bitflipper

I've played the RD2000. It's got a pleasant action not unlike the Kronos, meaning the keys are "hammer action" (a marketing white lie in almost all digital keyboards) with the weights heavier in the low end and lighter in the high end, in an attempt to simulate an acoustic piano action. It's also got that V thing going on, which gives you progressive velocities rather than discrete velocity layers. Unfortunately, though lighter than the Kronos, at 48 lbs. it still falls short of satisfying my light weight requirement. Plus iirc the organs and Leslie emulation were weak. I've had a bunch of Roland keyboards over the years. All were good values for the money, but until recently I never cared for their keyboard action. Yamaha has always done that part well. IIRC, AKAI makes their keybeds. My best setup so far was in fact a digital piano / synth (Yamaha MO8) alongside a Hammond XK-1. That way, you get the feel of a piano when playing piano and the feel of an organ when playing the organ. But it takes up too much space on stage if they're set up side-by-side and when stacked you can't see the controls on the lower instrument (and on high stages the audience can't see me at all, not that that's necessarily a bad thing).

Went to bed last night with a back ache. My keyboard weighs 82 lbs in the flight case. So I started poking around online to see if there was something I could switch to that wouldn't be such a back-breaker. Spent some time listening to the Nord Stage 3, which is waay lighter than my Korg KRONOS. Sure, that thing's expensive. Sheesh, they want $700 for a soft-sided case! But I wasn't put off by the price (the Korg was about the same). Rather, I was put off by the weak organ sounds and Leslie emulation. I need a good Hammond-type sound since my "real" organ stays at home now to reduce stage space and setup time. Even the Nord's well-respected piano libraries were too special-purpose for me. They sound great in solo but would likely get lost in a rock band. The KRONOS, by comparison, has literally dozens of pianos and lots of third-party libraries available. So I pose this question to all the keyboardists here: what should I be looking at for a lighter-weight substitute for my Korg? Yamaha Montage weighs 64 lb, so that's out. The Roland Fantom could be a contender, being lightweight and having good organ sounds, and it's relatively cheap. But its synth action keybed won't cut it, as I play pianos about 75% of the time. Your thoughts?

Many plugin developers already make use of the GPU. Maybe they've figured it out now, and maybe this product will make it easier to implement, but for years it was a real PIA to get GPU support to work reliably across all manufacturers' hardware because each one is different, even within a given product line. I was involved in one vendor's beta and it took months to get it working on my particular card, even though it worked flawlessly on cards from other manufacturers. My guess is that DAW developers wouldn't be in any hurry to take this route and incur the inevitable support nightmare that would follow. It would make far more sense for plugin developers. But what do I know? I once predicted the end of hardware-based audio processing, and now everybody's using TC Powercores or ProTools HD.

To the topic...I played around with this a bit. I've always imagined a MIDI plugin that would randomly pan each note, creating an effuse, or maybe twinkly effect. That plugin doesn't exist, AFAIK, but I hoped that this might produce a similar effect. It doesn't. At the default setting, most things I threw at it just laid lifelessly on the left and occasionally jumped to the center. Who'd have guessed that panning the quietest notes left and the loudest notes right isn't all that useful? That said, there are other modes I haven't experimented with yet, and I think that if you created a track specifically with this effect in mind it could still be pretty nifty.

You're an inspiration to us all, man. Kind of like those vegans who superglued themselves to the counter at Starbucks to protest the price of soy milk. I don't understand them, but I do admire their commitment.

Does it not emulate the MCU protocol? Most similar devices do (the "U" in MCU stands for "Universal"). If so, Cakewalk supports it natively. At least, that is my understanding, as I do not use that type of controller anymore. Azslow would know. Smart guy.

It varies from vendor to vendor. Some store factory presets separately from user presets. Many use proprietary formats, others use text or XML. Some location examples, taken from notes I made the last time I went on a similar hunt: ValhallaRoom C:\Users\{user_name}\AppData\Roaming\Valhalla DSP, LLC\ValhallaRoom\User Presets Factory presets: C:\Users\All Users\All Users\Valhalla DSP, LLC\ValhallaRoom\Factory Presets Native Instruments \users\{user_name}\documents\Native Instruments\{Product_Name}\presets U-He Zebra \program files\cakewalk\vstplugins\zebra2.data\presets\zebra2 -or- \vstplugins\u-he\Zebra2.data\presets\Zebra2 File formats and file extensions vary, too. FabFilter's have a .ffp suffix and are binary files, while Ozone presets are editable XML. Kontakt presets tend to be .nka files, but many vendors prefer snapshot files. U-He uses a proprietary text file format with .h2p extensions. Voxengo uses .cbf (compressed bank file), and lets the user specify where user-defined presets are stored. Omnisphere's are the weirdest, with separate (binary) formats for fx, filters, arpeggiators, oscillators, LFOs and envelopes. Multis and patches are stored in .db files. Since the majority use "presets" in the folder name, you could find most of them by issuing this DOS command from the root: DIR *presets /s /ad

I have to keep getting rid of my old Cakewalk installers. I like to keep the most recent one just in case, but tend to forget about them. Just looked and I had 2 GB worth of Cakewalk installers hanging about. [EDIT: Now that I think about it, though, that may just be me and my fellow beta testers, who sometimes update multiple times a month. I'm thinking that the BandLab downloader must get rid of installation files automatically, right?]

Isn't it strange, that a world where mutants want to eat you is still a more pleasant place to be than reality?

"1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8...I can't think of the finish." "That's strange, I can't think of anything else." "I think I went past it." "Well, if you come around again, jump off." This, I think, is the definition of free jazz.

Fallout 4 is totally worth deleting those for. (Admittedly not a universal opinion.) My solution to massive games eating disk space is getting a cheap external drive and copying old games to it before deleting. That way, I can always tell myself that I can restore them if I change my mind. To date I have never once re-installed a game that I'd previously tired of. Also, I keep games physically separate from the important stuff (e.g. sample libraries and DAW projects). It's one thing to blow away Skyrim and another thing entirely to decide if a Kontakt library I haven't used since 2011 needs to go.

You know what's gonna happen, right? Half way through that trip a viable hypothesis will pop into your head, but you won't be able to test it out. Then you'll think about nothing else for the rest of the flight, lest you forget that inspiration. This is why they give you napkins with your soda.

Yay! One mystery solved, only 32767 more to go before the universe makes complete sense again.

Oops, that screenshot is for a different plugin. The "True Mid-Side Extractor" does not have all those controls. Here's the one we're talking about: With "Adjustable" as the selected output, this plugin pretty much acts like a normal M/S gain effect like MSED (free from Voxengo). If you turn the knob all the way to the left, the result can be comical. I tried it on a full mix that had a stereo organ track. The Leslie effect was turned into a weird bubbling noise, since all I heard was when the sound went fully to the side, while the panning transition through the center was quashed. With "Middle/Center" selected, it does the same thing as Cakewalk's Channel Tools plugin if you center the L and R sliders. Basically a stereo-to-mono effect. "Stereo Sides" works like MSED when you turn the Side up or the Mid down, emphasizing the harder-panned components. "Left Side" and "Right Side" are exactly that. Eliminates the opposite side. Still looking for a practical use case. At this point that would seem to be as a M/S widener, but I can already do that with Channel Tools or MSED.

Maybe opening a hole within a stereo synth pad to make room for vocals? Obviously, it depends on your definition of Right, Left and Center. Looking at the screenshots on their page show that these are all user-definable. They definitely make a better case there than what's in the KVR product description. On their own product page, they advertise it as a width maximizer. Sounds like you'd use it to emphasize the Side content - which is exactly what you do with a M/S-aware EQ or compressor, except with the added ability to treat Left and Right independently. These pictures make it more clear what the plugin does.

I've already got multiple ways to do this, but I picked it up anyway. For 17 bucks, it's a - I refuse to use "no-brainer" because I like to think my brain is always engaged, even for easy decisions. Let's just call it a good value. But please, everyone, don't over-use it. Not every vocal needs to sound like a Disney princess theme.

WTF. I had to read that explanation twice to figure out wth they're talking about. First, they give the actual literal definition of M/S and then proceed to tell you that it's all wrong by giving a misleading explanation of how M/S processing works and what it's for. And then arrogantly designate their interpretation as "True" Mid/Side. The good news is it's not complete bs. You just have to read between the lines. What they call "True" Mid/Side is just a way to make left, center and right content available as separate streams. I'm not sure at this point why I'd want to do that, but it legitimately is a new way of looking at stereophonic processing. I take issue only with confusing it with what they call "traditional" M/S processing, because that's what M/S processing is. Of course, they use the same technique internally to determine the common content that M/S encoding does, but this is in no way a replacement for M/S encoding/decoding. I'd be curious to hear anyone's hypotheses as to potential applications for this plugin. Separating voices in a spoken interview recorded with a stereo microphone in the same room, perhaps?

Good tip! I found a bunch (800MB) in \program files (x86)\common files\avid\plug-ins. Didn't think to look there. Not sure which of those were due to my own inattentiveness and which were due to lazy installers. Almost every vendor in there was a reputable source: Spitfire, iZotope and even Cakewalk. And, of course, AAS. My mistake was doing a global search for *.aax. 32-bit versions have an extension of .aaxplugin. When I went to root and typed "dir *.aax* /s" I found a bunch more.

Just listened to your recording. That's the sound Windows makes when it senses a USB device being plugged in or unplugged, or switching from external power to USB power. Maybe something's only partly plugged in, or a bad USB cable?

You could try running Task Manager off to the side, or on a second monitor if you have one, and potentially catch the culprit in the act if you notice a jump in CPU whenever the beep sounds. Or you might get lucky and spot a process called AnnoyingBeep.exe.

When I worked for corporate masters, no new feature was allowed unless you could first prove that it would increase sales. That's one reason I respect the Cakewalk model. Sometimes cool stuff just appears and I don't remember anybody demanding it.

Weird indeed. Some had no problem while others, like me, just gave up after multiple attempts. I might just give it another go, just for grins.

It's been a while since I've attempted to get Dim Pro going, but when I say "every trick in the book" I'm pretty sure that included a complete uninstall and re-install. What eventually worked was something very obscure that only someone with access to DP internals would have come up with. Wish I'd made notes at the time. I'm usually a compulsive note-taker, but didn't think I'd need to do that again, i.e. didn't anticipate my computer being stolen and having to rebuild everything from scratch. It's no big deal. Once upon a time, Dim Pro was a go-to instrument. But that was 1.5 terabytes of Kontakt libraries ago.

As a former programmer, you are probably aware that in most companies installers are a last-minute consideration, and typically assigned to the most junior developers. But I certainly understand your disdain for lazy programmers. I think about it every time I open my microwave and the "READY" beeps just keep on going, ignoring the fact that I've already responded and have removed my food. Meanwhile, my 40-year-old microwave that I keep in the garage to warm my coffee knows to stop beeping as soon as I open the door.

I haven't been able to authorize Dim Pro in years. Believe me, I've tried every trick in the book. Last time I was successful was around 2008, after a Cakewalk employee (who no longer works there) gave me an obscure workaround, but I've forgotten what his trick was. I just keep hoping someday they'll dust off the source code, get rid of that arcane authorization scheme and start selling it again. It's a great product.