Skijumptoes

Owned it as part of the Absolute collection, it's a great and somewhat unique. Although, I rarely use it in any productions. Really surprised to see it going out as a freebie though, it's a legit offering for sure.

Yes, i'm very much into my classic sounding synths, EPs and pianos. I really love bread and butter sounds, and building on those. I don't like anything that sounds too 'in the box', so do all I can to route out an back in as audio tracks and work on that level. To me a sampler should sound raw and gritty and more like old AKAI hardware, so tend to reach for TAL Sampler and then build on top of that. And I think that's why NI Komplete and separates such as Arturia and UAD's offerings are more my ball park, and this is perhaps why Falcon doesn't really stand out all that much to me. All these textured soundscapes are technically wonderful, but I have no desire to listen to an album full of them - they have me bored within 20-30 seconds, let alone 3 minutes plus. There just seems to be a huge amount of musicians who are deep into the whole 'sound design' trend, and somewhat bypassing the process of learning how to write well constructed music with a vocalist over the top. But i enjoy writing songs, I think there's a whole other hobby in enjoying noodling with sounds even if there's no final destination for it.

So it's more powerful than what you can do with a DAW and routing/layering existing plugins and fx? What does it do that excels it beyond? To me it just looks like an instrument of convenience that ultimately has you with putting all this work into one DAW instance, whereas i prefer a more old school approach of treating each instrument in a layer as it's own entity on the mixing console so you're learning a wider skillset that can be applied across the board. I've owned HALion for years and I see the same comments about that back in the day, and I question what's the advantage working within a restricted single instance environment, overkilling a channel strip ,when you could instead reach out for a much wider gamut of sounds through the DAW? I'd love to be interested in it, as it's clearly at a great price, and the countdown clock is ticking. But I just don't get it, sadly. And nor do I hear anything special from it. It does look great fun though, but i'm trying to prevent proscratination not add to it!

Looks like this release has killed their servers for some. If you're having problems opening Arturia Software Center, or logging in to site, just wait until later!

Yes bands like that were using presets on gear that supported it - we all know those classic patches, but that's not really relevant as you can do so much with a preset as the starting point. My point is more that back then it was the sum of individual pieces of gear that they would layer up themselves to create the magic. Each element going into the mixing desk as it's own entity for the producer to work their magic. We only call it sound design retrospectively, but for those artists it was more about developing a sound through creative direction and to realise ideas in their head. Nowadays people aren't referring to those techniques when mentioning sound design. It's much more about going through a tool, such as Falcon, using the pre-existing blocks, and working in a pre-existing environment to copy pre-existing ideas. Many just try random ideas and hope for happy accidents, and then once they have something, try to work out what they can actually do with it in a song. People like these tools as they're quick, which can ultimately create lazy results... Hence (imo) why there's so much of the sound design heavy music out there such as that over-used ambience with a trap beat layered over top. Personally, i'm just sick of hearing it everywhere... Again, that's probably just an age/genre thing. But i could not tell you if AI or a human had done it in all honesty. That's why I ask what people define as sound design, and how Falcon doing so much in a single instance provides better end results versus using a wider range of individual elements. Surely it's more about convenience than creative freedom, isn't it?

What is the advantage having it within a single DAW channel when you could instead layer multiple instruments across multiple DAW channels and have such better routing options and more efficient CPU performance though? That's the part that I don't get, and this is how the most creative minds have worked in studios for decades before. Is it really going to give a better end result versus layering an NI piano, over Spitfire strings with a Pigments track triggering an arp in the background which can be independently automated with the DAW, which I can play in realtime via a single MIDI input? And from a longterm perspective, how do you archive projects with Falcon so that should the plugin not recall ideal that you have editable audio stems or files to work with. Do you render the Falcon tracks audio into one file, with all the layering and FX in place? It seems more restrictive to want to put all the eggs into one basket to me. But the more I read of people saying this is one of the greatest products ever just makes me more interested, and bringing on a greater sense of FOMO!

Falcon seems to have an almost hipster-like following to it, and it kinda puts me off it, I can't lie. I've listened and watched demos and I see a lot of people talking about how great it is, but going purely by the sound it creates I just don't hear anything special. Whereas, when I turn to NI Komplete, or even the UAD instruments, I get a sense of having much more considerable backbone of instruments which have dynamics and expressions, from which you can do many things with. But perhaps this is a genre, or age thing - maybe i'm too rooted in classic bread an butter sounds so having solid EP, Piano, Moog and Juno sounds is what's important for me.. From that I can layer and apply fx to suit, as they're clean, pure, playable sounds. I see many people bring up the word 'sound design' and lauding products like Falcon that do a lot of interesting things - but honestly, what does it even mean in a song production sense - Is this similar to those who promote modular systems, losing hours coming up with soundscapes but not actually producing songs?! I get that, as making music is more enjoyable than listening to music for many of us. Or, Are these 'sound designers' people who are looking to create one standout soundscape as the basis of a track, and then throwing something like a trap beat over the top, sit back and say how dope it is?! None of that is of interest to me, but maybe it's the core base of Falcon users?! So maybe I should stop trying to see what it could do for me every time it comes on sale like this! haha.

A little concerned that they're going to try and do too much with Scaler as it progresses. I've only seen sneak peaks of v3 and on one screenshot it looked like it had multi-track sequencer, plus audio mixer at the bottom of the screen. I appreciate that they have to add value to make the update saleable, but hopefully it won't become un-necessarily resource heavy or complicated in the process. Also, I hope that they keep the focus on integration with the DAW as it's primary purpose, because with a mixer and multi-track sequencer it will bring the temptation to offer a one-stop shop utilising a DLC model to expand it's own sound library or MIDI patterns/motions. Looking forward to giving it a go though.

You can get the whole caboodle for $125 https://www.jrrshop.com/ik-multimedia-total-studio-max Code: Group

The big problem I had with IK and products like Sample Tank Max in the past is that they limited the timeframe you can download the content to about 180 days, beyond that period you had to pay to be able to download it again. Just incase anyone is unaware, Since November 2023 they no longer put this restriction on sound content: https://forum.ikmultimedia.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=33469 Just thought i'd throw that out there for anyone not aware of the changes. As it put me off using their products as I always felt like I had to download the whole sound library and archive it, as well as the installed versions.

Interestingly, they were wanting people to sign up by saying that only the first 10,000 would get it for free, yet today you can just grab it? Either the uptake wasn't as expected or they've been a little deceitful in wanting to get people's emails on their system.

I don't know how they get away with it really, all it's doing is crippling their end users experience. They design these very efficient machines that are nice and portable, as slim as possible an run for hours on battery. So this idea that it's ok to hang an external drive off the side of them goes against that principle for me. If they charged 200 per TB they would be making a serious cut on them, and I think most people would think it's expensive but not insanely so. Especially as so many people opt for the monthly options. Luckily I got my machine on a costco deal so was much reduced, otherwise anything else 2tb and over is silly priced. However, when i done my accounts this year i have to estimate cost of electricity and the difference in running a silicon Mac vs a desktop PC is quite significant. It's about 90% cheaper to run - which alone saves me back a few hundred a year. Hopefully Windows ARM works out well.

Was hoping that the Session Organ would be part of these deals, oh well.

Depends what your use case is, EZBass is very good if you want to compose bass parts within the plugin itself. I liked MODO Bass when I first got it about 2 years back, but i've rarely used it in a project. Orange Tree/Ample require more learning and better ability at playing but probably yield the better sound if you're prepared to put the time in. For me the ease of EZBass is brilliant for songwriting due to the whole package it offers, i've come up with bass parts on my laptop and then used the fret guide to play them in on a real bass on my desktop machine. I just continually go to it, even if it doesn't end up being the final sound.

Perhaps the Mac experience is somewhat different, as it's not intrusive in the slightest. But then that's my general experience versus using Windows, no need to go searching through the registry to clean up remnants, or searching through task schedulers to find out why something is starting up without my prior approval. Not so glad to be paying paying those apple SSD prices though! .