' products, plenty where I can't find any use for them at all, and plenty that I think are needlessly complex, to the point where I've given them many tries and given up trying to fit them into the rotation (MDrummer, I need a drum machine, not a drum DAW). They are not everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes not even my cup of tea.? Overall, what I dig about MeldaProduction's stuff is the amazing depth most of them have, the underlying tech, and most of the company's business practices. Documentation being a glaring exception. The ones I recommend are ones I think most people will find usable. For the most part, snag those two bundles I mentioned and you've got the best of what they have to offer. Past that, pick and choose, and if you want the inverse of a subscription, get MTotalFX, MSoundFactory, or MComplete. New goodies every year until the company or you passes from this mortal plane. As for collections of IR's, I thought that was the easy part with convolution reverbs. Aren't there extensive free collections of them kicking around the netz? Like I said, not much experience with convolution 'verbs.

Oh, absolutely. Apologies if I came across as too argumentative. That graphic is interesting and pertinent. Just tossing my .02 in there. If I were putting together a collection of plug-ins, Trackspacer might be my first purchase.

I'm looking at the IR browser on MConvolutionMB right now and it looks like the same list of files.

Maybe not the best ever, but if someone needs/wants what Trackspacer has to offer, it's a false economy to wait 4 months to see if it might drop $10. According to that graph, it went as long as 7 months between sales last year. Trackspacer does the task it's made for so well and so quickly that I consider it buyer's remorse-proof. I wouldn't want to be without it for a single project, even though I have a couple other plug-ins that mimic its functions.

As I said I'm fascinated by the doings of companies, especially music equipment ones. I have every book ever published about the history of Fender (which is actually quite a few) and have read plenty of others from the library. A misstep I see over and over again, when missteps are made, is when differently-clued management assume that what works in one business will work in another one, or all of them. It happens over and over. A company is bought or in some other way gets new management, and the new management doesn't understand the specific market, tries to apply general business school principles or things that worked great at the last company they managed. It even happens with different divisions in the same company. One of the brands that Gibson killed (or at least failed to resuscitate) in the Henry Juszkiewicz years was Slingerland. Some of it was done well, they were aiming for the high ticket American made segment (a la Gibson guitars), and they tooled up for accurate Slingerland hardware, good shells, by all accounts they were excellent drums. But then when it came time to get them in stores, the people at Gibson didn't understand how things work in the high end drum world. For those who don't know, high end drum sets have long been almost a custom product. Since the parts are interchangeable, and the finishes varied (and the stores more specialized), stores stock a few examples for the floor, then the customer orders what they want. The shells and mounts are usually from one manufacturer, but bass pedal, hi hat stand, throne, heads, about half the kit effectively can end up being from multiple sources. Different finishes, wraps, all of this makes high end drums custom affairs. It's as if when you went to buy a guitar, it was customary for you to specify what brand and model of pickups, tuners, and bridge, and then the dealer would order everything, put it all together, and phone you. But Gibson apparently tried to sell Slingerland drums like they were used to selling Gibson guitars, where a Gibson guitar dealer is expected to purchase and keep in stock a variety of different models in different finishes. More cash up front to the manufacturer, more risk for the dealer. So if you wanted to be a Gibson/Slingerland dealer, they'd expect you to buy a whole bunch of product up front, which if you were unable to turn around and sell, you'd end up taking a bath on. With the presence of Ludwig and DW already in that market and willing to play by the established rules, you can guess how well Slingerland drums, a brand that had already gone through a decline and extinction and was attempting to make a comeback, did in the marketplace. Or just look for Slingerland drums from that era. There are very few. You see someone playing Slingies and you're looking at a vintage weirdo like me. I have worked at large and small companies who made software for consumers and businesses. What I wonder about this "taking over the world" thing and its encroachment into music software is who is telling makers and sellers of music software to try going subscription (especially the so far rare cases of subscription-only)? Are they veterans of the industry (by which I mean the industry that markets software to musicians)? Are they people who came up at companies with mostly business clients? I think Adobe pulled it off because they were able to leverage Photoshop. If you do pre-press and/or want to sell your photos, you use Photoshop. Which makes it kinda B2B, sort of. I think that if they hadn't been able to leverage Photoshop they wouldn't have been successful, I don't know if they'd even have tried. Which is why I always raise the point, when people say words to the effect that the software industry is headed subscription-only: if that's true in the consumer market, then who's been able to pull it off? Waves tried and backed off, even Avid tried and backed off. I think there's not just one software industry. There are programs that are purchased and used by both businesses and individuals, but those are different markets with different use patterns, different expectations, different accounting needs, etc. It's easy these days to know who is buying your product, what their buying habits are, how often they use your product, etc. One obvious thing to do is ask them. I always like the opportunity to participate in a poll by the companies whose products I use. Every company already has their users' email addresses. If the product is a DAW and the user has use analysis turned on, then the company can know how long between exports their users go and draw some conclusions based on that. If they go a few weeks between renders they're probably not a pro studio. 2 simple questions: "If program YYY and future updates were made available via subscription, how likely on a scale of 1-5 would you be to take advantage of it?" and "If program YYY and future updates were only available via subscription, how likely on a scale of 1-5 would you be to continue to use it?" 2 questions and they'll know which way the wind blows.

My fascination for how companies do what they do is piqued by Waves' story. It is kinda sad to see how they've alienated so many once-enthusiastic customers. Half a dozen years ago, it was so common on the Cakewalk forums for people to recommend a Waves plug-in that I had a snarky comment about it in my sig. If someone was having a problem with a mix, the first solution that came to mind was using a Waves plug-in. It was so widespread that I got eye-roll-y about it. That is some excellent mind share. Now they don't ever seem to get any love at all. Nobody has anything good to say about the product. It's almost as if people don't like to admit that they use anything by Waves. I've only ever snagged their freebies, and there are fewer of those still installed than not installed, but Berserk, Magma Lil Tube, MetaFilter and Silk Vocal are really good stuff.

Clapclapclapclapclapclap. Keep coming back.

Spectral Plugins has closed its doors and released its 3 products as freeware. There's Spacer, a very well-regarded reverb/delay multitool, Pancz, a sound shaper, and OCS-45, a cassette lo-fi processor. As with any such situation, I suggest acting quickly and saving the downloaders. We don't know how long their site will be up. Regarding the manuals, they seem to be in .PDF form on their site and open when you click the "?" in the plug-ins' UI's. I suggest opening them, then saving the .PDF's locally. Same reason, no idea how long the site will be up. You'll notice that they want an email address to download them, saying that it's for their newsletter, but I kinda doubt you'll see much news, since they've gone on to other things.

You can only use the 20% referral discount on your very first purchase from their site, though, right? From their site: "Any new customer who uses your code during checkout gets a 20% discount...."

Whoa, just noticed that there are some bundles that are discounted lower than the 55%. They've dropped the FreeFX bundle to $17, which means that a first-timer could get it for about $5. My favorite, MEssentialsFX, is 60% off. So a first timer could get MEssentialsFX and the MFreeFX upgrade for about $70 by my conservative calculations. That is just crazy. The friggin' tuner in the FreeFX bundle is the best in the business at any price. Polyphonic, pitch-to-MIDI. I don't even know of another tuner that does both of those things, much less one that you can use for free.

Ah, okay. I'm just so stuck on MTurboReverb that I've only ever opened MConvolutionMB to change the style and download the presets from the Exchange. Haven't even given it a listening test.

This is a thing, but it has a solid basis. There are 3 different "communities" on this site. Lots of overlap of course, but there are plenty of people who never venture outside (at least not to post) of their usual communities. There's the Coffee House/Deals forum, the Coffee House top level, and then everywhere else. Coffee House top level is basically a preservation/continuation of the similarly-named forum on the Cakewalk, Inc. site. There are many people here who either never used a Cakewalk DAW or switched away at some point. So....maybe if we don't post it here, it won't be read by the people we want to read it?

I agree that using TTS-1 to start your projects no longer makes sense. For the low price of $9.99, you can get a bundle that includes AIR's excellent workstation synth XPand!2. Popular among Cakewalk users and elsewhere for just the kind of work that you describe. It comes with over 2000 patches, including drums. Also 4-track multitimbral.

How does ConvologyXT compare with MConvolutionEZ? I've seen multiple people recommend MConvolutionEZ as being a resource-friendly free impulse loader. The reverbs I end up liking the most are algo ones like Exponential Phoenix/Nimbus/Stratus and MTurboReverb, but I like to know what I can safely recommend.

Nice, MSoundFactoryLE comes with a lot of useful sounds. With either MSoundFactoryLE or the full version, once you have it registered, go into the preset manager and hit the "download presets" button. There are hundreds of excellent user-created sounds in there. It also has a (not surprisingly) deep-featured arpeggiator. I got MSoundFactoryLE a while back and they have stayed true to their pledge to keep making more instruments for it. It looks like the sale is going to go on for a couple of weeks, so you have time to try out the plug-ins in MEssentialsFX if you're not sure. Don't forget to sign up for their newsletter to get the 10 euros credit before you buy.

This had the whiff of a 50% off everything sale, and yep, it's 55% (or more) off everything at Melda's own site. That includess bundles, upgrading the FreeFX bundle to the pro versions, etc. How to get the most for your money: First time buyers, subscribe to the newsletter, get a referral code, and hit it as hard as you can with that first-timer discount. If you're wondering what to get, start by upgrading the Free bundle, it'll run you about $10 with the newsletter credit and the referral discount. The initial bundle I recommend is the MEssentialsFX bundle, which lives up to its name, and with that and what's in the Free bundle, you'll have with what I consider to be the most useful plug-ins in their lineup. MTurboReverble is the best I've heard, MTurboDelay is a vast multi-tool, MAutoDynamicEQ is among the most powerful dynamic EQ's in the industry, and so on. The major ones in the MEssentialsFX bundle address the matter of the utilitarian UI's that many find off-putting. Some are "LE" versions, but the features you don't have access to in the LE's involve being able to do things like code your own reverb algorithms and design your own delays. Unless that sounds like something you want, you're not missing anything. If you're a first time shopper, you can probably snag the bundle for around $50 by stacking the referral bonus and the newsletter credit. MTurboReverble is worth that all by itself. If you're looking to level up your bundles, be sure to log in and check your personal deals. They have a mysterious formula for crediting plug-ins you already own that are in the bundle, and the prices usually come out lower than expected. Whenever I tried to figure it out myself, I always overestimated. As ever, bundle licenses not only grant you all updates for the life of the company or your own life, whichever ends first, but if they add plug-ins to the bundle, you get licenses for those as well. The Free bundle usually gets at least one a year added to it. MTotalFX and MComplete usually grow by a couple every year. Sort of the opposite of a subscription; you pay once and you keep getting more products over time.

You're referring to the article that divided the results into three main categories of Music, Post and Other/Both, I presume? And you looked at the previous article where the author mentioned that he expected Avid to do well in the poll due to the Pro Tools connection? As someone who produces music as a hobby, I admit I rarely stop to consider those who do post-production as a hobby. I never even heard of Metric Halo until I saw that they beat Behringer 2:1 in this poll. Shoot, they're right behind PreSonus. Shut away in my own little world, I guess. Digital Audio Denmark beating both Native Instruments and IK Multimedia put together came as no surprise of course. Toss up a YouTube video with the title "Digital Audio Denmark Any Good? Don't Be Fooled!" and you'll rake in a million hits from wannabe "producers" eager to do battle in the comments section. Yet I remain skeptical that the poll accurately represents the entire market. I'm even more skeptical that anyone cares whether I believe the poll is representative. Fun to debate, though. Aaaaaaamish raaaaaaaakefiiiiiight! (I wish there were an Amish rakefight emoji) Anyone who wishes to believe that UAD interfaces are overwhelmingly the most popular in the hobbyist (or even general) market, with Avid in 2nd place, that Avid outsells Presonus 3:1 and that Metric Halo outsells Behringer 2:1 is encouraged to do so.

Production Expert's original name was Pro Tools Expert. Hence still likely skewed toward Pro Tools users. Look at what's in 2nd place: Avid. Do you really think that in the hobbyist marketplace that Avid is that popular? 3X the users that PreSonus has? The least expensive interface Avid sells costs $600.

Might you not also say that when it comes to business, your views on subscriptions are like that of businesses, and when it comes to your personal computing, your views are like that of hobbyists? I don't think it comes down to a "preference" or what one is most comfortable with, it comes down to what role the software has in your life. And how often you expect to use it. For some kinds of software, subscriptions make the most sense. It depends on what the software does, how much it costs (subscription vs. perp), and it's different for different people. For me, making music is a hobby. I want a DAW around with a bunch of good plug-ins for when the mood strikes me. I don't get up, brush my teeth, have breakfast and then sit down and work at my DAW to get paid. So I buy it once, and there it is. If I were running a business, and DAW software was part of the business, I'd probably be on some kind of a subscription. Not because of a preference driven by being part of a generational cohort, but because when it has that role, it makes sense. It's preferable for accounting. Businesses would rather lease things than buy them outright. People say "subscription is what the trend is," but y'know what I see in the audio software market? The "trend" is for companies to initially try to sell their products only via subscription, but then back down and offer perpetual licenses. This has been the case for AVID and Waves, arguably two industry leaders in audio software. So I think THAT's what the actual "trend" is. So perhaps BandLab are following the audio software trend: try subscription-only and see what happens. Whatever, the lack of a definite answer regarding a perp license is trying even my patience, and I think I'm historically one of the biggest rah-rah's on this forum for BandLab and their Cakewalk experiment. But at the moment I'm just tired of it. One of the important things about whatever software I use is whether I can recommend it. I love to get friends hooked up with software that they can use to make music. CbB was perfect for musicians just getting their feet wet using DAW's. Good program, hands-down the best deal (free). I can't recommend a DAW that's subscription-only, so at the moment, Sonar can't get any recommendations from me. That's too bad, because I do see it as the largest step forward for the program since BandLab stepped in. Looks great, runs great, and it's clear that there will be more UI improvements as time goes on. At the moment, my recommendation for people new to DAW's is still CbB, given that it remains free, but I'd like to be able to recommend Sonar. On the other hand, both Studio One Artist and Mixcraft are excellent alternatives that both offer reasonably priced perpetual licenses.

One might think so, what with these fire sale prices, but looking at the products, I honestly don't see much room for improvement. They look great, work great, and sound great. An "upgrade" would be a hard sell. Some say that SampleTank needs improvement as far as browsing sounds, which is a fair criticism, but if it gets an update it will be to the player (the free part) and we'll still have all of the previously purchased instruments.