Matthew Sorrels

Happy New Year everyone.

Strings of Winter doesn't show up as it's own instrument in the Kontakt Library when you have the Orchestra Complete. But all the content is in Orchestra Complete. You just don't don't get a separate thing in the Kontakt Library list. But that's actually a GOOD thing, since it means you can use those Strings Of Winter instruments along with your base Orchestra instruments and build even more awesome patches. If the two things were completely separate you couldn't mix them together.

Melda only gives limited credit for single plugins that are part of a bundle. So if you buy three or four plugins and then go to upgrade to the bundle you get credit for them, but it's based on 50% of the price of the plugins if you bought it from a vendor instead of direct or whatever you paid if you bought it direct and then 70% of that. Which makes their upgrades from singles to bundles not so great, since it involves a 30% slippage. In addition owning a bundle doesn't get any discount or credit on another bundle even if they contain a number of shared plugins. The only exception for this is the MComplete bundles which the other bundles can help offset the cost of. But if you own the Mastering Bundle the Mixing bundle doesn't come at a discount even though they share plugins, for example. These "rules" aren't the end of the world of course but it makes buying single plugins when what you really want is the bundle not so great a deal. Total cost is always better to jump straight to the bundle when they are 50% off. Their transfer fees also make it somewhat unpractical to try and sell your plugins.

https://www.shazam.com/ It's an app you can run on your phone. Apple bought them out last year I think. It uses a very interesting way to recognize music. You just have it listen to a little bit of a song and if it's in the database it will recognize it. Works great when you are out and hear something you like on the radio or some loud speaker. The math behind how it works is very interesting, I read some really long detailed piece on it a year or two ago. Now that Apple owns them I fully expect the Android version to be killed any minute.

To get the Arp price I thought someone on KvR said the coupon was actually in their Korg Shop account and not the coupon from the old Korg user site.

TLDR version: KORG has software versions of some of their stuff. They just added the Triton. They are charging way too much for all of it. And their upgrade offers are complex and confusing and result in no significant discounts. Best move: stand pat this isn't a good deal.

The coupon is for the $199 price. Without the coupon you can't even get that. It doesn't lower the price any more -- just allows access to the $199 price. Which I guess is a limited time special, since normally the upgrade from M1le is $299 Which of course is a problem since the whole bundle right now is on sale for $299. Which is most likely why they are offering the M1le users this deal. But for legacy owners without the Arp the normal upgrade price is $199 and they are sticking with that, no sale price. For users with the Arp they are using $149 and sticking with that.

To get the upgrade offer you have to add the "upgrade" product from https://korg.shop/software/korg-collection-series/upgrade-products.html There is one for people that have the collection with the Arp. One for people with the old Legacy no Arp. And one for people with M1le. Once you add it to you cart you can't checkout until you add the correct coupon code to match.

If you want to demo the Triton you have to install their software center, KORG Software Pass. When I did that it showed all my legacy stuff (I never bought the Arp version upgrade) and claimed there were updates to them. When clicking the update button it would download and open a zip, running the setups inside those zips seemed to make the KORG Software Pass think I had the current versions. But inside Cakewalk the plugin still has the older version number and not the number the Software Pass is showing. The demo of Triton is pretty good. The GUI has some size options (thank God) and it sounds pretty good with all the expansions. It might be a viable GM Midi replacement (it has a bunch of GM soundbanks). But the best upgrade the offer for owning only the older legacy is $199 for the Arp and the Triton. And that's a bit much. Half off and I'd do it.

I think there is an update to the plugin today, FIN-MICRO_win_128.exe. Maybe they fixed it? I certainly couldn't get a vocal out of it. Didn't see anything in any of the files it installs that could be a vocal either. Post a Cakewalk project using it that makes the vocal, I'd love to see it.

Shazam matches that vocal to "Hold On" by Elefant Man & Mister P & DJ Slam, about the 3:25 minute mark (On Amazon Music's copy) Here's a YouTube of it Is it from a vocal loop pack maybe?

My legacy order is stuck "pending" as well. But it's in my account and installed, so I'm not sure what's up with that. To get the coupon code for the upgrade I had to go to the old Korg site ( https://www.korguser.net ) My account there had the coupon code for getting the new upgrade including the Triton and the Arp. At least I think that's what it is, I didn't actually try it since I don't think the upgrade price is all that great ($199) I'm also really confused because I download the current versions of the legacy synths and the zip's have higher version numbers as part of the filenames than what it installs. If they drop the price to $99 or less I'd most likely do it.

Here's links to last 2 years bundles https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc19/ https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc18/ Those they are a lot bigger than 1gb. I think they have monthly give aways around 1GB, though I only have a few of them so perhaps they aren't doing it anymore.

https://sonniss.com/ They do an game audio bundle giveaway every year for GDC

Their website/shop is kind of "difficult" but this offer seems pretty decent if you have any interest in film making https://store.ascmag.com/product-p/sub_dig_12-issues.htm $9.99 for a year of digital American Cinematographer Plus you get full access to previous issues (to at least 2015, maybe more) and they can be downloaded as PDF files. Normally I guess this is $50/year. Their store shows two similar products (the one linked above) and another that looks the same but talks about a July 30, 2019 deadline. I ordered the one above. While I had some difficulty getting an account setup and working through all the password issues it definitely delivered (you might want to setup your account before you order, might go better than it did for me). The web version is a little wonky, to get to the archives you have to click on a suitcase looking button that says "access more functionality and features" then click on archives, but that only goes back to 2015. On this page https://theasc.com/your-account at the bottom it lists issues back to 2011 but I can't seem to read/access the PDF/digital version of anything before 2015. Full version of Kontakt isn't required. Crazy priced prime lens set and camera to match recommend.

The cash-back won't show up till Jan 3 their website says. So there is no way to be sure just yet. But it seems pretty likely, given how Waves have ran things in the past.

While I do think this may be a price error, technically they got $5 more than Abbey Road Studio 3 is actually worth (using $29 as the reference price for all things Waves). After playing with it a bit, I kind of think NX is the better product. What S3 changes vs NX doesn't seem to be a whole lot more for me. But I don't have the head tracker, so perhaps that changes things. I also haven't been impressed with the Waves ATH-50X headphone settings vs Sonarworks. But you can use both NX/S3 and Sonarworks at the same time (turning off the headphone EQ option in NX/S3) so that's all good. I do like NX when using headphones and S3 does seem to do the same head transfer trick. But if you have NX I'm not sure S3 brings a whole lot more to it really. If I had to pick one of the two, I think NX sounds more neutral. The monitor choice options in S3 I'm not sure help me all that much. Someone with much better ears might hear something I'm missing.

Now the real question -- on the Waves site the Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin after the HALF coupon is $64.50. Which would qualify for a $15 cash back offer on Jan 3. So will Wave's site credit the MF purchase at their price point or at what MF actually sold it for? Though I'm not really sure what good a $15 credit would do me. But if they give it that would make this a crazy good deal (assuming I could find a use for the $15).

Me too!

The reason this is so small on disc (and in ram too) is there is only one mic/mix. If you think about it, every single mic option means another set of all the samples. So two mics cost you 2x, 3 mics 3x, etc. They also don't have a ton of velocity layers nor a bunch of round robins. All of which would increase the disc (and memory) footprint. I think the disc requirements they list aren't to be added. Complete is 11.3 GB, the basic version is 6.36 GB

11.3 GB for Orchestra Complete for me.

I couldn't pass up AR Studio 3 for $34, with MF points I got it down to $11. lol I figure there is a fair chance they won't fulfill it though.

Says "performed by fourteen of London’s best strings players at Spitfire HQ" I don't think any of the Kontakt instruments were recorded at Spitfire HQ.

I built a Rube Goldberg-like system out of Python scripts to automate downloading and updating the Noiiz stuff, so I can keep up with what they release without any headaches. 402.1GB worth of Packs total so far. I also bought/won one of the lifetime subscriptions they offered during the Christmas charity auction event on KvR, so I guess I'm set till they go out of business. But at least the higher quality vocal libraries, you aren't going to find them on Noiiz. Function Loops/Black Octopus/ADSR all have much better vocal libraries (like the ones in this bundle). Those libraries do show up on Splice and a few other subscription libraries. If you only end up using a small handful of vocal loops the download limits on the subscription services aren't that bad really. If you want to collect loops (which I do) they aren't so good, though they all let you keep whatever you download. Which I don't see as quite as bad as a subscription that locks you out (Output Arcade for example).

And of course REQUIRES THE FULL VERSION OF KONTAKT lol