The Song Fight Bulletin Board

What I mean is, see you at the Grammys, chumps

Yeah from a brief skim I wasn't sure how this was any better than using rhymezone.com and the dictionary/thesaurus built in to macOS.

I went to their site and was mildly impressed that Stephen Sondheim is allegedly using this, but also I remembered that he's like 90 years old and probably types "Google" into Yahoo.com to search for stuff, so I am not taking any software endorsements from him.

Also, this quote sounds like something I would make up if this company hired me on fiverr to make up their website copy for $5

“I use Masterwriter consistently in both my songwriting and my books. I wish I’d had it back in 1980, I would have come up with a better rhyme than ‘moot’.
Rick Springfield – Grammy Award winning songwriter and artist

If you play guitar and are looking for a relatively affordable new starter tube amp to take your tone to the next level, today's deal may be of interest. It's the Egnater Tweaker 1x12 15-watt combo amp down from $600 to just $330. It's tough to judge an amp's tone online but I watched some videos and it sounded pretty decent, both clean and distorted. This could be a pretty sweet upgrade for a lot of folks here.

https://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifi ... 4000283000

What makes it a "starter" tube amp? Just that it's cheap?

"Before you're old enough to afford a tube amp so expensive you're afraid to take it out of your house... get this one!"

Yeah, it's cheap, could be somebody's first tube amp if they're on a budget. That's all I meant by it. I don't know much in detail about the amp and have no personal experience with it so I can't say much about it otherwise.

I own the Tweaker 15 head and I love it. If I didn't already own it, I'd have definitely bought this combo version deal of the day. It's got Marshall/Vox/American sounds all in one nice little tube amp. It was my first tube amp and it's a beauty. Can't really go wrong for this price, if you don't like the built in speaker on this combo, there is an outlet for using an external cab (speaker cable only folks!) so you can plug it into your Marshall 4x12 like I do with my head only version. It's got an FX loop too. Here is the manual which has some "tone" guides for you to try out some of the many different sounds you can get out of this amp: http://www.egnateramps.com/manuals/TweakerIM.pdf

Apparently, iZotope is having a sale. This is a great summer for blowing tons of money and supporting the software you may have used illicitly.

https://www.izotope.com/

Ozone Standard: $99 (reg $249)
Ozone Advanced: $199 (reg $499)
Neutron Standard: $174 ($249)
Neutron Advanced: $279 ($399)
Neutron+Ozone Standard Bundle: $199 ($349)
Neutron+Ozone Advanced Bundle: $349 ($699)
Music Production Suite: $499 ($999)

I stared at the page and it gave me an additional 5% off my cart. No joke. (So that's $189 for Ozone Advanced or $331 for the Advanced bundle)

Ozone is fantastic for throwing on your master track and sometimes even individual tracks. The presets it comes with are fantastic. It's a huge time saver.

I haven't used the other iZotope products, but I'm sure they're great too.

Or... you grab Ozone Advanced for $199 and then find one of the vendors that gives you an upgrade from that to Music Production Suite for another ~$149 (during the sale only!), which makes for ~$350 total. That's ~$150 less than getting Music Production Suite directly, or just about the same as the bundle of only Neutron & Ozone Advanced.
If that third party vendor is Plugin Boutique (VAT may apply on top), you can also get iZotope's Iris 2 for free on top (they give you that with any purchase right now, until the end of August).

The iZotope sale runs until 29 August, by the way.

PS. I got Ozone Standard for myself and asked iZotope support if it would be possible to upgrade it to Advanced for the $99 difference while the sale was still going, and they added a coupon for that to my account, so that was actually surprisingly helpful.

And then once you have Izotope Studio, which comes with Melodyne Essentials, upgrade to Melodyne Assistant for $99 from Sweetwater.

vstbuzz.com is selling EastWest's Hollywood Orchestra Gold for around $250. That's roughly half of the current special price on EastWest's website, which in turn is ~25% discounted, so the total saving is around 62.5%. Sale going for 11 more days.
https://vstbuzz.com/deals/60-off-hollyw ... st-sounds/

Steinberg has an ongoing holiday sale on some of their instruments, e.g. HALion -50%, Groove Agent -30% and The Grand -50%, running until 5 September. https://www.steinberg.net/en/promotion/ ... nts%20sale

jast wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 23, 2019 8:11 am

vstbuzz.com is selling EastWest's Hollywood Orchestra Gold for around $250. That's roughly half of the current special price on EastWest's website, which in turn is ~25% discounted, so the total saving is around 62.5%.

Is this worth it over Kontakt Ultimate's orchestra selection?

From the samples I've heard of the two they seem pretty comparable, but like all things on the Internet and music-related there are many long and ranty discussions where one is clearly superior than the other and how can anyone not tell that [insert one they bought] is the better one.

grumpymike wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 26, 2019 7:21 am

Is this worth it over Kontakt Ultimate's orchestra selection?

If you want many different articulations, yes. The only thing from NI's line-up that really compares to EWHO Gold/Platinum is Symphony Series (the full version, not the "Essentials" included in Komplete Ultimate).

If a few basic articulations are enough for you, Symphony Series Essentials will probably do.

Just an FYI for anyone who may have jumped the gun... Izotope is awesome and credited me both $150 and Iris 2 for my Suite purchase.

jast wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 17, 2019 5:30 pm

That's ~$150 less than getting Music Production Suite directly, or just about the same as the bundle of only Neutron & Ozone Advanced.
[...] you can also get iZotope's Iris 2 for free on top (they give you that with any purchase right now, until the end of August).

On top of their perpetual "deal" where everything is "discounted" all year round, Waves Audio have a 30%-on-everything voucher until the end of August if you spend at least $50.

Bundles you may find interesting at the lower end of the price spectrum:

• Vocal bundle $89 -> $62.30, includes Waves Tune which is a cheaper alternative to Melodyne that works quite well if all you need is visualizing your vocal pitches and fixing them (protip: the core secret of using these tools is splitting notes if their pitch varies too much, before trying to fix them). The bundle is cheaper than Tune on its own. Audio example: I used only Tune on my CoT song "Too Short; Didn't Read" - quite mild adjustments in the verses, stronger adjustments in the chorus, and almost flattening the backup vocals and the last few words: https://cot.music-jk.net/media/songs/co ... ntread.mp3 - I didn't properly fix some of the notes, this was pretty much my first try using Tune. But I could have.
• Silver bundle $99 -> $69.30, includes MaxxBass which is just about the only plugin I know that lets you add "fake low bass" to a track by messing with the harmonics to create purely psychoacoustic low frequencies. The result doesn't actually boost low frequencies in the signal itself and can create a bass effect below the physical limitations of the speaker system (up to 1.5 octaves according to their website). A real song that I believe uses MaxxBass is the 2001 remake of Lady Marmalade.

I think most of Waves's plugins are a waste of time and money, so I wouldn't go too wild, but they do have some bread-and-butter stuff you may find useful. Semi-notably: the Vocal bundle contains a de-esser, a breath remover, and a comparably flexible stereo doubler (not beyond what e.g. REAPER's stock plugins can do, but it's all rolled into a single plugin). The Silver bundle contains another de-esser, the same doubler, one of their mastering limiters, a convolution reverb plugin with a whole bunch of impulse responses, a fairly flexible modulation/chorus plugin (and another audio mutilation plugin that does wilder things), a spectrum/phase visualizer, a 10-band graphic EQ, a stereo imager, a multi-tap delay and an algorithmic reverb.

PS. Tune is somewhat comparable to Melodyne Assistant (one step up from Essential), except it doesn't allow you to change the timing/dynamics of notes, its tools for fine pitch manipulation are somewhat different (you can draw your own pitch curve but you don't get tools like Melodyne's pitch center markers and drift editing), and it doesn't have formant editing (formants are adjusted but you can't fine-tune them). It also doesn't support ARA.

Youlean is offering 43% off the pro version of his Loudness Meter for another 13 days ($47 -> $27). Lifetime updates included.
https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/

Some advantages of the pro version over the free version:

• Presets for popular streaming sites
• Dynamics graph for the entire song, can be exported as PDF/PNG/SVG
• Save custom presets
• A/B save states
• Drag & drop analysis (offline analysis of audio files)

None of these look super critical to me, but if you like the free version and want to give back a little, now would be a great time.

Musicians Friend is running a flash sale: https://www.musiciansfriend.com/flash-s ... 91499ea49c

IK Multimedia sale until 5 Nov:

• Amplitube (amp sim VST) 50% off
• T-RackS (mastering tool/plugin) 50% off
• SampleTank (sampler / virtual instrument library) 33% off
• ARC (room correction system for speakers) 50% off
• Total Studio MAX (IK's "everything" bundle, including a whole bunch more than I listed here, excluding ARC) 40% off - and even cheaper if you get an individual part of the bundle, e.g. Samplitube, and then "crossgrade"

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/news/?item_id=8503

jast wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 28, 2019 1:09 am

IK Multimedia sale until 5 Nov
Total Studio MAX (IK's "everything" bundle, including a whole bunch more than I listed here, excluding ARC) 40% off - and even cheaper if you get an individual part of the bundle, e.g. Samplitube, and then "crossgrade"

Alright, so I think this scheme will work... The problem is that the MAX deal ends Nov 5, but the iRig deal ends Dec 1. The latter of which requires you to hold the physical product and register it - and you won't get it by Nov 5. IK won't let you purchase an upgrade from their site without owning a software product first. However, you can purchase the upgrade through one of their authorized resellers.

1. Puchase iRig Keys I/O 25 for $179 from Amazon (or get whatever product you want, you just need to get the studio Maxgrade). You just need to receive it before the end of the month.
2. Purchase Total Studio 2 MAX Maxgrade for $299 from KVR before Nov 5.
3. Wait for your iRig to arrive Nov 17 or whatever
4. Register your iRig and get your free SampleTank 4 MAX
5. Use your Maxgrade to get Total Studio 2 MAX
6. You now have a fly keyboard, SampleTank 4 MAX, and Total Studio 2 MAX (which includes SampleTank 3, not 4, if that matters) for under $500 total.

I'm really getting sick of these upgrade deals that require these ridiculous hoops... jast probably has a better upgrade route charted.

I've been using Massive for years... probably almost as long as I've been around SF. This year for FAWM I got the Maschine Mk3 and with that I qualified for the Crossgrade pricing on Massive X. Got it yesterday and it is a lot of fun.
-bill

EastWest (Hollywood Orchestra etc.) is doing yet another sale. 60% off basically everything until the end of November (probably).
http://www.soundsonline.com/mega-sale