New Laptop acquired, old Toshiba died....

Wolf

Okay, this has been a long time coming. I bet this old machine is more than 15 years old. Had cracked screen hinges, a USB keyboard atop the original due to a coffee issue, and the last straws included USB/SD-card buss not acknowledging when devices were attached or removed for an extended time period, and the SmartOS telling us the HDD is going to fail. I did not get a BSOD, but it restarted into a black screen stating drive failure a few times. Restart always came up.
I'm so glad I saved all the important bits at the end of September.

It was a Win7/Office 2003 rig, and I ran various speaker designing software.
PCD7, RM3, WBCD5, Xsim, WT2, Omnimic, and Unibox.

I now own an ASUS TUF Win11 64bit I7 machine, 2TB SSD, 32G RAM, Nvidia RTX4060, and I put Office 2003 on it. I bought higher on specs to hopefully use this a good long time. This is mine, not shared with my wife as the previous unit was. BTW, she is getting a new Dell, yet to arrive.
Unibox works fine, Xsim and other stand-alone programs are good, but none of Jeff's suite will load. Acts like it is trying to recover the saved sheets, and then gives up and closes. Analysis Toolpack is installed, so that is not the issue. It just has to be an incompatibility issue this time.

What i still want...

1- I still want the series xover utility, and Xsim can do that, and I'm pretty sure VituixCad can too. Unfortunately, WinPCD does not support this.

2- I still want to be able to model the manufacturer curves to a specific baffle. I'm pretty sure VituixCad can do this. There is still the Blender for Excel, which would need to be updated to work on my machine. Unfortunately, it looks like my favored Response Modeler 3.0 is unlikely to be resurrected.

So, I have some options as to what I can do here on out....

I see that Productkeys has Office 2016 for less than $20 per PC install. This would be a good thing, and update to .xlsm usage over the previous .xls operations. I sorta need to do this part anyway. This would then allow me to use the PCD8/WBCD6 combo suite from 2019. It would also maybe allow usage of the Blender, and maybe Unibox since it still works on the software as I have it installed.
Is anyone else using the latest JeffB suites or does anyone have experience with ProductKeys?

Or, I could learn VituixCad.
If I wasn't so familiar with the old suite, this might not be such a huge step. I think I'll have to learn it before I get the next PC, or whatever else comes out to replace or surpass it. Xsim doesn't do everything the other 2 programs do without taking more measurements and/or creating more simulations. It is good for comparison and a circuit that PCD won't do.

I know some people feel VituixCAD is the penultimate currently, but being in the situation I'm in, I'm leaning towards getting Office 16 anyway. I do not want Microsoft 365.

If you computer savvy peeps have some advice, I'm listening...

jr@mac

It will take some getting used to the ribbon interface in modern Office. Nice machine.

dcibel

@Wolf said:
Or, I could learn VituixCad.

This. No better opportunity than the present to learn new tools. I haven't opened those old spreadsheets in years, they don't do anything that isn't done much better by VituixCAD. 10dB/div in Unibox with no ability to adjust it, is this the middle ages? If I ever do need the old spreadsheets, I have a VM with Office 2003 installed. With a new install, just make sure your security setting are set to run the macros, and stick with 32bit versions.

Of course, once you get going you will eventually find yourself wanting to upgrade from the old Omnimic as well to a proper 2 channel interface and XLR mic, otherwise accurate information in VituixCAD is basically limited to single axis of information just as Xsim.

Wolf

Thanks, JR! I have no idea what you mean by ribbon. I do use Excel at work, and likely an older version than the most recent. We are on Win10 there, so that helps. 11 feels a lot like 10.

Reid- That was the beauty of PCD. It could model off axis response, power response, and such within the program. It might not be a polar response plot or an actual measured off axis plot, but it would show you a lot in using it.
I'm also a guy that likes to check his own work, so having both present would help me learn the new one. If I can't model a box response without measurements I take, then planning for a design is not as easy, and I likely won't be able to get an idea of what a xover will look like before purchasing or acquiring drivers. Modeling a possible xover is or was part of the fun for me. Also being that, I don't look to purchase a new mic setup as such, except for maybe the Omnimic40k that is on the horizon. I'm just not really interested in doing something different than what has worked so well for me already.
Purchasing 16 would be for Word and Excel home usage as my wife needs it for her job too. It would not only be for speaker spreadsheets.

I am glad I used snapshots for jpgs of all I've done prior, as they are still accessible.

And, I really like Unibox. It is a powerful program, and usually meets my needs. It also has my box models saved in it from virtually all my projects. I just rename for each one. Archaic or old does not mean useless.

dcibel

@Wolf said:

Reid- That was the beauty of PCD. It could model off axis response, power response, and such within the program. It might not be a polar response plot or an actual measured off axis plot, but it would show you a lot in using it.

VituixCAD doesn't include this functionality as the standard workflow because it's woefully inaccurate, and I would even argue completely useless for tweeters without flat faceplates, waveguides and horns are a non-starter. You need a very smooth good DI of your speaker to get anything close to accurate results with that simulated off-axis stuff, which isn't the reality for most speakers. We have the ability to provide real world measured data for this off-axis analysis, and should consider it an significant improvement, not a limitation. Realistically, the functionality does exist in VituixCAD, but it's a bit clunky workflow, and still better than what PCD does when I compared the simulated data in VCAD and PCD to real world measurements, namely because this workflow will include diffraction effects at all angles, where PCD is just using a simple piston model with whatever single measurement data you provide.

This document may be of some use to you, with a clear disclaimer on accuracy on page 1.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j9leycXJNvUmYZxQNVqg8U13mMRHh8Iw/view?usp=sharing

dcibel

@Wolf said:
I really like Unibox. It is a powerful program, and usually meets my needs. It also has my box models saved in it from virtually all my projects. I just rename for each one. Archaic or old does not mean useless.

10dB/div graphs, simple inductance model, lacks ability to create overlays for direct comparison. It works but we can do better today with other free tools. VituixCAD driver database is just a CSV file (tab separated really), so it should not be too difficult to migrate from Unibox database or WBCD to VituixCAD with a bit of column reorganization.

Wolf

After searching for a bit, it appears you can't DL Office 16 from Microsoft any longer (stopped a month ago), but you can change your 365 install to 16-32, 16-64, 19, 2021, or vice versa- sort of.

I still have the old tower with win7, and could keep that around and offline, but why....

Wolf

Even if I get Office 2016, it looks like I don't have to uninstall Office 2003 to do so. It appears they can coexist on a recent Windows PC. This means Unibox will live on in use for me whether others like it or not.
One battle won, still fighting the war....
Looks like the Professional Plus and Pro licenses are for businesses only and not licensed for the consumer.
Still looking...

jhollander

I'll double check latter but I run PCD 8 and unibox on Office 2019.

Wolf

32 bit Office?
Thanks, John!

Ron_E

I've bought Windows 10 and MS Office from Kinguin. https://www.kinguin.net/ OS installs were can be a pain if you have to confirm the license by voice over the phone but you can register with your cell phone which is pretty painless. The problem with the voice method is you have to communicate long lines of info with a non English speaker who can't understand you.

jhollander

@Wolf said:
32 bit Office?
Thanks, John!

I'm running 64 bit Office 2019 on Win11 machine. Both PCD 8, Unibox, and the Blender run in compatibility mode. All are set as trusted files. There were a few Excel add ins I recall having to turn on. I'm running DATS and Omni Mic on a Win10 laptop.

Wolf

Cool, I don't need the 32bit install then. Thanks again, John!
I'll update as necessary...

DrewsBrews

I'm on win10 with Office 2021. I just now tried opening Response modeler 3.01. It opened but I got a few "compile error in hidden module" messages so I don't know how functional it actually is.

I've gone through Kinguin in the past too. It is legit. Companies buy blocks of licenses but don't use em all. Then companies like Kinguin buy up the unused licenses to resell. Pretty sure that is how it works.

Wolf

But I found you still have to be able to get the download of the software. That is where the 2016 issues arose for procurement. 2019 is easier to get.

If I open them in the current situation, it opens, states at the bottom 'recovering ____', and then gives up and closes.
Not sure what compatibility mode is though...

tktran

Ben,

I understand how having to change one's workflow or process is annoying, particularly as they've been working for you, for a long time.

But really, you only need about 2 weeks to get up speed with VituixCAD2. Why did I say 2 weeks?
Because that's the amount of time I had when I was locked in quarantine during Covid/2019, and went through the program.

I really concur with Reid. After using VituixCAD2, you'll really wonder why you didn't use it sooner.

It's daunting moving from something like a tried and trusted OS like Windows XP to Windows 10.

But if you can think of it another way, after using Windows XP for so long, do you really miss MS-DOS?

Wolf

It was a Win7 laptop, not XP. I never actually used DOS myself as my first PC was a tower with XP on it. Relatives had 3.1 and 95 at one time or another, but I was not adept at any of those and started most of my computer skill buildup after 1996 when I graduated high school. I'm only 45. Email and internet didn't come to me until the fall of 1996.

I don't understand why people are having a hard time with my thoughts here. I have to update my Office suite because the other is so old. So why not use what I know as an example and acid test when trying out the new software? I'm not saying I don't want to learn VituixCad at all, as I likely will eventually as things become so archaic that they will no longer work as designed. Just as Jeff did when designing his suite, I would like to have something familiar to compare to as I learn the adjacent replacement.

Steve_Lee

We all have different backgrounds and experiences, Wolf - this would explain the differences of perspective and I don't find you difficult to understand once I put those differences into perspective.

I came along with Commodore 64+, IBM DOS/IBM 5150 and then Microsoft DOS and then Win3.1 and then . . .

Everything evolves and changes.

I got sick of Microsoft and tried Linux and gave up on it and went back to Win/MS for the OS but not looking back on spreadsheets and other office apps at all.

And then I discovered DSP and quit trying to learn passives because I am now too old to learn/retain new stuff like I used to be able to do.

Wolf

My cousin had a Commodore 64, and I played Dig Dug, PacMan, Pong, Donkey Kong and others on it at about the age of 8 or 9. Then he had a Nintendo, and I played that too. Other than gaming systems like that, I didn't do more than described above.
My mom bought a word processor, (you remember the fancy electronic typewriters of the late 80s and 90s?) and I wrote my papers for language arts and such on that through high school. We were not a computer family until my sister went to college and bought one from my uncle. She had a Zip drive, remember those? I used that one for college papers, as well as the word processor, think it was a Win98 machine. My folks again do not have a computer, nor do they have cell phones. Unfortunately, you can't do much without either these days, especially in a hobby like ours.

jhollander

Never got Response Modeler to work past an old XP machine with office 2007. I still have Office 2007.

Wolf

Just finished with the dual Office 2019 64bit fiasco installations. What a pain that was, but it was required. It was easy on my Asus, but I had to run a cleanup utility on the Dell before it would accept the new installation. Kept throwing an error and telling me to restart before I ran it. Once I did that, it installed easily. Left 2003 and conversion utility on my ASUS, and it didn't care. I did delete 365 in both cases before the install, and OneDrive afterwards. When I first started up on the ASUS, somehow it was trying to back everything up to the cloud, and filled my 5G storage quickly, and wasn't easily allowing me to delete them back out. Got that sorted, and made sure it wouldn't do that agan.
Well what worked? RM3 and WBCD do not load, neither 5 or 6 edition of the box maker. Unibox still loads, and it seems both PCD7 and PCD8 load and are usable at the moment. I have not delved deep into the programs to see if everything works, but they both at the least open and values can be adjusted. Next is to DL the Blender and VituixCad.
To reiterate, these are currently valid:
Unibox
PCD7/8
fprawn graph tracer
WT2
Omnimic
Xsim
I figured it would be good to document what works to those that want to know. I'll keep yall posted...

6thplanet

So anyone have Omnimic working on Windows 11?

PWRRYD

Yes

Wolf

Yep, it works.

6thplanet

Ran in compatibility mode for win 8, seems to be working. Is this what you all are doing?

PWRRYD

I don't remember having to do anything with that.

Wolf

The latest software installs and runs on Win11 as it is.

Win8/Vista was junk and a lot did not work well with it. I guess that does not surprise me that it was weird with it.