Matthew Sorrels

I'm not sure I trust the CbB new plugins count. I'm am pretty happy about this update. Since I jumped on version 11 thinking I could use the generators inside CbB and was crushed when that wasn't included. While certainly not worth full price, I'm pretty sure I didn't pay all that much for it (less than $200). For that it's a pretty good deal. A ton of instruments and now MIDI generators. The only complaints I have left is the non-configurable install data directory and the loss of rewire (which I really never used but I hate losing things).

That's odd. MIDI Output is enabled on mine with the new version. But I have auto-plugin scanning on startup enabled. If you don't perhaps you need to do a manual scan to update the settings for the Reason plugin (since they changed with this release)?

Upgrades (on sale upgrades of course) is a great way to WUP AND get more plugins, since Waves doesn't require the product you are upgrading from be in WUP (another thing that isn't obvious). There are lots of upgrade paths for almost all the bundles.

Sampletank 4 crashes can often be a fault of video card drivers. Sampletank uses OpenGL for it's UI and that is controlled by your video card driver. The other common Sampletank problem is due to versions of the Microsoft C/C++ Runtime. This can be a bit of a tricky subject though. You may need to update a bunch of versions to get everything right. Sampletank may also be using some Intel math libraries (that are shared) which again can cause some issues (depending on what CPU you are using). (I seem to remember yelling at IK over this in the past but my memory on this is pretty hazy ). The solutions to those problems are a lot harder to pin down (developers are supposed to ship the libraries, there aren't practical stand alone installers for end users). Usually re-installing Sampletank should fix this.

WUP if you're re-selling. WUP if they add new things to a bundle (and it's cheaper than buying them). WUP if your OS changes require it (Mac users get this more than PC) WUP if you want/like to have all your plugins running the same version number. WUP if you need direct support. None of those reasons are the same as a subscription though. Now that the sudden V11 release is out of the way (due to the Mac OS upgrade) I am hoping there will be many years before V12 ships. You can still update plugins with the same major version number even without WUP (which I think a lot of people don't understand). Which means it's not a subscription.

Looking at the Wayback machine they seem to have evolved a few plans over the years. I see some rent-to-own plans ($149/month for 24 months for Mercury, $49/month for Platinum) last year. Before that they had some $9.99/month just rent Silver and $149 Mercury. This current Silver/Gold/Platinum at $6.99/$9.99/$19.99 is still a bit off I think (especially the yearly cost which is pretty close to what you can buy the packages outright for if you wait for a sale) I can't imagine any pro users seeing a Platinum subscription even with the additional 5 bonus plugins as being good enough for a one-off job. Maybe Horizon+5. The real problem of course is that unless you have the plugins day in and day out you'll never be good enough using them to warrant a spot subscription. I'm not sure I believe there is a market for plugins on demand. Certainly not among the non-pro users, but even professional users seem unlikely to swap in and out toolsets. Mostly they stick with the same handful of plugins, day in and day out. They may replace those pieces (for newer better plugins) but I'd bet they aren't often finding themselves needing some random Waves plugin out of the blue. And if that was to happen I doubt it's in Silver/Gold/Platinum. If Wave's wants to get into the subscription game they need to make a Mercury+Studio Classics+Inspire for $50/month. And that'll never happen since they want to claim Mercury is $7500 full retail.

They have had a subscription option for a while now, not sure these new terms are much better. I'd label this as "not a deal".

Kontakt 6.2.2 - 2020-02-17 FIXED Using Super Audio Cart by Impact Soundworks would cause hangs and crashes in certain cases FIXED The effect of having "Unwind Automation" On was reverted after saving and recalling a multi or host project, when the assignments were made through KSP FIXED There were still hangs and crashes when batch re-saving certain instruments FIXED Kontakt would crash when trying to load NKM files directly from the operating system (Finder / Explorer) FIXED Kontakt would crash when trying to load certain NKI files directly from the operating system (Finder / Explorer); only reproducible with NKIs from Kontakt Player libraries that were not activated on the affected device FIXED Overwriting an NKI through the "Save as..." menu did not work correctly on macOS 10.15 Catalina FIXED Kontakt could crash when adjusting LFO Retrigger across multiple groups FIXED Button hover states would not appear as expected in v6.2.0 and 6.2.1 when controls where overlapping FIXED After using the Creator Tools Instrument Editor on Windows, file paths would sometimes be corrupt when saving and recalling an NKI using Kontakt FIXED KSP Arrays loaded from NKA files were erroneously populated from fallback data on snapshot recall

I was told they would fix it too (in chat). Considering it has been broken since Wed I'm guessing they aren't actually in a rush. I really don't need it (I already have one of the Q25 keyboards I got years ago for free with something) but Studio One 4 Professional and the BlueCat plugins for $120 seemed like a reasonable deal.

You can't actually order these. The site will give you an "Order contains item(s) with unavailable or undeliverable status." when you go to checkout. Their chat agent says they aren't available. I know there is another post here of someone that managed to get them to fill it with phone calls but short of doing that this offer isn't really available.

Yeah I was surprised about the download option too. So I opened a chat with them before I ordered. The support rep said they just made the decision to start offering Diamond downloads this week. My upgrade to Diamond took about 3-4 hours to download and uncompress. But it took them more than a day to process the order (they have to do upgrades manually I guess), so don't do it expecting you'll be able to start downloading right away.

Unlike most of the East West sales this one includes upgrades (only on their site though). And they are now offering Hollywood Diamond as a download (so you save money on the hard drive and shipping). Was a good enough deal for me to finally upgrade from Hollywood Orchestral Gold to Diamond. It's downloading now, pretty quickly (I have Gigabit FiOS).

I really don't like the noise in the woodwinds and brass, my default mixing chain's compressor+limiter really make it sound like bacon sizzling and wheezing especially on the shorts. The strings are pretty nice though and a really good size. The sound design bits are actually better than most of the Albion's. If I could have demoed it, I would have skipped it. The woodwinds and brass are a major let down. The strings and the rest I think I will use though. With smart mixing I think you can use the woods and brass, but you have to keep the volume down a lot.

He confirmed it's 32-bit Windows only: https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7659944#p7659944

This post was from back in early Feb last year. Right now it is on sale at Audio Plugin Deals. Either as part of "the deal" or you can buy it separately. It's also in The Shop with an even lower price if you have reward credits. Deal $99.99 for just it or $174.99 for it and Spotlight Strings 4D https://audioplugin.deals/deal-1/ The Shop: $69.99 if you have Audio Plugin Deal Reward money: https://audioplugin.deals/virtuoso-ensemble-kirk-hunter-studios/

ACID Pro 9 is very good. They really did fix most of the problems version 8 had. I was happy enough with it I actually took them up on one of the sales for ACID Pro Next. Its additional features turned out to be sort of worthless though. Odd it looks like those features are going to be part of ACID Pro 10

Fixed that for you.

Workspaces hide menu items. Your early screenshots are using Basic and the last one is using Advanced.

I went looking and couldn't find any TVEC2 instruments in my KH Diamond. I have a bunch of TVEC1 and TVEC3 and TVEC4 but I couldn't actually find a TVEC2 instruments. I'm not sure this compatibility problem is that big a deal. The TVEC1,3,4 instruments seemed to work, though the details of the scripting could mean it looks fine but little things don't work right. Even with 80% off I don't think this closeout sale is all that great a deal really. The two instruments not on sale are (of course) the most interesting, and also very overpriced.

Any of the Kirk Hunter TVEC 2 instruments won't work on Kontakt 6. See this post for details: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/kirk-hunter-studios-20th-year-anniversary-sale-80-off-storewide.89803/

Flowstone is not Synthedit. They are in a similar class but different companies/developers. I think we have to wait for it to be available to know what it is, but I don't think I'd get excited about it just yet.

Software and virtual instruments, like games, songs, books, movies and any media really, are always at risk of becoming discontinued and unavailable. At least they are telling people in advance and giving you a chance to get them. Though I think they could be a lot more specific about their plans.

To be fair, if you are willing to wait for Christmas I'd imagine a Black Friday deal is possible. It may not be much better to this, but I'd bet it would be at least equal. If you really are short on cash and willing to wait 9-10 months this deal will come around again. But that's true for almost all deals these days, the age of the once in a lifetime deals may have passed.

From the email they sent out: "our entire store catalogue will officially be discontinued and no longer available"

KvR thread says it's Synthedit and not some new 64-bit version either, old buggy crashy 32-bit Synthedit. 1 Euro seems a bit high if that's true. https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=535754&start=150 Not sure why this is getting all this press right now...