XLN Audio: Early bird sale - 50% Off

[husker]

1 hour ago, telecode 101 said:

I would like them to make the GUI for piano resizable.

It is now. 

[telecode 101]

4 minutes ago, husker said:

It is now. 

hmm. i gotta check that then.

[abacab]

...

Edited August 17, 2022 by abacab

[abacab]

5 minutes ago, telecode 101 said:

hmm. i gotta check that then.

Check the Settings Menu > UI Scaling & Settings > [select from 50% to 200%]

[Christian Jones]

5 hours ago, abacab said:

The best is in the ear of the beholder. To each his own

So I guess there's not a bad one in the pack then? 

[abacab]

21 minutes ago, Christian Jones said:

So I guess there's not a bad one in the pack then? 

None of them are likely to be bad, just some more relevant to the music that you make. I got sucked into the XLN ecosystem by Cakewalk Sonar. I got 6 XLN ADpacks bundled over two releases of Sonar that included the 3 XLN Studio kits, as well as the Fairfax 1 & 2.

If I was just starting out, the Fairfax kits should cover a lot of ground.

https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_drums_2/adpak/fairfax_vol_1

"Fairfax Recordings, A.K.A. Sound City... this place is so important to the history of Rock and Roll that Dave Grohl directed a feature-length documentary about it. Nirvana recorded "Nevermind" there in 1990, but since 1969, this one legendary room has pumped out an unbelievable stream of seminal rock albums; Pat Benetar, Metallica, Guns'n'Roses, Slayer, Tool, Rage Against the Machine, the list goes on and on.

Now you can have the extraordinary drum sound from this studio right in your DAW. The well-maintained vintage gear, the vintage Altec console, the irreplaceable microphones, the kit, and the magic of the room itself all shine through in this ADpak, giving you a slice of the sound that defined American rock music."

https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_drums_2/adpak/fairfax_vol_2

"If you've seen the film about it, you'll know there's more to Sound City than hard rock. This studio has a subtler side too. The live room might look a little shabby, but its particular sonic mojo was built from years and years of great ears and happy accidents, rather than expensive sound treatments. Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, Elton John, to name but a few have all managed to capture audio magic in here over the years and now, so have we. Beat by beat, through irreplaceable vintage mics, on a beautiful drum kit, through a '60s Altec desk, all so you can have it as your very own plaything. You're welcome."

Edited August 17, 2022 by abacab

[abacab]

United Heavy

https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_drums_2/adpak/united_heavy

"To pay this beautiful drum kit the respect it deserved, we took it to Los Angeles, California, to one of the most celebrated, and sought after recording rooms in the world. Studio B at United Recording (previously Ocean Way Recording), built by recording legend Bill Putnam in 1958 and changed very little acoustically since, has turned out hit after hit ever since. From Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made for Walking", to Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief" to Green Day's "American Idiot", whatever you put in this room sounds just right. When you put the Pork Pie kit in the hands of legendary drum technician Mike Fasano, pair it with a mouth watering selection of vintage mics, feed it all through a world class desk, and record what comes out is pure HEAVINESS!"

[abacab]

Session Percussion

https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_drums_2/adpak/session_percussion

"This ADpak comes with the obligatory latin set of a pair of congas, Tito Puente timbales, LP wood block, plastic block and tambourine, plus a brazilian caixa snare and pandeiro and a large orchestral bass drum. Played on their own to add flavour to your productions, or slotted into other ADpaks as interesting additions, these sounds are rich and punchy and sit nicely in the mix.

But this is no ordinary percussion set. We put it together to act as a super unique, fully functioning drum kit with the congas and timbales as toms, and the pandeiro working as a hi-hat. The obvious kick and snare are the caixa and bass drum, but the different slap styles of the pandeiro can easily be split over kick, snare and hi hat, for some bad-***** samba business. We tested a lot of cymbals and hi hats to choose the perfect set to complement this crazy percussive set, giving you a completely different way to hear any drum pattern you want to feed it."

[abacab]

Vintage Dry

https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_drums_2/adpak/vintage_dry

"It doesn't get much more '70s than this. The 1968 Ludwig Silver Sparkle is like the drum kit equivalent of a glitter ball, and it'll make you feel just as groovy. But to get the sort of authentic '70s drum sound that's been brought back into vogue by artists like Daft Punk and Justice, we pulled out all the retro tricks. We started by tuning and dampening the individual drums using authentic '70s methods: The kick was stuffed with a pillow and a large sheet of felt. Newspaper was taped to the snare heads and more felt sheets were pinned to the toms. Then, to ensure audio authenticity, we recorded it using only microphones from the 1960-70s (Coles, Neumann, Sennheiser and Bang & Olufsen) sent through the studio's vintage API console."

[chris.r]

2 hours ago, abacab said:

But I think my favorite so far is the United Heavy.

Loooove my United Heavy, but I'd say it's more on a clean side of the sound.

For hard rock definitely check also Black Velvet, it's a DW.

[MusicMan]

7 hours ago, marled said:

I really don't understand people complaining that vst instruments/plugins are not updated all the time! I am glad if plugins are stable and do their job perfectly!

On the contrary there are some developers that I have marked red, because I feel that their newest updates just bring instability, performance issues and permanent update chore. And there are more and more that get on my list! 😆 For them I prefer definitely to stay on older versions!

A lot of this comes from compatibility issues with the plugins/instruments to the DAW or OS. Apple users get hit frequently by that and so they need developers that are regularly updating things, otherwise they either can't upgrade their systems, or can't use their plugins. Windows users aren't entirely immune either, just less frequently an issue.

I personally won't buy any non VST3 plugins now, as Steinberg is dropping support for VST2 (they already have for the Mac version). I've only made one recent exception and that was for RC-20. Crazy price and they had stated they intended to release VST3 which they've now done so I'm glad I got it 🙂

Then there's plugins and instruments where scalability is an issue (I have a few that it's not ideal, but not enough to stop me using them, but this does seem to cause a lot of frustration)

There are some that also have existing bugs, or lack some bread and butter features.

Apart from them, if I like a plugin/instrument and it's not updated, I never really mind. As long as I can keep using it 🙂

[PavlovsCat]

The only AD2 drum kit AdPaks that I don't have are the jazz kits, the R&B kit and United Pop and I'm contemplating getting United Pop but I'm just kind of okay with the demos. As a former drummer, I'm super picky about drums and cymbals and want them to sound close to how I tuned my drums and chose cymbals.  Toontrack is always for more to my liking than AD2, but I'm still wondering if I should pick up United Pop -- one thing Ive found is that it's great to be able to change drums when I'm starting the mixing process; as after listening to a completed song I might find I've changed my mind about a snare, tom or cymbal  and try other options. So more choices in that format are good. 

Does anyone who has United Pop and does rock music want to weigh in? I'd love to get some insights from someone that owns it. 

Edited August 18, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[chris.r]

I'd say United Pop sounds too polite for rock. Sure the engine allows us to make wonders with the sounds up to beyond recognition but was wondering if you'd get more crunch from that RnB's Yamaha. To my ears it's more versatile. On the other hand United Pop sounds more deep, so could be good for something lighter like pop-rock.

[marcL]

4 hours ago, MusicMan said:

A lot of this comes from compatibility issues with the plugins/instruments to the DAW or OS. Apple users get hit frequently by that and so they need developers that are regularly updating things, otherwise they either can't upgrade their systems, or can't use their plugins. Windows users aren't entirely immune either, just less frequently an issue.

I personally won't buy any non VST3 plugins now, as Steinberg is dropping support for VST2 (they already have for the Mac version). I've only made one recent exception and that was for RC-20. Crazy price and they had stated they intended to release VST3 which they've now done so I'm glad I got it 🙂

Then there's plugins and instruments where scalability is an issue (I have a few that it's not ideal, but not enough to stop me using them, but this does seem to cause a lot of frustration)

There are some that also have existing bugs, or lack some bread and butter features.

Apart from them, if I like a plugin/instrument and it's not updated, I never really mind. As long as I can keep using it 🙂

I think you are right with the Apple scourge! 😆 They caused a lot of trouble in the plugin industry (Fxxxing Apple!).

With VST3 I am more careful, because there are several plugins that still have some issues with VST3 (e.g. most PluginAlliance plugins don't have easy accessable presets).

And there is one IMPORTANT thing that you forgot: Many plugin developers change their programming interfaces. In general this shouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately it is today!! It seems many of those new interfaces are rubbish and cause more trouble than that they help! Also there are companies where the developer crew has been changed and it is not always a benefit for us users! 😄

[MusicMan]

1 hour ago, marled said:

I think you are right with the Apple scourge! 😆 They caused a lot of trouble in the plugin industry (Fxxxing Apple!).

With VST3 I am more careful, because there are several plugins that still have some issues with VST3 (e.g. most PluginAlliance plugins don't have easy accessable presets).

And there is one IMPORTANT thing that you forgot: Many plugin developers change their programming interfaces. In general this shouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately it is today!! It seems many of those new interfaces are rubbish and cause more trouble than that they help! Also there are companies where the developer crew has been changed and it is not always a benefit for us users! 😄

Haha.. they sure have! If they stopped moving goalposts then maybe XLN and other devs might be able to spend resources on useful updates and bugfixes too 🤣

Good point about PA and presets. I don't really know why they struggle there.. they're one of the few developers that just can't seem to get that part right and yet it's normally flawless for the majority of other plugins I have. I don't often think of using presets with their stuff, but out of curiosity some of mine I checked did have presets.

My main reason for VST3 is just so if I want to open up a project years down the track and tweak a setting, it should still work. Sometimes in the conversion from VST2 to VST3 some developers change the plugin ID which means they won't open the new one. I kind of think the DAW should handle some intelligent remapping, but I don't think they do.. So I'd rather only create projects with VST3.

I've been pretty lucky with updates.. apart from Kontakt once.. NI completely broke it.. I leave them to stew a little bit before I update any of their stuff now! 🤣

I do hear some noise about Cubase with updates sometimes. I've been lucky there, but I also sometimes sit a few updates behind to see if any major bugs pop up. Sometimes I live on the edge with it too and I haven't' been burnt yet! Lol... 

[paulo]

15 hours ago, chris.r said:

I'm missing Larry's voice of dissapointment with their lack of development roadmap.

Hmmmm...... you could be onto something there.....

He may have resisted this time, but if (just thinking aloud here....) a certain person from a certain company were to post a thread to suggest that they are looking into making all of their software completely free but only for people who have no paid products in their account I reckon he'd be back pretty sharpish....

Obviously it's not for me to say what company that might be, but I Know that you all do. 

[Magic Russ]

For everyone complaining about the lack of content releases, is there something you are looking for in particular, or do you just want shiny new things?

Most of the rock stuff I do sounds fine with Fairfax.  Sometimes I'll do stuff that might  be called Neo-Soul, and for that it's Kontakt's Abbey Road 60s.  

For electronic stuff I use Battery or RMV.   It's crazy, but there's a 20 year old library from Wizoo I still use for chillout things.

I can't say I've felt the need for more drum packages.  

[abacab]

11 hours ago, MusicMan said:

A lot of this comes from compatibility issues with the plugins/instruments to the DAW or OS. Apple users get hit frequently by that and so they need developers that are regularly updating things, otherwise they either can't upgrade their systems, or can't use their plugins. Windows users aren't entirely immune either, just less frequently an issue.

As far as I can tell, none of this applies to XLN Audio. XLN has released VST3 versions of their plugins, and often issues patches.

I don't use a Mac, so cannot comment on compatibility with Mac, but I do understand that many developers have had to provide resources to resolve issues created by Apple at the expense of other projects.

 

[abacab]

12 hours ago, chris.r said:

For hard rock definitely check also Black Velvet, it's a DW.

I have the Black Velvet. I thought it would be cool, and the base sounds are good. But IMO, most of the presets are duds.

[MusicMan]

16 minutes ago, abacab said:

As far as I can tell, none of this applies to XLN Audio. XLN has released VST3 versions of their plugins, and often issues patches.

I don't use a Mac, so cannot comment on compatibility with Mac, but I do understand that many developers have had to provide resources to resolve issues created by Apple at the expense of other projects.

Yes, that was more general, not for XLN in particular. I was surprised that up until recently they didn't offer VST3 for RC-20, but luckily they came through with the goods. 

Edited August 18, 2022 by MusicMan