PavlovsCat

This sounds really nice. I own a couple of Xperimenta Project's libraries and will surely buy more in the future. Just really great stuff, IMO, and some of the libraries are a great deal or a steal in the case of the recently released Minima freebie. I hope they/he (Flavio) do a solo cello in the near future. Besides the fact that I love cellos, Flavio seems like he would do a great job at a cello library.

I have a bunch of Sampletekk/Per's pianos, but I still haven't picked up Vertikal. I suppose now is the time. I'm a sucker for upright pianos.

On a related note, what an incredibly confused strategy to call their new line of software "The Collective" when they already have the "The Plugin Collective." I found this copy amusing, for marketing and branding professionals, this is basically like reading "The Onion": "A note for our loyal Plug-in Collective members. Plug-in Collective is a separate entity from The Collective, and will remain separate for the foreseeable future. We encourage all Plug-in Collective members to check out The Collective!"

Does anyone know anything about this developer? There's no info about them on the website and they only recently established social media accounts. They might be a talented new shop, but they also might not be. Does anyone have any insights they could share?

I have Studio One Pro 3 and am just starting to get back into using a DAW and have only been using Cakewalk. What are the specific features that those of you who prefer Studio One think makes it worth the money? I'm definitely interested if I find there's a compelling advantage to Studio One.

Well, FTR, I just used Apple as an example, because they're so familiar to everyone and they're an extremely successful brand (as I see this is getting politicized, I will clarify that I'm an Android user and even used to work for an Andrioid platofrm using mobile phone brand). I was merely explaining a very elementary business strategy concept. Apple, Google, Mercedes, Toyota, Nike --- very strong brands protect against deep discounting. It's literally what every brand aspires to. I realize Larry is reacting as a consumer that is ticked off that Presonus isn't discounting like they used to, and I wish they did too, but I am just trying to explain a basic business concept of why most very established brands want to protect against deep discounting. It's definitely not a rarity. Everyone who has been a business manager, brand manager or marketing manager is very familiar with the concepts. My key point is that it doesn't make a brand evil that they don't want to deep discount. But just because you don't understand a concept doesn't mean consumers are stupid or a company is bad. That is an illogical and unreasonable leap.

It's actually strategy 101 that when you have a strong brand you do not deep discount, as it can have a negative impact on a brand image. It's why you don't see Apple at 75% off sales. I agree as a consumer that I love seeing deep discounts, but when you manage a strong brand, you really don't want to engage in those practices and if you sell through a retail channel you have agreements to ensure your partners don't engage in deep discounts in order to protect your brand. Consider Waves or Izotope. Would any of us pay full retail price for their effects again? No. We've been trained to expect deep discounts and those brands are no longer able to sell to most DAW users at their full retail prices.

I haven't bought any of his libraries, but I'll always remember when a certain developer friend of mine was being attacked in a forum by one super abbrassive guy, the Indiginus developer stepped in and was just such a decent and fair person I really respected him. I know my friend Jay Asher uses his libraries and really likes them.

Over saturated in the market and on my hard drive! And yet I am sooo tempted by this. I really love the tone/character of this library.

I have sooo many acoustic piano sample libraries -- uprights and grand pianos -- I literally have at least a dozen commercial (paid) KONTAKT upright piano libraries and VSTs. It's getting ridiculous, but I've always really liked the tone of this library and figured I would pick it up someday. I'm a sucker for a humble upright piano. What to do...

As I disclosed, I've consulted to Orange Tree Samples, so you know my bias, but just as a fellow sample user, I strongly urge checking them out. For electric guitar libraries, I am especially in love with their Rock Standard, a Les Paul, Evolution Songwriter Acoustic Guitar and Evolution Flatpick 6 -- these guitars have just beautiful tone and the presets are superb (their mandolin library is also amazing, IMO). If you just watch their ten minute video on how to use the strumming engine, you'll see that you can chose to rely on presets or create any strumming idea you like for yourself. For customization, leads, the scripting and tone are second to none. Analyzing the guitar libraries, and I own a bunch, I do enjoy how you can use NI's strumming libraries and play a chord and choose a pattern -- it's super easy and I was doing that before I even watched a video, because it starts playing a pattern when you play a chord; but there's no customization because it uses loops. Whereas it's different in Evolution. But once you spend, I'd say, 20-30 minutes learning the Evolution system, you can come up with incredibly realistic leads, any strum you can imagine with a lot of different guitars such as a Les Paul, a Strat, a Telecaster, a Rickenbacker 12 string electric, various acoustics, mandolins, etc. The libraries are finding their way on final productions in ads, games, TV, movies, trailers...because they're that good. Now, I think Ample Sound also sounds incredibly realistic -- I think Orange Tree Samples and Ample Sounds are the most realistic guitar libraries on the market. So it largely comes down to determining your criteria and the scripting/usability/workflow that works best for you. I just think OTS is worth a serious look for anyone looking at guitar libraries, IMO. I use them in every song I do that features guitar. A review of some of the Evolution acoustic guitars: The review is decent, although I don't think the guy's playing really shows off the library very well. Just my opinion.

My email inbox is so overloaded, I really need reminders from cclarry to check it for stuff or I'll miss it! So, thanks again Larry!

I completely agree with Reid that it's preferable to have chords laid out for the right hand. While those of us who went through years of lessons are used to performing chords with our left hand and splitting up chords between both hands, keyboardists largely play chords with their right hands in band settings and a lot of self taught keyboardists are mainly used to playing bass notes in their left hand. To chris.r's point, when you're playing say a 9th, 11 or a complex chord in a band setting, it's common to not play all of the notes of complex chords and I would expect that the autochord functionality (scripting) should be able to figure those chords out. I've been playing guitar sample libraries going back to the 80s (the Roland U20 was one of my first synths with guitar samples), trying to create a realistic guitar sound on the keys (mainly for demos for original songs back then, as I always played in bands with guitars). One of the features I want in a guitar sample library / VST is autochord functionality -- the ability to play a chord phrased as a keyboardist would phrase it -- say a triad like D using the notes D-F#-A and have the library/VST have a script that phrases it the way a guitarist would play it. Back when Orange Tree Samples was starting out, I strongly urged Greg (the founder) that his library had that functionality. So I like that Jesus/ (the owner of Wavesfactory) has done autochord, but I agree with Reid, the setup of the chords on the left isn't ideal. The sound and feel of the strums in Strum Guitar sounds extremely similar to Native Instruments' Session libraries to my ears. That's not terrible, I find NI's Session libraries that came with KOMPLETE are fun, they just sound really canned, lacking emotion, to my ears --but that's a challenge common to these libraries when you stick with pre-programmed, or in the case of some of them like Session, pre-recorded loops and there's not much you can do about the feel in the recorded samples. From the video, I like this a lot better than UJam's VSTs (I own, I think 4 of them, but really don't use them), but it's not going to provide the kind of ability to make something my own the way Orange Tree Samples Evolution libraries do (DISCLOSURE: I've consulted to and am friends with Greg and had a good deal of input into the Evolution libraries; I'm also friends with Andrea from Pettinhouse but beyond loving these guys, I don't feel I've lost my objectivity and I disclose these relationships to be transparent). At this point, I think the most realistic/detailed guitar sample libraries / VSTs on the market are Orange Tree Samples Evolution line and Ample Sound's VSTs; I think it comes down to usability, scripting, tweakability and tone between those two for serious work. But for $50USD, I think this will appeal to a lot of users, especially when you want to quickly add some quick strums to a song and guitars aren't the focus of the song. Hmmm, years ago when I posted my opinion on guitar sample libraries a couple of developers I've established friendships with got ticked at me! But it's one of my favorite sample library categories, so it's hard not to comment on something I've invested so many years and time into. It's pretty much as big to me as drum libraries, and I used to be a working drummer years ago (I'm just a hobbyist musician today) -- I can talk drums and drum libraries for hours!

I completely agree that is a sleazy practice and it's generally wise to distrust a new dev who engages in such practices. FTR, the developer who owns Melda Productions regularly spammed KVR posing as VST users praising his VSTs back when he was starting out (and he eventually admitted doing so and stopped). Frankly, it caused me to avoid his VSTs, but he turned out to be a pretty talented dev. In this case, AnyDayLong has done a lot of really good drum libraries released by PastToFutureReverbs that many of us already own and the proof of the quality of his sample libraries was easy to see from his freebies. So, yes, those practices are a huge turnoff and should have been beneath him, but the quality of his libraries spoke for themselves. Again, I'm more prone to cut the guy some slack for those practices because he has been proven both talented and generous.

Yeah, I thought his posting under different identities pretending it wasn't him was odd. He clearly didn't realize that developers can freely post here. But he was always friendly and gave away some very good libraries, so it's not a big deal, IMO. I found it a bit of a shame he didn't realize that many of us -- including me -- greatly appreciate talented developers and appreciate the opportunity for direct communication with them. Hopefully he'll come around again after realizing it. And this is a total leap, but I wondered if he wasn't dealing with depression from some of the statements he made regarding staying motivated and how much encouragement meant. So, circling back to the posts pretending to not be himself, I'll cut him some slack and be grateful for the quality libraries he gave away for free.

Same.

Yeah, it seemed rather obvious that he was posting here under two different identities, but for some reason didn't want to acknowledge it was him. I personally greatly appreciate talented indie developers and he clearly has talent. I hope we hear more from him in the future. Hopefully, he'll see this thread and realize that he was appreciated.

As mysteriously as AnyDayLong arrived he has disappeared. The website and YouTube videos, poof! I did confirm that he was formerly with Past To Future Reverbs. He made some pretty cool sounding drum libraries. They weren't ultra detailed, but they had a really cool vibe. I always find it a bit sad to see small independent developers vanish, usually due to poor sales. I wish him the best. Maybe we'll see him again in the future.

Thanks so much, @InstrEd! I have watched some of Mike's videos and really find them extremely useful. He does a great job. I really like his teaching style.

Okay, first, thanks, InstEd for mentioning the arranger from Studio One, it is what I was looking for. The big question I have, is does Cakewalk offer a feature similar to Studio One's Arranger that I'm not aware of? For anyone else following along, this is a video for an older version of Studio One (3), but it goes over the Arranger feature.

Thanks, I just want to understand what the differences are and if people feel it's worth it, as now that I am starting to use Cakewalk, I can't help but be curious. I'll check into the features you were mentioning. One of the things I would like to be able to do more easily -- which may be easy to do in Cakewalk, I just haven't figured it out yet -- is to adjust the length of song sections or add song sections (e.g., add a bridge or a chorus, lengthen a verse or a chorus, etc). Just things that would make life easier when working on an original song. I tend to come up with a song from start to finish and then go back and make tweaks, and if I lay down say 12 multi-track parts on various instruments, it gets messy trying to say, lengthen a verse by 4 bars or insert a bridge after a chorus. So, I suppose workflow differences that addressed that area would be really valuable to me. One of the things that attracted me to Cakewalk is that it's easy to persuade fellow musician friends to collaborate in it, because they can download and install it free.

But what specifically are the features that makes Studio One Pro better? I'm just starting to use Cakewalk again after a long absence and I like it, but, of course, I'm interested in how the latest version of Studio One Pro compares, I mean, what does it do better that justifies the price difference?

I'm just starting to record music again after stopping for around 15 years. I was a Sonar user and it's actually been pretty easy to adapt to the current version of Cakewalk by Bandlab and it's great to see that they're actively supporting it. @cclarry -- and anyone else who's interested in responding -- how do you find it compares to Studio One (I remember when the previous Cakewalk owner announced they were stopping the business and I bought Studio One Pro 4 based on their offer in the previous Cakewalk forum, but I've never actually used it and consequently, never updated it)? As, like me, you play rock music, are there certain features in Studio One Pro you find worth the money? Thanks! Otherwise, I hope all is well and, I appreciate having you back. Your absence was very much felt here.

Same here. I figured, okay, so maybe Larry has changed things up a bit since his experience in Kentucky, posting about "cow phasers." Who am I to judge?

So your dreams were your ticket out. Nightmares are still dreams. Oh well, nice to have you back. And I like a bunch of America songs. My first concert was Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Trilogy was just released and a 12 year old version of me loved prog rock. Still do, I just don't live with anyone else who also does.