Starship Krupa

As of now, CAL is fully functional in Sonar, even the FT version. Regarding fear uncertainty and doubt about Sonar FT being dropped and the product going completely payware, that possibility was always there with Cakewalk by BandLab. They didn't deactivate CbB until they had a newer DAW that CbB users could use for free. So their record has been pretty good in that regard. There has also been no small amount of programming time and effort dedicated to enabling Sonar's free tier. Would they go to all that trouble if they only intended to discontinue it? Your choice is to continue with the same company that's been giving you free subscription access for over 7 years, uninterrupted, or acquire and move to a different DAW. The fear about losing Sonar FT is that we would have to migrate to a different DAW. So either you take the chance or force yourself to move to a different DAW right now. Whatever else happens, they do seem to be pretty good about advance warning. In the event of licensing for Sonar changing, it's reasonable to expect that we'd get plenty of time to either buy it or wrap things up.

That worked a treat! Thanks. I didn't think I needed to "get" Komplete Start again, 'cause I already had it. There's also a "Bass Music Essentials" product I didn't have. Nice!

I wish it were true for me. You have my sincere envy. Was there anything you had to do other than run Native Access?

Looking forward to it. Still not showing up in my Native Access. Massive itself has always been pretty much a "player" instrument for me, so getting a player version of Massive X will be a treat once it arrives.

The 3 prong/2 prong adapter is a tool that the intrepid audio engineer keeps around in the tool kit for cases like this one. I thought I had suggested one earlier, but that might have been someone else's thread. Amberwolf had it covered. I used to keep one in my gig bag along with a 4 outlet power strip. There are so many old houses and nightclubs in converted old storefronts near where I live. It's more likely than not that the mains wiring will be sketchy in some way.

Glad to hear that it worked out! Ya-hoo! Now that you've fixed it, once you get reasonably caught up on your projects, I'd suggest figuring out which of the solutions actually cured the problem. This isn't just for curiosity's sake, but for education's sake. Also, if you have problems down the road, it would be nice to know which one worked. I know it's tempting to just leave it, it works and who cares why, but see if you can take 10 minutes to check it out. If it was a noisy USB cable, you'll really want to know, because you won't want to use that cable for connecting another audio interface.

Such as: https://medicatusb.com/ Or: https://www.hirensbootcd.org/ Best practice would be to download and create the bootable USB stick on another computer, then bring the stick to your computer and boot from it. Once you boot from the recovery drive, you'll be presented with many utilities. Try the drive/data recovery tools first. With luck, they'll be able to recover the lost directory. If they do, copy it off of there ASAP. As Amberwolf says, until you either get your data back or determine that you can't get it back, you shouldn't boot the computer from its current drive and use it. Turn it off until you can boot from the recovery drive. Once you get your data back, then you can start addressing what might have caused the problem. From what you describe, some piece of hardware went bad, probably your hard drive, maybe memory. You'll likely wind up replacing whatever it was. There are good utilities on the Medi-Cat and Hirens disks that you can use to run tests on your system.

I suspect that their "off the record" policy was/is to go ahead and allow it due to the fact that the user must do it deliberately. They don't get the same security overkill that they would with the TPM and CPU with the extra feature, but they get everything else. And I suspect that they would ultimately rather have people on Windows 11 than Windows 10. My test Windows 11 system is an i7 4770, and it works a treat. Updates, etc. And Windows Security and Updates never complains that my hardware isn't strictly Windows 11 compliant. Performance-wise, there's no difference that I can perceive. It could even be better for all I know. So far there's no compelling reason to upgrade my main (i7 6950X) system. While I really like the return to rounded window corners, the changes to the Start Menu are annoying. Microsoft haven't entirely broken the Start Menu yet, but they seem determined to do so.

Yes, I think it's when I'm trying to add a layer with text, and I suppose it would be the same if I were using a geometrical shape. I used to do extensive work with Cakewalk UI theming, and of course using text and geometrical shapes is something you do a lot of in the course of that. Making buttons and the like. So I got that "would you like to convert this vector layer to raster?" A LOT. And there is no checkbox for "No, I want to set the program to default to creating new text on raster layers and then not see this message ever again." Out of curiosity I just did a search about this, and if you only wish to work in the raster domain, the "workflow" is that every time you create a layer with something that the program defaults to creating as vector, you immediately convert it to raster. So there is no way to change the default to "create new text objects on raster layers." Of course I have so far solved the problem by using a program that doesn't support vector layers in the first place. This seems to me a bit like having a sat nav program that always delivers distances in kilometers, and if you wish to see miles, you just calculate the distance in kilometers and then have the program convert it, problem solved. That would be the result of "programmer syndrome." The program, after all, has to default to initially calculating the distance in either one or the other, and since the satellites and other infrastructure speak kilometers, we deliver our results in kilometers. There's a button you can press to then see it in miles. Figuring out how to pull down information from satellites and then displaying directions and distances is fun. Converting the result to whatever units the user wishes to see is still fun. Re-coding the preferences menu to allow the user to have the sat nav do the conversion before the distances are displayed is just drudge work. And if the user then decides they want to see the results in some units other than miles, any rounding errors from the initial conversion will only be compounded.

Too late. I have the previous version, not the latest. It was the latest version I was talking about wanting to upgrade to for no reason other than that I have the older version and never use it. Not to say I've never used it. It's probably on on "Unfinished Doodlery #17" or something. I'm all right with having a license for the previous rev. and keeping it around. It's the most high tech "advanced" compressor I have. Feed back, feed forward, gain reduction limitation, all that stuff which I must cop to not understanding what they do. If I my skills ever advance to the point where its advanced features make sense to me, I'll mess with it. And if it somehow "clicks" with me, then I'll upgrade. By this theoretical time in the future, the current version of alpha compressor will be on sale. Or maybe humankind and all of its works will have fallen into dust. Gaze upon my plug-in collection, ye mighty, and despair. Then gaze upon my collection of released tracks and marvel that the first outnumbers the second by at least 100:1, and despair even harder. It's all in good fun, 'cause it sure ain't in anything else.😅

I'm not the world's biggest fanboy for MSoundFactory, but it does have some whompin' pad sounds, and Wishmaster Strings is no exception. Right now I have something that sounds like a quartet of Queens Mary sitting a mile offshore and sounding their ships' whistles at the right pitches. Quite evocative. Since Cakewalk no longer allows me to create themes for the DAW, I'd love to start making my own "devices" for MeldaProduction FX, but whenever I've looked it's just too complicated. I get lost right away.

I was psyched to get PaintShop Pro 2023 when I picked up the Humble Bundle with Painter, PaintShop Pro, and VideoStudio. I mostly wanted it for Painter, but I'd been wanting to get an image editor with more muscle than Paint.Net, which had been my go to for years. Great program, free, but limited. However, while I've enjoyed using Painter with my Wacom tablet, I just can't seem to get with PSP 2023. I used JASC PSP 30 years ago when it was still shareware. It was great for image format conversion. What continually trips me up with the current version is that what I want to do with it is strictly photo editing. I don't care about the vector part of it. But the program won't let me ignore the fact that it can do vector. It seems to default to vector mode, even if what I've opened is a JPEG. There seems to always be some dialog about whether I want to convert a layer from vector to pixel or vice versa, and it usually sends me running back to Paint.Net. Maybe there's some way to set the preferences so that it wouldn't do this, but I don't know how.

It's not often that I come across a description of an engineering phenomenon this spot on and succinct. Having worked on many consumer software packages in the past 35 years, yep, that's a thing. I think that the leaner things are, the less top down control there is, the greater the danger this will happen. Larger organizations have such creatures as product managers, who are not programmers. One of their jobs is to steer what new features will be added and how they will work. At least that was the common structure 25 years ago, maybe it's changed. Programmers, IME, tend to be at their best when presented with problems to solve. People who are good at programming aren't necessarily good at other aspects of creating and marketing a software product. Many are, but it's not a given. One of the difficult things about FOSS is the lack of "adult supervision." Some things work better when there's more hierarchy. There's no authority figure to tell them that the feature should work this way, just a bunch of whiny end users who think they know everything. Also, when everyone works on the modules that they themselves think are the sexiest, more mundane stuff like basic workflow and (especially) documentation can suffer. My favorite plug-in house, MeldaProduction, suffers from this. Vojtech is a genius who came up with a way that he could continue to do the coding as a one man show for a long time. His products are so feature deep that I could spend the rest of my life digging into them and never finish. And one of the reasons for that is that his written documentation is traditionally sketchy. He started out using the same "shared code" concept that the plug-ins are based on, so the documentation for a large number of the plug-ins is 90% boilerplate that applies to all of the plug-ins at the expense of information pertinent to the individual plug-in.

Edited my last post to reflect this at the same time you were replying! Good research. You're right, if that's the last chance to get ST4 MAX v2, that's one to hit. But who knows what they'll do next. Maybe issue the libraries in new form and offer us all an upgrade deal.

So, noise. Sorry, I have nothing but the basics, make sure all bit depths and sampling rates match, go into Device Manager and disable all other sound devices, try a different USB jack, etc. Will it play back Windows sounds? Sounds from other programs? Or is it only ASIO mode that's broken?

I suspect it won't be all weekend. You/we got this. And even if it is, weekend of learning, too. I'm rooting for a sketchy USB cable. They even have them with ferrite beads to get rid of noise. Also, not the worst idea to get a passing familiarity with a second DAW. You never know what will happen.

And there's a big difference between "skim through most" and "pay no attention to ANY of them." There are plenty of EULA's and "Important: Changes to our TOS" messages, but warnings and nag screens? I don't see so many of those, and when I do, I at least try to check/skim what they're warning me about, at least the first time I have to see them. Considering how long CbB/Sonar has been around with the same authorization warnings, and how few times this scenario has come up (first one I can remember where someone ignored the warnings, then worked on a project for hours before "discovering" that they weren't able to save it) on the forum, I'd guess that the warnings work well for most. Anyone who chooses to ignore all of the warnings that pop up on their computer screen....if that's working for them, who am I to say they should change? They are free to do so as much as I am free to regard their behavior as foolish. I've been using personal computers for about 40 years. During that time I've worked as an IT support person, a software quality assurance engineer, and a network server engineer. From the first time that always-on connection to a LAN, then to the Internet has been possible, my computers both at work and at home have stayed connected to them. When appropriate (that is not "on the clock" for someone else), I've used all of those systems for multiple tasks that include recreational web browsing. Since Microsoft began installing its own anti-malware software that defaults to realtime scanning of every disk read and write, I've disabled that realtime scanning on all of my personal computers, relying only on the drive scanning that Defender does during periods of inactivity and ad hoc scanning when I've downloaded an installer (right click, Scan for Malware). The only times I've ever seen malware infect a computer (anyone's computer) were when a user of the computer actively obtained and installed software that contained malware. It's always required the active participation of the user, I've never seen it arrive passively. Download and install a dodgy program, click on a dodgy email attachment, click okay on a dodgy website that wants to install something, whatever (usually the email and website ones). While I have of course known some people who wound up with malware on their systems, I've also never known anyone personally who lost data to it. Time and hassle spent removing the infection, yes. But actually lose access to a file or files? Never seen that, never met anyone personally who's had it happen. Plenty of people who will say that it happened to a friend or a friend of a friend, but still, nobody I've met personally. (I have on the other hand personally witnessed systems rendered practically useless due to the installation and misconfiguration of anti-malware software, but that's another story) Disconnecting my music production computer from the Internet would be such a pain in the * that it would eclipse whatever risk I was trying to avoid by doing so. The need to buy and maintain another computer to use for recreational web browsing being the biggest pain, followed by not being able to download, validate and update software, followed by not being able to access information pertinent to my tasks directly at hand. And so on. We all must determine our own way of assessing risks and what will allow us to feel comfortable. In the case of malware/data loss fear, not doing things that stand a chance of screwing up my computer, doing backups and periodic scans for malware (I never find anything) suffice for me. I'm NOT putting anyone down for whatever safety measures they think they need to take. Anyone who thinks there IS a threat that outweighs the hassles of taking their system offline, go right ahead. Just relating my own experience for anecdotal purposes. Of course, I'd encourage anyone who fears having their computer connected to the internet to step back every so often and assess whether the risk continues to outweigh the hassle. I've got some risk assessment coming up, all of my systems run Windows 10, and October is looming. Microsoft say that Defender will continue to be updated but that the full range of OS security updates will cease. I suspect there will be some backing down from Microsoft, and of course plenty of 3rd-party solutions, but we'll see.

I got the XTD presets when he posted them to the MeldaProduction forum and there are many useful ones. That they're presets and not instruments serves as a reminder that MSF comes with a ton of sounds that are just presets and have no fancy GUI associated with them. The online preset exchange has hundreds of them. These should not be neglected in favor of the fancy GUI instruments. There are some really good sounds among them. I don't know because I wasn't interested in it when it first came out; did MSF come with the GUI'd instruments from the start? MeldaProduction plug-ins didn't start getting those until several years ago.

Nice setup. All hail the mighty Behringer Ultrapatch. I have 2 of them. Haven't used them in a good long while because working in the box, but this may change at some point.

That can actually create issues if the things in the rack are each getting their ground from the mains, then some of them are connecting via their rack mount ears and chassis. This is why some people use nylon washers and the like Ground is weird. Sometimes redundant grounding helps, sometimes it causes problems or makes them worse. I'm not sure how common it is today, but 30 years ago, part of a sound engineer's toolkit included a couple of those 3 prong to 2 prong adapters that are intended to allow you to connect a grounded device to an old fashioned 2-prong outlet. They called them "ground lifts." Sometimes the only thing that would cure hum and other interference was to stick a ground lift between one or the units and the outlet. Here in the SF Bay Area, there were/are so many venues in very old buildings with sketchy wiring, sometimes not even with the 3rd pin available, so they'd end up using the "ground lift" for its originally intended use.

This was the thought that came to my mind. By my count you mention it 3 times. That is appropriate and I hope it got their attention. A USB cable can pick up noise and it can also carry it to the the interface and/or radiate it to the audio cables. I believe that these days USB cables are supposed to be shielded, but there are no guarantees with that, and a shield can become disconnected. If changing the USB cable doesn't help or make it worse, if it's possible to run an extension cord, you might try plugging your new system into a different outlet as a test. Also, as always, it's best to simplify things as much as possible. Disconnect any USB devices that aren't absolutely necessary to the operation of your system. If any of this helps, you can begin to set things back to the way they were piece by piece and find the culprit. BTW, you say that you can't hear the noise until you open a project. How about with other DAW's? Tracktion Waveform is free, REAPER has a generous free trial period. If you don't have them get one or both and see how they do. I recommend REAPER. I don't use it except for testing. "It works fine in REAPER" is an oft heard statement on DAW support forums.

I don't understand what this means. Did the level increase, did noise come out?

Not "presets" but an instrument created in the MSoundfactory framework. I think it's supposed to conceptually be like Kontakt. I found it after running MPluginmanager.

They have ongoing free to play games, and then every week they give away licenses for a couple of not-usually-free games. That's how I got the Elder Scrolls Online, which I've played almost every day since I started playing it.

Well, for anyone who wants them, ST4 MAX v2 can be purchased at Plugin Boutique for $29.99. Strike that, the only place I see that still sells it is Sweetwater, and it's $49.99. The PB one seems to be the later version that doesn't include Syntronik 2 and SampleTron 2. Going forward, I just hope they keep selling the soundsets. My SampleTank 4 MAX bundle would see way less use if it hadn't come with Syntronik 2 and SampleTron 2. I don't know if I'd call Syntronik 2 "essential," but there are some very good, useful sounds in it. I liked it even better once I installed the newer packages. Alien Harbours and that stuff. Doubtless, there are other emulations and sample collections of vintage synths that sound better, but they're also significantly more expensive than the SampleTank 4 MAX package. Well, at $29.99, there are a LOT of virtual instruments that are significantly more expensive.... SampleTron 2 blew me away with how comprehensive the collection of samples is. Not just the Mellotron and Chamberlin tape sets, but plenty other, lesser known analog samplers like the Optigan, and not just instrument sounds, but also the funky weird sound FX and loops. They're all lo-fi to start with, so it doesn't matter if IK recorded them back when technology was holding the size of samples back. The amount of disk space my ST4 libraries takes up is 520GB. Substantially less than the 800GB they claim in the ad copy. I think they got the larger number by adding up the size of all 3 tiers of SampleTank 4 while not accounting for duplicates. Since SampleTank 4 MAX v2 includes everything from the lower tiers, they're really fudging it. Not that value actually comes from how much space the samples take up. Still, the package is/was a good enough bargain that they didn't need to lie about it. But guessing and armchair quarterbacking is so much more fun! It's probably done for the reasons stated earlier: those soundsets work as well or better when played using the ST4 engine, there hasn't been a time for years that SampleTank 4 MAX v2 hasn't been available for less than the individual products. When ST5 comes out, my hope is that the Syntronik and SampleTron sounds will be included. Kind of a drag if it means that there will be no more Syntronik-branded sound packages, but I guess there can still be some branded SampleTank. The continued proud existence of Philharmonik 2 will just have to go into the "forget it Jake, it's IK Multimedia" bin.