# Play 4 this month (or not, in fact)



## noiseboyuk (Aug 3, 2012)

http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/show ... hp?t=42353

Good news. The lack of background loading is one of the bigger practical problems with Play - if this works efficiently, it'll be a big step forward. Numbers on faders - my heart skipped a beat. It's speculation, but maybe the preload buffers will be adjustable too in the advanced properties - that would be useful.

No realistic prospect of lossless compression, or basic editing, but if this is executed well (and that's a big if), it should close the gap between Play and Kontakt a little.

EDIT - thread title edited to reflect the unannounced delay on this.


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## IFM (Aug 3, 2012)

Wow, it would be nice if they finally fixed the RAM issue on Macs. Maybe by removing those 'third party' products (hmmm....) they finally have.


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## RobertPeetersPiano (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

As far as I know, there isn't a release date, so it could be this month, but if the beta testers find some problems, it could be 2 or 3 months before we see something...


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## NYC Composer (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Only three words I'd like to hear- 'improved Mac performance'. I guess if I'm still on the Play beta team, I'll find out soon enough.


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## Bernard Quatermass (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

All those on their website saying stuff like awesome news need to rethink that fairly fast. They should have implemented this kind of thing years ago and on an ongoing regular basis. Enough complaints were made. And then will it actually work?


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## Mike Marino (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



> Only three words I'd like to hear- 'improved Mac performance'.



+1


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## redleicester (Aug 3, 2012)

Can we have PlayPro now please?


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## organix (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



noiseboyuk @ 3rd August said:


> it should close the gap between Play and Kontakt a little.




Oh yes, the gap to Kontakt 2 or 3. :lol:


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## redleicester (Aug 3, 2012)

:hehe:


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## david robinson (Aug 3, 2012)

i've got to say, from my humble experiences with PLAY on a mac.: it's not good. notes sustain when there are fast passages - not even renderable.
huge delay after rendering. drop-outs. crackles. etc.
and YES, i've got libraries from every other company on earth. and none, none exhibit these failings. my mac is quite recent and very powerful, btw.
in PLAY's defence, some of the libs a beautiful and expressive and unique.
j.


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## redleicester (Aug 3, 2012)

When it falls over on both my 12-core MacPro with 48gb of RAM and my i7 Slave with 24gb of RAM, you know there's something not quite right with the world.... twas ever thus.


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## mark812 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



noiseboyuk @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> it should close the gap between Play and Kontakt a little.



:lol:


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## 667 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I'm just happy to finally get numerical values for the faders!


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## Johnny42 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Here is a post from EW admin.

Frank, there are still performance limitations in the MAC architecture compared to PCs, so while our software team has done its best to extract the best performance out of the MAC, the PC currently is capable of superior performance. Apple CEO Tim Cook stated recently, after a disappointing update of the MAC Pro at the developers conference, that Apple has not given up on it's professional users, and that new, more powerful MACs will be released in 2013. In the meantime the only improvements that can be made to the current architecture is to fill them with ram, and use SSD drives where possible.


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## redleicester (Aug 3, 2012)

Still passing the buck then.


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## Vision (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Johnny42 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Here is a post from EW admin.
> 
> Frank, there are still performance limitations in the MAC architecture compared to PCs, so while our software team has done its best to extract the best performance out of the MAC, the PC currently is capable of superior performance. Apple CEO Tim Cook stated recently, after a disappointing update of the MAC Pro at the developers conference, that Apple has not given up on it's professional users, and that new, more powerful MACs will be released in 2013. In the meantime the only improvements that can be made to the current architecture is to fill them with ram, and use SSD drives where possible.



Enough already with the Mac is the limitation nonsense. Get your software right east west. It blows! Adjust, adapt your architecture for the Mac version. You are the only piece of garbage software that doesn't work on modern powerful macs. Its _your_ fault East West, not Apple's. Jeeeeeeez oh peaze man!


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## DynamicK (Aug 3, 2012)

redleicester @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Can we have PlayPro now please?


 ;/c]


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Vision @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Johnny42 @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Here is a post from EW admin.
> ...



Exactly. How lame to blame OS X when Kontakt etc works great there.


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## synergy543 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



> ....there are still performance limitations in the MAC architecture compared to PCs, so while our software team has done its best to extract the best performance out of the MAC, the PC currently is capable of superior performance..



*HOW* LAME!.

All of my other software works equally well on my Macs and PCs. 

Too bad too, as I didn't think the "recorded samples" sounded that bad, but if the execution of HOW and PLAY is really that half-baked, and PLAY is moving into *six years of excuses* with just "more of the same", then I think I'll have to pass on purchasing HOW.

Funny how all of the fan boys on the SOL forum are wearing rosy glasses. I'll miss the honesty and directness that Nick and TJ brought to the team.


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## 667 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

That EW post is bunk. PC and Mac run identical hardware these days. So there is no excuse in terms of needing "more powerful" macs for "professional users". A Core i7 is the same whatever OS it may be running.

Since both OS runs on 100% identical hardware I'd like EW to reference a single technical reason why Mac OSX is "worse" than Windows. Mac OSX having Mach kernel, being unix-like OS, is generally considered to be superior, to my knowledge. I would like to know one single technical reason why PLAY sucks but Kontakt runs fine. 

Apple/MacOS has a decades-long legacy of being the superior platform for audio and video production. The recent complaints about it not being "professional" is FUD based on the changes they made to Final Cut Pro and removing Firewire ports. I have a hard time believing this is what makes PLAY broken on OSX. But EW's bad programming could certainly explain it.

(And this coming from an OSX hater-- can't stand the UI personally, but otherwise would expect it to be perfectly capable of sample playback).


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## synergy543 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



667 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> I would like to know one single technical reason why PLAY sucks but Kontakt runs fine.



It seems there is a serious memory leak in PLAY. You can watch it happening, by monitoring the Activity Monitor as you PLAY. Your memory will increase as you go and you can either restart your computer to flush the RAM or use a PURGE command in the terminal window (which is far too much to ask of most users).

This has been a known problem for several years now and their programmers can't seem to resolve it....so they blame it on the Mac. :oops: 

I wonder what Steve Jobs would have to say?


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## muziksculp (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Kontakt runs better on PC than on Mac. 

Actually, even VSL VI runs better on PC !


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## handz (Aug 3, 2012)

"unny how all of the fan boys on the SOL forum are wearing rosy glasses. "

SOL fanboys, Apple fanobys... dont get any of them.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



667 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> That EW post is bunk. PC and Mac run identical hardware these days. So there is no excuse in terms of needing "more powerful" macs for "professional users". A Core i7 is the same whatever OS it may be running.
> 
> ).



Then why did Karel Bassez of VSL write me in response to my asking him about this:

"Jay, I love Macs but the simple truth is that most audio apps will run better on the PC than the Mac because you can code them more efficiently."

And people from N.I. and Steinberg told me essentially the same thing. 

Are they all wrong?


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## mark812 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Kontakt runs better on PC than on Mac.
> 
> Actually, even VSL VI runs better on PC !



Maybe. But they work properly on Mac. PLAY doesn't.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



mark812 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Kontakt runs better on PC than on Mac.
> ...



Well, let's hope Play 4 helps with this.


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## muziksculp (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Yes, it boils down to 'Efficient Coding' and for some reason/detail in the coding world, this is true, coding for PC is more efficient than coding for Mac. 

Not sure if this is due to Apple not disclosing some key data to coders, that makes them write less efficient code, or something else. 

You will note that most Mac & PC apps, and updates, are smaller in size for PC than Mac, I have noticed this %99.99999 of the time. 

smaller file size = more efficient coding (less lines of code = less instructions to CPU = faster execution of code by computer = Program will run faster, and more efficient on computer).

Cheers,
Muziksculp


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## Mike Connelly (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Kontakt runs better on PC than on Mac.



This discussion was going on in another thread and I asked for benchmark numbers to back that up. Did anyone ever find any? Maybe Kontakt does run better on PC, but that claim should be based on actually doing a comparison, not "everybody knows it's better". Not to mention it doesn't address the question if it's better, specifically how much better. If it's a five or ten percent difference, that's probably not enough to be worth switching over.

And even if Kontakt does run a bit better on PC, it runs extremely well on mac. When something runs well on PC but very poorly on mac (including some things that any sensible person would consider flat out bugs), that's just making excuses for poor programing.



muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> smaller file size = more efficient coding (less lines of code = less instructions to CPU = faster execution of code by computer = Program will run faster, and more efficient on computer).



Nonsense. There's absolutely no connection between app file size and code efficiency. And that's not even considering things like feature parity between the two platforms, how much is code versus assets like graphics, whether 32 and 64 bit code are included or just one, etc.


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## 667 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> 667 @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > That EW post is bunk. PC and Mac run identical hardware these days. So there is no excuse in terms of needing "more powerful" macs for "professional users". A Core i7 is the same whatever OS it may be running.
> ...



Well, the answer from EW is still bunk. New "more powerful" "professional" macs will not solve this problem. If it's an OS layer issue, or development environment issue, or kernel issue, etc. then new Macs won't solve the problem. OS fixes will. Or, fixes/improvements to Xcode, new libraries, etc. Or, if it's a matter of not enough skilled developers to make "efficient" programs, then new more powerful macs will not fix this either, since the newer more powerful PCs (identical hardware, remember) running Windows will again outclass the Macs. 

Also just saying "you can be more efficient on Windows" is not a technical answer. What is the core failing on OSX which inhibits development of "efficient" programs? Is Logic inefficient? Honest question-- I don't use it. I use Cubase on Win7-64.

A proper answer would be something explaining the issue, e.g. whether it's Core Audio, memory management, process overhead, UI threading, etc. etc. etc. etc. Real answers would probably be appreciated since that's the first step to getting it resolved (angry users complaining to Apple).


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Mike Connelly @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Kontakt runs better on PC than on Mac.
> ...



Here is where we differ. If Native Instruments tells me Kontakt runs better on a PC, I will take their word for it.

That said, it WOULD be interesting if someone were to take the most taxing Kontakt library, whatever that is (LASS or CS maybe?) and measure its relative performance on the PC vs on the Mac.


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## José Herring (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Mike Connelly @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Kontakt runs better on PC than on Mac.
> ...



Check out a sight called DAWbench. The guy does some pretty good cross platform testing. 

But be prepared to be shocked and don't come back here crying when you find out that even PT runs better on a pc. :lol:


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## paulcole (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Waldorf Salad.


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## José Herring (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



noiseboyuk @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> .....numbers on faders - my heart skipped a beat.



+1. Play leaps into the 90ies with this advancement! :mrgreen:


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



667 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > 667 @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> ...



When Logic was cross platform, before Apple bought it, yes, it WAS more efficient on the PC. Just before Apple bought it, I was considering switching to a PC,

And I have no idea what the technical reason is because you can be damn sure none of the cross platform selling companies want to piss off Apple by publicly going into all that.


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## muziksculp (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Mike Connelly @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Nonsense. There's absolutely no connection between app file size and code efficiency. And that's not even considering things like feature parity between the two platforms, how much is code versus assets like graphics, whether 32 and 64 bit code are included or just one, etc.



Sorry, but there is a big connection. 

Code consumes memory, yes, there might be some other graphics related components in the code, but they also do have some (small) impact on efficiency. But the bulk of the file size is made up of executable code, and that has a direct impact on efficiency. 

This is not fiction, but fact. 

Many apps are ported to Mac from PC, I have a friend who is a senior staff member at Adobe Systems (Photoshop Development), and he codes on PC. He told me the same thing, Adobe Apps. run better on PC than Mac, due to more efficient coding on PC. The PC code is then ported to Mac (which translates to less efficient code for some reason that I don't know) . 

Cheers,
Muziksculp


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 3, 2012)

And real estate is cheaper in Barstow than in Beverly Hills. But there's a catch.

Taking the performance claim at face value, there's a catch: you don't get to work on a Mac!

Don't get me wrong - I like my ancient Windows slaves. But I don't like troubleshooting the MFs when something goes wrong. And the only time things go wrong is when you don't want them to. 

Bottom line: who cares. I run Play on my 4-year-old 8-core Mac Pro no problem.


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## muziksculp (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I switched from Mac to PC, went from LP9 to Cubase 6.5, and have not had any issues with my PCs. Running nice and smooth. 

On the other hand, my 2007 Mac Pro 8 core (which I still use, but not for music production), had a motherboard replacement in 2009 (I was lucky it was still under Applecare coverage, was going to expire in one month), then a Graphics Card failure, (which I had to pay for replacing).


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## Mike Connelly (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



josejherring @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Check out a sight called DAWbench. The guy does some pretty good cross platform testing.



Yep. And he refuses to include Logic in any of his comparisons, which makes it much less useful.




EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> That said, it WOULD be interesting if someone were to take the most taxing Kontakt library, whatever that is (LASS or CS maybe?) and measure its relative performance on the PC vs on the Mac.



Exactly what I've had in mind. I'm kind of surprised nobody has done this yet, seems like it would just take a midi file and a collection of Kontakt multis and it would be pretty easy to make comparisons of different platforms and DAWs.




muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> But the bulk of the file size is made up of executable code, and that has a direct impact on efficiency.
> 
> This is not fiction, but fact.



Let's look at some facts.

The Logic app is 789 megs on my hard drive (wow, didn't realize it was that huge). Let's look what's inside (right click, show package contents). The app itself inside there looks to be 30 megs. There are also 117 megs of frameworks files, seems likely most of that is code.

In a Resources folder, there are five folders for foreign language support, each 84 megs for a total of 467 gigs. And about 77 megs of each of those is help files (including what looks like the entire manual in each language in html files).

A Plugins folder of 50 megs, wonder how much of that is code? The biggest plugin is guitar amp at 24.9 megs. 24.8 megs of that is graphics, 55k of code. One of the smaller plugins is 466k total, 406k of graphics and 55k of code.

Logic even has another app stored inside the app itself.

Another app, Pro Tools on mac, 189 megs. The app itself looks like it's 5.5 megs but 124 megs of frameworks. Again, help files, in this case 55 megs.

So what have we learned from the facts? On mac, developers can include whatever files they want inside an app. Including things that may never be loaded (help, foreign language options, other apps, etc). So that means that looking at the app size tells us absolutely nothing about the size of the actual code (and whether the code itself is bigger on mac than PC).


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## muziksculp (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Simply comparing just an app. update for Mac vs PC versions, the Mac update for the SAME version is always a larger file, sometimes significantly larger. 

An app. update is mostly code related to the app. not graphics, info. languages, ..etc. 

Does that make sense to you ?


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## Mike Connelly (Aug 3, 2012)

So now it's not apps but app updates?


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## muziksculp (Aug 3, 2012)

Mike Connelly @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> So now it's not apps but app updates?



It's both !

I don't think you are going to be convinced by what I say here, so I feel you might need to consult with an expert programmer, maybe he/she can explain this in more detail. 

All The Best,
Muziksculp


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## sin(x) (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Muziksculp, former fulltime developer here with a bit of experience with crossplatform C/C++ development and low-level optimization on x86 platforms. You can *absolutely not* draw any conclusions whatsoever about runtime efficiency from the code size, let alone the total package size. In fact, I've probably come across more optimization approaches that increase code size than not. For starters, each time you inline a function call, fold out an inner loop, or duplicate parts of your code in order to optimize them towards different runtime environments, it'll make your program bigger. Also, as stated above, the .app thing on OS X is actually a big pile of just about every resource and asset an application needs to run; you'll have to open that package and look at the actual binary size to make even a remotely useful comparison (and even that's debatable, as OS X and Windows apps are built on foundations of vastly different system frameworks).


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## muziksculp (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



sin(x) @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Muziksculp, former fulltime developer here with a bit of experience with crossplatform C/C++ development and low-level optimization on x86 platforms. You can *absolutely not* draw any conclusions whatsoever about runtime efficiency from the code size, let alone the total package size. In fact, I've probably come across more optimization approaches that increase code size than not. For starters, each time you inline a function call, fold out an inner loop, or duplicate parts of your code in order to optimize them towards different runtime environments, it'll make your program bigger. Also, as stated above, the .app thing on OS X is actually a big pile of just about every resource and asset an application needs to run; you'll have to open that package and look at the actual binary size to make even a remotely useful comparison (and even that's debatable, as OS X and Windows apps are built on foundations of vastly different system frameworks).



Hi Sin(x),

I appreciate your expert feedback on this topic. 

So, what do you feel is the issue with Apps. performing better on PC vs Mac ? i.e. PLAY, Kontakt, VI-Pro, Cubase, and others ? 

Are Mac coders not as good coders as PC coders, or is it the general Mac programming environment ? or ... ? Something is playing a part here. But I have no clue what it is. 

As far as file size being not an indicator of code efficiency, I think that might be true according to what you described, I respect your professional opinion, the statement I made was a pure observation, and if it has nothing to do with efficiency of code, then I will just take your word for it. But surely PCs are ahead of Mac in the efficiency dept. these days, and not only in Music related apps. 

Cheers,
Muziksculp


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## sin(x) (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Not saying they aren't more efficient on PC, just that there's no stringent correlation with code size  I've been pretty much out of the game with recent versions of both OSs, but my uneducated guess would be that it might be a combination of a more realtime-friendly thread scheduler and more permeable (and/or less complex) hardware abstraction layers on Windows. Apple's system frameworks are traditionally tailored towards intuitive high-level development at the cost of fewer options for low-level optimization. Also, Microsoft jumped on the 64-bit train *much* earlier than Apple.

I think there's another factor though, which might be much more significant especially in cases where the OS X and Windows versions are night and day apart, which is that it's simply much easier to find coders who are adept at writing stable speed-optimized Windows code in the marketplace. The video game industry alone has been breeding these for two decades. Apple has taken a few steps to close the gap in recent years, but overall Mac development still has a tradition of valuing style and usability over performance.


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## playz123 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Johnny42 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Here is a post from EW admin.
> 
> Frank, there are still performance limitations in the MAC architecture compared to PCs, so while our software team has done its best to extract the best performance out of the MAC, the PC currently is capable of superior performance. Apple CEO Tim Cook stated recently, after a disappointing update of the MAC Pro at the developers conference, that Apple has not given up on it's professional users, and that new, more powerful MACs will be released in 2013. In the meantime the only improvements that can be made to the current architecture is to fill them with ram, and use SSD drives where possible.



That quote from Admin was a response to questions I asked, and I thanked Admin for a polite and honest response. As a long time Mac user for music who also uses PCs daily, I can only say that there may be something there that can't be disputed. One can't compare the architecture of a program like Play with Kontakt either. BUT it's also very true that Kontakt does indeed perform very well on both PCs and Macs, so no argument about that at all. In any case, I'm not going to bad mouth EW...Play is what it is. I will say that my Kontakt libraries are performing very well on my Mac Pro, but when it comes to Play, it's not nearly as good, especially with libraries like HS. EW has responded off line to my concerns in depth though, offered some tips, and I still feel very valued as a customer. As soon as Play works a little better with the system of MY choice, I'll return to using it and my dozen or so Play-based libraries more often. In the meantime I continue to compare PC and Mac performance myself, and am grateful to people like Jay for responding to many of our concerns, and for providing factual information and advice. Cheers..........."Frank"


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## muziksculp (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Thanks for the interesting feedback sin(x).


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## Peter Alexander (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



playz123 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Johnny42 @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Here is a post from EW admin.
> ...



I mean this sincerely: thank you for a positive and professional response!


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## synergy543 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Yes, in the "other thread" (where he seemingly went to purchase the competitors product) he is also "professional" and frank. :? 



playz123 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> QUESTION: I just went through the ordering process, got to the PayPal page and discovered that unlike previous purchases via PayPal this year, they now want me to create an account. I do NOT want a PayPal account EVER again. Had a terrible time with them, they wanted access to my bank account after me being a member for 4 years and thousands of dollars in successful purchases, and then I had a tough time closing my account. I have no respect for this company and neither does my legal counsel or bank. How can one purchase BWW without signing up for a PayPal account?? Ignoring their request for entering a password stopped the purchase. In the past I've been able to go through PayPal and pay via credit card, but was never forced to create an account again. Can't I just pay by credit card somehow? Please advise....preferably soon.  Thanks.


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## playz123 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Thank you Peter, for your kind reply. Much appreciated.

***************

Synergy543, I'm not _quite_ sure how my purchase of a library or my questions about PayPal tie directly into this Play 4 thread, but if you see a connection there, by all means feel free to suggest it.  In any case, I can never be anything, but "frank", even if I wanted to be.


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## José Herring (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Mike Connelly @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> josejherring @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Check out a sight called DAWbench. The guy does some pretty good cross platform testing.
> ...



Well, Logic isn't cross platform.


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## NYC Composer (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

At times, this does feel like a Logic forum.


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## zvenx (Aug 3, 2012)

it isn't because logic isn't cross platform, it is that it uses a hybrid engine. You get the same performance regardless of sample buffer size you set, because that size only affects tracks that you are recording, not tracks already recorded.

rsp


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## synergy543 (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



playz123 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Synergy543, I'm not _quite_ sure how my purchase of a library or my questions about PayPal tie directly into this Play 4 thread, but if you see a connection there, by all means feel free to suggest it.  In any case, I can never be anything, but "frank", even if I wanted to be.



Yes, the connection is that both are professional responses. Both being polite when you think you've been treated well, and being irate with things don't PLAY right after you've paid good money are acceptable professional responses.

Developers would love that all customers would just turn their heads the other way when problems occur (or when developers are trying to pull the wool over our eyes) but that's just not an honest response - not even in Pleasantville.

Sometimes its good to be Frank. o-[][]-o


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## chimuelo (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I remember seeing Kathy Lee Gifford on the Ellen Degeneres Show once as wifey tends to like her and Chelsea Lately, but it was a particulary good clash of culture between Kathy Lee Gifford and Ellen.
But Guess what Ellen said to Kathy Lee Gifford........................?


........


Can I be Frank with you............................. :mrgreen: 

Ankyu.............Please,.......stay seated.

Glad to see PLAY 4, I still look forward to realtime capabilites and haven't given up hope yet.
I still believe it's tied to the Compressed Audio.

Kontakt and NCW based developers really make Kontakt 4 the finest playback software sampler I ever used as far as size of content and depth of development, and realtime use.
I really would love their Hollywood stuff as Jose H. had some demos that sold me.

Prefer the homegrown forum demos from a Non NFR guy, than a hired gun with weeks of BETA testing and who knows what hardware.

My 2 Cents.


Hurry up with Play Pro, I would rather have that then the indoor versions....

But Congrats on the new PLAY 4......


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## Vision (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



synergy543 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Yes, in the "other thread" (where he seemingly went to purchase the competitors product) he is also "professional" and frank. :?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I know this is off topic, but what is going on with paypal? I encountered the exact same thing today. They want my bank password, and user name? Seriously, I'm waiting for the punchline. Further more, their customer service was really, really bad when I called to find out why they needed this info. The 19 year old customer service girl had no answers for me, and then of course put me on hold. I hung up. Very shady company.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 3, 2012)

> Mac development still has a tradition of valuing style and usability over performance.



And that's exactly why I like using Macs. It would be one thing if the machines were unusable, but we're past the era of all music software bringing the hardware to its knees.

If you need to run Hollywood Strings with all mics blazing, put together a massive Windows machine. Meanwhile, forearm smashes with the sustain pedal held don't make QL Pianos stutter on my 2008 Mac Pro running standard hard drives.

I know I'm being curmudgeonly, but I can't help feeling that there's a failure to adapt going on here. Isn't a quarter century of chasing our tails for the next machine as soon as we unpack the last one enough?


----------



## NYC Composer (Aug 3, 2012)

Nick Batzdorf @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> > Mac development still has a tradition of valuing style and usability over performance.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Funny. I have the same machine and am feeling the same way. I won't be upgrading my machine for at least another two years, I'm thinkin'.


----------



## muziksculp (Aug 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Talking about PLAY-Pro ... Well, first. Is it still in development ? 

It's been ages since it was first announced, and all we get so far is (It's in development) :roll: 

So... Will PLAY-Pro ever materialize, or is it just an EW-Myth product ? 

Actually I asked Doug at EW forums directly about PLAY-Pro release, but no reply so far.

I feel PLAY is limited in terms of customizing PLAY instruments to a user's needs, Just look at VI-Pro 2 , now that's what I call a Pro-Instrument Player. 

I'm also not sure if PLAY-Pro is going to be a full featured 'Sampler', or just an advanced, very flexible sample player for PLAY libraries ? 

Any new info. about PLAY-Pro and what it will offer would be cool, and interesting.

Cheers,
Muziksculp


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 4, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> I switched from Mac to PC, went from LP9 to Cubase 6.5, and have not had any issues with my PCs. Running nice and smooth.
> 
> On the other hand, my 2007 Mac Pro 8 core (which I still use, but not for music production), had a motherboard replacement in 2009 (I was lucky it was still under Applecare coverage, was going to expire in one month), then a Graphics Card failure, (which I had to pay for replacing).



And what on earth does a random hardware failure have to do with OS efficiency and performance?


----------



## snattack (Aug 4, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I think the most obvious difference in performance between Windows and OSX are the notation softwares Sibelius & Finale. They are both VERY MUCH slower in OSX than Windows, which forced me to install Win7 on my Macbook Pro to be able to work without going nuts. I don't understand how anyone can stand working scores in OSX.

Architecture in this case is probably software only, since the same computer produces different result in different OSes. Not sure if it's the graphics engine in OSX or something else.

Play is pure crap in my opinion (no, don't start a discussion wether this is true or not - I know there are people who disagree, which I respect), but it's less bad in Windows, and EVEN though it's difficult optimizing code for OSX (?), of course it's not an excuse. There are plenty of other software working without leaking memory, so why should Play?


----------



## rpaillot (Aug 4, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Talking about PLAY-Pro ... Well, first. Is it still in development ?
> 
> It's been ages since it was first announced, and all we get so far is (It's in development) :roll:
> 
> ...



Frankly , I would prefer EW to focus on making a perfect PLAY version before getting a PLAY-pro with super advanced functions and complex scripting.

If we had to wait 4 versions to get a PLAY almost working good, I cant imagine how much versions there will be of PLAY-pro before gettin a 100 % stable version :D


----------



## rgames (Aug 4, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



rpaillot @ Sat Aug 04 said:


> Frankly , I would prefer EW to focus on making a perfect PLAY version before getting a PLAY-pro with super advanced functions and complex scripting.


I would prefer that EW (and Cinesamples) license the VI player from VSL.

For writing with orchestral sample libraries, VSL's VI is so far beyond anything out there that it seems like a waste of time for any other orchestral library developer to use anything else. Kontakt is efficient but it has nowhere near the feature set of VSL's VI.

Been hoping for that option for a long time now... the Berlin WW articulation tool is the first real attempt I've seen that tries to duplicate VSL's VI but it's extremely basic. And VI came out, what, 5 years ago?

VSL is mostly a software company now, anyway, so why not just license the player?

rgames


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 4, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



rpaillot @ Sat Aug 04 said:


> Frankly , I would prefer EW to focus on making a perfect PLAY version before getting a PLAY-pro with super advanced functions and complex scripting.



I agree, although it will never be "perfect" and Kontakt is not "perfect" but very good. IMHO the first version of Kontakt that was very good was 3.5.


----------



## mk282 (Aug 4, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I am going to tell you why is direct from disk streaming better on PC than on Mac. It's because NTFS is a superior file system. This is the truth, and this is what both NI and Vienna will confirm to you.


----------



## adg21 (Aug 5, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Oh man I'm a PC / Cubase / PLAY user so I haven't got much to complain about but I prefer the mac operating system. I just do. And I prefer Cubase on a Mac because it doesn't have the annoying disappearing windows (even though improved window issues are a big feature request for Cubase 7). I feel for people out there who use Logic or DP and have a bunch of PLAY libraries, especially Hollywood Strings. Sort it out EastWest.


----------



## JohnG (Aug 5, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I use DP and have a bunch of EW libraries on PLAY. They work just fine, all day, all the time. And they sound great.

One or two people I've talked to report better results on Macs with Logic when PLAY is housed inside VE Pro. This is anecdotal only, but might be helpful to someone so I thought I'd mention it.

Personally, I'm using PLAY inside DP itself and also in VE Pro; both are fine. I used to use PLAY standalone but have not done that for some time.


----------



## Jerome Vonhogen (Aug 5, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



chimuelo @ Sat Aug 04 said:


> Prefer the homegrown forum demos from a Non NFR guy, than a hired gun with weeks of BETA testing and who knows what hardware.



I'm not entirely sure if it is the EW beta/demo-team you're talking about, but if you are, I can tell you that it's not like that at all.

We are not hired, we don't have next generation CTU or NASA equipment, and we are regular forum members (here and elsewhere), just like you. As for the demo's, they are usually made in a fairly short amount of time, unlike many (if not most) forum demos.

If you prefer user demos that are posted here or in other forums, that's perfectly understandable and I don't mind at all. However, I don't think it's fair to those volunteers who spend a considerable amount of their time testing and scrutinizing all sorts of early versions of new products, to suggest that they are 'hired guns' and therefore not capable of representing the average user who wants to know what he or she can expect from the software out-of-the-box. As a matter of fact, we don't even get those fancy boxes! :( 

Anyway, I don't want to sound like I'm preaching from a mountain top, but please don't give ground to false impressions of the people involved with East West (including volunteers), since even the tiniest assumption or suggestion seems to give rise to all sorts of rumors, which poisons and hardens the discussion whenever there is an East West related thread. I sincerely hope that the bitterness and malice I sometimes come across in this forum (not in your post b.t.w., Chimuelo!) will disappear, cause East West deserves better. I know them as a group of hard working, dedicated, and sympathetic people, who just want to make wonderful products for composers and musicians anywhere in the world.

Play 4 will be great! I personally love the mixer, since it has been on my wish list for Play for a long time.

- Jerome Vonhögen


----------



## chimuelo (Aug 5, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Actually Developers in General. I haven't even listened to a developers demo unless they use a video like Gregjazz, or Andrew and Sebastian from AudioBro.
Out of curiosity I should check them out, but after a John G. and Jose demo, I can tell the quality and sounds are excellent. 
And those guys don't kill me with the ancient over used DAW drawn velocity curves w/ Tympanis or Kettle Drums, and aren't bathed in the latest Cavern-esque Reverb.

It's good of you to stand up for your time spent, so I will give them a listen as the last time I heard a Piano demo it was so MIDI Filed up, I just bailed. 

Thanks for your effort, and tell them stiffs at EW to kick down some coin........ :mrgreen: Just Kiddin'.

Cheers


----------



## Jerome Vonhogen (Aug 5, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



chimuelo @ Mon Aug 06 said:


> It's good of you to stand up for your time spent, so I will give them a listen as the last time I heard a Piano demo it was so MIDI Filed up, I just bailed.



I know this is shameless self-promotion, but did you ever listen to the official Quantum Leap Pianos demo I made for Nick Phoenix? It's a demo featuring QLP Bechstein's subtile dynamic layers. It's all played live with hardly any corrections in the MIDI data afterwards. 

As a matter of fact, I would never have achieved a realistic result like that if I had programmed every single note manually. With all the nuances, rhythmic subtleties and dynamic layers found in this piece, that would actually take forever! The same goes for acoustic recordings; it's better and easier to record many complete takes and then pick the best of those takes, than to try to construct a natural sounding recording by pasting countless fragments together. I don't think that will ever sound right or convincing.

Anyway, here's a link to my QLP demo:
http://media.soundsonline.com/ip/mp3/2069_World Premiere Rosenthal Romanze.mp3
http://media.soundsonline.com/wav/2069_World Premiere Rosenthal Romanze.wav

This piece, by the way, was written by the brilliant Liszt-pupil (as well as pupil of a famous Chopin-pupil), pianist-composer-philosopher Moriz Rosenthal, who was also a friend of Brahms and Wittgenstein, who made a tour with Kreisler in the USA, and was one of the best amateur chess players in New York, where he lived and died in 1946. It's not a great piece, but I chose it anyway, since it had not been recorded before and it's interesting from a pianistic point of view.

Sorry for being OT, back to the topic of Play 4!
o 

- Jerome Vonhögen


----------



## chimuelo (Aug 5, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Shameless plugs are fine when such taste and skill is used.
But of course you expect some crituqe.
I record the same way, and use a special HDD recorder with no editor unless I wish to transfer the media to Reaper or something. Much more realistic.

Your Pedalling is excellent as no mush which is not easy on the crap pedals we must get used to after using certian amounts of sustain, instead of half pedalling, which is not close to the real thing, or full tilt sustain.

The dynamics were very nice, only one little slip in the Bass Clef I heard, but to be expected in such a heavy Bass Clef piece.
Also thanks for keeping it realistic instead of this massive CHurch from Antarctica or some other far away one of a kind ( unprovable ) effect.

Very good work for a white guy. 0oD 
Now I will go to the forum and check your stuff.
Hopefully I haven't been banned from lack of chatting.
I lurk in forums where I cannot contribute as I have no Libraries since QL Guitars, and I don't anyway use them anway.

I considered Liszt the best Pianist and excellent composer of his time. Hungarian Rhapsody 2 was my favorite. I wish they had better recordings from 140 years ago, but even so the dynamics and precision of playing were impressive when I was a young Conservatory Student.

Thanks for a nice unknown ( to me at least ) piece.
I go see an old school mate and feel awful that I don't practice as much , but simply retain my DeBussey, Chopin and Bartok chops.
Went to school with this chick at the Conservatory.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... HfMfzVxgaA

and she smoked me, plus she was so pretty, even now she's definately a babe for her age. I would listen to her doing the same songs I played in the dark.
I actually was an opening act and had Chuck Leavell kick my ass too, but after her it was a slap on the wrist.
Haven't seen her in years now that she lives in the UK but saw the Sklatkin stuff back in old St.Lou and wow......

Enough OT thanks again. 
Tell them to fork over some coin or break down and buy you a dinner.....

Looking forward to the outdoor Play Pro when it's finished.

Cheers.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 5, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



chimuelo @ Sun Aug 05 said:


> Shameless plugs are fine when such taste and skill is used.
> But of course you expect some crituqe.
> I record the same way, and use a special HDD recorder with no editor unless I wish to transfer the media to Reaper or something. Much more realistic.
> 
> ...



Nah, Chopin was the better composer. And there is no capital B in Debussy. :D


----------



## jamwerks (Aug 6, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Glad to read that Play is being further developed !!


----------



## 667 (Aug 6, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> I have no idea what the technical reason is because you can be damn sure none of the cross platform selling companies want to piss off Apple by publicly going into all that.


OSX is over ten years old. I think that if it has a core failing related to audio / reatlime / IO / whatever it would be well known publicly. You can be damn sure SOMEONE is going to make some noise if the OS is not working correctly or core components are poorly designed. And it would still not explain why the performance of PLAY is worse than other audio applications on OSX e.g. Kontakt / Logic / etc. 

The most likely explanation is that EW has not deployed sufficient resources to make PLAY on OSX perform as well as it can/should, because cross-platform development is hard. It takes resources and that can be expensive (especially to do it well!). Sample libraries are a niche market, and OSX is just a slice of that. So it makes sense that companies need to be careful how much resource is allocated to this. 

But I don't think blaming an unnamed OSX deficiency is fair to those users who paid a lot of money to use EW products. I think they deserve a better, more transparent answer, and that they deserve better performing software, too. Hopefully PLAY 4 performance improvements will bring them. I don't think anyone is expecting perfection but Mac users who say "It should work as well as Kontakt" are, in my opinion, being perfectly reasonable and should be listened to.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 6, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



667 @ Mon Aug 06 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > I have no idea what the technical reason is because you can be damn sure none of the cross platform selling companies want to piss off Apple by publicly going into all that.
> ...



Fine except that does not explain why VSL and Native Instruments and Steinberg all told me the same thing, does it?


----------



## Dracarys (Aug 6, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

PLAY has been good to me for the most part, I'm just hoping this upgrade subsides any confliction between PLAY and Kontakt within Cubase. If not time for VPRO


----------



## JBZeon (Aug 7, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

PLAY most of the time is rock solid, but sometimes is a nighmare..recently a upgrade my DAW and now templates in Cubase with PLAY instances crashed Cubase....EW support sometimes seem to be.... ~o) ..., dont answer customers, hmmm EW, if you dont like to answer customer then do not charge for the libraries..... i redesign all templates to host PLAY in VEP5, Luckily it works. PLAY need to be polish, and not only with lates Hollywood series.

I hope this PLAY 4 will be free of stupids bug before "improved".


----------



## chimuelo (Aug 7, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I sure hope EW doesn't sue Jerome...


----------



## Jerome Vonhogen (Aug 7, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



chimuelo @ Mon Aug 06 said:


> Shameless plugs are fine when such taste and skill is used.
> But of course you expect some crituqe.
> I record the same way, and use a special HDD recorder with no editor unless I wish to transfer the media to Reaper or something. Much more realistic.
> 
> ...




Thanks a lot for your kind words! :D

I'll put a lot more demos online, as soon as I reopen my studio (my studio is in a monumental medieval building which currently undergoes major restoration; there's dust everywhere, and the place is crowded with contractors and construction workers!).

To me, working with virtual instruments should always involve some kind of performance, especially when phrasing of melodic lines is relevant. That's why I like samplers with a standalone mode, and virtual instruments that can deliver convincing results out-of-the-box without the need to tweak a lot, cause in my view, the more you have to tweak the harder it is to maintain a natural flow of melodic phrases and individual voices. That's why I like the philosophy behind the Play engine, 8Dio's approach of legato in Adagio, and Giorgio & Stefano's amazing sample modeling techniques.

However, I also expect samplers to work flawlessly as 'VST-backbone' in complex arrangements (which obviously, is the strength of Kontakt). This requires stable handling of multiple instruments within one instance of the sampler, as well as quickly accessible general functions and bulk settings that work consistently for all instruments, and also individual controls that are transparent, i.e. knobs, slides, dials that reveal their exact numerical value.

EW Play always had trouble with 'multis', i.e. multiple instruments sharing one single instance of the engine simultaneously. One of the reasons, I think, has been the lack of a clear, consistent mixer overview, which I always found was missing, especially since all Play instruments have custom GUI's with lots of variations in the selection of controller options. Therefore, I'm excited about the Play 4 mixer window, and I'm sure this will improve the consistency of the interface considerably. 8) 

Thanks again for your nice comments on my demo!

- Jerome Vonhögen

P.s. the girl you referred to seems to have a lot of passion. :wink: Unfortunately, I can't say I like her playing of that Prokofiev prelude, to be honest with you. She plays most of the piece way too loud, which results in a rather aggressive tone, which totally ruins this delicate masterpiece. Also, her playing is highly irregular, which unfortunately, is a common problem among young pianists.

In this particular piece, those arpeggios must be played fast, soft and strictly regular, and must end exactly(!) on the beat, otherwise the entire phrasing is destroyed. By losing time on those arpeggios, precious time needed for the phrasing of the melody is lost. This often leads to clumsy attempts to compensate for the delay by accentuating, and sometimes even delaying the following notes of the melody. If you ask them what they think they're doing, they will say it's 'rubato', but in fact it is not 'tempo rubato' at all. It's just a lack of overview, and, sadly, often a lack of taste as well. :cry:


----------



## Jerome Vonhogen (Aug 7, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



chimuelo @ Wed Aug 08 said:


> I sure hope EW doesn't sue Jerome...



Don't worry Chimuelo, I have been teaching civil liability law at the university for several years, before I decided that it was time to pursue a career in music. So, I'm not afraid of anything or anyone. :mrgreen:

By the way, I sincerely hope EW and QL will soon come to an agreement, and I even hope they will eventually reunite. I like them both very much, and it makes me sad to see such a wonderful and longstanding collaboration in so much trouble. I hope they will find a way to settle this case outside the courtroom, now that everyone has started reading through all the legal documents related to this case. Official documents such as legal complaints and counter suits will never look pretty to the untrained eye. Legal strategy and tactics chosen by the lawyers involved can easily be misunderstood as unwillingness or even hostility. In fact, cases like this will always look much more serious and unsolvable than they are in reality, since no one wants to weaken his or her position by agreeing to a settlement too early.

- Jerome Vonhögen


----------



## star.keys (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Johnny42 @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Here is a post from EW admin.
> 
> Frank, there are still performance limitations in the MAC architecture compared to PCs, so while our software team has done its best to extract the best performance out of the MAC, the PC currently is capable of superior performance. Apple CEO Tim Cook stated recently, after a disappointing update of the MAC Pro at the developers conference, that Apple has not given up on it's professional users, and that new, more powerful MACs will be released in 2013. In the meantime the only improvements that can be made to the current architecture is to fill them with ram, and use SSD drives where possible.



Am I reading this as: "EastWest's ability to build software for MAC hasn't yet improved hence we will continue to deliver crappy PLAY for MAC users" :lol: 

Guys this is just hilarious, if not stupid. My 12 Core Mac Pro with 64GB RAM struggles with this piece of sh#! This is breach of customer commitments where they haven;t differentiated the performance of one architecture over the other in the specifications. I get increasingly frustrated with every news flash where EW doesn't support MAC users.


----------



## star.keys (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> 667 @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > That EW post is bunk. PC and Mac run identical hardware these days. So there is no excuse in terms of needing "more powerful" macs for "professional users". A Core i7 is the same whatever OS it may be running.
> ...



Another hilarious attempt to defend EW position. They hate to compare their EULA and other policies with these great firms but use their competitors to defend their position on their pathetic MAC performance :lol: :lol:

Well Steinberg and VSL softwares are VERY efficient on MAC and a zillion times more reliable than EastWest software for me. Even if theoretically assume there is an architectural constraint on MACs, NI has achieved to bridge it and EastWest has left it that way by HUGE margin.


----------



## star.keys (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Mike Connelly @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Nonsense. There's absolutely no connection between app file size and code efficiency. And that's not even considering things like feature parity between the two platforms, how much is code versus assets like graphics, whether 32 and 64 bit code are included or just one, etc.
> ...



That's because they "ported" it, not re-written it for MACs
Same like you design a BMW engine and port/ nut & bolt it under an AUDI's body


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 06 said:


> 667 @ Mon Aug 06 said:
> 
> 
> > EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> ...



Please tell us exactly what they told you - give us a technical explanation why Macs are not as suited for audio streaming as PC's. You must have one, since you so vigorously defend PLAY. 

Please - give us some insight: Why is it perfectly understandable that PLAY can't work well on Mac? 

Also, what is the reason that Kontakt works perfectly well on Mac? There must also be an explanation for that. However, that explanation has to be conflicting somehow to your explanation why PLAY doesn't work well on Mac, right? 8)


----------



## muziksculp (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



star.keys @ Wed Aug 08 said:


> muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Mike Connelly @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> ...



Yes, that's what I have been told, which does result in both less efficient code, and larger file size (on Mac OSX). 

Oh.. and an Audi Engine, in an Audi body Rocks :lol: 
I love my classic Audi 2002 A4 (3.0 Litre) engine. Still going strong. 

Cheers,
Muziksculp


----------



## jamwerks (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I really hope that Play 4 will have some features for loading several articulations on the same midi channel !


----------



## muziksculp (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

A 15% or more improvement in overall efficiency, compared to PLAY 3 would be nice too !


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

[quote="star.keys @ Tue Aug 07, 2012 11:38 pm"

Another hilarious attempt to defend EW position. They hate to compare their EULA and other policies with these great firms but use their competitors to defend their position on their pathetic MAC performance :lol: :lol:

[/quote]

This is not EW, this was me asking them personally, since I am a user and a betatester of N.I. for Kontakt and VSL for Vienna Ensemble Pro.


----------



## Bernard Quatermass (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Simon Ravn @ Wed Aug 08 said:


> Please tell us exactly what they told you - give us a technical explanation why Macs are not as suited for audio streaming as PC's. You must have one, since you so vigorously defend PLAY.
> 
> Please - give us some insight: Why is it perfectly understandable that PLAY can't work well on Mac?



They can't. It's so pathetic it's laughable. In a day and age of technology that we currently now have, there is no excuse whatsoever for EW's total failure to address this situation over a several year period. In the words of Mrs Fawlty, they are the collective Brilliantine Stick Insect.

FWIW, I don't think eastwestlurker can have any responsibility for their ineptitude. He is more like some sort of dreadful and terrifying 1984 Orwellian device they have created just for this type of situation. You can almost hear the siren before the next announcement. Sort of thing the EU have been doing for years. We'll have another summit and see if anyone notices type of deal.

EU and EW are worryingly similar titles btw. :shock:


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 8, 2012)

Guys, you can spin it anyway you want. They gave me no technical explanation but developers at all three companies (and Steinberg at the NAMM show btw) said essentially "audio apps in general run much better on the PC because you can create them to be more more efficient for the PC and Windows."

I am not lying and I did not make this up just to help EW. I asked and that is what they told me. Take it for as much or as little as it is worth. For me, I built a slave PC and it was the best $,1600 I have spent on gear.


----------



## jamwerks (Aug 8, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ Wed Aug 08 said:


> audio apps in general run much better on the PC because you can create them to be more more efficient for the PC and Windows."



There's a big difference between "more efficient" and funtioning properly.
If hundreds of daw's, plugs, processors & samplers are working great on Mac's, it because they've spent the (extra) time and money to make it work. EW hasn't.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 8, 2012)

jamwerks @ Wed Aug 08 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Wed Aug 08 said:
> 
> 
> > audio apps in general run much better on the PC because you can create them to be more more efficient for the PC and Windows."
> ...



Well they HAVE in fact done that but clearly it has been a tough nut to crack for them. I am hopeful Play 4 will be a step in the right direction.


----------



## JohnG (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



jamwerks @ 8th August 2012 said:


> I really hope that Play 4 will have some features for loading several articulations on the same midi channel !



This is possible now and has been for a long time. Simply load two different patches and then assign the same midi channel to both.

I use PLAY on a Mac and PC all day and it works fine on both.


----------



## Jerome Vonhogen (Aug 8, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Bernard Quatermass @ Wed Aug 08 said:


> EU and EW are worryingly similar titles btw. :shock:



You mean, like 'ME '(Middle East) and 'EB' (Easter Bunny)? Well, I guess you are right about that, the similarity between 'EU' and 'EW' is indeed deeply worrying, ... in fact, it's just as worrying as the similarity between the names 'Barack Obama' and 'Osama Bin Laden', or 'Barack Hussein Obama' and 'Saddam Hussein'! :roll: 

Here's my problem with Apple: my Powerbook and my iPhone (2nd generation) are getting slower every day. I have been using Mac's alongside Windows/PC platforms for decades, and I never had this problem before. Apple's operating system has traditionally been more stable than Windows, even on older machines, which meant that I could use my Apple hardware for many years with only a couple of upgrades to the OS. Somehow, Apple computers never felt outdated, and they were always fun to use. I guess those days are over now... :( 

It feels like every OS upgrade nowadays requires the latest Apple hardware if you really want to benefit from all the new OS 'innovations' that Apple likes to throw at us, and that every older system is doomed to slow down when software updates are installed. This wouldn't be a problem, if there was more choice in terms of hardware options, but I still find the options that Apple is offering rather limited.

Also, I don't like to buy my hardware in those fancy Apple stores where it always feels like they want to sell me a complete lifestyle instead of just new gear. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get your hair cut, while waiting for one of those annoying Apple Genius to appear to foretell me the future of the planet that Steve Jobs has created for the benefit of mankind.

Windows platforms have become more stable since Vista x64, and I don't have to renew my PC hardware as often as I used to do. The only problem now, are software companies like Steinberg or Avid who think they can decide for you when it's the best time to upgrade your OS. My main PC is still running on Vista x64 Ultimate and I'm very happy with the stability of the OS. PLAY 3 is also very stable here, so I'm pleased that EW continues to support older Windows versions.

I would love to add Cubase to my system, but Steinberg has decided that I need to start all over again with Windows 7 if I want to use their software. I'm sure Windows 7 is at least as good as Vista x64, but switching to it would cost me more than a week, which I don't have right now. Besides, Windows 8 is already around the corner (October 26). 8) 

Let's hope PLAY 4 doesn't require any change of Windows version, cause I don't like to be told what to do when it comes to studio gear and software maintenance.

- Jerome Vonhögen


----------



## alanb (Aug 9, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Jerome Vonhogen @ Thu Aug 09 said:


> I would love to add Cubase to my system, but Steinberg has decided that I need to start all over again with Windows 7 if I want to use their software. I'm sure Windows 7 is at least as good as Vista x64, but switching to it would cost me more than a week, which I don't have right now. Besides, Windows 8 is already around the corner (October 26). 8)



Windows 8 looks like it will be an unmitigated disaster for anyone who doesn't want to just do nice simple things with their shiny new touchscreen interface.

Win7 SP1 x64 _is-and-shall-for-quite-some-time-be_ the way to go and, since its end-of-support date is currently January 14, 2020 . . .

http://www.zdnet.com/how-to-skip-windows-8-and-continue-using-windows-7-7000001734/

. . . , you won't have to worry about upgrading it for quite a while.


----------



## tabulius (Aug 9, 2012)

All I want that I could have option to build my own instrument patches and play it how I want. Berlin Woodwinds and Cinesamples stuff (and of course VSL) are great example how to do this.

I would use a tons more EW samples, but I don't like the workflow.

But I haven't got any issues with the PLAY otherwise. Just the poor workflow personally..


----------



## Bernard Quatermass (Aug 9, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Jerome Vonhogen @ Thu Aug 09 said:


> Bernard Quatermass @ Wed Aug 08 said:
> 
> 
> > EU and EW are worryingly similar titles btw. :shock:
> ...



Yes. You're dead right on that one too. I hadn't thought of that and see your point entirely. I certainly wouldn't vote for anyone with a name like that. Thanks for your concern. It's the same as Nederlands sounding like upeastwestsass. Very similar sound. Wouldn't want to go there either.

Just waiting for the next foghorn to go off and the next person to be pointed at as not being body snatched by EW.


----------



## adg21 (Aug 18, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Looking forward to it.



noiseboyuk @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Good news. The lack of background loading is one of the bigger practical problems with Play - if this works efficiently, it'll be a big step forward.


For those of us working on single system maybe we'll finally be allowed to check our emails whilst Play takes half an hour to load. Praise the lord
[cue the sanctimonious comment about not running the internet on a music PC] 



noiseboyuk @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> No realistic prospect of lossless compression, or basic editing, but if this is executed well (and that's a big if), it should close the gap between Play and Kontakt a little.


Which is a shame for Hollywood Strings and Hollywood Brass users because no other sample library requires 64gigs of ram to run fully (multiple mic positions) alongside other sample libraries which use just a fraction of that.


----------



## Igor (Aug 18, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



jamwerks @ Wed Aug 08 said:


> I really hope that Play 4 will have some features for loading several articulations on the same midi channel !



+1


----------



## snattack (Aug 18, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:


> Mike Connelly @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Nonsense. There's absolutely no connection between app file size and code efficiency. And that's not even considering things like feature parity between the two platforms, how much is code versus assets like graphics, whether 32 and 64 bit code are included or just one, etc.
> ...



Sorry, but I'd have to disagree as well. Code efficiency have absolutely nothing to do with the file size of the app. There could be several reasons why it's slower: graphic handling, memory handling, etc, but adding a couple of MB on the actual file is just nothing. That only matters when starting up the software, and then adding it to the memory from the (extremely) slow harddrive.

Code efficiency is due to how instructions are handled. If the inefficiency is a result of have to make a huge rewrite of the code for the new OS and therefore CORRELATES to the app-size (read "global warming must be due to the lack of pirates"-scenario), it's still doesn't have anything to do with the code itself, it's just a bi-product.

It's not fact, it's only fiction.

Best,
A


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 18, 2012)

The guys who write code for cross-platform audio apps for a living most likely know more about PC vs Mac code than those who do not.

Shocking idea I know


----------



## joris de man (Aug 22, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



snattack @ Sun Aug 19 said:


> muziksculp @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Mike Connelly @ Fri Aug 03 said:
> ...



A lot of apps these days on the mac contain both the 32 and 64 bit versions, bundled in one app. That explains why they can be twice the size of their PC counterparts.
Also, in the past some of them contained PowerPC code as well (universal binaries) which would also add to the file size. With ML that should be a thing of the past, as PowerPC code has now been made redundant.
Though it seems that OS X is slightly less efficient at low latency performance than the PC, there still shouldn't be vast differences between the two.

Vinnie (a gearslutz regular) who has a company that builds specific music PC's and does a lot of Daw testing did uncover that on most cross platform Daws there is about a 15-20% improvement running it on the PC at lower latencies. (http://www.dawbench.com/index.html)
The Daw that managed to get most performance out of the Mac was funnily enough Reaper, which seems to be the most optimized.

At the end of the day it's all in the coding, and simple ports are never going to be as efficient as properly OS specific builds with platform specific optimizations.

Just my two cents 0oD [/url]


----------



## paaltio (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

This topic seems to induce quite a lot of talking past other people, because frankly both arguments are correct.

- Play as of version 3 is still not as efficient as Kontakt.

- OS X suffers from its Mach kernel heritage in realtime applications. The scheduling just isn't as efficient as in Windows. Apple compensates for this in Logic among other things by using a constant large buffer (1024 samples I believe) for any non-live tracks.

So, the performance disparity between Windows and OS X with Play is very likely due to the developers reacting to the threading performance differences among other things. But that's not to say there isn't also room for improvement. And that's what it looks like we'll see with Play 4.

But what I want to know is when are we going to get all the DAWs and plugins on RTLinux!


----------



## Hanu_H (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I think it's just more and more becoming a fact, that Apple is not capable of keeping up with multiple developers that develop PC. Also the fact that there is no companies competing in Apple world like in the PC world might be one reason for Apple getting so seriously behind. I think they had a nice run branding things, but atleast here in Finland if you look at the prices it's just ridiculous. 1600€ for a !5, 4GB of ram, 256GB HD laptop? When you look at the PC you get !7 with 8 gigs of ram, newest video card, etc. for a 900€. The idea of having everything super tested is great, but nowdays it has to happen a lot faster than 10 years ago. One company is not going to be able to do it in time. And I don't even think they try to do it anymore. Apple is now more about phones and tablets than computers for pros. I think they dropped the ball when PC went 64-bit and Mac got left behind. Many of the users switched to the PC. I think you all should, not because it's better, but because the price you pay for the Mac, you should get top of the line support for all the softwares and everything working before PC, including 64-bit. I know that somebody is gonna chime in and tell that they have developed this and that and I like their operating system. I don't really care about the past, only the future. And the future for Mac users is not looking too bright. Almost all the developers do it first for the PC, because the market is bigger and then if it's possible, they try to get it working for Mac. Thats why you always have to wait and thats why it always works better on PC than Mac. The whining doesn't help, if the developer doesn't have the funds or the interest to write the code again from scratch. That leads to stupid fast fixes and more resource hungry codes, hence the problem.

-Hannes


----------



## Dan Mott (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I agree with Hannes.

PLAY is great on PC, atleast for me. No problems at all.

I don't understand why composers would go to thr MAC world. It's just double the price of PC in every aspect. I built a MAC for fun on the Apple site and it ended up being almost 9000 dollars. I pretty much tried to much my PC specs. My PC was 2500 all up.


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Dan-Jay @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> I agree with Hannes.
> 
> PLAY is great on PC, atleast for me. No problems at all.
> 
> I don't understand why composers would go to thr MAC world. It's just double the price of PC in every aspect. I built a MAC for fun on the Apple site and it ended up being almost 9000 dollars. I pretty much tried to much my PC specs. My PC was 2500 all up.



Sure it was - with the same Xeon CPU's, same low noise casing and all.... 8) 

This is the endless discussion. I can only speak for myself when I say that I simply prefer working under OS X - it is a more pleasing experience as a user, and to the eye as well. Some people don't care about aesthetics and will just tell you that the only thing that matters is how many samples you can stream at once or whatever the tech talk would be about, but to me the non-existing noise of my Mac Pro, the ease of changing RAM/PCI cards etc. + the OS itself just means a lot.

Also I can honestly say that the amount of problems I have had with hardware, drivers etc on my Macs pale in comparison to the grief I have had with some of my Windows PC's. I am not going to go into detail since it serves no purpose. But for me, I am going to stay on OS X as long as it makes sense and as long as I don't see Windows as a better alternative.


----------



## IFM (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Dan-Jay @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> I agree with Hannes.
> 
> PLAY is great on PC, atleast for me. No problems at all.
> 
> I don't understand why composers would go to thr MAC world. It's just double the price of PC in every aspect. I built a MAC for fun on the Apple site and it ended up being almost 9000 dollars. I pretty much tried to much my PC specs. My PC was 2500 all up.



So you system is a Xeon? A smart buyer would never order the Apple installed RAM because you can just get all that aftermarket and save a bundle. Great that you love Windows but I feel the same way about that OS as you do about Mac. This argument never ends because there are a lot of us who just vastly prefer OSX.


----------



## Hanu_H (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Dragonwind @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> So you system is a Xeon? A smart buyer would never order the Apple installed RAM because you can just get all that aftermarket and save a bundle. Great that you love Windows but I feel the same way about that OS as you do about Mac. This argument never ends because there are a lot of us who just vastly prefer OSX.


I don't think anyone said anything about Windows or OSX? Of course theres people who like OSX more than Windows, because they have used it more and it might have some features they like. But if you choose to use it, you just need to take the fact that OSX is not the main platform for developers. So if doing so, you have to accept that you don't get all the softwares that PC people get and not the same level of performance with many softwares, especially in the audio side, where more and more people are changing to PC:s because of their great performance and price. And I think it will get worse and worse by the years.


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Hanu_H @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> Dragonwind @ Thu Aug 23 said:
> 
> 
> > So you system is a Xeon? A smart buyer would never order the Apple installed RAM because you can just get all that aftermarket and save a bundle. Great that you love Windows but I feel the same way about that OS as you do about Mac. This argument never ends because there are a lot of us who just vastly prefer OSX.
> ...



Where are those statistics saying that more and more are moving to PC's? PC has always been the bigger platform, but a lot of people have used Macs for Photoshop and audio work, yes.

Steinberg have always been more PC than OS X - Logic is the only exclusive DAW platform for Mac (and has been since Emagic was bought by Apple). ProTools... still mainly on Mac. Digital Performer, Mac only. I don't know anything about any massive migration from Mac to PC - at least I haven't seen it around me. Most plugins have been done for both PC and Mac at the same time. Some of them for Mac first (or only, like AltiVerb), some of them for PC first. I don't reall see anything radically changed here, except we who prefer to use Macs are a bit pissed off by Apples non-focus on the desktop machines. That might move some people from Mac to PC eventually, and over the coming years. 

But right now and historically, I don't see much has changed regarding the plugins and what is available for which platform, and what works best for what platform. I only have PLAY as an example of something that works much better on PC - and that is EW's fault, not Apples or OS X's.


----------



## Hanu_H (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> Where are those statistics saying that more and more are moving to PC's? PC has always been the bigger platform, but a lot of people have used Macs for Photoshop and audio work, yes.


This is something I've heard on the forums and from my composer friends and recording studios here. Forums I mostly use are VI-Control.net and Soundsonline so that might be the reason for that and I might be wrong. For me the overtone has been to ditch the Mac and move to a PC for sometime, by developers and fellow composers. As Jay said many of the developers say that their software works better on PC than Mac.


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 23, 2012)

Hanu: I am not gonna say it again. As stated by me and so many others in countless PLAY threads, I have no performance issues with any plugin on my Mac but PLAY... And you can hardly call Jay objective in his goal of defending PLAY, no matter his means.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 23, 2012)

Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> Hanu: I am not gonna say it again. As stated by me and so many others in countless PLAY threads, I have no performance issues with any plugin on my Mac but PLAY... And you can hardly call Jay objective in his goal of defending PLAY, no matter his means.



I am indeed not able to be viewed as objective, but when I quote from VSL, N.I, Steinberg and EW, that IS objective as they have no reason to say it if it is not true.

I am still hoping that someone who has a comparable Mac and a PC to load up a reasonably demanding library, like LASS or Cinematic Strings, and do a performance comparison. My strong guess is even with those in Kontakt, which are not as demanding as HS, the PC will significantly outperform the Mac.

Andrew K. of Audiobro runs a PC, as do most of the Kontakt developers I know. It is not just because they are cheap.


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 23, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 23 said:
> 
> 
> > Hanu: I am not gonna say it again. As stated by me and so many others in countless PLAY threads, I have no performance issues with any plugin on my Mac but PLAY... And you can hardly call Jay objective in his goal of defending PLAY, no matter his means.
> ...



We have your anecdotal telling of it - we don't have it from VSL, NI or Steinberg. As you know, EW's word isn't worth much in this dicussion seeing how lame PLAY is.



> Andrew K. of Audiobro runs a PC, as do most of the Kontakt developers I know. It is not just because they are cheap.



Are you saying they made the switch to PC from Mac when they became Kontakt developers, because Kontakt doesn't work well enough on Mac? Or are you just saying that for whatever reason that we don't know of, they are using a PC? There could be a ton of reasons. They could use PC's because they always have. They could use PC's for Kontakt development because there are development tools that are only available for Windows.

As usual, you excel in writing like a true politician, just picking the few facts that you need to make your case and leave out the rest of the story that might give a totally different angle on the story.

EDIT: Oh, I just found a great reason why I would myself use PC's when developing sample libraries for ANY platform: Wavelab. Although it has recently been released on Mac, I don't know of anything like it on Mac, for batch processing of samples. Used it myself when I edited custom sample libraries. And although I would take a look at the Mac version today probably, if I started out doing this in Wavelab on PC, I would see no reason to switch to Mac. But this has nothing to do with the performance of Kontakt, it is simply because there are better tools available for sample editing on PC.


----------



## Hanu_H (Aug 23, 2012)

Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> Hanu: I am not gonna say it again. As stated by me and so many others in countless PLAY threads, I have no performance issues with any plugin on my Mac but PLAY... And you can hardly call Jay objective in his goal of defending PLAY, no matter his means.


I am not defending PLAY in any way, I am on PC and have problems with it, but I totally agree with the fact that PC's perform better than Mac's in most of the softwares that were made for PC first. I am a happy Cubase user and I don't want to change to Logic or DP, but I can understand the frustration if you have used Logic or DP and feel left out by developers. It's a shame that Apple has to control everything so tightly and also loose all the possibilities to be the tip of the arrow in pro computers that it was 10 years ago.


----------



## noldar12 (Aug 23, 2012)

If one wants to take the time, what Jay is saying about Mac/PC performance can easily be verified.

My primary libraries are VSL, and on the VSL site from time to time, the issue with Mac performance comes up. VSL developers have said repeatedly that performance is better on PC.

As for Play, I cannot really comment. I have a couple Play libraries, but don't like the software design/resulting workflow, so I no longer use it.


----------



## Revson (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> Dan-Jay @ Thu Aug 23 said:
> 
> 
> > I agree with Hannes.
> ...



Pretty much my overall thoughts and intention.

Going forward IOS seems to be wagging the dog at Apple, though, and for my uses of OSX this doesn't seem a particularly good thing.


----------



## Dick the Flick (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



> I don't understand why composers would go to thr MAC world. It's just double the price of PC in every aspect. I built a MAC for fun on the Apple site and it ended up being almost 9000 dollars. I pretty much tried to much my PC specs. My PC was 2500 all up.



It's quite simple. Many like me use a Mac because not so long ago (probably the 90's) the Mac was the best platform to work with MIDI / Sampling / audio. 

I bought an EMU II in 1984 when it cost as much as a house to buy a sampler that could actually record 17 seconds of audio. Apple paved the way for us to edit samples with the EMU in 85 and so I bought my first computer. It was a Mac.

I've been quite busy making music these past 28 years and have so far had no real reason to have to change. Even PLAY HS works fine for me on a Mac. If I have a problem, I quickly find a workaround and carry on composing.

If one day someone develops some product for PC that I think is radicle enough to merit the platform change ..... I'll do it. Until then my work modus fulfills all my needs without having to go through the pain of a move.

Life's too short without becoming beholden to every small increment of advance in technology.


----------



## muziksculp (Aug 23, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

PLAY 4 will still run better on PC than on Mac. 

I moved from Mac to PC and never looked back. I feel there is a certain PC-Phobia that Mac users (including myself) inherit by running Mac for many years, and get so used to the OSX environment, but PCs are imho. better suited for Music Apps. at this point in time, and the transition is not as bad as it might initially seem. So, if you are using a Mac for your DAW, and are happy, stick to Mac. 

On the other hand, If you are Not Happy with what your Mac -DAW is offering, then switch to PC. You won't regret it. Provided you get a Custom-PC for music production from one of the turnkey Audio-PC builders. They are built rock solid, stable, fast, quiet, and offer a lot expansion options, RAM, SSDs, HDs, I/O ports, Graphics Cards,....etc. 

That's what I did, and I'm glad I switched to PC/Cubase 6.5 

Going back to PLAY 4, I wonder if EW will actually release it this month ? or delay its release due to any bugs that have still not been sorted out during the beta-phase. ? 

One week left in August. 

We shall see. 

Cheers,
Muziksculp


----------



## dxmachina (Aug 23, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> Andrew K. of Audiobro runs a PC, as do most of the Kontakt developers I know. It is not just because they are cheap.



Hi Jay,

Andrew K and I have been happy Mac Pro users and developers for many years now. Both platforms offer advantages, and I never owned a Mac prior to 2004. Now I own both, but my PC only gets turned on once or twice a month.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 23, 2012)

dxmachina @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 23 said:
> 
> 
> > Andrew K. of Audiobro runs a PC, as do most of the Kontakt developers I know. It is not just because they are cheap.
> ...



My bad then. I thought I remembered him being on a PC with Cubase when I visited him at his house a couple of years ago but either had a senior moment or he has moved to the mac.

Sorry or the misinformation.


----------



## Dan Mott (Aug 25, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Hey. I just though going to MAC was the "Cool" thing to do. I mean, afterall, everyone keep saying to me that it's the best thing for audio and video. 

"Why aren't you on a MAC if you are doing alot of audio and composing"?

I get alot of that :D


----------



## kitekrazy (Aug 25, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Dan-Jay @ Sat Aug 25 said:


> Hey. I just though going to MAC was the "Cool" thing to do. I mean, afterall, everyone keep saying to me that it's the best thing for audio and video.
> 
> "Why aren't you on a MAC if you are doing alot of audio and composing"?
> 
> I get alot of that :D



Then if you get a MAC, prepare for "Why aren't you using a Pro Tools if you are doing alot of audio and composing"?


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 25, 2012)

Not to be a PITA, but why do so many people think Mac has to be written in capital letters? It's not like the M, A and C stand for anything in themselves - it's just short for Macintosh


----------



## Dan Mott (Aug 25, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



kitekrazy @ Sat Aug 25 said:


> Dan-Jay @ Sat Aug 25 said:
> 
> 
> > Hey. I just though going to MAC was the "Cool" thing to do. I mean, afterall, everyone keep saying to me that it's the best thing for audio and video.
> ...



Haha. Yeah I get that too.


----------



## mark812 (Aug 25, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> Andrew K. of Audiobro runs a PC, as do most of the Kontakt developers I know. It is not just because they are cheap.



PCs are not cheap. Macs are ridiculously overpriced. :wink:


----------



## quantum7 (Aug 25, 2012)

mark812 @ Sat Aug 25 said:


> PCs are not cheap. Macs are ridiculously overpriced. :wink:



Exactly!


----------



## dxmachina (Aug 25, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

My TCO on the 6 Macs I've owned has been substantially lower than my much longer experience with PCs. Resell value is also significantly higher. In-warranty repairs are handled so elegantly and without hassle. 

Compare a Mac Pro to another Xeon workstation with comparable engineering (or as close as you can get) and you'll find the price pretty similar. Price difference may be greater on the consumer Macbooks and iMacs, but when you consider TCO this becomes quite a different story. 

For the record, I still _love_ building my own machines, working from the command line, tinkering with the Linux kernel... but I'll likely not use a PC for my day to day work in the near future.

This debate is as old as personal computing, but is for the most part erroneous these days.


----------



## alligatorlizard (Aug 25, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Great, PLAY 4... Now how about you also sort out the programming on some of your recent libraries and maybe then the tide of opinion might turn...

Finally upgraded to LASS 2, and been setting up some templates with that today - after ongoing battles with various PLAY libraries recently, I was reminded just how powerful and slick Kontakt is. In fact today was fun. An average day working with a PLAY library will _not_ be fun. 

I guess it _is_ good news about PLAY 4 (particularly for those poor souls using MACs), but as others have pointed out, it's like buying a faulty car then having the dealer fix it several years later - you're probably not feeling that grateful by then. Especially if they only fix the engine but leave the steering and suspension a mess...


----------



## jleckie (Aug 25, 2012)

Simon Ravn @ Sat Aug 25 said:


> Not to be a PITA, but why do so many people think Mac has to be written in capital letters? It's not like the M, A and C stand for anything in themselves - it's just short for Macintosh



Because when we 'say' MAC we are shouting.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 25, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 23 said:


> dxmachina @ Thu Aug 23 said:
> 
> 
> > EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 23 said:
> ...



I talked to Andrew this morning and there _was_ a period of time when he was using Cubase PC around when I went to his house so while I may be losing my mind, this isn't evidence of it necessarily.


----------



## dxmachina (Aug 25, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



> I talked to Andrew this morning and there was a period of time when he was using Cubase PC around when I went to his house so while I may be losing my mind, this isn't evidence of it necessarily.



I wasn't accusing you of losing your mind (in this thread), Jay. But since I've been working and developing with Andrew every day for the last few years (on Macs) I thought it was a strange example of developers being mostly PC-based. 

I do find it amusing that you called Andrew to find out. 

My contributions to this thread are completely off topic, so I'll back away slowly...

Regards,
Sebastian


----------



## Peter Alexander (Aug 25, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

We had a discussion on this a while back and Andrew moved Nuendo to the Mac and never looked back. As Daryl might point out, the virtue of working with a dual platform program which is seriously tempting me (Cubase 6.5) away from Logic 9.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 25, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



dxmachina @ Sat Aug 25 said:


> > I talked to Andrew this morning and there was a period of time when he was using Cubase PC around when I went to his house so while I may be losing my mind, this isn't evidence of it necessarily.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Oh I know that Sebastien. I was accusing _myself_ for a moment there. 

You're a good guy, and so is Andrew.


----------



## paaltio (Aug 26, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



667 @ 2012-08-03 said:


> Since both OS runs on 100% identical hardware I'd like EW to reference a single technical reason why Mac OSX is "worse" than Windows. Mac OSX having Mach kernel, being unix-like OS, is generally considered to be superior, to my knowledge.



A broad statement like this is almost automatically wrong when talking about kernels. Superior for what? Even a cursory look at the Mach kernel Wikipedia page would reveal that there's a history of latency problems with the architecture.

I wish we had a kernel developer here to tell about how exactly XNU relates to Mach and what kinds of challenges it presents for real time applications today. I certainly don't have that background, but for example the benchmarks on dawbench.com for cross platform applications have such clear differences across the board that combined with the Mach heritage the problem seems obvious.

It's clearly not just a matter of poor OS X versions. Pro Tools, for example, has a completely scary and horrendous Windows port. I shudder to just think of the UI widgets. And the Alt-Tab task switcher that reverts to the non-aero legacy version when Pro Tools is active. Seriously Avid, how the hell is that even possible? If the ASIO support is half as weird, it's probably shipping audio buffers via the postal service. And yet, the Windows version outperforms the OS X version in the benchmarks.

The "why then are Macs so popular in audio" argument is a complete non sequitur. The time when Macs became the de facto platform for audio was before OS X existed, or anyone was using NT for music production. And OS X's performance is good enough, combined with, to many, a superior user experience, so people continue to use it. And they should! But to use it as an argument about what the inherent performance of each platform is in 2012, that's totally nonsensical.

The bottom line is, Unix comes from a time when no one even thought about real time applications. That's not to say the NT kernel was designed at all for audio either, so it seems more of a happy accident if it has advantages in that area. Even a relatively new kernel like Linux (which is technically not Unix, but in practice is) has problems with them, hence the modified kernels like RTLinux. Which in turn is actually really good for audio, but there doesn't exist a similar variation of OS X.

It would actually be really cool if it was possible to do a sort of RT OS X from the released Darwin sources, but of course Apple only open sourced the absolute minimum. So getting the modified kernel in OS X is either impossible or a completely ridiculous hack. In other words, sounds like a perfect blog. Any takers?


----------



## 667 (Aug 26, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

The issue is that EW is claiming the problem is OSX without any proof or technical reason. I do not think this is good corporate citizenship: it is spreading FUD which needlessly hurts the industry.

If they are going to blame some issue with the OS as the problem then the burden of proof is on them to say what it is.

To me it smells like total BS.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 26, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



667 @ Sun Aug 26 said:


> The issue is that EW is claiming the problem is OSX without any proof or technical reason. I do not think this is good corporate citizenship: it is spreading FUD which needlessly hurts the industry.
> 
> If they are going to blame some issue with the OS as the problem then the burden of proof is on them to say what it is.
> 
> To me it smells like total BS.



Once again, it is NOT just EW that says this. It is Steinberg, VSL and N.I.that have told me and others this as well. Granted, however the problems are greater with Play than Kontakt but it is hard for me personally to assess how much is due to the mammoth size of the Hollywood series patches, especially HS, and how much is generically Play 3.

If someone wants to run some tests with the smaller Play libraries on both platforms, I would be interested in what they discover.


----------



## noiseboyuk (Aug 26, 2012)

This has been going round in circles for some time, and it's all rather pointless. The issue, it seems to me, is not whatever VSL / NI say in theory - it's how it works in practice. If people are finding VSL and Kontakt work fine on their Macs (possibly despite poorer architecture) then it's pretty obvious that if Play doesn't work as well, they're gonna blame EW for that.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 26, 2012)

noiseboyuk @ Sun Aug 26 said:


> This has been going round in circles for some time, and it's all rather pointless. The issue, it seems to me, is not whatever VSL / NI say in theory - it's how it works in practice. If people are finding VSL and Kontakt work fine on their Macs (possibly despite poorer architecture) then it's pretty obvious that if Play doesn't work as well, they're gonna blame EW for that.



Understood Guy, but if you read my last post, do the smaller Play libraries perform poorly on Mac "in practice" or only the mega ones, so therefore is it Play or specifically the HW series? That is to me the unresolved question.

Even before last week when I had a less powerful Mac, I never really had a problem with Play's performance on the Mac "in practice" until HS and on my present Mac that is even more true. For instance SD2, Silk, Ra, etc. are all fine for me on the Mac with Play 3.

I am really curious to see how much difference Play 4 makes, though.


----------



## NYC Composer (Aug 26, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I concur with this to an extent, based on recent experience.

I had been using EWQLSO strings for quite a while. I recently replaced them with CS2, which I totally love, but put a LOT more strain on my CPU than the EW strings did.

The EW patches I used were "master" patches, with a large number of articulations each, so it's not like they were much simpler than the CS2 ones. It may be less a matter of Play than it is the demands of more deeply mullti-sampled isntruments that makes the big difference. I don't own HS or HB and probably won't, but all of my older Play libraries work well. HS and HB do seem to have been coded very speifically for PC, though-no other explanation makes all that much sense. If what we were talking about was what testing has found, i.e. a 15% difference in performance on Cubase between Mac and PC, then HS and HB would work on higher powered Macs, just not as well. As it is, it seems they essentially don't work at all in any real world sense.


----------



## StrezovSampling (Aug 27, 2012)

sorry, but that's just funny. EWQLSO was released in 2003 (and one year later or so they made the ProXp ver). As for CS2 - it was released in 2011 or somewhere at that time diapason. 

It's like comparing StarCraft 1 to StarCraft 2 and saying that the second game takes more hardware resources. Or comparing SuperMario to Crysis 2


----------



## floydian05 (Aug 27, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ Sun Aug 26 said:


> Even before last week when I had a less powerful Mac, I never really had a problem with Play's performance on the Mac "in practice" until HS and on my present Mac that is even more true. For instance SD2, Silk, Ra, etc. are all fine for me on the Mac with Play 3.
> 
> I am really curious to see how much difference Play 4 makes, though.



I use a number of the older EWQL libs. SD 2, Silk, Goliath, SO etc... I have no issues with any of them on Mac except Pianos. They do not run well on my system and I would have replaced them with another library, but nothing I've tried as is good.


----------



## Bernard Quatermass (Aug 27, 2012)

quantum7 @ Sat Aug 25 said:


> mark812 @ Sat Aug 25 said:
> 
> 
> > PCs are not cheap. Macs are ridiculously overpriced. :wink:
> ...



Definitely!

Also, as everyone here has an opinion, may I also say that all PC owners should be vaporised. (upward inflection on that final word so it sounds like a question. You know, the way morons talk most of the time) (upward inflection on the word 'time' too)


----------



## NYC Composer (Aug 27, 2012)

Strezov @ Mon Aug 27 said:


> sorry, but that's just funny. EWQLSO was released in 2003 (and one year later or so they made the ProXp ver). As for CS2 - it was released in 2011 or somewhere at that time diapason.
> 
> It's like comparing StarCraft 1 to StarCraft 2 and saying that the second game takes more hardware resources. Or comparing SuperMario to Crysis 2



Always happy to provide amusement for others  I'm sorry that your video game analogies are useless to me, as I have never played one except Pong, and it's been a while!

Do you or did you have QLSO? The master, multi articulation patches are pretty large, and being that Play is thought to be so inefficient, one would think that a group of heavy patches on old programming (Play) would be less efficient than resource demanding patches on newer programming (Kontakt 5). The notion doesn't seem so far fetched to me.


----------



## Vision (Aug 27, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Sun Aug 26 said:


> 667 @ Sun Aug 26 said:
> 
> 
> > The issue is that EW is claiming the problem is OSX without any proof or technical reason. I do not think this is good corporate citizenship: it is spreading FUD which needlessly hurts the industry.
> ...




Jay Smh.. PLAY is a failure. Using reputable software devs to justify the poor performance of PLAY.. even though PLAY isn't even in the same _league_ as those other developers doesn't cut it. Honestly, I feel like you're almost insulting our intelligence. No offense, but at this point I just don't care how much EW puts a spin on it.

I don't understand why this thread is even five pages long already. Oh wait.. PC enthusiasts have found a great opportunity to come in and blow off some steam to justify having a PC, and blast Apple. Okay I get it. 

Having an almost 10 year old library (ewqlso) work well with PLAY doesn't say a whole lot either. I have PLAY ewqlso, (deleted it off of my hard drive, except for some percussion). It's such a basic library by today's standards, that in my opinion, its not even valid to use as an example.

I have Silk, SD 2, and the EW pianos just to mention a few EW products I have. They work "okay". But in fact, I was having problems with Silk, on one of my latest compostions. I used about only 26-30 tracks for "Sun Tzu Tactics", and I was toying with using Silk in this composition. Silk was one of the last instruments I opened, (which I assume is a problem.. opening PLAY in a template after other libraries). As I was going though the patches in Silk, auditioning sounds etc., all of a sudden I get an error. I look at my memory manager.. my memory is completely drained. I have 32 gigs of ram in my machine. The total template size for this track before was originally 12-14 gB in size. What the hell?? At that point I was like, it isn't even worth it to fight with, I just won't use Silk. Btw, I have an 8-core 3.2 ghz, similar spec as Larry I think. 

SD2 works on my machine, but it is still shoddy imo. Especially If you want to use SD2 as multi-channel loops in a dense orchestration on one machine. Good luck with that.

The problem I'm seeing is that Play cannot distribute power evenly amongst cores on a Mac. For instance, again.. with Sun Tzu Tactics as an example, For one particular section, I wanted to use just one Hollywood Brass, 2 French Horn patch.. Impossible. I constantly get one core that spikes, and the sequence becomes unplayable. None of my other software does this. So, instead I decided to use VSL, VI PRO 2 Epic Horns instead of HB. My Mac didn't even _notice_.. VSL worked so well. Btw, I'm using the fastest solid state drive on macs to date, (owc mercury accelsior pcie ssd) with HS, and HB. This was a perfect opportunity to see how HB, and HS would work with a ssd of this calibre. Thankfully, I didn't purchase this ssd solely for use with EW products. However, it did confirm even further that PLAY is just a horribly programmed piece of software. 

If it sounds like I'm pissed off, it's because I am. I was lied to, and I spent thousands of dollars on software that doesn't work as stated:

MAC RECOMMENDED SYSTEM (for HB)

Mac Pro Quad-Core intel Xeon 2.66Hz or higher (I have an 8-core 3.2)
8gB RAM or more (I have 32gb RAM)
7200 RPM or faster (non energy saving) hard drive for sample streaming (I have the fastest solid state drive on macs).

MAC RECOMMENDED SYSTEM requirements should be as follows: Build a PC. 

A few posts back, Aligatorlizard used a car analogy. I was thinking something similar as I was reading through this thread. 

Simple analogy.. whether this makes sense or not.. just bear with me.

I'm a car enthusiast. So, let's say I have a new Ferrari F12 Berlinetta. I'd prefer to use 97 or even 100 octane to get the max performance out this sports car. But all I have available to me is 89 octane (kontakt and VSL). However, at least I can still hit 195mph top end, 0-60 3.4 sec, qtr mile 11.3 sec, with the 89 octane. Yeah, I'm losing some power, but I'm not too upset about that, because I'm still sorta pacing with the the Nissan GT-R (PC), and I'm running smoothly. Still a good investment overall, because I like the aesthetic design, the engine, and the feel of my Ferrari. 

PLAY is like putting Witch Hazel, and club soda in the gas tank of a Ferrari. 

Fix the faulty fuel additive that is PLAY 3 to at least be on par.. Just on par, with Kontakt 5 and VI-Pro on a Mac. Then we can talk.


----------



## NYC Composer (Aug 27, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I find that Play works best safely ensconced within the warm confines of VEP. I've never had a problem with Silk, but it IS annoying that Play insists on being first in any chain-especially since one of the dumbest things about Cubase is the inability to re-configure the order of V.I's in its Instrument Rack.

Peter, if I had bought HB based on the original Mac spec, I'd be pissed off too. My point was that there are some K5 libraries that are quite resource heavy as well. For example, CS 2, which I LOVE...seems to eat my processors for lunch-to the point that I'm reluctantly looking onto a Mac Mini slave.


----------



## Vision (Aug 27, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



NYC Composer @ Mon Aug 27 said:


> I find that Play works best safely ensconced within the warm confines of VEP. I've never had a problem with Silk, but it IS annoying that Play insists on being first in any chain-especially since one of the dumbest things about Cubase is the inability to re-configure the order of V.I's in its Instrument Rack.
> 
> Peter, if I had bought HB based on the original Mac spec, I'd be pissed off too. My point was that there are some K5 libraries that are quite resource heavy as well. For example, CS 2, which I LOVE...seems to eat my processors for lunch-to the point that I'm reluctantly looking onto a Mac Mini slave.



CS2 works very well with a ssd on my machine though Larry. I cannot say the same for PLAY.


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 27, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I think we can all agree that PLAY on Mac sucks (even more than on PC), ok? 8) I am so happy that so many cool orchestral libraries are coming out for Kontakt these days so I don't need to invest in more (more or less dormant) EW libraries. Thank you Audiobro, thank you Troels, thank you Hendrik, thank you Cinesamples 8)


----------



## noxtenebrae17 (Aug 27, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Simon Ravn @ Mon Aug 27 said:


> I think we can all agree that PLAY on Mac sucks (even more than on PC), ok? 8) I am so happy that so many cool orchestral libraries are coming out for Kontakt these days so I don't need to invest in more (more or less dormant) EW libraries. Thank you Audiobro, thank you Troels, thank you Hendrik, thank you Cinesamples 8)



Agreed. I do think that EW still makes good products, and I own EWQLSO, HS, and HB but I think I'm keeping to Kontakt libraries from here on out. With products like the Cine-libraries, Berlin Woodwinds, Cinematic Strings, LASS, 8dio products, Spitfire, and ProjectSam stuff I can happily say the quality is of near-equal or exceeding quality to what East West has to offer. I also think VSL is a wonderful software developer and couldn't be happier with VE Pro.

That said I am looking forward to Play 4 as EWQLSO, HS, and HB are still an integral part of my template. But those instruments are slowly being replaced by other products.


----------



## Vision (Aug 27, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Simon Ravn @ Mon Aug 27 said:


> I think we can all agree that PLAY on Mac sucks (even more than on PC), ok? 8) I am so happy that so many cool orchestral libraries are coming out for Kontakt these days so I don't need to invest in more (more or less dormant) EW libraries. Thank you Audiobro, thank you Troels, thank you Hendrik, thank you Cinesamples 8)



..which is more or less the reason why I haven't built a pc slave. Some of the aforementioned libraries are taking up the slack. That isn't to say that Hollywood strings isn't worth buying an extra PC.. for some people. But, for me it isn't at the moment, unless I'm doing a major film. 

What would be nice though, is if I could run an adequate amount of play instruments to _supplement_ the other libraries, and vice-versa.

I have my doubts that Play 4 will be that much better than Play 3. If so, I'll be pleasantly surprised.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 27, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Simon Ravn @ Mon Aug 27 said:


> I think we can all agree that PLAY on Mac sucks (even more than on PC), ok?)



No we can't all agree because if you read through the thread, you will see several people here who disagree. 

You are entitled to have an opinion but you are not entitled to speak for everybody. 

If it were true, every single Mac user who ever bought a Play based library would never have bought a second one, and I can assure you, that is not the case or EW would not still be in business.


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 27, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> Simon Ravn @ Mon Aug 27 said:
> 
> 
> > I think we can all agree that PLAY on Mac sucks (even more than on PC), ok?)
> ...



Jay, you're like the Iraqi defense minister saying that nothing is wrong, while we can hear the bombs going off in the background. You just won't admit it and that is such an EW mentality, and it really hasn't brought anything good, has it? It's standard concensus by now that PLAY is way behind Kontakt, VSL etc. and that there are major issues with the software, but here you are, denying it again and again. 

Even I bought several PLAY libraries, but I still realize that PLAY is a piece of crap software that just barely works for minimum purposes. The user interface looks and feels like something from the 90's, the efficiency and performance is behind anything competitive in the market, and feature wise it has less features than GigaSampler from 1992 (or whenever that was released). It really is embarrassing that EW still has such an old fashioned piece of software accompanying their often very good sample libraries. 

I tell you, if EW were using Kontakt and not PLAY, Doug could be driving FIVE Lamborghinis, instead of just one 8)


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Simon Ravn @ Mon Aug 27 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > Simon Ravn @ Mon Aug 27 said:
> ...



Simon, look up the meaning of the word "hyperbole" in the dictionary. For some reason when you criticize ANY product, not just EW's, things are never "good" "bad" "better""worse", they are " great""dreadful" "wonderful""crap".

I don't deny anything that is empirically true. Is Play as fully featured as Kontakt? No, it is not. Kontakt is a full featured sampler while Play is just a sampler. That is empirically true. Calling it"crap"' is not empirically true. Play's big libraries work far less well on the Mac. That is empirically true. Which is why I built a PC.

The division of the reasons are _not_ empirically clear based on the comments from VSL, N.I., and Steinberg and the experiences of some of the users here with the smaller libraries.

And once again if you look up "true" in the dictionary, it does not say "in accordance with Simon Raven's views".

EW told me that at a certain point they had plans for their libraries that simply could not be accomplished with Kontakt and N.I. was not responsive to making the needed changes, as well as the financial aspects of the relationship. I was told for instance that it would have been impossible to do with hollywood Strings with Kontakt what has been done with Play. Also, some people, including Hans Zimmer thinks Play's engine sounds better than Kontakt. QL Spaces is based on that engine and many people here rave about its sound.

You will of our dismiss all that because it is who you are. Fine, goodbye and good luck.


----------



## woodsdenis (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I have one question for EastWestLurker.

How can anyone, Hans Zimmer or otherwise say that the Play engine sounds better than Kontact when no Play libraries are released on the Kontact system. surely it is impossible to do a valid A/B test unless you can accurately do a blind test of the SAME source material. 

I don't use Play personally but have heard it used by my fellow composers and certainly does sound good but those very same people constantly complain about reliability issues. 
Yes they use Macs. Second hand info I know but before forums like this that is how we got our info.

There is no question that all Native Instruments stuff works better on PCs, but it is not crippled or unusable on the Mac the way the Play seems to be for a lot of users. It seems unreasonable and disingenuous to compare Play to other companies like this. You really seem to be playing with semantics a lot of the time.

Finally I have no axe to grind here, I freely admit I don't use Play, but just giving an observation on the way you and EastWest seem to handle criticism. As a PR exercise it really doesn't work. It doesn't persuade me to even look at your products and surely that is the point, to create new business. To be fair I do admire your staying power in the firing line.

Best

Denis Woods


----------



## Gerd Kaeding (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



woodsdenis @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> How can anyone, Hans Zimmer or otherwise say that the Play engine sounds better than Kontact when no Play libraries are released on the Kontact system. surely it is impossible to do a valid A/B test unless you can accurately do a blind test of the SAME source material.



Hi ,

both EWQLSymphonic Orchestra and EWQLSymphonic Choirs were released in Kontakt format first. And , as far as I remember , the content of the Kontakt formated library COLOSSUS is the current PLAY library GOLIATH plus additional new content.

Best

Gerd


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Gerd Kaeding @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> woodsdenis @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > How can anyone, Hans Zimmer or otherwise say that the Play engine sounds better than Kontact when no Play libraries are released on the Kontact system. surely it is impossible to do a valid A/B test unless you can accurately do a blind test of the SAME source material.
> ...



Would love to do an A/B test and see who can tell the difference between the same sample played back on Kontakt and PLAY - I am sure it would be quite a show 8) .

Come to think of it, wasn't the Kontakt version of Orchestra + Choirs 16-bit - and the PLAY version 24-bit? That could account for a (probably minimal) difference. Anyway, that PLAY "sounds better" than Kontakt is just another, desperate way of Jay trying to defend "his" horrible piece of software.


----------



## Gerd Kaeding (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Simon Ravn @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> Come to think of it, wasn't the Kontakt version of Orchestra + Choirs 16-bit - and the PLAY version 24-bit? That could account for a (probably minimal) difference.



Hi ,

EWQLSymphonic Orchestra provides the option of using 16bit samples instead of 24bit samples. ( _Not sure about the Choirs library _).

Best

Gerd


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



woodsdenis @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> I have one question for EastWestLurker.
> 
> How can anyone, Hans Zimmer or otherwise say that the Play engine sounds better than Kontact when no Play libraries are released on the Kontact system. surely it is impossible to do a valid A/B test unless you can accurately do a blind test of the SAME source material.



He didn't tell me Denis, but my guess is he compared the Kontakt and Play versions of one of the earlier libraries that exist with both engines, like EWQLSO. The samples didn't change.


----------



## woodsdenis (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Gerd Kaeding @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> woodsdenis @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > How can anyone, Hans Zimmer or otherwise say that the Play engine sounds better than Kontact when no Play libraries are released on the Kontact system. surely it is impossible to do a valid A/B test unless you can accurately do a blind test of the SAME source material.
> ...


 
Tx Gerd I have EWQL and Goliath for Structure . That was a while ago. LOL. If that is what he is comparing then it's a pretty old version of Kontact against an old version of Play. It just seems a silly point to make if this is the case. Also compared to modern libraries they are really basic in terms of scripting and articulations. 

I really think that, if you throw out a comment like Hans Zimmer thinks A is better than B, you really need to be able to back it up. Maybe he does, and has said so recently. this would truly be a great endorsement for the Play system. I would still like to know the context of the quote seeing as it has been publicly aired.

Best


Denis Woods


----------



## woodsdenis (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> woodsdenis @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > I have one question for EastWestLurker.
> ...



Tx Jay

Fair enough, I am sure this will start a debate on the differences between Kontact engine quality over different versions now !! Either way the debate has never been about the quality of the samples or the quality of playback, but the reliability of the software on different operating systems..

Best


Denis Woods


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



woodsdenis @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> Gerd Kaeding @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > woodsdenis @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> ...



It is simple. I ran into Hans at RC and we spent a few minutes chatting and amongst the opinions he offered to me, that was one of them. (Cubase sounds better than Logic was another

Anyway I am not claiming it because I have conducted no listening test as I have no interest in comparing them as I use both Play and Kontakt libraries and will continue to do so regardless of any test, just as I have no interest in testing Logic vs Cubase. i am a Logic user and an A/B test will not change that.

But he said what he said and it is neither my nor his responsibility to "back it up". People have ears and brains and they are free to assign as much or as little credibility to it as they choose.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



woodsdenis @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > woodsdenis @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> ...



I agree. I will make one final summation of MY opinions based on MY experiences, not official from EW and frankly, probably am going farther than they would like me to:

1. Play 3 64 bit is more efficient on the PC than on the Mac. So is Kontakt and VSL but at least partly, and I am not sure to what degree this factors in, since there is no Kontakt library that is as demanding as i.e. Hollywood Strings it is less problematic for the Kontakt based libraries.

2. Play 3 works fine however on a reasonably powerful Mac with a lot of RAM until you try to run a lot of the Hollywood series Then the performance becomes disappointing. My guess is that if it were possible to directly port Hollywood Stings to Kontakt with the size, capabilities, and demands oft he patches, this would STILL be true, although maybe a little less so. But the developers tell me that they could not have done what they did with HS if they were still using Kontakt. I have to take them at their word for that as either way, this will not be happening.

3. The PC makes better use of SSDs than the Mac (although Thunderbolt may change that) and SSDs are really helpful with the Hollywood series, particularly HS.

None of this of course will deter the Play haters from spewing their bile so I will not try further, other than to respond to factually incorrect statements, but facts are not usually the currency that these guys deal in. 

Back to the topic, like all of you, as a user I am curious to see how much of an improvement Play 4 brings to the table with both platforms.


----------



## Maestro77 (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Just chiming in to say that I own 9 EW libraries that use Play on my Mac Pro using Logic and I've never had a single issue, other than slow loading times.


----------



## playz123 (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

BELIEVE IT OR NOT:

---There are actually many people who are using Play successfully, even on a Mac, who like EW software, and who are achieving good results with it. Is Play perfect or up to the standards it could be? Absolutely not, BUT that doesn't mean it also deserves some the vitriolic remarks I read in these threads sometimes.

---For some of us, the information and comments that Jay provides are just as important, valuable and respected as other remarks are. The constant nit picking by some at everything he says, and the lack of respect he is often shown is growing 'old' and some of the comments directed at him do nothing to enhance the respect for and reputation of the respondents making them. I've never met Jay, and know very little about him, but I'm just not 'getting' some of the comments he receives or even why he receives them. True, I haven't been part of this forum for as long as many members, but why he isn't shown the same respect as others is a puzzle. If other respondents were shown the same lack of respect that some show to Jay, I'm sure we would be deeply offended and even hurt sometimes. 

--Much of the criticism of EW and Play I read here is IMHO, nothing but jumping on a popular 'band wagon' and is completely non constructive. We get it! You don't like Play, so perhaps don't use it anymore or buy it or whatever, and now let's just go make some music. If you have suggestions to offer then post or forward them. Believe it or not, EW does listen and so does Jay. They can't answer every concern promptly, and yes, even I agree that they've been far too slow addressing some of the issues with Play, but they do want to produce products we will like and use, and it makes little sense to suggest otherwise.

Believe it or not, problems with software can often be solved, constructive criticism is what gets heard the most, and comments like 'Play sucks' does nothing to help anything. There's nothing essentially wrong with offering a complaint or opinion...after all this is a "forum", but don't they have way more value to others when they are offered in a constructive and respectful manner?

Respect: "Consideration for the feelings or rights of others"

Just some thoughts.....


----------



## Peter Alexander (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

FWIW, years back I did compare QLSO platinum on Kontakt to the new Play version, and it did sound to me that Play was brighter sounding.


----------



## Vision (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> None of this of course will deter the Play haters from spewing their bile so I will not try further, other than to respond to factually incorrect statements, but facts are not usually the currency that these guys deal in.
> 
> Back to the topic, like all of you, as a user I am curious to see how much of an improvement Play 4 brings to the table with both platforms.



Jay, I for one am not a "hater". I don't say what I say just to bash, and belittle. I don't have time for that. In fact, as many years as I've been a part of this forum, I rarely post. I just call it like I see it. And, frankly at times you really do sound like you're in denial, and/ or are just being a corporate representative. 

In my real world experience, using many different types of software.. being under deadlines.. working with many templates.. trial and error.. It doesn't take a lot to figure out that PLAY is poorly written code. That _is_ a fact. It might sound like "hate" because it's hard to hear. But it is what it is. Perhaps some people don't have the high expectations that I and some others have for PLAY on Mac.. fair enough.


----------



## Inductance (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



playz123 @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> BELIEVE IT OR NOT:
> 
> ---There are actually many people who are using Play successfully, even on a Mac, who like EW software, and who are achieving good results with it. Is Play perfect or up to the standards it could be? Absolutely not, BUT that doesn't mean it also deserves some the vitriolic remarks I read in these threads sometimes.



+1

I've generally been pretty happy with EW products and Play, but I'm always reluctant to jump into threads like this one because the tone is always so negative. I wouldn't be surprised if there are other EW users out there that would offer their opinion, but don't feel like getting insulted. And I feel bad for Jay for being the only one fighting the fight.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Vision @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> [t doesn't take a lot to figure out that PLAY is poorly written code. That _is_ a fact.



If that is a _fact_, please explain to me the several posts right before yours. Please explain to me the many times experienced working composers here have disagreed.

Maybe we disagree on the definition of "fact". From the dictionary: Fact= a thing that is indisputably the case.

People are disputing it here who have no affiliation with EW. So, _empirically_, it is NOT a fact, it is your opinion.

I do not care how you perceive me. I am very precise with the terms I use. When I believe that I know something to be true, I say "I know". When I believe something to be true but do not know it to be true, I say "I believe". When I am told by people who should know whether something is true or not but can neither confirm or dispute it personally, I say " I am told".

We would all benefit if everyone would impose that discipline on themselves. But hey, it's a forum, so anything goes, right?


----------



## mk282 (Aug 28, 2012)

Hans' comment is irrelevant to the whole discussion. Without proper A-B test nothing can be concluded. EWQLSO samples have supposedly been *completely remastered* for the PLAY edition. Of course it would sound different then, right? No shit, Sherlock! Effects notwithstanding, the same damn sample should be read out the same way NO MATTER IN WHICH PROGRAM YOU THROW IT. Otherwise if it sounds different, something's broken - be that in the settings of the sampler or the DAW, or purely in sample playback code! These are FACTS.

The whole quote is just ridiculous, just as the Cubase vs Logic claim. It's all zeroes and ones, with the same settings they will all sound the same. And this has been _empirically_ proven.


----------



## Vision (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> Vision @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > [t doesn't take a lot to figure out that PLAY is poorly written code. That _is_ a fact.
> ...



Wait.. So, basically it's my fault that PLAY isn't working up to it's expectation on my machine? I've been imagining this for the past few years? Everything else on my system is running with out a hitch. PLAY does not. That to me = poor software. Not that difficult to figure out. 

Sounds like you're going into semantics again. I'm not playing that game. My opinion is "fact" because it is simply happening. How about this.. It's my opinion, that it is a fact, that play is poorly written software on the Mac platform. I just gave you bone in my last post, that I think you missed. I said, that perhaps I, and some others have a I higher expectation for PLAY. 

Jay, I'm not just some guy saying this for the hell of it. Believe or not.. I'm actually trying to help. I don't know if you get that. Ok, Play can technically "work" on my mac. I've used it in various projects.. this still doesn't change the fact that it is poorly written code on Mac. And nowhere near where it should be.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

mk282 @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> Effects notwithstanding, the same damn sample should be read out the same way NO MATTER IN WHICH PROGRAM YOU THROW IT. Otherwise if it sounds different, something's broken - be that in the settings of the sampler or the DAW, or purely in sample playback code! These are FACTS.
> 
> .



Simply not true. The same samples played back on the Roland S50 sounded different than on the E4. Ask Eric Persing. Even software samplers have different filters, etc. so unless you examined the code of each and analyzed the zeros and ones you are talking out of your butt.


----------



## mk282 (Aug 28, 2012)

I'm talking out of my programming experience, thank you very much.

Roland has used companding mechanisms for samples, which is NOT used in software realm (fact). Don't use any filters in Kontakt, just drop a single sample, play it at its root, and it will SOUND THE SAME. Anywhere you put it. Of course, Play Pro is not out, so proper A/B can't be done, but I did this between Kontakt, MachFive 3, and Halion, and they all sounded THE SAME. Fact, proven empirically.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Vision @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > Vision @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> ...



Words matter. Calling them "semantics" to try to trivialize that is intellectually lazy.

I accept your statement "It's my opinion, that it is a fact that Play is poorly written software on the Mac platform" as factual and had you written that I would have said nothing.

As for your "expectations" you are an MD by trade, I believe? Do you think it likely that you should have higher expectations than those who compose for a living, aton of whom use Play daily on the Mac?

Play on the Mac with big libraries is NOT yet what I want it to be either. I have said so a number of times and I built a f$^&ing PC!

Is it to much to expect (speaking of expectations) that you simply could have said something like "I have been disappointed by Play's performance on the Mac and I sincerely hope that Play 4 will be an improvement"? 

Is that _really_ so unreasonable of me?


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

mk282 @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> I'm talking out of my programming experience, thank you very much.
> 
> Roland has used companding mechanisms for samples, which is NOT used in software realm (fact). Don't use any filters in Kontakt, just drop a single sample, play it at its root, and it will SOUND THE SAME. Anywhere you put it. Of course, Play Pro is not out, so proper A/B can't be done, but I did this between Kontakt, MachFive 3, and Halion, and they all sounded THE SAME. Fact, proven empirically.



They all sounded the same to YOU. THAT is a fact. They all sound the same is NOT a factual statement that is empirically proven so in a blind test.

I think you are wrong. I will, however ask Eric Persing, who has no dog in this hunt and knows more about software samplers than practically anyone on the planet. If he says you are right and I am wrong then I will say it here publicly. But if not, I will expect you to be a man and do the same.


----------



## mk282 (Aug 28, 2012)

What you think is entirely irrelevant. Null test is empirical and factual evidence of the claim that I stated (and it's not just a statement of my own).

I'm not going into resampling methods (which are various and of course each will sound different, but this is only happening when you're playing back the sample outside of its root pitch), I am talking about pure unadulterated sample playback, straight up. Kontakt, MachFive 3, Halion, hell even DirectWave, I played back the same sample and recorded it back to disk. Null-compared them all. Got back blank wavs. Which shows that they sound the same, and it removes any traces of subjectivity in the test. If your math says that 2-2=5, then you're just dense. My math says that 2-2 is 0. K? K.

I've read Eric's post (was it on GearSlutz?) which talks about S-50 and how it sounds different than other samplers. The answer is COMPANDING. Read about it, please, if you're not aware of this already. This is not the case with software samples, they do not use companding techniques.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

mk282 @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> What you think is entirely irrelevant. Null test is empirical and factual evidence of the claim that I stated (and it's not just a statement of my own).
> 
> I'm not going into resampling methods (which are various and of course each will sound different, but this is only happening when you're playing back the sample outside of its root pitch), I am talking about pure unadulterated sample playback, straight up. Kontakt, MachFive 3, Halion, hell even DirectWave, I played back the same sample and recorded it back to disk. Null-compared them all. Got back blank wavs. Which shows that they sound the same, and it removes any traces of subjectivity in the test. If your math says that 2-2=5, then you're just dense. My math says that 2-2 is 0. K? K.
> 
> I've read Eric's post (was it on GearSlutz?) which talks about S-50 and how it sounds different than other samplers. The answer is COMPANDING. Read about it, please, if you're not aware of this already. This is not the case with software samples, they do not use companding techniques.



From Eric:

Hi Jay,

He would be generally correct if all we ever used a sampler for is playing a single recording at the root pitch at maximum level. 

(although most are identical, there are audible differences between some samplers even at root pitch/Odb) 

However, once you play more than one note and change the pitch or level at all, they all handle those functions quite differently and are coded to do these tasks in many different ways. (different approaches to summing algorithms, sample rate interpolation algorithms, gain algorithms, etc, etc)

That's the technical explanation of why each sampler engine sounds different and why anyone with decent ears who has used different samplers knows this fact. 

-E


----------



## Scrianinoff (Aug 28, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ Tue 28 Aug said:


> mk282 @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > [...] I played back the same sample and recorded it back to disk. Null-compared them all. Got back blank wavs. Which shows that they sound the same, and it removes any traces of subjectivity in the test. [...]



_Blank_ you say? Not even dither noise? Or was it almost inaudibly silent?



EastWest Lurker @ Tue 28 Aug said:


> From Eric:
> [...]
> However, once you play more than one note and change the pitch or level at all, they all handle those functions quite differently and are coded to do these tasks in many different ways. (different approaches to *summing algorithms*, sample rate interpolation algorithms, *gain algorithms*, etc, etc)
> 
> ...



Unless the algorithms are really [email protected]$ked up, summing and gain artifacts are most definitely drowned out by the dithering or otherwise (re-)quantization noise, and therefore inaudible.

He's right about the sample rate interpolation algorithms though. As he should know, Roland was quite ahead in the 80s with their https://www.google.nl/search?q=differen ... ion+roland


----------



## sourcefor (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Ok take it easy boys!I personally Like Play and the way it sounds..yes it does eat up alot of CPU and could be more efficient..so lets go wait and see what they have in store..they are not out to hurt us I hope! I am waiting patiently and in the mean time use LA Scoring strings and Project SAM if need be! Peace!


----------



## Vision (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> Vision @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> ...




Intellectually lazy.. okay. Lil bit insulting.. I'm not trying to trivialize anything. But you know what.. It's nothing personal against you. I apologize if I insulted you. 

I'm not a Doctor, I live in MD. I've been doing music for a living for about 13 years. This is all I do for income. I received a scholarship to Berklee, and Majored in Music and Technology. I tested out of a few courses here and there.. you could say that I know my way around a sequencer or two. 

I don't claim to be an authority on anything. I'd like to think though that I'm qualified to make a comment about the tech that I work with on a daily basis. I rarely participate in threads like this.. and when I do, I try to give fair, and reasonable feedback. Then I read quote like this:

"Apple CEO Tim Cook stated recently, after a disappointing update of the MAC Pro at the developers conference, that Apple has not given up on it's professional users, and that new, more powerful MACs will be released in 2013. In the meantime the only improvements that can be made to the current architecture is to fill them with ram, and use SSD drives where possible."

I've been using and working with macs for 15 plus years.. This East West quote was pathetic, in my opinion. A blatant scapegoat tactic that needed to be called out. I've always been patient with EW. But sometimes people get tired of being fed excuses. 

Anyway I'm not going to stress about this. Good luck with Play 4, I really mean that.

peace


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Sorry for my confusion about the MD. 

Good luck with calling Apple out, and I really mean that


----------



## mk282 (Aug 28, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ 28.8.2012 said:


> From Eric:
> 
> Hi Jay,
> 
> ...



Awesome, thanks for getting Eric to confirm everything I've been saying (although he didn't go really "technical", if you won't mind me pointing that out).  Since the majority of PLAY libraries are using chromatic sampling (i.e. playing samples at its root without resampling), I am going to assume there's no resampling going on in them. Which will again, in turn, prove my point some time in the future, when we will be able to load our own samples in PLAY Pro. I expect the sample to null out of PLAY exactly as it did with 4 samplers I tested. If it doesn't, well then it's not reading out my samples correctly! This is equivalent to dyslexia when reading books!


BTW, there's just one way to sum 0 and 1 sequentially when multiple voices are played. Go ahead and try it. 


I study DSP in college. I know these things. So, excuse me, Jay, but I am definitely not talking out of by butt when I'm talking on this topic. OK?




Scrianinoff @ 28.8.2012 said:


> _Blank_ you say? Not even dither noise? Or was it almost inaudibly silent?



Yeah, not 100% blank, I had to zoom in to see the dither noise. But, as far as the discussion when the same sample sounds different when played in different software samplers and/or DAWs, at its root and without filters, it's basically QED my point.



Scrianinoff @ 28.8.2012 said:


> Unless the algorithms are really [email protected]$ked up, summing and gain artifacts are most definitely drowned out by the dithering or otherwise (re-)quantization noise, and therefore inaudible.



This is correct, Jay. And Eric for sure knows this 



Scrianinoff @ 28.8.2012 said:


> He's right about the sample rate interpolation algorithms though. As he should know, Roland was quite ahead in the 80s with their https://www.google.nl/search?q=differen ... ion+roland



Yes, correct.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

Eric did NOT agree with you however.There is simply not way not to reach that conclusion in his final sentence, "each sampler engine sounds different and why anyone with decent ears who has used different samplers knows this fact. "

And great that you "study DSP in college" but you are still not in the same league as Eric Persing anymore than I am in the same league as John Williams because I studied composition and orchestration in college.


----------



## Vision (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> Sorry for my confusion about the MD.
> 
> Good luck with calling Apple out, and I really mean that



Please don't twist this.. I'm calling EW out for using this quote as justification. I hope you're joking. 

Take it ez Jay...


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Vision @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > Sorry for my confusion about the MD.
> ...



I was joking.


----------



## mk282 (Aug 28, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ 28.8.2012 said:


> And great that you "study DSP in college" but you are still not in the same league as Eric Persing anymore than I am in the same league as John Williams because I studied composition and orchestration in college.



So what, the one with bigger dick (name) in the public wins? Nicely played, Jay, very nice. A brilliant way to devaluate the years I spent in college learning, trying out and listening these things. That's not the way you should conduct yourself.


I'm sure if I talked to Eric, we'd agree on the matter. But the point is, what he says, or I say, doesn't really matter. It's the facts that count. And null tests confirm the fact, _empirically_.


Bear in mind that he said "although most are identical", without stating which ones. How rude of him, no?

Any differences in pure sample playback at root and 0 dB are: messed up sample reading algorithm, pan law differences, "hidden enhancers" than can't be turned off (for example, Ensoniq Paris did things like this in a roundabout way, by having the markings on mixer faders different (not true real world values, but 3 dB hotter or so), which ended up in slightly hotter mixes which would push the comps and EQs more), etc.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

mk282 @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ 28.8.2012 said:
> 
> 
> > And great that you "study DSP in college" but you are still not in the same league as Eric Persing anymore than I am in the same league as John Williams because I studied composition and orchestration in college.
> ...



Yep, in the _real_ world, as opposed to forums like this, absolutely, who says it DOES matter a great deal.


----------



## mk282 (Aug 28, 2012)

I already have a job, it's scripting for Kontakt (and soon MachFive 3 too, when I get my grips on it). It gets me by very well, thank you. And I'm not even finished with college yet. So please, don't devaluate what I've achieved up until now, I wouldn't state something I know for a fact isn't true, and proven empirically by me personally


----------



## NYC Composer (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Just out of curiosity-has anyone gained any updated knowledge or experienced any personal growth by reading or participating in this thread? :wink: 

Unless one feels that "Play sucks/Play doesn't suck", "different sampler engines sound different/no they don't" and a few ad hominem attacks provide enlightenment, I sorta doubt it, and if anyone expects Jay to stop defending EW, it's obvious they haven't read the label on the box. It's not reasonable to expect him to be objective-hell, it isn't even reasonable for HIM to think he is (though he states he's semi-objective-I've given up arguing the point.)

I'm curious about what the proprietary Roland sampling engine, the flagship of my former rig and a hardware box, has to do comparitively with software on a Mac, but what do I know. Eric sure made my samples sing back in the day.

Hey, how 'bout that Dodger trade?


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

mk282 @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> I already have a job.



OK, I changed MY post because after I posted I notice you had changed YOURS, which may be confusing people 

Believe what you want believe. Eric has now confirmed that it is in fact possible for _whatever_ reasons, for someone with good ears to prefer the sound of the same samples in a library played back through one software sampler's engine to another.

Good enough for me. I have spent all the time debating with you that I think is merited, so good day to you.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



NYC Composer @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> Just out of curiosity-has anyone gained any updated knowledge or experienced any personal growth by reading or participating in this thread? :wink:
> 
> Unless one feels that "Play sucks/Play doesn't suck", "different sampler engines sound different/no they don't" and a few ad hominem attacks provide enlightenment, I sorta doubt it, and if anyone expects Jay to stop defending EW, it's obvious they haven't read the label on the box. It's not reasonable to expect him to be objective-hell, it isn't even reasonable for HIM to think he is (though he states he's semi-objective-I've given up arguing the point.)
> 
> ...



You're right Larry.


----------



## mk282 (Aug 28, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ 28.8.2012 said:


> possible for _whatever_ reasons



Very empirical and technical explanation. I am amazed. :D :roll:


I assure you, my ears are very much fine.


----------



## woodsdenis (Aug 28, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



NYC Composer @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> Just out of curiosity-has anyone gained any updated knowledge or experienced any personal growth by reading or participating in this thread? :wink:
> 
> Unless one feels that "Play sucks/Play doesn't suck", "different sampler engines sound different/no they don't" and a few ad hominem attacks provide enlightenment, I sorta doubt it, and if anyone expects Jay to stop defending EW, it's obvious they haven't read the label on the box. It's not reasonable to expect him to be objective-hell, it isn't even reasonable for HIM to think he is (though he states he's semi-objective-I've given up arguing the point.)
> 
> ...



Agreed

This has really got crazy.

All in the box old school samplers (Akai/Roland/Fairlight) did sound different. Many reasons . Converters/compression techniques/ crap coding/ aliasing filters the list goes on. If you want to use this reasoning all Play systems will sound different depending on the quality of the final DA. I am sure there is a marked difference between an Mbox and a Lynx converter stuck on the backend of your system.

The point is quite simple if you play back one sample at its root on Play and Kontact on the same system and then record internally, without leaving the digital domain, and they do not null, there is something amiss. Simple. You cannot do this at this time, so the outcome is pure conjecture.

The only real way to determine a preference in sound is to take a multisample progam that is identical and then play it using the same hardware on Play and Kontact. It should also be a blind test. Since this is never going to happen, or at least
can't happen now, this discussion is totally meaningless.

As a matter of interest what does Hans Zimmer use as his DAW sampler ? I am sure he doesn't use the rack of Rolands anymore for his custom stuff.


----------



## IFM (Aug 29, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> EW told me that at a certain point they had plans for their libraries that simply could not be accomplished with Kontakt and N.I. was not responsive to making the needed changes, as well as the financial aspects of the relationship. I was told for instance that it would have been impossible to do with hollywood Strings with Kontakt what has been done with Play.



That is likely a true statement but that was maybe 2-3 versions ago? I remember a time when Kontakt was hell...not so anymore.



> Also, some people, including Hans Zimmer thinks Play's engine sounds better than Kontakt.



I read that same comment on the Steinberg site. I like Zimmer but anytime I hear a comment like this it drives me nuts. So many times the 'sound' of a DAW has been argued when in the end the plugins make all the difference. (Oops missed quoting that part of the statement).

As for Play's sound? The closest you could compare is EWQLSO but I recall reading they went back to the original samples to improve the sound. You'll never really be able to get a true a/b test. 

All the best,
Chris


----------



## muziksculp (Aug 30, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

One day left in August ... Will EW-PLAY 4 materialize ? or will they delay it to Sep. ? :roll:


----------



## Dan Mott (Aug 30, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



muziksculp @ Fri Aug 31 said:


> One day left in August ... Will EW-PLAY 4 materialize ? or will they delay it to Sep. ? :roll:



Delay


----------



## paaltio (Aug 30, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ 2012-08-28 said:


> From Eric:
> 
> Hi Jay,
> 
> ...



Well, I'd love to hear Eric elaborate on what a summing algorithm is.


----------



## muziksculp (Aug 31, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Dan-Jay @ Thu Aug 30 said:


> muziksculp @ Fri Aug 31 said:
> 
> 
> > One day left in August ... Will EW-PLAY 4 materialize ? or will they delay it to Sep. ? :roll:
> ...



Guess we will have to wait for Sept. 30th 23:59:59 

EW-Delays are quite standard/frequent events. :mrgreen:


----------



## chimuelo (Aug 31, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

It's a tactic frequently used with all software developers.
It gives pause for people for are on the fence of thinking of VSL, Kontakt, etc.
My company Soniccore S|C that I look to for upgrades and new I/O options, developments with JUCE, Open Source, etc. are extremely lenghty, but always worth waiting for.
Having said that, they never use time frames though, they prefer the word " soon."
It's never when I want it, but I must say it's never a BETA with a price tag.


----------



## dpasdernick (Aug 31, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

OK, I read the whole thread and I think I understand what is going on...

1) There appears to be some issues with Play software

2) Play does feature a rather robust ADSR engine that allows you to manipulate samples, in ways that only an ADSR envelope can, but they still can't be played on a mac.

3) Doug has a Lamborghini but it can't drive up hills (OK I stole that from another thread)

4) If Play is first in the chain it doesn't say F*ck You" as loudly as when it's last in the chain.

5) There are some things that Kontakt can't do that Play does do (like break down)

6) Play is referred to as a sampler even though it can't sample (but the product name Simple-Tron was already taken)

7) A lot of people hate Play and prove it by buying several of the Play libraries (even after they have had issues with just one)

8) The graphic designer for Play ran out of ideas in 1990

PS I am a Play user and while it does ocassionally give me grief I do love it. Mostly because I'm having a steamy affair with the hottie on the cover of Voices of Passion. (take that Kontakt) but also because it does sound beautiful.


----------



## Peter Alexander (Aug 31, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



> 4) If Play is first in the chain it doesn't say F*ck You" as loudly as when it's last in the chain.



Not exactly. When using a Kontakt based program in a sequence, PLAY/VSL need to be first and Kontakt LAST. This has certainly been proven true for Logic.


----------



## TGV (Aug 31, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I thought I would never *EVER* participate in this thread, but this:


dpasdernick @ Sat Sep 01 said:


> 6) Play is referred to as a sampler even though it can't sample (but the product name Simple-Tron was already taken)
> 7) A lot of people hate Play and prove it by buying several of the Play libraries (even after they have had issues with just one)
> 8) The graphic designer for Play ran out of ideas in 1990


+1.73!


----------



## Chris Hein (Sep 1, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



muziksculp @ Fri Aug 31 said:


> One day left in August ... Will EW-PLAY 4 materialize ? or will they delay it to Sep. ? :roll:


The topic says: "this month" which is always true. 

Kontakt3 was delayed 18 month, but Kontakt 4 was on time again, just a few month later.

My experience is: The longer the delay, the better the update. 

Thats also true for the CHH update which is delayed 5 month now.

Chris Hein


----------



## LTSF (Sep 1, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



dpasdernick @ Fri Aug 31 said:


> 2) Play does feature a rather robust ADSR engine that allows you to manipulate samples, in ways that *only an ADSR envelope can*, but they still can't be played on a mac.


What does Kontakt use?


----------



## dpasdernick (Sep 1, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



LTSF @ Sat Sep 01 said:


> dpasdernick @ Fri Aug 31 said:
> 
> 
> > 2) Play does feature a rather robust ADSR engine that allows you to manipulate samples, in ways that *only an ADSR envelope can*, but they still can't be played on a mac.
> ...



It was kind of a joke. Kontakt has an amplitude envelope as well but also includes a bunch of other ways to manipulate a sample. I've always been confused as to how Play feels like they shoved a bunch of world class samples into an player that feels no more robust than my old Korg polySix used to be. (i.e. only the basic editing features)


----------



## Rctec (Sep 1, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

Just for the record, I've never said that "Play" sounds better than...whatever. We build our own samplers, because we couldn't stand the sound of all the commercial ones out there anymore. That was a few years back. I've never actually fired up "Play", even though Nick and Thomas where "in-house" composers for a while... so I don't know how it sounds. But unless you do your own samples and then figure out how they sound in the machine, you'll never really know. The 'null test' works probably perfectly well on Kontakt, but - and I really like NI's innovative ideas - to me it still sounds grainy and thin. But I know people who get a great sound out of it. They just know how to manipulate the limitations in an artistic way, usually by having great ears to begin with and are good recording engineers.
Best,
H


----------



## Diffusor (Sep 1, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Rctec @ Sat Sep 01 said:


> Just for the record, I've never said that "Play" sounds better than...whatever. We build our own samplers, because we couldn't stand the sound of all the commercial ones out there anymore. That was a few years back. I've never actually fired up "Play", even though Nick and Thomas where "in-house" composers for a while... so I don't know how it sounds. But unless you do your own samples and then figure out how they sound in the machine, you'll never really know. The 'null test' works probably perfectly well on Kontakt, but - and I really like NI's innovative ideas - to me it still sounds grainy and thin. But I know people who get a great sound out of it. They just know how to manipulate the limitations in an artistic way, usually by having great ears to begin with and are good recording engineers.
> Best,
> H



I've put my own recorded samples into Kontakt and they sound the exact same there as they do just played by themselves.


----------



## givemenoughrope (Sep 1, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*

I noticed a huge difference in EXS over Kontakt. I forget what library, an ambient sound design one, but the samples were much fatter, louder. It made me want to set up a Logic slave...almost. 

Sometimes I think I notice a difference just importing and manipulating audio into Cubase from unlocked Kontakt libraries. 

Play SO is way louder and fatter but I'd prefer to add SIP and create my own patches...just for the solo strings really.


----------



## noiseboyuk (Sep 2, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Rctec @ Sun Sep 02 said:


> Just for the record, I've never said that "Play" sounds better than...whatever. We build our own samplers, because we couldn't stand the sound of all the commercial ones out there anymore. That was a few years back. I've never actually fired up "Play", even though Nick and Thomas where "in-house" composers for a while... so I don't know how it sounds. But unless you do your own samples and then figure out how they sound in the machine, you'll never really know. The 'null test' works probably perfectly well on Kontakt, but - and I really like NI's innovative ideas - to me it still sounds grainy and thin. But I know people who get a great sound out of it. They just know how to manipulate the limitations in an artistic way, usually by having great ears to begin with and are good recording engineers.
> Best,
> H



I suspect you have far better things to do with your time, Hans, but I'd be interested to hear the results of you doing a couple of new blind tests with some of your own samples in Kontakt 5 and your own samplers. There was a thread recently where someone was having issues with Kontakt sounding worse on their own samples but (I seem to remember) that was resolved as a setting was wrong somewhere.... link, anyone?


----------



## Simon Ravn (Sep 2, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:


> Also, some people, including Hans Zimmer thinks Play's engine sounds better than Kontakt. QL Spaces is based on that engine and many people here rave about its sound.
> 
> You will of our dismiss all that because it is who you are. Fine, goodbye and good luck.



So, this Zimmer statement was false - so was the "Andrew K." and all other developers use PC's for development. I wonder how you make these things up but it's pretty clear that you do everything, even tell wrong stories, to get your point across. So I guess it's fair to say by now that we can't really trust anything you say, being quoted from a third party/person...

What I find most disturbing though is that you were using a false statement from a big profile Hollywood composer like Hans Zimmer to get weight behind your statement about how wonderful PLAY is, only to find out that you were telling a lie... :shock:


----------



## Simon Ravn (Sep 2, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Rctec @ Sun Sep 02 said:


> Just for the record, I've never said that "Play" sounds better than...whatever. We build our own samplers, because we couldn't stand the sound of all the commercial ones out there anymore. That was a few years back. I've never actually fired up "Play", even though Nick and Thomas where "in-house" composers for a while... so I don't know how it sounds. But unless you do your own samples and then figure out how they sound in the machine, you'll never really know. The 'null test' works probably perfectly well on Kontakt, but - and I really like NI's innovative ideas - to me it still sounds grainy and thin. But I know people who get a great sound out of it. They just know how to manipulate the limitations in an artistic way, usually by having great ears to begin with and are good recording engineers.
> Best,
> H



Hans, it's great that your are participating on this forum, I think everybody appreciate that. So, are you saying that you had custom samplers built for you with a more "analogue" sound to them? I guess that means that some modeled filter was applied at the output - deliberately - you were not just trying to get it to sound "as it is", more like "as you think it should"...? Whereas Kontakt and any other sampler probably have a more "0=0", "1=1" approach.


----------



## jamwerks (Sep 2, 2012)

There are a several participants here (CS, OT, CH, just to name a few) who develop products for the Kontakt platform.

Having access to both the original audio files, and the Kontakt versions, seems it would be easy enough for them to do some quick tests.

There may be some sampler feature-enhancements (pitch shifting, time stretching, cross-fading, multi-mic, etc) that bring on slight degradation (phasing ?).

I imagine that, given the economic force that Kontakt represent for NI, that quality tests are constantly performed by them.


----------



## germancomponist (Sep 2, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Rctec @ Sun Sep 02 said:


> ... to me it still sounds grainy and thin. But I know people who get a great sound out of it. They just know how to manipulate the limitations in an artistic way, usually by having great ears to begin with and are good recording engineers.
> Best,
> H


----------



## jamwerks (Sep 2, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Rctec @ Sun Sep 02 said:


> The 'null test' works probably perfectly well on Kontakt, but - and I really like NI's innovative ideas - to me it still sounds grainy and thin.



Maybe I'm not understanding what is meant by a null test "working", but isn't there some kind of contradiction of terms here? If it null's, can it still sound "grainy(er) and thin(ner) than the original ?


----------



## quantum7 (Sep 2, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Simon Ravn @ Sun Sep 02 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > Also, some people, including Hans Zimmer thinks Play's engine sounds better than Kontakt. QL Spaces is based on that engine and many people here rave about its sound.
> ...



DOH!!!!!! ....and Eastwest keeps wondering why people are constantly upset with them. :roll:


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## germancomponist (Sep 2, 2012)

To give you all an idea how different audio units can sond, watch this video:



What is your sampler doing when sample rate conversion is needed to be done in your sampler?


----------



## mk282 (Sep 2, 2012)

...and that is exactly what I stated - there are different resampling algorithms and they will sound differently for different ranges of repitching/SRC.


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## germancomponist (Sep 2, 2012)

Yes.


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## EastWest Lurker (Sep 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



Rctec @ Sat Sep 01 said:


> Just for the record, I've never said that "Play" sounds better than...whatever. We build our own samplers, because we couldn't stand the sound of all the commercial ones out there anymore. That was a few years back. I've never actually fired up "Play", even though Nick and Thomas where "in-house" composers for a while... so I don't know how it sounds. But unless you do your own samples and then figure out how they sound in the machine, you'll never really know. The 'null test' works probably perfectly well on Kontakt, but - and I really like NI's innovative ideas - to me it still sounds grainy and thin. But I know people who get a great sound out of it. They just know how to manipulate the limitations in an artistic way, usually by having great ears to begin with and are good recording engineers.
> Best,
> H



Hans, respectfully, the morning I came to RC you did say that to me when I asked you. I am not accusing you of lying, only forgetting and I am sure you honestly believe I am mistaken. Perhaps we merely misunderstood each other.

Guys, I know Hans monitors this forum and I would not write that he said it to me if did not believe he did. I am not a liar and if I was a liar, I would not be so stupid to publicly write a lie that could be so easily exposed as a lie.


----------



## José Herring (Sep 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



jamwerks @ Sun Sep 02 said:


> Rctec @ Sun Sep 02 said:
> 
> 
> > The 'null test' works probably perfectly well on Kontakt, but - and I really like NI's innovative ideas - to me it still sounds grainy and thin.
> ...



I say yes. And, I don't know enough about "null" test to tell you why. but, I do know that over the years people have pointed out to me two files that "null" and yet they sounded different to me.

I'm often shocked, that people can't hear the difference between pieces of software. I wouldn't describe it the same way Hans does, but to me files played back in Kontakt sound "smaller" than when the exact same file is played back in my DAW. I noticed this right away upon my first sampling project some years ago.

I'd be interested to know how samplers sound different. I do remember a while back when I was running gigastudio that giga sounded better than Kontakt to my ears. Using the same exact patches, they noticeably sounded better in gigastudio. I even turned off all fx and features and just played the raw samples and giga sounded better. I ended up sticky with Kontakt because the writing was on the wall for giga at the time and Kontakt looked like the future.

So there's something missing in the "null" test that doesn't account for all variables. But, I haven't bothered to figure out what it is. I did do some basic research though into the construction of computers and found some pretty alarming things. Apparently those binary bits are not as absolute as we all think. Just think if it were then our computers would never make a calculating mistake. And, we all know that isn't true. :lol:


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## germancomponist (Sep 3, 2012)

Jose, just compare the audio quality between that Apple Quick time player vs the Windows media player.... . 

We have had some threads about this theme and the most people seems to not hear the different... . There is a good thread here on VI-Control where Eric P. told many interesting things too. I know that Eric has very very good ears!


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## José Herring (Sep 3, 2012)

Yes, I do remember that thread quite well. It was a shock to me. I just always assumed that people could here a difference between DAWS. I always noticed that Cubase to me sounded waayyyy better than DP when I switched. I also remember talking with a guy at NAMM that does tutorials for all major DAW software and he said to me that in his research that Cubase sounded better than all other DAWs. Take it for what you will. Just an opinion maybe, but in all honesty, in a field based on qualitative opinion like music then, what else do we have. Music certainly goes beyond anything that science can explain empirically. 

So the question remains, if Hans took the time and money to have his guys build him a unique sampler then it stands to reason that there was a reason for that. And, needs definite consideration from us as to why he just didn't settle for using kontakt, like everybody else. I always think that if we all use the same thing then we all sound the same and that sound become so common place that we lose all uniqueness. 

Maybe a small difference but small differences add up to big differences. I use to know a flute teacher that use to be big on the the smallest details. He would always say that each detail on its own is just a drop in the bucket, but after a while the drops add up. I always try to keep that in mind with everything I do.


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## NYC Composer (Sep 3, 2012)

I remember getting the Roland S-770 sampler and hearing it in the store against Akais and Emus, it seemed to have a wider, more spacious sound. I subsequently bought numerous S-760's and 700s, and it was widely thought that the Roland sound was "better". It makes more sense to me that hardware would sound better than other hardware than that software on the same computer platform would sound better or worse. It goes back to the Pro Tools/Logic/Cubase argument-personally, I couldn't ever tell you what sequencer a piece of audio was done on. I'd be pretty curious about a software sampler blind test.


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## jamwerks (Sep 3, 2012)

If HZ can have a sampler made for him (1 guy), I wonder why an awesome version of Play (30,000 users) can't be delivered?


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## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

blakerobinson did a perfectly scientific null test and Jose didn't take it. Speaks volumes about his perspective on the topic, I think.


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## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

josejherring @ 3.9.2012 said:


> Just think if it were then our computers would never make a calculating mistake. And, we all know that isn't true. :lol:



What a stupid statement. CPUs do make mistakes, yes, but they have mechanisms for error correction as well. Did your OS calculator ever throw out a wrong result? No, it did not. Why? Because CPU calculated it correctly! Were there possible transistor branches that miscalculated that result? Possibly - but the mechanisms within the CPU corrected it. It is exactly the same with any other mathematical operation that's done within the computer, be that the calculator, or outputting audio samples.

Don't be ridiculous.


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## germancomponist (Sep 3, 2012)

The most important thing I have found out is that many people are listening to their monitors in not well treated rooms. So, they are not able to hear any differents. A wide field, of course! But when you ask them about this...... , you know the answers...!


----------



## sin(x) (Sep 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



josejherring @ 2012-09-03 said:


> jamwerks @ Sun Sep 02 said:
> 
> 
> > Maybe I'm not understanding what is meant by a null test "working", but isn't there some kind of contradiction of terms here? If it null's, can it still sound "grainy(er) and thin(ner) than the original ?
> ...



Part of the confusion might stem from the fact that people who use that term rarely specify what _exactly_ they mean when they say that two signals “null”. A proper null test in the digital realm is done by sample-accurately lining up two signals, inverting one of them, mixing (adding) them at unity gain, _slapping a bitscope on the output_ and observing if it indeed shows a “null” (i.e. a trail of zeroes). If that's the case, I can absolutely positively guarantee you that any difference anyone might perceive is the product of either non-reproducible random factors in playback or a placebo effect, and won't survive a double-blind AB test. However, if there's *anything* left at the output after mixing the signals, even if it's far below the threshold of audibility (such as dither noise), it's at least theoretically possible that this would impart a discernible difference in the source signals.


----------



## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

Psychology plays a vast role in how we percieve sound, too. Not just "well treated rooms".


----------



## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



josejherring @ 3.9.2012 said:


> I say yes. And, I don't know enough about "null" test to tell you why.



If you don't know enough about it, then don't talk about it and diminish its scientific and empirical value.


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## germancomponist (Sep 3, 2012)

mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:


> Psychology plays a vast role in how we percieve sound, too. Not just "well treated rooms".



Yeah, your answer is exactly one of the answers I was talking about.... .


----------



## José Herring (Sep 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:


> josejherring @ 3.9.2012 said:
> 
> 
> > I say yes. And, I don't know enough about "null" test to tell you why.
> ...



I'll trust my ears when it come to music rather than numbers on a piece of paper. Thanks for the advice though. :roll:


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## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

germancomponist @ 3.9.2012 said:


> mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:
> 
> 
> > Psychology plays a vast role in how we percieve sound, too. Not just "well treated rooms".
> ...



The thing is, if your psyche screws you up you start hearing stuff that's not there (like in two virtually identical files that null beyond the threshold of hearing), then you've got issues, my friend.


----------



## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

*Re: Play 4 this month*



josejherring @ 3.9.2012 said:


> mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:
> 
> 
> > josejherring @ 3.9.2012 said:
> ...



Then go and take blakerobinson's null test. Come back when you hear no difference (because you won't, and if you say you do, I won't believe you one bit because it's not possible).


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## germancomponist (Sep 3, 2012)

mk282, may I ask you: In what room are you listening?


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## José Herring (Sep 3, 2012)

Who's Blake Robinson? Where is the test?


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## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

germancomponist @ 3.9.2012 said:


> mk282, may I ask you: In what room are you listening?



Reference headphones beat any room when objectivity is concerned, my friend. And you don't really need ears for a null test, for crying out loud!  Human brain is an idiot and each brain does things differently, when there's only one objective truth when summing zeroes and ones is concerned


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## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

josejherring @ 3.9.2012 said:


> Who's Blake Robinson?



Have you heard of Spitfire? :D


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## José Herring (Sep 3, 2012)

mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:


> germancomponist @ 3.9.2012 said:
> 
> 
> > mk282, may I ask you: In what room are you listening?
> ...



Yeah, but how many people experience music with reference headphones? C'mon man!

Reminds of the "scientists" who use to say that the perfect listening environment was the anechoic chamber.


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## José Herring (Sep 3, 2012)

mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:


> josejherring @ 3.9.2012 said:
> 
> 
> > Who's Blake Robinson?
> ...



Still doesn't point me to a test.


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## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

For objective testing, you need controlled environment. But since we're in the box and dealing with 0 and 1, you don't even need that. It is very easy to do a null test, as sin(x) noted above. The room or listening equipment doesn't matter at all. It's just like this:

2 - 2 = 0.


Simple as that.


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## jamwerks (Sep 3, 2012)

Jose, I have no doubt that DAW's sound a tad different, as do samplers to some extent, but if two files null with a bitscope, any difference you hear are undoubtedly in your head !


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## germancomponist (Sep 3, 2012)

It always seems to be to come to the same results, when it comes to a discussion about this theme. 

Me, ok, I am a ghost.)))))

But, mk282, Erik P. is not a ghost, and HZ is also not a ghost? Why are you not ready to trust them when they talk about their experience?


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## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

I trust MY ears and my null-test results. 


I know about companding (the reason why Roland's S-series samplers sound "better") and resampling algorithms, yes, they can change the sound - and I agree with Eric Persing with that. However, when you sum things digitally, there's really nothing more you can do than just go ahead and sum 0s and 1s, and there's only one way to do that, no matter what CPU you're using! Digital to analog conversion is also a factor in the sound that's output, but since we're in the box, that doesn't matter the least bit.

As I said before in this thread, if Eric and I had a nice cup of tea (I don't drink coffee) and talk about this subject, we'd very much agree on everything that I've stated. 


Now about Hans' quote that Kontakt sounds grainy and thin... sorry, but I just cannot digest that, not after my tests with Kontakt, MachFive 3, Halion and DirectWave. Hans, you're great and all that, but I just cannot confirm what you said there (subjectively or objectively), and I'll attribute that to some sort of psychoacoustic pheonomenon (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but just your personal, subjective (as in "not objective") perspective).


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## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

josejherring @ 3.9.2012 said:


> mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:
> 
> 
> > josejherring @ 3.9.2012 said:
> ...




http://syntheticorchestra.com/blind/


It was a blind test, not a null test (Blake's doing a null test which will be appended later to the same link). Everything is said on the page. Jose never replied back. So, this is your chance to prove you can hear a difference and pick out which is Kontakt and which is not. Jay answered back saying that HZ said play is better... oh wait


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## NYC Composer (Sep 3, 2012)

mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:


> josejherring @ 3.9.2012 said:
> 
> 
> > Just think if it were then our computers would never make a calculating mistake. And, we all know that isn't true. :lol:
> ...



There's nothing like calling someone's opinion "stupid" or "ridiculous" to open their mind to your point of view.

I swear, there should be a professional musician's class called "comportment."


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## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

It's not a point of view, it's a fact about how CPUs operate what I laid out there. Go check with Intel and AMD and others.


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## NYC Composer (Sep 3, 2012)

It's also a fact that the way things are said is often as important as the content in imparting 'facts'. That's why there are successful and less successful teachers, and successful and less successful human beings. Maybe you could bring the vehemence and the vitriol down a notch? Thank you.


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## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

Sorry, but the statement that "Apparently those binary bits are not as absolute as we all think" is definitely a ridiculous one from whatever point of view you look at it, without any vehemence and vitriol involved at all.


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## NYC Composer (Sep 3, 2012)

mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:


> Sorry, but the statement that "Apparently those binary bits are not as absolute as we all think" is definitely a ridiculous one from whatever point of view you look at it, without any vehemence and vitriol involved at all.



It would have been quite easy to make your point without the minimizing adjectives. Here are a few alternatives:

1. That's factually incorrect.
2. I disagree, and here's why:
3. The science doesn't support what you're saying

Words like "stupid" and "ridiculous" are charged. Do you really not understand this, or is it that you just don't care how you present yourself or speak to people?


----------



## José Herring (Sep 3, 2012)

mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:


> Sorry, but the statement that "Apparently those binary bits are not as absolute as we all think" is definitely a ridiculous one from whatever point of view you look at it, without any vehemence and vitriol involved at all.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_scaling

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the computer has to interpret the binary point and that in that interpretation, an approximation is taken. Thus my points. But like I said, I'm only just beginning to research it all.

But, I do know to think that its as simple as 2 - 2 = 0 is just way too simplistic of an interpretation of what goes on in a computer. After all it's not just a fancy calculator.


----------



## mk282 (Sep 3, 2012)

I'm waiting for you to take the test, Jose. Anyone is welcome to take the test, too. After a pool of answers has been posted by the lot, I'll reveal the password. Your reluctance to take the test can only be percieved as having fear from not supporting your claim that you can hear a difference between straight playback from the DAW and playback from within Kontakt.


And just to let you know, binary scaling has absolutely nothing to do when you're comparing DAWs because a great majority of them uses native 32- or 64-bit FLOATING POINT engines. Only SawStudio has integer engine, to my knowledge.


----------



## radec (Sep 3, 2012)

josejherring @ Mon Sep 03 said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the computer has to interpret the binary point. Thus my points. But like I said, I'm only just beginning to research it all.


jose my man, id say best not to jump into the pool if ya cant swim and have no water wings. some of the things you said are so wrong they ache my brain. computers just dont go screwy like you seem to think - they go screwy when you
a) give them screwy data (ie binary scaling - lossy compression of a big number into a little one)
b) transfer data through a noisy or error prone medium and dont check for errors (internet, wireless networks, faulty hard drive)
c) they're physically broke. 

if data was as ambiguous and fickle as youre trying to make out to prop up your case then your comp wouldnt boot up half the time. zip files wouldnt unzip and those project files you save in your daw would fail to open in the future.



mk282 said:


> I'm waiting for you to take the test, Jose. Anyone is welcome to take the test, too.


i had a go but ill be danged if i can pick a difference. somethin about the second, fourth and fifth but thats a wild stab in the dark. ill take another listen in the morning with fresh ears. i second your motion though. i hear so many times _i trust my ears and i can pick x from y_ and then no follow thru to back it up when asked to do so. trust your ears boys but not when they disagree with your eyes and your brain.


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## José Herring (Sep 4, 2012)

mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:


> I'm waiting for you to take the test, Jose. Anyone is welcome to take the test, too. After a pool of answers has been posted by the lot, I'll reveal the password.



Sorry missed it. 

I don't know why you're trying to be such a jackass about the whole thing.

I'm not sure what the test is to tell you the truth. I just listen to the fist file and only the first two clips. Here's my impression:

Firstly the file sounds like a giant accordion that it would be impossible to do any kind of qualitative judgement.

But...... The first clip of the first file is way fatter and has way more highs then the second clip of the same material. The second clip sounds duller, less highs, and smaller.

I went ahead a listen to the third time it played and that one sound way more pinched. Though the highs and lows are all present the sound sounds compressed almost as if it's an AC3 file.

Then the more I listened to harder it became to tell them apart.

I'm tired though and really have so little interest in these kinds of test. I'm more of a subjective composer and my system may not be the same as others so I just stick to what I know on my system.

all my best,

Jose


----------



## noiseboyuk (Sep 4, 2012)

Well, this thread has gone on an exciting journey, hasn't it?

Hans is Hans and there's no arguing with The Legend, but for me any time the conversation revolves around null tests and whether or not anyone alive could pass a double blind test... we're in the extreme realm of perception. To everyone except Hans - think about your work, your composition, your orchestration, your choices of instrumentation, microphones, effects, libraries and / or players and your mix. Whatever this issue is, revolving around a null test (be that playback in Kontakt, 24 bit files etc), will be less important that at least 357 other building blocks in your way. Put this issue to the bottom of your pile of woes and choose something near the top instead - it'll be far more productive.

So - how about that non-appearance of Play 4, eh?


----------



## paaltio (Sep 4, 2012)

josejherring @ 2012-09-04 said:


> But, I do know to think that its as simple as 2 - 2 = 0 is just way too simplistic of an interpretation of what goes on in a computer. After all it's not just a fancy calculator.



Actually, a fancy calculator is exactly what it is.


----------



## mk282 (Sep 4, 2012)

josejherring @ 4.9.2012 said:


> mk282 @ Mon Sep 03 said:
> 
> 
> > I'm waiting for you to take the test, Jose. Anyone is welcome to take the test, too. After a pool of answers has been posted by the lot, I'll reveal the password.
> ...




The point is to listen to the first file, all nine clips, and state in order of listening: ProTools or Kontakt, which clip is played by what. That is, if you can hear any difference within the SAME wav file (you're not supposed to compare but_which_ones.wav and but_which_ones_sterile.wav!)




josejherring @ 4.9.2012 said:


> But...... The first clip of the first file is way fatter and has way more highs then the second clip of the same material. The second clip sounds duller, less highs, and smaller.



Interesting. Notice that volume and pan are randomized, so as to see if volume and pan can be placebo for "sound quality". It seems that it can. Human ear will always percieve louder as "better", which is not an objective judgment 



josejherring @ 4.9.2012 said:


> I went ahead a listen to the third time it played and that one sound way more pinched. Though the highs and lows are all present the sound sounds compressed almost as if it's an AC3 file.



There's no compression used anywhere.



josejherring @ 4.9.2012 said:


> Then the more I listened to harder it became to tell them apart.



Which is the point of the test - you cannot tell them apart. 



josejherring @ 4.9.2012 said:


> I'm tired though and really have so little interest in these kinds of test. I'm more of a subjective composer and my system may not be the same as others so I just stick to what I know on my system.



Then don't claim you can hear a difference when quite obviously you cannot, otherwise you would clearly write this (for example):

1 - PT
2 - K
3 - K
4 - PT
5 - PT
etc.

If you're so confident and reassured in your supposed "ability" to consistently pick out when a sample is played through Kontakt, and when it isn't. But seems like you cannot do that consistently, which was the point I tried to bring all along.


Try listening to "but_which_ones_sterile.wav", this one does not have volume and pan randomization, and it should be "easier" for you to pick out which of the nine playouts of the same clip is done by PT, and which by Kontakt.


----------



## germancomponist (Sep 4, 2012)

Has anyone watched the video I posted?

There can be differents only because Sample Rate Conversion. So, when you work in 44,1 kHz and have loaded samples in Kontakt what are recorded in 48 kHz....... .

My tip: Watch that video and listen!


----------



## mk282 (Sep 4, 2012)

That video doesn't reveal anything, all 3 examples sound the same, Youtube's compression ate all the differences. Now, if it were uncompressed audio in video, we might talk then. Youtube's "HD" is far from "uncompressed". 


And we already agreed on several occasions before in this same thread that different SRC algorithms exist and they can result in a slightly (not vastly!) different sound.


----------



## José Herring (Sep 4, 2012)

I did hear a difference. 1 sounds fatter and fuller than 2 and 3. Now if the files weren't exactly the same and you pumped up the volume on some, then that would make it hardly a scientific test.

And 3 to my ears really does sound like its being run through something. If it's coming from Kontakt then that doesn't say much about Kontakt, because 3 sounds like crap.

But, you're being such a dick that I really have to be done with this.


----------



## mk282 (Sep 4, 2012)

Listen to the sterile test, Jose. That one doesn't have randomizations that are obviously impacting the way you hear things. And you will be surprised by the results (just to let you in on a hint, 3 does not come from Kontakt ). 


The whole point Blake did this test is to test you if you can *consistently *pick out when something is played through Kontakt, and when it is not. Seems like you cannot, which is exactly the point Blake was trying to get across. And it seems like he succeeded.


----------



## José Herring (Sep 4, 2012)

I'll do it when I'm not tired.

But, it will be easier to demonstrate with something recorded. Which I will do over the next few days. The problem from ripping from a CD is that the audio is so compromised just from being a CD.


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## mk282 (Sep 4, 2012)

The audio example in that test is Danny Elfman's soundtrack from Hellboy 2. Ripped to 44.1, 16-bit WAV. CD quality.


I will not comment your last sentence because... I better not say it so as to not come off as being too "vitriolic". I would urge you to learn about DA conversion and how it can reconstruct the original analog signal perfectly.


----------



## germancomponist (Sep 4, 2012)

mk282 @ Tue Sep 04 said:


> That video doesn't reveal anything, all 3 examples sound the same,



If you don`t hear a different, than it makes no sence for me to talk with you about that theme.... .


----------



## mk282 (Sep 4, 2012)

I say give me that video with uncompressed audio and we'll talk. Compression artifacts are all over it.


----------



## jamwerks (Sep 4, 2012)

Where did that video come from? Seems a bit like a promotion for the system that he always chooses, a bit suspicious...


----------



## germancomponist (Sep 4, 2012)

jamwerks @ Tue Sep 04 said:


> Where did that video come from? Seems a bit like a promotion for the system that he always chooses, a bit suspicious...



Ask Bob Katz about this tool! 

For more best information about this theme you can also have a look at this forum: http://www.digido.com/about-us/staff-a-studios.html


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## devastat (Sep 4, 2012)

I can hear differences on conversions on that video (on my headphones) and Saracon stands out from Wavelab and Cubase.


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## Tanuj Tiku (Sep 4, 2012)

It is worth mentioning that where, how and on what kind of a playback system you listen to these sounds plays a very important role. 

We are talking about critical listening and you will need to have the following to understand the differences:

1. Good pair of ears with some critical listening
2. A good quality playback system (Sound card with decent AD/DA and good monitors)
3. A good room in which you will hear this. 

In theory, such differences should be audible on high quality headphones.

Please note that I am not saying that your playback system be of the highest quality, just that they be of decent quality (pro level).

But definitely, you need to be in a reasonably balanced room.

I will try and do a test myself in Kontakt once I get to a good studio later this week.


Best,


Tanuj.


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## organix (Sep 4, 2012)

germancomponist @ 4th September said:


> My tip: Watch that video and listen!



I didn't hear any differences, but maybe my monitoring system isn't good enough for such comparisons. Youtube btw, isn't the best platform for such experiments because of its recompression of audio and video material.
Maybe I need ears of a dog for hearing.  

But I believe, that different conversion algorithms brings different results. But I don't think that these smallest differences influences the overall sound.

There are dozens of things are more important to take care. 

Markus


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## germancomponist (Sep 4, 2012)

organix @ Tue Sep 04 said:


> germancomponist @ 4th September said:
> 
> 
> > My tip: Watch that video and listen!
> ...


You do not need ears of a dog! If you are not able to hear the difference, than it seems that there is no need for you to discuss about such things in general. Do you know only something about the person who did this video? If the audio quality on youtube would not translate this differences, you can be sure, that the video never had been posted there on youtube!


> But I believe, that different conversion algorithms brings different results. But I don't think that these smallest differences influences the overall sound.


Our discussion has nothing to do with what someone believes or not believes..... .


> There are dozens of things are more important to take care.
> 
> Markus


Oh, tell me!


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## rocking.xmas.man (Sep 4, 2012)

oh to me it seems like this discussion is completely based on things some guys believe in and some guys do not.


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