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When someone announced that Musician's Friend was selling a full version of Tracktion 3 Ultimate Bundle for $20 I jumped on it, mainly for the plugins and samples, although I was curious to see how "the most powerfully easy-to-use music production software ever" would work. Joke's on me, I guess. I just tried to load it and discovered that I have two blank DVDs. Ha, ha. I've got a message in to MF; be curious to see how they handle it.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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Quote:
I just tried to load it and discovered that I have two blank DVDs
Makes it easier to compose the next ground-breaking composition inspired by John Cage's 4' 33".
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 12TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 12TB SATA BB2026/UMC204HD&404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/Notion/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com (under rehosting/construction)
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I'm going for a new world's record. It'll be called "4' 34"." 
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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I think you actually have many hours worth of no music.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I've done 4 33. Then I saw a stunning blonde in a skimpy dress do it and I liked her ability to interpret it better. I think the phrases were more rounded, and the first figure was more rondo than mine. The allegro had my heart going and when she got to the finale I'm sure breasts rose in sympathy with the crescendo. I was enthralled. Her heel fell off and her toes curled in a pentatonic moment as she struggled to get it back on. The final note was the bench, now an aerophone in itself, scrapped a perfect D, doubled by the other leg, as the audience realized that her bow revealed D's in unison...
oh, well. It was poetry in motion...
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Our adventure so far: E-mailed MF. They said contact Mackie for a download. Called Mackie. They said too big for D/L, but send copy of receipt and they would mail disks. Called MF for copy. MF sent electronic invoice. E-mailed to Tom at Mackie. This all happened in about half an hour.
So far so good. I just hope Tom doesn't choke when he sees the $19.99 sale price.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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for the Tracktion bundle you should be receiving, disc 1 is 4.27GB and disc 2 is 4.19GB. That's probably why they didn't want to give you download links. Don't know which discs you'll get, but after you install and register, you should be able to download the 3.0.4.8 update (only about 36MB).
Good luck!
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 12TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 12TB SATA BB2026/UMC204HD&404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/Notion/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com (under rehosting/construction)
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Quote:
Joke's on me guess. I just tried to load it and discovered that I have two blank DVDs. I've got a message in to MF; be curious to see how they handle it.
I came to the conclusion a long time ago that MF collects broken equipment and sells it. My buying experiences with them has been almost universally bad. A fender amp arrived DOA, I sent it back and they suppossedly replaced it, but the very same one came back, not repaired. I gave them another go at it and again the same one came back, this time with a repair tag on it. I turned it on but it screamed and howled like a banshee. I ordered a TC Helicon VoicePrism Plus, and it came without the card that made it a PLUS in the first place. They refused to just send the missing card and I had to return the unit before they would ship me what I actually ordered and paid for. I ordered a dmx dimmer that arrived with all four of the fuses removed. Assuming that was the only reason it wouldn't work, I went out and bought four new fuses, and then found out that it wouldn't work at all. I finally wised up and stopped ordering from them. One of the worst companies I've ever done business with.
Keith
2026 Audiophile Windows 11 RYZEN THREADRIPPER 3960X 4.5GHZ 128 GB RAM 2 Nvidia RTX 3090s, Vegas,Acid,SoundForge,Izotope Production,Melodyne Studio,SONAR,3 Raven Mtis
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My experience with Musician's friend over the last three years.
1. ordered three Behringer 8500 mikes, and cables and 1 AT 2020 condensor mike
results - came new in the box and in perfect condition
2. Ordered a factory reconditioned TC Helicon voiceworks.
results - came in a factory box, not a scratch, and in perfect condition
3. Ordered a Tascam "Stupid Deal" US 800
results came in a factory box, un opened perfect condition.
Just a little note, MF is owned and operated by Guitar Center. They do get rid of a lot of used, reconditioned and slow to sell items, but they sell new and very high end stuff as well. Side note i ordered a TC Helicon Harmony G unit before the Voiceworks, and i wanted to send it back, and had no issues what so ever, not questions asked.
Not trying to discount Keiths experience, just say my personal experience has been superb.
HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB/RB 2026, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 11 , Presonus Audiobox USB96
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Ryszard - curious indeed!
Blank DVDs!
My $19 Ultimate Bundle Tracktion from Musician's Friend is two discs and no issues except for the following - when installing the included Garritan Personal Orchestra, the installer file for GPO never exits, even though it installs completely. You have to manually break it out of the GPO installation.
Other than that, the DVDs that came bundled have installed multiple times with no issue.
Years ago, I bought a combo deal from MF consisting of an 'OLP' guitar (a musicman copy) and a guitar port from Line 6. Couldn't get the OLP guitar to stay in tune worth a darn. They bought it back without issue, even paying for return shipping if I recall correctly - though I had to take it to a local regional FedEx depot to get the free shipping.
No issue with the Tracktion Ultimate Bundle for $19 (which is a ridiculous steal) of which you have 2 blank discs. (I'm sure you have tried reading them in a different computer or tried reading other DVDs in that drive - from your other post, it seems you have a new/used build.)
And make sure to download the Tracktion 3 update referred to by jford above. It will only require a few minutes of DSL speed download time. It's all the bundled extras with the Ultimate Bundle that make up the size of the DVDs. Also, to get your feet wet with Tracktion, the included instructional video is VERY good. That is, once you get your non-blank DVDs.
That's the first I've ever heard of, amongst the complaints about Tracktion - it's the first I've ever seen in paying close attention to the product for about 8 years from generation 1 to 2 to 3. Most of the complaints have centered on the user interface, which is a love it or hate it situation.
More recently, my US-800 purchase has been problematic, not because of MF for the most part, but because of what I am guessing are dodgy Win7 drivers or USB compatibility.
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Curious . . . it hadn't occurred to me to try swapping disks and computers. I put the Tracktion disks in my laptop and it appeared to read them fine. Then I put a movie in my DAW. WMP won't play it due to DRM, but it recognizes it and tells me what it is, and Windows Explorer tells me how much data is on the disk.
Now I'm trying to recall if I had ever loaded a DVD into this particular drive. I have other software on DVD, but I may have loaded it from a earlier DVD-ROM drive. The present unit is a DVD-R/W. They're cheap enough to replace if that's the issue.
To respond to Keith: The only other purchase I can recall from MF was a Planet Waves brand GK cable for my Roland VG-88. I got it cheap as a backup. When I finally opened it up it was horribly crackly and microphonic. I had had it too long to consider returning it, but I wasn't real happy about it. I replaced it with a $20 piece from ebay and threw out the $75 cable.
Now, can someone explain why PCs have a software DVD player if I can't watch anything with it?
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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In my case I also got the $19.95 deal but I'm on a Win 7 64 bit machine. It's supposed to work but I'm getting the "poof crash" and it's useless to me right now. That so called update was released in 2008, my discs already are that version so for now I'm stuck. I've been all through the Mackie Tracktion forums, there's has not been word one from Mackie about any updates or a new version for over three years. If nobody knows what a poof crash is, it's lots of fun. With no warning at all the program just disappears "poof" and resides in the system tray and that's it. No warning, no error box, nothing, nada, squat. You have to go to the task manager to close it. Go ahead, reboot and reopen it and at some unpredictable point "poof" again. It's a known problem with no known solution and absolutly no help from Mackie about it. I could try calling them I suppose but there's several threads about it on their own forum with no answers. It seems to be a T3 only issue.
This is not a priority for me, I don't really need it it just seemed like a good deal and to be honest it is a good deal for a lot of folks, just not me for whatever reason. It is disconcerting to see no comments at all, much less support from Mackie about this. Nothing on the KVR forum either, they've had a known bug thread going for years including the poof crash and not a comment from anybody about how to fix it. One of the moderators said he forwarded the entire thread to Mackie with no response.
If Scott or anybody else knows about this please post it. I would like to try T3 out and see if it's any good but right now I get maybe 2-3 minutes and "poof"...
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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I do not get that error - although I do know about the thread of which you speak on KVR.
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Quote:
Now, can someone explain why PCs have a software DVD player if I can't watch anything with it?
Like everything else with computers the answer is "it depends". If the disc you put into your DVD player was a commercial disc - read legal - there should have been no problem. If it was a copy you got from your nephews friends second cousin from down the block, chances are it is a illegal copy and yes, WMP won't play something with that encryption on it. That's because Microsoft is way to big to play that game. Other free software players you can download will probably play it. Or not.
This gets into teenage hacking stuff. There's readily available software to rip video off a DVD, remove the encryption, recompress it, the kids then upload it to a pirate movie website and it can simply be downloaded to your hard drive or you can burn it to a DVD and then it'll play. But wait, there's more! It'll play if you have all the codecs installed. They're not standard from MS, you have to find them on the web. When they recompress the movie there's several compression schemes that can be used and your WMP may not have the right codec. Sometimes just installing the correct codec will allow WMP to play it assuming you're not too worried that someone else already removed the encryption and it's illegal for you to possess it...
How do I know this you ask? Because I have that nephew plus my assistant in the office who know all about this stuff.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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For the record, all of my video is commercial product purchased through mainstream outlets. Also of note is that a copy of "The Incredibles" which would play on an older laptop (which has, alas, gone Tango Uniform) will not play on my modern machines.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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Quote:
I just tried to load it and discovered that I have two blank DVDs.
Discs full of Virtual Data....
Dastardly to Varying Degrees.....
Downright Vile Dealings....
I have more.....
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So, stupid is as stupid does. I scavenged a DVD-ROM drive out of an eight-year-old E-machines PC and Tracktion 3 is loading up a storm. Have no idea what's wrong with the relatively new Sony-LG DVD+/-RW I had in it before. See ya at the top.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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Richard - I have loaded the Ultimate Bundle on one XP Pro machine, and 2 different Win7 Home Premium machines. Take note that the Garritan Personal Orchestra portion of the installation went into a non-reponsive hang mode on all 3 installs. It's when the .nkx (I think that's the file extension) is being copied. Wait quite awhile to ensure it has copied over, then kill the installer. Uncheck that item and re-run the installer from disk 1 and it will then soldier through the rest. GPO is in fact installed, there is just some bug that doesn't recognize the fact.
Or avoid the issue altogether at first and uncheck GPO. Do that one last all by itself.
Enjoy...
-Scott
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Resurrecting this old thread with an update:
I got GPO to install properly by running the installer as administrator. Some nice sounds in that GPO I'll be putting to use.
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Ryszard...
For what it's worth... I had trouble with a dvd - r/w drive a while back. All of a sudden, for some reason Windows Explorer couldn't see it. And so it was off to the computer parts store to buy another one. Installed it and everything was fine - for a while. Suddenly I was in the same boat... WE couldn't see it. I opened up and just wiggled the wire going into it. After doing so, everything was fine. I changed the wire with a new one and everything's been fine since. Looks like I bought a new drive for nothing.
In all my years working with computers I have never seen a CD/DVD wire suddenly go bad. Oh well.
Bobby
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
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