Brian Lawler

Every year I let this deal pass... Last month I added a 4TB QVO SSD. This is the year of the Martian. 900 mbit internet is coming in handy.

"Dungeon Siege II" Steam key. I really ticked-up the drive this morning, finally buying Samples From Mars complete (46 G) for $19.50 I need to step away and let this machine cool off.

I jumped. I have not used Producer Loops before. 20 Gigs WAV format audio. Pretty well categorized by folders ( Library, Group, Loops/MIDI/Oneshots, Instruments. Long file names reflect Library, Group, tempo, key, dry/wet. Aleatoric/Foley have descriptions. Some duplication as far as dry and wet versions. I can't dig very deep yet- familial obligations Fill your HD for only a buck a gig- why not? I got my $ worth.

Good product. Can generate longer more "orchestral" type motifs. No percussion generator. Fun but very random. You are going to be clicking the dice and going through a lot of tries to get interesting cohesive parts. Not in the same league as the other two. They also can't interchange data like the other two suites parts. More good stuff- Drum part generator is excellent. More suited to pop/edm. I find the chord parts a little more difficult to work with than Orb. If you want the easiest and broadest capability- get Orb AND CP. You can use the CP percussion generator with Orb, and have a lot of flexibility to experiment with the different part generators. You didn't mention Plugin Boutique Scaler 2.5- Really outstanding (no percussion generator) BUT I would not put this in the noob category. A little more work to set up master/slave tracks for chords, bass, melody, arps...

If anyone has this I would like a quick review. Comparison to Antares Access?

Interestingly, I already own Captain 5, and there is no upgrade offer for Complete for me- still $124. The offer does look pretty similar to what was offered when I first bought Captain at V4 (the 5 upgrade was free). The stuff beyond Captain looks pretty "DJ oriented" which is not me. They do have a key/beat finder, but I already have that covered. Disclaimer- I have about everything in the "MIDI generator" genre, and I keep adding to my collection! I will be interested to see if Captain 6 will be a free upgrade for me next month.

https://mixedinkey.com/black-friday-VIP/ Buy Captain Plugins now and get a free update in December to next version. Edit Looks like 50% off for upgrades- 40% off for new users. Look for a "VIP email" for current owners. Interesting that there is going to be some kind of Phaseplant tie-in for the new version. Captain Plugins 6 "Epic" For the Black Friday price of $99 $49 by purchasing Captain Plugins 5 you will get a free upgrade to Captain Plugins Epic when it launches in December. • New Play Styles open up a world of musical possibilities • New sounds powered by Kilohearts Phase Plant • Make the worlds best chord progressions and basslines

Don't forget "Loonies". I can hit Canada with a rock from here (and often try). I might be interested in a crossgrade for the Cube. Best bang for the Yankee Dollar? (Reseller, direct?)

Yes, I got a $10 voucher too. I also follow @Canopus advice and pretty much only purchase from Audio Deluxe. "A bird in the hand..." So, I didn't expect much.

If you let a subscription lapse in the past, they will throw you a 50% off code by email once in a while. The sent one to me a week after I let mine lapse last December(passed on it). I got another one in October that I decided to use (Studio level for $59/yr), since there are some new apps and features I wanted to try. I assumed they have also added to the loop catalog over my lapse time.

JRR Prices are up. I think Group is a bit cheaper than Forum $54.18 for Abyss. OK- I call witchcraft on Lars. I was in a chat with JRR support and they told me right when they put the sale up!

I sent JRR a query yesterday. I would think that they would follow the other resellers. Probably swamped with updates. After a few hours of play, I am actually having second thoughts about Abyss, but really like Hyperion. There are some great sounds in Abyss, but there is a little less variety in the patches than I would like. Hyperion "clicked" with me pretty quickly as far as being intuitive to program and amazingly broad. VERY nice that Tracktion gives a full 90 day evaluation period. I can't find a sale end date on the Tracktion site. Audio Deluxe says 34 days left.

Abyss and Hyperion have my eye (and ear). Playing with the demos. Any dealers that have bonuses on top of the discount, or is direct from Tracktion the best route? It looked like I might get a couple more bucks off for owning a couple other titles. <edit> Looks like PB might be the place for me. Tracktion direct gets me a $4 discount if I buy both (plus I have a $3 credit there), but they collect sales tax that wipes that out by nearly 2x. With PB I get a couple future bucks/points AND I can make two buys to scoop the freebies. JRR not showing any sale yet. I will wait and see if they put it up. Abyss is a definite. Have to spend more time with Hyperion. It looks complex as heck, but the presets really sound great.

So- That didn't take long ? https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/36197-hornet-black-friday-sale/

I am a Hornet fanboy, but this version is disappointing. I am sure it is really hard (I would say impossible) to get real time chord analysis right. The MIDI output just doesn't look useable in my testing. It is good at what it did in previous versions as far as making a guess at the key (and BPM as long as there is no syncopation). I only looked at audio analysis, not the MIDI input capability. Zplane deCoda is still my tool for audio chord analysis, but of course it is much more expensive. I don't think sales apply to upgrades, but if you are a new user, wait for the Hornet monthly discounts.

Most of the XO love focuses on the sound selection, which IS cool. I think the beat editor is my favorite feature. No brainer at that price.

The hooked me in for a one year sub with a $59 offer about a month ago. I had the same offer about December last year but passed on it. They do appear to keep working on / improving their software.

Yep. Better safe than sorry. I will also add that one should maintain "cold" backups (not connected to a network) and rotate them offsite. I maintained my wife's medical practice server for decades. Would you believe that 10 days after we turned it over to a managed service, they got ransomed? NO cold backups. They have (had?) a lot of clients. They paid up and got the data back in two weeks. "There but for the grace of God" maybe, but I had enough sense to maintain multiple off-line archives. We could have brought her office back with "my" last backup- but since they had to pay a lump some for all their customers anyway, I let them earn their fees.

I have been bitten by backup software that didn't recover when I REALLY needed it to. The only way you can know for sure that you can count on it, is to run a system boot drive image backup (I am only talking Windows here- I don't Apple). Make the recovery boot media (like a thumb drive). Power down and pull the physical boot drive from your PC. Plug in a replacement drive. Run the recovery and see if it boots to useable Windows. As long as you have a reasonably small system "C:" partition, it doesn't take that long (couple hours). Most back-up solutions WILL work as far as getting all your data back after re-installing Windows manually, but that is a major multi-day task when you have all this copy protection nonsense to deal with. BTW you STILL might get bit by some security schemes. I re-routed several USB cables to tidy up my space and Pace iLOK decided I was using a different PC (I changed NOTHING inside the case). Thankfully the reset request I had to send was honored in about a day. <EDIT> I have NOT done this lately, as I am on an M2 drive and don't want to risk damaging the board. I am just keeping the faith that Macrium will remain up to the task.

Yes. I run a weekly backup image of my data drives TO a USB drive. 4 TB takes about 9 hours. This is the mode that is "slow" if run as a scheduled task on the free version. I just start the job manually Thursday evening and it is usually finished before I want to use the PC next morning. You CAN use the PC while backing up, but I prefer not to slow things down and potentially miss file changes. You can also backup FROM USB and TO any other device, including network. The backup images can be mounted as a container in the Windows file system / Explorer in case you only need to restore a few files. There is also a Windows boot drive system image option that will let you use a bootable Macrium CD/DVD/Thumbdirve to restore your OS in the event of "the big failure".

I have been using Macrium Free for several years. It is outstanding. From what I can see, the paid "Home" version primarily gives you a year of support. The free version is not crippled in any way, but lacks some enhancements for scheduled back-ups. You can use it "guilt free" https://www.macrium.com/reflect-free-faq Certainly the best way to evaluate before purchase. They even allow commercial use of the free version.

Orb Composer Pro is a dead product. The last update was December 2019 and Hexachord killed their Discord "support" account. It is too cumbersome to bother with, considering there will never be improvements. Producer Suite- "maybe" Hexachords are still apparently doing updates (V3 just came out about a month ago), but keep in mind what they did with their first product. Compare it to Captain Suite (but without drums), Feel Your Sound "Sundog", etc. Producer Suite clearly uses a lot of the Composer Pro code base for MIDI generation (I have both- don't have Pro installed any more). They wisely simplified the UI by splitting the program up and gearing it and their marketing to to a more EDM/Pop audience.

Blimey. I added about 100+ amps and FX during the IK GB, but the $69 FX2 crossgrade offer is going to reel in 22 more. I didn't expect that offer since I don't own any Arturia FX currently (I did just get V8 in September though).

I own all of the AudioModern generators. Good stuff. When I log in to AudioModern.com, my direct upgrade price to Suite is 12€ ($13.74 USD). What that gives me is the upgrade from PlayBeat 2.0 to 3.0. That is cheaper than only buying the Playbeat upgrade from them or a reseller. Playbeat 2.0 was free from 1.0, but this 3.0 looks like it is worth the $.

They ought to make a better intro offer to current Quadra "Muted and Harmonics" owners, as this is basically a sample pack for the existing engine. ?