News
05 Jan 2012 - Major Site Update
HOST It has been two and a half years since I've made any changes or updates to the site - I've been too busy with other responsabilities to keep up with this hobby/project. I've had some content written and backed up, but now that I had some spare time I dove into it and belted out the following updates:
- New Site Skin and CMS -- I've updated the CMS that runs the site to my latest code/practices, and gave the skin a redo. The old site's red background was a bit harsh, I think this one looks a lot nicer. The border and shadow effects are now all drawn with CSS3. Users of legacy browsers (Internet Explorer 8 or lower) will not get these effects; to be brutally frank: OH WELL!. The site is still functional and reasonably attractive without the shadows and rounded corners - so long as it still works in those older browsers, that's the end of my support. It is no longer practical to be expected to bend over backwards to make websites that look 100% perfect in outdated/outmoded browsers.
- Reviews Section Added -- Broke up the software page into multiple subsections and added quick reviews of "The Sax Brothers" and "Reaper". Both of those I consider a "must have" for EWI USB users. The review of "The Sax Brothers" also has some youtube links of people playing it so you can hear what the software really sounds like.
- Quick PC Setup Guide -- just a simple/clear rundown of the order to install things, since the manual from Akai is a bit... vague on the topic. I also put in a small/generalized troubleshooting section and some helpful tips.
On the planning list I'm hoping to add a Forums to this by end of month as well. Orginally I was just going to throw up a stock forum skin slightly customized, but I'm holding off until I can sit down and write a 'proper' skin for my forum software of choice -- SMF.
13 Sep 2009 - Enhanced Aria Skin Version 1.1
A few bugs and mistakes were made in version 1 of my replacement skin which many users pointed out and I was able to fix fairly quickly. The biggest of these was a number of elements in the 'third voice' of the 'mixing' tab not showing up or rendering under other elements. (sloppy cut and paste job on my part - my bad!)
So be sure to grab the latest copy, and if you find any further bugs or have ideas to make Aria more useful, please use our contact form to pass them along.
Oh, the troubleshooting and first time user pages have been somewhat delayed but I will get to them as soon as I can.
05 Jun 2009 - Announcing an Enhanced Replacement Skin for Aria
After mulling over the possibilites of making Aria better given what I've learned of it's XML capabilites, I've finally put together a replacement skin for it that reduces the application size to make it netbook friendly, moves more commonly used controls like transpose to a more useful location, expanded the controls so you can see your current settings for all four instruments simultaneously, and a host of other improvements.
So be sure to check it out here, and if you have any ideas/suggestions feel free to use our contact form.
In other news, sometime over the next two weeks I'm going to be adding a troubleshooting page. The existing documentation doesn't cover a lot of the stuff you I had issues with at first, in particular just getting the thing working right using ASIO4ALL in the first place - since it seems that universally the stock ASIO drivers put out by the various sound card makers for Windows are rubbish.
