PavlovsCat

i've seen a bunch of regulars here praise Medla plugins in general, but their interfaces look less than user friendly, so I've passed on them. But this one is pretty straightforward and dirt cheap. Does anyone here who owns this specific Melda plugin want to chime in with your opinion on it?

@jngnz Seeing Reid's links to lists of freebie KONTAKT libraries, it just occurred to me that I don't think I or anyone else has recommended one of my all time favorite KONTAKT freebie libraries, the Pocket Blakus Solo Cello library. It's really special, IMO. I love the tone / character of the library and have often chosen it over paid solo cello libraries I own. https://vstbuzz.com/freebies/pocketblakus-cello/

In case anyone is following this is interested in checking out Jazen Sounds Vital presets, they are quite good and can be found here -- and most of them are free: https://jazensounds.gumroad.com/

This is tough, because I think Sonible is superb, but I own the Focusrite Fast Series which Sonible made, which I am pretty certain uses the same algorithm as this reverb. If this was the EQ, I would definitely pick it up. Still that price is sooooo cheap for Sonible that I'm tempted. Great find / post @MusicMan.

Literally? They have some really nice presets.

Just a reminder, Larry's coming back this time! And he's going to come back happy and refreshed with lots of great memories to share. We're going to make it through this together, my friend!

Vital is one of my favorite soft synths (free or paid). If you aren't already using it, you should give it a try. Coolwav, a maker of preset banks for various virtual instruments, has created an extensive list of more than 4,000 free presets for Vital and there's a lot of good stuff there. Some of the linked sites let you download without providing any info, while others require an email and name and still others require you to like a video and subscribe to their YouTube channel. But, in any event, even if you only download from the sites with direct download links, there's a lot of really nice free presets and that cover a lot of territory. https://coolwav.com/blog/news/free-vital-preset-banks-2023-list If you don't already have Vital, you can download it here. The free basic version is all you need. It comes with 75 presets and lets you use 3rd party presets. There are other versions available with more presets and features you can buy (and support the further development of the synth), but you don't need to buy anything to use and enjoy this great soft synth. https://vital.audio/

I hope you a great time, Larry!

Yeah, I meant no disrespect whatsoever -- I hope my passion for these instruments is never taken that way (as I realize it could have mistakenly been!). I just think that Noire and Piano in Blue are two of the most incredible piano sample libraries I know of. For some reason, when I play Noire, it seems to make me believe that my simplistic playing sounds better than just about any other piano library I own. Piano in Blue has a tone that, to my ears, is as good as it gets. I am in love with Bill Evans' piano playing and piano sound on the Miles Davis album "Kind of Blue" -- and I'm in love with that entire album and everything on it. But I just can't cut it on solo piano with my tendinitis and it's not in my future. Still, every time this piano goes on sale, I think about buying it! My friend, Greg, did the last demo on the landing page and Greg went to college to study jazz and is a superb pianist and bassist. I love his playing. That's the kind of pianist worthy of this library IMO.

The two pianos are not even remotely close in any sense beyond they're both grand pianos. I love Noire. It's a great piano library, gorgeous. But it doesn't sound anything like Piano in Blue. The character of these two pianos is very different. I use Noire in rock settings all the time too, especially when the instrumentation is largely acoustic and it sounds great in those situations. Piano in Blue sounds beautiful too, but in a very different way and I wouldn't use it in those same situations unless I specifically wanted a very jazzy sounding piano. It does sound a lot like the piano in the recordings its name references (of course, it is that fantastic piano from those fantastic recordings, and it is very appearant to the point that it's easily identified as such).

I think you may have misunderstood what I wrote. I'm saying that I'm in love with the sound of this piano library. IMO, it's one of the best sounding piano libraries I've ever heard. It's just not a great fit for rock and, in my case, due to a physical issue, I don't have the ability to play very good solo piano or jazz pieces, which is where this piano absolutely shines. Even so, I may still end up with this at some point because the sound of it appeals to me so greatly.

There are a lot of piano libraries that I don't believe are good enough for me. In this case, I'm (my playing,that is) not good enough for this piano. I completely love the sound, but I can't do it justice solo and I'm not sure it would fit with rock productions.

What album or songs did you work on for Rod?

While Boz does make very good plugins, the founder is connected to another developer I'm connected to on Facebook, so I see his personal posts from time to time and the guy has an absolutely hilarious, off the wall, sense of humor.

It's also significant to note that I'm a former rock drummer who mostly records rock songs these days as a hobbyist as I think my mostly doing rock music is a big factor in my preferences for these kits. While as a drummer, I mostly did rock, but also played R&B, hip hop, jazz, fusion, dance, funk and country, I'm really looking for drum kits that would work with my rock-based productions. Bedroom Producer's Blog has some very useful recommendations and can't point you toward some very good developers and freebies that will give you a taste of a developer's quality of work: https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2021/07/02/free-drum-kits/

Of course, this is all very subjective. Goldbaby does have libraries I love, there are even Battery factory kits I love like the Amber Kit, Baracuda Kit, Beatroom Kit... (Okay, I just popped open Battery to see the libraries I starred). But off hand, I have so many libraries on my hard drive, I can't recall any specific packages at the moment, but I do find Goldbaby excellent and there's another developer I have a bunch of libraries from I also find excellent (but I can't recall all of their names offhand, but developers who make similar libraries that I really like include Wave Alchemy, Samples from Mars, etc. -- there's a developer of these kinds of libraries that's really good who contacted me for branding and marketing advice a decade ago who makes really good similar libraries and unfortunately I can't remember the name at the moment). Again though, everyone's tastes are different and I'm mostly doing rock, so if you're doing hip hop or EDM, you're likely to have very different criteria from me (even though I like a lot of different styles, I'm not making music in those styles and would make different choices if I were). After going through the libraries a second time, I ended up revising my rating of this package to an 8.5/10. There are definitely some kits in the package that I will end up using and the sale price I picked it up for was superb. In this case, what happened is that I really liked some of the demos for the package, however, the demos include both loops and drum kits. Goldbaby doesn't specify whether a demo is using say a Battery drum kit or a loop and what I found is that the demos with the drums I liked best used loops, so those sounds weren't available as Battery drum kits (the format I use). I'm looking for drum kits I can play. There were 7 Goldbaby drum kits in the package that I really like:: WooWooWoo, TryLayeringKit, ThePocketOpp, Mr.Ludwig, MoreHardTimes, FutureBab and 301Box. So, for the price, that's pretty nice. I certainly don't regret my purchase and I will certainly buy additional Goldbaby libraries in the future. They are a top notch developer in this space.

Just a reminder, this forum is largely powered by cclarry. If you're buying from VST Buzz, Larry has an affiliate link in his signature (at the bottom of his posts). I picked up the Goldbaby library last night. After running through it, I liked it, but didn't love it. I'd give it a 7.5/10. EDIT: After going through the libraries again, I would revise that rating to an 8.5/10.

I'm a huge believer in rewarding companies that treat their customers well and leaving those who don't. While Waves backed down from turning subscription only after a huge backlash, I don't see a path to their winning over my trust or respect. For me and many others, Waves has a negative brand image. As the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I'm stopping before the second time. The good news is that the timing to leave Waves behind couldn't be better when you consider how many high quality developers there are that are customer centric that make similar plugins and offer perpetual licenses -- and a lot have been offering deep discounts lately. It's really isn’t very difficult to leave Waves behind. I'm not even going to bother looking at new releases like SuperRack Performer because I'm super done with Waves. In fact, I'm going to try to replace every Waves plugin I own over time. As it stands, out of maybe 30 Waves plugins I own the only ones that I really use often are the Abbey Road plugins. Those are the only ones I feel are unique enough I may keep using. At least until Waves pulls another stunt like their last one.

Excellent sample developer. I own maybe a dozen of their libraries and each one is top notch.

I've never -- or almost never -- seen anyone who's purchased sample libraries from this developer post anything good about their libraries (the one exception was when I think it was Fleer who posted that this was the one library of theirs that wasn't terrible -- that's a paraphrase). I had a friend who bought one of their orchestral libraries who told me that their library had an unfixable level of problems from poor scripting, poor velocity layering, etc. that made it an unredeemable mess. I would strongly urge people to research this developer and library very thoroughly before making a purchase. Also, I am certain that I have seen this library regularly on sale for this price and even $10 USD lower. I seriously don't believe that anyone would pay $430 USD for this library -- I think that price is clearly bogus; just a device to allow the developer to claim an outrageous discount. This library is constantly on sale at various resellers for $29- 39 USD. I'm sharing this info only because I don't want to see anyone get stuck with something they regret and that is something you will see a lot of about this developer in posts at this forum, at KVR, at VI Control and on Facebook. I have no personal experience with the developer or their libraries; my only intent is to be helpful to the community.

Thanks for sharing this Larry -- you're the man! I've actually unsubscribed from a bunch of emails because my inbox is overfilled and you do a great job of keeping us all up on deals! I checked out the Goldbaby samples demos and I think I'm going to pull the trigger later today. That dev really knows how to put together cool kits, IMO.

I picked up a Presonus Studio One Pro license back when Cakewalk announced they were closing down and Presonus extended a crossgrade offer. I used Studio One a few times and I did like it. But when Bandlab bought Cakewalk, I decided to stick with the familiar. I'd be interested if anyone could share what they feel is a compelling advantage to using Studio One Pro over Cakewalk by Bandlab.

Thanks, @cclarry. Once again, I'm certain that I would have overlooked this email (I searched for it after your post) and I am confident that I would have never saw it in time to redeem it if not for your post. Considering that I own KOMPLETE 13 Standard and plan on updating to 14 once they have a sale (hopefully the Summer sale a lot of us are anticipating), I had to make sure I picked up a Play instrument that wasn't in that -- which narrowed it down, to I think, two or three. I ended up picking up Utopia. It's isn't aimed at the kind of music I do, but I liked the sounds.

Man, we go down some crazy rabbit holes. There's really not much of a comparison between news media subscriptions and the discussion of perpetual licenses vs paying a monthly or annual software subscription fee. The challenge that news publishers have is that display advertising doesn't generate sufficient revenue to sustain a writing and editorial staff, so payment from readers is required. It's been devastating on journalists. I've befriended a good deal of journalists, editors and a couple of former publishers and even had my own publication and I've witnessed up close how the changes in media consumption and fragmentation have impacted talented professionals. A lot of publications were free a decade or more that are now subscription because display advertising doesn't generate enough revenue to successfully operate a publication. But it's not very comparable to Waves because there's no payment whatsoever to these publications as an alternative to a subscription model. When you want to read journalism without paying for it, it's unlike the Waves situation, where consumers have always been willing to pay for perpetual licenses. What has happened in the US is that the quality of journalism available at no cost is all over the board and sometimes often comes from publishers with very strong political agendas who've created pseudo news publications with the intent of promoting their agenda. As someone who appreciates quality journalism, there are two excellent news agencies that provide a great deal of news stories at no cost -- and are regularly rated by top j-schools as two of the least politically biased news outlets, Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. I'd strongly recommend those two outlets to anyone in the US, but especially to those who can't afford or don't want to pay for news and also value good journalism.

Still it was one heck of a ride and I'm sure there's plenty of gas left in the tank.