Carl Ewing

Okay - this is annoying af. I could have gotten Solo, Fluid Brass, and Fluid Winds on top of what I bought during BF, and paid $30 less. So I got Talos ($99), Aeria Lite ($71), Nucleus ($202), Cerberus ($90), Jaeger ($141). That's $604 total. And had to figure out their complicated loyalty system to maximize discounts. Now, a week later I basically could have just bought Talos and Aeria Lite ($170 total), then picked up this bundle for $399 and paid $569 total, AND got Solo and the Fluids. I decided not to get Solo because my budget was capped. My loyalty price was around $130. So technically, to get everything in this bundle + what I got during BF would have cost $800+, but could technically be had for $200 less one week later. Uggh. Punches wall. EDIT!! Nevermind, the bundle doesn't include Nucleus. I thought it did. Fixes the drywall.

Mentioned before - but I do almost all my buying in November / December. These forums save me so. much. damn. money. Fully worth the time. I will check multiple times a day over these two months, because so much crazy stuff pops up, and Vi-Control / this forum, etc. are filled with people that are really scouring the net for obscure deals, or know how stackable deals work, or know what region to buy things from. This is a goldmine of info. But after January 1st, the buying is done and I try to avoid newsletters, forums, Youtube channels, etc. as much as possible until summer sales - but will just up in occasionally to see if some crazy deals are going on throughout winter / spring. As for making this a more healthy activity: make lists. Make critical lists of what you need. Be very specific. Ignore literally anything that's not on the list. If you needed it, it would be on the list. Deadlines also help. No time for gear love when a contract is on the line. But I know some people like the communities and talking about things, which is great. Nothing wrong with that. But if you're buying stuff you don't need, and it's affecting your finances, or happiness, or stopping you from getting thing done. Then ya, might be time to put a padlock on the computer.

For the freebies - If it's orchestral loop based, I just batch export the .wav files, delete all the mics except "decca" or "mix" and trash the rest. Dropped "Minimal" down to the like 3-4 gb (from 30gb I think). Usually good for, as someone else said, adding texture or tempo-synced flourishes to help with midi stuff. Can't imagine using some of these libraries in Kontakt. I export tons of **** to .wav (anything sound design, effects, textural pad, loop related) and scrap the Kontakt instruments. Absolutely no time to sit around auditioning these sounds when you can just scan through 1000 sounds a minute in Mediabay (Cubase). Have never used their multi-sampled instruments though. I always thought they just made loop based libraries.

Ya - and every plugin on this update requires tedious individual authorization on two different machines. So just did 16 authorizations. Lol. I'm usually careful about what devs I buy for for these reasons, since I have to mirror mobile and desktop systems. And this can be become a real headache quick. It isn't difficult to streamline this process. But some of these devs just don't GAF what the end user experience is like. Now I'll go figure out where my missing presets went for another devs plugins. This **** drives me mad. We need the plugin police who will hand out tickets when devs do this nonsense. Ha.

Unfortunately the update doesn't include a universal installer. Just one installer with checkmarks please, not a single .exe for every damn plugin lol.

Who are these people? Soundpaint is not even remotely - like not even close by a country mile - as sophisticated as either Kontakt or Omnisphere when it comes to synthesis, sound design or effects. That is just completely false. 1) Soundpaint's effects cannot be compared to Kontakt. Soundpaint has a couple nice effects (nice reverb emulation and nice LA2A emulation), but Kontakt has an enormous set of effects, including a convolution reverb (which nullifies any claims about Soundpaint's reverb capabilities) , an entire suite of ported over VST effects inside the engine, including all the native Softube effects from NI's main line, and including categories not even available in Soundpaint. It isn't even comparable. 2) "Next generation version of Omnisphere" has to be 100% bs. Soundpaint isn't as sophisticated as Omnisphere 1 from 10+ years ago, let alone Omnisphere 2. There are entire categories of synthesis & sample manipulation inside Omnisphere that are not available in Soundpaint. It's modulation matrix and envelope control blow Soundpaint completely out of the water. It's effect list, filters, osillator section, synth engine section (and modulation capababilities) aren't even comparable. Actually - I own Soundpaint's Dunescape - inspired by Dune. The source samples are 70GB on my drive. Virtually all the sound of that library comes from the source samples, not what the engine is doing with them. Yet, the guy who actually worked on the movie released multiple Omnisphere libraries based on that work, where he creates these type sounds with 3mb patches inside Omnisphere, using only the synth engine. Soundpaint is not capable of this kind of advanced sysnthesis. It needs a far more sophisticated oscillator section, a granular engine, waveshaper, harmonic and unison engine, with far more complex lfo / envelope / routing and filter options. Not to mention - even when it comes to it's stock library - we're talking 500 wavetables, and an absolutely enormous source library that includes samples of almost every hardware synth ever made. And then The Orb, which makes macro & iPad touch control effortless, which affects what you can do with modulation control. I like Soundpaint's dynamic sustains and legato features. And I do like the effects quality. It does absolutely eclipse Omnisphere in the ability to build multi-sample instruments. No argument there. That's where Soundpaint would be compared to Kontakt, and Soundpaint cannot compete with Kontakt's scripting engine. 8Dio are not going to eclipse the team at Spectrasonics or Native Instruments on synth / sample engines. Not yet anyway. Having said all that - to stay on thread target - $10 for a great flute is a no-brainer. If I didn't hate the sound of the flute with the passion of 1000 angry & neglected red-headed step-children, I would buy it!

Their LA Modern Percussion was strongly recommended by a lot of other composers. Got it for $99 so was worth a bit of a risk. I'm not entirely happy with it. It's got the Junkie XL style of velocity mapping, where velocities run up the keyboard, instead of being mapped to a single key. This is absurd imo. Imagine playing a taiko drum where you needed a different drum for every velocity. (Edit: For some patches they provide a single-key dynamics option. However, this doesn't help much because.....) Even worse - there is only one round-robin per velocity. So if there are 15 velocity layers for a taiko drum hit, that's all you get. 15 velocities per key.....with NO round-robin at each velocity. It's extremely easy to get machine gun like effects, or have to continually reperform something to avoid it, or use workarounds to help with repetition (their are techniques to help this...but this should not be necessary in a modern drum / percussion library.) To put it in perspective, if you needed to perform a really soft percussion roll - say at the bottom 25% of velocity, you are now dealing with maybe 4 or 5 different samples on each key, that will repeat over and over and over again. This becomes very artificial sounding within about 2-3 seconds. Again - imagine having a taiko drum where you only had 15 different tones from soft to loud, with no randomness every time you hit the drum, no matter the velocity. It would be a dullest sounding drum ever made. And that's the case with this LA Modern Percussion library. It's dull. However - the recordings are exceptional. I absolutely love the production / sound of the recordings. I believe it is either produced or fully mixed by Alan Meyerson whose mix work I love. But it's a real tragedy that they released it with this velocity / round-robin philosophy. It really sucks the life out of the whole library. The Nashville Scoring Strings have also been recommended to me. But after this LAMP purchase, I'm going to stay away from this developer unless I have clear understanding of how a library is scripted / produced. I'll still use LAMP - as it will be quite useful to blend with other percussion libraries (and a couple patches suffer less from the velocity / round-robin issue) - but I'm very disappointed in this purchase so far.

Oh - I only know how to turn that on in the Taskbar. Not sure if it's an option for the clock app. If you want it on the Taskbar, right click Taskbar, select "Taskbar Settings", then click "Taskbar Behaviors" then checkmark "Show seconds in system tray clock". You can access the same thing by hitting "Windows Key + I" (opens Settings), go to "Personalization", then "Taskbar Behaviors", and check same tickbox as above. Checking again, I don't see any option to get seconds on the Windows clock app. I'm sure there's a Windows app for it, but you can at least display it in the Taskbar which might help.

From the walkthroughs I've seen, some of their acoustic guitars are better than the usual suspects (Orange Tree, etc.). I was really surprised by how good TGuitar & MGuitar sounded. But walkthroughs can be deceiving! And I think the only guitar in Absolute is "Tales" which I haven't checked out. But I was also impressed with Amped Elektra - thought it would be terrible, but there's some great sounding patches in that library (imo). I've also heard Iconica is much better than expected. (have no tried it either). As a a long time Cubase user, I have really never installed any of their instrument libraries / synths except Padshop. I just assumed they were all quick-turnaround products to incentivze Halion, Cubase sales with "more content!". Apparently some of it is actually good. Ha.

I switched everything to Win 11 three months ago. It's been....extremely frustrating. But now it feels more streamlined and snappier than Win 10. I run Ultrawide's, so the lack of vertical taskbar was a pita. But Explorer Patcher solved that (among other customizations). Although Explorer Patcher can sometimes bug out if there's a Windows Update and the github hasn't had a chance to patch it. WinAero Tweaker is also a miracle for many of Win 11's annoyances. However, Windows 11 continues the trend of MS hiding many needed settings behind minimal UI panels, and takes a while to discover where detailed settings are now located. There's also a registry hack (adding a registry key) to shut off Bing from the start menu (same as Win 10...but even more annoying). I can find out what that key is if you need it. Although, except for App searching, I use VoidTools "Everything" app for all Windows file searching. Will index all connected drives and search multi-terrabytes of data in milliseconds - literally as you type a word it's already showing results across 8 of my partitions. Can't live without it. The less I have to open Windows Start / Search the better. Also had DPC Latency issues on my main system, which I didn't have in Win 10. Took a long time to figure it out. But if you have this problem I have many suggestions (BIOS & Windows) that eventually worked. And using Process Lasso has helped with quite a few things - at least on one system, Windows was having a hell of time trying to prioritize tasks across a ton of drivers / usb devices / graphics card / audio card, etc. This wasn't a problem on my mobile system, which was odd, as it has a fraction of the resources but had no latency issues at all.

I wish! It's all studio expenses, so it all gets pulled from revenue until there's like $100 left to buy Hosa cables and Ramen. Looking at revenue vs. expenses is always like "holy **** music expensive to produce." Unpaid interns and "hey, you'll get exposure working on this...for free" aren't really a thing anymore - at least not officially.

Haha. This is still much better than 10+ years ago, where single sample libraries were $1000+ on the regular. And plugins were $250+, and sales were few and far between with 20% off if you were lucky. My software expenses used to be $15,000 per year or more. This year, including all this BF stuff is under $5000. Composer Cloud, Plugin Alliance subs (and now Musio) help significantly though. And the 'race to the bottom' price competition across developers is helping as well. Getting Silka for $30 and all the Audio Imperia stuff for about $650 would have been impossible "back in the day". I'd have to total what I spent on UAD plugins between 2005 - 2020. It's gotta be $10,000 at least. Seeing people get these native bundles for $200 is hilarious. Wrong word: sadness is the word. The only two companies that seem to still price things like old days are Spitfire and Orchestral Tools. All their prices are very close to what everything used to cost. East West's Platinum Edition Orchestra used to cost $1999 (same as OT's Berlin seres) and came shipped on 20 DVDs (140GB). (lolol) EDIT: That was £1999. So like $50,000 USD at the time. https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/east-west-symphonic-orchestra-pro-xp

Looks like you beat me! This is a competition right?? I'm totally done now. Seriously. Done. Lost my paypal password and incinerated my credit card. 8Dio: Majestica Ultra (upgrade) 8Dio: Silka Choir (bundle upgrade from Insolidus) AudioBro: Eternity Adult Choir AudioBro: Eternity Adult Choir Expanded Audio Imperia: Talos Audio Imperia: Aeria Lite Audio Imperia: Nucleus Audio Imperia: Cerberus Audio Imperia: Jaeger Audio Ollie: LA Modern Percussion Cherry Audio: Polymode Cinesamples: Musio (12 month sub for $90) Excite Audio: Motion Harmonic Fab-Filter: Pro-R 2: Crossgrade from Total Bundle Kilohearts: Phase Plant Kilohearts: Convolver Macrium Reflect (4-Comp sub) Orchestral Tools: Konduit (screw it, bought it at full price. Using it already today.) Presets: Various Unfinished, String Audio, Leap Into Void Skybox Audio: Hammer + Waves Collection + Expansions SoundID: Reference for Headphones Yurt Rock: Ultimate Bundle (Got tired of buying single packs. Bought the whole damn catalog for $160) Zero-G: Ethera Gold 2.5 Zero-G: Ethera Gold Intimate Voices Zero-G: Ethera Atlantis 3 Zero-G: Ethera Prometheus Zero-G: Elements Cinematic Rhythms And more hardware for mobile system. And got a good deal on a set of HD600s. And bought a lifetime license for Writer Duet Premium, because if all else fails, that unfinished magnum opus screenplay will pay the bills. Right? Right??

Picked up a lot of this stuff during BF - was totally off my radar. Some of the best purchases I made this year. Atlantis, Prometheus, Gold 2.5 - almost nothing that is filler. That Prometheus library is a goldmine, wish I found it back in February, would have saved me literally weeks of sound design. Guy behind these libraries is a damn genius.

From what I've checked out it sounds quite good - HOWEVER, it's an extremely complex interface - much like their Genesis Children's choir, so it's going to take a bit to really test it out. Something like Audio Imperia Chorus is much easier for getting right down to playing. Eternity (and Genesis) take some manual reading. There's a massive amount of customization options (divisi, stage placement / mics, phrasing, consonant / vowel customization, etc.). However - just using basic vowel stuff like mmms, oooohs, aaaahs, etc. the polyphonic legato is as good as Genesis (i.e. amazing), and the staccatos are also excellent...although the upper dynamics are not as intense as something like Chorus. However...there are so many customization options I may be wrong about that...that's just in playing around for an hour. With the number of phrase options, this should be one of the best libraries on the market. However, I'm not yet convinced about the tone...especially the Male tenors and the Female sopranos. I find the performers they chose too "traditional" and emotionless when soft, and a bit shrill at max dynamics. But there's a lot of customization to deal with that (and the Expanded content splits each section - bass, alto, tenor, soprano into 4 separate groups each, each with their own mic placement / mic selection. That's A LOT of control. The manual reading will be intense. Haha.

Oh...It is 134.10 in my cart. (164.90 discount). Checking incognito, that's $15 cheaper than a new customer. So basically 10% off the sale price. Didn't feel it was worth it. The crossgrade stacking is where the discounts really kick in. So funny - I can get 134.10 for Solo, but got Jaeger for $142. Ha.

Okay - bought more ****. Pulled the trigger on a few vocal things. The list is now: 8Dio: Majestica Ultra (upgrade) 8Dio: Silka Choir (bundle upgrade from Insolidus) AudioBro: Eternity Adult Choir AudioBro: Eternity Adult Choir Expanded Audio Imperia: Talos Audio Imperia: Aeria Lite Audio Imperia: Nucleus Audio Imperia: Cerberus Audio Imperia: Jaeger Audio Ollie: LA Modern Percussion Cherry Audio: Polymode Cinesamples: Musio: $90 12 month sub. Excite Audio: Motion Harmonic Fab-Filter: Pro-R 2: Crossgrade from Total Bundle. Kilohearts: Phase Plant Kilohearts: Convolver Presets: Various Unfinished, String Audio, Leap Into Void Skybox Audio: Hammer + Waves Collection + Expansions Zero-G: Ethera Gold 2.5 Zero-G: Ethera Gold Intimate Voices Zero-G: Ethera Atlantis 3 ---------------------------------- Still deciding on: Audio Imperia Solo, Zero-G Ethera Gold Prometheus, Orchestral Tools Konduit, a new LiquidSonics reverb and Cubase 13 Pro (will probably wait for 50% sale next year). Will be happy when this madness is over. Gotta move some hard drives around lol. I ain't buying nothing again until....boxing day!

Awesome - thank you! This confirms what I thought from the official demos - it has a really great tone. A lot of synths try to emulate this kind of modular tone (really love Bazille / Reaktor for this kinda of thing), but everything I've heard from Konduit sounds gorgeous and much deeper than the VST counterparts. Should have bought it when it was on sale! Uggh.

Have you tried this out yet? I hesitated last second, and sale ended. Thought the demos sounded great - and in a particular noise style that I love - but also found it difficult to tell how playable it was. Some of these type libraries seem better suited to .wav file sample packs than instruments. Could not tell from the walkthroughs.

Holy moses that's an insane deal. No way it's legal. I've called the Feds.

Audio Imperia helped a lot with that - since their stuff, even on regular sales, don't have the stackable discounts they currently have. So I based it on regular prices, since I was buying so much, these discounts would have never been possible when buying single item sales. So I picked up $1845 worth of their libraries for $604. But - to give an idea of stackable / crossgrade discounts - I got Jaeger for $150 (reg. $699), but I had to buy one item first (Talos, which was already heavily discounted) to get the first 10% off, then used that to get Aeria Lite for $71 (this was mistake, I got the stackable discounts confused, although I still wanted the Lite version not full), but then got Nucleus with the stacking discounts (and maybe grossgrade as well?) for $202, which then triggered the crossgrade to Jaeger for $142 (combined with other discounts), and I added Cerberus for to that last order since the stacking was maxed (I think Cerberus came out to $80 or somewhere around that. I still wanted Chorus and Solo, but there's no benefit now because there's no crossgrade option. So I'd only be getting the loyalty discounts, which would give me a price 20% cheaper ($325) than a new customer sale price ($399), with regular price $499. I figure they'll do a 50% off sale eventually, so will wait. Like LiquidSonics, these stackable loyalty / crossgrade discounts, combined with regular blackfriday sales, can be really great.

Wait what?? Was this from a prior version upgrade? Or you started from scratch and got K14 CE for $410 total...and on a harddrive?? If so, please go to jail, that's stealing. I've been on Komplete since version 3. I don't even want to know how much it's cost me to get to 14 CE. (cries). Checking this public Google Sheet - Komplete 3 came with: Vokator, Reaktor 5, Pro-53, Spektral Delay, Kontakt 2, Kompakt, Intakt, Guitar Rig 2, Fm7, Elektrik Piano, Battery 2, BF Organ II and Absynth 3. That's it. And it cost $1499. Haha. Hahahahaha. Times have changed.

If my Excel sheet is correct, and it probably isn't because I'm dumb af, and after some additional software purchases today, over this sales season I saved just over $3500 (around 54% and not including hardware I bought) vs. buying at various sale prices throughout the year. The biggest savings vs. total cost was Audio Imperia because of the stacked discounts. Ethera series was also a good deal considering sale prices + 20% loyalty discounts. And I calculated based on the routine sale prices, not the regular price vs. BF price. So used sites like musicsoftwaredeals (and others) to figure out what things "actually" cost. It really does pay to wait throughout the year and just grab everything at once, unless some insane deal pops up throughout the year. So now that I've saved a bunch, I will buy something overpriced today and ruin everything.

I'm curious about this as well. I've only just now started to look at Steinberg's instruments - mainly because I know Cubase 13 includes a version of Iconica, which was surprising, so then started looking at other instruments. A couple of those guitars (Tguitar / MGuitar i think?) sound surprisingly good. Curious about other people's experiences with the stuff in Absolute.

That does not sound good to me for a cello. Doesn't help that he's not even trying to play it like a bowed instrument. But it really doesn't sound natural at all, even the sustains. However, it has a cool almost synth / acoustic hybrid tone that would make it useful for other stuff - especially since the envelope can be totally flat, even on soft sustained start. Would go well with distortion! Will check out more of their stuff, as I find some of the sample modelled stuff (like PianoTeq) great for sound design / experiments, but I don't usually think they sound convincing as acoustic instruments. As a comparison - although it's not released yet, this what the upcoming Performance Samples Vista II solos are sounding like. They've been releasing some scripting ideas they're experimenting with. This is more what I'm looking for, so I'm likely going to wait for it to get released: