KVR Audio

ugo · Post by **ugo** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 7:10 pm

i've got SL 2 and i've been thinking about upgrading to 3. what do you folks think about it so far? any problems/bugs? how is the new real-time time stretching?

-ugo

no3y3h4nd · Post by **no3y3h4nd** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 2:15 pm

I upgraded from 1 to 3 @ the weekend - tbh the addition of freeze and also the new play order system (defining named segments then playorders from them etc) was enough of a pull for me - I like the new send fx tracks also (simplifying automation of send levels and allowing easier bus routing etc) - and not forgetting all the new realtime warp fopr audio etc

but I think I've only just scratched the surface - but even so the new features mentioned justified the upgrade for me ..

NB - shame its not as stable yet as the old 1.06 though .. but I guess this will come with time .

Z · Post by Z » Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:31 pm

ugo wrote:i've got SL 2 and i've been thinking about upgrading to 3. what do you folks think about it so far? any problems/bugs? how is the new real-time time stretching?

-ugo

I upgraded last week, and for me, freeze alone was worth the upgrade. Steinberg finally got it right; in SL2, freeze simply isn't working. Have still not had a go at the rest of the new features though, but I can highly recommend an upgrade.

ugo · Post by **ugo** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:12 pm

thanks for the replies.
hmmm...looks like i may have to go for the upgrade...mabey i'll get it next month. can SL3 and SL2 coexist on the same machine (if 3 causes some problems) or is upgrading to 3 and 'all or nothing' affair?

thanks,
-ugo

no3y3h4nd · Post by **no3y3h4nd** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:58 pm

no if you upgrade the v2 license will be removed from the dongle when you get the v3 one off the web -

ugo · Post by **ugo** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 7:21 pm

i had a feeling that would be the case. its ok i guess provided the product works well. you mention that its not as stable as you would like. what problems have you had?

(btw, im using 2.2)

thanks again,
-ugo

progfusion74 · Post by **progfusion74** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 7:21 pm

Looks like it is time for me to upgrade. Probably after the holidays.

Cheers

prog

Blank_Frank · Post by **Blank_Frank** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 7:33 pm

no3y3h4nd wrote:no if you upgrade the v2 license will be removed from the dongle when you get the v3 one off the web -

Is this right? This isn't the case with Cubase SX - I've got SX1, 2 and 3 all running off the same dongle.

Seems strange that it should be any different for Cubase SL...

progfusion74 · Post by **progfusion74** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 11:15 pm

So where did people in the US buy the SL 3 upgrade. I can't find it anywhere on the Steinberg site or some retailers I tried.

Z · Post by Z » Thu Dec 23, 2004 8:58 am

ugo wrote:thanks for the replies.
hmmm...looks like i may have to go for the upgrade...mabey i'll get it next month. can SL3 and SL2 coexist on the same machine (if 3 causes some problems) or is upgrading to 3 and 'all or nothing' affair?

thanks,
-ugo

As mentioned, the SL2 license is removed from the dongle/upgraded to SL3. I honestly don't think SL2 would work with the SL3 license, but hey, why not give it a try?

I've also seen a lot of people who say SL3 is slightly less stable than SL2. While that may be the case for some, it's not for me.

The reason I love SL3 so much over SL2, is that I have this huge project with "thousands" of Kompakt sample players, a couple of EWQL Orchestra Strings Volume (that 28GB strings sample player) as well as Pristine Space and some compressors/EQ on the instruments, and finally The Grand using Reaktor4 FX's SpaceMaster reverb ensemble.
This project when running in SL2, would grind my PC to a complete halt (P4 3.3Ghz, 2GB RAM) when several instruments were playing at once. I tried to freeze some of the instruments, but first of all freeze took like 7 minutes per instrument (because freeze in SX2/SL2 runs for the entire project length, not for the actual data on a track), after freezing 3 or so of 14 instruments, SL2 started to quit with an error message abouth 50% in the freezing process, forcing me to export some tracks to midi, create a new project, bounce this to .wav and import it as an audio track to the main project -- you get the picture: lots of unnececcary work. Also the mixer view in SL2 was buggy, I have 10 - 12 Kompakt players in this project, and each instance creates 8 outputs in the mixer while I only use 2. Setting all of these to 'hide' and hide hidden channels, became a real mixup when I reloaded the project, most of the channels weren't hidden after all and instead, SL2 hid a lot of the channels which weren't set to hide.
All of this just added to the confusion of mixing (hey, where is the chello channel????), but most important to frustration which kills the joy of creativity and writing and producing this piece.

Anyways I bought and installed SL3, immediately after installation loaded that particular project, started to freeze and to my pleasant surprise, major bog down heavy tracks were frozen in a matter of seconds, not minutes. SL3 didn't crash one single time and the mixer view was correct again. I was finally able to mix this damn track properly for the first time in two years!

And as an added bonus to freeze (although many will say that the inclusion of this feature goes without saying), it also freezes insert effects so I could use so many heavy plugins on one track, the track alone would send the CPU up in the 90%'s, but not being bothered about it because I would just freeze it. And unfreeze takes a second or two.. Beautiful!

All of this made me feel like a kid on Xmas eve, SL3 is what SL should have been from the beginning. Steinberg got it right now and I haven't even started to explore the other new features but freeze!

As a final note I can add (phew, this post got much longer than I thought!) that the SL2 mixer bug when hiding channels, is a known bug when you use freeze. Don't know if it goes for SX2, but I can confirm it for SL2. Also, has SL3 crashed on me? Yep, a few times, but I'm not sure if I can blame that on SL3. The reason it crashed is because in the default project, the sample rate was set to 32kHz. When I loaded said project (44.1kHz), the Reaktor4 FX plugin complained about an invalid sample rate and SL3 reported the new sample rate was set to something like 43.600kHz and locked up with the R4 FX error message box which I couldn't terminate.
This was easily fixed by changing the default sample rate for projects to 44.1kHz.
Also like I said the cause of the lockup was Reaktor4 so I'm not sure if SL3 is to be blamed just like that.

All in all, SL3 is highly recommended. Buy it, you won't regret it. Trust me.

ugo · Post by **ugo** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 3:20 pm

thanks for the great post Z.
i've got a few synths that i love, but they eat up way too much of the cpu power my modest AMD 1.6ghz can provide me. SL2's freeze i found to be rather clunky so i havent used it all that much. as a result, those awesome synths are getting far less use than they should.

although i am planning on upgrading my processor, an improved freeze could be quite a help in getting me to use those synths as often as i'd like.

btw...has anyone here tried the new time stretch functions yet?

-ugo

cubase SL 3 opinions?