Paul_in_wales

Really impressed with harvest. Being able to lock some notes on the harvest grid and use DAW automation to trigger the randomization of non-locked notes from a user selected pool of notes with weighted probability, along with rests with their own probability setting (which can be baked into the pattern), is very sweet.

The interface is horrible laggy for me (mac) - I might still buy it though as it's quite an interesting synth to experiment with

IL's "minihost modular" is handy - but it only covers one small part of what GP does.

An End-Of-Line GP3 has less value (as resources won't be expended on improving it) - but of course buyers didn't know they were buying EOL. It's pretty normal for very recent buyers to get free/cheap upgrades, as distinct from just existing users - and I don't ever recall seeing differential upgrade pricing based on where it was purchased from. I can see why PA and Deskew played it this way, it puts money in the coffers from people who may never have bought GP at all and some of them may get hooked enough to pay the cost to upgrade to GP4 (even though that cost is far more than they paid PA for GP3) - but it feels a bit "bait and switch".

I love that in phase plant we can insert/modulate their effects plug-ins (in snap-in form) at the per-voice/poly level.

It took me ages to unlock a bunch of CM mags yesterday - click a link, get on with something else for a good few minutes, come back and 50/50 it might have loaded the page. Got there in the end though.

Bought one in 2012 to help with back issues from long stints in front of the computer. Worked like a charm, very comfortable and it's still pretty much like new even after 15,000+ hours use. Has been a rock solid investment for me, even after paying pretty much twice the ask of this offer.

lol yeah - and their upgrade pricing is pretty steep too - it's £85/$119 for me to upgrade from icarus 1. that's why I didn't do it when it first came out and then I promptly forgot it even existed!

Looks really interesting. I love the wavetable editor in the original icarus - I use that to make wavetables for my other wavetable synths. I prefer the results with the re-synthesis in that vs serum. Just checked my email and seems it launched back in October 2020 so I guess this is a best service new addition rather than a new product.

Title says it all - free with june 2021 mag.

Gig performer is brilliant for me. It has a really nice scripting language that includes sysex handling - I use that to make control panels for my roland synths. The only real downside is that unlike plogue bidule, it doesn't pass through midi clock on the midi routings - but it makes up for that with the ease of filtering/mapping etc. Absolute bargain at $50 imo - even better if you can get your hands on a voucher!

melda, image-line, spectrasonics and fabfilter also get my vote. I'd add rob papen to the mix - had some excellent deals based on being an existing customer.

Not sure what your gripe is - graphics are part and parcel of the music biz.

The other thing to mention with GP is the ability to build control panels for the plugins being used - and can control external midi hardware via CCs, or using the scripting language to generate sysex. The whole thing feels like something built from solving real-world problems - very handy stuff.

I dismissed it last time it was on offer as merely being a plugin-chainer, but I demo'd it and found it to be so much more. I have been waiting for it to go on sale so I'm a very happy bunny today. It will pretty much replace plogue bidule for me as a quick and easy way to route my hardware synth midi and audio, and to be able to more easily bring plugins into that mix. The midi routing is really nice as can very easily map midi channels, filter event types, setup splits/layers and transpose notes.

not sure why you think they have zero usb ports - the ports aren't USB A, but an adapter or hub than costs a few dollars solves that.

Am I missing something - isn't this still ultimately the same "instrument>effects>recorder" chain, just split as "[instrument>effects]>recorder" vs a DAW's "instrument>[effects>recorder]"? How is a plugin effects chain in something like metaplugin/bidule/patchwork/axiom any less portable?

@teclark7 - I know it's more money, but you owe it to yourself to at least look at bluecat axiom. Not only does that contain some really good guitar effects of its own - and a full version of the excellent late replies delay, it can host other plugins within it too.

Note it talks about taking payments - this shouldn't affect buying from non-EU resellers who've never bothered with jumping through the EU VAT hoops. That'd be pretty much all the resellers I tend to buy from...

always a good idea to leave at least 1 token in the account imo, as sometimes they have really good deals in the rewards sections that need a token to unlock (and you can't go the other way, from virtual cash to tokens). I'm speaking from my experience in repeatedly not having done that...

Just looking at the melda 14.16 beta and saw this: In the current 50% sale, mxxxcore is $61 - as is msuperlooper mturboreverb LE is $91 so $152 to get full mturboreverb full as a module inside mxxxcore or superlooper (plus there's the additional benefit of having mxxxcore/superlooper). vs mturboreverb which is $183 in the sale. Obviously more attractive still If you already have mxxx core/superlooper/mturboreverb LE (Double checked with melda to make sure I've read this right - see https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=558283 ) Don't forget with Melda there's also a 20% new customer discount using a referral code, and a 10€ newsletter signup credit.

I really don't think it's as clear cut as that. With a decent master keyboard and controller it's entirely possible to have a tangible relationship with software too. (I highly recommend the faderfox ec4 for that - it's my favourite bit of non-synth hardware). Software resale pain is lessened thanks to forums like this one - research sales patterns and buy cheap with no expectation of reselling, or at least know the resale policies for what you're buying to see if there is built in "resale hurt". Hardware can go faulty, and most manufacturers don't allow the transfer of warranties. Repairs can be expensive to the point of being uneconomic. The depreciation seen on hardware can buy a lot of software. Software can deliver crazy bang for the buck compared to hardware - especially in sales. There is a reliance on manufacturers to get improvements on hardware over time, and many have been guilty of quick abandonment. This can be a real pain if important aspects of the hardware are tied to software (eg access virus total integration breaking with recent macos releases and no sign of an update). Software can "improve" if the hardware it's being run on is improved - obviously it can also stop working entirely with new OS's and server disconnections etc. Boils down to the individual hardware/software - the utility we get from it, the potential for it breaking, the resale value vs the price paid etc

In terms of bang for the buck it was a recent lump of rob papen purchases with cascaded discounts by way of loyalty cash at time&space. Only had punch2 from RP, but bought Go2 for £15 then added Blade 2 and blue 2 (by way of sound design-x upgrade bundle) for £30. So £45 for the 3 and I still have some loyalty cash to play with. They all bring something interesting to the table.

One other thing that makes my scam-o-meter bounce off the ceiling is the review by "E. McHenry Brown" on that site - the picture is a clearly a photoshopped image from this video with the polyend logo removed: https://youtu.be/IbuRtnd_N8w

I think even if the core concept is old, there is a still cost to develop/manufacture the hardware and to create this specific instance of the tracker/sound-engine software, which doesn't seem an adaptation of existing software. Applying the same logic, cirklon and squarp pyramid aren't high tech either being just step sequencers at heart, which has been done cheaply in software too, but they command higher prices than the polyend tracker. Polyend are unlikely to sell them by the boatload so they have to recoup their investment and make a profit - setting a price that the market will bear that generates sufficient profit to make the project worthwhile isn't price hiking. The software is what makes the polyend useful - god knows what you'd get on this rip-off.