Vernon Barnes

Orange Tree's Famous E is absolutely superb. Works in Kontakt Player too. Waves Rhodes and Wurlie are very good and will probably be $29 each again at some point.

Nice freebie. Edit, oops I missed it was the session version. Still useful though.

Musio have just added another title to their subscription service, "Men of the North" and it sounds pretty good! https://musio.com/catalog/ They have also updated the Musio UI. This update is mostly cosmetic, no keyswitches yet, but does improve access to instrument parameters.

UK customers (others may avoid the VAT too) its £39 at Plugin Boutique with £1.63 back in virtual cash plus part of a token, and Comeback Kid free. And us can use any existing virtual cash and cash in any tokens.

I have had it for ages, I have rarely used the vst but use it as a module in Softube Modular a lot.

The update I did not know I needed! But its good and I am glad to have it. The new browser certainly makes it easier to find things across the various expansions. The A/B fader is a nice addition. The LFO fade in is a very welcome feature but I am not sure how much I will use the extra LFO waveforms but they are a nice to add . The Wow and Flutter could be interesting, I will need to have a play with those to see how useful they will be. The reverb is good for improving "straight out the box" sounds but I think I will be adding reverb in the DAW mixer in most cases. The amp effect is useful for adding a bit of grit. Incidentally the upgrade price did not show up until I had it in the cart, VAT was added to the £29 bringing it to £35.99

As I bought piecemeal there is no upgrade option. I may have been tempted by the Oddessy but I recently got the Behringer hardware recreation so I will pass.

Is it one that is useful beyond its design genre? Sometimes taking EZ patterns out of the original context can be a useful springboard for ideas.

I always thought the strum engine was pretty intuitive to program. I like to use a lot of arpeggios and it's good for then too. The NI guitars are good, but limited particularly if you want odd time signatures like 5/4 or 7/8 which OTS is good at. It won't go to 9/8 or 11/8 though. Amplesound is probably the most versatile, having both a strummer and riffer with drag and drop MIDI into a DAW, but its also less intuitive and more complex.

I see Harmony and Real Time Tune have updates in Waves Central

I must try to master programming Riffer again. It seems to hold the potential to create as good a part as you could get from a virtual instrument but really needs one to think like a guitarist or bass player with not just the note and articulation to consider but also string selection.

Installed. After the excellent Fantasy strings and brass I think it is a bit of a let down. What's there is very good but it seems to be lacking the depth of the other titles. It could really do with some low winds of some description and something a bit more off the wall like a Crumhorn or similar.

Its all pretty confusing It offers me Diamond as an upgrade but warns that I already own it. Others, like Gold warn me I already have a bundle containing this product. But for many other available upgrades its a mater of checking each item against what you already have.

Installed.😁 there is nothing left for me to buy

I am not seeing CPU hogging here. My last project contained two instances of Opus, one for ostinatos in Hollywood Orchestrator and the other running several brass and wind instruments and one of the Gold pianos without CPU issues. There were also instances of Kontakt, UVI workstation and Superior Drummer competing for resources. This was in Studio One 6 on a six year old computer.

Also an update for Hollywood Fantasy Strings.

I recently took out a annual subscription to Musio ($99). While I am waiting on some improvements to the player that are in the pipeline such as keyswitching I still find it very usable with a wide selection of mostly orchestral sounds with some synths and drum machines thrown in for good measure. Today I received an update notice by email. (see quote below). Installed - My first impressions. Industry Brass Pro looks like an update rather than a new addition CineBrass Sonore - these patches sound very nice. CineWinds Monster Low Winds - The winds have been the standout for me in the whole package and this library adds some very deep bass wind ensembles CineHarpsichord - Some very nice and usable harpsichords https://musio.com/

I do not have this one but I have several others of theirs. They are very good. There are no fancy Kontakt GIUs just the standard Kontakt instrument interface. Don't let that put you off, they sound great. I will probably pick this up too.

The update plan is on sale too. $129 from $169. It looks like there are some serious updates due. Mind you I still find the workflows alien to me so I probably will skip and it will join Cubase 9.5 on the list of DAWs I didn't get on with.

Kontakt! Looks interesting but 700+ NKI files? Snapshots would be more manageable but I suppose issues with loading different samples could have prevented this.

I installed it just to get rid of the update flag in NA, I am on Kontakt 7 and only have 6 installed incase its needed in an old project.

I had not looked at Musio until recently and I have been trying out the 14 day free trial to see if I would but up for a subscription. The current roadmap for releases and new features is here. https://musio.com/coming-soon/?_kx=7bYm_UvUC-D5nnkU-7zfm17lQtGjIg5vkt1bZPzTVKjwj04Cq1orJhWdIT11iUCq.TQPahU Two things stood out for me with the current status. Lack of key switching so every articulation you intend to use has to loaded as a separate instance. Its good to see that key switching will be introduced soon. Lack of instrument specific interfaces, this meant the synths in particular were pretty mehhh as there was no way to do even basic tweaking of each patch, again this will be addressed soon. Improvements to the effects and mixer are also in the pipeline. I think I would tend to mix and add fx in the DAW so the current basic level of the current feature set was not as big a drawback as the other two. All in all I like Musio and the libraries a lot. I am particularly taken with the Gina Luciana flutes. I already had some of the Tina Guo cello libraries for Kontakt and find them excellent. I am working through the currently available stuff and only the synths have been a negative so far. I like the way you can quickly preview a sound before downloading. You only need to download the articulations you want to use which will help people low on disk space, of course this may change when they introduce key switching, Temptation to subscribe (currently $99 a year) is rising. Blowing 10 years subscription price on a perpetual licence does not make sense to me but the option is there.

That is where they get you. I may look again at what upgrading to Ultimate would give me these days but will probably stick, I have little intrest in the Play series and the expansions.

I just discovered the record function. You can record your playing into the song, This opens up quite a few possibilities. For example creating your own patterns and then using EZKeys to apply a chord progression, or recording a chord progression as block chords and then replacing the pattern with MIDI from the browser etc. -NICE

EW are aiming it at scoring fantasy films etc. Hence the name. It departs from conventional orchestra lineups ( like fantasy Strings) by adding other, older, instruments like Alphorn and Viols but it remains a straight library of real instrument samples with keyswitches and various mic positions.