just about 30 years here, efnet #warez and eventually absu
the amount of work I had to put in to even get access to things kids will never understand

 

Best comment I read

 

Around 1995 we had an FTP site called MITOSIS it had everything but with 56kv2 modems it was slow but that's just the way it was

 

One of the first things I got was Cubase 3.5 back in 1998 through a BitTorrent (or maybe it was from a FTP server) download that took me 5 days if I remember correctly. I didn't have much stuff back then. I had a phase where I downloaded everything I could get when internet speeds got faster and I discovered the sister site. However for the last 10 years or so I only download stuff I really find interesting and still end up not using most of it for more than a couple of tracks and I eventually buy what I use regularly. I think having more hinders my creativity I just play around with it and never finishing a track. If I just use what I always use I will actually make music.

 

Smartest thing you could do right there. Im sure a lot of us in the beginning were like that, just grab everything because you never know!! Turns out you use almost NONE of it consistently. It turns out, it's a huge hinderance to just basic education even. Most folks nowadays can't even tell you what a compressor actually does, let alone use it properly, but they've got 200 different versions of it from different devs and slap them on everything because it's the 'cool thing' to do, and they're spending all of their time procrastinating because one more manufacturer's version is going to be released any day now that will solve the world's hunger problems and get rid of poverty...

But they still don't know what the threshold knob is even for..

 

The heck with warez, getting porn off dial-up bulletin boards, spending 4 hours to download a GIF that might be totally lame based on an 8 character file name... the struggle was real.

 

I have a friend that is exactly like this. I have explained, more times than I want to admit, how compressors work amongst many other things. He's always asking for presets and I told him many times that that doesn't make sense for compressors. He sees a new one and downloads that because somehow he hopes there will be a compressor or whatever else it is that will magically work for him.

 

I've been engineering for 30+ years and even though I understand compressors on some intellectual level they still seem like weird voodoo. I just wiggle the knobs until it sounds good. (I swear, half the time when I put Kramer Pie on a channel it sounds right on the default setting it opens up on.)

 

I run older software at least 10 years back, except for Reaper and some other applications for video and graphics.

I don't make money with this stuff it is purely a nostalgic effort. Looking back at 1998 and the first cd I burned brings back memories of recording with a 4X8X2 CDR-Writer

First CD 650 mb of Windows applications ( audio-graphics-system-network)
CDR blank media - Pacific Digital silver face CDR's with dark green dye on the recording surface
Auto run soft - Autoplay Menu Studio

And the rest is history...

 

I thought the topic was audio warez, but I do also know the real struggle of spending an hour to download a single jpg only to wait another 20 minutes to view it because my pc didn't have a math coprocessor. Or sneaking into the school computer lab with blank 5.25 disks to try to copy an apple II game before the librarian noticed I was stealing them. or being jealous my friends had a 300 baud modem for their commodore 64 so they could download games to put on cassette

 

This is how a hardware compressor works, the plugin version is literally an exact copy of the process, Nebula plugins the overwhelming best example of software based compressors ....You connect your computer to the rubber input valve (TEMU sells the best rubber hose to analog adapter in my opinion)(not a valve like tubes like as a "tube guitar amp", but you probably know that already 'cause you've been doing audio and stuff for like forever) and only then turn on the motor (if you connect it while already running you'll change the bit rate of the signal, a no no which introduces aliasing which is another discussion entirely). The sound that is input will now begin to become compacted, enabling you to stick it more easily into a mix as bigger is badder in this context (DM No Avenger for the best explanation, he's a fucking wiz, he has visualization thingys to explain sound and knows his way around a sine wave like nobody else). To get that miniaturized signal out of the compressor attach the midi output of the compressor to a free USB slot in your workstation.

There you go and free of charge! Don't you just love Audiosex!!!

 

Last edited: Oct 1, 2024

Old fart here as well, i guess my first audiowarez was from around 1995-96? (not counting c64 trackers from the 80s)
Funny thing is, nowadays i think i own 95% of what i actually use.
I used to hoard but now I use warez as an extended demo (and sometimes as a leaner less buggy version of apps i own)
Without the warez i would never have found what software to buy.

(And i have made hundreds of songs, some of them really rather good. Most of them really rather -meh.)

 

I started with trackers on Amiga, 1988. Then PC with AdLib Card first, then Gravis, Soundblaster etc...
My first livePA was using Cubase for Windows 3 (midi only) in 1992.
Farming warez since 87, being in a few release groups on Amiga and PC.
If I remember right we had a forum running before the sister site (with same admins ?) but cant remember its name ... One of its member (morz) started his own site as well ...
I produced a lot of tracks during the last 35 years including releases on a few labels. I remember those glorious Radium era when all those VST hype started with Neon, was beta tester for the first ReBirth, then the rise of R2R starting with Peace-Out ;-)
I feel pretty gratefull for being a witness of all those years of computer audio evolution.

 

I began with twilight (also called twin light) cds, lot of games and stuff, you can still find them in some archives.

Then began the mastering mania and find the best overburning device (mine was a yamaha), cdrwin sw and so on (it was necessary to overbun tw CDs).

I always look with sympathy at this past, but I wouldn't come back for its technology.
Goodbye modem days.

 

Software is forever too. You liked FM7 ? Just continue to use it ! You dont need to replace it with FM8 ...
Ok now pretty much all DAW are 64bits only but there are ways to use 32bits VST inside 64bits DAWS.
I still use ABSynth for exemple ...

I had a lot of hardware too and a few of them just die because of being old and degradation (Pro-One, Cr-78, DX-21, Tr-808 ...). Very expensive to fix ...
That's not a problem with software ...

 

As of using older beloved software, is there a way to boost the size of a GUI? I can hardly see anything at all when it is not scaled to modern standard.

 

do you have a link for this compressor? how many gigs is it?

 

I have changed numerous habits and even my core personality, since 2001 that i am following the scene.
If there is something that i still do religiously and still brings me joy like a kid under Christmas tree , is to check for new releases, mainly in sister site for the 12 years.
Before that it was AN, ed2k, ftp servers, DC++... oh boy.

Eternal gratitude for all groups, the legendary and the newest alike.
A word for the latter: You have a legacy to honor, that stretches beyond just cracking a code.
Ethics, consistency and quality as a habit, will give you a legendary status like R2R and H20 before them.

 

my father gave me HALF LIFE on a cd, it was the first burnt cd i ever recieved. and guess what, we could not start the game because the graphics card was so weak. good times

in school we had morpheous, kazaa and limewire