Kanthos

First, an update: Traktor and Guitar Rig have been sent out; the Kore pack hasn't, since the interested party backed out. Sure, I can mail it to the UK. I don't believe it uses a dongle since there wasn't one in the box (and I doubt Steinberg's as concerned with piracy of their lite edition products as they are with full versions). I'm not even sure if it had a serial number; if there was one, it'd be on the package with the CD itself. If you're interested, PM me your address, paypal $5 US to cover the cost of shipping it, and I'll get it in the mail to you. If you're at all interested in the Kore pack, I'll throw that in for free since I'm already shipping to you, and it won't cost extra to ship a second CD in a cardboard sleeve.

Could you record-arm the track but also just mute it? Or maybe route the track to nowhere or to some outputs on your audio interface (if it has more than two) that aren't being used? The last possibility does depend on how your audio interface does monitoring or on how you have your monitors or headphones plugged in; on mine, I can obviously connect monitors to either pair of outputs and that's all I'd hear, and if I use headphones, I have to choose which pair of outputs get sent to it. Regardless, there's probably an easy way to mute the vocal track you're recording or to send it somewhere where it won't be heard.

Nope, all NI products use a serial number and authorization system - you install their Service Center and each time you install a new NI product, you have to add your serial number and authorize it on their server.

I got to read the proposal they were sending around for Space Whale Tactics, and it was *very* well thought out. I just didn't know that they'd gone anywhere as a company, and I'm glad to hear that they have.

They just did figure out a way to compete with the used market, and now you're whining about that. Genius. Developers are fighting an uphill battle. Other than a short period immediately following the release of a game (i.e. before any used copies are available), who would buy a new copy instead of a used one? You'd only buy new if the price difference is so small that you're not saving much by buying used, if there were one-time-use materials or other benefits in the box with a new copy, or there are no used copies available. Without publishers and developers taking explicit action, though, the used market *will* cut into their sales and isn't something they can compete against. Just trying to 'put out a better game' won't change the retail landscape. Cutting costs won't increase sales of new copies (and if quality is affected at all, would likely *reduce* sales of new copies). Think about it logically. Unless the games industry can somehow shut down the used game market entirely (which would also include the inevitable upsurge in people using Craigslist and other services as individuals if they couldn't take the game they no longer want to play into Gamestop), there are only two ways to fight this as a developer. You either restrict the game so that it has no trade-in value, or you find a way to generate revenue from used sales. Reducing the trade-in value to 0 is something that's been done easily in the PC market with the use of serial numbers that need to be registered in order to play the game online. In Canada, we're not allowed to trade in PC games at EB Games (Canada's Gamestop) anymore, perhaps because the game industry put enough pressure on retailers because of piracy concerns, something that doesn't exist in nearly the same way on consoles because of the increased difficulty of duplication and the increased difficulty of playing pirated media (console hacking, unofficial firmwares, and the like). So there really is one good solution: find a way to make a profit on used game sales. Which, shockingly, the industry is starting to discover and people are starting to whine about. I spent 4 months with EA as a co-op student, programming for MVP Baseball 2004. The team was between 60 and 80 people, the majority of whom were on the project full-time (QA testers would rotate from game to game; our office in Vancouver did most of EA's sports titles, other than Madden, Tiger Woods, and NHL - the latter was at a separate office still in Vancouver). Now of course EA could've had a smaller team if they had a longer release cycle, but still, that's a lot of money to spend on salary alone, let alone licensing, equipment, and all the other costs required to get a game to market. Games these days *require* teams this size (simple 2D DS games being the exception). As zircon said, middleware products help out a lot, but there's still a ton of work to do. And it's not something that's negotiable either; gamers will avoid games that aren't as good as they expect. You can't cut a lot of corners and produce a worthwhile game. In short: gamers are stupid. We demand better and better quality at lower and lower prices, expect that all the upgrades and DLC we can dream up should be free, and value savings of a few dollars now over supporting the companies we claim to love in the long run.

Sounds like you'll have to pay for the upgrade in order to export to an actual audio file, then.

You should be able to export from MadTracker 2 in some kind of audio file. Worst case, play the file and record the playback into another file. Also, there's no such file type as wip; that's short for Work In Progress. Anything can be a wip (not necessarily audio, though audio is obviously the one people here care about most).

Happy birthday Rama!

Nice, didn't miss it. Happy birthday, both of you!

It's been years since I've used FL, but I seem to remember that you could possibly make multiple patterns using the step sequencer, and arrange those patterns into a song using some other view. This would make sense; who would ever use the step sequencer if it only did 4-bar patterns in the current time signature? It'd be useless unless you wanted the exact same beat throughout your song.

Guitar Rig's gone out, and Kore with extra presets is spoken for. Cubase and Traktor left, for anyone interested.

I'm going to add Crowded House - Don't Dream It's Over.

I've only heard the samples on NI's website, but Alicia's Keys sounds great. I just ordered the Classic Piano Collection this morning for live use, but the only reason I didn't get Alicia's Keys instead is because I want the variety of a few different pianos to choose from, and for the memory usage, I can fit the 3 grands and 1 upright from Classic Pianos into not that much more RAM than Alicia's Keys. I'll certainly end up getting Alicia's Keys as well in a month or two when I've got a bit more cash, and after I've played around with the Classic Pianos, probably end up replacing at least one of them for live use, unless I end up having the RAM to keep them all loaded. Alicia's Keys sounds incredibly realistic though, and I'd definitely recommend it as someone who needs great pianos as a key part of my sound. (Though any sampled piano library will probably be a big improvement over the smallish Yamaha C7 samples loaded on my Nord Stage).

Ok, I've had three people contact me about Guitar Rig, and one about Kore, so, like I said, first person gets it unless they choose to pass. PMs are going out now.

Please remove Native Instruments FM8 (download only) under For Sale, Computer Music/Electronic Stuff.

Another disadvantage of headphones is that they won't have the bass response of large monitors or monitors with a separate subwoofer. If you've spent a lot of time listening to similar reference mixes on your headphones, this won't be as much of a problem, since you'll be conditioned to hear how your headphones treat bass in similar material, but listening to your mix on other speakers, even commercial grade ones or a car CD player, will always help you confirm that you've mixed correctly.

Don't know the title, but the song's from Wizards and Warriors. I've never played the game, but recognize it from Trenthian's remix.

Please remove this from For Sale, :::computer/music electronic stuff::: Cubase 4 + manuals + Steinberg Key: $300 (inc. shipping) [Kanthos] Please add this to For Sale, :::computer/music electronic stuff::: Edirol UA-25 Audio Interface: $150 (inc. shipping) [Kanthos] Voucher for one of Guitar Rig 4, FM8, Massive, Absynth 5: $125 [Kanthos] Information on the voucher

Not sure how to update the thread title, but there's also a bundled copy of Cubase LE 4 that someone's welcome to. $5 to cover the cost of mailing the disc. As for the Kore Selection, it seems that it's a small set of presets in addition to those included with the standard Kore Player download from NI's website, and I think these are chosen from the full factory Kore install. Like the Cubase, $5 to cover the cost of mailing and it's yours. I'm not being *that* altruistic; there's also a voucher for a free full version of one of FM8, Absynth 5, Massive, or Guitar Rig 4, and that I'm going to sell. I upgraded my audio interface to the Audio Kontrol 1 since I needed more than two outputs for the live keyboard playing I'm doing now that I wasn't when I bought my Edirol UA-25 3 years ago, and selling that voucher plus selling the old interface will cover the cost of the new one, and I need that money

I just bought NI's Audio Kontrol 1, and it comes bundled with a lot of software I don't need. If you'd like any of them, send me a PM. I've got serials for Traktor 3 LE, Guitar Rig 3 LE, and 'Kore Player with Kore Selection' (which may very well just be the free Kore Player with no extra samples beyond the free pack NI's been giving out for a while, or there may be additional samples, I don't know). The first two should be downloadable; the Kore Player, if it comes with any extra content, is yours for the a small amount to cover the cost of shipping a CD, if there's content you can't just download. I'll take a look at what exactly is included tonight; I just have the documentation at work today so I can't confirm whether there's additional sample content or not.

Happy birthday! Now hurry up and level that paladin

Prophet, please remove the following, under For Sale, :::computer/music electronic stuff:::: Sample CDs, detailed here (all in original cases except the IK Multimedia Capsules) - $10 each, $80 for the lot (includes shipping)

Ok, so it's not latency compensation for things you're recording from hardware that are getting in your way; I was just throwing that out there since that's usually the most common problem. A clicktrack is basically a metronome (and many DAWs will just call it that). Unlike a standard hardware metronome, though, it will be able to compensate for any time signatures or tempo changes that are in your piece. Basically, at least until you have a number of other tracks recorded and you're happy with the timing, you want to play the first few against the metronome to get the timings accurate. The other purpose for a clicktrack (and almost certainly how it got its name) is that whether by using a metronome or by recording some type of percussive sound, some bands will have a separate track of recorded audio that gets played back, usually just in the drummer's monitor, so that the drummer can keep constant time. The purpose is about the same as it is in a DAW; if you have recorded music that's playing along with your live musicians, you need to be sure that the musicians keep in time with the recording.

Most likely it's latency from your soundcard. What soundcard are you using, what type of drivers if you're on Windows (choices are ASIO, WDM, DirectSound), what's the buffer size set to, etc? If none of those make any sense to you and you only have an onboard soundcard and not a proper, low-latency audio interface, and your recorded notes are lagging behind the ones you're playing back, then the problem is almost certainly latency from your sound card.

Synth1 is pretty much the standard recommendation around here.