Hey if we go beyond music, can my ex wife and my divorce count?

I paid my $1000 for the ad "Asian women seek rich husbands" (not really, but I have seen those ads and she was Asian, until she got the surgery to change it)
I paid about 100x that to get rid of her.

You know what I used to before I got married????

ANYTHING I WANTED TO

I never knew what happiness was until I got married
Then It Was Too Late

I have a million of them. I'm givin'em away down here.

ORIGINAL: jinga8

Hey if we go beyond music, can my ex wife and my divorce count?

I'm sure you "purchased" your divorce, chauncey. But is your ex-wife from a former red satellite state? Cuz those are the only "wives" I know of with a money back guarantee... oh, and some far eastern gentlewomen nowadays as well, i guess...
And do those count as "hardware" or "software" or maybe "nagware"...

Actually, I looked it up... "Gimme, gimme, gimme!-ware"

Best:
Sonar 6 Producer upgrade from Studio
Frontier Tranzport
Presonus Firepod (flawless with Sonar!)

Worst:
Alesis Multimix 16 FW--didn't get along with Sonar at all!

Worst: Gigabyte mother board... You give me for free i won't take it
Best: Reaper, Mackie Onyx1220

ORIGINAL: MArwood

Wish I would have bought sooner / Wish I never have bought??
Best / Worst - purchases?

Best:
All Cakewalk software DAW's, Pro Audio 2 through Sonar PE 5.2
Intel "Ergonomic" keyboard--I can barely type on a standard keyboard anymore
Roland XP-50 keyboard
Aardvark Q10 audio interface
Rode NT-2 mic
Jammer Pro software (great when you're in a rut, composition-wise)
1992 Fender Strat Plus guitar with Ash body
1952 Fender Deluxe (5B3 circuit) that I bought in 1972 for $125.00
Creamtone overdrive pedal
Mesa Boogie Studio .22 Plus amp
Mesa Blue Angel amp (2x10" model, with replacement speakers by Eminence)
2" acoustical foam for my bedroom studio. Need more, plus some good bass traps......

Worst:
Most of the disappointments I've had with music stuff were with small stuff (various efx pedals, software, etc.), and stuff I bought many years ago and which is long since gone. I've been pretty lucky, overall. Two of my worst purchases were guitar pickups, of all things. I had no luck at all with Fender Fat 50's replacement pickups or Stewart McDonald's humbucking pickups. Of course, the sound of pickups is very subjective, so YMMV. I just didn't care for the tone of either set for a guitar I built a couple of years ago. And, the Fat 50's didn't sound nearly as good as the Lace Sensors that came in my Strat plus, either. Another thing that didn't work for me was the Tube Screamer TS-808 reissue overdrive pedal. It's expensive and it just didn't get the tone I was looking for. Again, YMMV, since we all have different tastes in tone.

Bill

Worst - M-Audio Mobile Pre
Best - BCF2000 number 2 and 3 & 1 Rode nt2a

Oh and how could I forget... my tranzport.
Ooooh and Har-Bal. Yea Har-Bal that's good....

ORIGINAL: bunkaroo

Best: Sonar (natch), DimPro, EZDrummer, PodXt and Bass PodXt

Worst: E-MU Emulator X - piece of junk software, needs its own USB 2x2 as a dongle, just a waste of $300.

WOW thanks you just saved me a $300 nightmare, i was wondering
about how good it was to.

now i know

Best:
Ableton Live - Sonar Pro is great for my heafty and final builds but to throw down
creativity nothings better, dare I say even P5
Reason - can't beat the compressed format for sounds on a laptop and since you can
only have Sonar on one computer....
Motu Ultralight - Transparent Pres and, great GUI, Live mixer, low latency........get one!
Line 6 - Variax, Podxt Live: I'll agree that all digital will never sound as good, but the
flexibility, sound design, & gigging win.
Novation SL-Zero - Phenomenal, how did I ever interface without one, nuf said.
Stylus RMX / all Sage expanders - You can't get better sounding drums, check out
Skippy's Noizebox!
Atmosphere - again you just can't beat Spectrasonics for overall sound quality
Hercules Stands - look cool and built stage worthy

Worst:
Motu Mach Five - 8 gigs of useless sounds, frustrating reformatting,
Pro Tools - MBox 2 - the MBox 1 worked great, could never get MBox 2 to work, Digi's
are a little too proprietary for me
Built a custom PC and didn't get an Istar D series rack case - just ended up getting one
later

SoSo:
Dimension Pro - Great sounds I just haven't really used any of them on projects - a little
too other worldy for me perhaps
Project 5 - Could be amazing, but you can tell Cakewalks money is going elsewhere -
needs GUI update & hardware (like Torq)
KRK RP-6's - For the money they are a great buy...but then you hear dynaudio
BM5a's......absolutely no comparison!

Thanks for the reply.....I've been doing it anyway.

My best purchase was a Fostex 4 track tape recorder in 1986 ftom sam ash in new york city, This was my first taste in a dowmward finanncial expensive hobby at the time.
I paid $1400 for that back then and it bit me with the recording bug and that let to many analog purchases for the next 20 years.

My other best purchse was Sonar 6 Producer edition

The worst is having all this analog equipment that i can never sell, its grown a part of me over these 20 yeasrs. I guess there my babies. When i need to fix one of them up, i see it like tasking my baby to school shoppinh and getting him a haircut. I gotta trat my babies good and therll treat me better
CJ

ok here goes.

Best.

Sonar, Reaper, Fireface800, Melodyne, PLPareq, Korg Legacy, Truepianos

Worst.

Kontakt2, UAD-1 (never worked properly with anything I wanted to use), Korg Legacy - That's right this is in both. The best sounding Virtual analog synths I own, but sorry - dumping users with a nasty multi-core bug which causes crackles unless they agree to buy a damn dongle REALLY pissed me off), Oberheim autotune - a very long time ago but STILL mad about this. PACE, NO user support AT ALL, just took my money and ran - I used an old crack of antares for a while because of this (same program basically)

Kind regards

Dave Rich

Thanks for the advice there newfuturevintage

I bought it way back because I needed a bass but couldn't justify the expense of a USA model as a second instrument.

As I say, I bought it because it's got a real easy action and plays like a dream.

The music store guy I mentioned re my main guitar 'retired' a few years back and some useless idiot took over his shop - trouble is this newer guy's not interested in talking music or selling strings - he'll only bother to talk to you if you go in flashing a wad and drooling over the Marshall stacks!!

Good news is I bumped into original guy just last week - he's decided to come out of retirement and open up a new shop - I bought my first pedal from him in 1981-ish so I’m expecting a few decent deals!! I’ll certainly mention the options for the P B you outlined in your post.

PS-The distortion pedal I bought replaced an old valve powered reel to reel tape recorder that had an jack socket soldered onto the input on the circuit board – great tone but heaven knows how I never managed to electrocute myself!

Cheers - Steve

Best:Sonar 6, Har-Bal, Line 6 gearbox plugs, AMplitube JHE, Addictive drums

Worst: RNC 1773 (w/24 bit don't really need it anymore), Line6 variax (pd 849 dollars pre-release, now can be found for 200 bucks, neat for sound variety but does not have the feel of a good guitar or the lively sound of my top end axes.)

Best: Okay, considering the forum (but absolutely no lie) Sonar 6 PE. Wow, this is cool. I've got Pyro 2003 I think it is and mine works great. Cleaned up a ton of vinyl with it.

Started with Mesa Boogie in the early 80's and still own a Mark IV and a Studio Caliber. Cool! My early 80's Schecter Bass and guitar necks on Frankenstein guitars. Still wonderful. EMG active pickups! 72 Martin 0-16 N. Y. (the one Ian Anderson uses) wide straight neck and records like butter. Cream machine and Rockman X-100, still very useful. Roland VG-8EX, a little digital sounding but wow, I can do tunings and 12 string without messing with that, great! Roland guitar synth, the one from several years back, tracks pretty good and has some of the sounds from that GR-700/G-707 setup I used in the 80s.

My 60's Ludwig drum kit, fun to beat on although I don't have the chops to record, I can now sample it and stick it into songs thanks to Session Drummer-2. Alesis QSR 8.1, piano feel and pretty easy to figure out. Roland D-10, still the best synth action keybed I've played.

Avalon 737 (Mercenary edition), RNC/RNP, Grace 101, Alesis Midiverb II, etc; gots to has some outboard. AKG 414 B/ULS, Rode tube mic, all the Shure SMs, AT 3035 etc, have been cool.

I really really dig my EMU 1212 sound card and the Emulator X software. Very cool and with synth swipe I am putting hardware sound mods on ebay. Stedman pop filter- sometimes the little things make a big difference. F. Alton Everest, man his book got my recording room sounding very much better. Yammy NS-10M Studio's and Auratones, since I started using them and learning them in the early 90's my mixes have translated much better. Mackie mixers; the older 'made in USA' ones are rock solid. Selmer Mk VI sax is needing some minor repairs, but still amazing coming from around 69 or 70.

For live, Crown power amps, JBL, McCauley and Renkus Heinz drivers rock! Never let me down.


Bad purchases: I bought an Orange amp in the late 70's. Coolest looking thing in the world but you could just tell it was fixing to blow and it did right after I traded it in on a Marshall. Earth mixing board and Alesis monolithic mix board. Both total pieces of crap. Monster cable; overpriced, made no difference garbage. Egg cartons on walls, man I can't believe I did that. Fabric pop filters, what a waste (see Stedman post above). Late 70's and on Gibsons, they moved the factory to Nashburg from Kalimazoo and the guitars just went to hell. I had a bud who worked there for a spell and I reckon I know why. Most of the Chinese mics. Just listen!!!

I recant regarding the Toneport UX2. Its a very good piece! works well with Sonar and sounds good!!