Notion 4 Bundled Sounds Download

[elerouxx]

Are you still getting speeds this slow as of this morning? We have taken some measures to allow more bandwith per user so it should be increasing....

With all due respect, I think you are overseeing the big problem here.

No matter the speed, you designed the sound installer to require a long and stable time of high speed connection, otherwise the downloads start over.

I have downloaded some 16GB in two days, which is twice the data I should need to download, and yet I haven't be able to install a single byte of software. I'm just starting over, you know, to try luck this time.

This means that your download servers are overloaded with people like me, downloading gigas and gigas of bytes and starting over and over. This won't go after the first days or weeks - as more people buy the software, the servers will go more loaded, and no matter the speed improvements, it will be impossible to install the sounds by relying on this single huge download process.

So tell the sound installer to remember the files it has already downloaded, and update it! Or give us a link to the separate instrument files so we can download and install them as needed! please1

[themeworks]

Admin/Team,

Guys - I am lost here.

a) I am still trying to download the bundled sounds, now individually - which are just as slow. It says an hour+ for a 200MB file. This problem is clearly on your end, guys. I have 50MB/s broadband and can suck a 6GB HD movie in a few minutes. At this rate, instrument by instrument, it's going to take a vigilant (clicking) week to get all this. Not worth it. Send us a DVD.

b) The bigger problem is I try to load Notion 4 with just the expansion sounds I paid for. I have double clicked them, dragged them, etc -- and it says "This instrument is already installed". Yet - it does NOT move it into a sub-folder of Notion 4 in /Library/App Support/Notion, etc. NOR does it show up in the app itself as selectable. All instruments just stay grayed out and italicized.

So - while I am trying to download the bundled sounds redux - please tell us how to enable the expansion sounds we already have on disk - since none of the documented methods work.

A video on this (and one the new features of Notion 4) would be helpful. Right now, I am ready to rm -r ./* the whole thing. I have spent two days and nights trying to get a single note.

-C*

[Surfwhammy]

Can I go ahead and install Notion 4 without all the sounds? If so, are there certain sounds I must download for things to work, or do I need to download only sounds I plan on using? I doesn't seem feasible to download all of those individual instruments individually.

Answers to things like this will help clear matters up.

If you are doing digital music production on a Windows machine, then I cannot be much help, but if you are doing digital music production on the Mac, the answers to your questions are very simple and straightforward, and they are based on what I did . . .

(1) I downloaded the installer for the NOTION 4 application, which for the Mac is "Notion.dmg" and is approximately 79MB . . .

(2) I double-clicked the "Notion.dmg" file, which caused the icon a mobile SuperDrive to appear on the Mac OS X 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion) Desktop . . .

(3) Inside this SuperDrive icon, there was a nice graphic image of NOTION 4 on the left and the Mac OS X Application folder on the right with pictographic clues that the desired action was to drag the NOTION 4 graphic image on top of the Application folder icon and then to drop it, which I did . . .

(4) And as I recall, I had to click on "Agree" and perhaps a "Next" button to accept the license, and then in a few seconds NOTION 4 installed without asking me any questions or generally annoying me, which is the way installers work on the Mac . . .

(5) Once that was done, I located the newly installed NOTION 4 app and double-clicked it, and I recall logging-in or doing something that involved registering, except that maybe the application already was registered as part of making the purchase, so this step mostly was what one might describe accurately as being "automagical" . . .

(6) I did a few experiments with MachFive 3 (MOTU), and after a while I decided that I should download the NOTION 4 sampled sounds, which I did in Safari, since it is the web browser that Apple provides, hence is perfect. Normally, I use Firefox, but in this instance Safari is less prone to odd behaviors introduced by unpaid proletariat who are being exploited by the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, plus it does "resume" really well, and considering hurricane Sandy, I expected a few interruptions in the ISP connection, either locally, regionally, or nationally . . .

(7) The NOTION 4 sampled sounds download stopped several times, mostly because the local ISP is a bit flaky during the day, but when this happens Airport Extreme sends a message, and I know to switch to Safari and click on the "resume" button. Overall it took perhaps 6 to 8 hours, except that probably an hour or two of the time was not doing anything, becasue I zoned-out and forgot to check to see if I needed to click the "resume" button again . . .

THOUGHTS

For the most part, I do everything with VSTi virtual instruments rather than with the NOTION bundled sounds, so I did not really need the NOTION bundled sounds, but I got them anyway . . .

I installed the NOTION 4 application first, and then started using it immediately after it was registered or whatever, and everything worked very nicely . . .

The only possible "odd behavior" was that it might have used some of the settings from NOTION 3 to create NOTION 4 Preferences, because for example the reference tuning pitch in NOTION 4 on the Mac Pro here in the sound isolation studio was set to 440-Hz the first time I ran NOTION 4, and while this is the correct reference tuning pitch, it is not the default reference tuning pitch of NOTION, so it has to be set explicitly. Also the "Enable ReWire" option was checked, which again is not the default setting, unless Notion Music changed these two things, which is unlikely . . .

In particular, the "Enable ReWire" option being checked caused a bit of confusion when I got around to doing initial testing of ReWIre 3 in 64-bit mode, but I already knew about all the weird ReWire stuff, hence I knew what to do, which to "toggle" everything, where "toggle" refers to turning reversing it and then switching it back to what it was before it was reversed, where if the 'Enable ReWire" option is checked, then you uncheck it; quit NOTOIN 4; restart NOTION 4; and check (i.e., "set") the "Enable ReWire" option, which causes NOTION 4 to initialize ReWire 2 correctly . . .

Other than that, and always running in an account which has supreme Administrator permissions and privileges, I did not do anything strange or whatever . . .

SUMMARY

If you are on the Mac, then my experience is that you can install the NOTION 4 application first, but you will only be able to use VSTi virtual instruments, since there will be no NOTION 4 bundled sounds, because you are downloading the NOTION 4 bundled sounds and have not installed them yet . . .

It also is useful to know that NOTION 4 installs on the Mac by default as a 64-bit application, so you need 64-bit VSTi virtual instruments to use it without the NOTION 4 bundled sounds, although if you Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 (Vienna Symphony Library), then my understanding is that it will run on the same Mac as a "bridging" streaming audio server, where you can use Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 to host both 32-bit and 64-bit VSTi virtual instruments in a way that NOTION 4 running in 64-bit mode can use them, which I might do as an experiment, since I really like the IK Multimedia VSTi virtual instruments, but at present all of them are 32-bit only, although IK Multimed has posted a few replies to ongoing questions about "When will everything be 64-bits?" indicating that they are working on it and should have something in the not so distant future, which is all I know . . .

I planned for this, which among other things is the reason that I got Logic Pro 9 (Apple), Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments), and MachFive 3 (MOTU), all of which are 64-bits but will work in 32-bit mode if you set them specifically only to function as 32-bit stuff. Logic Pro 9 has a built-in "bridge", but it only uses Audio Units (AU) rather than VSTi virtual instruments, which is fine with me, since the iK Multimedia and MOTU virtual instruments support Apple's Audio Units (AU) technology, as well, which probably is the case for Kontakt5, but I have not checked it, so all I can do at the moment is guess . . .

In the effects plug-ins department, all the plug-ins I use have 64-bit versions, so everything already is fine there . . .

Basically, the only troublesome stuff is the IK Multimedia virtual instruments, and I can deal with it for a while by having FUN with MachFive 3 and Kontakt 5, which is fine with me . . .

I hope this helps to answer your questions . . .

Lots of FUN!

[Surfwhammy]

As a bit of follow-up, there was a major hurricane just a few days ago (Hurricane Sandy), and having been in a few hurricanes, I am not the least bit surprised that there are some interruptions in web traffic, but on the good side, once the infrastructure is rebuilt, broadband cable throughput becomes stellar, because all the telephone poles, cables, and so forth are new, which includes the various network infrastructure equipment . . .

There are ways to route web traffic around troublespots, but I think this might be part of the problem, at least in certain areas, really . . .

Really!

[themeworks]

Sorry, that's baloney. This is unrelated to any hurricane.

I run terabytes of clouds from coast to coast, not a problem.

NOW - my expansion sounds licenses are not recognized -- and I don't see any way to re-enter them.

This is slipping downhill fast.

[elerouxx]

...And sorry to insist on this. The Sound Installer is just plain dumb. I did a search and found the *.prox.zip files in a temporary download folder inside my computer. I can even open the zip files and install the .prox instruments it already downloaded. But If I run the Bundle Installer again, it just deletes and downloads again every single file, one by one!

And it does it in alphabetical order! So, I can install the acoustic guitar and the cellos right away, but I will have to wait the installer to download all again so I can, with lots of luck, install the violins!

I'm very sorry to be so upset, but this doesn't make sense.

[themeworks]

Well, 35 minutes at I've gotten 63MB of total 283MB of one instrument, which it tells me I have an hour and 36 minutes left.

I'd like a set of sound DVDs overnighted please. Thanks.

[elerouxx]

ha, just look at this...

Everytime the sounds installer is run, it creates a temporary folder inside AppData/Local/Temp (in windows 7).


So I now have SIX different folders created by the installer. Such as:

is-2R16A.tmp
(folder containing 4GB of zipped instruments, from Acoustic Guitar to Tam Tam)

is-P62K0.tmp
(folder containing about 2GB of zip files from Acoustic Guitar to Maracas)

is-2R16A.tmp
(folder containgin about 3 GB of files from Acoustic Guitar to Harp)

and so on! I have a total of 14 GB already downloaded in folders, from Acoustic Guitar to something!

[DaddyO]

I am running a PC on Windows 7 64 bit. 2.4 GHz machine 8 GB RAM. I have never had any problems downloading any software, at least when it comes to speeds like this. I downloaded Cinematic Strings, Sonar X2, VSL Special Edition.

I am quite sure this whole issue came as a surprise to you guys at Notion, and that every effort is being made to fix the problem. We just need to know in one, easy to find place, the status and content of official information on the subject.

[Surfwhammy]

Sorry, that's baloney. This is unrelated to any hurricane.

I run terabytes of clouds from coast to coast, not a problem.

NOW - my expansion sounds licenses are not recognized -- and I don't see any way to re-enter them.

This is slipping downhill fast.

You can check the current status of the world wide web at the following websites, where there clearly are problems in the US due to Hurricane Sandy, as well as on the West Coast due to recent earthquake activity, which ipso facto is the case when your house is disintegrated by a hurricane or landlines and underground fiber optic cables are destroyed or damaged . . .

Most of the big cloud players have clouds everywhere and they have contingency plans, but Hurricane Sandy was a massive meteorological event, and it has an impact in several ways, including the inability of some folks to get to work and so forth. It was sufficiently significant to close the stock markets for a few days, which also happened with major airports, which should be clues. And while clouds are very important, the network lines that connect them also are very important, where for underground cables water from hurricanes and seismic activity from earthquakes can disrupt or sever cables, and this also happens when large trees are uprooted, since over the years tree roots wrap around underground water, gas, and sewer pipes, and can be near underground fiber optic cables, so when a large tree falls, it can play havoc on underground utility infrastructure, and all this takes a while to repair or to replace . . .

[NOTE: At approximately 15:10 Mountain Standard Time (MST), the North American "Network Up" is operating at approximately 54 percent. And for reference, this is not the only website that monitors network traffic, but it is sufficient, and if you need more detailed data, then do some focused web searches, because there is plenty of readily available information from a variety of sources . . . ]

North America (Internet Traffic Report)

Global (Internet Traffic Report)

Real-Time Web Monitor (Akamai)

And this is one of the detailed reports on the consequences of Hurricane Sandy provided by Renesys . . .

Hurricane Sandy: Outage Animation (Renesys)

Lots of FUN!