I have no doubt MOTU was quick in supplying replacement disks...mhschmieder wrote:No "amen" from this corner. After all, they sent a replacement disc right away to another poster (was it tooXXXhip?). Yes, they should use cases that secure the DVD's more securely. So should Winter&Winter (publishers of my favourite artist of the past decade, Uri Caine). But they stand by their product and replace faulty discs. Believe it or not, not everyone does.
In spite of all the scratches and scuff marks from the disc having traveled outside the case and up against the scratchy foam that separates the manual from the iLok, I was able to install and use Ethno Instrument tonight. It did take too tries with the data DVD, as the Ethno.dat file was not found the first time. But I doubt I'll bother asking MOTU for a replacement, as I backup my external hard drive anyway, so I have the data in two places whether or not the DVD ever loads properly again or not.
As for the sounds, they blew me away, and are immediately usable (unlike MSI, which requires many of the same tricks as one should expect when realising a score via a notation program, with all the sample-switching that that entails). Ethno Instrument works great with existing recorded MIDI tracks that were entered via keyboard.
I was shocked to find no kalimba and no shehnai, but I have other sources for those so no big deal. As for kodo drum, I may not have looked hard enough.
I only had time to render one composition tonight as I lost four hours over a snafu with upgrading my G4 iMac user memory from 128MB to 512MB (the blasted microscopically thin plastic rails that secure the SDRAM in place broke off, even though I used next to no force at all, and I had to carefully superglue them with the tiniest amount of glue possible in hopes of securing the SDRAM in place with no spillage and no shorting of contacts). Can we talk about Apple "professionalism" for a minute now?.
At any rate, I decided to augement the existing tracks with doubling instead, as there were no direct mappings of the bizarre collection of instruments I had used for this particular composition (which was recorded using a Yamaha Motif ES, the best currently available workstation for standard ROMpler based ethnic instruments).
The koto is the best I've ever heard, and the various bagpipes and bombards are worth the price of admission alone. In fact, regardless of how good RA is or whether I eventually need it to complement this set, I feel that I got well over $1000 worth of quality samples from my modest $279 investment.
I haven't been using MSI much yet for anything other than orchestral percussion (at which it excels, and for which I use it almost daily, so it did earn its investment regardless), simply because I have not yet developed the discipline or patience to split my string tracks based on attack vs. release/etc. Once I start using notation programs (I am just now about to evaluate the Notion demo disc, which also arrived today), I am hoping to get into the sort of habits that prpfessional MIDI orchestrators use.
Ethno Instrument, on the other hand, will be used regularly, on existing tracks and for upcoming work. I have a flamenco/arabic fusion project that I will be recording later in the month. It's a project that I subbed for last year on bass, and the guitarist and I were in a previous project together whose music I am currently remixing and adding to, and we are both very excited about being able to lend both projects a more authentic air with some of these exotic instruments (live players are hard to find).
I was referring to the recent deluge of installation problems showing lack of forethought on installation protocols and other issues of silly, blatant, non-professional forethought...
What do you think< that I would expect MOTU to NOT send out a replacement disk? OF course they would..they're probably embarrassed by this silliness...but it IS good they sent it out fast...
They were very professional in fixing their unprofessional method of sending out dvd;s...lol
