Mánibranðr Studios

As the title says, it would be nice to have the option to be able to see the summed up MIDI and audio clip data at a glance when you have the track folder collapsed instead of just blocks of solid colour.

Yep, the M-Audio is the better bet when it comes to keybed and build quality. Casio's keyboards are mostly cheaply with corners cut in order to make it affordable to more people, while M-Audio's equipment is more geared towards professional music production.

Yeah, you gotta match what MIDI channel the keyboard is sending to, to the channel that the instrument is receiving MIDi data from, within the Kontakt interface.

If you need a VSTi to replace TTS-1, I have found that XPand! 2 works pretty well, and it's $5 on PiB right now. I also recommend Kontakt over ST4, simply because a lot of IK Multimedia's practices with the lack of upgrade paths, non-permanent sound pack expansions, and no native ASIO drivers for their hardware or native ASIO support for their standalone software, and outright killing off ST3 CS from access to new customers have made me unwilling to give IK my money. Also, it's a lot easier to build your own ad hoc bespoke sample libraries with Kontakt.

Grind Machine II is really good for getting that rough dirty tone from old metal bands, I also found that Bulldozer is quite nice, since it's also worked on by the guys that made Cabal 8. (They also have a much smaller memory and CPU footprint compared to Amplitube 4)

It is related since we're at a tangent discussing why people subject themselves to loud music, despite the knowledge that it will damage their hearing, which, you know, was what drove the loudness wars in the first place.

I have this free Piano, which is nice. There's also Wolno and the Soft and Modular Pianos from Spitfire LABS. This Spring Piano by Chri Henson and Fred Rembrandt is also pretty good, and finally, there's the Piano in 162 by Ivy Audio. As for paid stuff, I mostly use the Grand Piano patch from my Roland SD-50, the SCVA or the Palette Orchestral Sketchpad. There's also stuff that was included when I purchased my Arturia Keylab Essential that works to that effect. If you're looking for an affordable one, the Mini-Grand by AIR Music technology is around $9.99 right now.

I remembered when Iron Maiden got caught up in the loudness war, and that resulted in the worst-sounding albums they've made. It is a shame too, because I really loved how Rainmaker was composed.

I got myself a bunch of freebies, Beatmaker EDEN, Cabal 8 Full and Audio Assault Bulldozer.

Goes $98 12/08 11:59 PM PST Requires Kontakt Full v5.5+ https://8dio.com/instrument/8dioboe-vst-au-aax-kontakt-instruments-samples/

I cannot figure out how to delete and clear ACT settings for a plugin, and manually assign each parameter to each knob and fader. It seems to assign knobs in a complete mess, and I cannot change the assignments to a specific knob or fader once it's set elsewhere. How do i fix this?

Hi there, I have the Arturia Keylab Essentials 49, and I could use help setting up ACT Control Surface. Now, i am not sure what t select for the input, since it has Arturia Keylab Essentials 49 and MIDIIN2 (Arturia Keylab Essential) as possible inputs. I selected MIDIIN2 for now, but the problem is that the ACT Control Surface interface only really allows you to set up 8 buttons at a time, and that leaves me with 1 knob, 1 fader and 4 buttons unassigned. What do?

It's useful for saving CPU cycles, since it frees up resources that would be used for sound generation.

I just assume that it requires Kontakt Full, unless mentioned otherwise.

I don't celebrate thanksgiving here, being from Asia and all, but I'll gladly accept free food and cheap plugins all the same

Yeah, I see what you mean, though a concept like that for €20 is still an interesting prospect. I think I'll grab Atheos first tho. I'd love to grab the Riffendium series when they go on sale later on.

Oh? Do tell. Also what would you recommend?

I definitely would love to get my hands on _Underscore_

Yeah, at first I thought it was a some warm dirty saturation added for character, but after cycling through some presets, I found that the rise krispies effect persisted. The standalone mode also doesn't seem to recognize my SD-50 in ASIO mode.

Is it me or am I hearing rice krispies in the synth?

Mind dropping the info?

Yeah, I really don't like that IK Multimedia does it this way. It does seem anti-consumer, TBH.

This is a pretty nice piece of hardware, the portability is attractive.

I'd recommend AIR Music Tech plugins, they have a variety of really good virtual instruments that can help you get started with music production. You have Hybrid 3, which is a hybrid additive/subtractive synthesizer with a very deep learning curve, and a large palette of sonic possibilities, you also have Vacuum Vintage and Vacuum Pro which is an emulation of a hypothetical vintage synth running through vacuum tube circuits, XPand! 2 which is a 4 voice polyphonic ROMpler and had a bunch of great sounds, other plugins include Boom, Strike 2, DS 500, DB-33, Velvet, Mini-Grand, The Riser, Transfuser 2, Structure 2, Loom Classic and Loom 2. The best part is that they're all on sale right now at Plugin Boutique. Another great synth you can get right now on sale is Sektor, which is a lot similar to Hybrid 3, but has a lot deeper customization options. Sektor is a synth that I have used extensively in my projects. However, my absolute favourite synth in my arsenal has to be Ultra Analog VA-3. It may not be as extensive with the modulation and envelope capabilities as Serum, but there is something about having two synth engines per instance, each with ability to set up different modulation options puts this over the edge for me. Oh yeah, the the factory sound library is massive and awesome, and it's actually quite easy to get started making your own presets. One more recommendation, and it's probably something only I would ever recommend, and it's the Roland Sound Canvas VA. Yeah, it's expensive at $125 and never goes on sale, but honestly, there is a charm to just loading it in a VST player like the Falcosoft Soundfont MIDI Player with loopMIDI and playing old DOS games with it as the sound engine. The SC-55 emulation on it is pretty decent, and it is also a very good no-frills GS ROMpler in its own right.

Only up to a point. The mind naturally attenuates sound that is too soft compared to the peak volume of a song, when the noise is too loud, that gate/threshold becomes narrower and you lose effective dynamics. Imagine being flashbanged, for a while, all you can see is various shades of white.