Poly-Ana: Coming soon from Admiral Quality.

531 posts · Mon Mar 20, 2017 7:54 pm

I suspect those last few posts above won't be shown and linked to on the company Facebook page :hihi:

773 posts · Mon Mar 20, 2017 9:43 pm

So what makes Poly-Ana different from other synths?

Overall, I'm not a big synths person. I really don't do much with them besides use the presets. I like the pads mostly. So I decided to play around with the demo, and then go through all my synths - it turns out I have more than I thought. Nothing major, just things like the Air synths, Synthmaster 2, the NI Synths, Synth Legends from UVI, and a bunch of free ones mostly from CM. There are probably a few more that I haven't realized I have. Are there some in the SoniVox bundle? Oh, and I have Reason.

I tried making sounds from scratch, but to me they are just noise. Now adjusting a preset? Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. I really have no idea what I am doing, just turning knobs and hitting buttons I can barely read. Unlike Wag, I don't mind the busy, but like Wag, I find the writing on some of it is very small. I had to get up close and personal with my 27" HD screen to figure out what was written on the "Source" button. Kind of an important thing.

And then there is the part of me that says "Deal! Got to buy!" Sigh. I need to quit listening to that part. It gets me in trouble.... Well, 10 more days to think about it.

1039 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:48 am

Ok, I took a chance and bought it. Sounds nice, I'll be happy that this was $45... when I can get it to unlock!

I'm on Win10 64bit, have the plugin in my plugins folder (it's detected and loads as 'Demo' by all my hosts), but following the instructions and placing the skins folder and key file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Admiral Quality\Poly-Ana it is like it doesn't detect it - no change of skin, still loading as a demo. I've also tried putting them in the same place as the DLL but no joy.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

22301 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:58 am

audington wrote:Ok, I took a chance and bought it. Sounds nice, I'll be happy that this was $45... when I can get it to unlock!

I'm on Win10 64bit, have the plugin in my plugins folder (it's detected and loads as 'Demo' by all my hosts), but following the instructions and placing the skins folder and key file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Admiral Quality\Poly-Ana it is like it doesn't detect it - no change of skin, still loading as a demo. I've also tried putting them in the same place as the DLL but no joy.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

That's the correct folder. It works here on Win 8.1 64 bit. Probably best drop Mike an email. He's usually pretty quick at sorting out system issues.

782 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 9:06 am

audington wrote:Ok, I took a chance and bought it. Sounds nice, I'll be happy that this was $45... when I can get it to unlock!

I'm on Win10 64bit, have the plugin in my plugins folder (it's detected and loads as 'Demo' by all my hosts), but following the instructions and placing the skins folder and key file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Admiral Quality\Poly-Ana it is like it doesn't detect it - no change of skin, still loading as a demo. I've also tried putting them in the same place as the DLL but no joy.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Check your license hasn't got .txt at the end.
Mine got changed by safari when I downloaded it and as soon as I edited the name it worked.
The skins have to be used one at a time in the skin folder.
Hope this helps.

7131 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 9:10 am

audington wrote:Ok, I took a chance and bought it. Sounds nice, I'll be happy that this was $45... when I can get it to unlock!

I'm on Win10 64bit, have the plugin in my plugins folder (it's detected and loads as 'Demo' by all my hosts), but following the instructions and placing the skins folder and key file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Admiral Quality\Poly-Ana it is like it doesn't detect it - no change of skin, still loading as a demo. I've also tried putting them in the same place as the DLL but no joy.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Poly-Ana doesn't change skins automatically. You have to decide yourself which skin you want, and move the files of THAT skin to the folder named skin. The other skins (including the default one), you may keep them anywhere you want (I have them in sub-folders inside the "skin"), and when you decide to change, go to the folder you choose, and copy the content into the mentioned "skin" folder.

The Poly-Ana.key is inside the same folder that also have the "skin" folder (usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Admiral Quality\Poly-Ana).

Since this is data that needs to be added to the registry, probably to best way is to double click on the file, which would make a dialog box appear asking if you want that data to be added to the registry. Say yes, and it's done.

This step shouldn't be necessary, but probably, due to OS security reasons, to have Poly-Ana authorized, you would need to instantiate it with a host running with admin privileges. Probably that's why it isn't authorized yet.

1078 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 1:59 pm

audington wrote:Ok, I took a chance and bought it. Sounds nice, I'll be happy that this was $45... when I can get it to unlock!

I'm on Win10 64bit, have the plugin in my plugins folder (it's detected and loads as 'Demo' by all my hosts), but following the instructions and placing the skins folder and key file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Admiral Quality\Poly-Ana it is like it doesn't detect it - no change of skin, still loading as a demo. I've also tried putting them in the same place as the DLL but no joy.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Sounds like you're nearly there - Like simmo75 says maybe it's added an additional extension to the .key file? This is what the folder structure looks like on my setup with an alternative skin:

In the 'skin' folder it should be just the .jpg and .png files that make up that new skin, there shouldn't be any folders or subfolders in there at all.

dzilizzi: What I like about the synth is to me (as I have with synths like u-he's Diva and Xils' PolyKb) is it really sounds like a physical piece of hardware producing a sound in a real space rather than just a soft-synth that doesn't really have any dimension/depth to the sound. Sounds really odd but when I was playing with the demo I had my small APK Mini keyboard plugged in, and headphones on - and there was a brief moment that I could've sworn the sound was coming from that keyboard itself with the acoustics of my bedroom, rather than the VST!

7131 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 2:30 pm

mcbpete wrote: In the 'skin' folder it should be just the .jpg and .png files that make up that new skin, there shouldn't be any folders or subfolders in there at all.

There is no problem in having other folders inside that folder (I have all my skins inside it, as I said). Poly-Ana simply ignores them, since what's relevant to it is just the files inside the "skin" folder.

Regarding the key, probably the problem is because the data doesn't get added to the registry for lack of admin privileges, not the added extension (which is unlikely, but anyway, it may happen, so, checking that doesn't hurt, I guess) :shrug:

1424 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:18 pm

Aliens wrote:I suspect those last few posts above won't be shown and linked to on the company Facebook page

Do you mean our comments are too good for it ?

1078 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:24 pm

fmr wrote:There is no problem in having other folders inside that folder (I have all my skins inside it, as I said). Poly-Ana simply ignores them, since what's relevant to it is just the files inside the "skin" folder.

Ah yeah to clarify I meant all the graphics files that you're going to be using for the current theme shouldn't be in any further folders in that 'skin' directory, you can keep a sub folder in there for backup of different themes you might switch to at a later date but as you say it'll ignore anything in those subfolders

fmr wrote:
mcbpete wrote:Regarding the key, probably the problem is because the data doesn't get added to the registry for lack of admin privileges, not the added extension (which is unlikely, but anyway, it may happen, so, checking that doesn't hurt, I guess)

Nah it doesn't touch the registry at all for the key check (in fact I'm not sure it touches the registry period even if you're running the DAW hosting the VST in admin mode or not) - It just reads the .key file from a hard coded directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\Admiral Quality\Poly-Ana\ for 64bit windows versions) and if it's not valid or just not there it goes into demo mode. You can see that's the case if rename the key file to anything at all even after the VST is registered and then load the VST - it'll go back to demo mode again until you rename it back to exactly 'Poly-Ana.key'

531 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:36 pm

david.beholder wrote:
Aliens wrote:I suspect those last few posts above won't be shown and linked to on the company Facebook page

Do you mean our comments are too good for it ?

Too good and probably far too honest :wink:

130 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:51 pm

With how entertaining this thread is, it makes me want to get Poly-Ana.....

Does Mike care about this product and is just rude; and is there a foreseeable future for this product? I find product attention by it's developer top. My number one reason to buy something now.

773 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 9:20 pm

mcbpete wrote:dzilizzi: What I like about the synth is to me (as I have with synths like u-he's Diva and Xils' PolyKb) is it really sounds like a physical piece of hardware producing a sound in a real space rather than just a soft-synth that doesn't really have any dimension/depth to the sound. Sounds really odd but when I was playing with the demo I had my small APK Mini keyboard plugged in, and headphones on - and there was a brief moment that I could've sworn the sound was coming from that keyboard itself with the acoustics of my bedroom, rather than the VST!

Thanks. I get what you mean and it makes sense. :tu:

5943 posts · Tue Mar 21, 2017 9:32 pm

twal wrote:With how entertaining this thread is, it makes me want to get Poly-Ana.....

Does Mike care about this product and is just rude; and is there a foreseeable future for this product? I find product attention by it's developer top. My number one reason to buy something now.

He definitely cares about his product and is always very quick with support. He just doesn't always take criticism well and ironically got banned for being harshly critical of the KVR site developers/maintenance people.

Hopefully it has a long future. There has been talk of some time about v2 for some time but progress on 1.3 seems to have stalled at the latest beta about a year ago. Hopefully he finalizes it soon but the beta works fine anyways.

412 posts · Wed Mar 22, 2017 6:40 am

All the intense conversation here just made me very curious and finally jumped on it. It's a good decision since I like the sound, which has a hardware feel to it, especially the bass. My only hope is for a constant update of the synth, especially the long delayed V1.3. I'm excited if the sound can be improved with the newer version, it has a lot of potential for becoming more useful and playable.