sarine

$99 on Tone2 site 24/7/365.

Got mine from AudioDeluxe for $71.40 at one point.

Although I don't like to say anything so exclusive and extreme, it's fair to say it is - in my opinion - my best-sounding synth. It's in almost every project, often two or three instances.

4 hours ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

I should be satisfied for a while.

6 minutes ago, Fleer said:

Yeah, could have made the demo more musical. But hey, maybe I’m the only one liking Lion

It's not "bad per-se," it just somehow gravitates towards harsh sounds, which is a bit of a surprise considering my experience with some of their effects (Sandman, SpecOps) has been mostly positive. It can definitely make good sounds too.

Good thing I don't need to investigate the possibility of purchasing this thing then, as I was on the lookout for a drum VST after MDrummer went bonkers. I've managed to narrow down the list of things not to do in order to keep it behaving, which is a bit stressful, but good enough, as I really don't want another drum sampler-sequencer.

I think it looks better than it sounds... Not sure if the filter sucks or the timbres demoed are just too thin to begin with, but on average it sounds a bit too much like Unfiltered Audio Lion.

Need to try myself before judging.

But damn I appreciate the layout and graphics design.

EDIT: It would've probably been smart to put a little effort into finding someone musical to demo the synth. Because that was bad. 3:56 made me grinch.

Larry be like:

Buy button doesn't work. Help, I need this, my faders are all maxed out!

16 hours ago, cclarry said:

For better or for worse, modern music often just doesn’t sound like our favorite classic hits. That’s true partly because zillions of classic records were recorded on vintage analog hardware with the artifacts, non-linearities, and tonal imperfections that the digital era tried so very hard to stomp out.

Just come to my studio you spoiled children of the digital age and I'll stomp them right back in, and as a true display of irreplaceable talent I'll do it inadvertently.

If I may crash this party and kick some gear around and piss on the floor? 🦂

With the possible exception of the BBC orchestra, I honestly think Spitfire's "instruments" are overprocessed/saturated aural garbage. I'm not a professional composer, but if I were, the only use I could think of for stuff like Albion-anything would be quick sketching/prototyping and checking with the commissioner to validate soundscape or compositional ideas on a very general level and in very broad strokes. From there on out, I would proceed to replace them with more expressive and controllable instruments to produce actual music instead of the melodic ambient noise that is Spitfire's "big" sound.

As a hobbyist, I can think even less uses for this stuff, and by less I mean exactly zero.

I also suspect that precisely the sort of "press C3 for epic" virtual "instruments" that the Spitfire products represent must have contributed to the dullness and unimaginativeness of contemporary film music. I'm confused and angered by how BORING the "EPIC" conveyor belt music presented in most current productions is, and why myself and approximately the rest of the world seem to disagree (or that's just what I assume). Music has become increasingly sophisticated noise.

Sorry about the rant, but not sorry, because F'em.

What happens if you run F'em into F'me. Will it F'itself?

With non-affiliate link.

22 minutes ago, Eusebio Rufian-Zilbermann said:

Strix Instruments are here not only to give you the experience of playing the soviet synthesizer but to immerse you into the actual atmosphere of the '80s. To do that, Strix Instruments went to the Chernobyl exclusion zone - the only place on Earth that doomed forever for 1986. Exploring the radioactive streets and buildings, Strix Instruments collected some special Impulse Responses collection for Convolution Reverb.

If I ever release a sample pack I'm going to say I had to go all the way down to Mariana Trench to record some deep-sea sub oscillations and sounds from undiscovered life forms, when it was all actually made in my tub with a rubber duck.

Why does everyone feel entitled to free upgrades of major versions after they paid $25? Maybe it's time to look in the mirror?

That said, running a sale on the previous version two weeks prior to releasing the next - without announcing the next version - would be a scumbag move and say a lot about how the company views you, the customer; you're a dumb, dead resource. Give them the same treatment!

You'd have to pay me to install a mountain of audio bloat on my measly 1TB drive. Don't get the appeal of these "all-in-one" shotgun assortments with 5% content that you'll actually end up using.

Very good video, but I'm not convinced this thing is much more capable than the combination of a lo-fi mic, hitting a xylophone with a cucumber, and the most basic sampler.

Glitchmachines' stuff is in this same category of "fun and useless" (to me) too.

If you're a pro SFX designer then I bet these tools pay for themselves.

Quote

Plugin Boutique Present VirtualCZ - Inspired by an Iconic Series of Digital Synthesizers Made in the 1980s

About the Synth

Many people fondly remember the CZ synths and they have become retro-classics that are highly sought after, having been used on countless techno, house, rave and synth-pop records in the late 80s and early 90s.

Many artists still use the CZ today for its unique sounds, including great pads and synth strings, screaming leads, big basses, weird FX, metallic percussion and above all RAVE ORGANS. Like many timeless synths, it has a unique sonic quality and will be a beneficial addition to anyone's synth collection.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/1158-VirtualCZ

Any opinions on this? I'm intrigued but for some reason the "PluginBoutique" brand doesn't inspire confidence.

What is the lowest / regular low price for this thing?

Bumping this because even if you weren't planning to buy his plugins, you might want to check out his (Gregory Scott) YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheHouseofKushTV/videos

He's very nice to listen to because he feels strongly what he talks about, and has the talent of using words to clearly express it, and transfer that feeling to you. He's not pacing through stuff trying to look efficient, but instead goes slow and gives you time to set into optimal mood and grok things. Recommended with a glass of wine and some knobs at a hand's reach.

Some picks:

Dial your KICK and BASS Faster & EASIER Than Ever!

Compressor Designer GEEKS OUT on DRUM COMPRESSION!

STOP sweeping the EQ, train your EARS to KNOW frequencies!

DON'T Listen to What You're Mixing!

3 minutes ago, TheSteven said:

If adding more operators was the magic formula to sonic nirvana everyone & their mom would have added it to their cupcakes ages ago...

I think all these extra operators are there just for the flex. That and perhaps for adding transients, resonance or more straight-forward harmonics construction e.g. in order to emulate real instruments, so you can say you did this in FM when in fact you're simply summing oscillators together because why not, I've got eleventy independent operators with envelopes, effect chains and the everything. Who needs modulation?  Then it can be marketed as beginner-friendly FM. 🙂  Good luck trying to construct a modulation matrix in which going from 4-op or 6-op to 11-op actually upscales the quality of the resultant soundscape in proportion to the number of operators used. I'm going to predict endless variations on garbled  mess so ugly that it takes a next-gen CPU to produce.

There are plenty of good FM synths, but I still want to punch the developer everytime something as simple and useful as an oscilloscope is omitted. NI FM8 is one of my favorites, but the UI is not very pleasant to work with. However, sometimes barely tolerable will be enough.

Most likely going to get this at a sane price (-50% maybe) if the sound is good and the UI half-decent. I hope it's a nicer experience than that other dawrky thing they did.

90-day free trial apparently, which should actually be plenty.

2 hours ago, antler said:

This is a public forum open to everyone

Well said!

5 minutes ago, Barrie said:

They expired yesterday.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Let's not worry, we can always not buy stuff this time around.

13 minutes ago, Piotr said:

Dobn't worry Frank, we can always not to buy this time anything

😆 GTFO 🤣

Looking for a $25 voucher...

4 hours ago, mibby said:

Occasionally you're lucky to find decent quality at a good price. That's different than "cheap"...   😉  

I think my AKG K702 are "decent" (as in not bad, albeit not good either)... Are these $44 on par with those?

I bought them like, I don't know, 15 years ago. I've dropped them on the floor, tripped on the cable a hundred times, until one channel went out and I got a new pair of Philips Fidelio X2 to replace them. Used those for two years or so, but only because I was too lazy to fix the AKG's which were clearly superior. So I eventually got around to fixing them, destroying the casing in the process because I was too lazy(TM) to look at disassembly instructions, with bare wires and solder exposed on the side, with the headband broken at every joint, rubberband stretched out... The padding on the headband was so uncomfortable that I had to tape a sock around it to increase comfort to human levels. The ear cushions are so worn out I'm sure it negatively affects the acoustics, so replacing them is years and years overdue, and still can't be arsed you-know-why. I must say everything except the sound and mini-XLR plug sucks about these headphones. The build quality is absolutely terrible.

But I would never swap them for an inferior sounding pair, no matter how "good of a deal" it was. I'm just a bit baffled that on a forum like this you would find one person on the hunt for a pair of [less than] "decent" headphones. Or maybe these are a sleeper and I just don't know.

Let's all throw thousands of dollars at plugins and then buy cheap headphones because they were cheap.