johnchop

I have a lot of Ableton sessions that are “one-synth challenge” exercises. Thats really helped me weed out some stuff I thought I liked. I’ve still got too many plugins. I try to keep a small library (<20) of favorite presets so I can just drag and drop and write without thinking too hard. Writing and production are usually separate processes for me, as I don’t have a Jacob Collier-esque gigabrain to do both at once. I work at trusting myself and my instincts.

Sprung for it in the spirit of keeping current. Easier to use for sure. Related: massive sale on ImpOscar 2 just dropped. I guess impOscar 3 is in the wings. That’s one of my fave soft synths ever, but it could definitely use a graphical facelift.

Checked my account, and HALion Sonic 7 is there as a free version bump. It includes the new HALion effects and MediaBay interface. No FMLab presets… no surprise. Any other changes aren’t immediately obvious. My aging eyes wish the interface could be resized. Ah well.

As an Absolute owner, I was glad to see an upgrade path with the same cost as HALion standalone. Dongle-free is good, but I hate paying for that, so I have to consider the other value add. I’m not deep into HALion, but will give the 7 demo a shot to see if the UI overhaul makes it less intimidating. I reach for HALion Sonic a lot, so I’m curious what’s changed there, if anything. The upgrade tease may just be the FM synth... maybe. I do wish Steinberg would release a stand-alone effects suite as part of the package.

If there’s an uncanny valley for music, I think they found it.

Awful news. Glad we have this little corner of the internet to preserve some memories. RIP Andy.

Demo EZDrummer for sounds. Low fuss, good sounds, lots of libraries. If you're not tweaking drums to the nth degree, you can save money over Superior Drummer and go ham on kits and MIDI libraries. I have Addictive Drums (great for a song-ready pop sound). MODO sounds huge... some folks hate the cymbals. 🤷‍♂️ Do you have Komplete? StudioDrummer is pretty tight sounding. IMO Steinberg GrooveAgent is comparatively frustrating to work with and doesn't sound as good.

Gutted. He’s on my personal Mt. Rushmore of guitarists.

Wouldn't the parent/child clocking option be something you'd have to set in each device?

But there's literally dozens of us! Dozens! That leaves Komplete Kontrol (I think?) as the last standing "hardware integration" platform, which falls short for me because it's not multitimbral, or multi anything really. It's just sort of barely enough as a synth interaction experience. Curiously, Omnisphere's hardware integration gets at what I want but sort of backwards. It elicited an "that's neat!" when I moved the Filter 1 cutoff knob on my Virus TI desktop and saw Omnisphere respond. But... I've got the Virus, so... where exactly does Omnisphere come in here? A knobby, slidery "generic synth" MIDI control surface would be a hell of a thing.

I use this one: https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkVision-T24T-20-Touchscreen-Monitor/dp/B09QCL771L Works well for me as an Ableton user, and when displaying GUIs at > 100% scale (which helps my aging eyeballs regardless). Not every software UI works the way I want. HALion Sonic does acknowledge the right-click gesture, and some GUI elements have really small target areas. Otherwise, it tracks really well for slider movements, knob spins, preset navigation, etc. I've been meaning to do a video sharing my experience... maybe this month? I mouse all the livelong day, so it's refreshing to use what amounts to a big tablet for music work. For a pro with a rapid-fire workflow, I'm sure it would be more hindrance than help, but I much prefer it for sound design and DAW control.

I've got a 24" touchscreen monitor, so I get by with that most of the time, at least for quick, somewhat broad changes. I'm yet to find a really satisfactory solution on the hardware side that doesn't involve mapping. I usually map a handful of macros if the VI supports them, and I try to map consistently (a knob for filter/overall brightness, one for timbre adjustments, one for effects depth, etc.). I don't want to think too much when I'm playing. Kore was pretty cool, but NI dropped it. VIP was less cool but worked well enough for me (and still does for many VST2 plugs) but Akai/inMusic effectively dropped it. If MIDI 2.0 + CLAP integration materializes, I can envision a controller where parameter discovery + assignment could be done from the hardware itself, or when you want to tweak something very specific but don't want to click around a screen.

Good Yule to everyone at this GAS factory. 😁

NI grinds my gears a bit, assuming we want the NIHardwareAgent installed and running at startup. I don’t have NI hardware. The license watchdog processes for elicenser, pace/iLok, etc are just sort of the cost of doing business for the moment. Sucks that all honest, paying users are automatically enlisted in piracy defense. As for OP’s specific woes, sounds like a combo of growing pains with the new macOS + bugs + potentially lazy design… who knows? Some devs listen and actually fix this stuff, so if their background processes are causing bigger problems for the Os, support should take note. Sometimes it’s amazing this stuff works at all.

+1 for Al Coda’s advice. I just reinstall. If there’s not a “product manager” installer (like the ones used by Toontrack, Arturia, IK Multimedia, etc.) I keep the installer file on cloud storage for ease of reinstallation. When I run the installer, I pay attention to the default install directory for VST2s. I always change it to a consistent path, like C:\Program Files\Vstplugins. Not all developers default to this or detect where you last installed. (VST3 is a different story, as they aren’t .dll files, and they all go in the same place. AAX I don’t bother with… not a ProTools user) Good luck!

Video of a performance is not the same as live performance. The videographer decides what to focus on. If there’s a story to be told with the music + visuals, let’s see that. If the performance is particularly emotive or can be filmed in an engaging way, show that. If it’s some guy slouched over an Xkey and Nanopad triggering Eurorack modules, no one wants to see that… right? I mean, whatever blows your skirt up 😂

Unless the performance involves some flashy technical execution, watching musicians play simple parts is boring af. I don’t care how hot they are. 😂 Music is not a visual medium, so I’d much prefer complementary visuals.

V2 really turned that product around. V3 feels more like a slight bump in realism, but that’s fine. I think there’s room for improvement on the upright model, but the grands are good. Jerry, big fan of your presets on Piano. The “Don’t Stop” (?) is my current fave for playing loud. Your work on Stage V is likewise appreciated. I’d love to see a Wurli update, and I’m curious if they’ll ever do a CP70/80 sim.

May have been true at the time, but it’s not an issue now. I can have my version 10 licenses move all over the place and activate as needed, to any drive, back to the license cloud, wherever.

I was just about to post back that impOscar 2 is now heavily discounted at 30gbp. I’ve had it for a few months and it sounds lovely. Hoping this gets the revamped gui, patch browser, etc that oddity got. -John

Login first, then add it to your basket and go to Checkout. You’ll see the discount applied.

https://www.gforcesoftware.com/products/oddity3/ … with a reasonable upgrade charge from Oddity 2. It’s still a bit weird to look at, but you can squeeze lovely sounds out of it. The sorely needed UI update — resizable! — works really well on my touchscreen monitor. Makes me wonder if a similar spec bump to impOscar may be in the works. Demo available. -John

Sure! Shouldn’t be a problem.

I have the launchkey 88 (and a 61). Pad lighting is customizable (can be switched off). Lack of expression pedal is annoying but for the money not totally surprising. Lack of an on/off switch is more irritating for me. Mines on a USB hub with a switch. “Scale mode” / “Chord mode” is everywhere these days, and I wish Novation (and others) spent the money elsewhere. But I wager customer feedback from the bedroom button pushers demographic is driving this dumbed down approach to music.

I sort of know what you mean. Mine is pretty high frequency and varies in intensity depending on how tired or congested I am. (Can’t really hear above 10.5K these days.) Growing up in the American South, I’m used to cicadas, frogs, and other critters providing background noise, so it’s sort of like that. If I find myself paying attention to it, I just distract myself with something. Whoever figures out a treatment or cure deserves the Nobel in medicine.