marcL

I always waited for the PSP 85 going on sale! Now they took it from the shop! 😟 I would have preferred the PSP 85 compared to the new knob-monster! 😄

Frankly, how many saturators and tape emulations are around now? I have more than 40 such plugins and most of them have much better control possibilities! And there are also freebies and cheap ones in my list. But YMMV!

They had much better freebies in the past! I pass!

Frankly, OTS may have great sample libraries, but unfortunately they're not in my price range! Thus I don't have an account!

Maybe you are right, but in the documentation they state that it is a "dynamics tool" and yes you can do some fine adjustments with the different modes and controls. With my short, rudimentary tests with drums and bass guitar I found that it is much easier with Trackspacer to achieve satisfying results. With VoxDucker it needs some more effort, some fine tuning, but it is also effective. And by the way I also tested with TB_Compressor v4 (I read that you also own it) and side chain input and IMO you can achieve almost the same result as with VoxDucker (with Drums and Bass by all means).

AFAIK Trackspacer is EQ-based where as VoxDucker is a sidechain compressor. But both concepts can have a great effect for reducing conflicts with instruments with concurrent frequencies. On the other hand I am convinced that there is no way to sail round manual frequency reduction with competing instruments to achieve a great mix! Yesterday I listened to the great mixes of St. Peppers and I said to me "Hey man, your own songs are too busy! There are many great tracks, but it's too much!" I think it all starts with the arrangement and those "ducker" tools maybe great, but in the end they do not really help to solve the problem! (But I have to admit that I purchased both, 'cause there are situations where they may help 😆).

+1 I think either they use a random system or they discriminate against some countries (EU)!

I have 9 Boz plugins and I got an email with the title "FREE Major Update", but in the contents it says update price is $10 for me! I am really tired of paying for fxxxing Apple updates!!!! I guess that the last years 50% of the update development for plugins has been invested in this one-sided stuff! And all the Windows users should pay for it! Also some new stuff has increased prices because of it! I hate APPLE (even don't eat any apples anymore)!!! I am also sure that there have been bugs, because of the A stuff!

In the 80s I purchased a TR-707 and I had it until 2011. Was great at that time, but today I prefer VSTi's! 😄

Absolutely true! 👍 With a new major version the risk is even higher that's what I wanted to say. I prefer to do it manually if required! But in most cases I avoid to do such changes in old projects. I've lost settings even without changing the plugin versions (and of course with the VST3 change, too 😆). You are a lucky one! 😉

E.g. can you be sure preset loading, outputs, volume, ... works as it did? The former was one issue with VST3 that happened with some plugins! I agree with you that the change of the instrument in templates may not be as critical as in old projects!

But such automatic replacement is always risky! It was the same with VST2 to VST3 replacement! If there is any interface, parameter, default or behavior change, it may fail somewhere and you may even not notice it in the first place!

There is some truth in your words! But on the other hand nearly all the libraries that I own or are interested in are still K5. There are not many K6 libraries on the market AFAIK. It seems NI is too zealous with Kontakt updates. The makers and most consumers are satisfied with version 5. This reminds me somehow of Apple/Mac. 😄

Most Kontakt libraries even don't need K6! So why should I install K7 Player or upgrade to K7 full? IMO wasted time at the moment!

That's what annoys me with Windows, the newer the edition the more registry settings are required to reset good old features! 😄 Somewhere I have noted a lengthy list of them! Lately when I was working on my W7 recording system I found it so comfortable that hovering over a couple of open Windows Explorers showed a path list instead of a couple of irritating thumbnails! And I have to agree with people on the web saying that in most cases the thumbnails don't represent a lot. But hurray, I found a registry setting to implement this on W10! 😆

I have some dozen synths with some 1000s of presets. So it takes hours to choose the "right" preset for my idea (it's a time-consuming pain). Why should I program my synth(s) then? (minor changes to the presets are exlucded to this declaration)

Most of the APD deals are not of my taste! And the only really good ones IMO were plugins that I already owned! 😆

^^^this, but Odin2 is one of the synths I really like to use, good sound! And I am also one of those preset users 😄!

I purchased Aurora Choir (Aria Sounds), 'cos I thought it would be a good deal. Yes, the price was/is fine, but the product seems to be not worth even $1! I worked a couple of hours on a choir passage (to no avail), but the bounced audio was totally out of sync! Absolutly unusable! (I have begun to align the syllables manually then with crossfades and bouncing, time-killing and mad!) First I noticed that the overall volume of the choir was too low. A look at the samples revealed that the close, ribbon and mid microphones were almost quiet (-45 to -50 dB). Only the room microphone has an acceptable, minor volume. Also, there are a lot of volume inconsistences in the samples, i.e. you have to play with velocities for a satisfying result (time-consuming). Another thing that worried me were terrible artifacts in some syllables at certain velocities. Not to forget that the installation was a nightmare, 'cos the package of 9 rar's could not be extracted with 7zip. After a lot of time I was successful with winrar. After 2 frustrating days I cannot recommend this instrument to anyone, but YMMV! Just be warned!

FX handling and quick group is so much improved now! A real game changer! You can now replace a specific FX module in several tracks with one step! Or clear the FX bin of several tracks at once ... 👍

Thanks a lot for the improved FX handling (replace, delete all, quick group)! This is a real time saver and so convenient, one of the best new features over the old Sonar! 👍

I have noticed that the quick group feature does not work if I change values with the mouse scroll wheel (volume, pan). If I do the same value change with mouse dragging, then it works as expected. Shouldn't it also work with the mouse wheel?

Sorry Peter, I didn't want to criticize your comparison work! It seems you have misunderstood my overhasty remark. I should have thought about before I write my comment! No, in the contrary I just wanted to mention how difficult it is to do a comparison generally! Many I listened to on Youtube were superficial IMHO.

The problem in all those VSTi comparisons is that the instruments do not behave the same at the same velocity levels, i.e. in a "real" comparison you would have to adjust the MIDI file for each instrument and then equal the loudness. This is very time consuming and also difficult! Otherwise the MIDI file may suit one instrument better than the others and that's not fair. E.g. in a drums comparison it maybe necessary that the overall kick velocity is quite different per vendor and even per drums pack! And so on. For non-percussion instruments there are also other things that must be considered in the MIDI file, such as behavior on note overlaps ...

These troubles with all the licensing stuff makes me sad! Everyone says they just want to protect their software, but in fact they do on the cost of the paying customers! The worst thing IMHO are those company specific authorization managers (like IK ...). That's why I weight the authorization very high for my choice of music software nowadays! First are offline keys and auth files! Second I like more and more iLok based authorization, because it is simple and clear to use and with a dongle it is easy to apply on offline systems also (just bought SSD5.5, smooth and fast authorization on all of my systems).