Craig Fowler

Just throwing this out there (and being mindful that resources our more finite for some of us than others), but something that hasn't been mentioned here is the fun factor. @PavlovsCat, your chops might never do PiB justice - mine won't either - but you can sit down and just get lost playing PiB in a way that isn't the case with most other piano VIs. @dumbquestions I haven't listened to those demos, but PiB and Noire are actually about as far apart as two piano VIs can get :-). Noire is very modern and malleable, whereas PiB is the best one-trick-pony you could hope for.

Infinitely

They sound pretty. But they'd sound much pretty if there was a viola to go with 'em...

BFD3 always sounded great, but I absolutely hated working with it and using the groove editor always felt like a chore. I was prepping my license to resell and somehow it managed to completely disappear from the registration system...I never even bothered to chase it up.

It works out pretty good if you want a couple of the high priced plugs. E.g., the new(ish) noise reduction plugins haven't gone below $175 each yet. For more run of the mill buys, it's ok but nowhere near no-brainer territory. Relatively few of their plugins hit $99 on sale, and it's usually the same ones over and over (e.g., Fender Tweed, Vocoder).

Seems like a good deal; I got VSM-3, Knifonium, and Soma. All things I probably don't need and wouldn't punt for at $29 a pop, but can justify at <$17 each as they might offer something a bit different from what I already have. Great time to pick up the Amek console if you don't have it.

Holding the line, eh @paulo? 🙂

Very helpful - thank you! I really like the sound of the C3 in the Xperimenta library, so I'm sure I'd love Chroma. Sigh!

Fair question, but the 224 is quite different in character from other reverbs! I prefer it over the Relab and UAD 480 releases.

Do you have Hammers & Waves as well? I've been interested in Chroma, but I can't justify it when I have Noire, Ascend, and Hammers & Waves that all play in the same sandbox!

"At the end of each trip, shoes and clothes were thrown away or thoroughly washed out taking into account the radiation contamination of the soil, asphalt and dust particles in the air. Unfortunately, radiation accumulates in the human body, summing up to the dose that has already been received and will not be removed from the body throughout life, some isotopes will be active for thousands of years, i.e. much later than our death. We shortened our lives to create a truly unique instrument." Yikes!!

That's a bummer...I've only heard good things about it before now! Fortunately, Skybox are also doing a piano day sale 🙂

Not helping!

Me too, @Christian Jones...it's still in my cart at the glitch price. But even though I'd save $600USD on it, I'm not sure I'd get my $80 worth given how rarely I'd find a use for it!

Fleer is right about Modern U being ideal for what you want. Given your 'vintage' tastes, though, I don't think Piano in Blue would be out of place in 60s rock sort of stuff or anything that's on the rawer side. It's one of my absolute favourite virtual instruments and I'd hate to be without it - I have objectively 'better' virtual pianos, but nothing that sounds or feels like PiB.

There's very little you can screw up with kits of this kind. Beyond a screwdriver, drill, and soldering iron, you shouldn't need much. I've put together probably a dozen kit guitars with parts from Warmoth, USACG (before they were bought out), and Musikraft. Apart from one, they've all turned out great - and the one that didn't was because I made poor choices in parts.

This is the first time I remember where you can use it on items priced on sale at $99. I toyed with getting Ravel for $49, but...I just don't like it! I'm curious about the C-Suite noise reducer though...could be a single-coil lover's dream!

His story's pretty tragic 'other Craig' IIRC...he'd been very mentally ill for decades. Based on his wiki entry I suspect had he been tried ten years later, it would have been for involuntary manslaughter rather than murder.

Sounds really good! Am jealous of your vocal and mixing skills!

FWIW, this is an excellent library and the smart delay function is a thing of wonder!

I've seen it down to $80-ish I think, but that may have been by stacking a coupon or something.

Think yourself lucky. I'm lacking the ability as well!

Can't speak to the Softube offerings here, but $11 sounds hard to go wrong! It's obviously a totally different level of cost, but I got the AKG BX-20 spring reverb from UAD a few years back, and that's something pretty special. I wouldn't get into the UAD eco-system purely to get it, but if/when they port it over to the UADx semi-native platform, it could be right up your alley.

The players are free/downloadable with the products you get that use them. I find the old "VI" player pretty fiddly, but the Synchron player and Synchron piano player are about the best hosts I've come across. Really powerful and fairly intuitive. They even look nice! I've become a bit of a VSL fanboy in the last 3 years or so, especially for pianos. Their jazz drums and upright bass sound brilliant too...I just wish they'd port them to the Synchron player because I can't usually be bothered to use them because of the old interface.

Absolutely! I love my pretty GUIs as much as the next person, but these are ridiculously underpriced for the sound and functionality they offer.