PavlovsCat

@Fleer Every time I see you post "come to mama," I immediately think of blues legend Koko Taylor singing this song.

Thanks, gentlemen! I'll put Musical Sampling on my watch list. I do remember a thread about StraightAheadSamples, @Craig Fowler and their demos sound very compelling to my ears. I've just cut back on my spending and only buy during major sales. Clearly, there's no shortage of extremely talented developers out there. Thanks for helping me navigate through the pack to find the best ones, guys.

I never see many posts about this developer, and I only have one freebie they gave away some time ago (a trumpet for KONTAKT). But that freebie is really nice and I suspect this developer is top notch based upon that and the demos. Even though I'm not in the market for an oboe, the demos for this sound superb. I'd love to hear from those who own their libraries. Is this indeed a very talented developer that deserves more recognition, as I suspect is the case? How playable are their libraries? Do they have any libraries you'd strongly recommend we check out?

That post is awesome! Thanks for the laugh. And I think Fleer knows, we're laughing with him, not at him. I'm definitely #teamfleer.

Savage! But thanks. Fleer is a good guy who I find helpful and I do appreciate his advice. I also appreciate your very critical advice, which is probably closer to my own analytical nature -- with a lot less self editing! I tend to save the completely unedited takes for developers that engage in bad behavior. But I'm guessing over a couple of beers, you and I would have pretty similar savage takes!

I realize the idea behind it. But the out of tune nature and baked in reverb makes me think these libraries use cases are incredibly limited to maybe cinematic or games composers looking for the piano for texture,, but could you actually use them to play an actual song with chords, etc? I don't get the sense you can. Is that perception correct or incorrect? What do you like about them and what do you think they do well? Also, if you buy directly from the developer they're selling it for the same price and will give 100% of the sale towards the effort to help Ukraine from the Russian attacks. https://strixinstruments.com/pripyat-pianos/

The Preparato Piano prepared piano is superb. But if anyone is looking for the best free pianos for KONTAKT, SonicCouture's Hammersmith Free (works with the free KONTAKT Player) and 8Dio's 1928 Piano top that list and none of the piano libraries on the list linked above even come close to the quality and depth of those two.

Sure, you can always edit the original post to include that info. I edit my posts all the time -- usually after finding a typo or grammatical mistake! I need a good editor.

I also own Deep Solo Strings and bought this, but have yet to install it. 8Dio's customer support person explained the differences in the two libraries in a chat before I bought it. But it clearly sounds different and I believe the articulations are quite different. You can compare the articulations and if you want more information than that, I'd suggest using their chat. But I loved the sound in the demos.

I've bought libraries from Dream Audio Tools in the past and they're decent. 5 bucks is pretty hard to beat for what they're offering. For those unfamiliar with the developer, they make KONTAKT libraries. This library requires the full version of KONTAKT.

I have a mix of SDx and EZx, but the library I love the best lately is Custom Shop. I think it would work well for certain types of R&B and funk. The kits sound very different than everything else.

Yep. That's the major downside of Toontrack stuff. Absolutely top notch, but I'm not crazy about their prices. I have a few ezX for metal that I'm open to offers on if anyone's looking. But even then, Toontrack charges you $15USD for each library you sell.

I already own it, but it's great to see it at this price. It's my go-to acoustic drum plugin, my favorite by far and I have a bunch of KONTAKT acoustic drum libraries, and AD2 and most of their libraries, but nothing comes close to SD3. Highly recommended.

Wow, that's a crazy price. I just picked these up a few months ago. But I still haven't gotten around to installing my new SSD to download them.. The demos sound gorgeous to my ears. [DISCLOSURE: I've stated this a bunch of times, but just to be transparent, 8Dio is one of more than 3 dozen developers I've given consulting advice to over the years. Although I've only advised them on the SoundPaint brand, not 8Dio.]

Apparently our friend Larry sucks at keeping secrets! 😆

I have the e-instruments Wurli and think it's pretty good. I find it's greatest strengths are in how you can customize the sound with the GUI. Especially for the dead key sound (I think it's the unplugged Wurli key sound that they mix in -- which is what I love so much about the AcousticSamples Wurlie library demos). I've created my own presets turning up that dead key sound that I like more than their presets. But I'd say it's a library I'm really glad I bought. I also bought the 145B from SkyBox Audio which has slightly different characteristics than the 201A -- it's more pristine. I have a bunch of Rhodes libraries, with the Famous E being my favorite and I quite like the freebie Rhodes from Fractured Audio too. @jngnz This was the video that sold me on the W. I'd strongly recommend checking it out.

They're clearly a very talented group. I learned about Dan Keen from Pianobook, where he's given away some really nice libraries. Something tells me if I watch your video, it will be very hard to resist picking this up!

I love celestes, but I already own several celeste libraries I'm very fond of. The demo does sound beautiful and I think this developer has proven themselves to be a very talented, high quality shop based on tbeir freebies alone. Maybe I'll pick this up down the road. I'm sure it would be a nice addition to my collection. I'd love to hear from anyone who picks this up.

Get Reiya ROMpler by NN Audio for free, normally $24.95 US, via PLUGINOMAT. Expiry: April 17th. Here's a video of its presets: ➡️ https://pluginomat.com/product/reiya-by-nn-audio/?aff=stu FTR, I did search to see if anyone posted this and there were two threads for the plugin when it was on sale at APD a couple of years ago, but nothing recent and it wasn't free. Still, in the time it took me to do that search and write the post, Larry probably already posted it! FTR, I have no idea of this plugin is any good or not. I listened to a little of the demo audio in the video on my phone, which sounded interesting.

Great point, Brian. Thanks for making the point about compatibility. I'll try the demo before buying it.

I already have this installed, but somehow didn't realize it had a No Quarter based preset. I need to check that one out! Thanks for the post, @Starship Krupa!

I love the sound of his viola in the demos; it sounds absolutely gorgeous. I'd love to hear thoughts on its playability and scripting from anyone who owns it. I've had some DMs with the dev in the past and he seems like a really nice guy. What Bunker Samples libraries would folks here recommend?

I didn't ask @Greg Schlaepfer, but from the shape, I think that's a Fender Jaguar electric guitar. Although I'm sure all of you guitarists know it from the shape. In any event, I love the tone!

That's the reality developers that engage in deep discounting face. Once they discount a product 70 percent or more, it can be very difficult to convince the market that the full retail price is the true value of that library. I've been a Sampletekk customer for two decades and they (Per) have been superb and worthy of recommending. But, to your point, we've all been trained to buy during their seasonal sales where they offer massive discounts and now, even seeing this library for far less than the regular price of $149 US requiring the full version of KONTAKT gets a less than positive reaction that the price is too high. On the positive side, this version includes a free sample player (Sampletekk's $149 version requires the full version of KONTAKT). While I agree with Kitekrazy that KONTAKT is superior to HALion, I think HALion is decent and HALion Sonic 7 is a good option for free. I'm certain that the $69.99 US full retail price will be discounted in future sales promotions. If this went on sale at $50 US or less, I think it would be very worthy of consideration for those who don't own KONTAKT. Of course, even at that price point, there's a good deal of competition (e.g., grand piano libraries with free samplers such as NIs pianos on their 50% off sales, XLN's Addictive Keys Grand on sale, SoundPaint's regular priced piano libraries, etc.). On a separate note, if this is indeed the same quality as the KONTAKT version, the KONTAKT version is clearly not priced appropriately.

I'm contemplating getting this for voiceovers in videos. I'd love to get some opinions from the experienced / knowledgeable mixers in the group about Vox Ducker and other, similar plugins, that are worth exploring.