Kanthos

It's a reasonable guess; you're someone who comes across as wanting to be helpful (which you often are) but not always discerning the difference between a helpful response (most of what you've said in this thread, for example) and unnecessary chatter (the one post I quoted). So either you think that everything you say is helpful, which isn't true, or you have some other reason to post often. Don't assume, however, that *everyone* who has something to say about *one* of your posts thinks the same about *all* of them; if I'd had wanted to comment on all your posts, I would've used the word "all" at some point in my post, or quoted more than one of yours. I don't care about making myself look good period, and I know that the only way I am going to look good is by giving worthwhile advice. All I was trying to do was help cut down on unnecessary chatter. I did read *all* the posts in this thread, including all of yours. I chose to directly respond to one of them, and point out why it wasn't useful. That seemed to go over your head, so let me try again in smaller steps. First, yes, you did recommend something; the sentence above that I quoted is obviously a recommendation. If you did not intend it to be, maybe you should take the time to be clear about what you say? Second, when you use 'always', that's a blanket statement. Always means "100% of the time" (or, depending on how loose you want to take it, it could be interpreted as "there may be rare exceptions which I will ignore, but generally, the vast majority of the time...") You're saying that no matter what the situation, you'd always recommend hardware. That's a pretty bold statement, given that all kinds of pro musicians disagree with you, from Owl City to Lyle Mays of the Pat Metheny Group. Logically, you saying that you always recommend hardware means that either 1) you don't know enough about playing live to know when software is the better choice or 2) you disagree with anyone who would use software over hardware while on stage. The former's a pretty useless statement; the latter is much more relevant, and it would be helpful to Garrett to know *why* you think that. You didn't explain yourself in any detail (and still haven't, at least not in this thread), so it's completely relevant for someone to ask why you're making such a generalized recommendation without saying why you think that way. And, for me personally, I'm always tweaking my keyboard rig, so if you've got something to say that I haven't considered, I'd want to know too. Whatever you say wouldn't likely be enough to change my opinion on using software (I've put *a lot* of time and experience into deciding how I want things to work for me), but you might be able to highlight some pitfall of software that I hadn't thought about yet and could find a way to work around. Moving on... Ok, so in once sentence you state that you think all live performers should stick to hardware. In the next sentence, you say that you don't have enough focus on live performance to have given it much thought. This makes your argument really weak. In total, you're saying, "You should do things with hardware, but I won't tell you why I think so, and I don't even put enough thought into it to tell you why". You're certainly entitled to your opinion, and I'll be the first to agree that hardware is almost always the *easiest* option for live performance, but if you're looking for the *best* solution, you should consider both options. So yes, I did read what you said, and called it out for being unsubstantiated opinion. I'm sorry you feel that way. Some people may be using you in that way, and that's not right (and also not what I did here; I trust my advice on live rigs enough, and have had enough opportunities to see other people put it into practice, that I'm confident to let it stand on its own). I'd also gently suggest making sure that what people are "stepping on" is actual quality advice that they disagree with, not posts like the one I quoted that have very little usefulness. Look, I think you're generally a helpful, knowledgeable, and nice guy. I just think that if you put a bit of thought into what you post, and that includes deciding when it's not worth posting anything at all, that you'll come across as being more helpful overall and that people will take you more seriously.

So why make a blanket recommendation for something you don't really do, and then not back it up? Are you trying to be helpful or just get your post count up? Reasons to use hardware live: 1) You generally get better hands-on control (or footswitches in the guitar case) - Doesn't mean that you can't et the same level of control with software by using the right MIDI controller(s), but that takes more work to set up and... 2) Simpler is often better; the fewer things that can fail, the less likely you are to actually have a gear failure. Reasons to use software live: 1) The sound has the potential to be better (more true with samples than guitar effects) 2) Upgrading your sound is easier - you can't upgrade the GT-10 but you can upgrade Guitar Rig 3) If you need to do anything else, like play some keyboard parts or add a backing track or even clicktrack to stay in sync, you probably can't do that with hardware. 4) Simple is better, but sometimes isn't good enough; you can usually do more complex things with software because you're not limited to a single unit with fixed capabilities, and you can combine software to do what you want. For me, as a keyboard player, I'm going the software route because the sound is so much better and there are so many ways to control things that you just can't do with hardware (running my EPs, and optionally piano sounds, through Guitar Rig controlled by a Line6 FBV Shortboard controller pedal to stomp things on and off). In my rig, I process all the incoming MIDI through a program called Bome's MIDI Translator that adds all kinds of special behaviours (controller buttons that can do different things at different times, or things like a button to reset all the modifications I've made to a sound by adding effects, playing with cutoff and resonance, or even changing the base sample), then send the MIDI through Cubase (it's the most stable VST host; not great for live use on its own, which is why I use Bome's) rewired to Reason (to get easy access to good synth engines, that make it easy to change the sounds loaded into Reason at the start of a song). Complicated, yes, but powerful. For you, the big thing I'd ask is how you would record clean guitar tones. I strongly recommend recording dry(or both dry and wet at the same time) as Darangen suggests, so you can tweak your sound later. It's easy enough to record clean with a hardware effects modeller, but it's not as easy to *hear* the wet signal. One solution is to get a splitter pedal (some tuners do this; I'm not enough of a guitar gearhead to know what else works) and put that in your signal chain immediately after your guitar; send one signal to your DAW, with monitoring turned off for that track, and record it clean, and send the other signal through your effects and either out to an amp or through your DAW on a second channel, this time with monitoring turned on, so you can hear the guitar the way you'd expect.

The Rig Kontrol isn't an audio interface, and doesn't replace having a low-latency audio interface. With a proper interface, you'll have no problem using it live; I do this with my keyboard rig (though, to be fair, I'm using electric pianos in Kontakt, not a hardware EP running through my laptop for effects).

This album has my support < /April O'Neil >

I misread Soma, and shouldn't try to quickly post with a one-year-old trying to play with me. I meant to say that nothing released through the PSN had paper manuals, but they provided scans and it worked out just fine, so they could do something similar with Vita games, whether PSN or retail.

None of the PS1 or PSP games released through the PSN had manuals, so I doubt that will change here. For me, whether I buy it retail or not is about replay value and convenience. I'm not a game collector: if I'm not going to play a game once I finish it, I trade it in, so if I'm not sure that I'm going to want to keep coming back to a game, better to buy it retail so I'm not stuck with it forever. As for convenience, some games have a more-or-less fixed path and I like to play them through in a block, without doing much with other games in between (think RPGs, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, etc.) Others don't necessarily have any fixed completion and can be more easily picked up, because what you accomplish in the gameplay in an hour or so is pretty standalone (fighters, racing games, etc.) - games where coming back after a few months of not playing isn't going to leave you to remember where you are in the plot. The former, I'll often buy retail, while the latter, I'll buy through the PSN so I don't have to be switching memory cards all the time to play a fighter for an hour.

I've got mine pre-ordered; less than two more weeks

The only thing I can think of is that the PLAY update is separate from the library updates (updating the audio files), which are separate from patch updates (updating the performances or multis or whatever EW calls them). Is it possible you've updated the patches but not the library, so you have patches referring to non-existent files?

Not at all. I just wanted something with two mic inputs so I could record in stereo and with digital out, and NI had a good discount on the Komplete Audio 6 for people who own Komplete. It is a great interface, as is its successor.

Does it need to be online? What about something like Evernote (incidentally, cross-platform plus it'll work on your smartphone)

Yes; it's tied to your iLok account and not to mine, so I couldn't copy the licence between iLok accounts.

I'd love to, Meteo, but I'm not going to be able to. EWQL only lets you transfer licenses to another iLok that's tied to the same account. Selling something individually would mean I'd have to buy a new iLok and do the license transfer myself. That's not a big deal, we'd factor the second iLok into the price, but the problem is that I couldn't give you access to the iLok or soundsonline account without giving it to someone else too. So sadly, since there's no way to license-transfer individual products, it's going to have to be an all-or-nothing deal.

OMGitslewis, what audio interface do you have? MIDI controllers don't cause lag; I bet you have a crappy (or no) audio interface. Don't go buy a new MIDI controller; you won't be fixing the problem that way.

Edit time As usual, everything's under For Sale. Additions: :::computer/music electronic stuff::: EWQL Orchestra Gold, Choirs, StormDrum, Live, RA, and Waves S1 Stereo Imager. $600 w/shipping, negotiable [kanthos] (02/12) Ableton Live Intro: $40 [kanthos] (02/12) Native Instruments Audio Kontrol 1: $175 + shipping, negotiable [kanthos] (02/12) Removals: :::computer/music electronic stuff::: KORG Legacy Collection, Digital Edition (M1, WaveStation, and MDE-X plugins): $75 [kanthos] (2/11) Sonic Projects OP-X Pro: $75 [kanthos] (2/11) TruePianos: $100 [kanthos] (2/11) Native Instruments Alicia's Keys: $60, inc. shipping [kanthos] (9/11)

I'm selling a bundle of the following software (all PLAY editions, not Kontakt): EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold, with the Close and Surround mic expansions EWQL Symphonic Choirs and expansion RA Silk StormDrum 2 and StormDrum 2 Pro Also, the Waves S1 Stereo Imager plugin. I'm asking $600 with shipping included to North America, but I'll consider any reasonable offer - keep in mind that the Complete Composer's Collection plus an iLok device typically sells for more than this on sale (though you get 7 major products instead of 5); and you wouldn't get any of the expansions or mic upgrades without paying extra. If you live outside North America, I'll be happy to ship anyway, but I'll go to the post office and get a price for the shipping first, and we can work out a final cost. EWQL software is all tied to an iLok device, and there's a $25 fee per license to transfer things, if individual vendors even allow their software to be resold. All the software I listed above is authorized on my iLok, and my iLok contains nothing else. What I'm proposing instead is that you'll get my Waves.com account, soundsonline.com account, iLok.com account, the iLok that contains all the licenses, and the physical media for all the EWQL software (the S1 plugin is a download from Waves). I'll remove any personal information from the accounts, change the passwords, and send them to you, and put the DVDs and iLok in the mail. No licence transfer fees or anything. The DVDs came in paper sleeves and didn't come with any manuals; those are available as PDFs. The DVDs were ordered at some point when PLAY version 2 was out; EWQL has updated everything to use PLAY version 3, which you can download from soundsonline.com. I can't split the bundle; that would mean paying costs to deauthorize individual products from the iLok, plus you'd need another phsyical iLok to transfer the licenses to. Anyway, send me a message if you're interested and we can talk.

Keyboards are classified by their primary function. He didn't have a MIDI Controller; a MIDI controller is a device that can *only* output MIDI. He had a keyboard (probably a workstation keyboard, if it had onboard memory that he could load his own sounds, but without knowing the model, I don't know for sure). Most keyboards have MIDI output and can also act as MIDI controllers; it'd be really frustrating to not be able to connect everything. I think what you should do first is think a bit about how you'd set up your live rig and what specific things you'd want in a controller. First, to answer the specific questions you asked: 1) All kinds of people play live with a laptop and keyboards of some sort; you can even mix the two. I do this: I run almost everything from my laptop, but I use the organ section of my keyboard (Roland V-Combo VR-700) because I have physical drawbars and other pedals and such to control my sound without having to set that up in software. You ask about needing to be hooked up to your computer. It depends, really. If you were going to use a MIDI controller to control another keyboard or audio device (rack-mount sound module, maybe, like the Yamaha Motif-Rack XS; it's the Motif keyboard without the keys, basically), then no, you wouldn't need a computer. On the other hand, you could have a keyboard with sampling capabilities (meaning that you're recording samples from your computer or elsewhere and using the keyboard's memory to play them back); I'm not aware of any MIDI controller that does this; everything I know of that has sample playback is a proper keyboard, has sounds of its own as well, and is more expensive. And, of course, you can always just hook up to your computer. 2) Do you need an audio interface? Almost certainly yes if you have a Windows machine; not necessarily if you have a Mac. Mac has good audio drivers built right into the OS; on Windows, if you try to play sounds through Ableton using your headphone jack, you'll get really high latency - the delay between when you press a key on your keyboard and when the note's triggered. It's almost a guarantee that you'll find it unplayable because the latency's too high. And, in either case, how are you going to get the sounds into the house sound system? Your keyboard won't be producing any sound; a proper MIDI controller won't even have any audio outputs. You could try to use a 1/8" stereo male to 1/4" male pair cable, but I'd just get a decent audio interface and avoid the problem. (Incidentally, I've got a Native Instruments' Audio Kontrol 1 for sale; I've used it live for a couple years, and it's solid and does the job well, plus it's got 4 1/4" mono outputs, so you could do something like run a keyboard part in stereo and also play a backing track and have them separated. It's also got MIDI in and out, which is less common these days; the advantage is you don't have to think about whether the keyboard you want to connect to your computer sends its MIDI data over USB or not. PM me if you're at all interested) So, what should you buy? I'd say you need the following: 1) Audio interface 2) MIDI controller keyboard OR workstation keyboard, depending on your needs (there's no reason why you can't connect your workstation to your computer at home for recording tracks). You're leaning towards spending less money, so unless you really want to use sounds off a hardware keyboard, whether live or you record them into Ableton, you can get by with just a MIDI controller. The one remaining question then: what style of keys do you like? Weighted keys like a piano? Synth action keys like a synth? Or semi-weighted keys that are in the middle? You'll get the most expressive piano performances out of a weighted keyboard, but there are some things that are harder or impossible to do (slides are harder on your hand, double-triggering notes, eg. using two fingers to trill repeatedly on the same key, are impossible on a piano but are a useful technique for some styles of B3 organ playing). My personal preference is semi-weighted. Anyway, figure out what you like and you can get recommendations. I'm happy to help you figure out how you might want to set things up live too; I've tried a variety of things and am familiar with Live too, so I can definitely point you in the right direction.

GLASUJed. Listened to the track too, and a few others; I wasn't that impressed with the track you linked (it didn't have that much direction in the way of melody, to me), but I liked some of the others more. They're pretty good though; I hear a bit of Umphrey's McGee and Weather Report in them.

I'm not a lawyer (CS grad, actually) but I'd think that even recoding it by hand while making reference to their source code would cause your source code to be under the GPL. My suspicion is that you'd have to write something from scratch without ever looking at the din source code, otherwise your work would be derivative even though you're not cutting and pasting parts of their source into your own project.

It's possible, but it'd be pretty hard. Any GUI stuff would have to be recoded from scratch. The bulk of the code would work with minor issues, but you'd also have to figure out how to make the code present itself as a VST or AU. I don't know about AU, which I'd imagine is similar, but for VSTs, there's a set of C++ functions that must be implemented and exposed in the Windows DLL. The DAW will be looking to call those functions and expect certain things to be returned. Probably, that plugin would generally be compatible with this kind of an approach (I can't imagine the general mechanism of audio plugins in Linux is much different from Windows or Mac), though there might be subtle differences in things that the VST API supports that aren't supported on Linux. I wouldn't expect it to be, simply, "For each function in the VST API, write a stub that calls the appropriate function within the Linux code" (this is called a wrapper, making one thing look like something else externally). Basically, unless this plugin is REALLY good and unique, it's not worth the effort. GUI aside, it could take a few hours or it could be much more complex, and only someone who knew the VST or AU spec well and had some familiarity with porting to or from Linux would be able to tell. I'd suggest you find an alternative on Windows or Mac.

I doubt anyone besides the creator will be able to give you a make and model. It's just a standard voice sound, obviously singing 'doo', with some delay on it. Virtually any decent workstation keyboard will have something similar.

Platinum is 24-bit samples (Gold is 16-bit), and it has all three mic positions, though you can pay to get the close or surround mics for Gold. Unless you're making money professionally as a composer (or hope to) or you have a lot of cash to blow, get Gold plus the close mics upgrade. If you just have gold (which uses stage mics) or you have gold plus the surround upgrade only, you're tied to using the naturally-recorded reverb, which won't be right for every piece. With the close mics, you have a lot more flexibility to add as much or as little reverb as you like.

SoundsOnline has sales 3-6 times a year (I didn't do an exact count). Most of the time though, they're a 'buy one, get one free' kind of deal, which might not be what you want unless you wanted to supplement your orchestra with something else. You probably won't be waiting a full year for a 50% off one product sale, but you probably won't see one in three months either.

The only critique I'd give it is that it focused a bit more on the first half of the source than on the second half, but that's really minor. You've got some interesting ideas, and you pulled it off really well. I'd sub it.

Brad: I've had the most fun with high-DPS so far; Annie and Master Yi.

I've had the game for a while, but never really played past the tutorials. I played a few all-bot matches last night and I'm getting the basics figured out. Who are some good champions to start out with? Oh, and my summoner name is Kanthos