bitflipper

I don't care how scarred the backs of my hands get, I am not going to bite him back. Bad enough that I take a hit off the milkshake straw after he's licked it.

This spoiled-rotten pup has a dozen chew toys and various chew snacks. It's not because he's short of things to gnaw on. There's just something about the texture of microphone cables that is irresistible. Yesterday, I turned around in my chair and thought he was chewing on yet another cable. I jumped out of my chair, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and shouted "NO!!!. As he turned those cute puppy eyes toward me, I saw that he'd actually been chewing on a stick that happened to be situated in a nest of cables. I felt just awful, and immediately took him to the store for a bag of pig ears. To let me know we were still pals, he playfully bit my hand. I deserved that, I guess.

Paul Simon: "punk was invented for those who can't play a musical instrument, rap for those who can't sing." Now there's a third option for those who just can't be bothered, period. It's called "democratization". The same process that turned millions of people into infectious disease and/or international relations experts, strippers with an iPhone into millionaires, named a Royal Navy ship "Boaty McBoatface" and gave "Keeping up with the Kardashians" a Peoples' Choice award. Everybody gets a Participation Trophy! Of course none of that applies to those of us enjoying a million-dollar recording studio in a laptop, pretending to command a full orchestra, pretending to have perfect pitch, pretending to know what an oud is, taking credit for some loops we found online, and generally letting software polish our turds for us. No, that's completely different.

Two points: 1. Having a master bus is not a technical requirement. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't have one. 2. A bus alone will not change the sound of your mix. A bus with no gain and no fx will be completely transparent. You can route that bus into another bus into another bus and the sound will not change. Normally, a master bus is where the mix is brought up to desired levels. That implies that levels going into the bus are lower than the ultimate target. Take a look at your bus meters; they should be well below 0 dB, preferably around -12 but no higher than -6. If not, lower every track until it is.

First thought this morning was I'll roll up all the cables today (gig this weekend) and will be able to get through the week without the puppy destroying any more mic cables. Sweetwater will be disappointed, but that's tough. So this happened while I was rolling up a different cable. At least he severed it near the end, so I'll be able to salvage a 19.8' cable from this 20-footer.

I did not, because a) I don't yet understand exactly what's happening, and b) it might turn out to be more of a Kontakt issue. Loading three identical nki's into one instance of Kontakt isn't a normal scenario for me. Especially not nki's that are so heavily scripted as SSS2 is. Usually when I have a lot of instruments, they're all different nki's.

I have been experiencing some weirdness with SSS2, although I am enjoying it. With all the new instruments, I thought maybe SSS2 might become my new go-to percussion library. But you can only load three instruments at a time, so that means multiple instances for a percussion-heavy composition. The first two instances worked fine, but when I added a third, some samples refused to play. I decided to load the third one into a new instance of Kontakt to see if that worked better (it did). In the process, I decided to save a snapshot of the original SSS2 instance to accommodate the move. However, when I attempted to load the snapshot into the new instance, it did not appear on the list. In the original instance, I had "User" and "Factory" categories, but the "User" group did not show up anywhere else. I went on a hunt for the snapshot I'd saved, and yup, there it was under Public User. But because I had renamed the previous SSS2 instance (I called them Perc1, Perc2, and Perc3), the snapshot was saved under a subdirectory there named for the instance and consequently unavailable to any subsequent instance that wasn't named Perc3. I use snapshots with other libraries without such confusion. They, however, just stash user-created snapshots with all the others by default. The only justification for using a LUA-approved folder location is that the sample library itself can then be made read-only. But who does that?

Self-taught guy here. We often underestimate how much self-education just seeps into our subconscious, simply by listening to music. Lennon and McCartney weren't formally trained, but musicologists still analyze their compositions. They drew from a rich tradition of English popular music, threw in some American influences, and mixed them up with a heavy dose of creativity. But would they have accomplished what they did without also leveraging the knowledge of the "fifth Beatle", a formally-trained composer and multi-instrumentalist? Personally, I just know enough buzzwords to use as incantations whenever my bandmates question my wisdom. Don't like my arrangement? Hemidemisemiquaver! Mixolydian! Diminished Seventh! Grovel, lowly acolyte!

We could all get jumpsuits and form a Bowie tribute band that plays at casinos.

To answer the original post: Is ripple edit necessary? Not at all. That doesn't mean it's not a very useful feature for some users' workflows. So is the Matrix View. I don't use either feature. Come to think of it, the list of features I don't use is pretty extensive. Somebody else likely considers each of them essential.

I use a Chrome extension called Fakespot. It's a handy addition because it warns you about fake reviews on Amazon. This is what it says about the site linked in the OP: Whois shows the ownership of worldofsoftwar (sic) has been obfuscated through a third party. This is common practice when the site owners don't want you to know who they really are. Their contact info is "withheldforprivacy.com". Registrant name is "Redacted for Privacy".

Well, I suppose technically I can play rings around Keith nowadays. By the same logic I play better drums than John Bonham, better guitar than Stevie Ray Vaughn, and better harpsichord than Amadeus Mozart.

That looks like a pirate site, Tim. As a general rule, Spectrasonics does not discount its products, You're just gonna have to bit the bullet. To quote Lucy from Disenchantment, "do it...do it...do it".

That's a pretty good Photoshop job, Paulo. You did that yourself? I'm about to go in for my semi-annual haircut, just might take this in to show the barber.

I don't know who that is. Pretty sure it's now Bowie. It's either somebody who can't shave himself in the morning, or has unsupervised children with access to Sharpies.

Next band rehearsal is Sunday. I'm going to ask to measure our sax player's hands. Hope he doesn't think it's weird, but at this point it's important research. If I find out I have the smallest hands in the band I could risk my credibility as musical director. They might all start questioning whether someone with such short stubby fingers even knows what the hell he's talking about! That could lead to an insurrection and me being deposed in favor of the guitarist. That SOB has long fingers and loves Iron Maiden. Suddenly we're an 80's glam rock cover band and I really can't pull off Spandex. Then I break my back because I've had to replace my compact QSCs for Marshall stacks, my hearing blows out from playing at 140 dBSPL and my kids think my new David Bowie haircut looks ludicrous. I have to buy a 1972 Chevy van, which we all live in while we tour the Midwest playing at NASCAR events. The bassist, now suffering from a heroin habit, can't keep his sh*t together because his wife has left him and we have to fire him after he gets into a fistfight on stage with the drummer. Then again, I might just be overthinking it.

Well, they finally deemed me worthy of the upgrade. Shut up and take my money! I begged. First impressions: some nice new samples added, but more importantly they've added more velocity layers to some of the existing instruments. For example, there's one named "Shells" I liked from the old version but it didn't respond to velocity, but now it does. Sequencer still seems to start at whatever step it wants to, but now that I can drag it onto the MIDI track that shouldn't be an issue anymore. The new kick and toms are deep and full-sounding. Weird thing when I attempt to use more than two instances of the nki - the third instance will not play and a clicking sound comes out. Will investigate further, but for now it doesn't look like this will be my go-to general purpose percussion instrument since I can only load 3 sources per nki and only two nki's per Kontakt instance.

Just realized my right and left hands don't match. Left is 7.5", right hand is 8". That might explain why it's hard to find gloves that fit. Makes sense, I guess, given the superior work ethic of the right hand. It does everything, from scrubbing pans to pruning roses. I am, however, impressively ambidextrous when it comes to nose-detritus removal.

Quite possibly. There is little to no downside to just keeping larger buffers in place, with the exception of when you play virtual instruments. Mine are set to 2048 samples and almost never changed. The only time I reduce them is when I'm playing a VI in real time, and that's usually only when I've acquired a new Kontakt library and want to explore it. Most of the time, large-buffer latency isn't an issue because I'm listening to outboard hardware while recording MIDI. Once the MIDI has been recorded, I route it to a virtual instrument.

Will is correct. However, increasing the buffer size doesn't always solve the problem. Sometimes the root cause of CPU overload can be obscure. Often, it's a background process or interrupt service routine (ISR) that's hogging the CPU. Troubleshooting this kind of issue begins with a free diagnostic tool called LatencyMon. Interpreting the results can be challenging, but there are some instructions on the Resplendence website that may help. What this utility does is measure DPC latency, the time it takes for your computer to process hardware interrupts. Interrupts take priority over pretty much everything else, so if they're taking too long it can keep your system from handling audio properly. Sometimes it's a sloppily-written driver, sometimes it's a broken interface card. The most frequent offenders are network adapters, in particular wireless wi-fi. But run the tool and report back what it tells you.

Yes, there are sampled B3s for Kontakt. Native Instruments themselves sell a product called Vintage Organs, which includes not only a B3 but also an M3, C3, Farfisa and Vox Continental. It's $99. Here's the link: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/keys/vintage-organs/

I used to have a programmable keyboard that allowed any keyboard shortcut to any sequence of commands. It was very handy in the DAW, although CW already uses so many keyboard shortcuts there weren't many left to assign. Such keyboards are popular with gamers. Go on Amazon and search "Programmable Keyboards". There are also software-only solutions that intercept keystrokes before they get to the application. The advantage is that they work with any application, even DOS programs. Here's one I haven't used myself but have long thought would be ideal because it offers its own keys.

Sheesh, you guys are all giants. We may have to switch the conversation to gut diameters so I don't feel like such a dwarf. I remember reading about a guy who had 6 fingers on each hand. Somebody wrote a piece specifically for him that literally no one else in the world could play.

Mallets are awesome. And the virtual ones are almost guaranteed not to cause physical injury to bystanders.

Yeh, I thought it was pretty cool that they left that in. Maybe they ought to start making blooper reels to accompany these videos.