TheMaartian

Yes. It's a nice Oberheim companion to their OB-X and DMX VIs. I appreciate the fact the GForce includes standalone versions of their synths. It's nice to be able to bring one up and play it without having to open one of my DAWs or Gig Performer. For curious Europeans, the £49 listed sales price was converted to £40 plus £8 for the 20% French VAT. The real expense was PayPal's exorbitant currency conversion fee. I wound up paying 59,29 €. The nominal exchange rate is about 0.845. PayPal used 0.81! Almost 4%! Grrrrrr.

LOL. Arturia? No. UVI. Yes. Digital Synsations 1 for the eleventieth time!

I've had their Chorus plugin for some time, so this doesn't do me any good, but I watched the game last night. Türkiye played like Türkiye, a bit chaotic but very entertaining. The Orange played with more discipline, but were also quite fun to watch. I'll be cheering for them against England for sure. I hope France remembers how to score. Their semifinal against Spain will be tough. Would love to see Les Bleus against Pays-Bas (Netherlands) in the final!

Found it. It's from Soniccouture. List: 299 €. Currently on sale for 149 € until August 1st. Only 34 GB! Oi vey. Balinese Gamelan II

I don't see this. I have v1.5.3 installed, with no update showing. Was there a paid upgrade to v2 offered that I missed?

I don't spend a lot of time looking at plugins I don't have, The 3 TDR plugins I have are excellent, so I picked up Nova GE at this price. I just watched their long intro video and, holy crap, Nova looks amazing! It will definitely find a place in regular use. ??

Falcon, too. Updating both.

I waited and waited and waited for several years, then, just before Xmas 2022, NI offered Diva for half that price. I picked it up for 89,50 € (including 20% VAT). I pulled out my virtual credit card so fast, it was smoking! No idea if NI will offer that price again this coming Black Friday.

I installed v17 and nothing says "beta", so I think it's new the release version.

A bunch of new MSoundFactory instruments! Oh, boy!

Let me say this about that. I go all the way back to iLok dongles for Centronics printer ports. Each "protected" application came with its own dongle. iLok "claimed" that you could chain the dongles, but the reality was that only the dongle directly connected to the computer was recognized. So, I was constantly having to disconnect my printer and swap dongles. Even with a single dongle, a lot of stress was placed on the connector on my motherboard due to the thick, stiff printer cable. Fast forward to the USB dongle. I have one. It has NEVER worked reliably and now, on my new laptop, isn't recognized at all. I can't even deauthorize the Slate plugins that are on it. But, I have NEVER had a single problem with plugins that support licensing to my PC/laptop. Authorizing plugins via the app is super simple. I have over 100 plugins authorized to my laptop and they all work perfectly, every single time. And then iLok added Cloud support. Dongle? Bad. Cloud? Terrible. Most plugins vendors permit 2 or 3 authorizations. The idea that a user can move between multiple machines, taking their dongle or Cloud authorizations, is a limited use case. I'll grant that it works for a few peeps. Some early Slate plugins were dongle-only and never supported machine authorization. Then the Cloud came along and they added support for Cloud authorizations, but never for machine authorizations. I contacted their customer support several times, mentioning my inability to use the dongle reliable. They never once responded, not even an automated response. So, F Slate. PSP supports machine authorizations. As they have updated their plugins, they have switched from a license key file to iLok. Like I said, iLok registration and authorization was super simple and totally reliable. In my opinion, PSP now using iLok protection should not cause anyone any hesitation or flat-out rejection.

The WUP money pit.

No, I wouldn't, if the time between major version upgrades was 2 years or more. For example, my first license for Studio One Pro was v2. I happily paid for the v4, v5 and v6 upgrades. Waves v9 was out for a long time, but then v10, v11 and v12 came in pretty quick succession. Pure WUP money grab. And some companies even charge for point updates (like Vn.5). I'm not going to mention any names, they know who they are. But i have also uninstalled their products and purchased competing products with more respect for the customers' wallets. Which brings us to subscriptions. I absolutely understand and appreciate the value that subscriptions offer suppliers. It's very difficult to run a business when your income stream is neither regular or predictable. For me to sign up for a sub, it needs to offer value to me, not just to the supplier. I tend to avoid sub-only suppliers, but like having the choice of perpetual vs. sub. And how the sub license works is one major key. If I cancel the sub, can I continue to use what I have or do I lose it? And the subs that are cloud-only suck the worst, since you also lose access to all of your personal files.

I heard back from them. They asked me to check if the standalone version would authorize. I think it did when I originally installed it, but it's really unusable. Every time I start the standalone, I get an error message that the audio file I was using had either been deleted (nope!) or moved (nope again!). I had to browse for the audio file I was working on and reload it. Then, when I tried to select ASIO instead of the default Windows Audio, it refused to load my ASIO driver (that every other audio app could find and use no problem) and then became somewhat unresponsive. I could work within the app, but couldn't close it, forcing me to use the Task Manager to END the task. I replied with this info...and haven't heard back since. Maybe I'll just uninstall it and write off the 29 € I spent.

Anybody else having a problem authorizing Scaper v1.0.1? I've tried it in both Gig Performer and Reaper. I instantiate the VST3 and the Authorize window opens. I paste the long authorization code into it and press the Authorize button. Nothing. Nada. No feedback of any kind, even an unhelpful error message. Nothing. I sent an email to Sampleson. Let's see how long it takes them to respond and how they respond.

I joined the W.A. (Waves Anonymous) simple 3-step program: 1) Accept the monetary loss. 2) Uninstall all Waves plugins and associated garbage. 3) Never buy another Waves plugin or register another free Waves plugin. No 12-step program needed! No meeting attendance required! Your plugin scanners will thank you!

IIRC, WUP (Waves Update Plan) renewal cost is capped at around $250, once you get past a certain number of their plugins. Each new (to you) plugin comes with one year of free updates. Then WUP is required. Let's say that you have purchased a few at their sale (but what seems like regular) price of $29 and you've installed several freebies. Then comes WUP time. Holy smoly! An annual charge of $250 to keep WUP active? Fugetaboutit.

Waves often creates a new shell when you install a new plugin, even if there's an existing shell of the same version number. I think if you install, for example, 6 Waves plugins, one after the other, then only one shell is created. But if you install one or more new plugins, say one month later, a new shell with the same version number (V9, V10, V11, etc.) is created. Waves reminds me of a design engineer I worked with back in the '80s. His one and only motivating goal in life was to create the most complicated solution possible and still have it work. He was tasked with designing a portable test device for our new model of RTUs (Remote Telemetry Units) for use in the oil and gas industry. The darn thing cost $6K, was super flaky and got tons of complaints from the field techs. I redesigned it, getting the cost down to just over $1K and it ran glitch-free. I wound up redesigning most of his work. On the day he was shown the front door and told not to let it hit him in the patootie on the way out, I went out for a 3 martini lunch (OK, it was margheritas). I don't think I was the only one. No one seemed to notice that I was s**t-faced that afternoon.

I've already got Pro, so I'll wait a bit for an expansion pack sale. Unless I get a bad case of G.A.S. ?

Plus, it's from Waves, which means Waves shells and, eventually, WUP, even for freebies. I finally bit the bullet and wrote off all of the money I'd spent on Waves over the years. I uninstalled them all, along with the multiple v9, v10, v11 and v12 shells littering my VSTPlugins folder. I've been Waves free for over 4 years. ?

Gorgeous piano! I once (sadly, only once) got to play a 290 Imperial. An exec at a NYC-based international bank I was consulting to invited me to play his. He had added a huge addition to his Long Island house just for that piano. It was done in the old European recital room style with a two-story high ceiling, and with tall French windows with heavy curtains. Even the extra left-hand keys rang clear. No mud. Damn, but that piano sounded awesome. I had studied piano with the soloist for the St. Louis Philharmonic, but I was just a rank amateur compared to some of the jazz and classical pianists he'd invited to play it when they were in NYC on tour. I haven't often felt "special" in my life, but I did that time. There are three other libraries that I've wanted to add, so the Börsendorfer makes 4. Does Modartt ever put them on sale, or should I just PayPal 4 x 49 € to them now?

What the hey. It's only $25. Purchased and installed. EDIT: Holy cwap! Who named the Hank Marvin presets? Good lawd.

As much as I like the PSP plugins that I have, I'm not sure if I'd use this often enough to justify a purchase, even at this price. I generally reach for Soundtoys EchoBoy first, and almost always get a delay effect that works.