Starship Krupa

Dang, missed it. I actually was interested in it, too. Can't have enough glitch plug-ins.

"Nosedive" is brilliant, although one where reality overtook speculative fiction.😄 And "one of the less dark?" Maybe by Black Mirror standards. I recommend "15 Million Merits" in part because it's only the second one and some people like to watch even anthology series in order. But it really is a favorite.

Easiest to be confident of when one has not been offered the choice.🤨 There are SO many highly-respected bands who have had players replaced by studio ringers/guests at one time or another, to varying degrees. Even bands much respected by other players. The Beach Boys (probably most famously, on some songs not a single Beach Boy played a note), The Beatles, The Byrds, Steely Dan....and the list of ones we don't know about is longer than the list of ones we do know about. What went wrong for Milli Vanilli was that they replaced the lead vocalists without giving credit (that's typically where the line is drawn, as in the case of film musicals), and were too successful and copped a Grammy. We always want to credit our guest musicians (except that most of the time we don't) and importantly, didn't even do the vocals live. Audiences expect that at least vocals will be live. Don't we? Pitch correction, comping, drum replacement, note editing, arpeggiators....these things all exist to make musicians seem more skilled than they actually are. I'm with the "athleticism" argument: if what's most exciting about your music is that it's hard to play, well, then you should be playing it as heard. I also agree with the genre specificity. When possible, obey the expectations of the genre. In the case of 80's metal shred guitar, that's a tough one. If memory serves, appreciation of and admiration for the players' technical prowess was an integral part of the music. So from that standpoint oh no! Fraud! Say it ain't so, Warrant! But I also remember that the music industry and the process of making records was different 40 years ago. The only path to getting your music out to a wide audience and making a decent living from it led straight through a big corporation that didn't care at all about things like musicianship and authenticity except to the extent that they were concepts that could sell records. And the contracts that artists had to sign to get these corporations to loan them enough money to record using the facilities and techniques of the day often (usually?) stated somewhere that the label had the last say in whatever producer the band would be working with, and that the band had to abide by that producer's decisions. It was, after all, the label's money that was allowing the record to happen at all. The penalty for defying them? They'd not release the record, and the project and the band itself would be effectively dead. In light of that, I kinda admire Joey Allen for fessin' up all these years later. He made the choice to finally be honest about the process and risk attracting comments like "that's some Milli Vanilli sh*t in my book." 😄 Maybe it was, but whom to blame? A record company trying to maximize their return on investment (which was their primary job) or a group of young musicians at the mercy of the record company? A record producer trying to please the people who were paying his salary and also ensure that he would get hired for future projects? Warrant as an artistic concept and sellable product wouldn't have existed (or at least not been the same) without the participation of Joey Allen. Was hiring another talented musician to cover some of his tasks during the production of a record such a terrible thing? Maybe it was by the expectations of the genre. Replacing Dennis Wilson on drums is different from replacing a metal guitarist who the fans idolize as an awesome player. What of the Warrant fans over the years? Is the enjoyment they got from having it be the soundtrack of their lives now tainted? The kids paid to hear badass guitarists tear it UP, and I'll presume that Mike Slamer is indeed a badass guitarist who did indeed tear it up. He wasn't the badass guitarist they had been led to believe was tearing it up, but yet, up it was torn. Heads were banged, beers were consumed, babes were impressed, high school was endured. The product fulfilled its purpose. It's a fascinating question, and one of the topics that Adam touched on was the matter of jazz musicians working out parts ahead of time. I was in a club 30 years ago watching a jazz ensemble with another alt roc guitarist friend who had done some time at jazz camp. Of course the band traded fours (or in their case maybe eights) and when it came around to the guitarist, well, what she played was not very interesting. I don't mind simple, but this was just boring. Of course being guitar players we had to talk about this and I wondered why she apparently hadn't sat down with a recording and sketched out some ideas ahead of time. My own leads in those days were a mixture of ideas worked out ahead of time and in-the-moment improvisation. I would stock up on phrases for each song, and mostly stick to them, but if lightning struck, I'd run with it. He shook his head and said that the idea with jazz is that you're supposed to be such a hot player that you make up every solo right on the spot, otherwise it's cheating or something. I guess the idea is that you're supposed to be in the moment and reacting to what's around you and playing only what you feeeeeel, man. Which seems to imply that if you have a night where it's just not clicking, the audience is going to suffer. And I don't like making people who've shown up to watch me play suffer, unless that's part of the genre I'm working in (not entirely joking here). And why are ideas that you've worked out in private less valid than ones you've come up with on the spot? It seems like some kind of weird snobbery. And as such, to me, inauthentic. Because why front that you don't care about entertaining the audience? If you really don't, why have you sacrificed so much in order to play in front of people? So in this case, what was most "authentic" in the case of jazz solos was poseurism to me.

Right? I recall it as more of an ordeal than an entertainment. An unfortunately very common story. I said 50%, but that's actually optimistic based on my hope that devoted fans of the show by now are guaranteed to warn their friends away from watching the first episode, at least until they've watched the second one and a few more, and even then, one's life will not be diminished at all by skipping it entirely. I'm a BIG fan of the show, and it took me some time to make it to the second episode because I thoroughly agree with you about the first one. I've watched the remaining episodes of the show multiple times but have never gone back to the first one. It's not just the obvious repulsive elements; I didn't find the storytelling, etc. to be very good. It's as if Brooker always wanted to write a TV script where the Prime Minister is forced to....in order to ensure the well-being of a member of the royal family, and then he didn't manage to build anything interesting around it. My experience was of thinking "why am I even sitting here watching this?" Because I didn't really care about the contrived crisis or any of the characters. The Prime Minister is neither bad enough that it feels like he has it coming nor noble enough that we care about his plight. I kind of wonder if it was somehow a deliberate move on Brooker's part to make sure that his show would always be a cult item. It's designed to alienate everyone who watches it from the start, and then they have to give it another try because someone begged them to. Or who knows, maybe the first episode was more relevant in the UK. Maybe there are references in it that viewers in other countries won't pick up on. Something about how low the government will degrade itself to protect the royals at all cost? I can vouch for the second episode, "15 Million Merits" as not merely being an improvement, but even approaching the "as good as TV gets" level. Good storytelling, humor (although very dark humor of course), a very relatable, likeable protagonist....as I said, a career-making role for Daniel Kaluuya (Jordan Peele hired him to star in Get Out based on his performance as Bing). It's representative of what Black Mirror does well when it does it well, which is give us a look at where current social and technical trends might take us if we're not careful. It has things to say about class, employment, entertainment....speculative fiction at its best. The show of course doesn't always maintain that quality level; even The Twilight Zone had its clinkers. I found the most recent season to be of generally lower quality than previous ones, although the first episode should be required watching for software company executives to educate them as to why a significant number of users will NEVER be comfortable with the software licensing model that must not be named. I also liked the one with Paul Giamatti for multiple reasons. There's one with Peter Capaldi that is delightful due to the trip down memory lane of technology from the past 30 years. Brooker must have had a blast with that one. The one with the return of the U.S.S Callister had no reason to exist, IMO.

The Buggles: The Age of Plastic. Flash and the Pan.

The best way to understand it, IMO, is to just try it. For the most part, it only applies to multi-mic'd sources like drum overheads or stereo mic'd acoustic guitar. So if you record such things, next time you do (or perhaps you already have a project that includes a track or two with something multi-mic'd), try either demo'ing one of the popular plug-ins or doing it manually by lining the waveforms up by eye. Zoom in all the way on the waveforms and you should be able to see if there's any misalignment. If there is, nudge one of them so that they line up. If you hear a difference, then you'll know. If you don't hear a difference, then you're doing a really good job of placing your mics! I find that it has the most effect on multi-mic'd sources where I want to pan the resulting tracks a bit, like with stereo acoustic guitar. I use MAutoAlign, and it can make a big difference in the perceived size of the instrument. The 10' guitar effect. This goes for not just left/right, but the perception in other dimensions. I have (pardon the pun) mixed feelings about MAutoAlign. I usually like what it does, but I'm not so confident that it's doing what it says it does, aligning the sources. This is because it's possible to run MAutoAlign's analysis multiple times on the same source and get different results. I mean, if it were working properly, wouldn't the results be the same, or at least very similar, each time I run it? Whatever, I don't trip on it, if it sounds good it IS good and MAutoAlign is either lining up my tracks so well that they bloom, or it's inducing a nice little Haas effect. 😄 I have Neutron, but since I haven't been recording acoustic guitars or drum overheads in quite some time, I haven't been able to compare its results with MAutoAlign's. It is true that back in the analog days, they didn't have fancy high tech ways of getting phase alignment correct. It was managed by rolling a bit of tape, listening back to the results, and then adjusting the mic placement if anything sounded weird. As with so many things, this was more labor intensive than how its done now. Studios were more likely to have multiple engineers so that one could control the tape machine while the other would move the mics. Also, the engineers were more experienced and practiced. The explosion of home studios and recording as a hobby means that the "chief engineer" might go for months at a time without setting up a multi-mic recording. So a purist might suggest that doing it the labor intensive way is the "best," and perhaps it theoretically is, but as I said, if it sounds good it IS good and who cares how you get there. If you like how your recordings sound, there's a solid chance that they ain't broke. I think it's something to be aware of, but not trip too hard about. Of course asking computer recordists not to trip about something is a big ask. Me included.

Ha! When I saw the topic title I thought "Charlie Brooker." I discovered Screenwipe and his other shows several months ago after falling in love with the Philomena Cunk shows on Netflix. For anyone who likes that sort of thing, his shows are all available on YouTube. Brooker is the evil genius behind Black Mirror. An excellent show that while it has done well, would have taken over the world had it not been for its unfortunate first episode, which probably cut its potential audience by about 50% due to people watching it and deciding that the show was not for them. If the show had started with the second episode, the amazing "Fifteen Million Merits," Black Mirror might have its own movie, theme park, and game franchise by now. That episode pretty much made Daniel Kaluuya's career happen (and rightly so, he's unforgettable in it). So when I recommend the show to people, I beg them not to watch the first episode, at least not until they've watched the second one. It's an anthology show, so it doesn't much matter what order you watch them in. As long as you skip the first one. This season's first episode is an incisive commentary on a subject much discussed in our forum here. Given that Brooker started out writing reviews of video games, it's not surprising that he'd have something to say about a current trend in the software industry.

I hoped that with Sonar we might see some progress with this, but it seems to have fallen to the "death to all personalization" edict.

I'm sure this feature has been requested before. When creating new tracks and folders, they appear as already named, you must double click in their name field to edit the name. I would like to have the option to have new tracks and folders appear with their names already selected and ready to edit, as if I had already double-clicked in the field. This would make the creation of new folders and tracks go faster. Secondary request: the option to leave the "output" part out of the names of newly created synth tracks. This applies to synth tracks such as created by selecting "First Synth Audio Output" in the Insert Soft Synth Options dialog. For whatever reason, simple instrument tracks already use only the name of the synth and the instance number. Example: I add a synth track for Xpand!2. The name given to the track is "Xpand!2 1 Primary Output." While this is handy information when creating tracks for synths with multiple outputs, in the scenario where I only use the first output (which is the vast majority of my synths), the "Primary Output" is just clutter. It displays as "Xpand!2 1 Prima" on Console strips. If I create a simple instrument track for Xpand!2, the track is created with the name "Xpand!2 1" No "Primary Output" to have to delete. So for those of us who create our synth tracks using the "First Synth Audio Output" option, please allow us to use the track name that Sonar would use if it were a simple instrument track being created. Yes, I know that all I have to do is double click on the track name and delete the extra text, but for a project with say, 15 soft synths, it's a boring, repetitive task that slows the flow.

John didn't post for months. I, too, am happy that he's back.

The Sansui 1975 styling of the UI's is lovely.

I must do a comparative test between MMatcher and HorNET VHS and ToneBoosters TB Morphit to see which works the best for headphone correction. Theoretically, my K240's, DT880's, ATH-M50's, MDR 7506's, and Superlux 681 EVO's should all sound the same using these products, which should also sound the same as each other. Somehow I expect that such is not the case.😄

Oh, I thought that what you meant by "trying to take a leaf out of Plugin Alliance's book with their freebies" was that they were emulating the practice of giving away a number of plug-ins in order to draw attention to the ones that they charge for. Which is a practice that I've benefited greatly from over the years and which has encouraged me to buy the companies' paid products. Plugin Alliance, MeldaProduction, IK Multimedia, Applied Acoustics and iZotope all have hundreds of dollars of licensing fees I've paid after being given a free taste. It predisposes me to look favorably on their products in part because it suggests to me that the people running things at these companies might understand the importance of good will in successful marketing, that it's not so much about wringing the last drop of money out of each individual product, that the warm fuzzies will result in more than enough sales to offset the costs of producing these freebies. So it's a smart thing for Waves to try to get into. Given their reputation, even among people who like their products, for trying to extract as much cash out of each user as they can with WUP or full-on subscription licensing. It seems with Waves that plenty of people love the products, but few people feel any good will at all toward the company producing them. They have had the practice for many years of giving away licenses around Black Friday, but that seems not to have done much to inspire good feelings.

I've watched enough White Sea Studios YT reviews to look for the non-functional screw heads😄. Rackmount holes I can forgive, after all it is T-RackS. Moreover, as they are at the edges, they don't distract the eye.

I'm going to proceed with using it as if there are no restrictions. I've searched for a licensing agreement and none is disclosed in the usual places.

Kilohearts, Native Instruments, iZotope, ToneBoosters, MeldaProduction, Audio Damage, Cherry Audio and IK Multimedia are just some of the companies whose product lines have included multiple free loss leaders for years. Not having a collection of free products is the exception for plug-in manufacturers. I'm having a hard time trying to think of a company that doesn't. Which is the point, I reckon. FabFilter, Sonible, UAD....

The licenses for the individual modules are specific to TR5 or TR6, so if your licenses were purchased for TR5, you aren't entitled to the TR6 versions. That's how it's worked for me at least. I would think that that is by design, because it would amount to a free upgrade for each of the modules, which I don't think they'd want to do (otherwise why bother making new versions).

I couldn't find a license agreement. Not on the website, not in the download.

Surprise, I also know of a free product that can help out with this until such time as the Cakewalk developers implement the feature natively: DMG Audio Track Control.

What do you mean? If there's some restrictive license for it I can't find one. I can't find any license at all for it.

Thanks for this review. I'm a big fan of the Exponential algorithms, going back to when Phoenix first went on sale for $9.99. I tried a demo, substituting if for my previous main reverb and the difference was stunning. Using a good reverb turned my mix into something that sounded....not sure of the word I'm looking for, "real?" "professional?" I'm apparently very sensitive to reverb tails when listening to music, and Phoenix' tails go on forever without turning grainy. They're just "right" in a way that no other reverb I'd tried before that. Since then MeldaProduction's TurboReverb has proved able to equal if not best it (esp. the Brichamber model), but it doesn't surpass it (for natural go-to reverb that is; MTurboReverb can also do what you call the "color" stuff like SuperMassive). My questions for you: the fact that everything from Phoenix/R2 through Stratus/Symphony is very easy on resources is a selling point for them. iZotope are notorious for the high overhead their processors usually have. How does Equinox stack up to the Exponential reverbs that were coded by Exponential? I have Neoverb, and it just seems to me like an attempt to kludge an iZotope wizard onto the Expo algos. I don't need my reverb to analyze my song and then recommend a preset, I can choose presets myself, I can even adjust the parameters myself, although I usually don't with the Expo reverbs. Second, have they finally done away with the godawful single seat iLok'd licensing scheme and enabled the much saner iZotope licensing and validation? That alone would make it worth the loyalty upgrade price. Otherwise, as with anything iZotope that I want....kick back and wait for the glitch, they usually seem to happen right around the end of iZotope's financial year.

I notice some confusion as to how exactly to install the presets. The location mentioned is the correct one for VST3 presets, and a host that uses Steinberg's canonical VST3 presets can populate their preset list by scanning them. Sonar, unfortunately, while it can load single VST3 presets one by one using the VST3 menu, it doesn't scan the location and populate its own preset manager. Fortunately, with this one plug-in, I found a solution that populates the plug-in's own menu system as well as Sonar's own preset menu: after you've installed the VST3 version per the instructions, also install the VST2 version and let Sonar scan it. After it does, the preset menus should work in the VST3 version and you can delete the VST2 version. I don't know what's going on here, but it works, and when I called up Minimogue VA VST3 in another DAW, the menus were functional in it as well (although I don't know if they otherwise wouldn't have been). I know this is a necro of the thread, but so what. This topic is very high in Google's results when you search for how to install the presets.

It looks like the "Classic" UI wasn't present in the first iteration, but arrived pretty soon after that. I can say that some of the newer IK releases are leveraging the AVX extensions, because MODO Drums refused to install on my old laptop, whose 2nd generation i7 apparently lacked that instruction set. Yes, less eyeball fatiguing colors is good, and they're at least in the ballpark of resembling their earlier forms. Red Opto Compressor looks good, and IIRC, has the M/S feature that I love so much. I wonder when that startedI was surprised to see that the 670 arrived so early. It was actually the plug-in that introduced me to the magic that M/S processing can do. I had been conflating it with M/S micing, so had no idea why such a thing would be included in EQ or dynamics processors. Ohhhh, it lets you process mid and side individually, same as if they were left and right, and that can do magical things to the stereo image. It was one of the presets that had something about widening in the name and that was the lightbulb moment and now I use it on everything. Started using it with the MeldaProduction processors too, most of which also have the feature, and any other plug-in I get my hands on that has it. I understand not wanting to see a stylized tyrannosaurus rex on the face of every plug-in. Especially since IK are, IMO, the best at designing clean skeuomorphic UI's. You don't put in silly things that distract the eye, like non-functioning screw heads or wear marks, the UI's represent what is best about using hardware and that type of UI: you can see knob position and meter movement instantly, and when you move a control, it "feels" more analog. Also, they're just pretty to look at. As I said, you got it right 25 years ago, which is impressive in the software business. I'm thinking of XLN's recent facelift of Addictive Drums. When I first got the product, as part of a bundle, I paid less attention to it than I should have due to the fake brushed aluminum Johnny Space Commander control panel UI that screamed "I'm from the early 21st century!" Then they laid the free update to 2.5 on everyone, with the UI overhaul, and I took another look and saw that it's actually a pretty great product. Maybe I'm shallow. If the UI looks exciting, I'm more excited to use it. A dinosaur silhouette in a purple oval kinda doesn't fit that. He could be on the website somewhere in with the blurbs, though. I found the history of the product to be fascinating, and would also if more of it were described on the IK T-RackS product pages. I wasn't aware of the pioneering nature of the company.

A lot of stuff I have, a lot of stuff I don't have that is covered by other manufacturers products I do have. New T-RackS modules are always fun. Since these are individual licenses, seems like there's a decent chance that I'd be able to give the dupes away....

I hope my research helps you get the most from it. Syntronik 2 and Sampletron 2 are fantastic.