Amicus717

I've collected a fair number of their libraries via the two big Native Instrument bundle sales that they participated in, which gave pretty good value IMHO, and the two bundles matched up really well together. I do like their stuff, and pretty much every library I bought has been incorporated into my template and seen some use.

Site looks fixed! Sale prices are now in evidence...

I would assume a site update issue. Someone on the web producer side missed a memo.

It's a bit weird that the page for this Sale says "There are no products on sale." I've asked their support team for a bit of clarification. Looks to me like the site hasn't been updated or something...

This looks (and sounds) like something worth picking up. I have their Adventure Strings and Brass and Soaring Strings libraries, and they are all pretty good.

FWIW, I inquired of Behringer support if they were discontinuing or phasing out the XTouch series (a whole bunch of online and brick-n-mortar stores in Canada are listing their stuff as “discontinued”), and the reply I got was: “The Xtouch series is still in production. There are some retailers not carrying our products anymore because of our recent transition to superpartners like Sweetwater, thoman and andertons.”

Great stuff, Bats. Slickly recorded and mixed, with your usual high-end polish. Really enjoyed it.

Great stuff, Wook. As always. Enjoyed the listen.

This is great info, thanks Jim. I was wondering about this myself, as I’m shopping for a new build.

Anyone familiar with the Icon Nano? Looks intriguing. I've heard of Icon's stuff before and have seen a few of their larger products reviewed, but was not aware they had a smaller unit like this... https://iconproaudio.com/product/platform-nano/ I currently have an older MCU on its last legs (faders are getting sticky and starting to fail) and am looking to upgrade, but I don't really need much beyond the shuttle controls and one fader, and I'd like to reclaim some desk space. So the Faderport v2 and the XTouch One had been on my radar, although I'm not sure either of them will be what I'm looking for. The FaderPort v2 seems a bit too threadbare for me (I'd still like a rotary encoder and a digital readout), and the XTouch One is getting hard to find -- most Canadian stores seem to be removing it from their product lines and a few places even list it as "no longer available / EOL", so I wonder if Behringer is phasing out the XTouch products. The Icon Nano looks like it has lots of nice features in a small footprint...

I think the Taylor Davis violin, CinePiano and the Solo Strings would be a nice addition to anyone's collection, regardless of what you already own -- they're standalone products and they're great. The Woodwinds Pro library doesn't have the bread-and-butter essentials found in the core library - flute, oboe, bassoon and clarinet - but does have a lot of really nice additional instruments that are good to add if you do the kind of music that needs them. I can see it being a worthwhile addition if you already have another basic woodwinds library. The Brass Pro library is really intended to accentuate the Brass Core library, and I suspect it would be much less useful on its own - it's got a few nice standalone patches (12 horns, and a couple of solo patches for Trombone, Horn and Trumpet), but is also has a lot of FX patches and muted patches etc that are intended as direct extensions of the ones in the Core library. They may be useful, but they'd be a lot more valuable if you have both libraries. CineBrass Core and Pro are two libraries that really should go together as a pair, and the Pro one on its own is very incomplete. The Descant Horns library is a nice addition to my library, but is kind of niche; the descant horn is a agile, lighter sounding French Horn variant that is great at playing high range notes, and very handy to have around, but not exactly a game changer. Nice to have, but not essential. So, there is definitely stuff here that would be useful to anyone, for sure, but if you don't have CineSamples Brass Core, then you're not getting full value for the package. There is also the matter of the CineSamples sound and vibe -- to my ears it's pretty specific to their products, and may not suit everyone. Their stuff is all recorded on the MGM scoring stage, and its got a similar sound across all their libraries, and it's kind of big and bold and a bit in your face. They do have lots of mic options, so that helps you tailor it to blend with other stuff, so it can be flexible. But it is something that should be noted. Hope that helps!

So, I did take the plunge and grabbed the Toolset bundle. Couldn't resist for that price, and I spent yesterday evening playing around with them. So far, they're great. The Woodwinds Pro library, in particular, is absolutely killer. Totally fits into the kind of music I like doing. It's got ensemble versions of the Woodwinds Core library (which is all solo instruments), and adds new solo instruments (bass clarinet, contrabassoon, contra clarinet, alto flute, bass flute, Eflat clarinet, etc) - but also has an extensive list of historical and world woodwinds and pipes: Irish whistles, a duduk, shawms, tenor and soprano recorders, baroque and renaissance flutes, a collection of bagpipes (border pipes, renaissance pipes, uilleann pipes), and a few patches worth of recorded phrases for some of these instruments. It's an awesome addition to my collection. Really happy I got that one, and I've already used the border pipes in a new piece I'm assembling. The walkthru for this library is here, and I think it is worth watching: https://cinesamples.com/product/cinewinds-pro The CinePiano library is basic, has four flavors (basic grand, a more ambient classical grand, a soft and intimate cinematic grand, and a hard edged rock grand) and they are all excellent - clean, clear and nicely calibrated. CineBrass Pro has additional ensembles and solo brass instruments, including a really delightful 12 Horn power ensemble, and lots of FX, mute patches and the like. Great addition to their already very nice CineBrass library. Taylor Davis solo violin is excellent - clean, expressive with a nice legato. I've only briefly fired up the CineStrings Solo library, and haven't really explored it much. But what I have heard sounded great. As always, YMMV. These libraries perfectly suit me, my working style and my musical preferences, and they sound very good, but they may not suit everyone. However, if you are already in the Cinesamples ecosystem as I am, then adding these for $400 is a total must-have, no-brainer. Frankly, I'd have paid $400 for the Woodwinds Pro library, and called it a good day. Rob

Info here: https://www.sonokinetic.net/sale?utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Sonokinetic+Flash+Sale

Worth noting, the Toolset bundle is the expansions to the original core libraries. They sold the core libraries (CineStrings, CineBrass, Harps, CineBrass Sonore, etc) for 70% off last year. I got the whole collection for, I think, $700, and it was a really good deal. Great libraries. I won't be able to resist this one at all, as it gives me all the expansions for one pretty awesome price. And yeah, Tina Guo is great across the board. It sees a lot of use in my template. I really like their stuff. It is absolutely built as per the brand namesake, with a big, bold soundtrack vibe. The strings are fulsome and raspy, and kind of in-your-face. The brass is pretty powerful (and my favorite libraries of the whole set). The percussion is a mammoth library, with tons of options, and so far I like what I've heard (I'm still exploring that one). All the libraries have multiple mics and some really nice mix presets. Cinesamples also has multiple settings for how to switch between articulations -- there is separate mappings for keyswitch, velocity, pedal, etc., and you can tailor it all to you preferences, including adjusting the adaptive legato speed and intensity, etc. There is also polyphonic legato for some of the libraries,. I like their stuff a lot, and this is a heck of deal to my eyes...

Details here: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/specials/komplete/cinesamples-offer-2021

Info here: https://www.vsl.co.at/en/News/2021-04_Special_Editions

Thanks, Bapu! Yeah, I read through the specs on your system, and its looks like a monster. I assume in whatever task you are running, it's pretty perky across the board? Do you know which make of PSU? I've had a few people tell me that different brands can be really different in terms of quality (and one tech dude at the local computer superstore told me that even within specific brands, different classes of PSU can be really variable as well -- he was citing Corsair PSUs, in that particular case, saying in his experience some of them were great, some of them were quite unreliable).

Hi folks, I'm embarking on a little studio rebuilding adventure, and am looking for a bit of advice. Some background: My girlfriend and I are buying a house together, so I just sold mine, and the crazy real estate market pumped the sell price into the stratosphere. Most of that profit is just being dumped into the next house (because the crazy sell price will mean a rough purchase price on the next house). But I'm carving off a small chunk of that profit, and plan to build a proper home studio in the new place. This is something I have been looking forward to for a long, long time. I've been a single parent raising three kids alone for the past 17 years, and its been really rewarding (and totally worth it), but also rather a slog -- at one point, just to keep the mortgage paid and the lights on, I worked four jobs at the same time (my day job, an evening retail job, a Saturday job at a tire store, and a Sunday job at church). But I got my kids safely to adulthood, and now they're finishing up their education and getting started on their lives, and after almost two decades of hard work and sacrifice, I'm rewarding myself with a fun - and thoroughly ridiculous - shopping spree. My plans include: a) a purpose built, spare-no-expense studio room that will be properly treated and furnished for audio b) a beast of a new audio computer, built with all the trimmings and custom-tailored for VST instrument use (including a new audio interface and new monitors) The audio computer part is where I'm running into questions. I have built my own systems for many years, starting back in the Intel 386/486 days, including gaming PCs, music PCs and just about everything else. So I do consider myself something of a power user/builder. But the current tech landscape is a bit murkier than I remember in terms of building specifically for audio, and I'd be curious to see what folks think of the setup I am compiling. I have not purchased any of this yet, although I plan to start at the end of April. The core of the system will be: Intel Core i9-11900K CPU ASUS Prime Z590-A LGA mobo ASUS ThunderboltEX 3-TR expansion card 128GB (4x32GB) DDR4 3200MHz I'm trying to figure out the best HD/SSD configuration for a heavy sample user like myself. I figure some variation on this theme might work: an M.2 drive for the OS, a couple of large SSD (or M.2) drives for samples, and a nice big platter drive for storage (I already have a NAS on my network that I use for back-up). I'm also trying to figure out what power supply brands are currently considered top-shelf; I'm a big believer that the power supply is one of those key components that make a huge impact on system stability and durability, and I want to make sure I get a good one, properly spec'd for my system's power consumption. As for the audio interface: even though I have been an RME user for the past few years, I am really drawn to the Presonus Quantum 2632 with its uber-low latency and (apparently) great sound and build. I've heard nothing but good things about it's performance and stability, and it seems specifically built for all-VST dudes like me. I'd really appreciate any thoughts on the above components. I was originally looking at the Gen 10 Intel CPUs, but if I'm reading the specs correctly, the Gen 11 CPUs allow me to use memory with a higher clock speed. Is the RAM clock speed upgrade (3200Mhz instead of 2666Mhz) going to make much of a difference? Also, while the Gen 11 CPUs have a smaller core count than Gen 10 (the 11900K has eight cores instead of the ten cores found in the 10900K), I've read that the Gen 11 CPUs are more efficient and faster on a core-vs-core basis, and this kind of speed and power matters more than pure core count when it comes to audio. A detail worth noting: I'm also a Vienne Ensemble Pro user, and intend to also properly implement a multi-PC VEP setup in the new studio. I've got a couple of decently spec'd i7 refurb PC's that I picked up from a friend of mine (they are off-lease corporate workstations), and I intend to farm out some of my sample libraries to them. Oh, and also: screens! I've heard and seen folks using 4K HDTVs as main image monitors, and am wondering if anyone here does that, and if so what brand/models do you recommend? I know there are potential issues with input lag and chroma subsampling when it comes to using TVs as computer monitors, but I love the idea of tons of screen real estate for my rather large orchestral template. Thanks, Rob

Yeah, and while I understand the Apollos are pretty awesome in lots of ways, I don't think their latency is nearly as good when you're not using their plugins.

I don't know of any other interface that has the low latency of the Quantums. The only thing that would match it would be a PCIe card, I'd guess, and the only high-end PCIe cards I'm aware of that might be able to match the Quantum's sound and latency figures would be the either one of the Lynx cards, or the new RME AIO Pro. But at this point I can find no reviews or demonstrations of the RME card, and so I have no idea how good it is. I know the Lynx cards have a great reputation for sound quality, but I have no idea what their latency is like. Both the Lynx and the AIO Pro cards cost about the same as the Quantum 2632, so if I can get awesome low latency performance, great converters, a few decent preamps (I do record with a mic, every now and then), and the ability to control monitor levels, etc directly on the interface, well that would be great. I actually would prefer the Quantum 2, which was smaller and with less in-and-outs but otherwise the exact same specs as the 26x32. However, they no longer make it.

I've been eyeing the Quantum for a little while -- I'm building a new studio, and want to upgrade my gear across the board, and the Quantum 26X32 looks like a nice option. I am 100% in-the-box, and do orchestral stuff exclusively, so its all-VST-instruments-all-the-time. The low latency of the Quantum is very appealing. I wish the Quantum 26X32 was offered in TB3. It is has a lot more features (and slightly better specs) than the Quantum 2626, but I dislike the idea of buying a $1400 interface that right out of the box has an outdated interface and needs an adapter.

...and for the record: AlbionONE orchestral stuff? Always and every day. The Steamband, rarely; and the Brunel Loops, never.

I think this kind of info is very interesting - I like finding out how others use these libraries.

Sounds great, Tapsa, as usual. Rob

Great stuff -- smooth and tight, with a great mix. Nice and clear, and I could hear all the musical details. Sweet!