The TelenatorIf it hasn’t changed, the Russian keyboard (non-phonetic version) possesses 7 (seven) keys that make hotkey use in all DAWs a bit tricky. The only solution I know of is that one must memorize those seven as set out in QWERTY format.
The TelenatorThe TelenatorAnnounced in the last 24 hours, details and statements from Microsoft still very dodgy. One thing for certain is it is NOT a Windows 9. As druid and I were discussing above here, it will be more like a Windows 8.1, containing various fixes and changes that users have either been requesting or have been having trouble with on 8.
Sure, it might be great if we end up with a Start Menu on the screen again, but our concern should be about another important issue that has surfaced recently. You won’t find much at all about it in the PC trades magazines and blogs, but DAW and VST users have been reporting in with problems regarding mainly DPC (deferred procedure calls). I won’t go into detailed explanations here for the very many who have remained happily oblivious to this potential problem. Any search will provide you with plenty and, while there, do look up ISR as well. These issues are what has been the Number One problem in choosing a PC that is good for digital recording and has made PC choice for recording a virtual minefield.
What I am saying here is that I SO HOPE any MS upgrade to Windows will address the audio needs so many users have — in particular DPC/ISR problems. Returning to the matter of Windows 8 in general, here are a couple of links to the most recent news:
http://www.zdnet.com/what-microsoft-is-now-saying-and-not-about-windows-blue-7000014960/
Cheers!
–Tele
The TelenatorThe TelenatorI actually read the post regarding Number 3 above when it happened and remember blanching all ghostly white while considering that poor chap’s situation and standard of living. It was a personal and true reality check moment for me, I can assure you that! It’s times like that which make me so very grateful for what limited bits of ‘stuff’ I do possess.
Being sometimes shorthanded in material goods, including of course software intangibles, has been a blessing in some respects. One apt example is how informed I’ve become concerning workarounds. Another has been my increased knowledge of all things freeware and how to spot and make good use of the best among the thousands we suddenly have to choose from.
Azure — and everyone for that matter — I can’t over-recommend saving and planning for the eventual two-DAW situation that is quickly becoming the standard M.O. among serious home recording musicians and engineers. Those with unlimited money head for the more expensive DAWs; however, this is not only unnecessary, it may also be unwise. That’s because the more expensive ones have their quirks and odd limitations and have less likelihood of ‘playing well’ together. I will strongly suggest that anyone liking Podium obtain a licensed version of it to release its full potential, then go asap for a licensed Reaper. These two complement each other incredibly well, the strengths of each supporting the other, whether ReWired or simply used for various sub-tasks. I’ve had this setup for more than a year now, and I still can’t get over the advantages — worth every penny! And you can have two of the best DAWs available for less than the price of one of the many others hustling for your patronage. A year later and I still get that ridiculous dopey grin each time I’m at work using the two!
Cheers!
–Tele
The TelenatorThe newer it is, the more likely certain ports or certain channels are indeed ‘dedicated’ for control duties. This is partly because of recent advancements in controllers, but also because less experienced users had so much trouble setting up channel offsets and so on by themselves.
When I posted before I did so assuming you probably knew all I was saying already, but I though perhaps reviewing it some might assist. One note about MidiYoke — those virtual cables are unpowered; they are nothing more than a guitar cable really, no power to actively send, just mere connectors. Now, MidiOX and some of the others are a different story all around.
Again, I’m clueless about most specific hardware products and brands, but I have to assume your emulator does send control messages. I mean, how could it not? Back to what you closed with, It must have its preferred channels. The manual for my keyboard was extremely vague, so it was an evening of trial and error until I set things straight. Good luck with your efforts. Once you get things straightened the benefits are truly grand! Cheers!
The TelenatorI’m no MIDI genius or expert, having only begun using MIDI myself about a year ago after avoiding it whenever possible (I’m originally an old-school guitarist type!). But let me see if I can help some.
I don’t know the names and details of your gear but, ideally, I shouldn’t have to. First, Podium is flashing because it ‘sees’ MIDI connected in whatever way, whether right or wrong.
The important thing to know first is that the MIDI In and Outs you will use for your control surface MUST NOT BE the same ones you will use for MIDI In and Out for your VST instruments actual note functions. This is what confuses most new to setting this stuff up.
My example — my keyboard has a dedicated MIDI IN 5 for control surface use, and it has MIDI Out 2 as the return to keyboard for same. Therefore, I use them on the Mackie-styled control page in Audio/MIDI Prefs ONLY. Then I have MIDI 1, 2, 3, 4 as available to run various VSTi stuff, and have MIDI Out 1 (not needed, not used when using USB) for return, which I connect anyway, if only so I won’t try to apply it to control surface, etc.
I have used MidiYoke before, but I don’t understand why you would need it for this above use in Podium. It is usually only required for novel or unusual connection attempts (e.g., running things in from desktop, etc.).
Hope this might help. Whole point here is there are sort of two types of MIDI hookups going on here — one sort for instruments (MIDI note things only), the other to run your DAW, knobs, sliders, other assignable items on your instruments and so on.
The TelenatorThe TelenatorThe TelenatorSorry if that sounded like I was talking down to you — I wasn’t. If it helps any, let me assure you what a great little team of devs you have there at Cockos. Don’t judge from the membership at the forum, although I will say, less trolling and jerks there than many other audio and DAW forums. The quality of membership I’m guessing would perhaps be a little better were it not for the low price tag attracting all sorts. Back to the devs, though, they are a deserving crew. They will just about bend over backwards for a user, despite how you see posts every day that contain all sorts of outright demands for features. I really don’t know how they put up with it over there. No fun at all if you ask me. I have to be honest here, if it were Steinberg’s Cubase or AVID’s Poor Tools we were talking about, I’m sure I would have said …
So, soon you will be to able carry a wallet that is full of plastic cards, and you will be entitled to accumulate thousands of dollars in debt, just like my own sons. When I used to teach guitar I used to caution the many younger students not to be in too big of a hurry to grow up. Not that it ever did any good, but they were always saying to me, I can’t wait until I’m old enough to _____ (insert your own here).
In case I become too busy in the next few days, let me take this moment to wish you a Happy Birthday! now. What a world to come of age in today!
Cheers!
–Tele
The TelenatorHaha! Perhaps if DAW forums had online dating inclusive or perhaps started there a sub-forum containing such, members of those forums would drop the regular use of flaming, 4-letter obscenities, and the ridiculous immature behavior! To me, THAT alone would be worth 10X the dating feature!
On a more realistic note, I believe the gang at Ohm Force started it with their release of a brand new DAW — Ohm Studio — that is made specifically for online collaboration (to the detriment of less attention given to its core work features). It goes online immediately upon booting it up I believe, and further I heard it is difficult to use offline. Regardless of the details of it, within 6 months of its release online collaboration had truly taken off in many other quarters. I doubt any of us are surprised at this; to me, it seemed to be the logical ‘next frontier’ in home recording and its time had come. (Personally, I insist on working alone when it comes to my own material these days, so I won’t be participating unless it were others’ works and for hire only.)
I mentioned in passing earlier in this thread that I’ve had one exchange in a thread with a member of the other species. I was not even aware of this at first, being the absent-minded sort I tend to be and not bothering to even look at her avatar or name. But after a few posts, I sensed somehow from her words or tone that I might be communicating with a female, checked her info, and . . . sure enough. Her comments were quite informed, intelligent, mature, and having no obvious attitude of sarcasm — something I see only about half of the time in the male population of members in that forum. I would certainly hope for more posts of the same qualities and from either gender. Perhaps more participation from women will serve to ‘clean up’ those troll and poser-infested places, because, as it stands now, I find that entering many forums is similar to visiting S&M parlours. One must always keep one’s guard up!
SoundCloud. You know they are only doing this to save themselves from potential legal troubles later. The fines in the EU and US are extremely high for having any part in what might be ruled plagiarism by a court of law. George Harrison paid more than $330k USD in mid-’70s dollars for his ‘My Sweet Lord’, an all-too-obvious melody and arrangement rip off of the song ‘He’s So Fine’. When I served on ASCAP during my early 30s, the fine was an absolute minimum of $175k and that was per song, not per offending artist, per performance or per album!
I would so much love to see the algorithm they are using for this, as I expect it is not a very good one from all the complaints I am hearing. The same is likely true of other websites. There have been severe toughenings of various laws lately, beginning in the EU, lately the leader in protections of intellectual property. If you ever wish to know what your country of residence will be doing about the issue, you only need look to the EU, as most civilised nations follow their lead soon after. I can tell you what the international law used to be, if you are interested, as it may still be the same: You cannot have any musical work that contains 5 (five) notes in sequence that are of the same pitch and rhythmic structure. (There’s more, of course, but this is the bedrock ruling.) Any works recorded, performed or submitted for copyright that break this must credit the original composer of such works included, and must make arrangements to remunerate on schedule for any accrued royalties, etc., etc. Artists who do song ‘remixes’ and related have entered very dodgy times currently I am afraid to say, as I believe the laws were recently changed to include these techniques.
The TelenatorAzure, I haven’t had cause to return to this thread, but I was scanning the forum just now to see what I might have missed in the last couple of days. I thought I’d said plenty in this one.
I happened to catch your response, page 2, and then alex’s return comment and must concur with him. This is indeed no joke: you need to set straight your relationship with Cockos, and I mean without delay. They have no concern there for the many who run a few days over before getting to it with a proper registration, but a Day 151 is a serious abuse of their graces. I trust you will give this matter you immediate attention. -Tele
The TelenatorThe TelenatorThe TelenatorHey, druid! Several important points here. First, some of this is above rumour status, and I’ll explain in a minute.
I posted this thread, not so much for those who follow PC trends, but for those who don’t — yet meanwhile might be considering a shift to Win8 after putting it off for as long as they reasonably could. I would hate to see folks running out and going Win8, then seeing Blue come out right after. This is regardless of the discounted 8 upgrade that MS has been pushing lately, too.
As I expect you know, one reason rumours are so extensive is that MS, normally taciturn about the details anyway, have really clammed up lately, refusing to disclose units sold in the last 2 quarters and so on. As it stands now, MS watchers who are familiar with their usual behaviors are all pretty much in agreement that some game is afoot. And we do have some facts and data to support some safe conclusions.
For example, Samsung’s radical actions are all facts — no rumour at all there. You can often learn more about a company by watching what the others do. Also, a little checking reveals that an abnormally high percentage of steadfast Windows users have held back on upgrading to Win8 despite the good offer. It’s now become obvious that MS is going to have to do something, if only to maintain credibility, and its options here are quite limited.
So when you say ‘old news’ I understand the bits you are referring to, but the distinct likelihood that the release of Windows Blue will be moved up remains and, importantly, so many of those who regularly blog or formally report on MS matters are pretty well in agreement for a change — this is the new and rather recent development. After weighing the options myself, I have to agree with the experts that this is the most likely course.
And I also agree with your assessment and cold feet about annual upgrades, even if made ever so affordable to the vast majority of users. It should be considered, however, that this almost certain course of action is more in line with other software releases, whether we are comparing it to Apple’s behaviour, major synth upgrades, DAWs, and much more. With Microsoft, I expect we’ll all be so used to this within just a few years that their former way of handling OS releases will seem strange to most users in hindsight.
Also what is new is that MS personnel aren’t talking even more than usual, and in the world of software nothing is written in stone (until it is written in stone). Since we do know a few things for certain — for instance, that MS’s main source of revenue is indeed its software sales and that MS has taken a real hit here with all the Win8 hesitancy and slack sales of its Surface tablet — so it would be most logical for MS to move to a very regular repeating cycle, and it should do so as soon as it possibly can.
Personally, I’m dead certain Blue will be out as soon as they can manage it safely. They badly need to move beyond what is looking like a confusing and big mistake with the Win8/RT issue that has only been compounded by the confusion over tablet PCs and smartphone advances to some degree. I truly believe MS has made an even larger mistake by failing to understand the consumer in the last year or so. I think, for one, it failed to understand how fast consumers would embrace their phones as the favoured internet portal. There is, of course, the related issue involving apps as well that I won’t go into right now.
The bottom line is that, despite the fact Win8 itself is in my opinion a very good OS, Microsoft ‘blew it’ in every other regard. It now must choose whether to become mired in this mess, slapping on band aids, or to move ahead as quickly as possible with its only available ‘cure’ of Windows Blue — a major surgery of ‘OS-ectomy’ — and leave this confusing chapter of its history well behind.
[edit] One item I failed to include above is consumer perception. You see, to you and me, we are talking about Win 8.1, but to the average consumer it is Windows Blue, a new chapter, a departure from these recent troubles and uncertainties, a new beginning. I’m suggesting the perception is more important than the product in this case.