Starship Krupa

You're not stupid, but you're unusual. People don't tend to read manuals. They get in a big hurry to play with their new toys and don't want (or think) to sit down and read the manual. I was born in 1961 and it was that way then and has certainly not improved since then. I was a technically-competent kid who liked to help people sort things out, and 9 times out of 10 the people having trouble hadn't cracked the manual. Manufacturers are complicit in the fact that people tend not to read manuals. Everything is touted as being plug and play, a breeze to set up, no hassles. Apple doesn't ship manuals with iOS products. Some people just don't do well with manuals, it starts to look like a confusing blur to them especially once their anxiety level goes up. Not all manuals are well-written. No amount of kvetching and browbeating on our part is going to change that. It's getting exasperated over something that we can't change. The only hope is that gentle suggestions that the information should be in the product instructions will be heeded and shown to be helpful. As regards having Cakewalk Sonar/Next specific cheat sheets for getting hardware to work with the software is a good idea. As you yourself said, downloading and installing the latest driver from the mfrs' website is step one. There are Cakewalk-specific issues that can come up, even with just interfaces. And those aren't going to be in the hardware's manual. Cakewalk by BandLab (and I'm sure its successor, Cakewalk Sonar) unfortunately (IMO) supports too many driver modes. 32-bit MME has no place being a selection. Nor does WDM/KS. They're just confusing. ASIO, WASAPI Exclusive, WASAPI Shared are all that need to be there. When someone installs a MAGIX or Steinberg program, or the full Realtek driver package and gets unwanted ASIO drivers (which can happen before they get their new interface), things can go to hell for them. Cakewalk for some reason just loves to grab those crappy drivers, after which you can't change back to the interface's native ASIO driver until you disable the outputs under Devices. I've had to do this myself. That ain't in the interface's manual, and I'm not even sure it's in the Cakewalk Reference Guide. It might be helpful to have a list, for beginners, of community-recommended interfaces. We recently discovered that M-Audio sells one for $50 that has full ASIO support. I consider that the price of entry for recording audio. The bottom rung. Well, that and a mic or instrument. There's no reason to waste time with those low-end Behringer ones that don't have ASIO drivers. But if someone happens to have one, with no replacement in sight, they should know that running it in WASAPI Exclusive is the preferred way.

Certainly one of the better ones I've participated in over the decades. And the best one for a product.

Early on, MeldaProduction came out with MDynamics, which was intended to be The One Dynamics Processor To Rule Them All. Get that and you'll never need another compressor, gate, limiter, expander, whatever. Which fits with Vojtech's design philosophies. A limiter is the same thing as a compressor with an infinity ratio, so why separate them? The answer is that there is usability value in reducing complexity (also, you can sell FX to people who don't have the budget for MDynamics). Despite the fact that their features are a subset of MDynamics', with the same underlying code, I use MCompressor and MLimiterX more often than I use MDynamics. MDynamics is just too huge for me to get my head around (for now). Vojtech has said that he uses MLimiterX when mixing/mastering, which is a pretty good endorsement.

Ah. Now that I think of it, back in the first half of the 90's, laptops didn't come with ethernet built in. You'd get an ethernet PCMCIA card, if your laptop even had a PCMCIA slot. Then they grew internal modems, which stuck for about 15 years, then ethernet, which seems to still be with us, then built-in wi-fi. Chances are that if your floppies can be read by the laptop's floppy drive, they can be read by an external floppy drive. If not, there are various strategies to help with floppies that can be read by one system and not another. One is to format the floppy in the target system. Then see if it's read/writable in the old system, in which case you can copy your files to the laptop's HD and then to the newly formatted disk(s).

What OS is on this laptop? If it's at least Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and it can connect to your home network, you may be able to transfer the files via Windows networking. The newer the OS (Windows 95, 98, XP), the better your chances.

It's not, actually. There are so many free offerings of plug-ins that it's like trying to drink from a fire hose. This particular promotional giveaway was bungled. And kinda weird, really. Why did they think they'd need to entice people with free goods so that they would participate in a class with Alan Parsons? The way it went for me was that I registered for it on the day it was announced and heard nothing further. I had forgotten the date, so a reminder email would have been nice.

So this deal is actually kinda half-fast?

My math on Melda's deals is notoriously unreliable (but usually my calculations come out higher than what they actually are). So thanks for the clarification.

Larry already posted this as part of a larger list of VSTBuzz deals, but I think it warrants its own topic. https://vstbuzz.com/deals/80-off-mlimiterx-by-meldaproduction/ This is one of those cases where getting the plug-in at a deep discount can pay off when the bundle sales come around. Melda licenses purchased from retailers are credited at 50% of list when applied to purchases of bundles that include that plug-in. MLimiterX is part of the MEssentialsFX, MMixingFX, and MMasteringFX bundles, so if you're interested in any of those, a license for it's good for $54 off. Couple that with one of their periodic 50% off bundles/everything sales, and you can get a nice collection of processors for little money. Not incidentally, out of all of the limiters in my collection. MLimiterX is my go-to mastering limiter. It's a worthy purchase whether you intend to leverage to a bundle or not. Caveat: if you've never bought anything from MeldaProduction before, this will qualify as a first purchase, which means that you'll no longer be able to use someone else's referral code to get a 20% new buyer discount.

This. The issue is the presence of the Realtek ASIO driver. A quick trip to the registry and all is well. Your system can then be set up to play Windows sounds like YouTube and whatever through the onboard chip and you will still have the ASIO functionality with the mixer. Also, in order to switch between two ASIO drivers present on a system, you must first uncheck all of the Audio Devices that pertain to the unwanted ASIO driver.

I think that's no longer strictly true, as a few of the newer synths that they have come out with seem to be using the underlying technology of Hybrid and Vacuum. They don't seem to have come up with anything like XPand! yet, though.

I wonder if the "save your keyboard binding in a file and delete all lines in the file which contain: Kx00530B, then load that keyboard binding file" fix that the OP tried also fixed this issue.

Therefore not much incentive to work around its bugs.

I'm very fond of Hybrid 3. For arpeggiator-driven 90's ambient kinds of stuff, it's my most inspiring synth, and I have MASSIVE and Chromaphone 3. Hybrid 3 has the best arp sounds. It has 2 arpeggiators that can be used simultaneously. Well worth $10, IMO. Xpand! 2 is also my favorite general purpose ROMpler. Vacuum Pro is another favorite. The only drawbacks I've ever experienced with AIR's synths is the lack of a way to mark "favorite" in the patch browser, but I can use the DAW's native preset system to get around that. As far as technical issues, I've never experienced any problems with AIR synths, not a single one. They are light on resource use compared to other synths out there.

They're usually trying to sell more of them I think. Likely very few. Yes. (apologies, I'm watching this freaking hilarious mockumentary show on Netflix called Crunk on Earth that features a hilariously literal-minded character covering human history in 5 30-minute installments. "So how long were the first flights? "Typically on the order of just a few hundred feet." "Well they could have walked that....")

Maybe we could compile a list of most-given-away commercial licenses. Quadravox, iZotope Elements (in its various forms), Ableton Live! Lite, A|A|S Sessions (in its various forms)....

Good lord, for whom? I've always been kinda weirded out by people who stuck with SONAR when CbB is free and so much of an improvement (and were subsequently having problems with the years-old unsupported program), but in this case, I believe there will be plenty of people who will keep using the free product unless there is a paid version that is really inexpensive. Whether they will also be people who actively participate in the forum remains to be seen. If anything, I'd have the impulse to shame anyone who shamed CbB stalwarts. ? Of course there is that versionism thing where anyone, pro or volunteer, who is trying to support a program will try to convince users who are having tech issues to upgrade to the latest version to see if it helps. How long before the first angry "I even spent my hard-earned cash on buying Cakewalk Sonar to see if it would solve the problem, and now I'm out the money as well as the time and my haptic controller still can't talk to my plug-ins?"?

VHS for 3.85€ you shall be mine.

It seems self-explanatory, does it not? Except maybe you're wondering why it happened when you have your DAW connected to the net every day and why would the activation ever get that close to running out and isn't it supposed to just silently renew itself yada yada. And the answer is....it just does it this way sometimes. Every once in a blue moon, someone's Cakewalk will start forgetting to renew itself, then eventually pop the red toast message saying that time's a wastin', then they have to tell it explicitly to renew itself and then it's fine. Often they also have to log in to BandLab with their browser, but it seems that you were spared that indignity.

I don't usually look too far outside the more business-y areas of this forum. So I open this topic and there is a photo of Richard Branson kite surfing with a naked teenaged girl clinging to his back. WTF do you guys get up to around here?

Perhaps in number of features, but that lack of support for 3rd-party plug-ins was a stone cold dealbreaker for a LOT of people, myself included. That relegated it to being just the little sound program that came with the interface. Crippleware. Plenty of native FX I suppose, but I'm too into VSTi's to be able to make use of Studio One Artist 4 except as a sketch tool.

Although I know it's useless to use facts and logic to change an opinion that wasn't formed using facts and logic, let's check out how Linux has fared in the desktop market in the past 5 years. In Jan 2018, Linux had a 1.69% share of the market. OSX had 12.8%, and Windows 82.68% In Jan 2023 Linux had a 2.91% share, OSX had 15.33%, and Windows 74.14% So in the past 5 years, Linux has gained 1.22%, OSX a (surprising, way to go Apple) 2.53% gain, and Windows has dropped 8.54% Not exactly a tidal wave. Speaking of which, one of the things I've noticed about people with irrational beliefs is that they often preach that there is an impending cataclysmic event or shift of some kind that will elevate those who think and act as they do to a superior status. This will be their reward for whatever deprivations they are suffering now (with Linux loonies, the deprivation is usually lack of software choices and hardware support). "You'll see! Just wait! You won't be laughing 5 years from now!" The thing is, it's trivial. If, 5 years from now there's been some breakthrough that actually does make Linux a superior platform (and that would need to include core audio functionality similar to Microsoft's and Apple's), and software vendors are supporting it as well as they do Windows, then there could be a reason to switch. I use my computers to make music, browse the web, and play games. When they no longer do that to my satisfaction, I change them. By adding storage, changing to a more powerful CPU or graphics card, switching to different software to perform those functions, a different audio interface, or whatever. When there is a compelling reason. Not one that I fantasize about happening in the future, but WHEN it's necessary. All the pieces are subject to change, including the OS if one more suited to my tasks comes along. Hasn't yet. I'm just not that emotionally attached to computer parts, including the software. I have some odd quirks about what I use; I still prefer Firewire, so I bought a new-in-box Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. I don't annoy people with how much "better" my interface is because Firewire 400 is an asynchronous bus-mastered protocol and USB 2.0 is serial, and nobody wags their finger at me or tries to convince me that soon Microsoft will end support for Firewire on Windows so I better drop it and get a USB one. I still have an optical drive and use it, nobody chides me about CD's being obsolete. Who even cares about this crap? This OS wars thing is so 90's. Use what you use and leave others to do their thing. As much as I'd love to have Garage Band available on Windows so that I could recommend it to DAW beginner friends, I don't go to Garage Band forums and drone about how I think Apple should make a Windows version and tell the people that they should switch to Windows before Apple forces their systems into obsolescence. I'd love to have iMessage on my Windows desktop like I do on my Mac. But I can't, and I understand why. No whining, no weenie-waving. I just use the stuff I do have and get on with it. I've also learned that fanatics are much more bothered by indifference than they are opposition.

Brave on Windows 10 over here. Works a treat. Maybe Linux systems have a feature that blocks hard information about the OS' market share. That would explain a LOT.

How else would such a referral system work? I put mine out there enough to eventually get MComplete and I never felt like I was begging. I think their products are a good value that I want everyone to know about. I post the same stuff now that I can't even use referral credits.

It works just fine on my system. ?