Starship Krupa

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.

Act now and you can get a license for Mixcraft 9 and some nice Cherry Audio synths in this Humble Bundle for $20. License can be upgraded to 10.5 for $29 or to 10.5 Pro for $79. But 9 is pretty great, too, and comes with some nice non-locked plug-ins (and some that are locked, as well). That's the regular price, they periodically have sales. Mixcraft 10.5 Pro comes with the Cherry Audio DC-106, which is a great Juno 106 clone, my current favorite new toy. I was on their beta team from version 7 through version 9 and will testify to their excellence regarding software QA. There may be deferred feature requests, but bugs get hammered very quickly. I was surprised to see that it's now been around for 20 years. Great program, really.

For those who really like (and are happy with) Cakewalk by BandLab, there now doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to dump it. It's going to get maintenance updates, it will keep working, so why switch? I get that some may be feeling jerked around, but as we saw with Studio One, that can happen in other places too. IMO, the practical route would be to stick with CbB for now. If you really want to upgrade to Sonar, then hold out for a while longer and see if they introduce a reasonably-priced perpetual license. Also, and I have said this many times: it's always a good idea to stay competent in more than one DAW. We all had the fear put into us by the Gibson Debacle. Fortunately BandLab reanimated SONAR into Cakewalk by BandLab, but there was a period of a few months where everyone thought it was gone forever. Mixcraft is good for people who are used to the Cakewalk workflow, I have that as well as Studio One Artist. They're both reasonably priced, especially if you wait for a sale on Mixcraft or get S1 Artist bundled with a PreSonus interface.

There are now only two DAW's in the entire market that are only available as part of a subscription: Adobe Audition and Sonar. As recently as 48 hours ago, I was offering Audition as suggesting that Sonar being subscription-only was going to happen, but I now concede, and stand corrected. I still suspect that Sonar will eventually be made available via some sort of perpetual license. Don't know when that might happen, but I suspect that it will. Sooner than later I hope, because the lack of definite information has, as @John Vere points out, had a detrimental effect on this forum and the Cakewalk user community in general. People who were "all-in" and rah-rah about CbB seem to be stalled. @Creative Sauce seems to be soldiering on, but his channel was shot through with "look at this amazing DAW that you can get for free." And at least for a while, he was leaning in the direction of Studio One. I guess it will shake out eventually. Sooner than later, I hope. We're still in The Churn. James S.A. Corey's term for a period when things are in a major state of flux, followed by a return to relative stability. A shuffling of the deck.

Curious, about you and others making similar statements, if you mean you are dumping CbB as a result of Sonar currently only being available with the BandLab membership: Since they also changed the news about Cakewalk by BandLab, now saying that it will be getting maintenance updates (presumably in case a future Windows update breaks something), why are you not just sticking with CbB? It hasn't gotten any new features in a year, but then there are people who are fine with SONAR, which is lacking a TON of features and, not incidentally, bug fixes and performance improvements now present in CbB. CbB also retains a feature that was dropped in Sonar, the Theme Editor. If you've followed the link in my sig, you know how important that feature is to me. I like the new UI well enough, but at this point, you can't even change any color settings. You're stuck with the various stock ones.

Oboy, if what you seek is a DAW without users going drama about licensing, Studio One ain't it. A few months ago the pitchforks and torches were out because they switched licensing models to make it so that certain add-on FX were only available with the subscription. Then they backed off and allowed perpetual license purchases of those add-ons from 3rd parties and I guess all was peaceful once again. The promo they were running at the time was great, $150 got you a year subscription at their top tier, and at the end of the year, you could keep a perpetual license for Studio One Pro. So it amounted to a Studio One Pro perp license for $150, with a year subscription to their other services at no extra cost. Despite Studio One Artist not being my primary DAW, I gave it some consideration. Talk sure was nasty for about a week, though....

Ah, that explains the expense and trouble they've gone to to keep the Cakewalk Inc. download and registration servers running (including an update to the client software) for the past 6 years. That coupled with the announcement that Cakewalk by BandLab will remain free to download and use adds up to sheer disregard for the existing userbase. How they could hope to retain a particle of goodwill is beyond understanding.

Really?? It happened at least twice in the past 9 months or so. The last time was back in April. The first one was $69, but unless you're one of the few people who doesn't have a cache of JamPoints, the JamPoints discount took it down to $49.

Questions for the "BandLab is only interested in subscriptions and won't be offering Sonar via perpetual license" people, and I'm being sincere this time, I really want to know what people think if we can set snark and innuendo aside: How many people should they expect to go for it, based on what? So far the most common arguments I've seen are that we haven't been told for sure yet, so far the only way to be able to use Sonar is in a subscription bundled with Next and all of BandLab's other services, and that most (not all) software companies would rather have users on subscription plans. I agree that all of those things are true, but I believe that there are other factors to consider. BandLab has spent the last 6 years building a large userbase of people who were attracted to Cakewalk by BandLab because it was free. Surely for other reasons as well, but I wouldn't have paid it much attention if I hadn't been curious about the way they turned SONAR into freeware. Can they expect enough people to be drawn in to BandLab subscriptions to make the development costs worthwhile? I personally see that as unlikely, but I don't know, I'm asking for opinions here. No snark intended, not a rhetorical question either. This is what I see when I look around: Software licensing by subscription is gaining more traction in the consumer segment. That said.... There's only one other DAW you can only get as part of a subscription bundle, and that's Adobe Audition. I of course don't know how much of Audition's userbase is made up of people who would be using it if it weren't included in the bundle with Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere, but I suspect that it's a small group. IMO, Adobe were able to force the subscription model because Photoshop owned the market so completely. They rightly calculated that the pro's who had to have Photoshop would pay for the subscription even if they preferred a perpetual license, and that the number of amateur users they would lose wouldn't be significant. There are a number of competing DAW's in the under $100 perpetual license price range, including Mixcraft, REAPER, and Studio One Artist. While the number of features these DAW's have may not be much greater than what Sonar has to offer, the features they do have tend to have been implemented in more recent years, so they include features that may be more likely to attract younger users. They are all solid, well-supported programs. Next, aimed as it is at first time DAW users, is a hard sell on subscription, because I don't think that someone who wants to try this DAW thing out is going to want to pay for a year in order to do so. The venerable Waves not long ago tried to make their product line subscription-only and the blowback was so hard that within a week, they had abandoned the approach and gone back to offering perpetuals once more. On this forum and on YouTube, there seem to be a majority who at least say they would rather switch to another DAW than pay for Sonar via subscription. So, given all of the above, I still think it is unlikely that Sonar (nor Next) in its final released form will only be available via subscription. But if you don't think it's unlikely, what are you basing it on other than the fact that we don't know yet, and that companies prefer subscription licensing? Do you think it makes business sense for BL to try it? If not, do you think that they are short sighted and/or misguided? I'm genuinely curious.

Dang. Between this and the $50 SampleTank MAX deal, a person could assemble a freakin' juggernaut of IK goodies for $100. IK Multimedia get a lot of flak around here for their puzzling upgrade policies and difficult and confusing installation/validation methods, much of it deserved. But in the end, the products are just really excellent. I have Analog Lab 5 and hardly ever touch it, whereas I've gotten multiple song ideas based on the vintage emulations in Syntronik 2. And there's so much content in SampleTank MAX that I wonder if I'll ever even be able to audition all of it. As for T-Racks, IK giving me a freebie on their Fairchild 670 emulation revolutionized my approach to mixing due to introducing me to what I could do with mid-side compression. As I said about the ST MAX deal, I would consider this from the viewpoint not of whether I wanted all of them, or how many of them duplicated processors I already have, but rather how many of the ones I don't have it would take to make it worth the $49. If 5 of them interest you, that's $10 a processor. If you don't have their Fairchild 670, it's the best of its type I've tried (gets great reviews, too). Equal, Master Match, whatever you don't already have. If you like attractive GUI's, they're great. A large number of them include mid-side processing, which is something I find essential.

I suspect that in a poll that reflected the entire current market, which now includes a TON of hobbyists, video makers, podcasters, VO pros and so on, Focusrite would be #1, followed closely by Behringer, Presonus, etc. I mean, how often do you run across a YT talking head who doesn't use a Scarlett 2i2?? Inevitably paired with a SM7. The outliers use RE-20's. AVID would be way down on the list, UAD might be somewhere in the midfield with MOTU, if that. Interesting experiment would be to create a similar poll on this forum. The DAW scene has changed a great deal in the past decade. There's been an explosion in the hobbyist segment. Creating music using personal computers is so much more popular than it was.

So it's basically a poll of Pro Tools users, or at least heavily skewed in that direction. Production Expert casts its net wider these days, but it started as a Pro Tools blog. After AVID left PT's lunch out on the counter long enough for all the other companies to start gobbling it up, they branched out. A planet where Antelope is more widely used than PreSonus is one that I don't recognize. And UAD? Great stuff, but it's too pricey to be that mainstream. Behringer, Steinberg and Tascam being so rare is also not realistic. This is a poll that reflects the hardware choices of people who built Pro Tools studios over a dozen years ago. Interesting, but it doesn't reflect the entire market.

That issue of Amazing Computing is very interesting. Anyone who's curious about this topic should check it out. There's a screenshot in there of a piano roll that has most of the important elements of the ones we use today, down to velocity display, articulations, etc.

There's probably an easier/faster way to do that. I'm not sure what you're doing in the Process menu, but here's how I do it. Split the clip right before the mouth noise I want to remove, then drag the edge of the clip until the breath is edited out. If you split the clip by using alt-click, it goes very quickly. Split, edit, split, edit. Faster to do than to type how to do it. And, yes, I, too, think a "repeat last command" would be a good thing for Sonar to have. Matter of fact, I wasn't even aware that it didn't. It's such a standard thing.

I get the left to right part. People from Western countries would expect the playhead to go from left to right. I was wondering more about the part where the tracks are horizontal, with headers on the left. That doesn't seem like something that DAW's picked up from something else, except maybe seismographs and other paper chart recorders. I know that trackers, which were a hip thing for a while and never really went away, and actual physical piano rolls scroll top to bottom. The traditional DAW/NLE layout lets the user watch as events are triggered, get an overview of a whole song or project. Maybe it's a simple as real estate: monitors are wider than they are tall, so horizontal tracks lets you display the greatest amount of timeline. Then there's Waveform, and Ableton Live, who put the track headers over on the right for no good reason I can think of, except unless the other stuff in Ableton Live need to be over there. These features are the way they are because someone thought of the best way to present the information, tried it, it worked, and then other developers adopted it. Draw and paint programs have floating palettes because it works. It's great to have access to those tools right there where you're working so you don't have to look away. I just get curious about things sometimes. Why is this program that I stare at so much the way that it is?

I'm not losing any sleep over the question, nor would I ask anyone else to. I'm not trying to develop my own DAW so there's nothing to fix other than satisfying my curiosity. Speaking of which, do you think I'm putting myself in danger asking about DAW development history?? If so, I'd like to know what pitfalls to watch out for. If it's too dangerous to even speak of, I understand. But a vague hint or two might not hurt?

Today's freeware pick, and highly recommended by me, Soundly Shape it EQ. Recommendation: do not write this off as "oh boy, another paragraphic to add to my collection of over a dozen of them." Try it first. Even though it doesn't do anything that the sonitus EQ doesn't. Even though MEqualizer and TDR Nova have more features. In this case it's not about having one single EQ plug-in that can do everything. It's how it does it, with everything right where it needs to be. What they say about it being lightning fast to set up the usual EQ tasks is true. Just fire it up, try doing your standard highpass, lowpass, notch, and boost. See how many clicks it takes you. Then decide whether to keep or trash. Single click to add a node, and if you do it at the ends, it's smart enough to start with a highpass or lowpass, depending. Then, once you have a node in place, when it's focused, it will have a small (but not too small) pop-up box attached with various parameters like Q, shape, etc. Changing the Q is as easy as clicking on the parameter and dragging up and down. The important thing for me is that you don't have to travel to another window or another part of the UI to do anything. It's all right there at the active node. I like it so much I'm wondering if it's going to replace MEqualizer as the first EQ I reach for for basic tasks. It has 10 bands to MEQ's 6, but I never use that many bands anyway. If you know what a drooler I am about MEqualizer, that should tell you how stoked I am. Also, I'm not just about freeware, I have some heavy hitters as far as this type of EQ. sonible entropy and proximity, Kilohearts Slice and Carve, T-Racks Equal, the entire Melda line, and all of iZotope's. I'm a hard sell. It doesn't do all of the fancy things others do, but that's what those EQ's are for. This is bread and butter. I fired it up in PluginDoctor and it was in the ballpark with MEqualizer for performance, which is my benchmark for that. Try their other freebie, PlaceIt, which despite the name is more of a sound designer's tool than a spatial placement tool. You can emulate the sound of laptop speakers in an office, the traditional telephone, "Wish You Were Here" transistor radio, party next door, and so forth. If I were doing soundtrack work, I'd consider it essential. I'll use it on dialog samples for my ambient stuff.

Argh, I seem to have missed the follow ups (good idea to use quoting, it alerts people). I've found that with some of these, you must click on the Input Echo button for the instrument's MIDI track for them to work properly. Otherwise, Cakewalk defaults to only input echoing on the currently selected track.

Something I've long been curious about: what DAW's or NLE's were the first to adopt the design/layout paradigms that are now pretty much standard. Whatever their differences, the "classic" DAW's seem to have settled down with a standard layout paradigm. You know you're going to see a main window with tracks laid out horizontally, track headers at one side, and another window with a piano roll for MIDI editing. The piano roll has a graphical representation of a piano keyboard at the left and a grid where you enter and edit notes. From there, it's down to the finer points of how you navigate those things. Also, over the years, many DAW's have added an optional "inspector" at the left that lets you access more parameters relating to a focused track. Same with a vertically-arranged "browser" either at left or right that acts as a table of contents for plug-ins, loops and other such things. Most of them now have some sort of layers or lanes or equivalent that allow for different iterations of the tracks. Cubase has this, Sonar, Pro Tools and of course the REAPERs and Mixcrafts and Studios One and Mixbuses that came later. Even Waveform and Ableton Live have it, with the difference being that the track headers are at the right for whatever reason. Who were the firsts? Who did the first piano roll with the keyboard at the left? Who first did the horizontal tracks with headers? Lanes? Everyone copies features and workflow from each other, but someone had to do them first. Later, who was first to have the floatable dockable rearrangeable windows for the views? Who put that inspector over at the left? The bulk of my experience is with Cakewalk, Mixcraft, and Studio One, all of which are close enough to each other that it's down to specific differences, IMO. I have no experience with pre SONAR X Cakewalk stuff, so I don't know about that. The reason this came up for me is that I visited with a college professor friend whose specialty is media, and when he wrote a paper on the influence that computers have had on how we create music, he chose Cubase as his starting point. I think that was because he had to start somewhere, and to him, Cubase seemed to be the first widely adopted MIDI sequencer.