Kanthos

No, I'm talking about the friend cards that you get when you use passwords. Each one of them will let you battlegen a different coloured gem, as well as one of the battlegen-only items that you need to use with password recipes (stuff like the Al Bhed Primer that comes from the Auron friend card - and no, you don't get to fight Auron; I think it's Jecht who's the enemy for that card). I'm not even sure what you're talking about; is it the Inward Chaos story mode or something in Arcade Mode? Inward Chaos is the only story mode I haven't mastered. I main Zidane, but have all the other good characters except Shantotto at level 100. There are 5 duel coliseums. Airship is 0-30, Falcon is 31-60, Invincible is 61-90, Lunar Whale is 91-120, and Blackjack is 121-150.

PC, 2 GHz dual core laptop with 2 GB of RAM, so it's more than powerful enough. Plus, I'm using Brainspawn Forte as a host, and since muting other VSTs (so they don't take up CPU) is par for the course, it's only really the available RAM that matters, unless I try to layer too many things together at once.

Last two stages? If you want unfair, try to battlegen some of the coloured gems. The ones that can only be done in an Ex Burst are really annoying. Still, I've got all the gems I'll need to make everything in 4 or 5 of the 8 colors; I'm not good enough to beat the level 100 SSS-ranked opponents yet.

Ugh, they also only take wire transfer for international shipments (boo living in Canada). I'll poke around a bit more and see if I can find someone else first.

Ack, priced around what I remember it selling for before Omnisphere came out. I was hoping for something actually affordable, oh well.

I know, I know, Omnisphere's been out for a while now. I don't want to purchase it because a) it's fairly pricy and takes a lot of system resources that I don't have, particularly since I use my laptop as a sound module and effects rack. Any ideas where I might find a copy of Atmosphere legally? I'm looking at eBay and my local craigslist, but beyond that, I have no idea who might still have copies of it lying around that they hadn't sold yet. Any more ideas? Anyone have a copy they want to unload?

That depends. In general, MIDI will translate to sheet music just fine. Things break down for a couple reasons: 1) The music is too complex to be played by one person (especially if the MIDI is something like an orchestral arrangement and you condense everything to a master piano score). 2) The person who made the MIDI file has taken small liberties to improve the way that their MIDI player performs the file but that a human trying to play the sheet music for that MIDI will find confusing. As an example, say your sound card's string sounds have a longer release than the brass sounds, but they're playing a uniform part. To make the notes cut off at the same point, you might shorten the notes in the string part so it sounds right but isn't technically written correctly.

DAWs generally aren't good for live performance (except, obviously, Ableton Live), especially if you're using more than one virtual instrument. There are other products out there that are much more designed for this: Brainspawn Forte, Native Instruments Kore, and others. If you're only using one instrument, and that instrument makes it easy to call up different sounds, a DAW will work fine, but as soon as you start mixing VSTs, DAWs start to make it really difficult to get what you want without a lot of pain.

Make sure to get an audio interface that has MIDI in and out, and you're set.

No latency is impossible. Small latency isn't noticeable: most people don't start noticing latency until it's between 10-20 ms or higher. You will want a good audio interface; assuming your computer's not horrible, that's all you'll need. MIDI data is very low latency and your computer's USB port won't add anything noticeable, so getting the data to your virtual instrument won't be the issue. What will matter is how CPU-intensive the virtual instrument is (if you're waiting for it to stream samples from your hard drive, that adds latency), as well as the latency that your audio interface will add. I use my laptop strictly for live performance, along with two keyboards. I use a host program called Forte that's built for live performance, and I load it up with a bunch of Native Instruments products (Kontakt, Absynth, Massive, FM8, B4-II, Pro-53, a couple Guitar Rig instances for effects), plus a number of other synths (OP-X, Stringer, Sylenth, Synth1, Ultra Analog VA-1, Lounge Lizard, and Zebra). I have a lightweight orchestra loaded in Kontakt, a couple pipe organs, a couple choirs, and some samples; 200-300 MB worth of stuff. Obviously, trying to play all of those at the same time would overload my computer (as well as being pointless), but by muting all the instruments I'm not using (so they don't take up CPU), I get great performance when I use this in live situations. My laptop isn't a massive powerhouse either; it's a 2 GHz dual-core with 2 GB of RAM; not bad, but it wasn't state of the art when I bought it almost 3 years ago.

If MIDI files don't translate to sheet music that is correct, the MIDI files are also incorrect. If you were to convert audio to sheet music (which can't be done effectively yet), the quality of the program you use would make a huge difference, because the program would have to analyze the audio and determine what notes were sounding at once and on which instruments. MIDI, on the other hand, is a format that is explicit about which notes are played when and for how long. Unless you get a notation program that's really buggy and incorrect, it is not a hard thing to convert MIDI to notation, so if the software you use isn't doing that well, the problem is probably with the MIDI files.

I think you mean something more like this? That sound isn't a vibraphone; it's a xylophone or marimba. Though a vibe could work too depending on what exactly you have in mind.

I bought Lounge Lizard a few months ago, and because of that, I just got an e-mail from Applied Acoustics Systems offering $140 off any of their instruments and some of their bundles (Tassman + Ultra-Analog + String Studio or Lounge Lizard + Strum Acoustic + Strum Electric, or both of the Strums together). I have no use for the coupon, which has to be used by January 5th. It's an e-mail code that you use when buying from them online. What I'll do is this, to make it somewhat interesting. If anyone wants it, post in this thread to tell me why, and the most creative response gets the code next Friday morning (December 18th).

Not 100% certain, but I think you can block bravery attacks but not HP attacks.

It's perfectly fair; you can do it to them. Dodging and blocking is your friend. Dissidia was never intended to be an easy game if you want to do things like farm equipment drops in the Blackjack duel coliseum. I wouldn't necessarily go for either of those two weapons; there are other choices that are better depending on the type of build you want. Who do you main and how do you have them set up?

It might be usable (albeit uneditable) with the free Kontakt Player.

Yeah, I never owned a PS1, so I never played the original. Maybe I'd find it more aggravating as someone who had, but as far as I'm concerned, it's not annoyingly unplayable.

Sounds like a zombie or something.

I never found it that bad, and for me, it only seemed like the first time it used an animation *might* be slow. Next time I play it through, though, I'm going to copy it to memory stick; I'm doing that with all my PSP games now. The loading times for Dissidia with the entire game on the memory stick are so much better.

Many artists who submit don't post in the workshop, and many who do post in the workshop don't list their virtual instruments, real instruments, and DAW in any kind of organized form. It'd be a nightmare to try and collect that for the site, and there'd be so many holes in the information that it's not worth it. As far as virtual instruments go, knowing exactly what person X used for sound Y on song Z isn't going to help you much. If there's a particular sound you like, ask the artist about it directly (contact information, at least to send a forum PM to an artist, isn't that hard to find here). Or be a bit more general and ask something like 'I'm looking for a sample set with really good strings' and see what recommendations you get.

Could it be that the Gold/Silver installer is used for the VST and the samples that are common to both, and the Gold-only part adds all the extra?

Worst case, get Squidfont Orchestral. To my ear, the lead is a flute, and the accompanying reeds are clarinet, bassoon in a fairly high register, and maybe a trace of oboe.

If you want to keep the 'old' versions and just add the ones you don't already have, you could just copy the files from wherever the torrent put them to wherever you have them now (as long as they're not in a bunch of folders or otherwise sorted) and choose not to overwrite any duplicates.

I've slept with her, broke up with her, got her approval up to 100 before and after dumping her, and did her sidequest and she still wouldn't teach me. Luckily, you can buy the shapeshifting tome from the vendor in the Dalish camp.

You're probably seriously outdamaging them or using AOE spells ineffectively. One of the tips that came up for me on a loading screen was that you want to be really careful as a mage since enemies will go after the person doing the most damage. Then again, I've also seen a tip about enemies going after the most armored person (don't really understand that; I'd want to kill the healer first, then the mage, then the harder-to-kill enemies). Think of it like an MMO: when you start a battle, enemies have an equal chance of going for anyone. If what the tip said about armor is true, then this'll affect who enemies go after to a degree, and Alastair's taunt will help. But you can't expect enemies being nuked repeatedly by you, with no one else going after them, to focus on someone else. To survive longer, do things like use spells like earthquake and cone of cold to keep the enemies controlled, hold off on your big AOE nukes unless you've got some control already in place, use something like stonefist to knock down enemies who are charging you, and give the tanks some time to get the enemies focused on them before you launch into your big AOE spells.