The Sound Board

Tanuj, thanks a lot for these words, I wholeheartedly agree!

11.1.1 is online.

Minimum OS version raised to 14.4. Bummer.

FWIW, in contrast to previous launches, this time the Apple pricing increase has been very moderate. The new Mac mini w/ 64GB of RAM should be good for a lot of audio software and is almost a bargain.

Why do you care at all? My music computer is not being used for anything else and I go with the policy of only updating it when a critical part of my infrastructure requires an update. So I pretty much only update when Apple's Logic raises the minimum deployment version bar.

I have been criticising Arturia's emulation offers for their – in my opinion – lifeless and plastic'y sound, but with SynthX I must confess they have nailed it. It's hands down my preferred Synthex emulation now. Having a bunch of other Arturia products, I got it for 99€. For 199€ I've been wary. Dow ...

Without having actual insights, to me K7 seemed to have been a transitional piece of software, an unhealthy mix of old and new technologies. I sincerely hope that with K8 they have addressed the technical debt and are onwards rewriting the core.

Sounds great, (again) much better than CherryAudio‘s version. The modules are a nice bonus.

For macOS, I have been using TwistedWave for years. Unfortunately they changed their pricing model to a subscription now, but it was a cute little workhorse which did the things it advertised very well.

Hi Dan, long time no see (you might not remember, but we had some chats back in the days of the Oasys Blue Bomber and later the PCI card…).

FWIW, while CPU usage is relatively high indeed, it doesn't impose a problem here on Apple Silicon. A single instance seems to consume up to 20% of an M1 Max.

The 2600 VST plugin seems to have problems (in Komplete Kontrol), the AU one is fine here.

That said, apart from TimeWarp2600 this sounds way better than all the competitors – and it's not only the programming, the raw sound seems much more beefy.

Does it sound any better than the CherryAudio 2600 variant? While they receive a lot of praise for their VSTs, in my ears all of those sound pretty much the same and usually nowhere near the emulated hardware.

But the chart and radio selection was more colorful. Different length of songs, different styles, even long instrumentals. Radio moderators could choose the songs they presented. New songs sent to the radio stations were discussed in a listening session. More surprises and individuality and less ...

I have to concur here. Where GForce, U-He, and Synapse Audio are sonically playing in the first league (with TAL and Softube being close contenders), for me, Cherry Audio synths all inherit a slightly plastic same-ish sound.

With 100$ off, if you own the legacy legend, the impulse gets stronger…

Well, the achilles heel of the shared memory architecture is obviously the scalability with regards to RAM size. For applications where you need terabytes of RAM, there is just no alternative (yet) to Intel, AMD, and the like. When Apple moved its Mac Pro from an Intel-based design to their own ...

BlueZone has an incredible stock of great sounds, in particular their "war of the worlds" type libraries are very inspiring, in particular, if you don't use them in their pristine form, but incorporate them into your ­(tonal)­ sound design.

Thanks for the explanation, Matthias! Does that mean that in an SoC like the Mx there is no longer a need for a cache? Since the distance is now minuscule is there even a need to store smaller bits of data nearby? No. L1/L2/L3-Caches are still a necessity, but the impact of a cache miss is way less ...

Nice updates, in particular, if you come from the original series. I'm coming from an S25 (which seems to be discontinued), so I have to cope with the longer length. Unfortunately there is no 3-octave model.

tack wrote: ↑Jul 03, 2023 11:34 am It does sound nice. But I fell into this trap with HZP, which is perhaps one of the biggest wastes of money I've spent on sampling yet. (The honeymoon phase was rather significant as I recall, but very short lived.)

What‘s your problem with HZP?

4. New VST Synth from Synapse Audio

Sounds juicy, but that's the first I hear. Is that a generic wish or something you have heard about?

Great sounding to me, but I really miss a vibrato with these winds.

I think it sounds more lush than the (also free) TAL U NO, albeit with less high frequencies. I also like the manual control which results in some interesting tones.

Turned out I became aware of my additional tax payment for 2019 (and 2020 as well), which is quite a mouthful, hence I had to ignore all offers.