Oct 012014
 

Paying full price is for Suckers.

Ouch, that’s harsh, isn’t it? But it’s true. When it comes to music production software and hardware, just about everything software (and some hardware) goes on sale 2-3 times a year.

There are a few products that never go on sale, but those products are a minority. A small one, at that. The perpetual sale nature of the software industry makes me question what the real value of any of this is.

It used to be that gear would go on sale once or twice a year. Now, every month there’s a huge list of companies making desperate offers to get you to buy their stuff. So, if there’s always a sale on, is there really a best time of the year to shop? Yes, there still is.

When? Around Black Friday, right after US Thanksgiving. (Check before, just in case.) As an example, I bought Native Instruments’ Komplete 9 Ultimate, which usually goes for $1100, for $575 last Thanksgiving. And I bought a few other things at very steep discounts (like SynthMaster), because I am what? Cheap! (Well, cheap but impulsive when I see a really good deal for good software.)

Komplete 9 was on sale one more time after that, and that was this past summer, but the deal wasn’t as good as it was last Thanksgiving. Same for Synthmaster. It’s been on sale, but not as cheap as it was then.

Black Friday is a great time to gear up a new studio, but sometimes companies have once-a-year deals that are outside of that time, so it pays to keep an eye on things year round.

I have a few places I check on a semi-regular basis:

  • On the front page of KVR Audio (or just follow them on Twitter), check the What’s New feed, and click on Deals.
  • Or go to Rekkerd.org’s Deals page.
  • Also, look at Rekkerd’s “Deals Archive.” That’s amazingly useful for bargain hunters like us, because companies tend to repeat the same offers at fixed intervals. (Some are regular like clockwork!)

If something has just come off of a deal, then you’re going to have to wait a while for it to come on deal again. (Unless it’s a Waves Audio plugin. I swear, they have everything on sale all the time, or so it seems. In fact, Waves has sales every weekend.)

You can also get some crazy deals at plugin resellers. The two I use the most are:

Both are totally legit, but you may have to wait a day or two to get your license codes. Plugin Discounts tends to have bigger savings, but Plugin Boutique will give you cash back in the form of a credit, which you can apply to your next purchase. Shop around!

As an example: iZotope makes StutterEdit, which is a great glitch plugin. It retails for $249. It just came off of a sale at $99 on the iZotope website, but I found it on Plugin Discounts for $88.

$88 for a $249 plugin? Yeah, I can do that.

When you do decide to start buying plugins, please go slowly. Don’t go broke buying tons of them. Buy smartly. And when you see a synth or plugin you like, make a note of it, and wait for it to come on sale. Most will, eventually.

A Few Closing Thoughts

First, when you go to pick out a DAW, make sure of a few things: does it use VSTs, or does it have its own plugin format? (Reason and ProTools use their own formats for plugins.) If you want to go cheap, stick with DAWs that use VST for now. It’s not an ideal solution, but it offers the biggest variety and the most potential cheapness.

You can hook up a VST to Reason through a VST host application, but it’s one of those things that’s kind of a kludge, and I don’t know that it’s worth the trouble. Rewire Reason into your main DAW instead.

Most VST makers will let you sell your plugins to other people. (License transfers.) Reason does not let users transfer Rack Extension licenses. You can transfer the Reason license, but not the RE license. If that’s a deal-breaker for you, keep it in mind. Read those EULAs! Rack Extensions are pretty cool from a tech point of view, and they make Reason really useful, but it’s a walled garden.

Some DAWs, like Studio One Artist edition, won’t allow the use of external plugins. Whoops! Gotta buy a more expensive version there! Studio One is a good DAW, but read the fine print. Same goes for the Studio One Vocaloid Edition. It only lets you use the Piapro Studio plugin. The rest are all Studio One only. If you don’t mind that, Studio One is an excellent starter DAW you can usually get for around $80-$90, and the full version is around $200-$300.

If you want to use Nerve and Serum in your music, you better make sure they’ll run in your DAW first! Read the developer’s website, and check for compatibility! Some plugins just don’t work with some DAWs, and you won’t know until you pay and suffer.

When it comes to copy protection, there are a few different ways companies do it– the worst in my opinion are the USB dongles, because they ruin your ability to go portable. How can I hook up gear if I have a dongle in every USB port? iLok and eLicenser are the more egregious ones. I can’t run Cubase without a dongle, so I tend to run Ableton more often. Native Instruments and Ableton both have very good copy protection, in that it’s not aggressively annoying.

It’s sad, but I tend to avoid perfectly good software if it uses iLok or eLicenser. I hate being shunted off into that kind of copy protection, especially when I’m a paying customer. (Even if I am cheap.)

This leads me to my final advice: learn how to program! I mentioned it briefly in part two, but making your own gear in Reaktor, Max For Live, Bidule, or C++ is a great way to save a ton of cash. It’s also a great way to learn more about audio and how those sounds are made.

Stay cheap, do your homework, and don’t forget to make some kickass music!

You Komplete Me

 Music, Photography, Technology  Comments Off on You Komplete Me
Dec 052013
 

Komplete Ultimate showed up today. It comes on a shiny little hard drive, and the install takes about an hour or two. I installed the full version of Kontakt first, then registered it, then installed the Komplete Ultimate cross-grade, and everything went just fine. I’m excited to get more into it. All of it. There’s a lot of it!

I’ve been looking at some of the other deals out there. One VST I picked up was SynthMaster, because it sounds great, and it was on sale for $49. I really like the sounds it makes. If you pay more, you can get more patches. In the case of SynthMaster, some great sound designers have made some really amazing patches, so I picked up a few to go with it.

I also picked up Chromaphone by AAS, because I’ve been looking for a good percussion modeling VST. I realize that Chromaphone does more than that, and, in fact, it does a lot of really wild and interesting things, too.

The last thing I picked up was a second monitor, because photo editing with just one monitor drives me nuts. Also, working in Reason with only one monitor also drives me nuts. I like having the sequencer/mixer in one window, and the rack in another. I found a Dell monitor on sale at Amazon, but it showed up with a bunch of dead pixels, so I sent it back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get another one, so I had to spend a little more to get an Asus monitor.

Now that I have two monitors, though, I realize that I need to do something about my desk.

It’s always something, huh?

Oh, my new dryer showed up yesterday. It dries clothes beautifully, and it was cheap. Did mention it was cheap?

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, N1 Coming

 Food, Japanese Language, Music, Technology  Comments Off on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, N1 Coming
Nov 292013
 

Thanksgiving was nice. We had our usual fried chicken, because turkey is boring, and takes too long to make. I made some killer fried chicken this year.

We did NOT go to any stores. It’s Thanksgiving– it’s not a day to shop. That’s what Friday is for.

Deals!

I’m also looking out for good deals. Ever since the Propellerhead User Forum got shut down, I’ve been relying on Rekkerd’s Deals page a lot for info as to what’s going to be on sale this weekend and beyond.

The coolest thing I found was Native Instruments‘ massive software sale. Full versions of some of their software is half-off, everything except Komplete.

But it’s not what you think.

If you get a cross-grade from the full version of an NI product, you can get a big discount on Komplete, and Komplete Ultimate. The way it worked for me was that I bought Kontakt for half off ($199), then got the Komplete Ultimate cross-grade for only $374. Considering it retails for $1099, and usually goes for around $999, that’s a great deal.

I’m looking forward to playing with that. A lot.

I also scored a great deal on a new dryer. My dryer has been making scary noises and giving off weird smells, so rather than have the house burn down, I bought a cheap dryer. Really, all I need in a dryer is a low setting and a timer.

So long as it fits, dries my clothes, and doesn’t burn the house down, I’m happy.

N1 Coming

Tomorrow I leave for Washington to take the JLPT N1 again. I’m studying as much as I can.

Study-wise, I put a couple of N1 grammar books into Anki. It’s not enough, but it’s all I had time to do given the time I had. Studying for the A+ (and getting it) took up a lot of time.

Music Composition // Bargain Hunting

 Music, Technology  Comments Off on Music Composition // Bargain Hunting
Nov 232013
 

My music composition class is going pretty well. I finished one piece, and just finished another. They’re just little musical doodles, but I like them. I’ve been using MuseScore a lot to do the writing, then I’ll output it as a MIDI, then import the MIDI file into Reason.

MuseScore’s playback is a fine, but the sound quality isn’t as good as I can get in Reason. Then again, MuseScore is free.

MuseScore is pretty solid, and it’s free. I like free.

I tried using the composition software in Cubase 7.0, but it wasn’t as flexible or easy to use as MuseScore. I might try again later on, because it would be pretty cool to have composition and production software all in one.

Bargain Hunting

I’m starting to check out what’s going to be on sale next weekend. Black Friday and on is a good time of the year to get deals on all kinds of music-related software and hardware. My big hope is that Native Instruments’ Komplete Ultimate is on some kind of sale, because I’m eager to branch out into some new sounds. I’m also really interested in Kontakt as a sampler.

Also, Nine Volt Audio is going out of business, so they’re selling all of their software in one big bundle for $199. (Except their Taiko v.2. Dang.) The bundle has some really good sounds in it. The sale ends in early January, and then that’s it. No more.

I picked up the bundle and downloaded it. Getting the downloader to run was a little troublesome, because my anti-virus kept wanting to call it a virus. (It wasn’t.) But after that, it was simply a matter of entering codes and downloading. Some of the libraries are Kontakt-only, so if I can get Kontakt, I’ll have some nice third-party sounds to play with.

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