fret_man

Man, you're not joking! I don't know HOW many cups of coffee I'm gonna go thru...

Does anyone have a recommendation for a solo violin / fiddle VSTi suitable for folk/bluegrass/Celtic/world music? I'm not (necessarily) looking for orchestral/classical sounds, but it needs to be convincing. I'm not a keyboard player so not so concerned with how accessible it is for keyboardist to achieve live realism. I'm not afraid of steep learning curves and used to digging into details to fine-tune the articulations, although something easier to get useable sounds is better than harder. This would be used in both supportive and solo roles, so sound quality needs to be quite high. My must-haves are: Win10 No iLok There are so many violins available. I'm having a very hard time knowing what to invest in. Any recommendations? Thank you! Paul

FYI, I found it was cheaper for me to buy these directly from AmpleSound's website even considering Best Service's discount. Maybe they gave me a "loyalty discount"? I got 13 instruments (their electric guitars & basses) for $650. That's $50 an instrument! Highly worth it. These are very high quality instruments. I'm a fanboy.

On sale at the Microsoft store, too, for Windows. Sale good until July 31.

But that was back in Oct 2020. I don't think there's been an update in the last 2-3 months.

Apparently that's very hard to do. There's specialized software that will convert PDFs, but it's not cheap ($39 to $179 depending on how many staves you have).

A wireless iRig. Guitar -> wireless link -> audio interface -> computer -> Amplitube.

Use promo code FINALE2021 at checkout for a $50 discount. Promo code expires 11:59 p.m. Eastern time, July 23, 2021.

FYI, a PC version is "coming soon"!

And you can keep coming back with more purchases as you decide "Hmm, maybe I should have gotten this, too."

I am fully vested in the AmpleSound workflow. I've used all of their acoustic instruments. But I needed a mandolin so I got the OrangeTree Acoustic Bundle. I posted a rant about their mandolin here. After that, I didn't really bother with the rest of their acoustic instruments. So I can't really compare the two very well. That being said, I am quite happy with the sound and programmability of the AmpleSound acoustic instruments. I am a guitar player, not a keyboard player, and everything I can do on an acoustic instrument I can do on the AmpleSound instruments. I do NOT use it live. I program the MIDI in my recordings. I do not have a tracking room quiet enough to record my acoustic instruments, so I reverted to MIDI - sometimes using Melodyne to convert my (noisy) recorded guitar to MIDI (keeping the dynamics and timing but losing articulations that I have to manually put back in). I can recommend AmpleSound without hesitation. OrangeTree may be very nice. I just can't say. However, with this sale I can fill in some gaps that OrangeTree provides. I'm looking at the Slide bundle, Rick 12, Rick Bass, and the Sitardelic for that 60's-70's psycho vibe.

Sorry, I already have both sets of acoustic instrument bundles so I didn't do those. But there's a great deal of overlap: OrangeTree -> Ample Sound Modern Nylon -> Ample Guitar L Flatpick 6 -> Ample Guitar T Steel Strings -> Ample Guitar M Songwriter -> Ample Guitar SJ Jumbo 12 -> Ample Guitar 12 Bluegrass Banjo -> Ample Ethno Banjo Mandolin -> -> Ample Ethno Ukulele

The Acoustic Slide is tuned in open D in case that helps.

Same as above but with Bass libraries: