Vernon Barnes

I had an odd and worrying occurrence earlier, I started Cakewalk and got multiple error messages that no Waves licenses were found. It was all OK yesterday. I rebooted the computer and got the same result. Waves Central showed the plugs were installed but not authorized. After much faffing about I managed to restore the licenses from the license cloud. Has anyone else encountered such a problem?

59 Euros down from 119 for another 22 days.

I think Estey was a paid product they gave away free for a while. The other were always free but when they introduced NKS support they added these instruments to the Player compatible ones. I love the Rocksichord in particular.

Sometimes upgrades and crossgrades are included in sales. The page on Kontakt crossgrades leads you to this list of third party Kontakt Player libraries. Do be careful as nowhere does it explicitly say all will entitle you for a crossgrade. Companies like Soundiron have some excellent Player compatible products and often have sales that can significantly reduce the price of their products. However it would be wise to check if it would make you eligible for a cross grade.

No, but there are some free libraries for Kontakt Player, you have to register them with NI. Once you have done that you may qualify for crossgrade pricing. I don't know which ones at the moment but this one has worked in the past https://en-uk.sennheiser.com/drummica Nothing to loose by trying it.

Unless you are in a position to get on the big playlists an get millions of streams its like playing gigs for "exposure". I have noticed several "small" but critically acclaimed band with reasonable size followings either pull their music off the platform all together of not add any of their new releases. I really don't expect to make anything out of music, its a hobby, but I am considering putting the project I am currently working on, which is somewhat different, and I hope better than the stuff on my Soundcloud on Bandcamp as an EP. If so I will be trying to drum up some sort of local interest because of the background story to the songs. I do use Spotify for exploration, seeing if I like a band before a gig, deciding if i want to buy an album etc. but not as a primary source of my musical entertainment. I have left favorite bands albums playing silently in the background overnight to get play-counts up, but its a futile gesture really.

I have seen numerous posts on social media on what Spotify and their ilk pay artists, there has been quite a variation in the quoted rates but they are all variations on next to rock all. This article explains the variations and gives a insight into what is paid. https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts I am not planning to put anything on Spotify but here is a best guess on how many streams I would need to pay for some outgoings. The session fee of the singer for her lead vocals on the track I am working on. 41,000 One Month EW Composer Cloud Subscription. 6,286 Melodyne Studio update. 46,800 Full Licence or Studio One 5 147,000 You will need a lot of streams to break even, let alone make a profit.

Doh! this is the version I have been using, I am not sure why it popped on on Installation Manager, it looked like a new product, not an update and was a 1GB download. so I got quite excited.

Noticed this in my Composer Cloud Installation Center today, I am downloading now. Spaces has been my goto for convolution reverb so this is a very welcome "sequel"

I am still mulling over signing up for the Sphere subscription. Having Notion in the package is certainly increasing the attraction and the extra content add to the temptation. The requirement is for 40 - 100 GB of disk space depending on what one installs. I assume the content can be installed on a sample drive and the C drive just has the programs? How much of the bundle can be used in other DAW. For example Presence XT is described as "built in" so I assume it, and its content can only be used in Studio One. but it would appear that some of the plugins like FAT Channel and Ampire are VSTs and could be used elsewhere. Can the Notion instruments be used in Studio One, or another DAW?

I don't have Studio One but the way they have just added key switch lanes looks very intresting. It would be nice to see a similar feature added to Cakewalk

If I recall correctly this was an old 32 bit DX plugin. DX plugins can not be easily bridged like 32 bit VSTs so getting it working could be more trouble than its worth. You can find free 64 bit VSTis that emulate analog synths in a similar way to square. The Freeware Instruments thread is a good place to look. There is so much it could be overwhelming but try this one for starters.

Further to this it seems Software centre creates a directory join, so if you examine the Program Date folder it appears the Arturia Resources folder is still there with all its contents. The disk space has been released however. Its important to understand and remember this to prevent potential issues in the future. The clue is the small blue arrow in the bottom left of the folder icon.

The Arturia V collection resources folder lives by default in C:/Program Data. It has grown to 12GB as new instruments have been added to the collection, particularly now some instruments like the Synclavier and Mellotron use samples. It's an annoyingly large amount of data on my SSD system drive. I noticed there was an option to set the resources folder in Arturia Software Center. Easy thinks I, move the folder to my sample drive and point Software center to it. Wrong. - Once I had done this the licenses would not synchronize. When all else fails READ THE INSTRUCTIONS https://www.arturia.com/faq/utilization/customize-your-ressources-folder-location I moved the folder back to its original location and mercifully it synchronized without problems. I am now doing it the correct way. It's a long process, there are thousands and thousands of files in the 12GB so moving them is slow.

Any library saved in a higher version of Kontakt will not open in a earlier version. So if the library had be saved in say 5.8.1 it will give an error message in 5.1. New libraries may state the required version or may just say 5 or 6. Updating to the latest available version of Kontakt 5 is highly recommended in you case. Its something to watch out for if you are running two versions of Kontakt.

No Kontakt involved, but you will need Battery 4 and Reactor 6. It looks like Native Access is also required. Personally I like Native Access, it's the most straightforward and efficient of all the management systems I have.

Not sure how much use any of this will be to me but I am in and I made a donation. I will install later. Hopefully one can be selective on the install, things like the Ableton kits will be of no use to me.

I particularly like the ones from Waves and Neo Soul keys, which have replaced Scarbee as my current goto. I also have Lounge Lizard but I tend to overlook it.

Bookends of a long career.

Sad news this morning, Judy Dyble had a long career starting in Fairport Convention, a wonderful voice and creative musician. https://www.bigbigtrain.com/ She will live on in her music and I look forward to the new album with David Longdon.

I like it, the sibilance tools are very good if, you are prepared to use them in a targeted manner they are better than a de-esser. Note leveling is excellent and should reduce the amount of automation and compression needed. I have not tried the chord feature yet but it looks useful, now if Cakewalk had a chord track that linked to it? Well that's a different story.

With my Orange slices it will come down to around $100. (Be sure to sign up for their Surveys for Slices and answer a few questions to get discounts) Undoubtedly this will be good, but will it be $100 better than my current Rhodes options? It's a crowded market.

I think this sale has been on for a while and finishes on the 13th July. I have some of the drum MIDI, and they are very good but I have never tried the bass. They may be something one could use in EZBass to improve transposition and chord change options. I thinking I may pick up the Rock Songs pack and try. https://groovemonkee.com/collections/bass-loops They have been pro-active and producing versions and updates for Drum software, I wonder if they will consider EZBass?

I have upgraded Melodyne (studio) to version 5 and I have been using it extensively this past week an I have not encountered a problem. I have been using it as a region effect via ARA.

Watching reviews and intro videos I am beginning to find the idea of subscribing to Sphere appealing. I have found MuseScore 2 useful recently for making rough scores for a session singer and found it really useful when writing lyrics but its a bit on the clunky side (it is free so I can't complain.) Having something better that Cakewalk's staff view integrated in the DAW, plus the full stand alone version of Notion available could be very useful. The other standout for me is the keyswitch lanes which look very useful. I am not sure how much the collaboration tools will bring to the party, dropbox seems to be working well enough for me but 30GB of online storage sounds useful and they say it can be accessed by non-Sphere users using other DAWs. I recently upgraded Melodyne and while watching the Groove 3 instruction video I noticed it should communicate with S1's chord track which could be handy. Beyond that I was taken by the fact that some of the new features have been in Cakewalk for a while.