MusicMan

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Losing track of flash drives is probably common if they don't have licenses on them, but really if they do, they're no more likely to be lost than iLok. Just simply add a tag to it, or use a permanent marker. The dongle from PA (which I don't personally use), is good for offline and using other friends DAWs, for collabs, or getting mixing done, etc. But it's more the fact that if someone wants to use a dongle, they can pick up a cheap generic flash drive and not an overpriced iLok dongle. 3 is becoming more common. I do have a mix though and quite a lot with 2. 1 auth is strictly do not buy for me. Even ML Sound Lab who only provide a second if you contact them I opted to not buy from. I don't want to have to contact a vendor to plead my case for a second activation, even if it's not too difficult. 2+ auths out of the gate, or I'm out these days. I already have enough and what they're selling can probably be done with something else that does include 2+. Melda is really great with their licensing and yes, Waves somehow manage to further alienate even more people with that move which was quite an achievement given the majority of people's hate for WUP! You're not wrong on those bundles either... You do get a lot of bang for buck. Without those and the freebies, I'd imagine their sales would be much, much lower these days. It can be a false economy though.. if people do pay WUP, then for what they often spend, they could've just paid once for more premium plugins that are better than Waves and still be getting free updates. Lots of great devs out there.

It's one of the more surprising ones in quite a while. This seems very well regarded from everything I've seen / read so it could be good exposure for Steinberg. Making this a freebie (with purchase) along with their Cubase 14 release seems to indicate they are trying to be more widely appealing to the EDM / beats producers. Of course you could easily use Cubase for those before and it was great for it, but it seems like they have been copying some of the ideas and simplified workflows especially for drums from the more prominent competitors in that space (Live / FL).

Steinberg Backbone Drum Re Synthesizer free with purchase at Plugin Boutique for Feb. https://www.pluginboutique.com/articles/2005-Claim-your-FREE-copy-of-Steinberg-Backbone #Deals

You absolutely could do those things separately and that's a completely valid way of working and common. Buy there's also benefits of the simplicity and direct feedback from trying things all within Falcon and not having to open up multiple other synths, have all that separate routing to worry about. Besides I'm pretty sure you can simply split the outputs out of Falcon and treat them with external FX and their own channel strips anyway. I only just got it recently, so don't bank on that, but I think you do. Something for me to try! Plus, if you've got any of the UVI libraries, you can get more control and ways to integrate them into your creations and layer them too. If you use them, it's easier to set up keyboard splits if you ever want to create them, again, all within Falcon. As for sound, I'm really surprised. Maybe it's just their demos on their site or something. After owning it, some of the sounds I've heard it make sound pretty amazing, rich and warm. It might depend on what genres you like though. Do you have a preferred style? I've often found that most of them have an area they do well, but then for another type of sound, I'd reach for another synth. Some excel at pads, some super saws, some basses, etc. But I could play this thing for hours just purely for the hell of it. For the enjoyment so far, I think I've already got my money's worth! 🙂

That is indeed one thing they and Plugin Alliance did right. A regular flash drive instead of iLok. Apart from iLok dongle sales, there's really no reason Pace couldn't do the same. They would probably win a lot more sales for their developer customers, but for some reason I don't think plugin and instrument companies are really their primary concern 🤣

Often overlooked, but they only provide one seat license with Waves unless you have active WUP. So once your WUP expires, you can only use on one machine unless you want to constantly be transferring licenses, or use a USB dongle. So anyone with a DAW in the studio that also works mobile on a laptop, or second DAW in another location, it stops working completely . I'm struggling to think of another developer that only provides one seat in this day and age. Even McDSP have evolved to give more than one! I'm sure there's others that suck in that sense, but not many at all!

Some great points Carl and now that you mention it, I do recall Omnisphere being incorrectly referred to as a rompler quite a few times too. I think a lot of people just don't take the time to fully understand and explore these products and learn how to use them. I would say that the learning curve can be a touch higher if you're creating presets from the ground up, but that's because they allow you to break out from the common rigid design of most synths. if you just jump in and click on a few presets and go no further, then you really miss out on seeing how powerful and versatile these things can be. I've tried quite a few synths over the years where I fired them up, tried all the presets as that's often a simple way to test the capabilities and thought they were terrible, only to find after creating a few patches that they were really much better than what the presets show. I own most of u-he and have somewhat had my eye on Zebra. I have been tempted to bite the bullet and just go with the current version, as I know it's very good anyway, but with the new one somewhere on the horizon, I have been holding off so far!

Interesting.. my account must fall somewhere in the middle! I don't get all the new stuff anymore, but I did get this... I do have 3rd gen, only solo though, but that was bought a few years ago now and isn't their latest generation.

It's actually not for once 🙂 I almost missed this, as when they first announced it, it wasn't in my account. But I logged in the other day to see if that new GForce synth was available (and it wasn't, but I expected it not to be) and was pleasantly surprised to see these were.

If you dig into that though, it's also not always so clear cut. A lot of what you've mentioned makes some sense for your content drives, but the system drive is what the whole computer runs off and that being faster, allows the OS and everything, including the DAW to run faster as a result as well. Apart from that, it's often just more responsive to use for all other applications and general use too. If the swap file is used, that will also be more performant as well. There really isn't any reason not to use them (apart from cost). CPU is definitely the king in most cases, although as you mentioned RAM at times can be important as well. But often you're more limited with CPU. Changing a hard drive for something better is trivial and normally simple to do. If you use large Kontakt libraries, especially orchestral, using a faster drive just makes sense, so both system and content where possible is preferred. All instruments are only going to get more demanding and larger, so it's often better to just simply do it once and do it right to save doing it all again. Personally I know I'd rather get faster drives and pay a little more. Over the lifetime of a well spec'd DAW, it's worth it to me and I won't remember the spend, but I will appreciate it every time I'm working with large files, or libraries. Cost is a consideration though, so I get the point.

I own all of those synths and wholeheartedly disagree, but of course everyone's opinion and tastes are different. If you listen to any of the professionally made sounds created by it, it easily sounds on par with all of those. You might be very surprised to hear how commonly it's used in cinematic and movies you've likely seen and also the types of high end situations where money is no object and they own all of the synths you mentioned too. None of the ones you mentioned can get as complex a sound without using multiple instances of them. None of them even come remotely close in terms of versatility. Falcon is completely modular. All of those other synths are very limited in terms of architecture. They sound great, but if you can think it in Falcon, then you can create it. I personally wouldn't think of it as a primary sampler, but integrating that with building up patches and layering the "rompler' content is great to have in there. I do think they could work on the interface and UX, but then Kontakt which is probably it's closest competitor I don't think is great in that sense either. I haven't looked at all their expansions yet, so I can't comment too much there, but the one I did get is really quite interesting. I like that and will get some use. I'm not worried about external developers. I purely want it for sound design. The expansions are also more of a consolation in that sense. Agreed on CPU and multithreading, that's what I was alluding to. Back on sound though, I've heard all of those synths in action, created my own presets in them as well as listened to 3rd party ones, seen them in many tutorials and Falcon can easily sound as rich, warm, organic and complex as any of them without a doubt.

It really varies between their expansions. Some are barely a few MB and some are a few GB. Conveniently they state them on the page for each expansion, so you could determine that first if it's a consideration. As a guess, maybe 20GB total, but don't bank on that.. The manual also states what the presets are as well which is handy, so you can see exactly what numbers of each type they include and it's a simple PDF on their site. Calling it a rompler doesn't even come close to doing it justice. You could ignore all of the samples and expansions and it's still an amazingly powerful and GREAT sounding synth for programming your own synth presets from scratch with standard oscillators and much more. The built in effects are probably some of the best sounding across a lot of the main players in well known soft synths. But then of course you can still layer any of the samples over them as well. It's a pretty amazing modular synth. Not perfect. The layout can take a bit to get used to and they could optimize it in terms of CPU. It does appear to have a few quirky limitations. But the sound beats a lot of the main synths / romplers / samplers out there.

Actually it's really not. The performance difference between them is not trivial. It's a massive and noticeable difference in a system. Apart from benchmarks, you can feel the performance difference and during large compressed file extractions, backups, copies, or moves, the tasks are completed much sooner. The 2TB / 8TB is somewhat moot, as you're not excluded from using 2TB instead if you choose, regardless of format. I get the practically and there's nothing wrong with opting for that, but it would be a disservice to anyone reading this thread not to call out what they would be losing by not spending a little more time to work out what is compatible with their system, or even adding a card to extend that compatibility.

The performance of SATA is so much worse though. I'd recommend NVMe instead of SATA these days every single time, as long as the machine can accept it and then simply back it up to a SATA if required and worried about losing the 8TB. Ideally that should be backed up elsewhere as well. The easiest option of SATA definitely isn't the best in this particular situation.