Craig Fowler

I agree with Brian that you'll probably get more for your money with Amalgam if you already have ToneX and use the coupons (I always do the 3for2; I'm not sure if they're permanently active). With that said, $99 is a great price for the UAD bundle. At that price, there's not much difference in price compared to buying them as captures but you get a nicer (IMO) GUI to work with and a quicker and more intuitive (albeit more limited) workflow. FWIW, I think the UAD AC30 and Dream (which is a Deluxe Reverb) are really top notch. They're not necessarily my favourite amp sims ever, but they're probably my favourites of their type, e.g., even though I have the Amalgam BFDR and AC30 captures, I think I prefer the UAD equivalents. The UAD and Amalgam BFDRs can be made to sound nearly identical, and they both sound uncannily like the real 60 year-old amp I have sitting in my music room (and my room/recording abilities mean the real thing doesn't sound as good when I record it). The Lion is also great; I haven't spent much time with the Tweed so far and it hasn't wowed me. As I mentioned in the TotalMax thread, I really like the new Amalgam Brownface captures. I've not been disappointed with any of the Amalgam captures, though - they're just different flavours of 'excellent.'

I *really* like their Fenders. The new Brownfaces are great, and the Blackface Deluxe Reverb is excellent too. IIRC, their Carr, Toneking, and Matchless captures are ones I get lots of use from as well. The flipside is that the UA bundle of four amp sims is on sale for $99, and their Deluxe Reverb might be even better. Their AC30 is also my favourite.

IIRC, TonexSE allows unlimited imports, and although the IK developed captures are fine, the Amalgam ones are far, far better IMO - so although I bought ToneX max, SE would have let me do what I want to.

It's really inconsistent. Sometimes you can use jampoints in combination with deals, other times you can't. It takes the price down to 140Euros which is a steal...although I still don't think I'll bite. The ToneX collections and Pianoverse stuff looks interesting, but I have tons of Amalgam ToneX captures and more pianos than I have drive space for!

FWIW, at the moment IK is allowing jampoints on the intro price!

I think I bought one of their compressors (original FET?) simply because I loved the GUI!

Not trying to put a damper on things, but important to be aware that the libraries appear to be abandonware based on the dev's non-responsiveness. Over at VI:Control there's a lengthy thread showing people troubleshooting the CFX library for themselves!

Thanks Larry!

Blimey, that's a deal and a half!

The thing I like best about it is the drive knob - it's a very usable overdriven preamp sound compared to most in-the-box distortion, and I really like not having endless things to tweak (like the Vertigo/Culture Vulture/Black Box type of saturation plugins). I'm honestly overloaded with channel strips, despite the fact that I never end up using them. If you don't have any, it's worth having. Truthfully, I'd probably buy it just for the drive - I just wish you could have that in a separate one-knob plugin! My one caveat is that it's not the most stable plugin I've used. I sometimes get crashes with it. Perhaps it's just my system.

Was surprised to see this dates back to 2008! I am resisting the urge to give in to massive reductions on something I don't need.

Indeed. Hard to beat Orange Tree for going way beyond call of duty for customers.

Best wishes and healing thoughts, Wook!

It does on mine, which is graphic card-less but not that old (i7-8700k).

Indiginus is a brilliant developer, and I ever thought I could need a dulcimer library I'd be all over this. Alas...

I've been vaguely toying with this because I have that coupon, but I don't really need them...and the ones I'm interested in are really old at this point (is it still worth getting their Distressor when you have the IK version? Or their Ampex if you have their Studer + all the IK tape emus?). Am very curious about Fatso, but in the demos I can't actually hear what it's doing! I think I've talked myself out of it!

Definitely, I'd say. The B3 and Rhodes are as good as it gets IMO.

Can upgrade from a single plugin... https://www.ikmultimedia.com/news/?id=T-RackS6UpgradeDeal2024&fbclid=IwY2xjawGHuXhleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVJCybD7r4PBbidc0ZG-DLjcr35AMcTAjdLB-Ct3GH99ZY7IFTPzggtgtA_aem_AckvzjPmaTwvAkuAkeG5wg (no further Jampoints discount)

Just dropped yesterday. $249 normal price, $199 (USD) intro. https://www.vilabsaudio.com/modernd It's absolutely spectacular (and this coming from someone who has 9 VSL pianos plus pretty much all the 'big' piano VSTs except Ivory). It could be the only piano VI you ever need.

I haven't listened to any of his newer releases for a while, though I love me some EC. The timbre of his voice has changed a bit (but you still wouldn't think you were listening to someone knocking on 80's door!). His phrasing is as 'him' as ever, though. Like you, I'm not sure I'd recognize the vocalist immediately, but I'm glad to hear lots of ECisms still there in his voice!

Don't care about a new version of Kontakt...I just want a Native Access that works!

Doesn't seem right not to tack this on 🙂

I say this every time Indiginus is mentioned, but I'm not sure there's another developer that I'd rate as highly on the 'fun' factor. The way these instruments are programmed makes it possible just to load up the banjo, or fiddle, or mandolin, or lap steel (etc) and simply enjoy noodling. And they sound fantastic! A bit off-topic, but I saw over at VI:Control that Tracy commented recently that Sampletekk is the reason he never bothered to sample a piano - it's always nice when one developer has such positive things to say about another developer!

Fair enough. The nice thing about BBO is being able to build it up as you need/can afford. I have less than half of it and the strings were what I went for first - they're about $80 a pack, I think. I think I also got sidetracked by the 'gobs of strings' phrase so I kinda missed the idea of it being an all-in-one orchestral package! No dongle needed now, though, for VSL. Ilok cloud is an option (separate can of worms I know, but I've not encountered any problems).

Sounds a bit like the Big Bang Orchestra stuff from VSL could suit - especially the Lyra and Musca (think I've got the names right) packs that are low/high string sections.