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bitflipper

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Posts posted by bitflipper

  1. You're going to be in a very rural area, so you might have to travel hours (everywhere you go takes hours) to find a bar with a live band. 

    However, it's a very musical country. At the very least, expect to do some karaoke. Don't be shy when invited to do so - it really doesn't matter if you do it well or not, they'll love you for participating.

    What I'd suggest is working in a couple days in Manila on your way back home. Staying in Manila eases the anxiety of catching your flight on time (believe me, you do NOT want to miss your flight), and it's the best place to find music of any genre, from folk to prog to metal.

    Have a great trip!

    • Like 1
  2. More power to ya, Joshua. Make music first, then worry about buttons and flashy lights.

    Don't know why you're running the 32-bit version of SONAR, though. It would be completely painless to switch to the 64-bit version, and that'd open up a lot of sample libraries that just don't fit into the 32-bit memory space.

    Also know that Cakewalk by Bandlab can be installed alongside SONAR 8.5 and will open all your 8.5 projects. You could go ahead and throw it on your machine, play with it at your leisure, and maybe discover some nifty features you like. Of which there are many. 

    • Like 3
  3. 19 hours ago, craigb said:

    Wow!  That is bizarre!  I replied to THIS thread earlier but didn't see the reply.  A quick search found it ... IN THE SONG ASSOCIATION thread!!! ?

    I realize it was a multi-quote over two pages, but how the heck did it post there??!

    Here's the actual reply!

     

    Yeh, I saw that. I assumed that it was my mistake, that you were replying to a post that I'd accidentally made in that thread. Although that was unlikely, given that I hadn't even opened that thread until seeing the notification of your reply.

  4. I don't think I've embedded a program change in a MIDI track in this century.

    When I was using hardware synths exclusively and limited to 4 tracks, program changes (and sysex dumps) were essential. But when you can have nearly unlimited instances of software synthesizers and your DAW remembers everything for you, there's really no reason to bother.

     

    • Like 3
    • Great Idea 1
    • Meh 1
  5. I became an InfoWorld reader around 1984, only because there were always copies lying about the office, so I guess I missed its glory years. My favorite mag was Nibble, which was aimed at Apple ][ hobbyists, which I was. That and Polyphony were the main reasons I'd go check the mailbox every day. A couple years ago I was doing some housecleaning and found stacks of both magazines in a closet. What a dope, I tossed them all.

    Sorry to the OP for going so far off-topic. Did everybody get the follow-up email?

    Quote

     

    Dear customer,

    the previous newsletter caused a little confusion among the OSX users. Please note that we are NOT going to stop supporting OSX platform. However we wanted to point out there are certain problems on OSX and there is an alternative.

    We are sorry for the confusion.

    Vojtech for your MeldaProduction team

     

     

  6. InfoWorld featured the same recurring topic in every single issue: whatever you're doing now, it's obsolete.

    It wasn't targeted at rank-and-file geeks. I know this because all I had to say was that I was the CEO of my company and I got a free subscription. (It was only a two-person company, so calling myself CIO would have been pretentious.)

    The rank and file had Dr. Dobbs' Journal. Thanks to that periodical I learned that the future of programming was LISP. And wasted a summer learning it.

     

  7. 6 hours ago, antler said:

    As the saying goes: there are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't

    Bingo. 

    One can improve one's understanding of binary, but it's a slow process. You just have to improve bit by bit. 

    Or take a class. I recommend "Binary 101".

     

  8. A "glitch" is a buffer-starvation issue. IOW, your computer isn't able to fill the output buffers fast enough to maintain uninterrupted output. That's because it's busy doing something else.

    If you can't get around it by increasing the buffer size, you need to figure out what other process is monopolizing your CPU. Unfortunately, that can have a great many causes. However, because your project played fine yesterday but not today, you have an important clue. Namely, something is different today. Determine what that is and you've solved the mystery.

    Start with Task Manager and see if there are any background processes eating up CPU. If Microsoft is force-feeding updates to your computer, that can certainly do it. If there's a scheduled backup or defrag going on, that'll do it too. Anything that keeps the network interface or your disk drives busy can do it. A program that uses large amounts of RAM, perhaps due to a memory leak, can slow you down.

    Always start with a reboot. Sometimes that's all it takes, especially if the issue is memory. If not, start looking for processes that are running that aren't as important as your DAW but think they are.

     

  9. Good point. I don't know that I'd waste time promoting plugins for Audacity, despite its huge install base. Plus Logic and Pro Tools users already self-identify as folks who have no problem spending money needlessly - clearly a more desirable market segment.

    Meanwhile, we cakewalkers merrily follow our own path, content in the knowledge that our solution works as well as any other. Just less-expensively.

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  10. I used to work at a company that sold high-end software for designing printed circuit boards. It was very expensive, but popular with many large manufacturers.

    One day, the company decided to switch from its proprietary OS to UNIX. There was panic in the tech community, as everyone was now going to need to achieve the same level of expertise in a new environment that had taken many years to acquire in the old one. There were seminars, training classes, books distributed. I myself took a company-paid vacation to Boston to study UNIX (I was already pretty well-versed in UNIX, but hey, a couple weeks out of town on an expense account).

    But here's the thing: users of the software barely noticed the switch. For them, the O/S was just a program launcher. Most of them used dedicated machines just for this one application, much the way many recordists dedicate a machine to being a DAW. For them, moving to another platform was no more stressful than buying a different brand of automobile.

    Vojtech is famous for having strong opinions and being stubbornly self-confident in them. Often, rightly so. He is, after all, universally recognized among his peers as a genuine expert in the field. There have been many times when users have asked for enhancements and he's flat out told them "you don't need that". Then 6 months later there's a new release and that feature has been quietly added.

    • Like 1
  11. RE: The Ladies

    Love that product. Someday you won't need to deal with egocentric vocalists at all. Someday. Not just yet, though.

    However, where sampled voices can shine is when augmenting live vocals, mixing them underneath "real" voices. When used subtly, even non-articulated voices such as those in Omnisphere or various orchestral libraries can fatten real vocals. I think of them as programmable reverb.

    • Great Idea 1
  12. If children will be the primary users, then closed-back headphones will be a must. Same goes for kids' musical instruments and handheld devices. They want to explore and that should be encouraged. But no point in subjecting your own ears to their experiments. 

    You can get those cheap $29 cans that studios buy in bulk for handing out to drummers and bass players.

    • Haha 2
  13. Ironic, given iZotope's long relationship with Cakewalk. Some ex-CW employees work there today.

    Usually, it's not a show of disregard for any particular host, but rather a practical matter of how much time you can devote to thoroughly testing your product within many hosts. You've got to do that before you can actually claim "support", even though it's a safe bet that any DAW that conforms to the main plugin interface specifications will be compatible. Tracktion isn't on that list either, but is fully VST-compliant.

    • Like 2
  14. My favorite Hammond emu has long been the original VB3 - not the more recent VB3-II, which is one of those products I alluded to that I elected not to write about. Sadly, the old VB3 is no longer available through legal channels. Its author needed to completely rewrite VB3 so it could be embedded into hardware units such as the Crumar Mojo (which I have). Along the way he left out something. Perhaps a call to the MakeHammondMagic() function.

    Arturia's B3-V is OK, adds some interesting modulation features and fx, but isn't particularly authentic with its baked-in distortion. Its Leslie emulation sounds good on slow rotation but its fast mode doesn't sound quite right. I got decent results by using other peoples' Leslie sims such as L'otary and MVintageRotary from Melda.

    GG Audio's Blue3 is a good value for, IIRC, a hundred bucks. The Leslie is just OK, but has the advantage of being a separate plugin, so you can throw it on a guitar or vocal if you like. The new UI is a big improvement over their previous synth-style interface. They seem determined to keep enhancing it until it's best-in-class. Even if not quite there yet, it's definitely in the same league with IKM's.

    IKM's B3-X is the first one I've used that gets both the organ and the Leslie right in the same package, sounds good clean or dirty, and gets the Leslie fast tremolo effect right.

     

    • Thanks 1
  15. Here's what probably happened...when you booted Windows for some reason the interface didn't respond and therefore never made it onto the list of known devices. It may have been the interface's fault or a USB port that didn't initialize.

    Then when you tried to restart SONAR, it was probably still running as a zombie process, waiting for the nonexistent interface to respond. Whenever SONAR refuses to start, go to your Task Manager, see if it's already running, and kill the process if it is.

    Most of the time, the interface will come back after you reboot your computer. Make sure you turn it on first, before the computer, so that it's had time to boot itself and therefore be ready to respond when Windows comes calling. I'll bet once you've rebooted you'll be able to go back to ASIO with no problems. If not, look for a hardware answer, hopefully something easy like an unplugged USB cable.

    • Like 1
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