dave coomber

Wow! Thanx for all these comments. I kinda got lost in setting up my computer, interface and other related stuff and hadn't looked back here. I do need to make one confession. I do have a microphone. I used to be in a band in the 60s and I have an Electrovoice 664, which is a pretty good dynamic cardioid. One of its outstanding features: the president of the company would go out on a stage at sales conventions to demonstrate this mic. He'd walk out on stage with the microphone in his hand. Then, on a table he took a 2x4 and used the mic to pound a 16p nail through the 2x4. He would then screw the mic onto its stand and deliver his talk. I will probably start with this mic for a while. I just tested it out last week, and its pretty good. I think I may want to explore others, probably next fall or so. I do sing, but I also do some classical guitar, which the 664 did not seem suited for. Thanx again for all this response dc

Thank you all for these informative replies. This all started when I went looking for a cello vst and stumbled across "pocketBlakus Cello" which was labeled a "for Kontakt". It looked interesting, so I pursued it and in the process went to Native Instruments, and saw "Komplete Start" and thought what the hell. Then I saw all that was involved, their need to install where they wanted etc. My post, and even now is just a rant. I saw what looked like a decent cello, and I wouldn't be able to try it out - well - because. I really do not think this would be for me. I am aware that I will eventually find what I am looking for; I agree that what I want to do is record and refine my skills. That is good advice. You guys will probably hear from me in a few months when I start sorting out exactly which microphone I may want for my vocals. Thanks

I am just now setting up my recording computer and like any rank beginner, I have done some searching through the web for what VSTs I could get that were free and actually worth having. I came across a VST Cello for Kontakt. So, curious, I looked into Kontakt. Gee, they have a free 6GB suite of things. I read further. I need the Native Access control which will download and install KOMPLETE KONTROL, and the library. I read some more. It will install stuff and I would need to run it and then I tell cakewalk to scan for VSTs, which it will find. Is there a reason for all this? Or am I mistaken, and once cakewalk has the VSTs, I can remove the Kontrol and the Native Access? Why does it need to be so complex for "free" VSTs? Other VSTs go into my VST folder and everything is fine. Is this system that good that people put up with this?

@JohnK Glad you posted this. I came to this thread because I have a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. Mklink does seem to be the way to handle this. Many people are aware of what the winsxs folder is for, and this is how it works. I just didn't know it was available to ordinary users. For others getting this far here is a link I found from my searches to understand how this works. Explains it simply and understandably: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/ It's of particular use after you have installed a program, and then create junctions using copy/paste to get things right. Now I gotta go find out what happens when you want to make a backup image of your drive.