20081009

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I didn’t think I was going to get anything done at all tonight. I spent most of it battling with installing the EastWest Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Silver PLAY Edition (which is even harder to say than it is to type). I already had EWQLSO, but a few months ago they offered a $99 upgrade to the new “PLAY” edition, which is based on a new and potentially better softsynth technology than the NativeInstruments based player for the copy I already had. Unfortunately it also comes with new and improved copy protection – in the form of a Pace iLok USB device. For which I had to pay an extra $US40. Then to add insult to injury, the drivers for the stupid thing wouldn’t install. I’ve had the thing for about three months and haven’t been able to use it – meanwhile, those who refuse to pay for their software are probably quite happily making use of it.
In the end I must’ve made an offering to the correct god, or tried things in the correct order, as it finally installed.

While I was waiting, a little fiddling around on my keyboard gave me a nice little piano idea. I figured I’d try it with the piano instrument included in EWQLSO. When using the Standalone player, it sounded brilliant, with no latency whatsoever. Unfortunately, when I attempted to play it in Sonar (after another hour’s battle getting Sonar to find the plugin), there was some _very_ noticeable latency. Noticeable enough to be too distracting for me to play. Another hour of fiddling didn’t fix it, so I gave up in disgust.

Fortunately I came back and gave it another go – but recording without any softsynths, just straight MIDI from my keyboard. Not quite as inspiring a sound, but by then I’d figured out what I wanted to do anyway. Once recorded I could switch it back to using the Softsynth, and so here’s the result.
A very short, simple little piano piece, using the Steinway piano from the EastWest Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra PLAY Edition softsynth (it probably took me longer to type that than for the piece to play).