Craig N

It's a full Kontakt library so there's no DRM. Some full Kontakt libraries are watermarked though.

Looks like I spoke too soon. Some of these Halls of Fame reverbs are pretty good. The earlier impression was from comparing the Eventide SP 2016 with the native plugin and finding the Halls of Fame versions lacking, but now I'm comparing the Bricasti M17 with Seventh Heaven Pro and some the Liquidsonics wins, but some the Halls of Fame definitely win (Large Ambience is a good example). I've never really been a big fan of Seventh Heaven Pro. It sounds a bit muffled to my ears. Cinematic Rooms Pro on the other hand, now that one is stunning.

I had really wanted Best Service Halls of Fame for a long time, so for me it was worth it just to grab that one. Didn't end up even liking it, so I'm glad it only cost me $10 😂 Must remember to install the Trinity thingy at some point. I'm not planning on doing any trailers any time soon though.

Just remove the folder for it from your Sampletank configuration so sampletank can't find the content and rename the folder so any hidden references in other plugins (eg Syntronik maybe) can't find it, and see how you go. If after a couple of months you haven't missed it, then it is probably safe to delete. But maybe best to backup first rather than pay to download again later.

Yay! This is the news I've been waiting for! Resizable UI is going to make these so much more usable !!!

Apologies if my wording was confusing, I meant I have Fame already but I don't want to demo The Farm Stone reverb which I'm sure is not included in TS Max 3.5 unless I've died and gone to heaven.

Oh I just remembered it will be automatically installed next time I update T racks Damn it. It's going to be too tempting not to demo.

The Fame reverb is so good I'm not even demoing this one until I get it in a reasonably priced TS 4 upgrade. Otherwise I'll agonise over not having it hahaha.

I picked up ToneX Max and managed to get the TS Max 3.5 bundle for $69.99 as a result. I'm out of IK purgatory at last. Feels good. For the moment anyway haha.

Pretty happy with that haul. Thanks Jan!

I changed my account email address when this happened to me for about a 6 month period. The emails arrive at my gmail account but they weren't reaching my outlook.com account and although I contacted customer support and they said they fixed it, it didn't fix it, but the change to using a gmail account worked. It felt a bit like having stockholm syndrome to be glad to be receiving PA emails again, but receiving the voucher codes and PA_EXT announcements is worth all the spam 🙂

I'm not sure if it's generic but this was my voucher I just used it so if it works, or if anyone else can confirm they got the same voucher, it's generic 2022-12-25SG9P2Q3iTw27e

They're not known for the cheapest upgrades either.

Nice work Peter! I had trouble picking out the differences on the cheap IEM earphones I had at work yesterday but listening through my AKG 701 headphones and MDR-7506 it was easier to pick a preference. I liked the second one mainly for its extra heft in the low frequencies, although ironically I felt it had too much low energy in the mix and was competing with the bassline. The first one was definitely easier to hear on my cheap IEM earphones and it also stood out clearer on the better headphones but tonally I guess I didn't like the nasal quality of it as much. But we're getting to splitting hair territory, the first couple of listens I thought they both sounded good and had trouble differentiating them at all haha 🙂

For those who don't need to pay VAT at least, Thomann has some exceptional deals at the moment! Some are as sharp as it ever gets. Hold on to your wallets, folks, this is going to be a wild ride. Judging from some deals they had last year, Thomann tends to have a certain amount of stock, and once exhausted they don't get replenished. So if there's something here you're contemplating, don't sleep on it too long... or it might be sold out next time you look. Arturia V Collection 9 $245 https://www.thomannmusic.com/arturia_v_collection_9.htm Soundtoys 5 $199 https://www.thomannmusic.com/soundtoys_soundtoys_5.htm D16 Silverline Collection $207 https://www.thomannmusic.com/d16_group_silverline_collection.htm PSP Infinistrip $86 https://www.thomannmusic.com/psp_audioware_psp_infinistrip.htm Sugar Bytes Sugar Bundle $349 https://www.thomannmusic.com/sugar_bytes_sugar_bundle.htm Softube Volume 5 $384 https://www.thomannmusic.com/softube_volume_5.htm Izotope Everything Bundle upgrade from any version of MPB or MPS $289 https://www.thomannmusic.com/izotope_everything_bundle_cg_mps_mpb.htm Relab Sonsig Rev-A reverb $62 https://www.thomannmusic.com/relab_development_sonsig_rev_a.htm Tone2 Icarus $77 https://www.thomannmusic.com/tone2_icarus2.htm There's more... but these ones stood out to me as better prices than I recall seeing previously. Here's the full list of software deals: (prepare to click "Show more" and scroll a bunch of times). https://www.thomannmusic.com/special_cyberweek.html?wghky=sw

I hadn't heard of Lonnie Brooks before, but I really enjoyed the song featured in that video clip, thanks for sharing it! I was bopping my head straight away, what a catchy groove! So I've added a couple of albums that song appears on to my Apple Music library so I remember to check out some more of his music. I was thinking to myself that you're lucky to have come up in an environment with so many musical greats, but then I remembered that just the other day, when buying a capo for my daughter to use on her acoustic guitar, I got to chatting with a friendly guy who has helped me at the music shop on previous visits. I had overheard someone bring up that he was going on tour a few minutes prior, so I asked him about it and found the name of his band (Osaka Punch), looked them up, and it turns out they're pretty amazing! When I put their album on in the car my daughter declared it was better than any of the other music I'd ever played in the car. Hah! I live in Brisbane, Australia, and a few famous bands have started out here, from the Bee Gees way back when, through Savage Garden in the 90s, to Sheppard (Hey Geronimo) more recently. Nowadays there's so much music being made that it seems even people with serious talent will end up in the long tail of the music business, and I guess that's natural as more and more of us start to express our creativity musically with all of the opportunities we have nowadays. It's amazing to me how much great music is in and around us all.

$35 is such an attractive price for this library (not to mention the further discount for people who own any of the Core Collection libraries). Once the intro pricing ends it's going to be $79.00 USD. That's a big jump up in price. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about it, once you have the time to get back to it, understanding family obligations at this time of year of course. I'm still loving the vibe I get from EP145B. It's so phat. The EQ moves you have to make with the Session Keys W are pretty extreme to get into similar territory. I was trying to remember the last time I felt an instrument had a wonderful vibe to it, and it just came to me; the Softube Model 84 (Juno 106 emulation). Another classic instrument. It's a fascinating thing this "vibe" or "mojo". I'm not sure what to put it down to exactly, I just know that an instrument either has it or doesn't.

Gladiator, Elektra and Icarus on Thomann for $77 ex vat https://www.thomannmusic.com/tone2.html

https://www.bestservice.com/deals/tone2_sale_40_off_3730.html Same prices but you can earn a few bestcoins

Makes you wonder if it's been ready for years but because of improvements from the competition, Steven wouldn't let them release it. With him out the way... send it!

Hahaha I was coming here to joke about the possibility of the upgrade to 2 being more expensive than the Shimmer Shake 1 price last Black Friday, AND IT IS!!!! The comedy doesn't end there though What a bargain, customers! They could have charged extra for this incredible bonus but act fast and you'll get it for free with your purchase.

Whoa, finally! Thanks for the heads up!

There's a big difference in tone between EP145B and the E Instruments W. The Skybox is much warmer, a very pleasing warmth. The W sounds almost anemic by comparison and adjusting the Bass knob doesn't get anywhere near the tone of the EP145B. I've heard people say Wurlitzers are meant to sound nasally, and the W has that kind of tone, so maybe that's accurate for the 200, but I remember seeing Simeon's demonstration of the EP145B and thinking it sounded amazing, and I still think that. OK I've just had more of a dig into the Skybox settings. The simple appearance at first makes it look like there's not much you can tweak. Wow, talk about the wrong impression. Elegant simplicity but there's a lot to play with under the hood! There's a bunch of different amps and cabs and effects. I'm really glad I got the two Skybox libraries now. I'm not interested in any of the sound design stuff, and I wish they had a bunch of bread and butter presets from famous songs like some of the other Wurlie libraries do, but if you're happy tweaking, there's some great sound to be had here. But coming back to the raw samples, the EP145B definitely has an unmistakably unique warm sound that I really dig. I can't get a tone anything like it using the E Instruments W. I managed to get fairly close with VReeds briefly but then lost whatever unicorn combination of settings was responsible and now I'm way off again.

The Denise reverbs are really high latency. Wonder if they'll fix that one day?

I picked up Skybox Electric + Skybox EP145B yesterday and they're both really good, not necessarily any better than e-Instruments W, but different flavours I guess. Perhaps slightly more consistent tonally thanks to their robotic recording although I noticed a little bit more noise in some of their samples even after turning the noise setting down to nothing. Not necessarily a problem, it's a sampling of a real instrument after all. I then picked up Acoustic Samples VTines and VReeds and had so much fun exploring the range of sounds that can be made with these instruments. I'd read that it was possible to get a variety of different tones out of VReeds and that was spot on. I could pretty much match the tone of the Skybox EPs using VReeds, and I got pretty close to matching the tones of the Famous E and the Scarbee EP-88s with VTines. The thing I really like about each of these is they have nice big UIs in UVI Workstation (for some reason they don't look as good at 150% scale in Falcon), load super fast since they're so lightweight, and play with very low latency compared to sampled instruments, the way Pianoteq is. But with Pianoteq you always know you're using a modelled instrument, it's like the idealistic way such an instrument should sound to the point of uncanny valley. Whereas with VReeds and VTines you would swear you were listening to a sampled instrument until you paid attention to the consistency of the tone across the keyboard. Anyway I'm pretty chuffed with these purchases in case that's not already obvious haha. Where with a sampled instrument you're just getting those samples with whatever effects can be applied on top, with these you can get under the hood and tweak the setup like a technician can with a real instrument to really change the tone. It's quite interesting to go into those settings for some of the presets and watch how the settings change as you play across the keyboard - they're not set the same way for every key, eg the Pickup Angle on the VReeds and the Tine Height on the VTines increase key by key for certain key ranges. Fascinating stuff that I assume mirrors the setup of these instruments in the real world. So they seem like far more flexible musical instruments rather than just a snapshots of an instrument.