PavlovsCat

I'm still holding out for a better deal for their Contemporary Soloist Cello. It sounds great and I probably should have bitten at 30% of for their BF sale, but in the days of deep discounting, I've been expecting a bigger discount.

Thanks Niky, I think you've found the best effects freebie of the season!

The UVI PX V8 sounds really good to my ears. I'm sure at some point I may have came across a Voyetra Eight, but it doesn't quickly come to mind and I really like the tone.

That sounds really good. I do have some harmonicas at home and learned to play as a kid, but I don't have great recording skills and it would be pretty nice to be able to control the harmonica as a MIDI instrument. I'm not sure I'll pick this up right now, but I definitely am going to put this on my radar and will pick it up if/when I have the need for harmonica in a song. Embertone is a top notch developer and I love their libraries that I own and had an excellent experiences with them when I needed tech support for their grand piano -- which is superb, BTW.

Why not? You should do it!

Welcome back, Larry! Glad to hear you had a blast! Looking forward to hearing all about it (at least the parts you want to tell!).

I want to note, for anyone reading this that FabFilter seems to be the best of the best when it comes to effects plugins. Now, I don't write that as a user, as they're beyond my budget (and talent level!). Frankly, I often read posts you guys and others here have made and, on numerous occasions, bought plugins based on your recommendations as you folks know far more than me (which is pretty close to nothing) about mixing/mastering -- when those plugins are inexpensive (Softube comes to mind, which I find makes really good plugins and has great sales prices). I wanted to add that I have two musician friends IMMENSELY more talented and knowledgeable than me who are my go-to guys for all things music related. They don't know each other and they both regard FabFilter as superb. Someday, if I ever figure out mixing and if I find I create something worthy of the investment, I'm definitely picking up some FabFilter plugins. I found this conversation really useful. So thanks to everyone weighing in with their views. I've been lurking, and reading it all!

Excellent track, @aidan o driscoll. I really enjoyed it and I loved the guitar parts/sound/vibe.

@abacab Do you own this model? It's cheap. I was thinking of buying it for my son (with my tendonitis, I can't play video games, Words with Friends -- yep, a nerd game -- is about the best I can; but I do appreciate everyone posting these deals, as I pick them up for my son, who is a gamer with Windows 10 and XBox).

I'm in the same battle as you, but lately, I've been focused on sample libraries -- because that's what takes up the vast majority of my hard drive space. I've deleted A LOT of sample libraries that I don't use. It's easy to delete freebies I don't use or don't like, but it's more challenging for libraries I've paid for -- it's my practical nature thinking, I've paid for this, I can't delete it! I'd say I'm doing good, but my sense of irony is too great. We're in the Deals subforum. Also, I miss Larry. I hope he's having a great time.

I got my serial too. But when I was registering it, an analogy struck me. Just as Cinderella's dress would turn into rags at midnight, in a year from now this nice little plugin will turn into WUP.

And it's total shameless self promotion, but I have been begging Orange Tree Samples founder to sample a Hofner 500/1 violin bass easily for for 13 years and this year when they did one, Greg asked me to do a demo for it considering the wait. And there's no way I'm qualified to do a demo. But I did and he put it up. Truth be told, after an injury 22 years ago stopped me from working as a musician, I stopped playing because I have pain after a few minutes of playing, but Greg was a giant part of persuading me to try playing music again last year, even if it's only for a few minutes at a time and he joined me adding additional guitar parts in this demo I/we did for Evolution Vintage Violin Bass. So if anyone likes it, I was playing everything in real time. I love the tone of this library. Going from the palm muted articulation to the regular articulation is so cool. I used, I used a couple different Evolution guitars on the guitar parts I did ( I came up with the lead guitar, Greg redid the lead part after I ended up having a bunch of midi issues at the time and he added a bunch of harmonies and rhythm guitar arpeggio parts I just love). This will probably be the only demo I ever do in my life and it's a medley made using my improvised melody over a chord progression from McCartney's "Dear Boy" and a McCartney-ish sounding song I wrote when I was 13/14 years old. Plus, I love any time I can use a Mellotron (the MTron Pro plugin, in this case) and a Wurli. https://www.orangetreesamples.com/audio/PeterDeLegge-DearPaul.mp3 https://www.orangetreesamples.com/products/evolution-vintage-violin-bass

I've consulted to Orange Tree Samples and Greg is a friend, so you can easily count me as biased and disregard what I say (hey, I have teenage kids, I'm familiar with people disregarding what I say!), but anyone who knows me knows how hypercritical I am of things, including sample libraries, I've gotten devs I've made friends with upset at me for criticizing their libraries, but Orange Tree Samples makes the most realistic and intuitively scripted guitar and bass libraries that exist today, IMO. They were the first ones being used in final TV, movie, trailer and pop music productions and still are used by composers and musicians I admire. Not that I make music that will impress anyone, but I have pretty high standards for sample libraries and I use them in every production I do that uses guitar and bass. I started out as a superfan of Orange Tree Samples maybe 14 years ago and later did some consulting (I only found out two years ago from a friend that my name is in their manuals, sorry I just watch the videos or worse call Greg!), but I haven't consulted to them in several years, but remain a huge fan of their libraries and can say that Greg Schaeplfer was once a well kept secret among sample library KONTAKT programmers as genius and innovator who gained notoriety for his work with Cinesamples. I have gotten to know three of his competitors -- who themselves make excellent libraries -- who have told me that their guitar sample libraries were inspired by Greg's work and trying to reverse engineer what he does. Anyhow, that's my testimonial. Biased for Greg Schaepfler as a human being? 100 percent. He's one of the best human beings I've ever met. Sincerely. But even if he wasn't, his company still makes the best guitar and sample libraries on the planet, IMO, of course. Now here's hoping I'm not making another guitar sample library developer I'm friends with upset. There are other quality developers making very good guitar sample libraries. But Orange Tree Samples continues to make the libraries they aspire to make their libraries as good as. https://www.orangetreesamples.com/

@JoeGBradford I've downloaded and installed the Hurdy Gurdy library. Some quick observations: - I can confirm that the library works with the FREE KONTAKT 7 Player. - The library of the Hurdy Gurdy musical instrument is only one patch that is one octave, from Bb to B. There are clicks and various noises of the instruments in other octaves but no additional melodic tones. - I don't know why, I suppose that it's by design, but you have to very deliberately completely release one key before hitting a second key. otherwise the second key won't make a sound.

It's not written very clearly. The first mention states it's for KONTAKT 7, but when you scroll down on the landing page for the Hurdy Gurdy, it states that it's "FOR NATIVE INSTRUMENT Kontakt player 7." So I'm guessing it works in the free KONTAKT Player. I think it's a really nice freebie. I love the sound of Hurdy Gurdies. I'm on my phone right now, but I'll update this after trying it out to confirm that it's compatible with the free player-- unless someone else can confirm that first.

I'm just listening on my phone, but the piano sounds very nice. Gentle. If anyone reading this owns the library, I'd love to get your thoughts on the piano and especially how it fits in mixes, especially rock mixes. I'm wondering if it might get lost in a rock mix and is better suited for acoustic pieces. I've had some very nice PMs with this developer and think his demos of his "Wurlie" is the best sounding Wurli I've heard from any sample library or plugin -- a 10/10 IMO. If he deep discounted that library, I'd get it in a heartbeat. Even while Im not a fan of UVI and greatly prefer KONTAKT, the demos I've heard of his electric pianos and saxophone libraries sound stellar so I think his libraries are good enough to still warrant consideration. It's also interesting to me that the dev and I had discussions about KONTAKT vs UVI and why he has no plans to do further KONTAKT libraries (e.g., piracy concerns, programming preferences, etc.) to see that this is a KONTAKT library. I'm guessing it's one of his older libraries when he was creating KONTAKT libraries .

Orchestral Colours is only $29 USD (normally $99USD). I used the strings from that library on my cover of "I Am the Walrus" last year -- I simply played it live on my MIDI controller with no editing and was very happy with the sound. For $29, I'd call it a no-brainer. It does require the full version of KONTAKT. https://impactsoundworks.com/product/rhapsody-orchestral-colors/

BTW, ai think ThomasNet still has e-instruments Electric W Wurli sample library for $34 USD, which I find a great deal (it's a KONTAKT PLAYER library, so you don't need the full version of KONTAKT) . I bought that library and the Wurlitzer 145B library from Skybox audio for around the same price on their Black Friday sale and am very happy with both. The W is great at letting the user make adjustments to add in more clunk -- which I love in the 200A -- and the 145B is an amplified, but very warm, smooth and pure sounding electric piano that lacks the grit of the 200A, but it is gorgeous and perfect in certain situations. A couple of our fellow forum users persuaded me to pick up the 145B and I'm very glad I took their advice.

Thanks for thinking of me, @ALC. You won't be surprised to learn that I also went looking for the plugin last night after Larry's post! It's odd that PB is promoting the plugin without even having an audio examples. But the copy makes me think that Sampleson isn't promoting this as a realistic emulation of a Wurli, but as a synth trying to emulate a Wurli. This is why I think that (from the landing page): "Before samplers, before huge computers, emulations were made with old and good synthesis. Wursy is the recreation of (what we think) the best way to achieve a Reed Electric Piano via synthesis." Even so, I'm still interested in hearing this plugin. Although Sampleson does have a Wurli 200A emulation plugin they call the Reed200 (as you noted above), so I'm guessing that the Wursy is a less realistic emulation of a Wurli 200A. https://sampleson.com/Reed200-Electric-Piano-vst.html

I run Cakewalk on a Windows 10 DAW PC running Cakewalk that was built specifically for DAW and had show stopping problems with Mandala 1 and put in a ticket with support with the developer. The developer contacted me once and told me he'd get back to me in a week but I never heard from him again. I was able to get the plugin working with everything but the factory library (the one that comes free with the player).Abacab posted that he had Mandala 2 working well, and I think, like me, he's on Windows 10 (but not sure). I installed Mandala 2, but had problems and gave up on it. After seeing a number of posts from others having issues. I'll give it a try again in the future, when I have more time to deal with troubleshooting a problematic plugin. EDIT: I just popped open Mandala 1 and Mandala 2, neither is working for me. I really give up with this developer. He seems like a nice person in the forums, but the fact is, the plugin clearly has major, show-stopping problems.

Come on now, get in vacation mode. I'm saying this as a friend. You better not post when you're on your vacation! GO HAVE FUN!!!

Have a great time! Everyone here will miss you, but you owe it to yourself to have some fun! We expect amusing stories when you return, go and make it so!

Also, has anyone checked on Fleer? Fleer, if you're reading this, I want you to know that I'm here for you, brother. It's going to be tough, but if we pull together we can do this. [EDIT: I just got a PM from someone sincerely worried about Fleer based on the above tongue-in-cheek post, so I thought I'd clarify that I was just kidding. When Larry recently took a short break from the forum, Fleer created a bunch of threads about how much he missed Larry, which I know reflected my feelings too and pretty much all of us. So Larry going away for a little while can get a us a little nervous! This place is not the same without Larry and that's a massive understatement.]

Have a blast, Larry. Just from what you do here, you deserve a vacation! Thanks for all you do and be sure to share some pictures after you return.

It's just name, address and email, the standard for e-commerce to comply/pay with local tax laws. You could always put in your local post office address if you really wanted (as you're not actually doing a paid transaction requiring sales tax).