Matthew Sorrels

It doesn't really have enough articulations for most real productions (the legato is a bit goofy too). The ensembles are all very broad (hi/mid/low for brass and winds for example), you can't really write for one traditional section all that easily. The sound is pretty good though and it's very easy to use, which may make it useful for some uses where say a full on BBCSO or VSL wouldn't be so easy to use. I definitely like Albion One much more, but you could use Da Capo for lots of things you'd use Albion for. I got it mainly to match the other Sonokinetic phrase libraries. I've gotten no real use for it outside of that.

I submitted my Ableton 10 Suite receipt to get the competitive crossgrade. That way I can keep my Cubase 10.5 and add Nuendo. At least I hope it works that way. $420 in the Steinberg shop, but I have to wait for them to verify my submission before I can finish the check out. Doubt they will do it fast since I ordered on Friday. I couldn't find any retailers that sell the crossgrade version. Long term I suspect I'll just switch to Nuendo. It's video and game development features match up what I do better than Cubase. But the fact they don't lead with new features in Nuendo makes no sense to me. Of all the DAWs I suspect Protools is going to take the most damage from the COVID-19 shutdown. All the studios that haven't been able to book clients for months are likely to fold. Everyone is going with home studio rigs and Protools doesn't seem like a good fit for that. I suspect Logic will have picked up a lot of new customers. Maybe Avid may finally have to rethink their subscription/permanent license model. I can't imagine what they offer now working out well. Lots of people will just stop updating and realize there are at least a half dozen serious DAW contenders that don't need a $200/year support contract. Apple going ARM will only push that even harder.

I've owned particle Illusion since the dark ages. Seen it go through a few different companies. And I have a paid license to the Boris FX version (though their yearly upgrade fee is making me think twice about keeping it updated). It's pretty cool even just the standalone version (which was all there was in the early days). I'm glad Boris brought it back (the standalone was dropped when it got merged into Boris). But I'm not sure how I feel about some of the changes. The old standalone had really weak load a background support and this new one they seem to have removed that completely, even if you have a paid license. Though for most uses you can just setup the effect you want, render it out with alpha channel and then do the composite in your own app. I rarely used the broken background stuff in the old standalone, not sure it being missing is that big a deal here really. Mostly I'd setup small effects (a single explosions/smoke whatever) and then do all the heavy integration in After Effects. I've been meaning to see about moving over my own PI emitter libraries, but they claim they already did all that work, though I can swear lots of stuff I remember having aren't in the list. While it's pretty fun to play with, none of the effects really do quite get to photoreal quality levels. Which I think makes a lot of people upset. Smoke/fog type stuff though it's pretty good with. Fire is fine if it's not very close up. Some of the mograph and special effect stuff was always fun but I'm not sure what use they have. If you need geometric shapes animating they always had a bunch of nice ones of those. Build a Iron Man HUD kind of display stuff. But without the ability to load a background still (which even the old standalone would do right) making a working computer screen drop-in might be kind of hard. Though again, render out each emitter to a file and then use the pieces in Resolve/Fusion/etc. I'd say the free version can be useful if you ever do video compositing kind of work.

I've actually been wanting Fanfare for a while now. But I won't buy it without a deal. I really wish this was a deal on the full Marching Bundle. But for $30 this seemed like not a bad thing. My download finished while I was eating. Just about to dive in and see what it has. Looks like it includes a bunch of stuff to hook up with Finale and Sibelius too. Which is interesting, since I've been considering getting a pro scoring app. Having this might push me towards one of those two. My first impression is it's basically some of a high school marching band. Older style Kontakt instruments but not awful. No legatos for the brass. Each articulation is a separate Kontakt instrument too (no keyswitching). The brass that is there is nice and makes me wish it was the full Fanfare. I'm not really sure what kind of music this would be useful for really though. It may be one of those fun to play around with but doesn't really fit into any music you might actually write.

I registered mine on the UVI website, not in the UVI Portal app. You might want to try that. Login to your account and choose register product.

My Synths Legacy showed up today. Was packed with a ton of bubble wrap. The code registered just fine but RAR file on the DVD is corrupt (maybe I should have tried the installer instead of just opening it directly) so I ended up just downloading it, that worked out OK. Pretty nice actually for $5. I really should get Synth Anthology 2 and upgrade my Vintage Vault 1.

Strobe2 finally showed up today. UVI Synths Legacy is supposed to be here tomorrow. I really love how I had to put the serial number in all upper case to get it to work. And it was impossible to tell an O from a zero.

The keyswitching choices in EW Hollywood are kind of weak. It's really setup for each articulation being on it's own track. And yes that could mean lots and lots of tracks. You can try and use the keyswitching instruments but you are likely to find the choices don't cover all the articulations you want/need. Might be better to just start with multiple tracks for each instrument from the start. If you do go with keyswitching I recommend having a separate MIDI track to hold just the keyswitches and a main MIDI track for the notes. That way you can transpose and or otherwise work with the note data separately from the keyswitches. In theory you could load up Play instances with a collection of articulations each on a different MIDI channel and inside CbB switch the MIDI channel mid-track/per-note to change articulations. I've never done it that way, but it might be worth trying. I usually just keep each MIDI track on a single MIDI channel, but in theory you can build a template with MIDI channel changes triggering different articulations. Changing MIDI channel per-note has always seemed painful though.

You can actually choose one of three skins (light/dark/legacy). But there is no rescale option, which would have been nice.

Mine still haven't moved/changed at Musician's Friend. The USPS number they gave me for Strobe 2 still hasn't been received by the post office. And Synth Legacy is still processing. Seems like last of the boxed music software is going to die with an ugly whimper for me. That already used serial number on a shipped product is a real problem. I've had it happen before with emailed codes but those are easy to fix. iLok authorizations can be removed if the user logs into the iLok License Manager, but I don't think they do it very often.

Yeah it has new UI.

I opened a chat with MF today and they claim they are behind with shipping but they will tell me when things really ship. I guess that ship notice for Strobe 2 wasn't real, the tracking ID isn't in my account, was only in the email they sent and the post office says they are still waiting for the package. I still think there are good odds this will never show up.

EzBass has an update out.

Has anyone that ordered UVI Synths Legacy gotten a shipping notice? I ordered it and Strobe 2 at the same time. Strobe 2 got a shipping a notice, but the USPS tracking id says it hasn't been handed to them yet. Synths Legacy is still "processing" and hasn't been shipped at all yet. At this point I'm beginning to think none of these box blow out items are actually going to ship. I also love how Stylus RMX is still showing the $99 price on the search results but not when you go to the product. I'd think they would be able to fix that by now.

They aren't giving SD3 on registering ?. You do get New York Studios Vol 1 as a result of having it though, so it's not completely worthless for SD3 users. But at $99 it's kind of overpriced. I'd say $50-$70 would be fair.

Many states (not all) require companies honor in store printed/displayed prices, but I don't think any of those laws apply on the net (yet). Sweetwater isn't all sunshine either. I've had my share of issues with them, very similar to issues I've had with Musician's Friend. I like Sweetwater much less though because they discount much less.

It definitely has a hard time loading presets in the most recent 2020.05 Cbb, but at least for me it sooner or later does finish loading. Things go slightly smoother (no audio engine cut out) if you press the ! in Kontakt before switching presets. Otherwise it does seem to peg a core 100% and kill the audio engine. Restarting the audio engine seems to get it to load (though is pretty slow to load). You might need to change your options in Kontakt (for how many cores to use) and Cakewalk. The last version of SPlat has tons of bugs that have long been fixed, continuing to use it will likely run into all sorts of issues like this. I doubt anyone at NI or SampleLogic would even bother looking into it. Xosphere 2 does this same thing in Cubase 10.5.20, the audio engine freaks out (but doesn't fully stop just sounds broken for a very long time) before the next preset loads. It's definitely a Kontakt/Xosphere 2 issue but I doubt it's something they can/could/will address.

You shouldn't ever get angry at a company that doesn't give you a deal that is a mistake. That's crazy. MF doesn't change the price on you and charge you blindly. They contact you, explain the problem and offer you the product at the correct price (usually with some sweeter/discount/bonus) and let you decide to if you still want it. Since you expect companies to treat you right, you shouldn't be surprised if they expect the same. That said, MF has honored more of their mistakes for me than just about any retailer. I'm kind of looking forward to what deals will be put up when they are forced into bankruptcy along with Guitar Center.

They shipped Strobe 2 but still haven't shipped Synths Legacy. Very odd. They also had for a short time Stylus RMX on sale for $99 but now it's back ordered and the price is back to $379. I should have taken it, but I just can't see the use for more drum loops.

Pretty sure all UVI libraries are protected with Pace, but don't require a physical iLok. I ordered this also but it still hasn't shipped. I'm not 100% sure it actually will ship (also ordered Strobe 2).

I guess they did: And they removed the presets that used it too.

Did they remove the PG-8X synth from the bundled instruments?

This is one of the cases where buying it direct was the better deal. To be honest they really need to fold the content updating/management and software update management into the plugin itself. It should be able to download the content and software from their servers, regardless to where you bought it. The new presets are nice. Adding one preset to another as new layers is very cool (maybe I could do that before?)

Personally I'm waiting for the update to go half off before I jump. VV1 is pretty decent and has a ton of synths. I paid $99 during that pricing fluke at Musician's Friend back in 2015 (deal was VV1 and free Alesis Q25 keyboard for $99.80). At the time I considered it one of the best deals ever.

Scaler 2 has a built in synth/sample engine the samples are what drives that. It's not optional really.