Quote:


Then I'm curious to know why you hang out in the PGMusic forum.

You don't answer questions about PGMusic's products.
Most of what you have to say is either derogatory about PGMusic products, or openly evangelical about their competitor's products. That seems more than a little inappropriate to me.



Pat, I guess you are entitled to your opinion.

I've used PG products probably well before you ever did - at least if forum participation under current usernames is applicable. My start time is about 1996, if my memory serves me correctly. I think there might be a 'join' date in the forumite database, but I'm not sure.

Read back through the lion's share of my posts and you will see that I rarely pan PG products, and often do the opposite, when it's a product specific question. In fact, just scroll up in THIS thread and you'll see that I talk about how the new Cubase chord auto-accompaniment generator looks way behind the capability of PG's products, for a simple case and point.

This particular thread is asking why there aren't more young folks around this forum. It's an astute observation by a relative newbie to the forum who I've recently found out is my age. There ARE reasons for it. Rather than dance around the issue, I laid out what my perceptions were. Of course, I believe that my perceptions have merit - as we all do. There are some reasons - what do you think they are?

As to 'why I choose to hang out here?' It's down to several things:

1. I consider a few of the long-time forum members here to be my mentors to home recording and I continue to learn from them. Goes back in the day to when everyone was recommending Radio Shack Optimus/Minimus speakers for monitoring. Y'all know who you are when and if you read this one!

1a. I try to provide the same type of tech support and advice that I received to those that are learning - this forum is a fairly graceful place to do that relative to other forums.

2. I consider some of the other more recent forum members as soul-mates as it pertains to pining for emulation of old-school electromechanical keyboards

3. I have a soft-spot for PG products because I cut my computer based recording teeth on Power Tracks Pro Audio, and I'd love to see it or RealBand contain the features that I've gotten hooked on with other products. I believe that some of what PG has added since 1996 is due to enough forumites asking often enough for features that exist elsewhere and not yet in PG Products. If you could rewind this forum 10 years back, you would see discussion after discussion about soundfonts and soundblaster cards. DX/DXi was the brand new thing and what folks were starting to wrap their heads around for 'soft synths' and so forth. You can credit folks like me who pounded and pounded for VST/VSTi direct integration as a feature for probably some of the reason it's a feature today. For many years, you couldn't use VST effects directly, you had to 'wrap' them and hope that worked. Not taking all the credit, but if there were never an outsider opinion expressed as to what was in Beulah land, y'all would still be having to use soundfonts and prior to that Sound Canvas modules, etc. Sample playback would be it. DX effects and PG's internal effects would be your only source. Yes we made music with those alone, but we make different music now and the horizons have expanded exponentially.

I would challenge you to look at my years, scratch that, decade+ of posts and what I tend to try to help with on these forums - when I give an experience-based opinion; and I believe you will find that nearly always, my comments are product-neutral, and try to stick to the underlying technical question at hand - of which USUALLY the product choice plays very little part. The only times I may wade in to what you consider derogatory comments are when someone is asking a very specific question that in fact IS product specific as to how to get the task completed and there is a direct shortcoming of PG products, or other products for that matter. Otherwise I steer clear of negative comments about PG products.

The DAW that I do use does not have an on-screen fake mixer. It's a shortcoming for what seems like most potential customers. It was never so for me, but I think it's probably one of the reasons that kept that DAW from becoming the de facto standard. It came with a mastering plugin that alone was worth the price - all by itself; at least the last two major version releases. That plugin was the Acuma Final Mix plugin, something that folks paid many hundreds of dollars for on the Mackie D8B digital mixers. Same code. It was like a mastering plugin with a full-on DAW thrown in for free!

So, back to the opening question of the thread - that is what is important here. I gave my opinions from a somewhat outsider view as to why there aren't younger forum members. I was in my late 20's when I started using PG products and asking on the forum, when I had a dial-up modem for access to the forum. I was pretty alone on the forum at that time from an age standpoint. I can think of a few others, but I think for the most part they left. I can answer the thread's question from a person that was that age when starting to use the forum and PG products.

What is your answer to the Joe V.'s question?

-Scott

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