denkom67

I forgot to mention - I think that Thomann also puts a limit on the amount that they will reimburse you for shipping if you have to return an item after purchase or returning for warranty servicing. If I recall correctly, I had to also pay a (small) amount of shipping prior to the German postal service losing my RD8.

During the pandemic, I bought a Behringer RD8 through Thomann because the price was a bit cheaper than US retailers, and I'd previously purchased some Japser's stands from them. I also purchased a Behringer Neutron through a US retailer. Within the first month, both of the Behringer items had issues that required them to be serviced under warranty. I had absolutely not problems with getting the Neutron serviced and returned. Dealing with the RD8. however, was very problematic. There was quite a lot of confusing paperwork to fill out to get the gear back through customs, and then somehow it got lost. I decided after that experience I'd rather pay a bit more to got through a US retailer and avoid the hassles.

Doh! I must be getting old - one of the most helpful / obvious resources for anything modular is https://www.modwiggler.com. You're probably already aware of that, but just in case...😀

One other one I forgot that was helpful when I first started exploring VCV Rack: http://patchandtweak.com/. The guy who started the site is a synth designer who used to work with Dave Smith and I believe was one of the lead designers on the Prophet VS. His blog has some good articles, although from what I remember he quit updating content / moved to a Patreon model a couple of years ago. Actually, his Patreon site might be useful if you don't mind paying $4 or whatever a month for as long as you are getting benefit from the material.

Omri Cohen's videos are a good starting point, but he sometimes overly complicates stuff by routing through lots of effects / complicated mixer setups that distract from the underlying techniques he's trying to demonstrate. There are a lot of good videos on Youtube - find a module you're interested in learning more about and do a search in Youtube and you'll usually find some useful material. Another good resource is the VCV Rack community forum: https://community.vcvrack.com/. A lot of the plugin developers post on there so the conversations can get a bit technical at times, but there's a lot of useful information. Also helpful is watching videos on Eurorack gear in general, as many Eurorack manufactures (Befaco, Instruo, Mutable Instruments...) have VCV Rack equivalents of many of their modules. One guy who sometimes has helpful videos on Youtube is Divkid, and there are many others. Have fun - as MorayM says above, you can definitely lose many hours, especially if you start interfacing with external gear. I really got into trouble once I added an Expert Sleepers audio interface and started combining VCV Rack with my Matriarch and a small Dot Com / Eurorack setup.

I had similar issues to what you described in an earlier post on a Windows 11 computer (haven't installed it on my Mac). I saw someone from Rhodes chimed in saying that issues should be reported directly to them and that they hadn't heard of this issue, but I did report it about a week ago through their website and never heard back. When I initially would insert the plugin into an Ableton project, it would initially be completely unplayable / predictable - half of the notes I played would actually sound. But after about five minutes of inserting the plugin into a project, it would work just fine. It also worked with no issues in a Reaper project, but was completely unplayable for the first five minutes in an Ableton project. On a whim last week, I downloaded the app again - I think it was a newer version, but I'm not sure about that. At any rate, the second download is now working flawlessly in Ableton. Not sure how long ago you initially downloaded, but if it was a while ago you might want to try to delete your current version and reinstall it.

Congrats on getting your PC3 repaired - you've inspired me to give another go at getting mine fixed. Mine developed issues with both the pitch and mod wheels almost immediately (both sent spurious data and needed to be disabled). I live in the SF Bay Area and at the time the closest repair place was an outfit called CAE Sound in San Mateo. They are about 90 minutes away from me and only open during the week (10 AM - 5 PM), so to drop it off / pick it up I needed to take time off from work. The built-in MIDI diagnostic feature of the Kurzweil clearly demonstrated that both controllers were sending spurious CC data. However, the jerks at CAE Sound insisted there was nothing wrong with it. It took me about a month to get back to pickup the keyboard since I needed to take time off work, and when I got there they charged me a ridiculous storage fee of something like $200 on top of whatever they charged me for not fixing the problem. As soon as I got the keyboard home and fired it up, it immediately exhibited both problems I took it in to get fixed. At any rate, I've been living with the controllers not working by disabling them for at least seven years (probably more - can't remember when I got the keyboard). The display is starting to go on it but otherwise the keyboard still works / sounds great and I'm not too impressed by the latest keyboard offerings from other manufacturers (would be interested in the PC4 if not for the lack of built-in PSU), so I'm inclined to just try and finally get the PC3 properly fixed. I see there are now a number of other Kurzweil service centers in the bay area - do any bay area keyboard corner folks have any experiences (pro or con) with service centers that work on Kurzweils? Or for that manner, ANY qualified keyboard techs that can work on new and vintage gear? They are getting hard to find, and I have an old Wurlitzer and Clavinet that need some lovin' by a good tech...

I saw a thread about this on another site last week, so decided to download and install on a Windows machine. I didn't want to move all my plugins over to another server, so I'm just running it as a local server on my DAW machine. In limited testing, I have to say I'm very impressed with the overall performance and stability. I can run multiple instances of Diva in Divine mode, and other CPU-hungry plugins, without a hiccup. Patches that previously caused audio stuttering on my system no longer glitch at all. I'm not sure how it works its magic, but color me suitably impressed so far.

Plus one for Transcribe. I used to use one called the Amazing Slow Downer, but Transcribe is a lot better / easier to use for only a few dollars more. If you use Ableton Live, this is also pretty easy to do with warping. With both Transcribe and Live, you can add named markers for different sections of the song; loop it between those markers; etc.

Double post

I have a similar philosophy to the Real MC, and appreciate the post. I also agree on the actions of the current crop of fully-weighted controllers. I did have a period in the recent past where I was chasing the latest plugin flavor of the month, but a few years ago began slowly moving towards acquiring outboard effects and a small staple of analog mono and poly synths that will last me for a good long while. The problem I'm struggling with over the last ten years is that gear just doesn't seem to be built the way it used to. My first two master controllers were Kurzweils, and they were built like tanks, and each lasted me with ZERO issues for over ten years. I built up tremendous brand loyalty to Kurzweil as a result of this, so when I decided to update my PC2 to get additional sliders to be able to properly emulate a Hammond B3, I upgraded to a PC3-X. Within a year, I began experiencing problems with both the pitch bend and mod wheels. After multiple trips and dollars to a horrible Bay Area authorized service center that shall remain nameless, the issue remained unresolved, so I just disabled both controllers, making the Kurz no longer serviceable as my master controller as I use a lot of synth sounds. Earlier this year, the display became noticeably dim, so I've turned the brightness and contrast way down to try and preserve the display for as long as I can. I had a similarly spotty experience with my GSI DMC-122 and Gemini units. The DMC-122 arrived with half of the upper keyboard not transmitting MIDI. After several emails with the kind folks at GSI, they walked me through opening the keyboard to check the ribbon connectors, and sure enough one of them was not connected. In the process of opening the keyboard, one of the attaching bolts sheared off the board, which was unfortunate. I love the sounds of the Gemini, but that unit has also been nothing but a hassle - the Wifi constantly drops out, and unless MIDI mappings are setup (mine weren't before Wifi became unreliable), you're left with no way to control sounds and effects until Wifi decides to begin working again. I finally achieved some small bit of joy by getting an extension USB cable and mounting the onboard Wifi to the base of the DMC-122, which allowed me to finish my MIDI mappings. A good thing too, as the Wifi issues have recently returned, although not as bad as the situation previously. At this point in my life, I don't need the shiniest toy and most polished modern sample set. I want my bread and butter sounds that sit well and cut through in a band context or a mix. And I want my gear to be absolutely reliable for ten years. This didn't used to be a problem, but with the current crop of gear unfortunately does seem to be an issue. One more modern board that I really loved the sounds on and worked great for me with no problems in my last band was my Yamaha Motif XS, but I balked at the size / weight of the 88 key controller (whose action I really liked) and got the seven octave version instead. While I loved the sounds, I never could gel with the action for piano sounds, and piano has always been my main wheelhouse and what I'm ultimately looking for in a controller so I sadly rotated it out of the staple. I still somewhat regret that decision...

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions - based on the Facebook group Delaware Dave pointed me to, I bought a weighted USB extension cable. It finally showed up today and I have it velcroed to the inside bottom of the DMC-122, and removed the wifi dongle from within the Gemini and placed it in the extension. Wifi is working MUCH better now - I haven't lost my network connection in over 15 minutes, whereas before I was lucky if I managed to stay connected for 30 seconds.

Good suggestion - I'm not sure if I have an extension cable that will work but will order one and give it a try. Thanks!!

Sorry; not sure why the images aren't displaying in my message above, but the links are clickable and will open in a new browser tab.

I didn't see any copper foil; just a USB slot with WIFI dongle as depicted below: http://ibb.co/zPFxQZZ http://ibb.co/GWCBc13