Reid Rosefelt

4 instruments were sampled in Cremona--two violins, a viola and a cello. I'm assuming that all four will come out from e-instruments and NI, and I've heard it will happen in the fall. I hope they will be included in KU13, but I doubt it. These sound like very expensive libraries. So I'm thinking they will be like the Symphony Series with KU11. They come out at the same time, but you have to pay more to get them. But maybe... I'm wrong? But maybe... a limited edition will come out with KU13, like Symphony Essentials did with KU11? @telecode 101 If you check out their catalog you'll see that NI regularly teams up with a lot of the major developers,. For example, the Symphony Series: Strings are Audiobro; Brass and Woodwinds are Soundiron; and Percussion is Sonuscore (who also did Mallet Flux, Action Strings, Emotive Strings, and Action Strikes), A lot of their pianos were created by Galaxy.

I'll still come here 400 times a day. 🐸

Rule by Art is one of the coolest and most unusual graphics companies around. You will probably recognize some of their stuff from music software packaging. https://rulebyart.com/collections/collections

When I think of all the "free" stuff I've downloaded over the years, I know that some of these libraries were a lot of gigabytes. So I wonder if I had to buy an SSD just to house them. And they were a lot more expensive in those days. "Free" is only $100 a TB nowadays. 😃

@husker my friend. I have some questions and rthoughts, that probably won't affect your decision. 🙂 How much music are you making? I think at the minimum people should spend at least twice as much of their free time playing or composing than shopping, researching videos, reading manuals, learning a new library, etc. I try to spend at least four or five times as much time making music over buying libraries. Or at least exploring libraries I already own, like Omnisphere, which is inspiring for my writing. So, how much music have you been making? Do you have stuff on your list that absolutely needs another choir? Music that you absolutely an't make with the choirs you already have, by layering them, etc ? For me personally, in addition to the choirs I already own (some of which were free), I probably have over a dozen choirs within libraries like The Orchestra, Amadeus, Omnisphere, Virtuoso Ensembles, XPand! etc. And some of these are so good that I end up using them over the ones I own. I think we all have to ask ourselves: Are we musicians or are we collectors? If we are collectors that is absolutely fine. Some people collect cars or antiques or sports memorabilia. If you have the money and it makes you happy, buy all the choirs that are sold. If you want every library that Spitfire sells, buy it. Have fun. But if you want to be a musician you have to spend a few hundred hours exploring the instruments you already own. And playing them! 😃 I'll give you an example, recently I decided I wanted to get some Middle Eastern strings for a song I'm working on. I had Aviram, which I like, but I wanted some phrases with sustained instruments. Sultan Strings is very rarely on sale, but now it is half off. And I am very interested in Findasounds' Petra Strings. By coincidence I started working on my Middle Eastern template, because I needed to know everything I had to use in my song. And damned if I didn't discover that there are a ton of great Middle Eastern String ensembles in NI's Discovery Middle East. I had no idea that exactly what I was looking for was right there. Much more usable to me than the way Sultan Strings is set up. If I could choose between one of the three paid products, I'd pick the one I already own. Sorry if this sounds preachy, but there are recent issues in my life and I suddenly have to think a lot more about money than I have before. I'm still looking for deals, of course. 🐸 FYI the Studio Sopranos isn't exactly a choir. It is three sets of three singers. You can combine them into a choir, if you consider 9 sopranos a choir, which I don't. I mainly use them three at a time, which I find a great thing to combine with a soloist. The Studio Sopranos one of the very few purchases I've made from 8dio that I don't regret . It's one-of-a-kind and has a great sound and a beautiful legato. I regret the many micro-purchases from $8 to $98 to whatever that I made when I was juiced up by a sale. GAS. They all add up to a bunch of stuff sitting on my hard drive that I never use. Spending all this $$ in a steady trickle makes it hard for me to lay out the big money for something else with a big price tag that I'd use every day. It was super hard for me to talking myself into buying Genesis, but that thing is a work of art. I don't think I will ever buy another choir. I have more choirs than I need and I have one choir that is like the Cinematic Studio Strings of choirs. The ultimate. It is half price, now, by the way. Reid

I never use these, not because they are so bad, but because I have since purchased so many guitar libraries that sound better and are easier to play. Accent on easier to play. They have a very clumsy GUI. The technology for guitar libraries has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years, from companies like Indiginus, Orange Tree Samples, AmpleSound, Native Instruments, and ujam. (And these are just the ones I happen to own--I've heard great things about Ilya Efimov and others. ) Guitar libraries just get better and better and better, and I suppose that ten years from now, Acoustic Samples will continue to trot out this sale price every few months with never an update. Particularly now with the OTS group buy going on. Not good timing for this "deal." These libraries were once state-of-the-art for guitar picking, but that was long ago. IMHO they've been left in the dust. To be totally honest, I prefer the Amplesound Acoustic freebie, the Guitar M Lite, to any of these. http://amplesound.net/en/download.asp

Triton is $199 But if you have M1 Le, you can get the entire Korg Collection 2 for $199. (FYI M1 Le, comes with some Korg keyboards and hardware. I'm waiting for the price to go down to half that. Korg Gadget for Mac is $199. The 40 Korg Gadget 2 plugins for Mac/PC is $149. This is a great deal, but I've been waiting forever for them to keep their promise and add NKS for PC. Remember these include LE versions of the M1, Arp Odyssey, Wavestation, MS-20, Mono/Poly, and Polysix, plus Reason's Dr. Octo Rex. The ironic thing is that the Gadget GUI for Wavestation (Milpitas) is a LOT better than the one in the Korg Collection. No idea why Korg won't port it over, seeing how they've already done the work.

Great deal.

Created by instrument developer and sound designer Frederik Theyssen These all play in Orchestral Tools' new Sine Playe ARBOS - Natural Forest Percussion 39 euros until 7/7, then 49 euros + VAT Raw, elemental percussion that channels the bond between rhythm and nature. Capture the atmospheric tones of the natural world with Arbos. Experiment with fresh percussive sounds ranging from root hits, rustling branch rolls, and dense woodland textures. Arbos’ distinct organic character can wrap itself around a wide spectrum of contemporary genres, shaping adventurous scores and left-field productions. 20 single instruments Up to 11 articulations, spot, room and reverb mics Processed: 6 ensembles, 3 pads, 4 plucks, and 3 textures AMBER - Downtuned String Quartet 99 euros until 7/7, then 149 euros + VAT A string quartet that unfolds with color, emotion, and an unmistakable edge. Amber offers a left-of-center sound. Darker, softer, fuller—the violins, viola, and cello were tuned down a fourth to accentuate their unique characteristics. Amber’s dry studio sound lays the foundations for modern scoring techniques, but dive a little deeper and you’ll discover a compelling string quartet that gives your music an unconventional and vibrant quality. 1st violin, 2nd violin, viola, and cello (tuned down a fourth) 19 articulations, true legato, 2 spots and 1 room mic Processed: 1 ensemble, 11 pads, 4 plucks, 2 keys, and 5 drones BABEL - Studio Voice Textures 59 euros until 7/7, then 79 euros + VAT Three vivid voices designed to build moods and evoke subtle musical atmospheres. The beauty of Babel lies in its subtleties. Rather than focusing on the all-out power of a choir, Babel draws you in close with soft vowels, elegant textures, and unexpected vocal patterns. With two female voices and one male voice—soprano, alto, and bass—this is a vital vocal tool for sound design, musical textures, and creative scoring. Soprano, alto, and bass 18 articulations, spot and room mics Processed: 1 ensemble, 12 pads, 6 drones, and 2 textures

Yes, but it doesn't seem to be up on the Audiority site any more.

O1.mp4Excited now? Obviously another one of those foghorn, cow moo, marimba sound design libraries. Ho hum. I'll wait for this one to go on sale for $29 on APD.

This is very encouraging. Nice to know they still care about these instruments.

I think I was wrong about Inspire 3. It's a countdown. Guess it's coming soon. O 2.mp4

How very Spitfire of them. Inspire 3? What do you think? orch tools.mp4

This is the first time I remember all the Sonokinetic World libraries being on sale. They were not included in the NI sales. Of course, the best deals on Sonokinetic will always be the 12 Days of Christmas sale, but you never know what will turn up in there. Da Capo was 49 euros during the last 12 Days sale.

Hi Larry, Has this started already? I don't see the discount on the site.

Sounds kinda good, if you like this kinda thing. Get it HERE More for filmmakers looking for prefab music, than for musicians though. 1. Cinematic Orchestra - Strings , Bass , Brass , Choir 2. Cinematic Percussion - Bass Drum, Snare, Toms, Cymbal 3. Ambience & Atmosphere - Wind, Fly by, Ocean, Sci-Fi 4. Horror - Jump scares, Risers, Tremolo Strings 5. Melodies - Mix & Match, Create your own with full Orchestra Sections playing in the same Key and BPM. 6. Action - Pre Made Action Drums set at 108 BPM which can be synced up flawlessly with other sounds to create your own Film Score. 100+ original sound effects professionally mastered all in WAV format 24 bit depth compatible with any major editing platform royalty-free digital download

Thank you! This is awesome!

Last BF, Zero-G had an "up to 80% off," plus a free gift if you bought something over $35. But they do sales all the time--I'm sure you can pick up a good price before BF. I would just get on the Zero-G mailing list, if you aren't already. Also, Time+Space, as they had a great deal on Zero-G's Inspiring Guitars recently.

I believe I have seen it around $25. Maybe a little less.

Waiting for Black Friday.

This is one of my very favorite libraries. It is the number one I go to for figuring out how to orchestrate a piece. Take a look at this and see how intuitive it is to use. It's like a lesson in orchestrating because you get a visual on the range of each instrument. And it's not just strings, brass and woodwinds. It comes with 4 percussion patches (very good), a church choir and a piano. All of these elements are put together in the 50multis.These multis havea lot in common with the ones in The Orchestra, but this, IMHO is much better for writing orchestral music, if you lack training. If you want to know what part you will give to the flute and what part to the bassoon, it will tell you quickly. It is most useful if you have a reasonably sized keyboard, but it doesn't have to be 88 key. To top it all off, these instruments are full-featured with articulations and other controls. They sound great. If somebody didn't have an orchestral library, this would be all they'd need. to get started, and I find it very easy on the CPU. The only drawback is that there are only four instruments from each section and the piano may not be the greatest. Information on what is included is on the Kirk Hunter Site

Inspired by the likes of Steve Reich, Terry Riley and John Cage, MINImalism is an electroacoustic virtual instrument for adding rhythmic motion and interest to your music. Requires full Kontakt “MINImalism” is a Kontakt based library which was recorded in the Sofia Session Studio with multiple microphones, which were later summed into three microphone positions. We recorded two pianos and a marimba, all playing perfect fifths in unison in order to achieve that distinctive percussive and mellow sound of the library. The user interface of the library is designed in a way that gives the user the whole library's potential within just three patches. In each of the instruments you will be able to see in the middle the Presets section, from where you are able to browse and select any of the premade presets for this library. On the right side you can locate the FX section, containing different effects (Compressor, Chorus, Flanger, Distortion, Equalizer and Convolution Reverb containing 30 different Impulse responses), which you are able to use to craft your own presets and create your own unique sounds. Get it HERE

I got this. For me, it was totally worth the money. There is a lot of great material in it that can be customized to taste. It is so much more than a loop library. I wanted to get this up while the sale was still on, but I had trouble with my download. Time-Life came through, but I lost time. I have two comments. First, some genres have a lot of content and others, like Brazilian, have much less. But there's enough to make it well worth it for me. Second, forget about changing the on these phrases--they are just awful. You've got to use them pretty much in the original key, which would make me mad for full price, but not for twenty bucks. If it comes back at this price again, I recommend it. Reading the manual I remembered that this is an existing library, called Najati's Rhythm Guitar, from Findasound that has been repackaged by the developer, Fayez Saidawi. I got interested in Saidawi when I bought his Middle Eastern Percussion Module from Zero-G. That was a re-issue of his Findasound product. I wondered then if Zero-G would be re-releasing more of his stuff. There's a lot of YouTube videos for Findasound and I found the above video and found it intriguing. But the Findasound site was shut down at the time. It's back up now and there are some interesting stuff there, including a lot of freebies. Mostly middle eastern, but other stuff too. As I love world music, there's a lot of interesting stuff on the site, including Petra Strings, heard in the video with the original version of Zero-G's Middle Eastern Percussion Module.