lawajava

Kontakt 7 has been sluggish for me for months to load stand-alone or in the DAW.  

Scale highlighting and scale coloring in Note Editor!  I requested that over and over again and now it’s there!  I am excited!  This is going to be great!!!

Mute/solo link between folder tracks and linked busses!!  That’s a plus!  Yay!

Rapid is really good. Pricey. But occasionally there are sales for the expansions.  I use it often.

As Avenger has so many capabilities it stands out as the one that blows you away when you select some of the sequence presets.  I guess Dune 3 has that aspect as well.  But Avenger has a ridiculous library of expansions available - all high quality.

As @Fleer noted, the dedicated single synth sounds of other products that also have high, high quality can be easier to keep your creative concentration - or fit to the song you want to make.

For song starters Avenger can generate some great ideas with its strong collection of layered sounds within presets.

Just grabbed the (on sale and new) Trance and House presets for Ana 2.  Worthy additions!  Favorited a bunch.   Ana 2 is solid but doesn’t have that much support.

Spire is my first choice when thinking of a cool synth sound.

Avenger is top shelf. The sound designers knock it out of the park.  A bit overpowered, but it can easily be adjusted to get awesome results.  

Avenger is on another level if you listen to it or to samples on YouTube.  For example, it has drums. Or even guitars incorporated into some patches.

Although these sequenced patches sound amazing, I tend to need to turn off layers of stuff, like the arps and the drums so that I can actually play the sound.

The overwhelming capability of Avenger is admirable. It’s also the reason I like and use Spire much more often. Spire has the great synth sounds out of the gate but doesn’t have all the automation turned in.

Agreed!

I’m at least watching for the meter one.  Has to get down to next to nothing for me to want to get it, but aside from DeEss that’s about all that’s left for the completist in me. I agree with @scook it would be good to ultimately get them all - but those last few would have to be at the 80-90 % off like some of the other previous deals to be of interest.

DeEss is about the only one that hasn't had a sale in recent memory.  That's the one I'm waiting for.

I get the 5 pack maybe once a year there.  It is a rare one, but a great chance to get the per expansion cost for a reasonable price.

On 7/14/2023 at 6:19 AM, JT music said:

Best Service always has the best price, I have bought many exp there 👍

Psssst.  Here’s a good tip.  Sweetwater periodically sells the 5 pack for as much as 50% off.  This can get the per expansion price way down into the reasonable zone.  

Or, use this free plugin!

When they practically give it away for the price of a coffee or two it’s kind of hard to say no.

Way to go Stefano!

Not quite enough knobs to bring the sizzle.

I really liked what I heard in the demo YouTubes. For $29 this seems quite reasonable.

The ones available for general widening are each good in their own ways, like the Ozone Imager which I use a lot.

StageOne, as illustrated in the two links above, has more to it, and has unique (and desirable) capabilities as well as intuitive controls.  In fact, within the two vid links above there is a comparison between StageOne and other wideners, which highlights and discuss the difference in the capabilities.

Updating the post, because as I mulled it further today, I recognized the sale price ends on July 4.

4 hours ago, ralfrobert said:

Still one of the good ones. 

I use it still with satisfying results.

It appears to be 30% off the regular (generally steep) price for all Leapwing products at the moment.

Here's one of the products I'm looking at.  Each Leapwing item I've picked up so far I now regularly use on songs.

https://www.bestservice.com/en/stageone.html

Here's an explanation of this one with clear listenable examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQav4HNf1Jo

And one more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nUZg1ER_kc

A tasteful and understandable stereo widener.

I’ve lost count of how many libraries are based only on Unify at this point (not requiring other products).  There are a lot that you only need Unify.  And they are all great.

2 hours ago, RSMcGuitar said:

It's a goodin'.  Agreed!  Use it a lot!

On 6/20/2023 at 11:43 AM, simon said:

looks like you can pick: 50 - 75 - 100 (etc) %  - it's not arbitrary and it's the entire GUI, you can't just zoom the instrument window.

Where do you see Zoom scaling as an option?  I have it open.  I can drag in the bottom right corner.  I have searched on Google and around the UI, I can't see where UI scaling percent is listed anywhere.  Please let us know!

Windows Defender - I’ll look at that.  Hadn’t checked that yet.

Looked at it. Nope. Already off in my case.

It’s probably just my machine. I have some support requests in to NI (and they have been responding back which is nice).  It takes an abnormally long time for me to load Kontakt 7.  Didn’t happen before. Kontakt 6 opens instantly.  Again, maybe something particular to my machine and not a general problem for others.

It does cause me consternation.

Now you can complete the whole action!  Record your Walk to the closet, put your shoes in the closet, and Lock the door. 

36 minutes ago, cclarry said:

the new Native Access is indeed a POS.  Now I have to sign in EVERY TIME and it takes
2 weeks to load.

I have the same situation.