Christian Jones

Just saying, the Windows 7 Pro I upgraded from was a retail disk (didn't come w/ a PC), but at the moment I'm not 100% sure if this particular Windows 10 installation would carry over to a new drive/mobo via cloning w/o me having to purchase a retail copy. Does anyone know?

Just an update in case anyone else is still on Windows 7 and considering the free Windows 10 upgrade option. Despite a couple of snags I was able to successfully upgrade to Windows 10 Pro from Windows 7 Pro using the free upgrade option at the following link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/ At first I was gonna do the free upgrade and once associated with my machine I was gonna wipe the drive and do a clean Windows 10 install, and I can still do that at any time. But for now I decided to do an image backup of my Windows 7 drive followed by an in-place reinstallation of Windows 7 over the existing installation so as to give me a clean slate with that OS (been running it a few years), followed by the free Windows 10 upgrade. The couple of snags ultimately had to do w/ a usb stick I had plugged into the front and an external hd plugged into the back (which I forgot was there and which caused the second installation error) that the Windows 10 installation didn't like because apparently they would have messed with the drive assignment - but the error message doesn't specify that and instead says 'Your computer has hardware that isn't ready for Windows 10,' but clicking on the provided help link takes you to a better explanation. So if you do this free upgrade make sure to unplug all your external storage devices first. After that the upgrade went smoothly and I'm now upgraded to Windows 10 Pro from Windows 7 Pro for free. I still need to look around and see what to tweak but it's looking good. This free upgrade option technically "ended" a year or two ago and could officially end at any time, so anyone thinking about it may want to do this sooner than later.. since support for Windows 7 will end for good on 01/20, this "back door" just might close with it. Thanks to everyone in this thread for the tips.

Right on. Well last thing I'd ask then regarding reinstalling all your programs after a clean windows install.. any tips/tricks to gather a list of every little program that needs to be reinstalled and get it done quick(er)? Or is it just the same old do my best to make a complete list of everything and spend days clicking through wizards? Is there no backup tool that'd be safe to use that can image just you're programs? *sigh* ? How does bapu get through this?

Ah I get it; do the in-place upgrade to win10 in order to acquire it for free and get it associated with your machine, then wipe the drive and do a clean win10 install.

I'm not sure that makes sense as you're saying "upgrade to win10" and then "clean install win10." Here's what I'm most likely gonna do per tips here: 1. Buy a new ssd and clone my current win7 ssd to it. 2. On the cloned win7 ssd, follow instructions at mdiemer's link up there to do an in-place reinstall of win7 over the current win7 installation to give me a clean slate of win7 without deleting my existing programs. 3. From there use the free upgrade option to upgrade to win10. I figure I've nothing to lose there; if all goes to s*** then I can just fall back on the original system drive I cloned and just break down and buy win10 for a clean install on the new ssd. I'd like to do a clean install of win10 like abacab says, but that'd mean I'd have to buy win10, which if all else failed I could still ultimately do.

My "Walmart to release it's own daw" prank was better. Caught a few fish w/ that one.

I've heard about your daw, dude ?????

Hey John, regarding your vocals.. on an honest note, I see you're discouraged but are in any case wrong about your potential to improve. Your voice actually has a very good tone, and your pitch absolutely *will* improve w/ some practice, I don't care how old you are. I mean, be glad you can hit those higher notes! A lot of guys can't anymore or never could. But, I can't stress enough how important attitude is. You say there's just no options for you in regards to voice lessons and just improving in general. Sorry, brother, that just ain't true. You just need to get yourself over to YouTube and take in all the free lessons on voice, breathing and everything else you can imagine, for free. I mean with free YouTube lessons, quite frankly you really don't need to pay for voice lessons if you choose the right teachers on there. Sure it's nice to have a personal vocal coach but you can do quite well on YouTube and a lot of people get their guitar lessons and any other kind of lesson from YouTube all day everyday for free and improve greatly as a result. I do that daily myself for just about everything from audio engineering to various instrument lessons, voice lessons, anything and everything. I mean YouTube is one heck of a resource and in this day and age would be the elephant in the room that you'd be ignoring. Check out the link below for Roger Burnley's channel. Tons of free videos on voice technique etc and he's just one of many great teachers on there who has helped me a great deal. Chin up dude. That song is dope by the way.. sad, pretty and dark which I like and I even imagined myself singing it.. Last thing I'll say is what I always say about myself; learn to make lemonade - that is, work to make any perceived shortcomings of yours lend themselves rather than hinder. For example, I have a really good voice, but my technique etc needs some work as I too have had a few setbacks in life that caused me to shelve things for a while, so I'm playing catch up now. It's all good though, because though I like singers like George Michael and that guy that sang for ABC, as it turns out I love punk rock too and my voice right now is at least good enough for that style, so I sing stylistically if you will w/ a bit of a punk attitude, but a punk who can actually sing, like Joey Ramone. https://www.youtube.com/user/RogerBurnleyVoice

Yeah. I'm just *really* not in the mood to reinstall everything lol. I mean I'll do it if I have to, but what if I did reinstall win7 over the existing win7 installation on the cloned drive... would that at least rewrite the old crud and give me essentially a fresh slate of win7 to install win10 over and thus I can just upgrade without having to reinstall everything?

Hmm do you know why win10 wouldn't install over your win7 at its then current state but only on a reinstallation of win7? Like, what happened along the way, i.e. what dialogs or whatever popped up and what did they say, if you recall? I'm asking because at this link here https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/ - they mention that a few people had issues updating to win10 but that they were all fixed by trying one or more of the available fixes that are available at the links in that article. Anyway your advice is good even though I'd have to buy new drive. So just to be clear your suggestion is: 1. Get a new drive and install it along side the old system drive. 2. Clone the old system drive to the new drive and then remove the old drive for safe keeping/backup if necessary. 3. On the new system drive that is an exact copy of the old system drive, reinstall win7 over the current win7 installation (as opposed to wiping the drive and then installing win7 on it, which of course would negate the point of having cloned the old drive onto it). 4. Then upgrade to win10 from there. ______ Is all that correct? Thanks

Thanks guys and good idea Craig, I'll upgrade this next week then.

I'd have said a DJ ?

I'm currently reading around on this but wanted to see what folks here are doing. What version of Windows are you guys using and how's it working out for you for audio production? It looks like I can still legitimately upgrade to Windows 10 for free. I was considering upgrading my BIAS FX to version 2 during holiday season and it looks like they don't even support Windows 7 anymore, but 8 and above. Sooner or later I know I'll have to leave Windows 7 behind. I'm on an i7 4770k 3.40ghz.

You could record onto 8-track?

How did that Onyx work for you? I never owned one but I followed for a while the nightmare w/ the drivers that a lot of people were having on Mackie's forum back then. I don't know the percentage of people who had issues vs those that didn't, but there seemed to be a quite a few. I did almost buy one of those Mackie Onyx mixers that had the interface built in.

Yeah, SD2-3 would be your best bet using the filer in the Grooves section like HS said, where you can get tons of just hi-hat or any other single drum combo and in those styles you're wanting. You may be able to buy some type of hi-hat vst out there, but even then I doubt it'd come w/ pre-made midi data of hat sequences.

I know a lot of new users are probably using it because it's free (for now) and that's cool and personally I'd still be using it regardless, but for those of you who've been using Cakewalk since way back when it was still just code.. just curious why you chose it, what turned you onto it? For me, it was Doug Marks in one of his Metal Method guitar lessons that I had on VHS in the early 90s. In one of his videos he was demonstrating Cakewalk to sequence drums from an Alesis D4. At the time of the video he was using Cakewalk 3.0 and was explaining how if you got this software, a x286 and a sound card you'd have something handy to record your guitar and sequence drums. I had a little Tascam 4-track cassette recorder and a Roland MC-303 as my first setup, but in around '97 when I had a few bucks to upgrade it was Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 by then so that's what I got along w/ an Alesis DM5 drum module and some other stuff. The only time I've ever used any other daw was when I was forced to at school. I've been faithful ever since, and will be to the death. The death.

I got this ISA card in about '97 and used it for quite a while, hooked up via plain old red/white audio cables to a Mackie 1402vlz. I used to hound the guy at Digital Audio Labs over the phone constantly trying to get it to work as I had no idea about buffers etc back then. I think it even cost almost $300 back then too. Somewhere in early 2000s I wanted to get their CardDeluxe but ended up w/ the Echo Gina for a minute, sold it and had the M-Audio Delta 1010lt for a second, sold it and got the RME 9632 which I'm still using. I plan to stick with RME and get their flagship soon. As for that Card D Plus, I'm waiting for it to appreciate before I hit the vintage market with it.

Lol now your link works for me now that I quoted it. Thanks I'll get it.

Thanks Jack. I couldn't get that link to work, but just to make sure, did you mean this one? Blitz Metal Care Original Cloth”, 2 Pack https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KVYVWZQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_gWCaDbZ4K23EN

Like this here? If so that's not a bad idea, I'll grab one. Do you use just the cloth or some cleaning agent too? Blitz Stainless Steel Care Cloth-Single Ply, Treated, 2 Pack https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KVYVXX2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_kduaDbXBMRQPQ

That dava's cool. Does that grip hurt your fingers at all after a while? I looks like it could.

Yeah I just ordered some XL Jazz iii picks, the .88 tortex flex, shaped like a jazz iii but nearly the size of a regular pick. This could be it! And that's the last pick I'm going to try for a long time in any case.

Yeah bass players especially can go without changing their strings for a long time. I even knew a guy who would take other people's used strings for his bass. I think that comes down to how you play and what sound you like and also the bass itself. I play w/ both pick and fingers (no slap) and I tend to dig in pretty hard and after a while I lose my twang. Thing is I love twang and on my guitars and basses... not zing, but twang, and I know a lot of guys seem to want a warm sound. I ended up w/ the Smiths because I was researching for a set w/ the best B string on a 35" scale. I may try some of your guys' suggestions though. I forgot to mention because it just occurred to me, that my strings are probably going to die quicker than other people's because I am a hand lotion freak. It's one of those things like chapstick that I'm addicted to and can't live without. I mean I don't go and pick up my guitars with my hands all lotiony or anything and they're always "dry," but this is no doubt killing my strings quicker I'm sure. I do have one of those fret cleaning systems like Fast Fret (but something else) and use it after playing and maybe it helps. Perhaps I can make myself rinse my hands before playing, just for when I'm playing, but then I'd be going w/o hand lotion *very* often! Probably I need to see about kicking the lotion.

I play a slow melodic doom metal and my favorite pick for a while now is the black Dunlop 1mm nylon. They have that wide raised lettering that provides some good grip w/o digging into my finger like sandpaper like some other grip picks do, and they have a little more give than other materials of the same thickness which makes them feel better in my hand. But for me the nylons need some serious touch up, as they have a super thin plastic flap that surrounds these picks and causes a kind of fluttering-like attack on the strings, unlike, say, a derlin pick, which is smooth all around w/ a quick release. For me the nylons would be perfect if they had that derlin smoothness on the edge. Why don't they? I've been just dealing with it, but recently I got a 72 pack of nylons and some 2000 grit paper and have been going through one pick at a time while I watch TV at night and just smoothing the edges until they're slick like a derlin. I've almost finished all 72 but I feel this was a bit obsessive so I've been trying some new picks again; .96 Dunlop derlin 500 Prime Grip w/ a pointy sandpaper grip that I just hated until I melted it down some w/ a hot needle. Some Dunlop pink derlin .96 that I poked holes through with a hot needle for some grip and that works ok I guess. Still somehow the nylon feels more comfortable in my hand. What do you guys do to your picks, or are you just not that picky?