CSistine

Another company I will skip for purchases! It is getting worse and worse! Luckily I have a bunch of plugins and at least one daw (Reaper) that have user friendly authorization (completely offline). So in the worst case I am prepared! ? More and more I hate those login- and challenge response authorizations. Lately I had great inspiration and wanted to use AnalogLab for a synth part and exactly in that moment the authorization on my laptop had gone caused by an unknown reason (maybe Windows update some days before). It's really a PITA!

I have quite a lot and I like some of their compressors and Magnetite. But what I hate is that there is no upgrade to the bundle, i.e. if you have already too much, it's no point to get the bundle!

I wonder why the OP writes lead-free? To me it is clear that a soft synth is lead-free in contrast to a hardware synth! ?

Don't they have this exotic authorization service (must run all the time)? It's a pity that they didn't stay with iLok IMHO! That's the cause I am no longer interested in Antares stuff!

Now that I have checked how "smart" this gate really is, I find that it is exactly what I expected: Nothing really world-shaking! ? Essentially it is a multiband gate! You can do exactly the same thing with iZotope's Neutron Gate. Or with Reaper's n-Band-Splitters (multiband split to several tracks) and ReaGate. For drums the Oxford Drum Gate of Sonnox does the best job in my opinion (defining spill). Primarily Sonible's "smart" is promotion, nothing else IMHO (but YMMV)! Nowadays a lot of ordinary or even dumb things are called smart or AI ! ?

I would prefer the pints to the updates, really! ? There are so many updates that give more trouble and pain than joy IMHO. But YMMV! ?

My purchases this year: Melodyne Assistent Upgrade from Essentials (to have a 2nd iLok activation) D16 Group.Spacerek Wavesfactory.Suspended Cymbals Steven Slate.Trigger 2.0 Platinum Fuse Audio Labs.VCS-1 Channel Strip Though I am satisfied with my loot in general (except for Trigger 2 that has only 1 iLok activation), I have been astonished that a lot of prices were not so good compared to usual deals before Black Friday!

It is possible if you open the different drum libraries in Kontakt and assign different Midi channels. But I agree it's too cumbersome! The thing I do, if I want e.g. the basic drums from Studio Drummer and the cymbals from 70s Drummer, then I open 2 Kontakt instruments in the DAW (1 for each drum library) and I separate the MIDI of the base drums and the cymbals to those tracks.

Maybe if your always online! ?

Because of the authorization I would even not take it for free! But YMMV!

This is difficult and I think it's dependent on what genres you do. I think SSD is best suited for harder rock styles. Not only it is dependent on the genres, but also on your taste! I can't argue about BFD, but what I like with SSD are the kick sounds, much better than in AD2 (their kicks are all too boomy)! Also I like the straight mixing console, not too much fancy stuff. I prefer to mix the drums mostly in the daw and not in the drum plugin. I usually export the drum plugin tracks as audio and import them into my mixing projects. In respect of the current Steven Slate deals I am really disappointed, because I purchased Trigger 2 and found out that there is only 1 lousy iLok activation for this one, for SSD 5 I got 3 activations back then! Thus I had expected the same for Trigger 2. Regret my purchase!

As it was expected that this gets on sale, I was looking what price it was yesterday. I am sure it was already reduced to $99 and I could swear the MSRP was $199! Hell, how they play with us!

Just 2 days ago I had something similar with a clip Gain automation. The first Gain segment was beginning before the instruments first note and I made it with a slanting line coming slowly from 0dB to the Gain change (2 points only from 0dB to -2dB). Accidentally when I zoomed in I saw that the bounced audio had suddenly a very ugly spike in the beginning of the first note! I had to shift the start of the gain change much more to the left to avoid this. I also had noticed that the visual gain change differed a lot from the bounced audio. In some places I had to remove it, as it was unusable. I had to split those areas and use a compressor instead. After all this I regretted that I had chosen CbB instead of Reaper to do this! By the way the visual clip Gain change is one of my preferred CbB changes over Sonar Platinum. It is such a pity that it is not really reliable!

Yes I know! But it's interesting that there are quite a couple of developers that implemented the possiblity to define the location of the configs, the manual and for other stuff in the registry, nonetheless this configuration is not available in the installer, strange! But manually (zip files) I can use it. Frankly if the installers would give more configuration possiblities I would also use them (e.g. if you want menu items, if you want a Windows uninstaller, the VST3 subfolder definition, the document location, preset location, ...) and it could have a default value for those who don't want to define it. Also, most installers don't tell you where they install stuff, except some exemplary developers.

That's only true if you like (or accept) the cluttered directory structure of Melda! ? E.g. I have already such a structure (Dynamics, EQ, ...) in my VST3 folder for all plugin providers and I don't want Melda to be an exception! So it takes a lot of work to move all the stuff! This is the crux with all those Installer Managers: Every provider has its own crazy idea of file organization (vst3 folder/subfolders, vst2, docu, presets, menu entries, program data, ...). IMO it's a terrible mess (except if you just use a single plugin provider)! ?

It seems if you don't own MSoundFactory and MGuitarArchitect, then you could skip the last updates and also this one! This is why I dislike plugin packages, there are too many relationships to new added stuff! I mean this generates a lot of installation work for nothing, if you don't have that new stuff!

This is exactly the reason why I prefer zip files for plugin installation! And because this is a lot handier, I create my own zip files out of the installer exes, if this is possible. Like that I safe a lot of time afterwards when I install the plugins on another computer or on re-installs. Also for removal I really know what is where. Additionally, I skip for me useless installation garbage (like AAX, menu entries, icons, ...).

The last years I get more and more updates that are none! Apple Silicon support, wow how important for Windows users! Other bells and whistles? I am not interested in. And new internet gimmick! How I like if I click on the wrong position of a plugin that my browser is being started, just to see a fu..ing home page, help page or check the current version! In what an absurd and pointless world, time do we live??? My DAW would suppress any internet access of plugins! I want to make music and mix songs! I don't want a Facebook or whatever social network in my DAW!

Sorry, I did not mean to blame you! I just wanted to give a hint! My fault, probably not the right way to tell!

Please fix the link (has 2 backslashes at the end)!

The problem is that the above link has to backslashes at the end! Remove one and it runs!

Frankly, IMHO their pianos and other instruments are not so bad as some mention here! The thing is that if you open them in Kontakt only the Close Mic is being activated. To get a nicer sound you need to blend other mic positions in the mixer panel! Though I agree that they are somewhat bloated, but that's caused by too many (IMO) microphone positions!

Great idea, I wanted to do the same (though here it is 29 EUR)! But when I put it into the cart, then it chose exactly the Essential 4 license as base that I want to keep for my W7 recording pc! There was no chance to choose one of the other Essential 5 licenses as base! The only solution had been to contact support, but this was too much hassle for me, thus I purchased it from everyplugin for $41.11 ! Okay, this is $9.00 more, but like that I keep my other Essentials (worth 20 EUR) for future updates!

I can recommend StandardGATE. I was looking for a full featured Expander for a very long time and this one has it all (sidechain, hold, rms, ratio, look-ahead, ...)!

That's even better with Reaper, it runs on XP, Vista, .... Windows 11, also 32-bit, Linux and Mac !