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What the heck, who am I (fooling). Got that sweet Spire after all. Thanks guys.

Every year it's getting worse - they are prematurely Black Fridaying all over us earlier and earlier. And then they won't leave... Well, I got news for them - the only Black Friday that matters in my world is this one: Although I hear that man-made monsters are indeed on the loose in a lot of retail stores across the coutry on that day.

I'm very, very, very happy with my purchase of Skybox Audio's Hammers + Waves - EP 145B I believe the intro price was about $49. Currently $79, but maybe back to $49 for BF? Simeon's video is available at: Let's Play The Legendary EP 145 B From Skybox Audio

Check your custom offers https://www.applied-acoustics.com/portal/offers/. They often give you 50% off the expansion paks on TOP of the 50% sale prices!

CLONE is a plugin for checking the mix in different rooms \ speakers (a la MixChecker from Audified). It is free with the coupon "BFFREE". https://www.thenatan.store/p/clone-mixcheker-plugin/

THREE WURLI SHOOTOUT -- ALL LESS THAN $35 USD each Most people at the forum probably realize by now that I'm a bit obsessed with Wurlis (Wurlitzer electric pianos). I have a long history with them and I've collected A LOT of Wurli sample libraries and plugins over the years. But this year I set out to buy a better Wurli library. Unfortunately, I bought a library that I find poor and one that I find very good. I wanted to do a shootout with those two plus an old Wurli library I have that many of us have had for a long time. Right now, during Black Friday pre-sales, you can by any of these libraries for under $35 USD. So I threw this together very quickly. I did a first take on the Wurli, electric guitar, bass and drums and just cut and pasted those MIDI files for the other two Wurli libraries, so you're hearing the identical MIDI file played by each Wurli library. I'm going to share what each of them are and I'll link to the best sale prices on each, but first I'd like you to listen without prejudice of knowing what each library is named. I'm playing the riff from "Where It's At" -- live, sloppily and from memory (all libraries you hear were played live), so I may have gotten the riff wrong; I just played basic guitar and bass parts that kept the groove; they're not based on the original song. What I would like you to pay close attention to are the tone and the dynamics of the Wurli libraries. A real Wurli sounds gorgeous when you play softly and has a bite to it when you play loudly. I don't think any of these three libraries do a perfect job of capturing that. But I find one does a very poor job of capturing that. Of course, that's my opinion. I would like you to judge with your own ears. I played electric guitar, bass and drum libraries (from a MIDI controller) along with the Wurlis so that you could hear the Wurlis in a mix. After we go through all three Wurli libraries with other instruments in a mix, I then let you hear just the Wurlis alone. The guitar, bass and drum kit sample libraries used are: Orange Tree Samples Evolution Texas Twang, Orange Tree Samples Evolution Vintage Violin Bass and drums ezDrummer Big Rock Drums played in SD2 (bought from our own ccLarry). I'll tell everyone the libraries used after we get some voting and -- hopefully -- other posts in, because I would prefer that you judge with your ears rather than from developer's or libraries' names.

Genre/Style: Modern Classical/Virtual Concerto Creative Vision for the Track: To write a 3 movement concerto featuring a virtual oboe (I’ve written 3 other concertos using a live soloist but the pandemic made that difficult so I wrote this one without a live player) Composition Details (Tempo, Key, Main Chords etc): Score included, you can analyze it if you want Main Instruments used: Vienna Symphonic Library Orchestral Cube and softsynths Zebra & Dune PLAY

Cyber Weeks 2022 Promotion https://www.steinberg.net/promotion/ Upgrade from the free Dorico SE to Dorico Elements 4 for $37.50 (USD). Download and activate the SE version and you are eligible for the upgrade. Dorico includes Halion Sonic SE for playback, as well as there is an optional playback template available for the free Spitfire BBCSO Discover library (as well as playback templates for BBCSO Core and Pro). Get Dorico SE here: https://www.steinberg.net/dorico/se/ Compare Dorico versions: https://www.steinberg.net/dorico/compare-editions/ Playback templates for Dorico: https://blog.dorico.com/playback-templates/

Well, we're enough posts down where people won't see this right away and my hope was that they'd judge for themselves and see my point. But I do realize that my playing is so poor that it doesn't illustrate my point as well as if I was a better player. I mainly just tried to play softly at the beginning and loudly a little later so that people could hear how each library reacts in terms of dynamics, because having grown up having a Wurli in our home, the dynamics of a Wurli are a HUGE part of what makes it great -- that it doesn't illustrate my intended point as well as just jamming on it would. Also, I paid for every library played and didn't approach any developers asking for freebies. I don't have any affiliate marketing relationships with any sample or plugin developers or any other financial relationships. These are my unfiltered, honest opinions. I rounded the stars up or down to what I felt most acccuarelty reflected my opinion of each library. THE FIRST LIBRARY / UNO: e-instruments Session Keys Electric W MY RATING: 3.5 - 4 / 5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ MY TAKE: This is a very good quality Wurli library that responds well dynamically. Also, this library a lot of controls that let you apply various effects and modify the sound of the included samples in useful and interesting ways. e-instruments put together a very good Wurli library and I've come to respect and trust the brand. Kudos to a quality sample developer. CURRENTLY ON SALE FOR $33.43 (the price I bought for the other day, thanks to @cclarry) https://www.bestservice.com/session_keys_electric_w.html THE SECOND LIBRARY / DOS: SoundPaint Wurli MY RATING: 1 / 5 / ⭐ MY TAKE: This is a very disappointing library that I initially enjoyed due to one heavily distorted patch (named aggressive something or another), but after my enthusiasm wore of for that and I paid attention to the quality of the samples, I realized that it's a pretty poor library that sounds as if it came out 20 years ago. Despite all of the hype about SoundPaint's 127 velocity layers, this sounds like one velocity layer. A giant part of the Wurli is that when you play it softly it has this tone I consider magically, almost like celeste. And when you slam the keys, it has bite to it. It's alive, like an acoustic piano. SoundPaint's library sounds like it's one velocity layer that was recorded with a player playing neither soft or loud, but somewhere in between, and when you play soft, it's just a lower volume of that recording and when you play loud, it's just a louder volume of that (and yes, I'm the son and brother of classically trained pianists/organists who took years of piano and organ lessons and can explain that using more technical language and lovely Italian words, but I opt for the simple jargon-free language that everyone can understand whether they formally studied music or are self taught). To put it in the purest, most direct language, I find SoundPaint's Wurli a total disappointment. It's only value for me is creating programs with other SoundPaint libraries I've bought. Doing this comparison and considering my several other SoundPaint libraries all being disappointing with only one exception -- the Bazantar -- I love that library, I am going to hit pause on buying anymore SoundPaint libraries and I apologize for those who might have bought the library due to my posting about it immediately after I purchased it. I was excited by one patch and thought for $20 USD it was awesome. But now, with e-instruments on sale for around $13 USD more, I would never recommend this library to anyone and would even go as far as recommending AGAINST buying it. Again, if you bought this library because of my past post, I am sincerely apologize. I wrote that post sincerely and I really should have spent more time with the library. That is part of why I did this post. Candidly, I find that SoundPaint is ridiculously overhyped and this library, the Soul Guitar library are especially poor. They certainly are not up to the same standards as a high quality KONTAKT library, not even close. My SampleTank libraries are better than both (yes, SampleTank 4's Wurli is better than SoundPaint's Wurli, IMO. I can add that if anyone wants me to and update this later this week. REGULAR PRICE $20 USD. When I looked at SoundPaint's website just now, I found that they removed the Wurli from their site, That was a good choice. I had informed them of problems with the library. My guess is that others have complained and probably returned the library after noticing the same problems (you can hear the sound sometimes spike in the linked shootout I did. Hopefully they can improve on more than just the technical problems and make this into a better library. As it stands, it's like using a Soundfont library. Add in the problems with the sound randomly spiking and it makes the library unusable, IMO. https://soundpaint.com/collections/keyboard THE THIRD LIBRARY / TRES: Scarbee 200A MY RATING: 3/5 ⭐⭐⭐ MY TAKE: Scarbee makes good libraries. But this library is probably 15 years old by now and I'm sure that today they could make a far better library. But it's a good library. Not as good as e-instruments Electric W and it lacks all of the effects and sample modification options of e-instruments Sessions Keys Electric W. ON SALE FOR $34.50 USD. IF you don't own the full version of KONTAKT, this uses the FREE KONTAKT Player, so it might be a good choice for those that don't own KONTAKT. https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/keys/scarbee-a200/

If a few more dollars can be coughed up Soniccouture's Broken Wurli can be had for $42 https://www.thomannmusic.com/soniccouture_broken_wurli.htm

“Chill” is a word that comes to mind with a number of Spire packs. They even have a category of preset packs in the Reveal store for Chill. I’m also a huge fan of Rapid. It sounds great! But like Avenger its preset packs are pricey. The Spire universe (it’s like a universe with so many preset packs) is way more affordable. The presets packs are pretty consistently full of very good sounds.

Yeah, this is when I realized I didn't have a lot of the new stuff!! Great prices too. I really like the sound of UA, always have.

I'd love to, but I'm on a tight budget and that's it for my Wurli spending for 2022. I'm not looking to be an influencer getting freebies. I prefer being able to be completely honest. My completely honest take is that one of these three libraries is greatly inferior to the other two. And I'll plainly state that the one that's inferior is SoundPaint's Wurli released this year. One of the other libraries is Scarbee's A200 originally released at least a decade ago and it blows away the SoundPaint Wurli, no contest. The best one, IMO, is the e-Instruments W. So those are the three I played, but I'm still not saying which is which. I'd like others to judge and then share the order I played each one.

Lovely. Now go try that Pianoteq Wurli

We do pass the project file location via the vst3 api and also another API. I'll have to check but Cakewalk itself doesn't create the melodyne sub folder. There must be some interop confusion. I can check with them..

Lee - with the zillion low cost preset packs - a wide range of styles are available with Spire, not just Trance. Sometimes I think of Spire as like having Vengeance Avenger-level amazing sounds - without all the out of control automation. Of course when I want all that pre-programmed out of control goodness I have Avenger or Dune. But to have great sounds at the fingertips and not need to turn off a bunch of automation, and at a very economical price, Spire always comes through for me with great sounds (and easily favoriteable presets). So I use it often.

Ultravox - Sleepwalk

R.E.M. - Letter Never Sent

Dang pwalpwal! You must be a lot of fun around a schoolyard! 🤣🤣🤣

Don't sleep on the preset packs, especially bundled. Fancy yourself some late 90s trance? Spire has got you covered.

So I got this as well as 3 extensions and I had no trouble authorising or downloading or whatever. One time, deleting the track BFD was on caused Studio One to crash (MBP M1 Pro, Rosetta) but I figured out how to avoid that (deactivating the instrument first). No further issues so far. This thing and especcially the Tama kit from the Modern Retro extension sounds so *****ing good that I pee myself a little every time I'm playing it. It's almost literally like playing the real kit. So much better than AD2 it's ridiculous. Worth every bit of trouble so far.

Ultimate Midi Plugin has announced the release of another update to its UChord MIDI effect that creates chord progression based on a chord table and rhythm editor. 70% off now. Version 1.6.5 adds slashed chords. More information: Ultimate Midi Plugin

Speaking of timing, mine was... not good enough in this case. I got distracted, and that PREBLACK10 code expired when the clock hit midnight (somewhere) on the 20th, so I missed it. On the bright side, that gives me another week or so to trawl current and upcoming deals before any product discount I'm tracking expires. And probably leads to better decisions overall. But I'll miss that ten percent!

Sound libraries are on sale too! 1/2 price with additional discount at JRR

Even sharper pricing via Thomann https://www.thomannmusic.com/soniccouture.html

Well, if you think about it, the only guaranteed way to know you have the best Wurli library is to buy all of them 🙂 I do like the fact there's a 140b in this Purgatory Creek collection, as I don't have one of those yet. I spent a fair bit of time comparing my Wurli libraries yesterday and realised what I don't like about the Broken Wurli is the mechanical noises so when I turn those down, it actually can end up sounding pretty good and surprisingly close to the e-Instruments one. But I still currently prefer the e-Instruments, mainly after watching an interesting comparison of some virtual Wurli's against an actual Wurli yesterday and then comparing those tones to the ones coming out of the libraries I already own. When I get the Broken Wurli closer to the tone of the Wurli in that video (by giving it some bass boost in the EQ), it readily distorts at high velocities. Whereas the e-Instruments one takes a bass boost more in its stride. I was testing them with some midi files, in particular Steely Dan's "Do It Again". Broken Wurli has a preset for Steely Dan's "Do It Again" and it doesn't really sound much like the tone used in the song to me. It took a lot of tweaking to get to a serviceable sound. I'm not really that interested in the sound design type presets in the e-instruments one either but it least the bread and butter stuff is totally serviceable without the need for tweaking. The default e-Instruments preset worked perfectly for Do It Again. I'm definitely going to be buying all of these Purgatory Creek libraries, and the VReeds and VTines from Acoustic Samples too. What I'm not sure about currently is whether I should try to get the sampled AcousticSamples libraries first, because at one point owners of the Wurlie library got 50% off VReeds and if that discount is still in place and stacks with BF pricing then it might be worth the extra expense. I obviously also need to get Keyscape. 🙂

I'm loving some of the demos of the Canterbury suitcase, and it will someday be mine. For now, I will have to do make do with some of the marginally less glorious-sounding Rhodes VIs I already have.

I'd completely forgotten about that and picked it up at the same time too, so thanks for the reminder!! I did think I'd end up with Phase Plant and here we are 🤣 Actually also had a Ghost Syndicate pack free along with another free one from Kilohearts. Info here: https://kilohearts.com/blog/sonoae_borealis_announcement Direct download link here: https://kilohearts.com/files/banks/sonoae_borealis.bank The Ghost Syndicate one is here: https://www.ghostsyndicate.net/product/flo-free-phase-plant-presets/ I didn't have Phase Plant, so not sure what they're like, but could be worth a download.

Yep

Well, in all honestly, its more like I don't sing at all, and my guitar playing is, well, Mrs. Husker is very glad for earphones....

Not specifically a BF sale, but the timing of this one evidently qualifies it as such. Udemy typically marks down courses to $9.99 USD throughout the year. Create an account and they will alert you to sales. No subscription required, and once you purchase a course, it remains in your account permanently and you will be notified of any updates to it, as well as any new courses being offered by the instructor.

I started a new project just for exploring all the new soundsets. 24 instances of Zebra so far - and this is one of the reasons I like Zebra - the project takes 3 seconds to load. btw, a rough count of all these patches comes to around 3,000. I reckon I'll have thoroughly explored them all just about the time Zebra3 is announced in 2025.

The Sabian Digital Vault looks pretty nice ($49 right now). It's on my short list because it includes cymbal brush samples.

I may be out on a limb here... but I would guess that most of us can agree that Maroon 5's Moves Like Jagger is a terrible song -- vapid lyrics, boring instrumentation, and lazy production. It is an archetype of overly-commercialized pop music. But then I heard the arrangement below from Project RnL. Some of the guys in this band are behind Beat Scholar. What an incredible difference! The song now has soul and passion. Its harmonically interesting. It changes from section to section. And they so wisely omitted the soul-cringing whistling intro from the original song. I'm grateful to these guys for replacing that song in my head with this amazing rendition. That feat alone is worth the $50 for Beat Scholar. Alas, they didn't change the awful lyrics.

$49 https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/57-Complete-Collection/8644-Rigid-Audio-Everything-Bundle

Yeah, I bought Jazz Noir and it's great. Didn't like the previews of Jazz & Funk. I don't think it's available at resellers. Neither is the Percussion extension that I'm desperate for.

I'm not sure of the value of nitpicking people's responses as you just did mine as you did to Larry on the day he took a break from the forum, but...He provided a specific example (i.e., "regarding some of Soniccouture's products, including the Broken Wurli. These are very old samples.") and that enabled me to provide a specific response with the included his example and a more general response with regard to older libraries that he didn't name.

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/synthesizer-v-vocaloid-haters-might-want-to-check-this.115973/post-5154145 There are lots of impressive demos on that thread. Will post a few more links when I have time.

Hopefully they still have the annual free pack selection this year.

Electro acoustic is deep ...

Larry just wanted to say thks cause you also post some computer related deals ... much appreciated homie !!

Triumph - Never Surrender

Novum, Abyss and Chop Suey are wonderful synths. Check them in that order.

Oh no, not a problem. I see the confusion here and it's already been addressed so no need to delve more into it. Yeah, Presonus aren't at all good at updating and/ or fixing bugs. I think it's because everything coded is outsourced. Every Time I've contacted support it's always the same. Thanks for the steps on recreating the bug. I've sent this to the development team and you should see it in the patch notes at some point bla bla bla. It took a year for the side-chain compensation bug to get fixed. From Studio One 5.0 to 5.2.1 that bug was just there, mad that sucked. Like Studio One 4 was a tank, never had issues, but then someone just started killing what made Studio One great. I honestly have no nope in Studio One now since Presonus merged with Fender. I could be wrong, but I've completed a Studio One survey recently and one of the questions was quite odd. The survey was asking about how you use Studio One and what main features do you use, but then suddenly asked, " Do you use a Fender Guitar" LOL. If I didn't have access to Sample One for a sampler, I think I honestly would be using Native Instruments Battery 4. It works and gets the job done.

Timing and luck counts for a lot with this stuff, doesn't it?! Sometimes it pays to jump quickly. That's not always the case and sometimes there's a better deal, but when it gets to some of these prices, that gets less and less likely. But the other big plus... I get to use it now 😃

I have it already - but a reminder some had interest in Broken Wurli and were waiting for a sale.

This is how to add sustain in the PRV:

And also working horizontal/vertical flip, stretch, duplicate commands for automation nodes.