Matthew Sorrels

I know lets lets roll out a giant epic sale and price structure change on Amazon Prime Day. Brilliant!

I guess Fume Music is some how connected to Rast Sounds (partner/spin-off). These two (actually 3 with some bonus thing) are a bunch of wave loops/one-shots with very bare bone Kontakt instruments (full version of Kontakt required). The instruments are pretty much just mapping the loops to keys. Not very useful. The loops are pretty much un-interesting. Not very useful. I like Rast's vocal libraries but these two libraries aren't going to convince me to sign up for any Fume subscription. Last time I checked they had no audio samples for their Originals collection or the loop subscription. I guess these are the "demo". If you need a loop subscription I think Noiiz is a better choice.

Your right, I (of course) read VI and it came up there and then watching the videos they always start on the chord patches, which are kind of phrases. But watching more of it you can see it's really normal instruments. ProjectSAM libraries aren't really deep sampled though, but that's not actually all that bad. Not sure I really need every note sampled at 10 velocity levels.

It was my understanding that new AR plugins could be added to the AR Collection at a (small) discount by using the upgrade option on the Waves site. But that only works if the plugin is part of the collection (which this isn't, at least not yet). WUP on the AR Collection is worthless in that it won't get you any more plugins, but owning the AR plugins can get you a discount upgrading to the collection. In this case the email I got from Waves gave me a coupon code for a discount ($69) because I own NX, it didn't mention AR at all. I think I'm going to pass on this one though. I don't have the NX hardware and don't really see the need to feel like I'm sitting in AR Studio 3.

Interesting that right after this thread came up Broadway Lites is back on sale at VSTBuzz. I punted on the last 77% off sale a year or so ago because I thought it looked a little dated and with no real way to upgrade. I'm not paying $2k for any single library and even at 50% off it's still way outside reasonable. I start running out of interest when a library crosses the $300 mark. But Broadway Lites does look interesting, might be worth it at this price. Still trying to decide if I want Swing/Swing More though. I have Symphobia 1 and 3, not sure about getting 2.

Doesn't look like it's in the AR bundle at all yet.

The notes don't have to overlay, but they do have to be perfectly aligned. Exactly on the grid.

I've never had much luck with build your own ensemble. Real players playing together aren't the same as a bunch of separate recordings. Of course real players aren't the same as multi-sampled libraries either. But multi-sampled libraries of single players put together never seem to jell right. It's like two stages removed.

To be honest I have to admit I like NI's Session Horns Pro, not so much for the sound but because I really like the instrument features/scripting (including the phrases which for someone like me are a lot more useful). All the rest that I might consider for the funk brass sound are kind of over priced. Mojo 2 looked interesting but the pricing is way too high. Eastwest and Play are pretty much no go for me with the way they handle the streaming. I can't invest more money in a platform that won't render correctly at full speed. I'd also recommend you avoid Cmusic Production's brass, very disappointed with the Trumpet I got from them.

Before buying any of the ProjectSAM libraries I recommend watching Guy Roland's videos. Here's one on Swing More. He has a bunch of them for almost all the ProjectSam Libraries. To be honest I doubt the Swing libraries are what you want, since they are kind of phrase library based (sort of). Check out all his videos at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtBlIrl__YxIEjuZs8vHU1g

While I'm still upset you haven't fixed the problem with the Steel Drums crashing Sampletank (going on 1.5 years now) I'm nothing if not willing to keep doing the same thing hoping for a different outcome. So I've submitted the repeating note bug, with Cubase and Reaper projects and a MIDI file that reproduces it. Anyone that wants to try this can download it here https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kQYEnFkCmbbDJPC3yTJGjD3wSbdgtIOX

My coupon was in a second message from the announcement, titled "Hyperion Strings Elements has arrived! Your personal upgrade code awaits within!"

They sent a coupon for $39 off (what I paid for the micro library). Just played with it for a few minutes between compiles. Seems pretty nice, a lot more articulations over the micro version. May be the best string library value-wise today.

Kontakt 6 Player and Kontakt 5 (player or full) co-exist just fine. I installed this Komplete Start back when I had Kontakt 5 full but only the player Kontakt 6 with no problems at all. Now that I've upgraded to full Kontakt 6, my Kontakt 5 still works just fine but won't load/use Kontakt 6 libraries or anything I re-save in Kontakt 6. This is a nice set of free stuff any full Kontakt 5 full user would be foolish to skip.

4.0.5 is pretty broken. Even by IK standards. The repeating MIDI note problem reproduces in Cubase easily. Just draw a bunch of 1/8 notes on the same key. It won't play them all when you play it back. Doesn't seem to matter what patch you use either, it's the engine not the samples.

I certainly hope it's sensible. If it was just them and Brainworx I'd believe they will discount massively(maybe not at first, but sooner or later), but they have Shadow Hills involved too. If you look at all these recent high end compressor plugins, they all retail way too high. Even $99 is kind of high in my book for a single compressor, but it's not crazy like $200+.

If you figure it's cost is $399, 10 at that price minus 60% works out to $159.60 each. Then add in $20 transfer fee. So $179.60 base cost before vouchers. Right now they won't let you do the dynamic discount with the $19 tuner, you have to get a $29 product (assuming no sales). Even 5 people (and 5 copies of a $29 plugin) would reduce the cost to $171.20 before the $20 transfer fee. So $191.20 base cost before vouchers. Just 1 person buying 9 $29 filler products and no transfer fee works out to $264 (about 33% off). You'd have to trust someone with ~$4k, might be a tall order. And vouchers over $20 won't help (I don't think you can pool vouchers, so they could only be used to cover the transfer fee). You'd think they would fix the dynamic pricing loopholes.

No way they don't retail this for at least the same as the UAD one ($299). The question then becomes what kind of discounts will they offer? My monthly voucher went up this month, I guess because I bought Dear VR pro. I think that means the price of everything at PA will now have to double. ?

Not really possible. VST design doesn't really cover this (changing one plugin to a whole new one), so it would break projects/etc. The best they could have done is reuse the VST id for one of the two plugins and make the new one read the old data format. But even that's kind of iffy. It's a whole new plugin and the old ones stay.

They lowered their prices 50% after pretty much stopping sales (I think because they felt piracy was killing them so they stopped selling anything). I've been wanting to get Giovani since it first came out ages ago, but it never made it to the top of my buy list. This extra coupon (on top of their lowered prices) was enough to push me over. Honestly I'm not sure these products are really in the same class as the highest end Kontakt instruments, even with the recent updates. I mostly picked this up because I've been wanting it since like 2005. When it was released it was pretty much the definition of high end vocal libraries and had a price to match, with this coupon it was $70. GAS never fades, just waits for the better deal. https://www.beladmedia.com/ For a limited time, the complete Bela D Media product catalog is on sale. Save 20% off the listed price and your entire shopping cart. Promo Code SAVE20BDM Please enter the above code at checkout to apply the discount. Format & Requirements Presently all Bela D Media products require the full version of Native Instruments Kontakt. Our products do not include a Player/Engine/VSTi. Any Player/Engine/VSTi you may own from another product cannot be used. This includes the free Kontakt player or demo modes. Native Instruments Kontakt 4/5. Tested successfully in Kontakt 6. Notice This sale will end on July, 7th. This offer may not be combined with any other promotional savings code. Vocal Tools Audition is excluded from this sale. This offer is available only via beladmedia.com.

The multi-track as layers in Cubase 10 mostly just crashes for me. Works perfectly in CbB, but the same 5 wav files in Cubase crashes just applying SpectraLayers. I think perhaps the new Cubase 10.0.30 isn't up to snuff on ARA just yet. The CbB ARA integration with SpectraLayers seems much better than in Cubase as well. Perhaps not a surprise but I would have thought the two teams would have worked together a bit more.

The ARA stuff works pretty well with CbB and Cubase 10. But (and this is a big one) you can't make layers. Every track you apply the ARA effect to is a layer, but when using it in ARA mode you can't cut part of the audio out and make it a new layer. Your ARA host can make layers, but not it. I understand why they did it this way, but it's lame and they should have done the work. It is should have been possible to have a virtual layer system that exists along with the ARA host layers, but that would require development and design work. Kind of disappointed with it to be honest. No plugins/effects and no layers in ARA mode seem like some sort of epic fail to me. Definitely not worth the full price.

The manual covers using it with Bandlab!

Well it has no plugins/audio effects. So on that basis I think RX7 Pro is a bit better as an audio editor. I suspect if I had tried a demo I might have re-thought getting it. I was hoping for RX7 Pro with ARA, but it doesn't really have the tool set to go with the selection engine.

Just bought it, the full version (I never got the MAGIX/Sony version). It's using the eLicenser but doesn't require the hardware, will soft license if you'd like. Only VST3 and AAX versions of the plugin. No VST2.