bitflipper

I am intimately familiar with the model you're referring to...19 heads, 20 platters, 300 MB capacity, similar in size and form factor to a top-loading washing machine. Those things used to go for $60,000. Weighed about 200 lbs. Were never popular with laptops.

Agreed. And it's a shame, too, because it's all very high-quality - and often unique - stuff that more people should be exposed to. At the very least everybody should go grab the freebies.

To be fair, the OP did at least come back to read the responses. Some folks are just shy, I think. Something the four of us that replied, all of whom being pretty much the opposite of shy, can't really comprehend, .

Channel 1 is the most common default. By default, Kontakt always assumes channel 1 for the first loaded instrument, then assigns channel 2 to the second instrument, and so on. Omni, btw, means the instrument ignores channel numbers altogether and responds to any MIDI coming in regardless of what channel it's on. There is a quick test to see if the instrument is "seeing" MIDI. In the instrument header, to the left of where you set the MIDI channel, is a little indicator that flashes whenever the instrument receives MIDI data. If it's not flashing while you play back your project, that usually suggests a channel assignment mismatch. Your problem may not be a channel assignment issue, though. It may be a quirk of the instrument. Some, for example, require at least one CC1, CC7 or CC11 event before they make any sound. I am not familiar with Sine specifically, but its name suggests it's an orchestral tool and these CC requirements are common among many orchestral instruments.

And before large-capacity disk drives were a thing, bulk storage was on tape, which was loaded onto a tape drive. Only the very earliest of those had capstans and rollers; they were driven by synchronized DC motors connected directly to the spindles, with vacuum columns to take up the slack during fast stops and starts. For all their complexity, when they broke it was always the same part that failed: just like your solid-state guitar amp, it was the heatsink-mounted bank of 2N3055s that made up the power amp for the motors. And those drives were dangerous: if you forgot to extend the stabilization arms on the rack when you pulled out a tape drive for maintenance the whole rack could come down on you. Don't ask me how I know that.

I could have some fun with that one. The handclaps and footstomps are nice. Would snatch it up if it had more variation beyond just "whoa". Hopefully they'll post a proper walkthrough; maybe there's more to it than the demos let on.

Anarchist!

Everybody has it. Comes with Cakewalk. We just cleverly refer to it as an "equalizer" so as to not run afoul of any BBE patents.

I've got some of those as well, but mine don't look as nice. I have a cat.

Speaking of console emulators, Dan Worrall recently posted this excellent musing. Also ties in with the Plugin Doctor thread.

Well, they got me. Again. All I can say in my defense is that it was late at night and my nightly sleep aid was already in full effect. I also ordered two pillow cases from Amazon and a Terry Pratchet book from the Kindle store.

Cheese Louise, that's more basses than I have, and all of mine are virtual.

Pretty sure that was a false-positive from Kaspersky. Not the first time a software installer has been flagged for that same supposed trojan. [EDIT: I was wrong about that. See Matthew's post below]

If the mics are too far away from the drum heads, or are the wrong kind of mics, that can result in that hollow sound even if their polarities are correct. The idea is to have each of them pick up as little as possible of what the other one hears. It's that overlap that causes comb filtering. It's one of the reasons the Shure SM-57 is popular for snares - they're pretty dead off-axis, which is good. They are also small enough to get pretty close to the drum heads, and durable enough that they won't be damaged by a wild drumstick. As for which one to invert, most will invert the bottom mic. That's because the top mic will pick up more of the other drums and you don't want phase cancellation between it and your tom-toms, so it needs to have the same polarity as the tom mics. But if you're careful where you place them, you won't need to worry about it because the tom (and hat) mics will be behind the snare mic, in its dead zone.

Honestly, it was over three years ago and I can't be absolutely certain, but I think one of them was the BBE Sonic Maximizer. I don't think I bought it, since even though I wasn't sure exactly what it did I was already pretty sure it was snake oil. It is. I found it illuminating on a range of effects, including compression but mostly for distortion plugins, from amp sims to exciters to console emulators. Some of those do far less than their marketing material would suggest. Some do more, e.g. add aliasing. For EQs, it can show you the real spectral curve so you can tell if the plugin's own display is accurate (FabFilter Q3 and iZotope Ozone, for example, are spot-on), or reveal what EQs are doing that don't have a spectral display. In the latter case, there are some filters and "enhancers" out there that simply don't want you to know what they're doing because you'd be disappointed if you knew.

First, congratulations on choosing to do something productive with your pandemic time. Wish I could say I did as well. But also a warning: once this hobby sinks its hooks into you there won't be enough hours in the rest of your life to fully explore it. No, I'm not talking about you being a geezer of 63. I'm 70 and have been doing this since I was 15, and there's no apparent end in sight when it comes to learning about this stuff. I'd focus on the basics first. It's easy to get hoodwinked by marketers who love to convince you that the only thing standing between you and your certain Grammy is the lack of whatever it is they're selling. Don't buy stuff just because somebody here tells you to, including me. At this point you have a computer and some excellent software and that's technically all you need to get rolling. Think of your keyboard not as an instrument, but a data-entry device for recording MIDI. Software synthesizers and samplers can do a much better job of making sounds, and you've already got a few of them that came with Cakewalk. There are many free third-party virtual instruments to build up your arsenal of sounds. Explore these thoroughly before investing any money - unless you're very wealthy, in which case everyone here will be happy to help you spend your fortune. The first limitation you'll run into is your cheap (your adjective) microphone going into a generic audio interface. Unfortunately, these two things need to be upgraded together, because a better microphone will have an XLR connector and won't be compatible with the little microphone jack on your computer without adding a transformer/adapter. An even better mic will likely require phantom power, which your interface probably doesn't support. We can recommend some inexpensive outboard interfaces, but first you need to decide how many microphones you'll be using at once, as that will be one of the main determinators of price. A good starter microphone would be a Shure SM-58. Those go for $99 and are extremely versatile. Every professional studio has a locker full of them. But lack of those things shouldn't stop you from getting creative and having fun right away.

Somehow this simple trick never occurred to me before seeing it demonstrated by this guy, Marc Jovani. His other tutorials are worth a look if you're a fan of educators such as Christian Henson who inspire by making orchestration look easy. Yes, the method described below works in Cakewalk. Use the Transform tool in the PRV. I'll probably continue to do it the old-fashioned way most of the time, tweaking individual notes that are too strident or too quiet, but this technique will be useful for those quick 'n dirty parts that aren't featured melodies.

Sums it up. What plugins you use will have a far greater impact on CPU performance than the host. 200+ tracks of audio with basic processing (EQ, compression, reverb) will have no issues, while 16 tracks of unfrozen resource-hungry VIs can grind everything to a halt. You can't escape the need for resource management, regardless of platform. IOW, any of us here can bring any system to its knees if we try. I, for one, try on a daily basis.

I use this tool on a regular basis, to better understand what a plugin is actually doing under the hood. Here's my nerdy review of version 1.0 from back in 2018.

I've destroyed a few cones over the years. I'm philosophical about it. It's an excuse to upgrade. At least a blown speaker gets to go out in a blaze of glory. Not like an amp emitting smoke during a gig. That's unpleasant. As an experienced electronics technician, I can tell you that all electronics are powered by magic smoke. It is injected in the final phase of manufacture. I know this because if the magic smoke ever escapes, the device ceases to work. If you don't believe it, try drilling into your CPU and see what happens.

Grammar Police just stopping by for a "wellness check"...I think you meant to say "this will arrive". Unless, of course, it's walking to your house of its own volition. OTOH, it could be just the gear-envy talking. The last thing I looked forward to arriving was an XLR cable. To be fair, it was a 50-footer.

Yeh, that's it. Authentic vintage blues tones like they did in the golden age of screwdriver speaker mods. Maybe after it's been replaced I'll put it up on Craigslist. What do you think? A hundred bucks?

A dose of reality. This is what my grandson's cat did to my home theater JBLs yesterday. She'd been using the grill to climb on, the grill popped off and she probably fell, got angry and took it out on the driver. I don't blame the cat, and am proud of my grandson for immediately stepping up and ordering a replacement speaker. Which wasn't cheap.

The post count algorithm has been updated with the forum software's new AI plugin. Now, the number is incremented not by one, but rather by a value commensurate with the post's informational content. It can even go negative if, for example, reading a post causes the reader's overall mental performance to be reduced. In particular, each grade school-level grammar or punctuation mistake drops the value by 0.1. Phrases such as "ta very muchly" are tolerated, under a special exemption for regional dialects, along with "ya great 'airy yob" and spelling "fries" as c-h-i-p-s. Unless you speak Brummie (see Ozzy Osbourne) or Mississippi quasi-English, neither of which can be understood by anyone anyway.

I'd suggest one or two high-quality multi-pattern condenser microphones if Barbershop is your main thing. Much of the texture of vocal ensembles comes from the mixing of voices, in much the same way that double-tracking fattens rock vocals. Separation isn't a concern. In fact, you'll get better results without it. Look at photos of the Beach Boys in the studio, or the Beatles performing Because - one mic. In terms of cost, two decent condensers won't be a whole lot more than four 58s. And they'll sound a lot better on your uke.