mettelus

For the past year I have been pondering how best to do a custom inlay. To get a machined fit requires excessive time (and precision), so I pondered permanent vinyl for a bit (easiest), but want the inlay effect. It wasn't until a few days ago that it occured to me that an inlay doesn't need to be hard until it is complete, so started to look at liquid options. Lo and behold, mica powder (either opaque or semi-transparent) is used in a truckload of crafts with clear epoxy (some of which are downright gorgeous), but not many hits out there for guitar inlays. Inlays with gaps around them bother me, so a liquid solution would solve that since only the edge of the wood will matter. I just ordered some opaque mica powder, expoxy and fine carving tools to give this a go but was curious if anyone had seen this done before? I have had a hankering for carving a guitar over the past several years, so this side project may explode in scope.

It is a massive decision point on what to do with the band after the loss of a member (whether to pack it up or continue). You already mentioned AC/DC, but for folks who lived through listening to Back In Black for the first time after Bon Scott's death... we were highly critical yet amazed. A portion of the credit for that album needs to go to Mutt Lange though (the album was done over just 7 weeks in the Bahamas!).

Or could take the model Melda uses where revenue is from new sales rather than soaking loyal customers. It is far easier to get an existing customer to shell out more money than to convince a new customer to buy a product (what started Adobe with their hostage tactics). The internet and electronic delivery has inserted a complacency of software release with bugs without much thought because fixes are easily distributed. Some systems do not have that luxury, most recent example would be an idiot shutting down all flights in the US.

I would try and send them another email. When I had my 8 fiasco last year (and no response), that affected my 9 upgrade. Greg (from support) was the guy who responded about 9 and sent an email with all the codes (only work required was in the eLicenser). He had also sent an eLicenser helper executable link (I downloaded anyway, but didn't use... it pops up a "only use this if instructed to by support"). Greg sent me the two activation codes I needed, and the last part was simply reopening 9, refreshing the activation manager popup and activating it (again). It was night and day for me for support from them. I am assuming that your situation is to rebuild your eLicenser file so it will take the upgrade code (what I think that helper executable is for), so I would try a separate ticket with them and tell them your eLicenser is not showing products you own so you cannot upgrade and need the eLicenser fixed.

I used Macrium Reflect (free version) when I updated my C Drive. What I needed most was to resize the Recovery Partition (defaulted to 500MB and I was using 495MB of it; I upped that to 1GB during the clone). Your primary partition will also need to be resized to use up the remainder of the new drive. This video walks through every step for that (why it is a little long), including partition changes. The clone was pretty much connecting both drives, do your work, then shutdown and swap the original out.

The bundles also go up in cost over time as well, so the cost to on-board keeps going up with new additions. I think the MCompleteBundle is roughly $200 more on sale than when I got it (had 99 plugins at that time). Also bear in mind that a number of multi-band plugins have free counterparts. I made an Excel spreadsheet years ago on that and didn't count the single-band ones since they are essentially dupes. Depending on personal usage, the instruments are the most expensive and one may or may not get full use from them.

Another thing to check is what plugins you are using. Delay compensation may not be accurate depending on what FX are active. When recording audio tracks into a fairly robust mix, it is often best to globally bypass FX (E hotkey) during tracking and only use FX during the mixing phase. Check and see if the E hotkey (Global FX bypass) helps your situation.

It is worth noting that MConvolutionEZ (part of the MFreeFXBundle) is also a (free) IR loader.

There is always some gimmick out and about, but unfortunately the common limiting denominator is human hearing, which rarely gets discussed.

"Now it seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table, but you only want the ones you can't get." - Eagles

MS has had "Home Use Programs" for years that were $9.99 based on employees needing to use Office at home. IIRC, that program ended with 2019, but I thought they were forcing 365 on everyone. I didn't realize there was anything after 2019, so these might be a return of the HUP variety.

This is a pretty significant update. Bear in mind that Rebelle got its start being the most realistic watercolor app, so a lot of features in Painter were not there. The new fractal resizing is impressive. I have been working with scans of 8.5x11 drawings done years ago at 300 dpi, so default to resizing them before painting, but when zooming you get the pixelated effect at some point. The fractal resizing interpolates (also with liquify/warp tools) to alleviate that. Painter doesn't have the liquify tool, it is actually in Paintshop Pro, so Rebelle adding that directly to the app is a one-up on Painter (or porting it to Photoshop from Rebelle). Brushes are more detailed and you can add them to favorites (huge deal). I opened work from Rebelle 3 and brush specifics used are long since forgotten (Painter had this issue as well). Overall, they added a lot of things you would need to bounce into Photoshop for. This video is from a guy who doesn't really use Rebelle but reviews it. His presentation is better and more critical of the new changes. He mentioned that people who got Rebelle 5 after Nov 1 get 6 for free, so made me wonder when the deal in the OP expired (I assume it was before Nov 1).

I just realized why they did this. Rebelle 6 is out on the street now. Some of the new processing features are impressive, especially the nanopixel tools. Watching that video now. https://www.escapemotions.com/products/rebelle/about

This is a big reason for this feature. Something as simple as "[plugin] expected at [this path] failed to load for [reason]" would allow for quicker troubleshooting (both solo and on the forums).

OMG, you should have taken a plane there instead of walking to Vegas!

Not sure, but it has been included in the Samplitude Suite. If you bought that during the Gibson debacle, you would own SpectraLayers Pro 4.

Thank you for posting this. I did a quick test of this (RX 9 Advanced versus SpectraLayers Pro 9), and the unmix stem results were comparable on the same song using default presets. Both of them took roughly 90 seconds to unmix stems from a song 7:30 in length. From that perspective, RX Standard would match that feature. SpectraLayers (Pro) will also drill down two more levels of unmixing, but it is very dependent on the reverb usage in the master to get a pristine (or even suitable) track. If mixing back into the same master, it is pretty transparent since the material missing that caused the phasing is in another stem. In many cases it can also be mixed into another composition. SpectraLayers Pro 9 also includes features of RX Advanced (Ambient matching and some of the more precision tools), so it really comes down to what you want to use it for (and if you already own RX Standard/Advanced). The display resolution in Pro 9 (and responsiveness of the GUI) is better IMO, and they are obviously monitoring each other's products (navigation is identical in many regards between them). As with all things, they each have a trial version to test out (highly recommended), and the comparison charts for RX and SpectraLayers are available. This is primarily how I use it; either for practice, covers, or to redo a friend's work from 20+ years ago that only existed as an analog master. Drums can be redone with drum replacer (or similar) if not used outright, other tracks can be re-performed and matched as necessary. Depending on frequency content of a song, content belonging to one stem may end up in another, so a little surgery may be required for a jam track. This is often best done by bringing the stems into a DAW and moving that content to an additional track (also alleviates phasing issues from reverb in many cases), then muting the track(s) you want to remove.

I have RX 9 Advanced, but really cannot speak to a comparison because I rarely use it. Over the past few versions SpectraLayers has added repair features seemingly identical to RX, but I use SpectraLayers to unmix stems more than anything (then tear into them). RX to me is more of a repair tool and I am not sure if it can unmix stems? Hopefully someone who uses RX regularly can speak to this better (I cannot).

This has also been included in the Samplitude Suite, but not sure prices (something to check as well). v4 was included in the Samplitude Suite at the time of the Gibson debacle, and when I got v7 it was the same price to upgrade SpectraLayers individually as to upgrade the Samplitude Suite to get it (plus Convology XT). If buying only SpectraLayers for the first-time, I am not sure if it will get better than the $179 (but check the crossgrade too!). As with a lot of these packages, the on-ramp is fairly brutal (then they bleed you slowly over the years to keep it updated).

I updated SpectraLayers to Pro 9 last night and the GUI response is significantly better, but Unmix stems takes twice as long. One thing I did not realize until last night is that even the Elements version has the noise-removal feature most are looking for in posts here. Adobe Audition and iZotope RX also have this as well, but they both cost more to get this level of surgical accuracy.

A pretty good litmus for this is starting with keeping things that are 64-bit VST3 and then cherry picking the rest. More and more apps that will use plugins are starting to lean toward VST3 only. I have been looking more at things that take up MASSIVE amounts of drive space that I rarely touch. Even though they were deals, 500+ GB of "stuff" will come to a reckoning at some point.

Quick insight to add to the above. Firstly, doubling power (duplicate tracks feeding same bus), will add 3 dB, and this occurs on every doubling. If you double tracks 6 times (64 tracks), that is an 18 dB increase. Granted, not all tracks will have sound at the same time, so lowering them all to -18dB (or even -21dB) should give you enough headroom to begin. If they are hot by themselves, you may need even lower. Bear in mind, in the digital realm signal-to-noise ratio is everything. With noise level low enough, mixing at lower levels will not affect anything adversely (you can use the master fader to achieve monitoring volume). Be cautious of making single tracks too hot as they feed into the rest. Similarly, you can do the same with busses, each doubling is +3dB. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc. (tracks or busses, depending on approach) will add 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, etc. dB respectively. You can also take the approach of each buss hitting -9dB to keep their combination in check (work tracks into busses with that being the target). In a situation where tracks are hot, but you want ones to stand out either 1) lower volume on others or 2) mirror EQ unnecessary content out of the other tracks. Another trick to achieving volume control is that once content repeats so the listener "gets it," it can often be safely lowered -6dB so that new content gets focus. The listener still recognizes it because they have heard it already. Mixing is challenging, but also fun and rewarding. Best of luck!

Ctrl-S helps with a lot of programs, bugs or not. Specifically for software with "undo history," it is prudent to set that to a realistic number (I use 10 on most things). Most are set to a massive number that just consumes RAM. IIRC, CbB defaulted to 100, but forget now.

The Step Sequencer has such a function, but might not be suitable for this application (will add variations to looping material). If the end result will be a printed master, randomization loses utility at a certain point and may become difficult to replicate, but not nearly as bad a oscillators out of sync on some synths.

LOL, I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of it and took a while for me to look it up. I got all the hand-me-downs from my older brother and sister, but I really liked the fact that turntable had 4 speeds to it (not sure I have ever seen a 16 1/2 rpm record in my life, but playing records on the wrong speed was fun as a kid).