Patrick Derbidge

The session series is the only reason I ever do the upgrades. They are awesome. I have so many other sounds and synths and high quality symphonic libraries than I know what to do with, so there's not much reason to consider upgrading for the other stuff. However, offering useful tools like Ozone is a smart move and should give people another reason to upgrade. I just barely bought Ozone earlier this year and had I known it would be in the upgrade I would have waited and put my $100 towards this upgrade instead of Ozone. Doh! There's always something to feel screwed about.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I'll have to look further into this.

Looks like a good alternative to Waves Torque which some say is a secret weapon for tuning drums.

I've only used Metric A/B and haven't owned it very long but given the deals they have on it, I think it's the best bang for the buck compared to Reference 2, based on my research watching tutorials for both. I haven't seen anything in the tutorials that showed Reference 2 to be superior but that may not be true and maybe some Reference 2 owners can explain why it might be worth more money than Metric A/B (if we're comparing sale prices- obviously the Metric A/B regular price is extremely bloated). On another note, for CLMS owners who also use Reaper. Make sure to ignore the tutorial about putting the receive on the master. That may work in Live but in Reaper it's way too laggy. Just put the send before the plugin and the receive after the plugin on the same track and it works perfectly. I almost spent money on a new plugin for this task until I realized that it worked perfectly as long as it was on the same track.

Wish I had a $75 voucher for this one.

Great news! If they can pull off what they did with Solaria but with a male voice, this will be epic.

I actually would have preferred this to Albion, which I bought because I bought into to he Spitfire hype years ago that I no longer buy into. I paid $600 for Albion Legacy and then $200 for the cross grade/upgrade to Albion One. I was able to test out Orchestra Essentials on a site that used to allow remote access for previewing project sam libraries and I immediately preferred Orchestra Essentials and regretted my Albion purchase. Since then spitfire has come out with a lot of great products but between Albion One and Orchestra Essentials, I prefer the latter. Don't get me wrong, Albion is still a great library but just overpriced IMHO. If you collect the entire Albion series,then you would have a more versatile collection but you would also spend a lot more. I'd say that the current sale for this is really good but it's only as good as you find a use for it. Don't spend money just because you can. Watch the walk through videos and decide if you can find a use for it. Guy's videos are the best for getting a feel for these project sam libraries.

I think you scored on that Fast promo. From what I can tell, it's a more advanced bundle than this new Sonible one. I keep kicking myself for sleeping on that deal. Here is a comparison of the different Sonible and Fast limiters

I get that, I was just wondering if they have ever addressed this and have a plan to fix it. I haven't heard anything so I'm assuming that they haven't addressed it. Hopefully they will come up with their own quality compression algorithm. I like it when there's competition.

Have they ever discussed the justification for the size difference? I'd be curious to know what their reasoning is for this, or maybe they just haven't decided on the right compression algorithm yet. Perhaps they have one in the works?

Your question is a good one. It depends on what part of the industry we are talking about. If we are talking about background music for sync licensing, then it will be up to those curators to decide if they care that the voice is real or not. Otherwise, there is no reason not to use a SynthV voice if it is up to par. For bands and singer/songwriters and other music artists, it's a different story. Even if you write great music with a real voice, that's only maybe 30% of the puzzle. The other 80% is branding and story telling. I'd prefer it to be about the music, but it's not. The mainstream audiences are looking for a social media presence and a personality that they connect with. This is where trying to use Ai voices will struggle, unless you can create a compelling story around your brand that connects with your audience and convince them that using the Ai voice is necessary. Did I say that writing good songs wasn't enough?(: I look at SynthV as a tool for helping me get other singers interested in the composition in order to collaborate with them. Unfortunately, most people, even musicians, just can't envision what you envision without a near finished draft of the song.

Synth V will be perfect for that without too much effort at all. The only reason to spend the extra time is if you are trying to get the kind of realistic performance that fools even real singers, like myself.

Here's a quick comparison with SynthV Pro. Eleanor Lite singing the same thing with SynthV Pro. No editing- just typed in the words. Instant Mode was turned on by default. Here is the same thing but with tweaks to vibrato. Keep in mind that it's always good to start with a solid "premise"- meaning an ai voice that was designed to have vibrato. Eleanor was not designed that way, so tweaking this voice to sound that way may be more effort than it's worth. If I wanted a voice with more dynamics and expression then I would use Solaria. Nevertheless, the tweaks just took me a few minutes

Pretty easy right? I haven't used the free version of Synthv and other than some technical limitations, there are also some quality differences so I'll have to use your example of Eleanor Forte lite with the pro version to compare, but maybe since it's still Eleanor lite there won't be a big difference. On another note, you can also download Solaria lite here https://www.eclipsedsounds.com/solaria

Hard to say, because I was learning as I went. Now that I'm familiar with "most" of SynthV features I could do this one line in probably anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour if I'm being really picky. Honestly, in just the time it takes you to plot notes and type in the lyrics you would have a great backing vocal (with their instant mode turned on) that sounds better than anything I've heard from EMVoice. Having said that, I have not yet played around with EMVoice yet, although I do own Lucy and plan to learn it this weekend. I still think Lucy will be useful but all my money is in on Synth V for the foreseeable future.

I saw Synth V mentioned, and I'll add my recommendation to that one. I don't think a lot of people quite understand yet how much of a breakthrough Synth V is. You could potentially do realistic solo's as well as backup singing. One of the best data banks for Synth V is Solaria. Here is an example I did to test out the Solaria voice. No DAW mixing or FX (which will only make it better), and absolutely no real person singing- This is just the raw file I created from Synth V With Music Without Music The Downside to Synth V is it is best used in its own app. Sort of how like some people prefer to comp a voice with one DAW and then use another to mix. The VST integration looks decent in Studio One, but not in any other DAW. Nevertheless, it is well worth the effort. Just use a stereo backing track for creating the vocals and then bounce the vocals and import into your DAW, then continue to mix.

They always seem to put this one on sale at the worst time for me. I've been meaning to pick it up but every time they have a sale I have other financial priorities, Like surgery, ugh! It's not like I need it though since I already have Atlas 2, XO, drumvolution, Battery 4, EZdrummer, Addictive drums, Drumvolution, Some Ujam drums, All the drums in Komplete Ultimate etc... It's probably a good thing it's only on sale when I can't spend money.

True, I haven't bitten yet, but I love PluginGuru stuff and have all his other plugins/sounds that I CAN use, meaning I don't have the Omnisphere stuff because I don't own Omnisphere. Having said that, I will eventually pick it up. It's a good example of a plugin done right. All the support and efficiency you want out of a plugin etc... Also, if you have the need to use AU or VST in a DAW that doesn't support one or the other, you can with Unify. Moreover, the layering capabilities are insane, so if you're an experienced synth nut who loves the ability to have parameters that feedback into each other etc... I'm sure you will love this.

Doesn't seem to be much difference than the v10 I had installed but I do use this one a lot so it's nice to know I don't have to worry about wup with the latest version if v10 were to ever stop working. I haven't had that happen yet since v9 with Waves but you never know.

The Panagement 2 freebie is a keeper though.

If you are an owner and fan of Audiobro LASS 2, like I am, the current upgrade price is the best I've seen it. But first! My rant. I purchased LASS lite years ago for about $500. After a month, I knew that I wanted to upgrade, so I paid the $50 upgrade fee and the difference in price. I'm sure I could have asked for leniency since it was such a short time, but I was happy to support this developer with extra money. So basically, I paid $1050.00 for a $999.00 string library, but I was glad to do it and I still use it today. For the next few months, I kept my eye on the cross grade to Audiobro's sordino strings ($200). I didn't feel that $200 was an acceptable cross grade, so I waited for a sale. A few months later, there was a sale, but it was a sale for new customers to buy the LASS 2+ Sordino strings bundle for about $800! OK, that hurt a little bit. It was only less than 6 months and new customers were already getting a better deal. In all that time, and for the last few years, the best cross grade deal I could see for the Sordinos was $150. Because of this, I refused to do the cross grade and found myself buying the 8Dio flash sale on their Agitato Sordino's, which are very good. To be fair, I never reached out to the developer to explain my plight and ask for a better discount but I also hate to grovel... In a way, I'm glad it happened this way because I have since purchased a lot of flash deals through 8Dio, collecting most of their string libraries and I have found a special place in my palette for 8Dio libraries and use their strings a lot and many times in conjunction with my LASS strings. I'm a big fan of both companies for strings. Today, I am happy to see that Audiobro has finally come to their senses during this holiday season and now offers their previous customers an acceptable upgrade price ($100) to LASS 3 which "includes" the sordino's, so if you are a LASS owner and haven't heard of their upgrade sale, now is the time to consider it. Just login to your account, and you will see your upgrade price. If you haven't been there in a while, you will need to update your login for their new server. Here is their website https://audiobro.com/

Darn. If I hadn't just upgraded my LASS 2 to LASS 3, I would have gone for this. Maybe next year):

Wish I had your guitar talents, but I'm glad for these types of libs for us non guitar players. At least there are some synthesized and experimental patches in these libraries I think you'll find useful.

Warning! My comment is known to derail the conversation and drag it down the rabbit hole, but I can't help it. This is the exact reason I am not a fan of copy protection. I could argue til the end of time about piracy and how much copy protection doesn't actually help fight it, but there is no denying that the paying customer bears the brunt of it in the end. I would bet that none of your freeware has this issue. Unfortunately, I have ALL the copy protection methods from iLok dongles to Waves to whatever system of imprint on your hardware and software is used by other developers. I think it's silly to argue dongles vs other systems of protection because they all have the ability to bring your projects to a halt until you get them resolved. In some ways, the dongles actually work better contrary to popular opinion, but frankly they all suck. I dread the day I have to do another upgrade to my system.

The concept behind plugins like this are based on understanding the music theory behind harmonics. This is something that many of us don't learn about, even growing up in a musical family, until we decide to take music theory classes in college. I miss those days. I used to hate music theory and almost failed my first class but years later I took it again and did quite well. I just needed to change my perspective on it and looked at music theory as guidelines rather than hard and fast rules. Once I did that, I enjoyed it a lot more. Anyways, Andrew Huang has a good video on this topic.