SteveW wrote:
Is there some reason why you won't install the trial and find out for yourself?
Well, firstly, please read the first line of my OP. It's the workweek, I've only so much time.
But also ... sometimes getting advance information ends up saving one the not inconsiderable time needed to test drive a project in a new DAW as one learns it. Sometimes you can learn something which lets you know you shouldn't bother.
For example, a while back I trialled Pianissimo in a simple project -- just that instrument, and really loved how it sounded. I bought it and crafted a piano part which I really liked.
I then returned to that project a few days later, adding a few pother VSTis. Had a great session, which involved a lot of careful automation of the other instruments. But when I again returned to the project a few days later, Pianissimo wouldn't open. That seemed odd, since in total I was using only a small fraction of my available RAM.
Research lead me to discover that due to the way Pianissimo is coded, it requires -- uniquely, in my experience with VSTis -- 512 MB of contiguous RAM, meaning basically, it has to be the first VSTi loaded into a project, each time you reopen it. Meaning that before you save and close, you have to remove the other VSTis, and when you resume, add them back in. And in my case, redo the automation. How uniquely, totally dysfunctional. Projects are meant to be cumulative endeavours, not something you have to reset each time.
Turns out this has been a longstanding issue; see this 5 year old post by Brother Charles
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=10064
or the even older Amazon review
https://www.amazon.com/Acoustica-Pianis ... B001N9YIDM
and yet, to this day, if you go to the Pianissimo product page, there is no mention of this. There should be, because it's a fatal flaw (or put more kindly, a major feature). Yet it's something so obscure I'd never have thought to test, or even ask about. It's something you need to stumble upon, a classic gotcha. If I'd known about it at the outset, I never would have bought it, or even based a test project on it.
That's why it makes sense to ask around. My questions in my OP are about trying to learn about gotchas and deal-killers in advance, to save me time, because vendors don't always make things as clear as they should, nor can I think of every conceivable bug etc to ask about. It's therefore useful to ask semi-open-ended questions of users, as I've done here (which would seem to be a natural place to ask; don't quite understand the pusback from some of you) and elsewhere. It's just sensible caution.
Which in this case, for example, has flagged for me the need to check with Celemony whether my version of Melodyne will integrate with Mixcraft or not. If it doesn't, I will likely pass. Much faster for me to ask in advance than to install the demo of Mixcraft, read the manual, watch the video (which cannot be skimmed, so you have to watch it all and hope it answers your question).
So I don't apologise for these questions. Folks who dislike them are free to ignore them.