Craig N

Doesn't work on Streichfett unfortunately (33 euro intro price). That would have been a crazy deal haha

If you have a VPN with a US-based offramp you can avail yourself of the $0.99 deal. I have a lifetime one that's really slow but comes in handy from time to time when shopping. From $2.26 to $0.99, huzzah!

Yep that's the right price. It's listed as #1 on their black friday offers page. https://www.airmusictech.com/black-friday It's the first time we've seen a $1 AIR instrument for a while! I've never had the opportunity to buy any at $1 before.

Not sure the specific model but I know it's a Rhodes. I have it, and I noticed the dynamics are great when I was comparing it to some other Rhodes libraries the other day.

I was quite excited when I first got that one during the big group buy, but sadly it's the least convincing Wurlitzer I've heard so far. It sounds more like a weird dirty synth imitation of a Wurlitzer to my ears. The 1974 Wurly Electric Piano in Sampletank 4 has a serviceable enough tone that would probably work well in a mix. At 323 mb it has its limitations; you can hear there aren't many velocity layers to it, although it does have a nice bark at high velocity levels. The higher regions sound less convincing with less noticeable release sounds. I start getting the sense of it sounding like a synth.

You don't even need the full Version of Kontakt as they're Kontakt Player libraries. I noticed last night when looking at this expansion, it says "No previous skybox instruments required" Whereas the other one (Ether) is 10 extra presets for each of the 10 instruments so it very much requires the other instruments to get any value out of Ether.

It seems to me that ANA2's main claim to fame is that it was included in the Slate bundle, so it had the industry's leading hype man talking it up at every opportunity before he cashed out and moved onto exclusively hyping up his headphones. The fancy genre-themed skins and presets were a nice touch, but they are exclusive to the Slate bundle I think.

How's THAT for oversharing? Hahaha

Thanks for taking the time to write this up (and the "overshare" part) I didn't necessarily get the impression you didn't like VReeds btw, although I can see how it might look that way given that I asked you if I was making a mistake hehe. I just thought that since you were mentioning the Wurlie library as the bees knees, and I was thinking of buying the VReeds library instead, it was worth asking the question because it's no small amount of money to spend on a couple of libraries that nominally do the same thing as libraries we already have (hahaha). I'm coming at this hobby from what I might term the other way around, interestingly enough. No musical training or background really, apart from a love of music and stuffing around coming up with 4 channel "Mod" tunes on an Amiga 500 and then a 486 when I was in my late teens. I intentionally put all of my creative energy into a non-musical pursuit for 23 odd years prior to COVID arising and bringing about a shift in priorities. I had achieved what I was seeking to achieve in that non-musical pursuit, so I am now in a wonderful position with the space to pursue music free from judgement or expectations. It might take me 20 years to release an album, and that is totally OK by me (although I would like to release an album one day). I'm just enjoying the ride and coming at music from first principles like I seem to do with everything. As a result, there's not really any sense that there's such a thing as too much money to spend on what I love... even though it might all be rather mad when looked at objectively 🙂

$111 via Thomann (for those who don't need to pay VAT) https://www.thomannmusic.com/synapse_audio_dune_3.htm

Even though I acknowledge by my own logic I need to get both to ensure I have the best one lol Credit card groans further

Two questions for you Peter if I may impose 1. By the end of Black Friday are you going to own it??? As I've heard someone famous say, "Come on, man!" hahaha 2. I'm personally more inclined to buy the VReeds modelled instrument... Am I making a mistake?

Cherry Audio made their name with these bargain priced plugins, and my experience so far has been that the quality is commensurate with their pricing at the low end. Lots of people are evidently happy with the motto "close enough is good enough" when the price is right. Their DCO 106 synth is a cheap and cheerful clone. I bought it for $29ish and enjoyed using it until I started comparing the sound quality with Softube and TAL. I happily paid much more for Softube and TAL's Juno clones. The great irony is that I use them less than I did the Cherry Audio DCO 106 because they're not as cheerful to use. I hope one day I will be convinced that the sound quality of Cherry Audio's synths competes with the best of the best. Until that time, I'll wait for a good bargain before throwing them any more money 😊

I'll probably grab it when it comes down to $29 in 6 months.

These are also sold on dontcrack, bestservice jrr shop, audiodeluxe, pluginfox but the pricing varies a bit and none have this 30% off listed yet.

https://www.acousticsamples.net/ 30% off until Monday Group discounts apply if you buy more than one item in a custom bundle Paging @PavlovsCat

Seems weird that they offered the Studio Grands bundle for less than this only a couple of weeks ago. Guess they mustn't be starving for business.

Ain't that the truth

Important proviso though. New version incoming and its going to be an $80ish upgrade price.

Dune 3 is really good. The new string synth by Waldorf is pretty organic sounding! You can try the demo, the sounds are the opposite of static. A few Xils synths could be described as organic too. Might be worth a demo.

Is that it?!?!?

Maybe the trademark troll threatened them too

I am pretty sure I know which ones are which, but I'm finding it a tough one to judge, because the second seems to have too much reverb for my liking (sorry) and the third has more tremolo which always imparts a lovely quality, and the first one is a little louder in the bitey parts 🙂

Even sharper pricing via Thomann https://www.thomannmusic.com/soniccouture.html

Well, if you think about it, the only guaranteed way to know you have the best Wurli library is to buy all of them 🙂 I do like the fact there's a 140b in this Purgatory Creek collection, as I don't have one of those yet. I spent a fair bit of time comparing my Wurli libraries yesterday and realised what I don't like about the Broken Wurli is the mechanical noises so when I turn those down, it actually can end up sounding pretty good and surprisingly close to the e-Instruments one. But I still currently prefer the e-Instruments, mainly after watching an interesting comparison of some virtual Wurli's against an actual Wurli yesterday and then comparing those tones to the ones coming out of the libraries I already own. When I get the Broken Wurli closer to the tone of the Wurli in that video (by giving it some bass boost in the EQ), it readily distorts at high velocities. Whereas the e-Instruments one takes a bass boost more in its stride. I was testing them with some midi files, in particular Steely Dan's "Do It Again". Broken Wurli has a preset for Steely Dan's "Do It Again" and it doesn't really sound much like the tone used in the song to me. It took a lot of tweaking to get to a serviceable sound. I'm not really that interested in the sound design type presets in the e-instruments one either but it least the bread and butter stuff is totally serviceable without the need for tweaking. The default e-Instruments preset worked perfectly for Do It Again. I'm definitely going to be buying all of these Purgatory Creek libraries, and the VReeds and VTines from Acoustic Samples too. What I'm not sure about currently is whether I should try to get the sampled AcousticSamples libraries first, because at one point owners of the Wurlie library got 50% off VReeds and if that discount is still in place and stacks with BF pricing then it might be worth the extra expense. I obviously also need to get Keyscape. 🙂