When your DAW doesn't have an aux channel capability...

[rob aylestone]

No point looking at the new cubase if you're not connected to the internet - dongles gone and online authentication is critical. To be fair, I cannot imagine NOT having it connected as downloading the sample packages, upgrades, freebies and stuff makes using a different computer a pain. Shutting gigabytes of data from computer to computer is something I'm glad I don't have to do - in fact when I installed Cubase on the machine in the video studio (as you can now have two installations) dumping all the files to drives and then putting them back, and having to fiddle everything was a total pain, it was actually quicker to download much of the contents again!

 

[Twiddler]

No point looking at the new cubase if you're not connected to the internet - dongles gone and online authentication is critical. To be fair, I cannot imagine NOT having it connected as downloading the sample packages, upgrades, freebies and stuff makes using a different computer a pain. Shutting gigabytes of data from computer to computer is something I'm glad I don't have to do - in fact when I installed Cubase on the machine in the video studio (as you can now have two installations) dumping all the files to drives and then putting them back, and having to fiddle everything was a total pain, it was actually quicker to download much of the contents again!

Sounds like another world entirely! I can see the advantages and the appeal of such a set up. I do tend to find that when there is so much "stuff" and so many options and alternatives it can be distracting and counter productive, which is perhaps why I like things the way they are.

There is internet in the studio but because it used to be the strongroom of a bank before we moved in, the internet comes through the mains cables connected via a gadget to the router on the top floor. There's no mobile signal or anything like that down there, not a thing!

We might download a sample or one of our people might send some stems they recorded, and now and again we upload something to Bandcamp or SoundCloud, but other than that there's not really much need to send files around the place.

A couple of years ago the main hard drive died. Fortunately I'm pretty good at backing up the data and only lost about three hours work. It took a couple of weeks to get everything working again though. It's really no fun at all working with these systems in that way.

 

[rob aylestone]

That I agree with! I'm totally hooked on NAS drives - my computers here all store on the network drive, which is speedy enough to have all my audio and video on it, and with the fibre internet, the other cubase system half a mile away backs up all my new files while I'm driving between them, so I can do some audio work here, drive to the office and do video work - sharing the files. At home, my wife has us on a turn everything off mode now because of our huge electricity increases in price - and this sometimes means the files have not finished duplicating - that is a severe pain!

 

[grimtraveller]

Digital vs analogue, Windows vs Mac, Old systems vs new, Republicans vs Democrats, left wing vs right.....it's all 'go' round here mate !
I'm of the view that everything that has been done in recording, every system that has been used to capture and playback sound and every version of every DAW or instrument is brilliant and appropriate for those for whom it is brilliant and appropriate.
I think of it as a train line that runs through farming country and there's a working farm at every stop. Some are more advanced and up to the minute techy, some are not quite so, some are pretty primitive and involve a degree of heavy labour and overcoming obstacles that some of the others don't have to.
But they all produce lovely vegetables and fruit.
So regardless of which stop you get off at, you'll get a result to your liking and if you are on one of the not so up to the minute techy farms, it's not really worth invading Sweden over to ring up someone on one of the farms to ask for advice or instructions on how to get something done. If someone has the info, even from an ancient bygone system, let it rain forth !

 

[grimtraveller]

It's not such a big deal as I can usually find a way around most things, I merely wondered if anybody here had any cunning strategies that I hadn't tried

I've always been on the prowl for different techniques people use or have used, even the ones that are generally shat upon {"never copy a guitar track, play the part twice !"} and I'll try pretty much anything at least once. Almost everything can work. And if it doesn't work, well, that's the price of an education.

It's true that I'd love to upgrade the whole system completely someday, but what with family and life and so on, a new bells and whistles DAW is a fair way down the list of priorities to be honest, especially when the system I already have is mostly working just fine

There are so many different reasons and combinations of reasons why someone elects to stay with what they have.
For years, I was perfectly happy with my 8 track portastudio....until I wasn't. I could've gone digital back in 2001 or maybe even before that, but I just wasn't interested. But once I was, I tried to get my head around a computer based DAW and it was only when I heard about standalones that I figured that these represented the kind of half way house between computer technology and portastudio ease. Sure, there was still a learning curve, but nevertheless, it really was like being fused simultaneously in two worlds and 17 years on from my first standalone DAW, I'm still with it {well, the second one actually. I have the 8 track version of the first one}. In fact, I bought 3 back up units of the elderly and ancient Akai because I decided that this is the machine I aim to be doing my stuff on till I shed this mortal coil. I'm a hobbyist, I'm not doing this for a living and I'm under no commercial constraint. Now, I'm not so rigid as to rule out the possibility of going the computer route one day, but with my Akai, I know how to get out of it what I want and I'm not really interested in wonderful upgrades. I guess if push came to shove I could get the 16 or even 24 track version {mine are 12 track with an additional 238 virtual tracks}, but there's really just one overriding reason I use it, though it came out in 2000 and was obsolete by 2002 ~ I like it.

It runs on XP, which is the last decent/reliable version of Windows,

Whereas the computer DAW I use to house all my virtual instruments {whichever Cubase was current in 2009; I think it was "Elements", the student cut down version} is on XP. Most of my VSTis were bought between 2004-2006 and ran on XP. The 5 or 6 I've acquired since then were able to run on XP. In fact I specifically looked at that as a requirement. And the funny thing is that even though they're all so Ooooolllldddd, except for the trumpet in most cases, they all sound exactly what they're supposed to sound like ~ the instruments that bear their names.
I don't know if XP was more stable than LP or GP, all I know is that it does the job and has been doing so for 18 years.
I really am a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it ~ unless it no longer serves its purpose" kind of person, for the most part.