John Maar

I still got the same request for a code after redownloading, but after clicking Cancel, the IRs were available!

My cost was 29,66 € in France. I assume that number will constantly change slightly with the varying exchange rate. The bundle is over 70 GB. There were individual downloads for each library, which was kind of a pain. I have a gigabit fiber internet connection. The downloads when into the Downloads folder on my C drive. The instruments went into my Kontakt Instruments folder on my E drive and the downloaded ZIP files went into my Rigid folder on my F backups drive. Extracting the libraries and moving them to E and moving the ZIP files to F took longer than the downloads themselves did. 😄

It's included with the $25 (29,66 € in France) bundle. The serial number appears on the FastSpring download page. I didn't receive an email with the serial number, so I copied it into a Notepad text file for backup. I was able to open the demo project instrument in Kontakt 6, 7 and 8, but got a "Kontakt version too old" error from Kontakt 5.

It was up for me just now. Downloaded and installed. I've got a bunch of ReMatrix IR libs, but didn't have this one. Maybe it's new?

I've had the bundle for years. Awesome "toys"!

I picked up String Machines 2. It looks like an excellent, major upgrade to the original String Machines, which I've been using for years. The 68% discount was nice, especially since it included the 20% VAT!

I am not a fan of Sampletank. I have it installed, but only have my Syntronik 2 Max instruments available. At this price, I couldn't see any reason not to pick up all of the Sampletank 4 instruments. It's going to take a LONG time to download and install all of them. My 2 TB Thunderbolt 3 SSD sample drive will be close to maxed out when it's finished. I think I'll move all of my IKM instruments to one of my 2 USB3.2 2 TB drives.

Downloaded and installed. I quickly tested a number of the presets since my dogs are still sleeping, so I can't make a definitive review, but so far, my response is pretty "meh". At least I got more than what I paid for it. 😉

Changes General: An Undo system has been added. Keyboard shortcuts have been added. EZmix 3 can now be used in a fully functional trial mode for 10 days. It is now possible to copy/paste a State between different EZmix 3 instances in a DAW. 125% scale should look sharper now (on "low-resolution" screens). The performance of AI Amp Capture presets on stereo channels should be a bit better now. "Show Tuner" has been added to the View menu. "Next Preset" and "Previous Preset" in the Edit menu have been renamed. Quick Start: Orchestral templates have been added. Some templates have been renamed, for example "Auto-Mastering" to "AI-Assisted.". When a template is loaded and the window is so small that the Preset List is in its own tab, the Preset List tab gets selected now instead of the Similarity Map tab. Loading a template no longer makes the Preset List be sorted by Similarity. Rack: New background images have been added for metal kit parts (snare, kick, etc.). Effect Controls: "Analyze Track" audio capturing will now pause less because of silent input – a longer period of not loud enough input is required for the capturing to pause. "Clear Analyzed Track" has been added to the menu for the current preset. It does not change any of the current preset settings (but selecting the same preset again will most likely yield a different result, provided that it is an AI-assisted preset). "Save as User Preset" and "Rename" now open a dialog where the user preset can be named. "Delete" for a user preset now opens a confirmation dialog. Preset List: The preset list is now accessible to screen readers. Filters: Selectable rows are now always sorted above unselectable/disabled rows in the filter columns. Selected filter rows are now orange instead of gray. The filter columns are now accessible to screen readers. Similarity Map: The preset points are generally sharper now, especially when you zoom in. If a filter is active and less than 250 presets are selectable, those preset points are larger now. "Reset Zoom And Orientation" has been added to the View menu. Settings: A "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab has been added. The Settings dialog can now be closed with Esc. Standalone: At startup, a dialog will appear if there is no input or output device. Bug Fixes General: In some hosts, changing a track with EZmix 3 from mono to stereo did not work well – it could cause a very loud sound in one channel. Having a captured/analyzed track for AI-Assisted presets and then changing the sample rate could yield bad results when other AI-Assisted presets were selected afterwards. AI Amp Capture presets could sometimes produce an unintended bitcrushed sound at buffer sizes 64 and lower (and mainly with sample rate 44.1 kHz). AI Amp Capture presets could potentially produce unwanted click sounds – if you played something very loud, paused and then played something much more silent. Changing from one AI Amp Capture preset to another could potentially cause a crash. Modal dialogs should no longer prevent interaction in other EZmix 3 instances in a DAW. Various accessibility fixes have been made for improved screen reader support (but it is a work in progress). Effect Controls: Canceling "Reanalyze Audio" should now keep the previous state of the preset. Alt-click (Mac) / Ctrl-click (PC) on the "Out" value did not reset it to the preset's default but always to 0. "In" and "Mix" are no longer possible to reset to default when their locks are on. The Gain Reduction peak value should be more accurate now and not miss any peaks. Filters: If a preset pack was marked as excluded, selecting another pack for inclusion did not work as expected. The "clear all filters" button is now gray instead of orange when no filter is active but there are inactive ones (i.e., when there are only gray filter chips, not counting "Favorites" and "User Presets"). Similarity Map: Zooming in much when using a large GUI scale could cause a crash on Mac.

While I was looking for USB mic options, I noticed that a couple of them had a headphone jack for direct monitoring.

This may not be helpful because it's not free, but the first thing I would recommend is getting the best directional mic you can afford. If you don't have an audio interface to plug a mic into, search for "best podcast usb mics 2024" or something like that. There are some good ones out there. Because you are teaching, you don't need a singer's mic. A podcasting mic is plenty. And you don't need to pay hundreds of dollars. For example, here are two $99 options: PreSonus Revelator Dynamic Shure MV5 In case you hit a lottery ticket, here's a really good $250 option: Shure MV7 You want to look for cardiod or unidirectional mics. Omnidirectional lets everything in. Bi-directional lets, no surprise, front and back in. There are headset USB mics, too.

I first saw Buddy Guy 4 years earlier, in the summer of '65. He wasn't wearing a suit, that's for sure. He was my first experience with electric blues guitar. All of my earlier influences were Delta blues played on acoustics and resonators. He blew me away! And that's a young Buddy Miles! I only saw him once, a few years later, shortly after he recorded that live album with Santana. Great show!

That's the way I did it. Twice. Didn't work. That could be because the first time, it installed to my Download folder. When I moved the files to the correct location, the authorization may have been lost or invalidated. Anyway, it's working now.

Son of a basket of fried chicken! That did the trick. Merci beaucoup! Why, oh why, is the authorization manager feature not built in to the product manager? This whole process reminded me of a design engineer I worked with over 30 years ago. His one and only goal in life was to make his designs as complicated as possible and still get them to work. Some of the time. In the lab. One time, he was tasked with designing a test unit for field use for our remote telemetry products. When I saw his design, I told the head of R&D that it was a disaster waiting to happen. I was the most junior designer and he was #2, so I wasn't listened to. We built his tester and had to sell it for over $6K. It turned out to be almost unusable in the field. The head of R&D came back to me and asked me to design its replacement. I included a microprocessor that "gasp" required software instead a being a purely hardware unit like the original. It was 25% of the size and we were able to sell it for $1K with higher profit than the original. And it was rock-solid in the field. When I gave up on that company and went to work for our main competitor (Motorola), that black hole for development dollars was still there, doing his thing. My goal at Motorola was to drive my old company into bankruptcy in 24 months. It took me 30.