At 60 I am a newcomer to DAW recording, but have no problem reading and understanding install directions and user manuals. In case I am overlooking the obvious I must apologize but hope I may come here with this one question only: is there an unpack/install manual or directions sheet available for the new AD2 "New Year" package? I have no clue what to do with the .rar archives and I have not found a directions file in any of them. Again, I may be overlooking something but I really don't know where to start. Any tips or short explanation on how to correctly use the AD2 package highly welcome.

Thanks,

Aileron

 

Last edited: Apr 18, 2017

Hello, Aileron! Welcome to the Audio-hanky-panky forum.

First you have to realise that what you're asking is "I have bought an F-22 airplane and I don't know how to use it" type of thing. Do you know what I mean? Your question is actually quite complex but on the other hand many people here do all that almost with their eyes closed.

That means someone should write a very thorough post with 1) and 2)... 33) that's it! involved, but that won't be me. I can give you a short version and some advice:

1) extract the archive that ends with .rar
2) read the .nfo file and possibly leave it open for later usage
3) start installation by double clicking the setup.exe file that you extracted from the archive
4) follow the instructions in the .nfo

5) call me if that doesn't work. I do that for living.

People don't have to know all this complicated stuff, that's true, but it saves you a lot of time and money to try and learn it. Have somebody teach you all this if you can. That's the easiest way to learn. I do that too for living-teaching stuff from operating systems to DAWs, mixing and mastering.

Really, the best thing is to ask somebody in person to help you, or Google around and learn it yourself. That's how I've been learning stuff for almost 20 years. But you have to devote some serious time into learning and understanding these things if you want to have fun with them. Now back to that quoted sentence...

Best of luck! Cheers!

p.s. I'm 46 btw. been into electronic music since I was 16.

 

Hello Aileron and welcome.

I don't really use AD, but I do remember installing it successfully for a friend that had trouble. Send me a private message and I'll see if I can help, if our schedules match.

 

I'm not sure if you're on a mac or p.c. but first things you'll need if you're on a p.c is a program to unpack the files like winrar (7zip might work also)

Get that first and then highlight(left click and drag down to the last zip)
right click and use "extract here"

A setup and iso file will appear and the R2R folder.
You'll need isobuster(or an equivalent) for the .iso file but it might be able to be unpacked using winrar.
Unpack the .iso and place the folder wherever you like.
Open that folder and use the library placer,a dialogue will pop up and click o.k.
Run the setup and select the options you need(32bit/64bit/aax)
Go back to the R2R folder and run the keygen.
Hit get it and then generate,you'll see successfully registered at the bottom.Close that out.

You should be able to see it in your D.A.W.
If you get a demo mode message,it means the registration code isn't the same so you'll have to use the question mark icon on the plugin to find the i.d.Click on the ? then about Ad2 and you'll see serial on the bottom left,copy that to the keygen.Hit generate again.

Hope this helps(some)

 

To extract .rar archives, you need to install 3rd-party compression software. A free option is 7zip, but you can also get WinRAR. Once that's done, right click on the first .rar file, and select "Extract here". You'll get a folder with a ton of files like "r2r-5631.r21"... you want to find the one ending with the extension .rar, then right click and extract. In that folder, you'll find the installer. Install. Then you'll have to mount the .iso image with software like Daemon Tools... or alternatively, you can, using 7zip, right click and extract it as well. For further instructions, check R2R.txt in R2R folder. Basically copy contents to a suitable place on your HDD, then run AK_Library_Placer.exe

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2017

First thing to learn is to read the ".nfo" file, or any ".txt" file that comes with the release.
Probably it is the R2R.nfo or R2R.txt, or both in Your case.

After that You can install Your software, following the directions in the .nfo or .txt files, without loosing time and waiting for someone to respond.

If You don`t understand the directions, well, than ask

anyway, .nfo and .txt are Your product manuals with most of the time all the informations required to install the thing.

Concerning AD Drums, it consists of two parts:
1. The software that plays the samples (this is the small part)
2. The Library with all the samples (this is the big part)

- First You setup AD Drums (the software), and leave everything as default, just install it.
- Than You copy the folder with the Library, wherever You want (best on a different drive than Your Windows) .
- Open that folder that You copied, and inside You will find a file "Library placer" or something similar.
- Double click that file, and the installation is complete.
- ...to crack it, You have the keygen somewhere in the R2R folder

Good Luck! , and welcome

 

Wow! Overwhelmed by your kind and very helpful responses! Now my finger's numb from hitting "Like" so often in a row but that's OK.

Equally many thanks to all of you.

Aileron

 

Last edited: Apr 18, 2017

.nfo files (info files) are text files but by default on Windows they will open with Windows System Information Tool. You need to change the default program association. [Right click a .nfo file, choose "Open With" and select Notepad from the list. Then .nfos will open with Notepad]

RAR files are compressed files - good for the internet because they reduce the size of the download. Large files are compressed and split into a series of several RAR files - hence FILE.RAR, FILE.RAR01, FILE.RAR02, FILE.RAR03 etc.

But once downloaded, RARs need uncompressing - to get at the files. For this you need a rpogram - WinRar is the best - and free.

Put all the Rars in a folder. Find the first one: Either FILE.RAR or sometimes FILE.RAR01

Doubleclick/open the first RAR and it will open showing contents. Either "Select All" and drag to a new folder, or click EXTRACT and point to a folder location. Then you should have all the files. You can delete all the Rars once you're sure you have extracted the contents.

[Sometimes there are Rars inside Rars......but same deal]

If the download is very big, often it's of a DVD or CD. These come in the form of .ISO -- essentially a single file which is a virtual DVD or CD. These files need loading into a Virtual DVD player - for instance POWERISO. You need to setup a virtual DVD drive, then *mount* the ISO into it. Then it will appear in Win Explorer as a new DVD drive, which when opened will show you the contents of the virtual DVD as if it were a real one. Run "Setup.exe", whatever, and it is just as if you had the original CD/DVD in a real drive. [Once done, unmount the DVD, and remove the virtual drive ---back to how you started.] Don't delete the ISO - that's your "install disc". Keep it for next time. (Only delete the original RARs)

Sounds complicated, perhaps, but isn't.

Oh, if you're just starting out, another piece of advice: make a specific folder to put all your musical instrument VSTs and effects etc into. And put everything you install (for music) into it. Otherwise all the .dll's will end up all over the place and your DAW won't find them. Subfolders are fine too - the DAW will scan them all once you give it the root folder for your VSTs (instruments and effects).

.dll files are the important ones (and small ones). They contain things like synths, or reverbs, whatever. These all need to go in a place your DAW knows (you will have to tell it where this "plugin" folder is).

Most every Installer will ask you to tell it where this ("plugin") folder is during install. After installing when you run your DAW you need to "rescan" the plugin folder - so it picks up the "new" installed stuff.

Big programs with lots of data will ask for the plugin directory AND for a directory to store the data. The plugins go in your "plugin" folder (best to make it your fastest/root drive) and the DATA files can go anywhere (larger, slower drive usually).

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2017

Think of each part as a chest, within each chest there is a piece, collect all 10 pieces in a single folder and then double-click one of them and they should combine to form your treasure.

 

I can't really add much to whats been mentioned above Aileron, but if you find that you need any additional help on this or anything to do with your foray into the DAW world, feel free to drop me a line.......good luck......and enjoy the learning process.

 

Great stuff

 

A little word
I suggest you to keep the archives files in a safe HD in case you have to reinstall it (it will preserve space and Hard Disk by the same way) also to prevent some loss of the keygen - grateful to your anti-virus which can consider it as a virus (it's not the case for sure but it got almost the same binary signature) or you'll have to fully re-download it.

regards

 

Almost 51 here. Many kind peeps here indeed. Some additional info.
The thumb rule when dealing with multi rar collections (the proper name should be spanned rar), is you always extract the file which has the lowest digit extension or no digit at all. In some cases there is no plain ".rar" file. Instead there are just numbered rars like .rar01, .rar02 etc. Some other cases include part01.rar, part 02.rar etc. Another example should be .r01, .r02 etc. Always start from the lowest number rar or the one that has no number and you 'll be good to go. In very big collections you may see the "r" naming change to "s", for example there may be fifty "r" files and fifty "s" rar files. In these cases its again the same, only now you should take in consideration the letter as well, in the aforementioned example should be the r file with the lowest number or no number at all.
Happy new year

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2017

I forgot to mention, when you install winrar, the program automatically adds itself to the Windows shel, so you get a very handy right click menu when dealing with compressed file extensions like zip,rar,7zip etc. So right clicking a compressed file (with winrar installed) you may select to extract the archive in place (extract here option) or selecting extract files will bring a pop up explorer window where you can select where to put the extracted file(s). There more of course but these two are the most commonly used. The extract to "file name" option will create a new folder with the same name as the rar file you right clicked and extract the content there.
Btw, extracting archives (especially big collections), is always faster when the target folder is on a different hard disk. And this stands for ssd's as well.

 

Not necessarily, because compressed samples and such like can't be compressed more - in fact the .rar will often be bigger than a non-rared pile of jpegs or samples because it has to store the compression stuff along with the files. There's not much in it usually though - and exe's are small. If you store the Rars you can later find you need a password, or it's corrupt and you never knew, whatever, so I always extract and delete the rars. Boooooring. And make sure my AV isn't set to eat them up!

Because, yeah, as you say, anti-virus muck can eat them up if you are not careful. :D

I plugged a USB drive into a friend's machine and his AV started munching at my Exe's and stuff! Get off, you swine!!!

One thing worth remembering is that a single rar (or even a few) will copy much more quickly than an uncompressed folder containing like 10,000 midi files. Likwise an ISO image will copy/paste more quickly than an extracted one.

I have over a million midi files, incredibly. They don't take much space but take an eternity to move or copy. A rar of them all would move in seconds.

 

It always depends on what the source is. Some rar collections include backup files. A good example should be usenet content, which includes almost always .par and sfv files (some people call these proper release or distribution). Yes, pars are additions mbs to dl and you need an additional proggy installed like Quickpar but you are 99.9% guaranteed the content will be extracted even if some rar(s) is damaged. And of course good usenet clients do the par check,repair (if needed) and rar extraction automatically in the background. Some can even play the content (if its playable media like ie. a movie) while it's being downloaded.
So in terms of file corruption, these rar collections are very safe to keep, regarding you keep the pars and sfv files as well. It then boils down to what's your preference.
You can also embed repair files into a rar collection with winrar itself. This of course again will raise the number of mb/gb etc. of the collection.
Cheers

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2017

All this really helps me grasp the system and hie"rar"chy of the spanned archives making up the AD2 Holiday Edition. I've installed Windows XP and 7 hundreds of times over my PC years as well as many consecutive marks of Flight Simulator. Those big AD2 .rars were however a totally different matter on first sight but already, thanks to you guys, to organizedly unpack and install seems less daunting now than a day ago.

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2017

Unless you have your antivirus set to automatically delete what ever malicious file it finds (not smart), there is no harm done when your antivirus finds for example a keygen as malicious. It will be moved to your antivirus vault where you can easily retrieve it and also add it to your antivirus exceptions so it won't mess with it again. For example Avast's (popular av) tray right click menu, gives immediate access to its virus chest.
Btw, i BUY everything i use but i TEST everything before buying

 

Glad you managed how to do it. As many others offered as well, just drop me a pm and i will help if i have the time

 

I know, but I hadn't checked my mate had done the same. He hadn't. And it was set to delete the files not just quarantine. :D I got some back using recovery software but....sheesh. lol Now I always check when plugging into someone's PC.

Yeah, I was gonna mention PAR but ...... I thought I'd overdone it already. Pars are neat. The stuff you do when you're hungry, eh? ha

Like I say, personally I think it's wiser to extract everything and dump the rars. But either way works - just food for thought and to elucidate the points made by everyone already.

Good luck Aileron!