bitflipper

Yes, that was interesting. Thanks for sharing the link. For no particular reason, I'd always pictured Furman as maybe a subdivision of some Taiwanese manufacturing giant (which it now is), not a mom 'n pop startup by hippies. I'm looking at a Furman product right now, at the bottom of my rack.

A reasonable presumption, I agree. However, I assume the OP wants to know if the K-system is worth learning about. Hopefully, my terse affirmative didn't come off sounding condescending, and instead conveyed that yes, it's worth investigating. And now thanks to your thoughtful addendum, he knows that it is neither coffee- nor coffee-house related. So aleo, if there's anything you want to know about K-metering and speaker calibration, just let us know. Even InstrEd knows a lot about it. I, on the other hand, know nothing about k-cups other than to assume they are bigger than d-cups.

If it's in the Coffee House, just wait an hour. It'll slip off the first page and be forgotten. J/K. If it's your own post, just shoot me a PM (or scook, John, Wookie, chuckebaby) and I'll gladly remove it. I'd also suggest that if you've posted a question or issue and then subsequently resolved it on your own, everybody will appreciate it if you post a follow-up detailing what your solution was. Don't be embarrassed if it's just an "oops, it was user error" - those lessons are valuable, too.

Yeh, pretty much everybody.

Apologies to anyone who may have been put off of Melodyne 5 by me mistakenly assuming the software copy protection was Pace. It isn't. BTW, the upgrade was worth it just for the new leveling feature. Saved hours of editing.

Correction: I may have been wrong about the Pace requirement. I've been unable to find the paragraph that said that (or that I interpreted as saying that). It may be that the options are between an iLok dongle and software-based protection that is similar to Pace but not supplied by Pace. The difference is that while it's still tied to your computer, you don't need an iLok account to make it work and won't need to have the Pace driver service running.

Good stuff, Wook. So relaxing. You'd never know it had been created by an 8-foot tall monster. I think the new drums sound great. Minor suggestion: the crash cymbals are a bit overpowering and might benefit from a little more variation, e.g. adding another cymbal for variety or using a side-hit ride. OTOH, they might just need to have their velocities backed off. I find that SD3's crash and china cymbals often fit better at lower velocities.

Neither the problem nor the solution has anything to do with Cakewalk. Waves' copy protection is notoriously fragile, a mousetrap with a hair trigger. Repaired your motherboard? Sorry, we assume that means you are a criminal. Replaced your network adapter? No RBass for you today! What you have to do is re-authorize your Waves plugins using their tool. I've had to do that twice in the past, but neither time did I need to open a support ticket. Actually, back then I couldn't open a support ticket because at the time they denied support to anyone not enrolled in their protection racket (aka WUP). Since then, I've managed to avoid the problem, mainly by no longer using Waves plugins.

When you go to buy a new plugin and find out you already own it...is that a sign you have too many of them, or just an early indication of coming dementia? At least if it's the latter, every day will be like Christmas.

Yes, version 5 requires iLok. However, the hardware dongle is optional. You can use the software-only Pace driver instead. [EDIT: SEE CORRECTION BELOW] This locks it to your computer, but they allow multiple registrations if you use more than one computer. Just don't forget (like I once did) to delete previous registrations if you upgrade your computer, lest you run out of authorizations (like I did). Unlike some other companies who employ draconian protections (rhymes with "Raves"), Melodyne has never left me in the lurch by suddenly deciding I didn't own it. Hopefully that continues to be the case. Also note that Windows 10 is required There is no 32-bit version An internet connection is necessary for authorization VST2 is no longer an option (VST3 only) Rewire is no longer supported (but not needed in CW and never worked well anyway)

I came this close to buying it. Then I logged into the site and was informed that I already owned it from the last time it went on sale. Guess I should take that as a sign that I have too many plugins.

Celemony has been pestering me to upgrade for months. I've resisted because version 4 already does everything I really need it's going to be offered at a lower price before year's end I wasn't convinced that the new features weren't just bells 'n whistles iLok requirement they don't take PayPal Then I discovered this guy, Rich Crescenti. He does for Melodyne what Dan Worrall does for FabFilter, namely gets you excited about using the product, even if you already do. Like Dan's FF videos, Rich managed to take a tool that I thought I already knew intimately and showed me new ways to use it. It was his piano leveling demo below that made me cry "uncle" and give them the $149, Black Friday be damned. Here's a link to all his videos, which mostly pertain to vocals as expected, but also bass, drums and piano. Plus some Studio One-specific tutorials for you S1 users. Note that even though he's pushing Melodyne 5, 95% of what's demonstrated applies to version 4 as well, so it's worth a look even if you're determined to postpone the upgrade for now. I feel like a hypocrite, as I hate iLok and I don't like giving out credit card info online. Oh well. It was only a matter of time before somebody got me to capitulate. But this is the last time. Really.

If history repeats, there will be last-chance offers to us holdouts before the year's out. My last three Melodyne upgrades happened that way, even though the discounts have gotten progressively stingier over the years ($59 to $79 to $99). I feel a little silly postponing the update over a mere fifty bucks' difference, but version 4 does everything I need and there isn't anything in version 5 that screams must-have-now. The de-esser, I guess. It's supposed to be more transparent, but after ten years of practice I've become fairly proficient at pulling off invisible edits.

Sadly, back when I first met bapu it was not widely understood just how contagious this affliction can be. Within a few months, though, I began showing symptoms myself. I told myself "it's not that serious...it's like the flu". Next thing I know, I'm buying extra disk drives to handle the overflow. You'd think that the lessons born of the inevitable bad decisions would eventually reach critical mass and provide some level of prophylactic inoculation. They don't.

I was a big fan of Eventide Clockworks back when there was nothing else like them. But that was hardware. Sadly, their decision to employ Pace for the software ports means I'll never own anything the company puts out. Anyway, I have way more chorus plugins than I need. Way more. But only one of them gets used on a regular basis. It would be in poor taste to endorse a competing vendor in this kind of thread, but it rhymes with "Balhalla".

Sometimes what we perceive as distortion isn't really distortion at all. For example, short dropouts can sound like distortion. This can occur if you're using small audio buffers so that you can monitor your guitar through the computer. Try increasing your buffer size and see if that alleviates the symptom.

This is why I avoid this kind of software protection. From an engineering standpoint, it's a textbook case of how NOT to create software. You're implementing a single point of failure - on purpose. Such software is literally designed to NOT do anything useful BY DEFAULT unless a specific set of deliberately obfuscated criteria are met. Imagine if other types of software worked that way, such as the code running under the hood of your car. Consumers wouldn't stand for it.

Yes, but it's not the DAW designer's job to write hardware drivers. That sort of practice dates back to DOS days, when you went out and bought a printer specifically because WordPerfect had a driver for it. Printer manufacturers in turn mimicked the Epson command set because WordPerfect had Epson drivers. This was the main driver - pardon the pun - of the widespread adoption of Windows: application developers no longer had to be responsible for hardware drivers.

You have better recall than me, Steve. I blame it on 50+ years as a cannabis consumer. But you're right; Samplitude's was indeed a customized ASIO4All. Why they felt a need to install that beats the heck outa me. Unless the OP is using Avid hardware, it's likely that his driver might even be ASIO4All as well. All the more reason to switch it out.

This instrument could be so much more versatile if there was a way to either import or reference external samples. Unfortunately, the samples are baked into the DLL, so that's not going to be possible under its current design. That seems to be its biggest limitation: a measly 8 instruments to choose from (and none of them are a cowbell!).

^^^ That explanation makes sense. When I initially read the top post, I struggled to imagine a scenario in which a ProTools component could possibly crash Cakewalk. The only thing I could come up with was using a ProTools component within Cakewalk, e.g. a software instrument, but to the best of my knowledge that isn't even possible. Using an Avid-supplied ASIO driver, however, could very well explain everything. I had a similar experience after running Samplitude. Like the OP, I had started shopping around for a backup DAW during the Gibsonacolypse and settled on Samplitude as a good candidate. However, it installed its own ASIO driver and SONAR didn't like it. I reverted to the ASIO driver that came with my interface and the problem was easily resolved. If changing your ASIO driver isn't a convenient solution, just switch to WASAPI for Cakewalk. As an aside, Cakewalk is not sensitive to network issues. You can actually run it just fine with no network connection at all, something many users do in order to make their DAWs more efficient.

Targeted advertising is still in its infancy. For now. "Based on your interest in ... CHEESEBURGERS .. you may also be interested in ... SAILING THE SEAS OF CHEESE BY PRIMUS"

I did a side-by-side comparison just last night, after a friend turned me onto Skaka. I had a project that needed some simple percussion, just shakers and tambourine Shimmer Shake Strike has been my go-to for hand percussion since it came out, but it's a quirky beast that often requires an inordinate amount of tweaking before it does what I want it to do. I thought Skaka might be a simpler quick-n-dirty alternative. Well, it is and it isn't. Skaka is indeed pretty simple to use and cheaper - way cheaper if you count SSS's Kontakt prerequisite. But there is always a price for simplicity. The two products are not interchangeable; their only real similarity is that they both do sequenced hand percussion. SSS has better-sounding samples, many more instruments, finer control, more rhythmic variation and more automation options. But Skaka is slightly quicker to set up and supports up to 12 instruments at once (SSS does only 3 at once). In the end I decided Skaka wasn't a waste of $25 and threw it into the toolbox along with the dozen other hand-percussion instruments I've collected over the years. But in my comparison test, SSS was the clear winner and that's the one that will stay in the song.

Last summer I was shopping at Home Depot for a new barbecue and saw one that came with its own app. Makes about as much sense as a refrigerator with a web browser or a wi-fi enabled toaster. Until the barbecue app can light the fire, turn the burgers and tell me with certainty that there is no chance of botulism, I'll pass.