PavlovsCat

Thanks for that review. Damn, your praise of Broken Wurli really makes me want to pick it up. Once again, I appreciate the raw honesty of your posts. Knowing how critical you are makes it all the more compelling when you praise a sample library like that. It was easily more than 10 years ago I spent maybe a couple of hours giving James Thompson (a co founder of SonicCouture) marketing and branding advice and was fascinated to learn his professional story. He and his business partner worked at Yamaha doing sampling. So these guys have a serious background in this business and know what their doing. I really should have purchased Broken Wurli long ago, but I overlooked it because the name lead me to believe it wasn't about sampling a functional Wurli. But your words intrigued me to the point I'm almost certain to pick it up at some point to find out for myself. I haven't always agreed with the libraries you don't like, but I have found that when you praise a library that I have yet to disagree and I suspect that would once again be the case.

After playing with the Inspire 2 Solo Cello, I'm not in love with it. The Salu Cello is vastly superior. My issues with the Inpsire 2 Solo Cello are: 1. The vibrato on the two legato patches is too heavy for my tastes 2. The looping is poorly executed; that should be fixed 3, There's far too much room baked in for my taste However, the Soft Sustains patch is pretty nice. In fact, I immediately put it in song I'm working on.

TheSteven ruined me so that every time I see this thread I now see the word "Bacon" ? instead of "Beacon."

Make sure you click on the tab that reads "instruments" to view the various instruments that make up a collection. I don't think Orchestra Tools has a very intuitive website design. https://www.orchestraltools.com/store/collections/inspire-2

I'm not crazy about the Sine Player. I'd put it up there with UVI's Player as among the sample players I find to be disappointing. But I own several Orchestra Tools libraries for Sine Player that I like. I just picked up the Berlin Orchestra Inspire 2 Solo Cello for only €1 after using the voucher. I think that's a very sweet deal.

Thanks guys. And yep, I did mean SE! I'll revise my earlier post.

@Brian Walton Brian, I am (correctly) ashamed to ask this question, but I own Guitar Rig 6, Ampitube 5SE (edit: I originally wrote LE instead of SE), Bias FX and Electrum and I mostly either use the presets or use presets as a starting point. I've never even explored to see if any of them allow the use of IRs. You listed Amplitube, hopefully the LE version takes IRs too.

Oops, you're right! I'll fix my earlier post. Be sure to post your thoughts after checking it out.

It's a KONTAKT Player library [edit: I originally mistakenly wrote that the library required the full version of KONTAKT]. I realize that it's confusing that they call it an expansion. It doesn't require anything else. I'm in love with Wurlis and this is the only 145B I own. It was recommended to me by two people in this forum, I think it was Chris R and Bad Penguin. I did a thread about my love of Wurlis and both of them strongly recommended this library and the developer and it was a fantastic recommendation. They have a 200A that also sounds great and it comes with a Rhodes that sounds great. The only reason I didn't get that is that I already have a 200A (from e-instruments) that is really versatile. But I think Skybox's 200A sounds superb. If I wasn't watching my spending, I would definitely grab this offer. While the 200A is my only library from Skybox, it's so well done that it reflects a developer that does exceptional work, IMO. The UI allows you to easily create your own presets. The 145B is one of my favorite electric piano sample libraries.

I picked up the Lite version after a nano influencer named Reid hyped it up in this forum as if it was groundbreaking. It's okay, but I definitely feel he greatly over hyped it. But that is what influencers do. A couple of weeks after I spent 10 bucks on it, they were giving it away free. No great tragedy, but I'd recommend that anyone considering buying the lite version should wait for it to become free again.

The big question is, is it worth having? I've picked up a number of WA Production's freebies, but haven't found anything worth keeping.

Wow! That's a great deal. I'm already over my meager budget, but from the one library of theirs that I own, the 145B (a Wurli), Skybox Audio is a top notch developer and I'm sure every library in this collection is similarly superb.

Haha! Drinking less beer (or any alcoholic beverages) can save a lot of money! You can (and I once did!) go through $50 USD at pubs! A tip from my performing days -- just tell the servers to charge everything to the bass player account. But I don't want to encourage you to spend when money is tight; I understand that situation very well. There are plenty of free alternatives. If you're looking for specific instruments, you can always PM me and maybe I can help you avoid the temptation to spend by pointing you towards free alternatives.

It's Arturia, so I downloaded it right away (they make great plugins, IMO). Only afterward, I looked more closely at the landing page for the product and went through the various demos. Wow! Arturia does a great job at presenting its products in a useful manner for anyone conducting product research. There are some very useful and interesting interactive demos. Other developers can learn a lot from Arturia's approach to product landing pages. As locrian wrote above this post, it is indeed (another) great freebie from Arturia. Everyone should grab this. https://www.arturia.com/products/software-effects/efx-refract/overview

Check your email, or sign up for Fracture Sounds emails, if you want a $10 USD voucher (min. spend is $20 USD). I only have their freebies, but they're excellent quality KONTAKT libraries, so I would expect their paid libraries to be excellent too. If you're not familiar with them, they are a KONTAKT sample developer and offer several free KONTAKT Player libraries that I can enthusiastically recommend. https://fracturesounds.com/

I don't think you could possibly regret getting KONTAKT, Joe. I have a thread full of my recommendations for free sample libraries for the full version of KONTAKT. There's a wealth of high quality instruments in there. Pianos, synths, brass, strings, drums, percussion -- it's there. The included Factory library with KONTAKT likely also includes some libraries you'd enjoy. I don't think I have a single DAW project with multiple instruments that doesn't include KONTAKT. I use it far more than anything else.

Capitol Chambers sounds really good to my ears. I'd love to get the thoughts of the more knowledgeable mixers here.

I put in a support question to SoundIron yesterday. This is SoundIron's response in its entirety: "Hi Peter, Thanks for reaching out. This library is from 2010 and is on the cheaper side of piano products. It only includes four velocity layers, so there is some "jumpyness" in volume between velocities. For comparison, Emotional Piano has 10 velocity layers and is triple the price. There is a velocity limiter built in to the montclarion GUI, so you can dial in the higher velocities to taste or use a compressor to squeeze some of the velocity jumps. If you're comfortable with the backend of Kontakt, you could also reduce the volume of the higher velocity layers easily in the groups. We do not have plans to update this library any time soon. Please let me know if you have any other questions."

I own and love the Embertone Walker, so I think that's a mighty fine recommendation and one I have recommended many times.I just love the vibe of this library, especially after watching Simeon's video. I think I'll ask the dev about the velocity issue and see if they're open to fixing the issue or not. Because if they even promise to fix that, this library is a no-brainer, IMO.

Simeon found the velocity issue in a video he did last year (posted above). Do you know if they fixed it? Granted, with your backing of it and laglag's code making it only $20.80, I'm probably buying this anyhow. I was actually considering getting the MFactoryLE for the Meldaway Grand, but it's 40 GB, and this one is 7GB and I've never been disappointed by SoundIron yet. More and more, hard drive space is becoming a factor for me with sample library purchases.

I was just researching the Montclarion Piano and watching @Simeon Amburgey's video and enjoying his great playing (both Simeon and I can play the piano at a level that would make my late piano teacher mother cry, but for very different reasons!). Simeon pointed out that there was an issue with velocity layers and I was wondering if SoundIron ever fixed that. I'd love to get insights from anyone who has this library. I own several SoundIron libraries and have been very happy with them, but even though this library is very inexpensive, I'm not sure if I want to buy it if the developer hasn't fixed the velocity issue that Simeon pointed out. There is something about the vibe of this piano that I love. When Simeon started playing some Vince Guaraldi, I think he nailed it. It sounds like a piano you'd hear on an old jazz recording.

I'm surprised the developer didn't put audio demos of the reverb on the landing page. I've been picking up their numerous freebies over the years and only recently tried one out recently and found it to be meh. I'd be interested in the opinions of more experienced (than me) mixers regarding 2BPlayed effects. Are there any gems in the bunch that are worth considering?

You know, after reading your post, I went back and listened to the demos for Chromophone, and I agree with you. I do like the sounds in some of the demos for Chromophone -- especially the demo called "Desperation" (a lot of the synth patches sound like reverses and I love that effect). Subsequently, I'll edit my original post. Is $99 USD the lowest price you've (or anyone else reading this) has seen it for?

I really think Venus Theory / Cameron has a lot of talent as a sound designer and he's been very generous with freebies (yes, I realize that they're a way to gain awareness for his paid versions and paid libraries, but it still means giving away a good quality libraries for free and I appreciate that).

AAS has great customer support, but I don't really love the sounds of [EDIT] most of their synths. I have a couple dozen and I don't think I've ever used them in a track. I would trade all of them for Vital or Synthmaster 1 or 2. or just about anything else I have Of course, it's completely subjective and I realize that's not an apples-to-apples comparison, it's just that I've never seen anyone post anything but fondness for AAS until the above couple of posts. AAS completely deserves praise for their customer service -- it's superb. But on a completely subjective level, I have yet to hear a synth from them that really inspires me.