PavlovsCat

I really like SonicCounture as developers, really top notch. I remember talking to James Thompson like a decade ago on a phone call, and he told me that he and his partner started out doing libraries at Yamaha. So I think these guys have a very long history as being some of the best there is at their craft. I only have the free version of Hammersmith Pro and eventually, I'll grab the pro version. I think their first library I picked up was the eBow guitar one -- which James gave me for free for picking my brain on strategy ( I often gave small devs advice pro bono at the time and refused NFRs because I thought I might post something positive or negative about the dev in the forum and didn't want them to feel like I has beholden to talk them up positively -- I was doing a favor to them). I haven't spoke to him since then, but I've been a happy paying customer for the ten years since then.

Fleer, you know I like you a lot, but we've got to be kinder to one another than that.

Downloaded and installed it with no problems on Windows 10. I love the tone of this library. I think this is my favorite Labs library to date. It's absolutely worth downloading. What's going on lately with all of these really nice freebies? I hope it keeps on going.

Sounds nice! I love the competition between orchestral library developers (Spitfire, Project Sam, Orchestral Tools, VSL -- while the dev isn't an orchestral library developer, the Heaviocity free libraries are really nice too) to create good libraries for free as a way of exposing their brands to new customers. It's the kind of marketing (technically promotional) strategy I really love. It's ethical, it benefits people of all income brackets (I especially love how it enables those who are financially strapped to enjoy music) and it's a lot of fun to enjoy these freebies.

This keeps tempting me. I own the first ezDrummer (and SD2), so I qualify for the upgrade pricing. I didn't upgrade to SD3 during the brief period where Toontrack basically said upgrade now during our timeline or we'll never extend upgrading pricing again -- which, as someone who's a marketing pro who's worked with literally at least a couple dozen music software companies, I find an incredibly customer disloyal tactic. The full price for SD3 is really high relative to competitors and beyond my music budget. Consequently, I'm hoping that ToonTrack offers upgrade pricing for all previous SD owners like they are doing with ezDrummer 3. But if they don’t, offer upgrade pricing for SD4 I'm going to be super bummed. What to do, what to do.. Do others here getting this have both EzDrummer and SD? What to do. What to do...

This one didn't really appeal to me soundwise, plus, I'm not a big loop library user. On another level, I really dislike sample libraries that are laid out where you play chords with a single note, as it not only results in weirdly having to play one octave for minor and another for major chords, and you don't have the option of easily playing simple, often used, chords like sustained 2nds and 4ths, diminished chords, augmented chords, 7ths, 9ths, etc. While I realize that those that don't know how to play keyboards may like the one note mapping for a chord setup, for those of us who do know how to play, I find it annoying, unintutive and very limiting. I wish devs that did one note chords would at least make patches where they map out samples for those that prefer playing chords, so going from, say, a major to a minor chord is just like it is with a piano.

100%, my friend. Spot on. When a developer makes commercial libraries they must hold themselves to a higher standard than this developer. I bought one product, put in a ticket when there was showstopper level problems. The developer got back to me a week later, said he was really busy and would get back to me in a week but never did. I don't believe it's ethical to market commercial products that clearly have not been properly developed and tested and on top of it to have such incredibly poor (non-existent, in my experience) support. It's simply not a legitimate business to charge people for products in that state. The developer may be a very nice person, who is in over his head but it's simply not good business ethics to sell products that don't work properly, aren't properly tested and have support that is equally as poor. Even one of the influencers promoting his libraries -- er, "reviewing" his libraries -- was in the middle of doing his "review" when he had showstopper problems, called the developer, and in a live show that went on for an hour or so, the developer could not get things working. I share this so that others are aware of these issues. These developer's products are definitely not ready for the market. He clearly is not properly coding and adequately testing his plugin based on my experiences and those of others who have posted in various forums- even from the experiences of that YouTube influencer whose technical issues could not be resolved by the developer, leading to the developer acknowledging various unresolved issues with his plugin. At this point, I think the developer would do well to temporarily pause sales until he can address all of the known issues with his plugin on numerous platforms. From the various forums, the issues encompass Windows and Apple operating systems and the developer acknowledges these issues, however he keeps having new releases that are clearly not properly tested prior to release and end up with even more issues. I'm waiting until I see multiple posts from users on the Windows 10 platform giving the all clear. I'm not going to waste more time on this mess of a plugin. EDIT: Just to be clear, I reported the plugin's issues back in December 2021. The developer said he was super busy addressing other issues and would get back to me. It's nearly 5 months later and he never got back to me and the issues were never resolved with the problem ridden updates made since then. That's simply unacceptable and the forums make clear that the issues I've experienced are not isolated.

The forum -- really your posts, Larry -- is like the days of shampoo bottle instructions reading "lather, rinse, repeat," except for this forum it's "buy samples and plugins, run out of HD space, buy more hard drives, repeat."

Wow, seeing that, it's difficult for me to want to even give it a try. Filosilo, as we all now, has been awful. I never even considered something could be worse.

By coincidence I watched that same video earlier today -- it's a great comparison video. I'm really after that funk bass patch, which sounds great in the demo and for $29.99, nothing else is close to the price and in the comparison, he doesn't play any patches that sound like the funk bass one, so I'm 90% certain I'm getting the Minimonsta after downloading the demo last night. I love that funky bass. I already have Mini V and Monark but have no idea how to make a patch like that. So yeah, 30 bucks for one patch!

@abacabI have the Mini V too, but there's no preset that nails a Stevie Wonder funky model D bass or the Parliament "Flashlight" which Minimonsta has a demo on their site that comes incredibly close to Stevie's bass. I'm sure someone who makes their own patches can probably come close with the Mini V, but it's beyond my skillset and Minimonsta is $29.99 at ADSR plus you get the free EQ plugin some folks here have posted about. Just an FYI for you and anyone else looking at Model D clones. The demo called "Bass Funk" has that Wonder bass sound I love. https://www.gforcesoftware.com/products/minimonsta/

That "you are about to buy a plugin you already own" feature has saved me a lot of money. Sad. I remember a time when my brain used to handle that function.

True story. I saw the original post the other day and have been following this thread. When someone posted that the link was working, I picked up Autoformer from Best Service. When I went to the developer's site to redeem the number from Best Service, I discovered that I already own it. I realize this isn't an unheard of experience for this group. Let me start over. Hi, my name is Peter, and I'm a plugaholic.

Be careful, @Reid Rosefelt, before you know it someone will complain that this thread doesn't belong in the deals forum (plus it's for a Cakewalk competitor). It's so ridiculous. Like most of us, I enjoy the camaraderie here. On another note, I think I'm in the minority, as I use Cakewalk and I really think Bandlab is doing a good job with it. Even if they were charging, I'd be happy with the software.

Thanks, Fleer. I'll check it out.

Do those of you with sound engineering skills find any of the Abbey Road plugins especially worth getting? I currently own Chambers, J37 Tape, Reverb Plates and Reel ADT.

The Beatles are definitely a Wilco influence, and of course, my style is very influenced by The Beatles, and I certainly brought a more Beatles' vibe to the song when I put the Mellotron on. This actually isn't a very popular Wilco song, and of course, my arrangement sounds A LOT different than the original, but it's a really simple song and there are a million ways it could be arranged, of course. I'm awful at production and my mic problems (still unresolved), definitely impacted this song. I'm no singer and that's why I thought this one might really work for me as Wilco's singer, Jeff Tweedy isn't much of a singer either. He's a great songwriter. I am definitely going to be trying out the techniques you and others (including a friend of mine) have suggested, although, at some point, I'm probably just going to re-record the vocals, because of the mic issues.

I struggled on whether to give that a THANKS or a LAUGH emoji. I went with THANKS, but I also did laugh, to be clear!

ezDrummer kits in Superior Drummer play perfectly fine. They are simply less detailed drum libraries than the ones specifically made for Superior Drummer, which are extensively detailed, with more velocity layers, round robins, ability to adjust the various levels, EQ and other settings for every drum, cymbal, etc.

I started having problems with my mic -- which is just a podcasting mic -- during this recording. The differences in the tone you hear wasn't actually intentional, it was because of the mic issues. I'll eventually re-record the vocals. My workflow, in the most basic sense, has been the same since I did multitrack recordings with reel-to-reel and cassette recorders as a kid. I start with the piano part and a scratch vocal to a click track and then add each additional track, which in this case was acoustic guitar. I usually play every part once or twice and use the best take, although the lead guitar during the final "epic" part (it's not really a chorus, I guess I'll call it the first verse) was improvised on the spot -- as are most of the parts -- and I thought it fit well, so I kept it. This is the original song. As you'll notice my cover is quite different. I didn't repeat a couple of sections as I thought it would be best to hold out during the epic part.

Happy birthday, Lee! I enjoyed the song. I think it was a great idea to turn to song to express yourself.

I enjoyed this, really nice tune and the playing was really good -- I especially liked your guitar solo.

Like everything I've heard from you, this is superb. Kudos again. But to be really honest, I knew it was going to be excellent from the other work you've shared. Top notch.

Nice job! I love Steely Dan and you did an excellent job on this. Everything is really well played. I'm wondering, this all sounds like physical instruments, is it (as opposed to midi and sample libraries). While everything is played really well, I especially loved the electric guitar tone and playing and the piano parts. You really nailed all of the parts.

How do you go about finding the talent to perform for this session and what happens to the studio after you've completed that session? I mean, not everyone is capable of producing this kind of performance on demand. So many questions... Also, some quick adlib bad puns to add to the mix (I thought I was better than this, but apparently, I'm not): This one doesn't pass the smell test. If one of the "artists" who was recorded has perfect pitch -- in this respect -- I'm imagining that it's better to leave that off the resume?