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I still have my Sonar 8 Power and my SonarX1 Power books on my shelf!

Double the Festive Fun This year, we're thrilled to be able to celebrate the holidays by offering a free giveaway from both iZotope and Native Instruments. Get Native Instruments' Play Series: TWENTY FIVE and iZotope's Trash 2 for FREE, plus enjoy 25% off any Native Instruments software product.* https://www.izotope.com/en/lp/izotope-ni-holiday.html *Voucher Terms and Conditions The Native Instruments e-voucher is valid for all Native Instruments software products in the NI Online Shop, excluding hardware, updates, upgrades, crossgrades, educational versions, and products already on special offer. The Native Instruments e-voucher is personalized and only for use by the appointed addressee/user. It is not transferable and may not be resold. Only one Native Instruments e-voucher can be used per product purchase. The Native Instruments e-voucher can only be redeemed at the NI Online Shop. The Native Instruments e-voucher may not be redeemed for cash. The Native Instruments special offer is valid from 16 December, 2021 until 4 January, 2022, at the NI online shop.

Sorry to hear that you had issues with Iris 2. The plugin hosts that I have loaded Iris 2 successfully in: Ableton Live, Cakewalk, Komplete Kontrol, NanoHost, Reaper, Studio One, Unify, & Waveform, and none of them had any issues with it that I can recall. I cannot speak for Cubase, FL Studio, Logic (Mac only), Pro Tools, Reason, or Bitwig, as I do not have those, or any others that I didn't mention. I'm strictly Windows 10 here as well.

Full disclosure: I have become a fanboy of Luftrum. All good stuff so far! I have his soundsets for Pigments, iZotope Iris 2, U-He Repro, and the Bioscape library for Kontakt. And when I can afford Omisphere, Diva, Zebra, and Dune, I will probably add Luftrum's soundsets for them as well!

I think that iZotope Iris 2 falls into a similar misunderstood category. It is unique, and does some very interesting things with spectral filtering. I think it was ignored by many who were looking for a do-it-all type of synth. I think that Loom and Iris are specialists. Just great for what they are! Biotek 1 & 2 by Tracktion is another example of a very good synth, capable of some very unique soundscapes, blending samples with analog VA. The presets are awesome, but for rolling your own, the modulations are just a bit complex for everyday use. The mind behind that design is Wolfram Franke, formerly of Waldorf. He most recently worked on the new mega FM synth from Tracktion, "F.'em". Another quite complex synth, with 11 operators, 2 of which are multi-sample, with modulations galore. I think that those are types of synths that you might not need every day, but you never know when you are looking for new inspiration, that one of those might be exactly what you need!

The keyboard player, obviously! ?

Luftrum 23 is 50% off at Luftrum until Dec 28th with promo code "snowisfalling". $29 $14.50 https://www.luftrum.com/luftrum23/ Wishlist no more, LOL! Totally understood, and I wasn't trying to add any confusion! Just pointing out in general that you can add substantially to the Pigments factory banks with select Arturia and 3rd party banks. Pigments is good for GAS, LOL!

I find that I struggle to keep my favorites up front as the list grows with time and accumulation, LOL. But there are some that I haven't opened in a good while. Not really ready to trash most of them yet, except in cases where they are obvious duplicates of function, because I like options! In consideration for the garbage bin, synths don't require as much space as sampled instruments. So I'm likely to keep them around unless they are buggy, have missing or incomplete documentation, or end-of-life for support. Or I have something else that is equivalent, but better! So in regards to those just mentioned, I made a few comments... Loom by AIR I have upgraded to Loom II also. I recently rediscovered this because there is now a "unified" preset library for Loom II available for Unify users. This synth is one of a kind, and is a good option to have around. Loom II added some great new presets, including many by sound designer Richard Devine. Digital Synsations by UVI I got this for free as well. Needed some hard drive space, so have temporarily removed it until I upgrade my drive. But it is a good digital synth emulation if you don't mind putting up with synth samples for oscillators, instead of circuit modeling. In the same sampled synth category as IK Syntronik, and Tracktion RetroMod. I think that sampled synths can offer very good sound, but at the expense of total tweakability of a virtual synth emulation. I think that their best use is as virtual ROMplers. SampleTank by IK Multimedia I started with ST3 (free with an iRig Keys 25), but I think that the instrument sound quality and variety improved in SampleTank 4 MAX and now is superior to the Kontakt Factory Library. But the open ecosystem of Kontakt has made it an industry standard that's wide open to NI and 3rd party instruments that blow ST away. The custom scripted UI's in Kontakt are far superior to the way the SampleTank interface works. And ST4 can be a system hog if you load it up. But for simple instruments, it can be an easy go-to. Instachord by WA productions Don't have that one, because I already have Scaler 2 and my plans are to learn that first, before moving on to something else, if needed.

This video demo of a virtual guitarist doing battle with a real guitarist always cracks me up! The keyboardist is using a Roli Seaboard with MPE, so that's cheating a little bit, LOL! But he has the technique!

My total is 2162 presets. I have the additional 4 Arturia Pigments banks that came out with 3.0, Amethyst, Malachite, Ochre, & Onyx. Plus a few others including Synthwave 2085 from the Arturia store, and Luftrum 23 - Soundbank for Pigments 2 & 3. Up to 50% off at Luftrum until Dec 28th with promo code "snowisfalling". $29 $14.50 https://www.luftrum.com/luftrum23/

Sorry to hear Analog Orchestra missed the freebie list for some folks. It would be a fine choice! Since I already had it, I grabbed the Ultra Analog VA-3 pack 'Kicks and Snares'. Why? You can never have too many kicks and snares! https://www.applied-acoustics.com/kicks-and-snares/ "Along with its 30 kicks, 30 snares, and 25 rhythm grooves, hi-hats and various percussions were added to the pack for good measure, making Kicks and Snares a complete drum track solution for your projects."

I ran the 8DIO downloader today, and everything just worked automagically! Nice freebie! https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2021/12/11/8dio-new-hybrid-rhythms/

Cameron also mentioned native Mac M1 compatibility with this Pigments 3.5 release.

To see just the 150 new presets in either Pigments or Analog Lab V, select only the Pigments 3.5 factory library under Banks!

Toontrack EZkeys Sound expansion (for existing EZKeys users- add any) $47 https://www.timespace.com/collections/special-offers/products/toontrack-ezkeys-sound-expansion

Toontrack EZX Americana $24 https://www.timespace.com/collections/special-offers/products/toontrack-ezx-americana

Here's the 2021 Toontrack deals at Time + Space: https://www.timespace.com/collections/special-offers/toontrack

Why Cakewalk by Bandlab? Top 5 Reasons

It can be as simple or as deep as you make it!

I already have too many soft synths to keep track of, but the three big ones I still don't have are Omnisphere, Dune 3, or Zebra 2. I'm still considering the last 2 for next year, if I can find a deal. I would consider Omnisphere if it had a demo version to test, but that's not happening... and I probably already have enough other synths to cover Omni turf. Anyway, I did pick up the U-He Repro this year on sale, and it is probably the best sounding synth I have. Tone2 Saurus 3 is a good one in the sound department if you just want analog goodness that you can twist knobs on a single page and program from scratch easily! Be careful, as the bottom end here could melt your monitors!!!

Sonitus is a quite old and legacy Cakewalk FX suite, and DX (DirectX) is mentioned in a 2016 knowledge base article here: http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013067/Overview-of-the-Sonitusfx-suite Sonitus FX will also be recognized in another DAW, such as Reaper, that recognizes DX plugins.

True, which is also the case with Ableton Live, although the guitar samples they include with their instrument rack and sampler are probably more suitable for electronic music. But with the integrated sampler in Live, one could import any guitar samples they wish. Going back to the OP, I will submit the distinction that the connotation of "virtual guitar" speaks to a more elaborate instrument than just a sampler with guitar samples. Although with a bit of effort, one could make that work. I have several 3rd party virtual guitars and they all offer much more than pure sample playback for realism, such as keyswitches and modulations, to easily trigger different guitar articulations from within a single preset. This allows a keyboardist to sound a bit more like a guitar player. IMHO, such purpose built virtual guitar instruments are a premium product and not likely to be bundled with any DAW, as the necessary bundle price would push it beyond the cost anyone would be willing to pay for a DAW. I would suggest that premium and boutique instruments have generally always been ala carte 3rd party choices. For example, just look at the success Native Instruments has had with their sample based instruments!

I guess that I missed that you were looking at DAWs in general. Thought you were referring to Cakewalk. When you say no DAWs include guitars, which ones have you looked at? I have PreSonus Studio One 5 Pro and their included Presence XT sampler is chock full of guitars (each of these categories has multiple instruments): https://www.presonus.com/products/Presence-XT-Complete-Core-Instruments/features Les Paul Nylon Steel String Stratocaster Telecaster

The Sonitus FX plugins provided with Cakewalk are 64-bit DX (not VST) plugins.