Zolton

2 hours ago, Lionel said:

Hey Philip,

Out of curiosity, is that project from Korea still around on the web? 

I imagine he's probably referring to this project at Seoul National University:

http://en.catsnu.com/Project/Gugak.aspx

For anyone potentially interested in Boom's micro packs "Skate" or "Black Powder", those are two of the prizes you can exchange the Boom Coins for (assuming the prizes are the same for everyone, which I suspect they are).

The odds of picking up something interesting each day are pretty good, too. The wheel has 10 slots, with:

4x free sound
2x Boom Coin
2x discount vouchers (one 10%, one 15%)
1x 1 free spin
1x 2 free spins

Even if you can't immediately use a voucher (they expire two weeks after winning), there's a 60% chance of getting a sound or coin, and another 20% chance of another spin.

The individual free sounds in particular add up over time if you spin every day (10 days in a row gets 3 extra spins); I've picked up a couple of hundred over the course of a year or so. Worth an open browser tab and 30 seconds a day, if you're looking to beef up an SFX library.

It also worked (for me) to add Calm, then browse to the Products page and add something else to the cart.

When the icon at top then indicated I had one item in the cart, I could see both the paid lib and Calm there and removed the paid item to check out with Calm only. It's as though the "Add to cart" button works on the Calm page, but Calm doesn't count as an item, and since the cart link goes to the home page if the cart is empty you'd never have any way to know. 

Hardly calm-ing, and yeah, fairly whacked, operationally. Appreciate the freebie, though.

The real (additional) question with anything Melda is whether you're likely to commit (some day) to buying one or more of the big bundles, and which bundle(s) the current plug counts toward. In this case, MPhaserMB counts toward MComplete (of course), MTotalFX (obvs) and MCreativeFX. 

No matter how little you buy/obtain a plug for, 35% of the regular price is credited against the cost of the relevant bundles. (Melda gives you 70% credit for the purchase price, and assumes plugins bought via 3rd party were 50% off, so 35%.)

For MPhaserMB at $43 regular, that's ~$15 credit, minus whatever was paid for to get the freebie. Which only matters if you're eyeing one or more bundles in the long run, but in that case, it can matter quite a bit, eventually.

A nice bonus is that Melda credits are applied regardless of any sale going on. For example, registering MPhaserMB should take ~$15 off the cost of the MCreativeFX bundle, which is $711 regular price. When Melda has a BF half-off sale and the bundle is $356, you still get the $15 discount, not half of that or some sale-prorated amount.

Lump a few cheapies together over the course of a year or two and wait for a sale on bundles, and it adds up dramatically. It's quite possible to go from zero to MComplete for less than a quarter of the bundle price, a little at a time, if Melda scratches your itch and you're patiently strategic.

2 hours ago, jackson white said:

as a S1/CW user. have you found a custom theme that enhances your productivity in Reaper?

As a Cakewalk user curious about Reaper, this modified Echolot theme put most of the basics in familiar places for me, so I could focus on learning about the differences, new features, workflow adjustments, etc.:

https://forums.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=2546076

Welp, the proverbial good news / bad news:

The 70% off prices are now listed on each item, so it's easier to see what's what.

But the sale-on-top-of-sale discounts appear to be dead, as the Blendstruments, for instance, are now $23 each. 

The common-but-fleeting 8Dio pricing glitch strikes again, it seems.

A bit of testing indicates that for the few items currently on sale (most Blendstruments, Aura Guitars, Berimbau, Ambient Guitar, Guitalele, possibly others), the 70% off stacks with the sale price. The Blendstruments are $10.50 in cart, for example, instead of $78 regular or $35 on sale.

The "volume discount" in cart appears to be wacky, though. One or two on-sale Blendstruments in cart, e.g., are $10.50 each, but three or more are $21 each. 

Usually the 8Dio pricing glitches work in the more favorable direction, so tread carefully if you intend to go a little wild.

Edited to add: Also Bazantar is under $20. Hmmm.

Per the update on Niky's post, though, the link on the page is actually for Quad Frohmage, which is also available via the legacy plugin area.

That looks different (and older) than the GUI on the Frohmager page, but Ohm Force doesn't appear to have created a link to the new plug, if it yet exists. Maybe the QF unclickable link is a temporary placeholder?

17 minutes ago, Grem said:

Isn't Riffer 2 out now?

From the linked product page on Plugin Boutique:

Quote

New Features for v3.0

Down to 80 signups needed, with 100 hours to go!

Yeah, oddly the only thing I've found that the "$30 off $50" code rejects is Polyscape 2. Even one of the collections, which *includes* Polyscape 2, works, but not Polyscape 2 on its own, due to an apparent policy decision.

For those interested in some of the older Karanyi items on sale -- note that the APD "base price" for some of the Karanyi items they carry match the current sale price on Karanyi's site. So if you have a few APD bucks lying around, and you make it in time to use the JULY4 20% code, some of those sale items are currently a little cheaper at APD. Continuo 2 works out to $11.99, for instance.

I was sorely tempted by Continuo 2 and Polyscape 2 for 23 bucks or so, but sadly the coupon doesn't work for the latter. It does, after a bit of testing, work for Analog Tales 2, if that's of interest.

I'd probably cave and go for Continuo 2, Analog Tales/Nightmare and something else, but I've already got most everything else on the cheaper side, so I may wind up sitting this one out. Great find, though!

If you're already in the ecosystem (with paid plugins that count toward bundle discounts), it appears that the credits built up are not affected by the discounted prices, which results in huge savings for some.

So if, for instance, you'd bought a few plugins that count as $50 toward the cost of the MMixing bundle, which is normally $710, you still get a full $50 off while the bundle is $249. If you're a little deeper in (as I was) and dig the Melda paradigm, the narrowed gaps may be in no-brainer territory.  Just make sure you're logged in when you check out the prices on the site. 

Two additional perspectives on the question of "need" (or general usefulness) w/r/t MModernCompressor:

From what I can find (e.g., this description on Gearspace), it's less directly comparable to MTurboComp (LE) than to MDynamics. It seems like a stripped-down version of MDynamics built in the same framework -- so if you happen to have MDynamics, you probably definitely don't "need" MModernCompressor. (Though I've seen some folks say the "lite" version is nice and easy to use.)

More broadly, if you're firmly planning at some point in the future to buy one of the Melda bundles, these cheapie one-off sales come in handy to whittle the prices down to more budget-friendly levels. It definitely helps to know which doodads are in which bundle (Melda's comparison chart is handy for that), and whether a particular plugin thus gets you nearer your goal. 

Melda's policy is to lop 70% of your purchase price off the relevant bundle(s), and they assume anything bought from a reseller was purchased at half price. So the reduction to your eventual bundle price is ~35% of the full price of the plugin.

In this case, MModernCompressor sells on the Melda site for $53 and is included in both the MixingFX and MasteringFX bundle (as well as the TotalFX and MComplete bundles), so it would reduce the price of any of those bundles by around $18. If (and only if) you're dead-set on someday getting one of those bundles, buying one for less than the discount applied to the bundle cost is essentially saving a couple of bucks by starting a payment plan. (Ideally, the plugin is also useful in some way.)

Another way to consider "relative value" for Melda reseller sales, in the context of a future bundle buy, is what the plugin effectively costs in the context of each bundle (which are heavily discounted from the individual plugin prices). Just for instance, the MixingFX bundle has 33 plugs for ~$700; dividing the one-off prices of each plugin into that total proportionally (so the more expensive ones stay more expensive), MModernCompressor -- in the context of the MixingFX bundle -- is "worth" around $11.85 of the total price. The MasteringFX bundle has fewer plugins for the same price, so MModernCompressor is "worth" more to the value of that bundle -- a little less than $15.

Also, for anyone who is thinking of Melda bundles and can wait it out, there's at least one end-of-year sale (and maybe others) where all the bundles are half-price. That takes the biggest chunk out of the equation, but a strategic low-price grab here and there can add up, too.

29 minutes ago, Niky Serrano said:

@Zolton I think that you haven't included in your Excel file this one:

Landscape => https://www.plugin-pusher.com/products/klang_landscape

 

Yeah, I waffled on whether to include that one, and a couple of other free libs from Cinematique that can be found on their site here:

https://cinematique-instruments.com/inst_all_sites/inst_all17_free.php

Despite Plugin Boutique "assigning" Landscape to Klang on their free Kontakt instrument page, the CI site lists it separately from Klang -- and the Landscape interface doesn't have the "KLANG" branding that the other set does.

Still, all the little mini and/or free libs from Cinematique, Klang -- or KLANG -- are made by more or less the same crowd, so far as I'm aware. What qualifies one of them a Klang or not-Klang is a mystery to me -- but it's an excuse to peruse 10 additional freebies on the CI site!

2 hours ago, Niky Serrano said:

Using Google I have found a web site with some Klang products that I hope that helps if someone is looking for them

https://www.plugin-pusher.com/manufacturers/klang

 

Thanks, Niky -- I hadn't seen that site before. It looks like one of the price trackers that have popped up recently -- it looks like it's tracking Plugin Boutique, but not Loot Audio, as it only has the PB prices on the individual item pages (including the ones that are free on Loot).

I should have included handy links to the free Klangs in the original post; here they are:

On Cinematique's site, the Klang page is here (click "For Free" to filter for the 6 currently free ones):

https://cinematique-instruments.com/pages_instr/page_klang.php

On PB, the dedicated "Free Klang" page is currently broken, but the 4 freebies are available among the free Kontakt instruments here:

https://www.pluginboutique.com/categories/55-Kontakt-Instrument?free=true

And on Loot Audio, the Klang page is here (sort by "Lowest" to drive the 7 freebies to the top of the list):

https://www.lootaudio.com/category/kontakt-instruments/Klang

Not sure whether anyone else would be interested, but I've been curious about the state and scope of the Cinematique Instruments-spun out Klang series, so I took a little dive into the history and current availability. In short:

Cinematique started producing small Klang instruments for Kontakt (and often Ableton) in September 2019. Most are heavily processed, perhaps intended for ambient, background or soundscape design. The first handful were released for free, as was one new instrument per month (or most months, at least) for a couple of years. As the series got more popular, some instruments were released with a small price tag (~5-25 Euro) and some (now quite a few) have been discontinued. I have a bunch, and use a few, and since several Klangs are currently available via Plugin Boutique and Loot Audio for $5-6, they make intriguing stocking stuffers / monthly freebie-getting fodder.

I was curious what the collection as a whole looks like. So here it is, as best as I can tell:

In total, 80 Klang instruments have been released, not including 6 in the "Sampl" and "Konzept" categories that sold for higher prices (15-25 Euro, with one freebie), and which don't appear to be available via any of the shops now.

Forty Klang instruments were released for free; 14 of those are currently still available for free, either on Klang's site directly, Plugin Boutique or Loot Audio. In early 2023, Klang went through a revamp and has changed the interface of their instruments; none of the six new-style freebies on Klang are available through a reseller. But none of the eight old-style freebies from PB (4 free) or Loot (7 free) are currently available from Klang.

The offerings available directly from Klang (28 instruments / 6 free, "new-style"), Plugin Boutique (50 / 4) and Loot Audio (41 / 7) are kind of a jumble. Everything available at Loot is also available at PB, and PB has a few extra, though Loot's (US) prices tend to be slightly lower, and some of the freebies at Loot cost money at Plugin Boutique. Altogether, a total of 69 Klang libs are currently available (which is nice), for no more than 5-6 bucks or Euro each, depending on where you might strategically want to throw a couple of bucks to get a freebie or top off a shopping cart.

Anyway, if anyone's interested in the gory details, I've dropped a spreadsheet with availability info below. Happy Klanging.

State_of_Klang-202305.xlsx

I thought the description and link combo was a bit odd -- 20 loops in a "50-in-1" bundle would be an awfully nimble bit of math! -- and I think there's a slight mix up. 

VST Alarm does have a "Trap Veterans 50-in-1" bundle deal for $24.95 (96% off), via the link above.

The free Toronto Guitars loop pack (also by Trap Veterans, gratis for 28 days) is available here:

https://vstalarm.com/product/toronto-guitars-by-trap-veterans-limited-time-free/

Just be aware (if it applies to anyone here) that the first-purchase $10 in points can't be used on products on an "initial discount" sale. 

So if you wanted to try a trick similar to MrFigg's above, you'd probably want to use your big guns/discounts on Pluralis first, then circle back to grab something else with the first-purchase ten bucks off.

3 minutes ago, Brian Lawler said:

Jeepers.  My "special customer price" at Sonible for owning five of their plugs is 179 Euros for the Dynamics bundle.  I took the Best Service deal for $41.41  I doubt that Sonible direct is going to beat that.   Arg!  I got a "No serial numbers available" email from Best... Probably a miss-price.

I wondered if it was a mistake, since each individual plug is the same price as the bundle.

On the other hand, the Dynamics bundle price is somewhat comparable (~$54) at D-Fused Sounds and Sweetwater ($49), which suggests either the neighborhood of the price is legit, or the mistake was on Sonible's end when they sent out the deals and they'll have to sort out each reseller separately. 

Looks like Plugin Boutique has the sale, too -- no discount at all right now on the Dynamics bundle, but $99 for the smart bundle, same as Sweetwater and consistent with BS ($91) and DF ($110).

If you happen to own any of the individual libs in either package and log in to buy from Sonuscore directly, the prices dip a bit lower:

$39 for Volumes 1-5

$49 for Volumes 6-10

Not so fantastic if you have three or four, maybe. I just have V5, so the first one's fairly tempting.

17 minutes ago, wallace said:

Correct me if I’m wrong, seems like Rift is at its lowest historical price.

Ditto, so far as I can tell, for Morph EQ, which I've had my eye on for a while. Thanks for the heads up!

There are many -- many, many, many, many, many -- threads discussing Ethno World, World Suite, EW's Ra/Silk/Gypsy, Tarilonte, Strezov libs and NI Discovery series, among others, in the usual places (including right here) over the past couple of years.

My overall impression is that out of the set of: modern, playable, affordable, comprehensive, realistic and flexible, you can get two, or possibly three, with any given choice. Personal preference, familiarity with specific instruments/styles and individual priority for each characteristic above heavily influence the available opinions.

Personally, I'm a hobbyist with great interest but not great expertise in various "world music" styles, and have tried to lean on the less expensive, more playable and mostly-Kontakt-based side, perhaps at the expense of precise authenticity, wide scope or other perks. I'd venture to guess the most relevant opinions would be the ones from people with the same general use cases / priorities as you, if you can glean those from the comments here or elsewhere.

Looks like Frozen Fuzz is either accidentally in the "For Free" section on the website when it isn't, or is accidentally listed for 8 Euro when it shouldn't be.

Might be worth checking on later, if you're Jonesing for a freebie.

24 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Umm, Melda hack version?? Would that be a preset for one of the MeldaProduction limiters? I have 2 of them.

Looks like a preset for MWaveShaper -- the video describing it is referenced in the BPB item linked above, or directly here:

Redpillz has a link to the preset in the YT video blurb -- not positive this is the one dubdisciple was referencing, but probably it is, unless there are a number of DIY Melda-flator hacks floating around.

Edited to add: When the above video finished in my browser, the Paul Third video dd mentioned loaded up right after. Not sure which came first, or whether the two methods are identical (need to watch later):