Mánibranðr Studios

I remembered when Iron Maiden got caught up in the loudness war, and that resulted in the worst-sounding albums they've made. It is a shame too, because I really loved how Rainmaker was composed.

I got myself a bunch of freebies, Beatmaker EDEN, Cabal 8 Full and Audio Assault Bulldozer.

Goes $98 12/08 11:59 PM PST
Requires Kontakt Full v5.5+

https://8dio.com/instrument/8dioboe-vst-au-aax-kontakt-instruments-samples/

I cannot figure out how to delete and clear ACT settings for a plugin, and manually assign each parameter to each knob and fader. It seems to assign knobs in a complete mess, and I cannot change the assignments to a specific knob or fader once it's set elsewhere. How do i fix this?

Hi there, I have the Arturia Keylab Essentials 49, and I could use help setting up ACT Control Surface. Now, i am not sure what t select for the input, since it has Arturia Keylab Essentials 49 and MIDIIN2 (Arturia Keylab Essential) as possible inputs. I selected MIDIIN2 for now, but the problem is that the ACT Control Surface interface only really allows you to set up 8 buttons at a time, and that leaves me with 1 knob, 1 fader and 4 buttons unassigned. What do?

2 hours ago, Kurre said:

I don't get the fanatism with kontakt?

To me it seems a bit lazy to use soundsamples...

It's useful for saving CPU cycles, since it frees up resources that would be used for sound generation.

I just assume that it requires Kontakt Full, unless mentioned otherwise.

I don't celebrate thanksgiving here, being from Asia and all, but I'll gladly accept free food and cheap plugins all the same

19 hours ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

Underscore's big problem is the UI/Script/GUI doesn't really lend itself to being productive unless you are the guy that made it.  SampleLogic instruments cover the same ground but are far more usable.  Same with Output.  But none of them are <$25.  Underscore has such a long history (it was announced as being worth $1000 way back in the dark ages with more than one forum flamefest over that claim) but the instrument itself is now kind of dated.

If you have to stay with the low priced Kontakt full instrument bracket I'd say anything by Rigid Audio or Audioifer will get you a far more usable instrument.  SEQui2R might be available cheaply.    The DRONAR stuff is very usable for underscore.  CL-Projects instruments on Kontakt Hub are also very usable in this space even if they don't have all the arp features like you'd get in a SampleLogic/Output instrument.

Perhaps this v1.6 version is better.  The v1.5 version of Underscore is one of the most confusing Kontakt instruments.  The sounds aren't bad, but if the GUI/script isn't very usable it's just too hard to get at the sounds.

Yeah, I see what you mean, though a concept like that for €20 is still an interesting prospect. I think I'll grab Atheos first tho. I'd love to grab the Riffendium series when they go on sale later on.

2 hours ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

No, no you wouldn't.  It's really not worth more than $10.  Maybe less.  It's vastly disappointing.

Oh? Do tell.

Also what would you recommend? 

I definitely would love to get my hands on _Underscore_

7 hours ago, Syphus said:

I'm glad you brought that up.  Listening to the samples (or it could have been the video), I was thinking that I was hearing distortion and on some patches the "rice krispies" as you described ( I believe ).  Maybe it was noise that they were adding to the patch.  I'm going to give another listen

We will see.  I have downloaded it and will play with it later this week.

 

Syphus

Yeah, at first I thought it was a some warm dirty saturation added for character, but after cycling through some presets, I found that the rise krispies effect persisted. The standalone mode also doesn't seem to recognize my SD-50 in ASIO mode.

Is it me or am I hearing rice krispies in the synth?

3 hours ago, cclarry said:

The won't show until Friday Reid...I got their email with the info

Mind dropping the info?

Yeah, I really don't like that IK Multimedia does it this way. It does seem anti-consumer, TBH.

This is a pretty nice piece of hardware, the portability is attractive.

I'd recommend AIR Music Tech plugins, they have a variety of really good virtual instruments that can help you get started with music production. You have Hybrid 3, which is a hybrid additive/subtractive synthesizer with a very deep learning curve, and a large palette of sonic possibilities, you also have Vacuum Vintage and Vacuum Pro which is an emulation of a hypothetical vintage synth running through vacuum tube circuits, XPand! 2 which is a 4 voice polyphonic ROMpler and had a bunch of great sounds, other plugins include Boom, Strike 2, DS 500, DB-33, Velvet, Mini-Grand, The Riser, Transfuser 2, Structure 2, Loom Classic and Loom 2. The best part is that they're all on sale right now at Plugin Boutique.

Another great synth you can get right now on sale is Sektor, which is a lot similar to Hybrid 3, but has a lot deeper customization options. Sektor is a synth that I have used extensively in my projects.

However, my absolute favourite synth in my arsenal has to be Ultra Analog VA-3. It may not be as extensive with the modulation and envelope capabilities as Serum, but there is something about having two synth engines per instance, each with ability to set up different modulation options puts this over the edge for me. Oh yeah, the the factory sound library is massive and awesome, and it's actually quite easy to get started making your own presets.

One more recommendation, and it's probably something only I would ever recommend, and it's the Roland Sound Canvas VA. Yeah, it's expensive at $125 and never goes on sale, but honestly, there is a charm to just loading it in a VST player like the Falcosoft Soundfont MIDI Player with loopMIDI and playing old DOS games with it as the sound engine. The SC-55 emulation on it is pretty decent, and it is also a very good no-frills GS ROMpler in its own right.

On 11/15/2019 at 10:26 PM, Notes_Norton said:

And as I said before, volume is a drug for musicians. Music just sounds better when it is loud.

Only up to a point. The mind naturally attenuates sound that is too soft compared to the peak volume of a song, when the noise is too loud, that gate/threshold becomes narrower and you lose effective dynamics.

Imagine being flashbanged, for a while, all you can see is various shades of white.

This is a no-brainer, if you don't have it, go grab it.

Grabbed Worra's Prophet and the Arp Solina, total no-brainer picks for me!

14 hours ago, Some Guy said:

IMO, the only decent VSCO2 option is the Kontakt port, which is quite well done.

But that requires full Kontakt.

So people on a budget are better off just buying something like GPO, instead... which is generally my first recommendation for Orchestral Instruments.  You kind of want a good base set that are all from the same package when starting out, otherwise, a lot of the instruments don't match and you have to start fiddling around to fake it...

VSCO has this sort of problem, although the compilers do a little work to attempt to overcome this.  Plus, it just doesn't sound good once you've heard a decent/good/great orchestral sample library.

Most stock samples that ship with DAWs sound better than VSCO.  You can get Halion Symphonic Orchestra for like $99, IIRC, and that will be far better.

There's also the Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra by Sonic Scores for $149.

Recently I have been just using Session Drummer 3, SSD5 Free and Druminator. I also end up just opening up Roland SCVA and exploring the included percussion kits.

It is possible that you're rubbing up against the limits of the data transfer speeds of your HDD, considering that most sample based instruments use DFD mode streaming. I'd recommend investing in a solid state drive, and migrating the sample collections to that drive.

This is also useful.

Oops, my finger slipped!