bitflipper

Ah, so apparently some people assume it's the MOUSE that's 35" wide. That explains the one-star reviews on Amazon.

Got tired of my mouse falling off the edge of my mouse pad, often in the heat of a virtual zombie battle. So I got one that's 35" wide. An early birthday present for myself. At least, that's how I justified the $18 expense.

But then what would hold up your coffee table?

Unless your MIDI file includes a sysex dump, it will have only patch selection information, not instrument selection per se. There's a difference. Assuming no sysex, your MIDI file specifies generic bank and patch offsets that don't address any specific instrument definition. You'll only get, say, "cello" if the target synth has loaded a cello patch at the same bank/patch offset. If you're using General MIDI-aware synths, that shouldn't be a problem. That's the whole idea behind GM; it's a standardized patch list. However, bank/patch-change events are optional. In the absence of those commands, the synth will default to bank 0, patch 0. Which, in a GM-compliant synth, is always Piano. The MIDI file format is probably not relevant, as all of them support patch-change commands. Your problem is most likely that no patch-change commands are being included in the file. They won't be written unless you've specified the bank and patch via the dropdown lists in the track header.

I've heard those S3A's (well, not those specific ones) and they are frickin' amazing speakers. Built back when the company's founder was still around and all their stuff was still made in Germany. If I was in the market, I'd definitely consider driving from Seattle to the bay area for them. I always tell people to buy studio monitors used. They don't wear out, don't get abused, and you're able to get quality that's a few notches above what your budget might otherwise allow. Note that these aren't exactly nearfields; they like to be a bit further away from the mix position than their smaller siblings.

I've heard your stuff and I gotta say you're doing just fine on your own. You sure don't need my help. That said, any time you want a second opinion, feel free to hit me up.

Have you noticed that since the weekly half-off sales began, Melda pricing has been slowly creeping upward? Today the 50% price is sometimes higher than the list price was a couple years ago. I'm still a fan, but Vojtech's stuff ain't the bargain it used to be.

I can relate, Greg. I'm in a creative slump, but am currently working on two friends' albums. I am contributing only technical chops, nothing musical. But there is satisfaction in making somebody else sound good, right?

Don't get your hopes too high expecting a miracle, Alan. Yes, if you're doing large orchestral projects with deeply-sampled libraries (like Micheal does), then it could make a big difference, especially if you optimize your VIs to make use of the extra RAM. But don't expect projects to load faster or playback to be smoother. You still have to read the data, which is still going to be throttled by disk latency, the I/O bus and the speed of the memory itself. It's true that "you can never have too much RAM", insofar as there is no downside other than the money you've spent on it. However, there's no benefit if it never gets used. I have only 16GB here, and have yet to run out of physical memory. YMMV, of course.

Just speculating, but I'd expect at least small gains in read times, which could improve load times for large libraries. But the gains are going to be small with SSDs, as the main benefit of striped sets is to combat rotational latency and mechanical head seeks, which don't apply to SSDs. I'm just guessing here, since my own history with RAID has been limited to database servers, where many processes are reading and writing large files. DAWs and VIs are designed to minimize disk activity, and with only one user I'd expect only marginal speed improvements. In theory you could reduce the preload buffers of your Kontakt libraries to make initial project loading faster, relying on your fast drives to avoid the usual downside of doing so, namely stuttering during playback as samples are streamed on demand. That might only make a noticeable improvement on certain sample libraries, e.g. those with long samples, such as pianos. As for which makes better use of RAID 0, samples or projects, throughput gains are greater for reads than for writes. So you're absolutely right: static data benefits more. Whether or not you'll actually notice the difference, I dunno. All I know is that I'm far more impatient waiting for a project to load than anything that happens afterward. More than once I've gone and made a cup of tea rather than watch the progress bar creep along as a big sample-based project loads.

Just a thought...are you maybe running SONAR as Administrator but not Cakewalk? I've never heard of such a scenario, but I suppose it's conceivable that Windows permissions could be playing a part in preventing the file from being closed. More mysterious is why it's opening the project file to begin with. Every DAW has its own proprietary and undocumented file format, making it unlikely to be useful to any software other than cakewalk.exe itself. I'll be very interested in what Noel finds out from Steinberg, if indeed they are forthcoming at all.

abacab, you've just described exactly my own experience, and this is why I've avoided iLok ever since. Once upon a time, Eventide was the only company doing what they do. Fortunately, that's no longer the case. I can't think of any H3000 trick you can't do with alternatives that use friendlier copy protection schemes.

Is Eventide still married to Pace? I'm interested in the new Crystals plugin, but I don't do iLok, even in software form. The page says is "Requires iLok: NO", but that's often weasel-speak for "doesn't need a hardware dongle but still installs the Pace driver".

Dude, if you've only found 13 so far you haven't been looking hard enough. Turns out, there's this nifty wheel thing that seeks out the 16,384 missing notes in between!

Sounds pretty good on my not-so-cheap cans, too. So yeh, I'd say you're doing numerous things right. Small suggestion: the room mics in SD3 can really add a live blues feel to this kind of material. Don't be afraid to bring those up and even compress them. My favorite is the medium-distance mics with a hint of the far mics. I don't mind the heavy kick you've got going. Nothing wrong with a little genre-confusion. I'd also note that there are no rules for what makes the blues the blues. BB King went from being a niche artist to worldwide superstar due to one radical production choice: adding strings. Just a thought...why not step a little further out of the box and throw some of your signature synth textures into this tune? P.S. If you didn't get David Sprouse's joke about Adele, search YouTube for a Rick Beato video titled something like "and then Adele said 'I hate wah wah'".

Don't you just love a mystery? I know I do. Lucky you, you're hot on the trail of one now. This is looking to me like a bug in synsopos.exe. It's a child of cakewalk.exe because it was invoked by a Steinberg plugin that is also a child process of cakewalk.exe. As Noel says, the only people with the answer are going to be at Steinberg and/or Syncrosoft. There's a good chance Syncrosoft already knows about this and may even have already fixed it. I'd check to see if there is a newer version of eLicenser available. There may be a link at the Steinberg site.

Nice to see the drummer is still going at it with such commitment...losing the gold lame suit and letting his hair grow out was a smart move. P.S. Don't think I am mocking your friend's band. Good on them for doing their thing. In fact, at the next rehearsal the drummer should introduce the concept of stage presence to the other guys.

I've composed music for training videos, and found it frustrating. Trying to develop a musical story with a beginning, middle and end that fits precisely inside N seconds ain't easy. We can't know yet how well your piece suits the video, but I am surely impressed with how you've managed to construct such a compact but cohesive tune. Yes, the mix is superb, but really what makes it work is the arrangement. It builds, not just by getting louder but via the successive addition of elements and building complexity. All crammed into a little over one minute. Good stuff.

I wasn't going to suggest Process Monitor, at least not until every other avenue of investigation had been explored. As you've discovered, diagnosing a problem via Process Monitor often requires some deep archaeological digging. Unfortunately, the log isn't revealing anything you didn't already know, namely that CW is unable to overwrite the CWP file due to a sharing violation. There is another tool that's more explicit in identifying which process has a file open, but it's been years since I've used it and can't remember what it was called. I'll see if I can dig it up. [EDIT] Ah, the tool I was thinking of is called Handle, another one written by Mark Russinovich. It lists all open file handles. This is a DOS command, so you'll need to write its output to a text file and then search the text file. Open a command prompt and type: Handle64 > junk.txt & notepad junk.txt You can also use Handle to search for a specific file name, using the -u option: Handle64 -u {filename}

Semantic distinction: YMMV <> BS

Yes. Just don't use any computer-based effects while recording, and then raise your buffer sizes while mixing if you'll be using a lot of effects. (You may think you won't be using a lot of fx, but everybody eventually does. The cornucopia of cheap digital effects available is just too alluring.)

My pulse noticeably quickened just looking at that slideshow. I would not want to be the guy on the downstairs end! How spoiled we've become with smaller, lighter gear. For years I packed around a PA that required two guys to load each speaker into the van. Today, my PA speakers weigh about 35 lbs each and are smaller than just the horns from that old PA. This past Sunday I went to jam at my friends' house, way out in the boonies. It was surprisingly fun, despite being uncomfortably warm. We played outdoors, widely spaced and separated by clear shower curtains. But doing this required packing up and moving my 80 lb. synth for the first time in 9 months. I also took one of my old Roland keyboard amps, which I hadn't used in years. Those things are made out of real wood, and heavy. That night I went to bed with an aching back.

You might want to consider using track templates when inserting Kontakt. That way, you're assured of getting exactly what you want without having to fiddle with Kontakt's sometimes obtuse UI. Well, that is you only have to fiddle with it once. The issue, I think, is that Cakewalk is going by the number of outputs the soft synth advertises, not the number of outputs you're actually using. I don't think it would have any way of knowing how you've got Kontakt configured internally. Again, you can avoid all that by setting up some generic track templates. I have one specifically for strings, for example, with separate outputs for violin, viola, cello and bass. Each audio track will then be pre-named and always in the same order, which avoids confusion when mixing. I do the same thing for Superior Drummer.

It does not. That's so you can enable/disable effects during playback without messing up the sync. You can, however, disable delay compensation independently.

To be honest, I didn't blame the movers. They didn't know what they were doing, and neither did I. I'd never moved a grand piano before. Yes, it has casters. But they don't work well even on a hardwood floor. Wouldn't have helped anyway, as the only way to get it in the house was to remove the legs and turn it on its side. Four guys could barely lift it, and there were steps. It got dropped on the concrete steps, hence the gouge. It's only a 5' 4" baby grand, but it still weighs probably 700 pounds. If I ever sell this house, I'm advertising it as "includes a pool table and a grand piano".