Starship Krupa

https://www.applied-acoustics.com/pulse-noir/ It has the usual Sound Pack intro 50% off deal ($19), and Chromaphone is also $99 (this purchase includes Pulse Noir). The free Swatches Sound Packs showcase assortment (I wish I could call it a "sampler" but that word is taken) has been updated to include patches from Pulse Noir and now includes over 800 sounds. A free soft synth that includes over 800 A|A|S sounds from across their line of instruments, yippee! https://www.applied-acoustics.com/swatches/

If anyone is on the fence about this, I'd say pull the trigger, unless of course you have your sights set on the Group Buy. Get that $10 discount from Larry and jump. I'm happy at $30, but $20 is even crazier. I've been spending more time with MODOBass 2 and it's stoopid fun. For instance, for all of your purchased models of bass, you can swap the pickups around among them. Right now I have the pickup from the Metal Bass in the bridge position on the Violin Bass. This allows for a LOT of customization, you can stick Violin Bass pickups on the Metal Bass and vice versa. The built in amp sims are kind of meh, but you probably have plenty of other ones to use. This is a great package, especially for the price. If you're still on T-RackS 5, or like me, had a mix of 6 and 5 processors, it's a cheap way to upgrade, and I agree that Pianoverse is top tier stuff. For absolute concert hall grand stuff, Meldway Grand is still my gold standard, but it's great to have a couple more that fit better with other styles like bossa nova or pop. They're now in the rotation.

O hail yeah! I did a full reinstall of T-RackS 6 and just went through my plug-in browser and instantiated all of the processors I know I have licenses for. Not only did all of the expected processors show up as licensed, but my half dozen T-RackS 5 processors that are not included in T-RackS 6 Standard now function in v. 6 form. Including my beloved VC-670. With sidechaining, the T-RackS compressors might see more action. This is much more than I expected and I am a happy purchaser. Haven't tried the modeled/hybrid instruments yet, but if @Brian Walton thinks Pianoverse is "amazing top of the class stuff," I will certainly give it a try. Fancy basses were formerly under represented in my collection of instruments, I have some in SampleTank 4, but I was able even with the free version of MODO Bass to surpass the SampleTank Rickenbacker I had started with on a recent project. This was due to all of the options. Even the single reduced feature P Bass that the free version has was versatile enough to cop a credible Rick tone. Once again the loss leader pays off. Looking forward to the Black Oyster MODO Drum. Ringo's drum tone is a holy grail, I bought the same model of snare he has used for over 60 years (mine's a couple of years older) to see if I could get close. I still don't have a virtual drum instrument that includes a Ludwig Acrolite snare; that's my absolute favorite drum. Not quite worth tracking down when I can sample my own. Very interested to hear how these MODO kits compare to what I have in Addictive Drums 2, which is the Fairfax kit.

When I tried this, I got a notice in IK Product Manager that T-RackS 6 had been authorized, but my none of my v. 6 processors appear as such in IK Product Manager nor on the website. What's strangest is that the v. 6 modules I already had licenses for no longer appear as such in these locations either. I'm going to try completely reinstalling T-RackS 6.

I snagged this in part to get the T-RackS 6 versions of multiple modules I have in T-RackS 5 form, but the only T-RackS 6 module that's showing up in IK Product Manager and my account on their site is Lo-Fi Punch. Should have also gotten De-Esser, Stealth Limiter, Tape Echo, and EQ-81 in v. 6 form, but none of them show up in v. 6 form. Stealth Limiter doesn't show up anywhere. I already had the others in v. 5 form. All of the MODO and Pianoverse instruments show up. Has anyone else picked this up? If so, did you get all the products you were entitled to (specifically the T-RackS 6 stuff)?

You are not alone in that, but unfortunately, it's unsustainable. In about 2 weeks, you'll either have to switch to Sonar or find another DAW.

For sure, it's on my "if I won the lottery" list. Which also means that if it were a tool that I used for making money, I'd have it straightaway. Seems like they know what they have, so they're smart to price it like that. The only danger is in someone coming along and eating their lunch, but the way to fend that off is to not get complacent. Keep it far enough ahead of the competition that the competition doesn't bother.

I checked out the demo video, and it looks like the existing UI is fine. Could do with some color theming, if it doesn't already. The blue is nice, but are there other colors? Are there gripes with the existing UI?

This time there are several items I don't already have. All those MODO instruments, Pianoverse, half a dozen T RackS FX. I already have most of the included T Racks modules, but not all of them are version 6. What's the word on these modeled/sampled instruments like the MODO stuff and Pianoverse?

Other way 'round, actually, but maybe you get that and I'm reading what you wrote wrong. The network liked the basic idea of the Cowsills, a rock band made up of siblings plus mom on backing vox. The idea was floated to have the Cowsills play fictionalized versions of themselves Ozzie and Harriet style, but they were deemed unsuitable. The Cowsills did have their own TV special, but the network decided to just "borrow" the concept behind the band and cast it with all professional actors. Mom Barbara became Shirley Partridge and youngest kid (backing vocalist and percussionist) Susan became Tracy. Youngest boy (drummer) John Cowsill mapped into Chris Partridge. John later became the drummer for the Beach Boys touring band.

Curious: I thought that the only actors on The Partridge Family who could sing were David Cassidy and Shirley Jones. Excellent singers both. IIRC, Cassidy could also play guitar IRL, but I didn't think any of the rest could actually play an instrument. Of course not even David played on their songs.

What kind of buffer settings/latency are you able to get with yours? Always nice to know for comparison.

I use dialog samples from streaming TV, where the sound is very good. Older TV shows have had their soundtracks iZotoped into hi-fi glory. Which is great for watching, not so great if you record it and want to drop it into your 90's ambient piece. There's a certain sound that is commonly used for dialog samples, I think it's supposed to mimic what you'd get back in the day if you held a cheap mic up to your portable TV's 3" speaker and recorded it on cassette. Using a cheap portable mono cassette deck onto a cheap drugstore cassette. Sounds like hell but it cuts right through a mix. Not surprising given that when a 3" mono TV speaker was a very common way to listen to television, audio had to be very intelligible.

Must as always put in a good word for RC-20 at this price. If you want to do the sort of thing that it does (which is to make clean sounds into more lo-fi sounds), it's the shortest path to getting there. I know that we all have plugins that do exactly what the individual elements of RC-20 do. But somehow, they got it just right. Yes, I can put together a chain of 4 FX and dial them in and get what I want. Or I can use RC-20 and get what I want with 1/4 the time and effort. How much is your time and effort worth? It's a joy to use.

Their producer/creator had a history of putting together similar acts (Boney M.) where he cut the records and then hired other people to perform "live." It was in Europe, no secrets about it, nobody cared, they sold millions of records. I suspect that in Europe there were fewer expectations/illusions about "authenticity" of pop music. I think what may have caused (or greatly contributed to) the trouble is that Milli Vanilli (that is, the "artist") won a Grammy. This embarrassed NARAS. Therefore they had to be made examples of. If the album or one of the singles had won the Grammy rather than the act itself (Best New Artist), things might have been different. They would have been acknowledging the work, not celebrating the arrival of a new talent and anticipating future achievements. It's one thing for a restaurant's dish to get an award, it's another thing for their chef to get an award for something they neither designed nor prepared. Although to quote The Beatles, I'm certain that it happens all the time.

That leaves only Justin Hayward, I think? Overused term, but I think it's safe to say that John Lodge was a very underrated bassist. Although a Moodies fan, I'm not sure about which of their songs he wrote, due to Justin being the one who sang them (I think). "Ride My See-Saw" is a great track, as is "I'm Just a Singer." I think those were his.

You're correct. My bad. I haven't recorded drums in years, so I'd forgotten about the change they made, and I wouldn't be surprised if my kvetching had something to do with their taking it up. My memory ain't what it used to be....

That's what their email and website said. I registered and redeemed, but the only files I could find to download were installation instruction PDF's. No actual plug-in installers.

Ah, yes. I was confused because you said "the free version." Does Premium have a different authorization frequency or something? I was under the possibly false impression that the authorization was similar, but with SoFT, it turns off the aforementioned features. With CbB, once authorized/validated it would run for 6 months without needing a re-up. I imagine that with Sonar the interval between last phone home and demo mode is shorter, but is it different for the two tiers?

I know the workarounds from your past helpful suggestions. I said "no simple way."😄 My workflow when recording drums is to loop the whole song and do multiple full-song takes. Sometimes I have to stop in the middle of a take due to major foul-up. When I do that, I get one of those what I call "spurious splits." I finally understand why they are there, the program assumes that you're going to split at that point while comping. I just want to be able to toggle it off. IIRC, your methods wouldn't work for my continuous looping workflow. It's especially a PITA when recording drums, because each take is spread across at least 4 tracks, and that's if you're a minimalist drum mic'er like me. Healing all of the splits across multiple takes across multiple tracks. Sheesh.

Just as well, I have tried grabbing it twice, including registering an account, and the only downloads I can see are installation instructions. I should have listened to you!

Cranking up the UI scaling a little helped me with the text that was shrunk between CbB and Sonar.

I'm curious as to which feature(s) SoFT lacks vs. SoPre that you think render it not suitable for live use or "semi professional" work. Plug-in oversampling, one more choice of dithering algorithms, one more choice of stretch algorithms, Workspaces, Overloud TH-U, and the BandLab loop collection? The only one of those that I'd noticeably miss would be Workspaces, but I'd probably work something out with Screensets to replace what I do with Workspaces. If I were worried about being able to apply DAW-based oversampling, running at 88 or 96 takes care of that during mixing, and exporting at 88 or 96 takes care of it at render time. The tests I ran on POW-R dithering and Elastique Pro stretching suggest that at least to the extent that I take advantage of them, they make no difference compared to the other algorithms that SoFT comes with. I've yet to use more than one Arranger track in a project, so that wouldn't feel limiting. The loop library is nice, but I already have access to all the loops I want via other means. TH-U is a good amp simulation plug-in, but there are numerous free alternatives. I wouldn't wish to see the membership ads. Everything else has simple workarounds. There's one big feature missing from Sonar that was in CbB, and that's user control of UI element colors. I reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaalllly hope that the promised remediation of that isn't going to be paywalled.

He is a heck of a guy like that, I must say. Still using the iLok 2 that he gave me years ago. Sorry to hear that you couldn't get the Saffire to work on your newer computer. My Pro 40 is still going strong, knock wood. I don't expect it to do so forever. When the time comes that it and Windows refuse to speak to each other, I'll probably get whatever Focusrite USB model will allow my to continue to use the Pro 40 as an 8 input mic pre via ADAT. I think the current one with ADAT in is the 81i something. I want it to stick around long enough for Microsoft's promised streaming-optimized USB stack to come out. At that point I'll feel better about using a serial port that was originally designed for mice, keyboards, and printers to stream asynchronous audio. The fact that Pete Brown thought that MS should redo the stack with audio streaming in mind tells me that I wasn't just being curmudgeonly about my USB skepticism.

The most baffling thing about Cakewalk (and Sonar) is that there's no simple way to suppress this.