The TelenatorThe TelenatorThe TelenatorWow, I remember Kjaerhus well, but I don’t think too many people use them anymore. GVST is still around — just issued a couple of new betas, one a looper that is rather cute. I still use their GRev reversed delay from time to time and their GMulti is possibly the best freeware if not one of the only multi-band compressors out there even though I don’t use it.
Anyway, I wasn’t really referring to these sort of ‘starter’ bundles when I posted. There are much newer plugins to be had. Breebardt of ToneBoosters recently made all of his JB series into freeware, which are about as good as his newer series. Variety of Sound has released some really fine new ones and also gone back and improved a few of the older ones. It’s hard to know even where to begin, really, as there have been so many in the last couple of years that rival anything commercial. Meanwhile, as you might have seen in the constant $50 sale going on for the last few months at Waves, the price of both FX and instrument plugins has crashed throughout the entire market.
I wasn’t so much focused on synths or instruments when I was commenting earlier, but most of the top brands are on regular markdown or recurring sales, too. I can’t get over some of this — I never expected to see a company such as Waves slash its prices, but for certain they are not the only ones. It’s just a great time to be making music … and hunting plugins as well.
Well, cheers and best wishes! I had thought you were new to Podium, based on your original comments. I’m essentially a Cubase refugee and settled down with Reaper and Podium after shopping around quite a lot. I ought to also mention I have an x64 PC, but I keep all my audio software in 32-bit. I don’t have any vast memory needs, don’t like plugs that drag a gig of stuff around with them, and a long time ago I discovered my whole setup worked best for me when I stayed away from 64-bit DAWs and plugins. More choice at 32 in the first place. They harped on and on about 64 being the future 10 years ago but so many have been slow to get there with stable product. I guess I’ll have to look into the notion of converting in another 10 years, aye?
The TelenatorSorry the Waves plugins are causing you trouble. I’m aware that this problem has come up on other DAW forums, including the Reaper forum Slomo has linked.
One suggestion I’ll offer concerning Podium is to try scanning each one in one at a time. First, you want to clear out the text referring to any of these if any have ended up in Quarantine. It’s merely a text file in AppData Roaming Zynewave on PC. Then attempt to import each one at a time if you can.
Your other comment — ‘the lack of quality free/cheap plug-ins’ — got my curiosity up. Which free/cheap plugins were you referring to and what lack? If anything, most of us have the exact opposite problem. Including my instruments folder, it’s a struggle these days to keep the number of plugins I have and use regularly to under 200. This number represents at least 75% free, very high-quality plugins. I only began purchasing reasonably priced commercial plugins a little under two years ago. The biggest problem for some of us currently that there are many new and free or very cheap plugins being released almost every day!
You can search the Net, but the best places I suggest starting in building up a most excellent collection is the thread or two with longer lists on the Zynewave forums, a few other threads here that focus on one particular synth or one maker’s line of plugins. Then, I’d suggest bpb (the bedroomproducersblog) for further helpful lists by type of plugin, and then the huge cataloging of plugins at KVR.
Personally, I prefer to choose my own plugins myself and usually don’t care much for the assortment provided by some DAW makers. The exception would be the many generic, GUI-less collection that comes with Reaper (the other Daw I use) and Ableton’s (a DAW I no longer use).
In any case, there’s thousands of them out there now, and there’s hundreds that are excellent from free to pricey. Finding and building up awesome plugin folders is part of the fun of recording on our own!
The TelenatorSo, greetings duffman and welcome to the select group of Zynewave aficionados. I might as just be straight with you — Podium does a lot of things and does them extremely well, but as someone very knowledgeable of REAPER and also a sometimes user thereof, I’ve got to be honest with you by saying that, if you are not satisfied with the zillion and one commands, scripts, macros, options, thousand-menu items and more in REAPER, then you are not going to be happy with Podium either. In fact, I suspect there is not another full, professional DAW in existence now or anytime in this decade that will suit.
No, Podium is more about doing your own creative work. It doesn’t, for example, shift keys or tonalities of every clip or loop you throw at it and make them all the same key. I don’t even think Fruity Loops (of late called FL Studio) will do that for you. Those kinds of bells and whistles are pretty well absent here.
Now, what you will find is a recording system that is very stable, thoroughly tested prior to any newer release, rather low CPU, most excellently thought out in its MIDI editor, and containing a few concepts that one can tell were carefully designed in. There is a distinct focus on the meat and potatoes here — it’s created for artists, musician composers and the like, instead of being geared for fads, trends or as some DJ’s toy. I find it an extremely inspiring chunk of software but, no, it won’t hold your hand and do the fiddly things for you.
I should mention that it is rather good at supporting Mackie and Mackie-emulating controls and will process internally at 64-float — a feature that Pro Tools 11 just added and is now boasting about today yet Podium has had this for ages. In fact, perhaps go read the latest PT propaganda, then return and notice that Podium has had many of their recently-added features for years.
I realise this post doesn’t answer your every detail, but, frankly, I never think about or have ever needed many of those. I’m too busy making my own loops, samples and bits of music — in whatever key I choose to write them in. I suggest you simply try the demo and perhaps read the Guide for yourself. The demo is free, biggest limitation I think is it’s single core functioning . . . oh, and did I mention the price of the pro edition? It will leave you enough left over to buy one or more other DAWs.
Cheers and Best Wishes!
–Tele
The TelenatorAh, Slomo! You said the magic words: PatchArena! I know the website well, but I haven’t been there in very long, so I had no idea that there were hundreds of Rapture presets and waveforms waiting to be downloaded for free. So many good ones there that I decided to only buy the Film Score Pack at Cakewalk and no more.
It also gave me a chance to compare and see if I had all the Z3TA soundbanks on offer there, too (I had all but one for that synth).
Dimension Pro is excellent for what it does, also, but I already have Z3TA and now Rapture, and that Rapture is about the most complicated of any synth I think I’ve ever played. This is enough to keep me busy for two lifetimes, so I have to pass on Dimension — but all of them are such stable, good-sounding instruments. Thanks for bringing PatchArena to my attention . . . ENJOY!
Cheers!
–Tele
The TelenatorThanks for the heads up on these. I couldn’t resist — for $19 I had to grab one, so I choose Rapture.
There’s more going on at Cakewalk, too. You get these low prices buying through DON’TCRACK.com, but if you are looking for a rather good drum machine VSTi, Cakewalk is offering its SessionDrummer2 directly at its own site’s store for $19 also. It’s a fine commercial drums, formerly $99.
The reason for this markdown is that their SessionDrummer3 is now out (for $99, I think). Also, at the Cakewalk store all the expansion packs for the two VSTi synths you first mentioned are significantly marked down. Most are $19 each, with the larger ones more. Just for example, there are 2 or 3 Rapture expansions that are $19 and said to be very good. Same deals on some of the Dimension Pro as well.
Don’t you love it? Practically everywhere you look now the top-dollar synths and some of the most expensive plugin FX are tumbling way low in price. It’s clearly become a buyer’s market! Cheers!
The TelenatorCongrats on the new machine, kim! I just ordered a nice backlit keyboard (a gamer’s keyboard, believe it or not!) and a larger screen for the one I’m building. Can’t put it off any longer!
Yes, this synth is a real sweet one. The filters don’t get as dirty sounding as fast as Tyrell’s do. Very stable also. With so many oddball, even wild, synths in my folder, I keep this one around when I want something less extreme.
The TelenatorHi, Chris! Congrats on having a new release. Honestly, I don’t believe I’m qualified to comment or judge any works within this sub-genre, although I have a friend who is a synth designer and one of the leaders of the microtonal movement, and he composes/records regular(?) ambient genre pieces. I probably ought to forward some of this to him for comment.
Meanwhile, I noticed that your label is one of the few that releases music in 24-bit format. Would you be kind enough to say a few words about your experience with having your music commercially available in this bit depth? As in . . . any roadblocks or impediments in doing so? public acceptance and feedback? Your own feelings RE? Any other whys and wherefores?
I’ve been thinking about the 24-bit issue for quite some time. So this has got my curiosity up about the entire matter. Thanks in advance for any remarks you might care to include!
Cheers!
–Tele
The TelenatorThe TelenatorThe TelenatorI have been following Microsoft’s latest and largest news story, this pending Windows Blue, and I’m afraid I have mainly bad news to report, with the inclusion of only a very little that is good.
The good news first? As reported rather universally, this Windows Blue, which is intended to arrive looking much like a giant service pack, like SP1 only much bigger for those of you familiar with that one, will indeed come with a few helps and solutions for downplaying the whole ‘Metro’ bit in Windows 8 and probably helping the user to more easily boot straight to the desktop and once again have access to the precious and widely desired Start Menu of the previous Windows 7. But Blue won’t be getting rid of Metro by any means, and this might be considered the first of the bad news.
Despite huge customer disapproval and continuing loss of market share — particularly in business where in a recent good survey it showed no more than 15% of businesses have accepted Win8, Microsoft is arrogantly pushing on with an OS that is becoming known throughout the computer world as the ‘OS that Nobody Wants’. You see, Win8 has been a double or triple fail of a notion — those who don’t like touch screens or even have the option don’t like hauling their mouses all over kingdom come on-screen, don’t like fiddling with hidden ‘charm bars’ just to sign off, gamers hate Metro and how Win8 subtly at most times and seriously at others SLOWS DOWN their software and hardware, businesses saw the need to retrain employees for Win8 an unacceptable expense and have opted OUT, and making the OS of Win8 more in line and similar-looking to the Windows Phone (which fewer than 5% use) and the Windows Surface tablet (which has stagnated even after the huge and snooty promo adverts) clearly showed that customers just aren’t that caring about having all their various gadgets look and operate identically.
I’ll give the biggest bad news here, so I won’t bury it in other comments: Gamers are our friends. Although their graphic requirements far exceed our audio requirements, they experience the same horrors when OS latency problems arise, such as DPC, ISR, and hard page faults. Where our audio may only drop out, pop and glitch, they get this but also have to deal with their commandos and other screen characters freezing up and taking a bullet that they could not move to avoid.
The gamers are the leaders in the entire field, largely because their numbers and advocacy are far greater than ours in audio. Computer builders are much more apt to listen to them, and they DO but apparently not enough sometimes. The word on the street is that Windows 8 just does NOT CUT IT for demanding software and hardware processing needs, something I myself can now verify. So, stay away from Windows 8 until we see what else this Blue may address and fix, and I fully agree — Windows 7, with a good and lean setup is far better suited to our audio needs. In fact, it is the best PC OS yet offered for pro audio, not discussing any one of the several Mac systems (which vary greatly here in their adequacy).
Windows Blue may indeed end up being the reason to rename Windows 8 as 8.1, but we should be far less concerned with titles than in what this odd step backwards for MS actually DOES. Details are sketchy, but some are starting to leak. While MS has shown that it is not completely obtuse and unconcerned to multimedia user needs, there is no indication whatsoever yet that Windows Blue will address anything that might help us or our gamer friends.
Note also that the companies that offer us specialised PCs and laptops for recording almost ALL still offer any build you would like with Windows 7 installed instead. Note also that some of their entry-level models are not priced very much higher than any good PC you might find at Best Buy, Target, online firms, or wherever else you like to shop. Another choice, of course, is to purchase your own Win7 disk and install this on your new unit, if it is no longer available from the factory with 7.
Remember that when MS boasts that it has sold some 100 million licenses for Win8 in the last 2 quarters that there were another 100+ million PC/IBM-type computers sold during this time — proof in numbers that the Win8 is not the must-have OS they make it out to be. The other PCs are running something OTHER!
Before, I said it might be best to wait this Win8 fiasco out and hope for a better future after subsequent fixes and ‘service packs’. As of now, I am saying, Forget Win8 completely. Some XP owners have kept with that older OS for as many as 12 years now. Windows 7 works better than either XP or 8 and might continue to serve your audio needs very well for another 20 years. As we all know, new is not always best!
Cheers!
–Tele
The TelenatorThe TelenatorThe Telenator