Brian Walton

8 hours ago, Craig Fowler said:

I've had my eye on that pack. I've got most of the Tone Junkie ones (at 90% off, would have been rude not to) and three of the Sadites ones; Deluxe Reverb, AC30, and one of the Dr. Zs. Generally, the Sadites ones seem more consistent, and I'm pretty darn impressed with ToneX.

 

There are a few of the Amalgam capture packs I'll pick up at some point, but then I'm done (famous last words!).

You might be aware but grab these on ToneNet for free to see if the character works for you:

2 hours ago, bluzdog said:

Never pay full price for Tone Junkie packs. He runs more frequent and heavily discounted sales than Waves!  It's worth paying a visit to the partners websites to check pricing. I do like the Amalgam Carr Mercury V set. Jam points are valid on IK's site.

Have both the DI Carr pack and the "cab baked in" one for the core tones.  It is one of the only amps where the clean, mid, and higher gain feel like they are on equal footing.  Other amps might be better at one particular area, but quite rare to find an amp that does all 3 as well.  

11 minutes ago, antler said:

Are there any packs that you recommend?

Yes, depends on the amp type and style you are looking for.

Amalgam Audio is consistently excellent.   Not many others are going to offer one of the grail Marshall JTM50s for example, and they are the only place so far that has a Komet, and the Bartel Roseland is quite responsive.  Has some different Two-Rocks, Marshall standards with the SuperBass and SuperLead.  The real key is he gets good amps and really knows how to make a high quality capture and I swear he is getting even better at it.

Matt Fig has the best Gilmour clean HiWatt platform I've heard

ToneJunkie - get on the mailing list ot get the Free vintage AC30 and 65 Deluxe Reverb for free, and then if you time his sales right - it is cheapest place to pickup packs (the Bad Cat 30R, Marshal Astra are my two faves there, but they also have the only commercially available Trainwreck option - though it isn't a Ken Fischer one, and honestly isn't in the same playing field as others I've tried)

Jason Sadites makes good captures (his Two-Rock capture is a nice platform as an example)

The Studio Rats - I like some of the captures though I wish they offered more "without pedals" in the packs and I like to get the full range of the amp.  The Chandler GAC19T is a bit unique - but also one I really wish they dialed in a bunch of AMP only tones instead of adding some "cheap" pedals to the chain.

Choptones makes some good captures but I'm not really a fan of how they are organized and they tend not to do the full range of one amp.  

Worship Tutorials - sometimes the packs are smaller (and darker sounding) than one might expect, but with EQ some can be rather good and surprising.  I'm not usually a Bogner fan, but the Goldfinger Superlead is pretty cool.  (Gab the AC30 which is free).  They run periodic 30% or even 50% off sales, so I wait for that.  Some of the packs only have 4 captures in there.  

Going direct to these retailers frequently has more packs than though the market place.

My method is #1 - see if Amalgam has a capture of an amp I want, #2 Look at others to fill in gaps

All of these have free tone models (many times from the bigger pack) on ToneNet, so I suggest downloading those - see which ones work for your style and then buy the larger pack that give you a better range of that amp.  

28 minutes ago, JT music said:

I am very sorry for IKM, how ridiculous to be buying their products and get the JamPoints which then you can not use in some other purchase that one wants, these are the repudiable anti-customer acts of IKM.

While I have been known to also criticize some IKM practices (they listened and no longer have the added DL later charges).

$299 for this pedal and software package is 100% worth it no matter how you want to look at it.  The thing is also made in Italy unlike what seems like every other digital pedal.  

If you could use JamPoints that would put the pedal at $210 ish and that is well under what they sell for used.

6 minutes ago, Doug Steinschneider said:

I logged into my IK account online and put it in my cart and tried TXPD100 and it said invalid code. Maybe only for non US buyers?

It is a code for people that already own one.  

If you have purchased before you can grab a 2nd for $300. 

Won't work for those that don't have one already.

Own two of them.  Worth it (as long as you invest in some 3rd party packs or have a setup where you can capture your own rig.

2 hours ago, ralfrobert said:

Let's put it this way: I've checked on some of the plugins some time ago, and they are nothing special. In a world with a lot of choice regarding plugins, you will always find something better. I would recommend to pick something like Analog Obsession for free or, if you are after pedals, go for Audiority, Kuassa or the many others around. Bottom line: As I wanted to downsize my setup anyway (which I did), I've successfully ignored this company. 

I tired the neural EQ when it was released for free.  It was the most CPU hungry nonsense I'd ever tried.  I heard they may have made it more efficient but for me the ship sailed.  Haven't seen anything interesting enough for me to try something else yet.  

9 minutes ago, Kirean said:

Cheers for the answers! Appreciated.

I feel it's a bit silly to have overlapping products like that at exact same price points (msrp doesn't count.) 

The price depends on what you have in some cases here.  For me they show up as $30 and $50.  

5 hours ago, Kirean said:

So thinking of buying something with that $10 off, since I can live with paying $19 .

What's the real difference between Masterdesk, Masterdesk Pro, Masterdesk True Peak? Any reason to even think about True Peak if you own Pro?

What's the difference between Shadow Hills - Mastering Compressor and Shadow Hills - Mastering Compressor Class A?

 

No reason to get Peak if you have Pro on Masterdesk (unless you like less option interface I think)

If you don't have either of the Shadow Hills, "A" is the more premium option with additional features and a resizable UI.  They do sound different.  Overall Class A can tend to be more tube warmth ish, which also means it can sound muddy on some sections.   I tend to use it when I want a little flavor, and pick a different family if I want transparent.  

I use IRON which is also the same price more than Green.

1 hour ago, Release said:

Sorry to single you out here..... and I definitely get your point..... but I've made my living from the Adobe Suite for the last 25 years and a good part of that is with the subs.  My work pays for one sub and my freelance pays for my personal sub.  I've gotten wayyyy more equity out of it than I've put in.  Adobe isn't aiming at the casual user.  They're going after the people that use their subscription to make their money.  

Audio is different though with way more "hobbyists" than professionals.  So with that in mind, I completely agree with you.  I don't want to pay for a music subscription knowing that I might not even use it for a month or two.  Makes no sense to me and I'm definitely not getting anything in return.... other than a bit of fun.  Someone using a music sub that uses it to pay their bills?  Then yea, it makes perfect sense for them.  

Options are good and there are plenty of alternatives for everything.

I know more people that use Adobe than use a DAW with adon effects as a hobby and I live in both worlds.  

Both are worlds of a sea of hobbiests vs a small pool of people making a sustainable living wage at it, and ironically it takes most more than a decade to make pro level results in music and plenty of people can get good enough for a small gig in photography/editing in less than two years without prior experience with some practice and youtube instruction.

Much harder to overcome the investment costs in music than it is in the digital art world.

Best opportunity was when they had the send in guitar playing recording offer.   If I had waited until I racked up all my recording during the period and that final sale they had which overlapped honestly could have gotten MComplete from ground zero.

It was a sweet deal for any guitar player that know how to record.  And I imagine we will never see something like that again.

23 minutes ago, Fleer said:

But it’s still a sub…

At least rent to own.   The price point seems about right for the market now.  While I never do subs (and have MComplete outright), I can't imagine the previous $50/month was something a lot of people could justify.  

On 2/10/2024 at 10:36 PM, bmarlowe said:

I am budget limited and would have to pick one or the other.  It would be mainly for basic rock, classic or light rock. Opinions appreciated.

Also consider just grabbing MODO Drum the free version:

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/mdstudio/?pkey=modo-drum-kit-studio

I have a few drum programs, AD2, EZ Drummer, Session Drummer (the previous version), Drum Core 4 - not discontinued, JamStix, MODO Drum, Melda's MDrummer, etc

I'd suggest getting a few for a program or two to find out what you find valuable and difficult to work with before making a hefty purchase in this area.

(JamStix,Slate,  and AD2 also have stripped down but function free versions)

On 2/3/2024 at 12:16 AM, Hillmy said:

It has been many months (probably over 6 months) and no news about the new D.A.W.'s and no social media or forum posts at all! Just total silence! 😐

Did you sign up for the beta?

Those who are on it know it is still seeing updates/changes before release.

7 hours ago, RSMcGuitar said:

I find myself only using amplitube for adding a tonex pedal in front of a tonex amp now.

I'll have to check the cpu hit on that.  Amplitube tends to be resource hungry.  I've run a couple tonex instances for the same, though I tend to use one of my real world drives so I can control with my feet.  

7 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

smaller file size would be on mine..........IK has become bloated.

I'm willing to deal with it for this particular product.  I have virtually every product they have and agree that most take up crazy disk space 

I wonder if they released a TONEX player vst that lacks the modeling network stuff and took out the VIR, only loading individual IR for the profiles how small it would be.  Each capture is a very small file size.  

8 hours ago, e-cue said:

bunch of the bundles for $40  https://www.sweetwater.com/ik-multimedia-amplitube/series?sb=low2high

Amplitude bundles though.

My own perspective is after TONEX came out my only use for the amplitude amps was simply to compare the difference.   $40 can buy some nice TONEX captures from a variety of places and amps.  

Just make sure you didn't already get it from PB a few years back when it had a limited time -$5 offer.

Haven't run the updater yet, but some of those are certainly things I was hoping for in the last update.

Glad to see it isn't just a "we added products to buy" update.

1 hour ago, bluzdog said:

No doubt, too bad they won't allow jam points on sale items. That would have put the Dumble collection at $35 with jam points.

Yeah, I thought the same.  I ended up buying a 2nd pedal during that offer, using JamPoints.  😁   

The $300 range is a solid/fair price.  $400 is a bit high but not totally unreasonable given just how good it is.

2 hours ago, bluzdog said:

As much as I like IK products, especially the Tonex pedal, I can't get onboard with their first two high dollar tone model collections.

The Dumble collection as free with Pedal Purchase was "worth it" if you had the jam points.

The $50 release price would have been borderline, some of those captures are quite good.

This one at $100 is too much, but I could see a Boogie fan picking it up.  They don't make sounds that are my favorite, and the Amalgam captures are good enough for what I may occasionally take for a spin.

They need real grail amps or a massive collection of something to really command that kind of price.

We want Sonar to be inexpensive.  

The in person store stuff wouldn't be well attended, it wasn't a packed house back in the day and far less likely to get people to show up unless they are also giving away the software.

Virtual is the only way to do it these days at a minimal cost.  That said, now that YouTube is a thing, I'm not sure I get the point of some sort of paid attendance as these things never end up being all that interactive.  And questions could be handled via live stream if that is the goal.

12 minutes ago, Kirean said:

When buying on Humble Bundle, be sure to "adjust donation", since Humble's cut can be really huge by default.

Yeah I usually do this some but since we have no idea what the biggest driver for these deals continuing it is hard to know how to best adjust it.  

1 hour ago, The Dispossessed Orangutan said:

Hi,

 I have heard of Humble Bundle for several years but this is the first time I have considered making a purchase.

I am primarily interested in the Painter License.

 I am a little confused about the idea that you redeem the license on DRM-free when the Corel website says you need to use their online authorization.

Is this really 100% legit?

Also, did anyone get Painter? is it really a full version or some sort of lite promotional version?

Thank you! 

It is legit but not DRM free, allows 2 installs at a time I think and done through Corel.    Full version.

1 hour ago, Jim Roseberry said:

Atomic is ultimately going to release a hardware version.

That is what I thought too and a smart move to bring people in as the hardware market is a lot larger for guitar players.  

And other companies beat them to market, have to do something to entice users