Curiouser and Curiouser!

Love Spectrasonics

I'd written to the Spectrasonics yahoo a little over a week ago about a problem I was having with automation of Stylus RMX in Logic. It turned out to be related to an underlying problem with Logic that Spectrasonics were aware of and Apple had fixed in Logic 9.

Yesterday Spectrasonics released the first 64-bit Mac compatible version of Stylus RMX along with a bunch of fixes including the fix for Logic automation. As a free update.

Gotta say that I really love the way Spectrasonics work. They make great products (Omnisphere and Stylus RMX are my go-to tools) and they keep them updated, and fix things.

This is my major complaint with so many companies. It's not enough to keep releasing new stuff you gotta go back fix the problems too!

Kudos to Spectrasonics for their attitude.

On file sharing

Opinions in the music industry appear to be divided over the draconian new rules regarding file sharing that our dimwit, Stalinist, labour government want to hang us with. I just read this piece in the Guardian online and thought a quote by, I think, Dave Gilmour is interesting:

"If an artist wants to give away their music, that's up to them. It shouldn't be up to pirates," he says. "A download costs 79p. Could you name me something that you could buy that would last you forever and give you pleasure for 79p? This is not a lot for people to ask for."

I totally agree but, at the same time, I think the law and potential redress should acknowledge that we are talking about things worth £0.79

Reaktor 5 problematic with Snow Leopard

Today I updated my main music making Mac to OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard. I'd been intending to wait for 10.6.1 but I got seduced and.. well I'm weak.

So far SL has been good and I've had no real problems. Logic 9.0 is running fine, most of my instruments seem okay however notable during the forced rescan were two auvaltool crashes on Reaktor 5 and Reaktor 5 FX.

Here's a summary of the damage:

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000008
Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Thread 0 Crashed:  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   Reaktor5.MusicDevice.component  0x119a8b17 NIAudioUnitMusicEffectEntry + 247
1   ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore  0x90b67cb6 CallComponentDispatch + 29
2   ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore  0x90b67c97 CallComponentOpen + 43
3   ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore  0x90b65f80 OpenAComponent + 433
4   ...apple.audio.units.AudioUnit  0x90347494 AudioComponentInstanceNew + 51
5   auvaltool                       0x00012b9e 0x1000 + 72606
6   auvaltool                       0x0001097b 0x1000 + 63867
7   auvaltool                       0x0001143f 0x1000 + 66623
8   auvaltool                       0x00006ad0 0x1000 + 23248
9   auvaltool                       0x00006ef9 0x1000 + 24313
10  auvaltool                       0x0000f2dd 0x1000 + 58077
11  auvaltool                       0x00002df4 0x1000 + 7668
12  auvaltool                       0x0000351b 0x1000 + 9499
13  auvaltool                       0x00002139 0x1000 + 4409

I have a ticket filed with NI support and it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to respond. I've also opened up a thread on the Reaktor technical issues forum. Please post if you have anything to add.