Brian Walton

Then perhaps it is time to move on to other things in life. If you don't enjoy creating it then find something else. I used to carry a guitar around with me everywhere now I rarely have time to touch them as work and other hobbies took over.

This. It has never been easier to share music, but the only one that matters is the creator. Seasons of life change, if you don't enjoy it right now you can always take a break and the passion may return one day.

Melda seems pretty reasonable too.

It does have some drawbacks without question. But once you become addicted to PA it feels like the convince out weighs some of the limitations. At this point I would NOT want to be installing about 80 individual plugins! Or individually updating them. Granted it is annoying that it can't even tell you what you already installed, inability to roll back (yes we did see some bugs in the last update for a few plugins), and the cleanup of plugins is unfortunate as there isn't a system lead uninstall process. The new installation manager seems really infrequent for PA from what I remember, this isn't like WAVES.

They have been around for a little bit. The coming soon stuff looks like updated UI and new offerings. I know I grabbed a couple free instruments they have before and seemed like good little noise/pad makers for ambient kind of stuff. Haven't tried this one yet. You can check the "free" tab to see other plugins they did release already.

I appreciate all those things, but these are legit plugins that people actually use (and pay for). While I use the Mid Side version of Black Box, it is legitiamly one of the best saturation plugins available in the box. Mastering Comp is among the best on the market - it is the same one from UAD, just isn't tied to hardware - https://www.uaudio.com/uad-plugins/mastering/shadow-hills-mastering-compressor.html The channel strip is top notch and Master Desk is pretty sweet.

Yeah, that was the only one I didn't have (already had Class A), but planned to grab it for $15 at some point. The main question here is if we are getting a nice hand out to only get a grim future. We knew how PA operates, we don't exactly know how this conglomerate operates long term.

I've only used Wacom tablets (I've owned 4 different models - and duplicates of some of those models) but I've also heard good things about Huion and would absolutely consider them if I needed something and Wacom wasn't having a really nice sale at the time. Wacom changing the PEN that is compatible with the tablets on what seems like every release is really annoying given the cost of replacement. This becomes problematic years down the road trying to get support for a perfectly good working slate that is otherwise a fancy doorstop.

In my day job, I've deployed hundreds of computers and while some MACs will last a long time, I've seen plenty that don't even with care. If the battery in that machine lasts 5-7 years you will be doing well and depending on the MAC you have even the battery replacement likely isn't self servicable.

If they are all $30 all the time, I certainly wouldn't have many as many purchases as I have. As someone that owns over 75 all but maybe 5 I paid less than $30 for. And $30 all the time devalues the perception of value one is getting. If this really worked, Toneboosters who basically has that model today would be swimming in piles of money. And they certainly have plugins that are just as good if not better than PA in many instances and are more efficient. At this point, I'd be fine with that model since just about everything I'd be looking at getting is going to be new with a couple exceptions. And yes, I'm thinking about the subscribe on and off again model here. I think it is good they are using a few different models here. This one apeals to the die hards that have more plugins than they can possibly use and have practically exhausted the loyalty voucher program. The normal monthly vouchers are a gold mine for those still building out the collection, and the mega bundle appeals to those that don't mind the sub model with voucher that will get you a very limited set of plugins to own.

I dropped Apple after my Apple IIc computer and haven't looked back. I don't base my computer purchasing decisions around some poorly coded plugin I got for free. ? Seriously though, I can't mentally or financially deal with a company that basically requires you to buy new software and hardware each time you want to upgrade your computer. I have really old Windows machines that are running the latest version of Win 10 and using hardware and drivers that haven't needed an update in over 8 years.

I'm not seeing anything. And the min system requirements on the website are surprisingly low based on the performance I'm seeing.

That was taken on an old Windows 10 dual core machine with 16 gigs for ram and a dedicated GPU machine. That said, in my vast collection of plugins, that is the highest number I've ever seen. PA Amek 9099 console runs at 3 percent with all the modules activated for perspective, and while that doesn't hold a candle to my AA or IKM stuff, that is a whole lot of audio manipulation tools in 3% compared to this 2 band EQ with a drive section running at about 40% I also ran it on a 5 year old i5 laptop with 16 gigs of ram and it was moving between 50-60% CPU usage. While I'm not using a really powerful machine here I'd tend to call it unacceptable for practical use in the context of a project. And we are talking about a single plugin in the chain (but with latency settings just low enough that I can run a live guitar.

high probability this one is getting banned from my current machine, even though it sounds quite good in a quick test.

Depends on the DAW you use. Cakewalk obviusly hasn't had a random generate a musical idea for you. And outside of plugins that do this, I don't think I've seen it in other DAWs either, but I also haven't kept up with the latest developments across all DAWs.

Very nice!

I tend to doubt it as they want you to keep buying plugins (thus the limit of 1 $30 plugin per month), and the $75 voucher best case is you are only spending $25 again since it has a $99 min spend on them. Also it is always an unknown when the $75 voucher runs out for each person. I've only gotten 2 of them over the course of buying PA plugins every single month for a couple years and they were not even in consecutive months so in theory they dropped me off that list, then put me back on it to presumably then drop off again. As you now have 85 plugins and are pretty well set, I'm curious when your $75 vouchers will dry up if you only buy about 1 $30 plugin per month under the new deal. I'd tend to hope with the new monthly plan they actually would lower the threshold to get to the $75 voucher as it is now suddenly less valuable and based on my spending it took an extrodinary spend to get it previoulsy.

This is certainly an interesting development as it now drops the value of even the top tier plugins on the secondary market to less than $20 (becuase the end user would have to still pay a $20 transfer fee). Should have held off another month to get the Amek Console apparently. But other than that, just about every PA purchase I've ever made has been $30 or less after vouchers.

I've been waiting for them to announce the fixes for the stuff that got broken in the March update related to PA. Console N having upside down meters suggests the dev team didn't really test stuff.

This is a pretty awesome concept and I was surprised with a couple clicks/attempts it output some decent nest egg ideas that I could see someone actually using. It would be great to have a local version of this that then integrates seamlessly with Cakewalk instead of the Web-based version and give it a focus on MIDI output, etc.

All you need is a $50 voucher! (sorry don't have one). Wish this one had auto gain compensation option, and perhaps better placement of the output knob which the user is going to constantly be tweaking. But it really is one of the best ITB saturators I've used. It genuinely imparts some tube-like sound and feel where a number of other alternatives fall a bit short.

Yeah, it isn't that you can't record audio in it. But that certainly isn't the same workflow as playing in the context of a mix without having to bounce from the DAW, etc. close the daw down, reopen GP, then export that audio and re open the daw again. Sure it can be done, but it is also a pain. While my card/drivers can run Cakewalk, Media Player, Youtube audio all at the same time. I find it does not play well if you try to run two "real" audio applications such as GP and Cakewalk at the same time. The 2nd one that opens effectively says the driver is in use. I know there are some routing applications but that isn't ideal for sure.

That tour makes it plainly obvious why they are never the low cost leader on any product they sell.

Thats right everyone, bash this thing upon release so it gets to the $15 tier in no time. ? Seriously though, glad to see PA add another Reverb to the line up, as the previous one certainly isn't up to the typical PA standards.

The $25 vouchers are the same number, so you can't use them twice. And loyalty vouchers don't stack, so you can't use the $25 and $50 in one transaction. Each one usually stacks with individual plugin discount codes though.