Mánibranðr Studios

Are these any good? I've been hearing things about their libraries being inconsistent in quality, and I am worried about dropping cash on something that may not be better than what I have.

9 hours ago, paulo said:

There is no compulsion to buy anything that NI sell. Nobody really  "needs" it and if the asking price becomes too much for the current marketplace at any given time they will either have to act accordingly or get used to not selling anything. In this sense, consumers already have all the power if only they would collectively use it. I thought you were smart enough to know full well that I am not talking here about people who are having difficulties making ends meet. This is a software forum and as such the discussion is about very non-essential items, but since you bring up the subject of those who are barely getting by then I would think that the cost of having some sample libraries isn't even close to being one of the things that keep them awake at night. Is anyone really thinking........hmmm, what to do, what to do...........I really like the look of Komplete Ultimate, but I can't afford to get that AND feed the kids.................what should I do,? It's all so confusing.

You're barking up the wrong tree there, because even if you may be right about it being non-essential. That doesn't mean that anti-consumerism shouldn't be pushed back against, and well, souring deals in the middle of a pandemic-induced economic recession is just not a smart idea.

2 hours ago, Bapu said:

I had been playing guitar for about 4 years when I was at a high school dance (as a freshman). My friends band was playing. Their bass player could not make it that night (sick or something). So he asked me to play bass on "Sunshine of Your Love" which was relatively new song.

I was ecstatic to hold that bass or any bass for the first time. 

To this day I cannot recall what make it was.

That was when I made the decision to switch to bass. Got myself a cheap knock off bass first. Oh what joy equal to holding that bass at the dance.

Then I was fortunate enough to acquire a non-working "slightly" hot 1965ish Fender P-Bass for $15USD. I opened it up and opened up my cheapo bass and figured out the wiring (that was corroded and broken off at the terminations) and got that bad boy working. So not only was it my first pro bass but first time working on the guts of any guitar. I was in heaven.

Every trade up (poor musician at the time) was also a joy.  I only had one disappointing bass then. My Gibson EB-0, which I immediately traded up for an EB-3. That was joy to play from the first time on. 

Then came the traded up to Rickebacker bass. Still not able to afford more than one bass. Another joy to hold.

Then came (big secret, please don't tell anyone) the tradeup to the Alembic Series I bass. Oh what joy. After 30 years of playing that bass exclusively I began to miss my other basses. So now that I could afford it, over time, I purchased a P-Bass, an EB-3 and Rick. I still get the same "first time" feeling when I play any of those including the Alembic.

Since then I've acquired a Squier Fretless Jazz Bass, a custom 5-String bass, a Kala Uke Bass, a Hofner "Beatle" bass and a Line 6 modeling bass. All give me a feeling of joy when I play them.

I am forever grateful for the blessings I have received in all my basses and guitars (a Strat, a Tele and a Line 6 JTV). I hoe I never take them for granted.

I have a Fender Jazz Bass, maybe one day I will pick that up for real beyond noodling for just a few minutes.

...and I feel that with every song I work on, I get better at playing on the keyboard. There were also times when I just fire up a standalone synth and play some the instruments for practice and to grind out some musical ideas. One of the things that really stood out to me is that prior to all this, I had absolutely no experience playing on keyboards, and yet playing it for the first time, it just felt like I had done this in a past life.

There's also the bittersweet memory that I flashbacked to of my abusive mother flat out saying no to helping to save up and helping to purchase a keyboard. I've always had a passion for music, and all this time I had been expressing it through manually entering notes on a sequencer, until now. It feels really good.

Does anyone here have had one of those moments when they held an instrument for the first time?

I mean, my HRT is doing me well, but I don't think my boobs are that big...

4 hours ago, Batwaffel said:

You may want to check your facts there. People aren't really spending less money. At least those who are buying plugins aren't spending less overall. Whether that changes, no one can say for sure. Most people are back to work for the moment.

What you're basically saying is that you believe it should be free or cheaper because a couple other companies have free players or put out cheaper products so your personal opinion is that it is the way the world is going so a company with no real competition at all should change their highly successful business model because people won't be willing to dump all that money into them that they've been dumping in for much longer even though their sales of Komplete are really strong and buying Kontakt offers them a cheaper way to get to the ultimate (no pun intended) goal of having it much cheaper.

Yah, okay there.

Yeah you're still leaving a lot of details out there, and since we've been at this for a while it's safe to assume bad faith here. You can keep believing that a company that is doing its layoff cycle, and a change of ownership, while making anti-consumer decisions for the sake of gaining more money, because they needed it is doing well. I am going to continue helping my colleagues get better deals for what they need.

I mean what is it, are they doing well enough that they do not need to change their model, or are they doing so poorly that they are resorting to pulling anti-consumer moves in order to squeeze more money out of prospective customers BeCaUsE dEvElOpMeNt Is ExPeNsIvE?

4 hours ago, paulo said:

C'mon........what we're talking about here are essentially toys. If a few people can't afford new toys for a while, it's hardly the end of the world. Might even be a good thing in the long run. If more than a few people stop buying the toys then the toy sellers will have to adjust their prices accordingly as demand (or lack of) always wins. Personally. I'm a little sick of hearing the....."I'm a poor (insert person type of choice) and because of Covid, I can't really afford the full price of (insert non-essential item of choice) so I should be able to get it cheaper. This seeming perception that everyone is entitled to have everything at a price that they can afford is ridiculous. Almost everyone apart from ppe/sign printers and perspex screen installers is being adversely affected in some way by this (insert description of choice) so a few muso types who have to make do for a while with their sub-standard sample libraries isn't really worth even thinking about.

And companies aren't entitled to more money out of a prospective customer's wallet than what the market can bear. If hearing the complaints of poor folk gets under your skin that much, then chances are, you're well off enough that worrying about making ends meet is something you'll never have to think about. You'll get over it in time.

On 8/19/2020 at 1:45 PM, Batwaffel said:

It's not "quitter talk", it's reality. Very few companies have moved to UVI; Virharmonic being the the most popular, Acousticsamples and VILabs. Most of the other companies have put out a single product that uses them.

Developing your own engine isn't something a whole lot of companies are willing to do. It takes time, lots of money, testing, more money, bug fixing before release, money. You get the point. On top of that, once released it can run into the same issues as companies like EastWest or Spitfire Audio have faced and take many years before they have a solid product (Play wasn't what I'd call a "good engine" till version 4). It can turn into a sinkhole for a lot of companies which is why they use engines put out by other companies. They are more able to focus on the sampling aspect which is what was intended from the start. 

The whole discussion about that is kind of off the original statement you made though because more people are willing to throw $130 at Kontakt during sales season than you think. It's been a sales model that has worked for them for quite some time now.

Look, you can save the excuses. The fact is, we're in a global pandemic, less people are able to afford things. Sure, people can throw in $130 during the summer sales, but if people have been using free libraries to get to that during the summer instead of having to pay $199, and that is suddenly taken away because they "need money" that is not a good look, and it is one that erodes consumer trust.

That was my point.

For the record, I already own the full version of Kontakt. This isn't about me, don't deign to make it about me.

4 hours ago, Batwaffel said:

I got the point. NI have been lacking in development for a long time now despite us screaming about the issues in plugins like Kontakt but they can do that because at the moment, there is no competition in the market. All we can really do is hope that changes but that also means that developers will have to adopt a new engine and scripting language which many are comfortable in right now with NI products so unless a ground breaking sampler comes out that people want to move to, they know they will keep raking in the money.

Falcon is a good option but barely any developers have moved to it. It also hovers around the $400 mark. Their sale on it isn't nearly as good as Kontakt, either and it's the only sampler out right now that I believe even comes close to Kontakt.

Best Service Engine is another option but right now, it's not even in the same league. This may change when Engine 3 comes out but again, you need to be able to convince developers to make the switch. 

So there are no good alternatives at the moment which is why nothing is going to change.

Now that's just quitter talk. I have been seeing more and more developers creating their own bespoke engines, and move to engines like UVI Workstation/Falcon. And keep in mind, the restriction to use 3rd party libraries with the free Workstation isn't as rough as with Kontakt Player and the whole demo thing.

And you know, sometimes, you don't really need the massive glut of features that Kontakt offers, and it would be better to use something simpler.

On 8/17/2020 at 2:10 PM, Batwaffel said:

The people who pay $400 for Kontakt are extremely minimal. Most people who look into buying it now get information on it first and one of the first things they are told is to wait for a sale. On top of that, NI's goal isn't to sell them Kontakt; it's to sell them Komplete. That is where their money is these days and again, people are told to wait for sales so that's what they do. I've never seen a single person in the past 5 years or so who paid full price for Komplete.

Again, you're missing the point. The point is that they are resting on their laurels, and this move is just going to remind producers that looking for alternatives is a good idea, actually.

12 hours ago, antler said:

I'm not entirely sure that lowering the price of Kontakt would make a huge difference to that market as a whole. I'm thinking people who make music for a living want a fairly diverse range of high quality instruments. Some Kontakt instruments can be fairly pricy: I've seen choirs between $300 - $500, a high quality suite of orchestral instruments would probably amount to more than $3000.

...and chopping off $150 from that gate would help get more people started. Far less people can afford $400 compared to $250.

(If people could just fart out $400, they'd be buying Omnisphere sooner than Kontakt anyways)

13 hours ago, Batwaffel said:

Not really. Their sales still go half off so while it might be a rocky start with grumbling people, they know that they have them by the smalls because if you want access to the mass amounts of libraries out there, you're going to have to buy it. It will be a while before Kontakt becomes unimportant even if a better sampler comes out. People will just suck it up and pay the $200 rather than the $130 or they will start pushing sales more on their own Player libraries to get people to crossgrade through that so they are still making money both ways.  AFAIK, you can still crossgrade from Player based libraries, just not the Sennheiser one anymore. Should find someone who can get Arcane and try it with that to see if it still works there.

The thing with people who do this for a living: we either know the tricks to get it cheaper already from being around the stuff and people so much and/or we still write it off on our taxes so there is much less pain in investing into higher priced tools.

This is less true this year than it was 5 years ago.

9 hours ago, Batwaffel said:

My belief would be that they are trying to get rid of the ability to crossgrade for free. They've known for a long time that people were doing that and I believe it was intentional for a while but the time has come that they likely want to end it. Especially as more high profile companies are bailing from their Kontakt engine and more samplers are coming out as competition for Kontakt which could cause a shift. They had no real competition for a long time, now we have UVI Workstation and Falcon, SINE, Whatever Spitfire is calling theirs these days, Engine 3 is right around the corner with a massive overhaul, I also have my suspicions we're going to hear about a new sampler by Spectrasonics soon... They are going to want to capitalise as much as possible at this point.

It looks like Embertone Arcane is still free but who knows how long that will last for.

But that will turn people off from sales.

If they want to stay competitive, they should be sweetening the deal for customers, not souring it. If the problem is that people are getting crossgrade pricing for free, the solution would be to keep the libraries Kontakt Player compatible, but also make it so that free Player libraries don't qualify for crossgrade pricing, and make the de-facto price for a full license of Kontakt $249, with crossgrade pricing reduced to $149.

The $399 price tag has been a point of contention and complaint for everyone I have known who makes music for a living, and it's what had been turning people off from NI on the whole, and pushing them to look for alternatives. If they want to win customers back, they should make their flagship products more affordable. Especially in this day and age when affording things is more difficult thanks to COVID shutting income down for a lot of people.

So I added it to my cart and it offered to include FrozenPlain's Phoenix for $15 more. So $20 later, I now have Amplitube SVX, Phoenix and Phoenix:Mirage!

Good times!

11 hours ago, John Kalabric said:

BassMIDIVsti is 64b.

Yeah but RGC does more than just SFZ, they also did synthesizers, and it would be nice to have them fixed up and re-released as a classics collection, much like how the Cakewalk Classic Effects Suite just got re-released with the latest update.

7 hours ago, aidan o driscoll said:

Try LOOPCLOUD ( Free month )  .. compare and contrast

 

That's exactly why I mentioned it.

It would be nice if someone is able to convert and update RGC's synths to work on modern DAWs without problems. So many headaches from using those 32-bit plugins would be gone.

To be fair, Bandlab could use a lot of improvement when it comes to how it previews, downloads and manages loops from the cloud. I'd like to be able to preview loops without having to download them, be able to choose lossless formats when I do decide to download, be able to batch download an entire pack, and decide where it downloads instead of it being hardcoded to download to the documents folder in the C : Drive.

3 minutes ago, aidan o driscoll said:

By that do you mean you are looking for an audio i/f with midi ports? AND you are looking for a controller keyboard?

 

I already have a controller keyboard, the Arturia Keylab Essentials 49.

On 8/9/2020 at 5:21 AM, aidan o driscoll said:

Installing 2020.08 now and will be trying. Why dont you do the same? I assume you be installing 2020.08 regardless anyway? So worst case is Beats crashes again and we have to wait a little further .. I think the developers are aware of this issue?

Yes they are, and I am gonna test it in a moment.

EDIT: Yes, it still crashes Cakewalk whenever I tried to load a program within it. Though I discovered an oddity. So earlier today, I installed the free Psytrance MPC Demo pack from Drum Depot, and I was able to load the programs under "Programs > Psytrance > Bass" but nothing else.

It should be noted that I am still running under Windows 7, so that might be a factor. Running the 08/2020 build of Cakewalk too. So I guess we still gotta wait?

I am in the market for an interface that will allow me to record hardware synths, use my mic for recording and voice chatting/streaming and recording a guitar, as well as handle the MIDI setup for talking to my HW synths. I had been using my SD-50 as an audio interface for a while, and I plan on retiring it so I can dedicate its function to being a MIDI tone generator module.

What would you recommend? I am looking at the Audiofuse series by Arturia, the AudioFuse studio seems to fit my needs, but the price....ouch. The 8pre also seems nice in terms of recording options and expandability, but it lacks any form of MIDI interfacing, or direct monitoring/loopback

The Hybrid Tool series is also on sale for a pretty low price. I'd get it if I am not filled to the gills with hybrid scoring options.

On 8/7/2020 at 3:59 AM, bayoubill said:

"LGBTQ+++++++++"  is not in my vocabulary and I have no idea what it means 

Basically people who are not straight, or don't identify with their birth *****.

In other news, hi, I am ace, trans and non-binary.

Okay so after some tweaking and messing about, I have figured out how to get the best experience with MPC Beats when using an Arturia Keylab series keyboard, I have the Keylab Essential 49, so I am not sure how well it will fare with other similar models.

• So the first step is to go to the MIDI Control Center and copy the DAW preset to the User templates section, and then in the copied preset, change all of the encoders to Relative #1. Make sure that the pads are all set to channel 10. It might be a good idea to also have a specific channel set for the faders and encoders too, though that is optional. My advice would be to hard-set the encoders and faders to channel 1.
• When done, save the template and store to one of the user preset slots.
• In MPC Beats, select the Arturia Keylab Essential mapping while you have the map select on the keyboard set to the preset slot.
• Then go to Edit>Preferences, and then go to MIDI/Sync and set Arturia Keylab/Essential to "Master", "Control", "Track" and then set the controller port, which is sometimes called "MIDIIN2" to "Control" and "Track". it should look something like this:
  
• Now go into the MIDI Learn panel and set the mappings for the pads and Q-Links.
• The final step here is important, because otherwise, you will get problems with keys colliding with some of the button assignments. So you know how most of the mappings are set to listen to events on either channel 1 or 10? Well, by default, you are in User Channel 1, and that is why you will get collisions where pressing A4 will accidentally undo instead of play a note. The great thing about MIDI channels in MPC Beats is that it doesn't care as long as you're inputting the notes in the right track. So what you need to do is set the User Channel on the keyboard to 2, or anything other than 1 or 10 by holding the "MIDI CH" button and pressing the key that is assigned to your desired user channel. Now all of your notes that you are playing from the keys are at Channel 2, and won't collide with the button assignments, which are on Channel 1.

Happy beatmaking!

Dorian Splash(D Dorian - 132 bpm).mp3

7 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

How about report it in Feedback Loop, to the Cakewalk developers, to the Akai developers, so they can get together and make it work? 😁

It seems like it's already been done, and I don't like waiting. So I'll just work around it, and frankly, committing to a sound helps the workflow better.

4 hours ago, Hillmy said:

Yes it is very unstable in Cakewalk and hardly even works. It works just fine in Reason 11 though.

I guess I'll just use it in standalone mode and import stems to Cakewalk