PavlovsCat

I've linked below to a YouTube playlist of Evolution video tutorials. I really can't emphasize enough how helpful these video tutorials are. I had input in the original Evolution libraries, but Greg's tutorials are where I learned just about everything I know. The beauty of it is that once you learn how the Evolution system works, that knowledge is applicable to the entire line of guitar (or bass) libraries. It's truly amazing what you can do with the guitar libraries. Of course, if you just want to use presets and play, you can do that, but if you really want to make this instrument your own, there's so much you can do, I still find it mind blowing. My guess though is that most users have no idea of how much these instruments cam do. Once you understand it and start using the functionality, it really changes everything. That applies to setting up how you want Evolution to respond to your playing-- like putting pinch harmonics at a certain velocity range or maybe when you tap your sustain pedal or create your own strumming pattern with palm muted strums on a certain beat. It reminds me of when I led a band and we performed my original songs and I'd tell the guitarist how the rhythm parts should be played and he'd play it. IMO, while it's more work than using loops, it enables you to do nearly any idea you have for a rhythm guitar part.

Larry's concept of celebrating WUP gave me a laugh. It's funny that we have a small group of contrarians who are now the pro WUP constituency. I was actually an early pro WUPer. But only as a joke. I did it to contrast myself with Fleer and I would take indefensible stands praising the merits of WUP. It's pretty funny that we now have some folks making the same cases I once made as a joke.

Just made some updates to the list (see the original post). This list is getting links from other forums, Reddit, and elsewhere, but because this forum doesn't pin threads like this and I see some folks in this forum are beginning to create similar, but much smaller lists, I'm starting the wonder if I should keep working on it. Let me know if you find this list useful. It took many hours to compile the list, and of course, it takes effort to keep adding to it regularly and maintaining it. As long as people here find it useful, I'll keep it going.

Yep, there's a lot of research on that. Year after year, studies by multiple major researchers have found Mac users to be more affluent than Windows users.

I have an unregisted license I'd sell for less, if anyone wants to buy it, PM me.

I second cclarry's opinion, these are excellent reverbs. Granted, Larry knows a lot more about audio than I do. I just know that they sound really good and have a bunch of presets.

Have you noticed that Group Buy threads used to get a lot more people talking? Now, that's going back a long way, but one of the masters of the Group Buy, my friend Dave Kerzner, used to do epic Group Buy threads over at KVR -- I'm going back as much as 20+ years. Those threads were a blast and a fountain of shared knowledge and information. I always loved the knowledge being shared as much as the thrill of getting a great deal. As a user of sample libraries, beyond it being enjoyable to find a bunch of other users excited about the same sample libraries, was also a great opportunity to share and learn tips about the libraries. I think with Evolution libraries, there's so much depth to them that most users have barely scratched the surface. I was giving my input as a super user of guitar sample libraries and plugins when OTS / Greg was first developing the Evolution line and however long it's been -- certainly more than a decade -- I'm still finding out about additional things I can do with Evolution. The only sample library or plugin that I've used that has close to that level of depth is Superior Drummer, which allows a user to mix, add all sorts of effects and edits to the samples, laying of drums, customization and replacement of drums and cymbals, etc. Sure, you can simply just stick with presets and get amazing results, but if you go deeper with Evolution, you can set up patches so they respond to your playing style, trigger articulations to play however you like, customize strumming patterns, etc. It's not really just a sample library. It's a very deep virtual guitar instrument and it's still unparalleled if you look at all of the capabilities.

Starship Krupa's thread is an excellent, curated list of free effects. He has been a fountain of information to this community -- and for me personally. The effects on this list certainly could be added to his thread. I have a two curated lists of free instruments; one is a curated list of free sample libraries and sample and synth plugins and is a curated list of for Kontakt freebie libraries -- I thought of those threads as covering the basses Starship Krupa's effects list didn't cover. It would be ideal to strengthen those threads instead of creating duplicates, IMO. Those lists are both pretty thorough and represent many hours of work and contributions from the community. They've become valuable resources for many people and they're linked at other forums, Reddit, etc. as valuable resources. I wish Bandlab would pin them; at many other forums, they would be pinned. Keeping them active is significant; it makes them better resources and makes SK and I feel it's worthwhile to keep updating them. So, ideally, these recommendations could go in those respective threads. On the other hand, I'm just happy to see someone sharing their experiences and knowledge to make things easier for other musicians on limited budgets, however it's accomplished. I think Aidan is doing a good thing by sharing his knowledge and advice to help others. To me, that's the real bottom line. So, in the end, this thread still gets my LIKE, because it's helpful to others. This is the similar curated list of free sample libraries and plugins that I created and have maintained since 2022. But it gets lost on the forum because it's not pinned, so you may not have been aware of it.

@aidan o driscoll If you've never used Vital, you've got to try it. It's free and I own maybe a few dozen paid soft synths and I like Vital more than most of them. Check it out. It absolutely deserves to be on your list, IMO. https://vital.audio/

I've consulted to around three dozen music software and hardware companies. I've had one of the larger ones recently contact me for advice. There's not a ton of secondary research comparing the pro audio market to the hobbyist market, but I can tell you from advising three dozen music software companies over 15 years, and what I've found from them, the hobbyist market is a very significant portion of their income. I suppose the surprise to many hobbyists is that this industry is still growing (a lot of hobbyists post in this forum from their gut feeling that the industry is declining; it's actually growing). It was projected that the DAW market grew by nearly 9% last year. The education market is also significant. Garrittan, long ago, made the education market a significant part of its market strategy and that set the way for many others in the business. One of the people posting in this thread mercilessly mocked / trollled me as an unknowledgeable in a past thread about Waves following the launch of their short lived subscription only pricing. Specifically, he mocked me for my prediction that Waves would retreat on subscription only pricing within three months because the hobbyist market wouldn't accept it. Of course, it happened much sooner than that. Why? Because Waves reacted to outrage from the hobbyist market. Do you think Waves would have reacted so quickly to hobbyists protesting subscription only pricing and go back to perpetual licensing PLUS subscriptions if the hobbyist market wasn't a significant portion of their revenue? Of course not. Businesses often like / prefer software subscription pricing, whereas hobbyists are most often are resistant to it, especially older generation hobbyists. When you look at it generationally, each older generation hobbyist group (starting with Boomers in the research I reviewed) is more resistant to software subscriptions than the next younger generation. Boomers are more resistant to software subscriptions than Gen X, Gen X is more resistant than millennials, and millennials are more resistant than Gen Z. So, is anyone here privy to Waves books (their revenue, net profit, whether they're growing or declining, etc.)? Probably not. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that Waves is in financial trouble, but based on their fast reaction to hobbyist outrage over subscription only pricing and forum and social media reaction to the brand, I would expect that Waves revenue is no longer growing as well as it was prior to that move. The unsubstantiated claim that Waves is doing great these days is also unsupported by fact. Actions like Waves took often have a long lasting negative impact on a brand / sakes growth. Based on social media and forum mentions of the Waves brand since then, I suspect that Waves is not seeing the same growth it once had and that the brand has a serious, long term problem. There were reports that Waves reduced its employee head count by 5% last year due to revenue issues, but because they're a small, privately held company that brings in around $15 million US in revenue annually, it's pretty difficult to get trustworthy info on them.

Okay, I watched some of that video and have to agree. Those patches were pretty much like I recall with Union. Meh. For anyone considering this synth, I'd say add a couple of bucks (or whatever your local currency is) and pick up Miniraze instead. Fleer and some others had posted about it early this week that led me to demoing it and I think it's really good -- and vastly superior to WaveOSC, as is the awesome and completely free synth, Vital. https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/4-Synth/9162-Miniraze?refSrc=12087%2C9162&nosto=frontpage-nosto-3

I bought the Union synth (and a few banks Plugin Boutique sold for it), that this evolved from. I think the developer was called Initial Audio [EDIT: As Vst0nE points out below, the company was named SoundSpot, not Initial Audio]. I found the synth to be pretty meh. But maybe PB improved it enough to make it worthwhile for 7 bucks. I'd be interested in opinions from anyone who picks this up.

The truth is, Waves, like many small businesses continue to do certain strategies that don't help their business out of inertia. The company came up with the idea at some point and management became so invested in the idea that it would be incredibly difficult for a consultant to persuade them out of it. As a strategist, I would want to look at the percent of the customer base that buy WUP, look at the general market perception of WUP, and its impact on the brand Image, paying special to the negative impact WUP may have on the Waves brand image, looking carefully at the percent of prospects that don't purchase due to WUP and also at the customers that defect related to the practice. Judging from years of seeing comments in social media and Waves knee jerk reaction to the customer outcry against subscription only -- added to the recent 5% of the workforce that the company reportedly shed, and I feel fairly confident that Waves use of WUP and their ill conceived, and short lived, subscription-only strategy have caused the company significant brand damage that is most easily measured in lost sales and lower conversion rates over the years as well as customer attrition rates. They've been doing WUP for quite a long time, however, the market has been changing significantly in recent years and many new competitors have emerged and it's a pretty easy guess that Waves is seeing their market share decline. Software companies have to work hard to maintain market share and, from observations, I think Waves is going to make changes. Perhaps their subscription service is helping them bring in new revenue, but I doubt it's enough to replace what they've lost.

Yes. As I wrote in an earlier post, if I were to buy WUP for my expired Abbey Road Chambers plugin it would cost $78.48 US, whereas buying another license costs $29.99 US. In the case of that plugin, I like it so much -- but it's such a resource hog -- that if Waves had an update that fixed that and it no longer had latency issues, I would probably -- okay, definitely; I love the Abbey Road plugins -- buy another license for $29.99 instead of paying more than twice as much for WUP. One might argue that WUP let's you install the plugin on a second machine, but only during your WUP period. After your WUP expires, you're back to having only one license. But I'm not a fan of Waves WUP scheme, so I've otherwise stopped buying Waves plugins for a few years at this point, and as you're well aware, there's a lot of excellent alternatives out there.

Okay, so maybe I didn't attend a fancy schmancy school like Harvard like the Forum elites (ha! I'm going to make that a thing), but I'm just going to assume that you're calling someone else an idiot. I'm guessing that most of that 6GB is not MIDI and I'm not interested in MIDI or loops played by someone else. I want to play for myself, that's why I do this hobby. So the MIDI is not of interest to me, the sound / patches of the synth are. But while it sounds okay, to me, it doesn't sound great or as good as other synths that are far less than 1GB.

It sounds alright, but what gives me pause is that it's 6GB, basically a rompler (their copy reads "more than a rompler" -- but I'm thinking in terms of the drive space it takes up) . It this was under 1GB, I easily would have snapped it up.

Absolutely understood by everyone who has a problem with WUP. When everything is working fine, WUP is a non-issue for a user. However, let's say that your OS or DAW has an update -- which happens regularly -- and it causes your version of Waves plugins to stop working. If Waves has fixed the issue for the plugins you purchased in 2018, you're going to have to pay up $240 US (that's the latest ceiling price for WUP) to get those Waves plugins working again. This is a problem plenty of Apple users have faced, BTW. And, of course, that $240 US only covers one year of updates. If your OS or DAW have additional updates during the next year that result in issues with your Waves plugins, that's going to be an additional $240 US for that year and so on, and so on. Do you think if you were faced with having to pay $240 US to get your plugins on projects working again (and for that year only, not next year) that you would still have good feelings for Waves and their WUP practices or might that impact your perspective a little?

Evolution Guitar Tip #2 Here's another Evolution guitar instrument tip that's super simple, but I find really useful and I can't believe it took me years to think of this -- and an unnecessary sample library purchase. I bought a guitar harmonics library from another developer and suddenly it occurred to me -- Evolution guitar libraries have harmonic notes meticulously sampled; why couldn't I just create a patch with only harmonic samples? So I did exactly that. I went into one of my Evolution guitar libraries and let the initial patch load. I selected the drop down setting for harmonics to velocity and set it to 0 - 127 and named the new patch "Harmonics Only." I tried different amp and effects combinations to save additional harmonics patches. I went and did the same for the other Evolution electric guitar and acoustic guitar libraries, and now I do the same thing with each new Evolution guitar library. Of course, you can do the same thing with any articulation that you only want to hear in a patch, but I really enjoy playing only the harmonic samples in certain songs and this lets me do that. Evolution Indie has a pure harmonics patch (catamaran) with a lot of effects on it, but not all the of the libraries do and even then, for Indie, I still created a direct input (no effects) harmonics patch and then added my own amp and effects settings, although I love playing around with external reverbs, amps. and effects too.

I was just doing a batch re-save on an 8Dio library and it occurred to me that when I recommended the 8Dio 1928 Piano -- which is a vintage Steinway grand piano -- that I should have mentioned that if you want to greatly lessen the time it takes for the library to load do a batch re-save in Kontakt. This can make a tremendous difference in load times, taking it from even as long as minutes to seconds. Also, I read somewhere -- I don't have this directly from 8Dio -- that the 1928 for Kontakt won't be free permanently. I do think it's probably the best Kontakt freebie (in terms of its value; it has a level of detail that no other free piano -- or any instrument, for that matter -- sample library has) available today. In addition to how much I love the sound of the (very detailed) piano it includes a good deal of sound design patches -- some contain other instruments. So, if you haven't downloaded that one, I would recommend that you do it soon. Yes, there is a version of the same sample library for SoundPaint, however that doesn't have the same patches and additional layered instrument, and I find that it sounds a bit different in SoundPaint. https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/210274985-How-to-Batch-re-save-a-KONTAKT-Library

New recommended free Kontakt sample library finds including a free Mellotron library, a percussion library, and a synth library. See the original post. As always, I list the most recently added sample libraries at the top of their respective categories.

Just looking at it as a sample instrument (not for its ability to play pre-written parts, I enjoy playing), I'm pretty sure that this a Rhodes. Does anyone know the make and model of the electric piano? As there appears to be a demo, I might give that a try.

So if you buy Waves Platinum for $74.99 US today, that would mean you would pay $240 US in year two for WUP, and so on, and so on.... My favorite Waves plugins are the Abbey Road series. Right now, if I paid WUP for Abbey Road Chambers -- which sounds great but is a complete resource hog with major latency issues and if Waves fixed the latency, I would be tempted to get the new version so that I could use it in real time. But Waves charges $78.48 US for WUP for the plugin, while buying a new license costs $29.99 US during their always on "sales." Waves should be required to have a warning label on their sales so that consumers clearly understand up front how the Waves scam -- er, I mean scheme -- works.

It's really hard to say one Evolution is my favorite, but out of the gate, I felt like Indie could take that title. Evolution Guitar Library Tip #1 Here's a tip I'd like to pass on to those just starting with Evolution. I invite other Evolution library owners to share their tips -- I'm sure we could all learn something new from one another. Most of the time I use the Evolution factory presets. However, I own Guitar Rig, Amplitube, Electrum, Bias FX, and a couple of other guitar amp sims and while I also play with the amps and effects in Evolution, I don't really know what I'm doing. I rarely feel confident building my own amp and effects from scratch. I mainly had training on piano, organ, and drums and only a handful of guitar lessons. So while I enjoy playing around with the included amps and effects, I end up either using the Evolution factory presets or using external amp sim presets and possibly tweaking those presets. Now here's the tip. The various presets in Evolution guitar libraries have different settings for scripts. In other words, each preset reacts to your playing differently. Some are perfect when I'm doing high energy leads, some are perfect for mellower and melodic soulful leads, others are best suited for rhythm guitar or chugs... I tend to find the presets that I find best fit the type of playing I do and rename them according to the type of playing its best suited for. I then turn off all of the effects and amp and go through presets in my amp sims. It's the closest I have felt to playing a real electric guitar and going into a guitar shop and trying out various amps and effects. Needless to say, it's pretty easy to have so much fun that time flies by.

Thanks for mentioning the demo, I'll do that. I have a bunch of pugins from Kilohearts, but not that one. Funny, this thread started out with me posting a freebie convolution reverb -- and I got it up fast before cclarry! But when I tried it out, I definitely didn't think it was something I would be happy about even paying ten bucks to buy. Instead, we've all gone on a collective tangent on convolution reverbs and Biran and Erik -- of all people (because he loves Melda plugins) unintentionally talked me out of buying MConvolutionMB (because I was interested in it to get more IRs) and now I'm interested in Kilohearts Convolver! This is actually part of what I like so much about this group. We collectively went on a tangent. Brian, while not agreeing with all of my observations, ended up getting me to think a bit more about the plugin I was interested in, as did Starship Krupa. Then you come along and get me interested in a completely different convolution reverb! At some forums, someone would be ripping on us for tangents. But we seem to have found a group of people who enjoy going on these tangents together! And we all can learn a lot during that process, because every one of us added their knowledge along the way. So y eah, this is basically the Socratic dialogue version of a music related forum!

Pat, I completely forgot about Kilohearts Convoler. That comes with a few hundred impulse responses that I would expect -- based on my experience with Kilohearts -- are pretty good (if anyone here owns it, please chime in). Now I'm looking forward to their next sale too.