Magic Russ

That's right. Another thing that hastened my abandoning P5 was when Rapture Pro came out. There were a handful of patches which exceeded that limit on their own. With that and other VST developers abandoning 32 bit versions, P5 finally was starting to feel obsolete.

That's a good point. Rewire had never been part of my work flow so I didn't consider that possibility.

I did get a license for the Nomad stuff some BFs ago, just saying that some people might be disappointed to find there are a few things from Sonar that aren't usable in P5.

Unfortunately a few things were tied to SONAR, like the Blue Tubes plugins. What killed my joy with P5 was the memory limitations. You couldn't use Addictive Drums plus Scarbee Rickenbacker plus Kontakt Vintage Organs at the same time without crashing.

For soundscapes, Absynth will take you to places not many others can. If you want to write patches whose names sound like chapters of science fiction novels, Absynth is the one for you. Massive X is probably the most versatile of the ones you listed. It covers everything from analog leads to lush pads to modern dance sounds and crazy SFX sounds. It's not on your list, but if you are interested in 70s prog and 80s new wave, I would definitely recommend SynthMaster. Check out the sound demos of the Nori U. banks to see how well it covers sounds of early synth pioneers. And if you are interested in picking up one of those packs, they usually go on sale right before Black Friday.

Like but not quite. You buy, you get 12 months of updates, you keep the latest version that they updated in those 12 months. If you don't like the direction they are taking, you can always sit out until you feel they are addressing your needs.

Before the events of 2017, I might have been annoyed that SONAR wasn't higher, etc. However, after taking advantage of a few of the crossgrades offered at that time, I have discovered that every DAW has great potential, which of course includes the potential to frustrate me. Getting back to the poll, they include the pro/con sections of the reviews. As the Con for Bitwig, they listed "Ableton Live still casts a shadow...", Not only do I find that irrelevant , but there are a lot of legitimate cons they could have listed such as no support for REX files or the inability to audition MIDI clips. They also listed "no Mac version" as a con for Cakewalk, which I don't see as a drawback.

On Page 837, the manual says... However, when I try to attempt to do this, I see the "wrong way" icon whenever I drag the FX Chain Preset and the cursor is over the FX bin.

Flowstone was SynthMaker.

The price of a back issue of Computer Music Magazine.

So how is it?

Pay $199, get NADA? Probably not the best sales pitch.

Crystal is pretty old but still a classic. https://www.greenoak.com/crystal/dnld2.html Komplete Start has a nice selection https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bundles/komplete-start/included-products/

I don't have that kind of time anymore. Plus, the bugs they are fixing are usually not the ones I have.

Which ones? S-Gear is the only vst3 causing me problems.