abacab

RCA audio inputs, LOL! I wonder if they are balanced? ? In all fairness, I should probably cut them some slack... it appears those were designed to primarily connect with i-Things via Bluetooth, with the wired inputs only as auxiliary.

Yeah, right. You can give your company a black eye and lose credibility by doing that. For example, just take a look at the AIR Music Tech "as-is" program. They fell far from the A-list (assuming they were ever on it). They once were part of Avid and Pro Tools. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! ?

That's exactly why I now have 2 copies of Xpand!2, LOL! I bought an Alesis VX49 keyboard that came with a VIP/AIR instrument bundle.

I never open Platinum anymore (or Sonar 8.5). But I do enjoy the Platinum extras in CbB. It would be nice if they were made available to those that never had Platinum. ?

I have only seen it go as low as $9.99 recently. It has been a few years since it was running at $1. That's when I discovered it, LOL! But if I hadn't already paid $1 for it, I would have gladly spent $10 or $15 for it. There is nothing else on the planet that offers such a variety of instruments in such an inexpensive package. It has a light footprint on disk storage and CPU usage, so you can run many instances without killing your PC. You would probably end up replacing many of the Xpand!2 sounds later in mixing, if you had some high quality substitutes. But many of those alternatives are CPU and RAM eaters, and often you might need to freeze some of those HQ instrument tracks to keep things from getting out of hand.

I have Sonar 8.5 Producer installed in a Windows XP 32-bit virtual machine (VM).

Nobody's arguing with you. The regular users here are just like you. We do not have the answers you seek.

Also, if they release all of the plugins, then they are on the hook to support them. Rather the dollars go to Cakewalk core development. For say: a chord track, integrated sampler, new notation engine, etc.

Well my point was that it's not just a Sonar internal plugin. Only the Cakewalk/BandLab devs know why it wasn't released with CbB. Not all legacy plugins were made available for CbB, for various reasons. I agree that it would be nice to have them. But you will have to ask somebody at BandLab for the reason.

I'm seeing it as a proper VST2 plugin here. And I can insert it in Ableton Live. It's been around Since Sonar 8 Producer.

I picked up Waves Flow Motion for $29. That's got me sitting on all the FM that I need at the moment. Very high quality sound, with a quirky interface. Not sure why it never made the A-list. Its pretty, pretty good! Still $29: https://www.waves.com/plugins/flow-motion-fm-synth Probably got dissed by the die-hard FM gurus who like to program operators... Also picked up the FM Station & Poly FM Station oscillator modules for Cherry Voltage Modular. Plenty of FM territory to explore there! $29 bundle with envelope generators and FM presets! https://store.cherryaudio.com/bundles/fm-bundle https://store.cherryaudio.com/modules/poly-fm-station That's a lot of F'em for $58!!! ?

I guess we need to first determine if this is actually A-list gear.

Don't know the deal with that particular plugin, but there are 3 other oldies hidden by default in CbB.

Not the lowest price ever, but not bad if you need a good virtual ROMpler! 2500+ sounds covering 29 instrument categories, not GM, but 4-part multitimbral. Light footprint, with small sample library about 1.5GB. https://www.producerspot.com/product/xpand-2 https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/64-Virtual-Instrument/1560-Xpand-2 *Free iLok account and License Manager required.

And not free, but currently on sale for $14.99 is the AIR Xpand!2 virtual instrument. This used to be part of Pro Tools, but is now available as a VST instrument for all! It has 2500+ presets that cover 29 categories of instruments. Not GM, but it is 4-part multi-timbral, so it's a bit of a virtual old-school ROMpler synth. Good for getting started with sketching an arrangement because it covers nearly everything. It sounds good, but the sample size is rather small. The whole thing is like 1.5GB. So Xpand!2 is pretty much a no-brainer for the price! https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/64-Virtual-Instrument/1560-Xpand-2 As far as freeware instruments go, there are not really any complete high quality band or orchestra instrument collections. So if you are expecting that, you will either need to pay up, or assemble your own collection from free bits and pieces.

And be sure to check the growing collection of free instruments from Spitfire Audio, aka LABS. https://labs.spitfireaudio.com/#category=&search=&new=true Spitfire Audio is a leading provider of professional sample libraries. If you install the free Spitfire Audio App you can access all of these.

Hey, before you spend any money, you may want to review this thread started by a forum member. Freeware Instruments. There are quite a few good suggestions posted here by forum members!

Did you have Platinum installed BEFORE installing CbB? That's the correct way to get all of the Platinum goodies into CbB. TS64 is showing up here for me in CbB as a VST2.

Those settings should not have any affect on the actual sound, other than more or less latency or dropouts. The sound generator source would be exactly the same.

Special pricing $107.40 - Regular Price $179.00 https://www.tracktion.com/products/f-em

You have probably hit a limitation with that Microsoft thingy. You can buy a lifetime license for the Roland Sound Canvas VA (GS/GM) plugin for USD $69 through the Roland Cloud (free version). https://www.roland.com/us/products/rc_sound_canvas_va/

Did you manage to get that download installed?

Keep the Tardis rolling, Doctor!

Goody two shoes!!! ?

I got all of the above for my birthday a few years ago. Have always had "the best of" and various Beatles "anthologies" on hand, but finally decided to get a hold of the actual album format themselves, as the digital remasters. I like! But the most interesting thing was in comparing "Let It Be" with "Let It Be... Naked". Very revealing. But I like them both... Hell, it's still the Beatles, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Be..._Naked