Carl Ewing

Picked up a lot of this stuff during BF - was totally off my radar. Some of the best purchases I made this year. Atlantis, Prometheus, Gold 2.5 - almost nothing that is filler. That Prometheus library is a goldmine, wish I found it back in February, would have saved me literally weeks of sound design. Guy behind these libraries is a damn genius.

From what I've checked out it sounds quite good - HOWEVER, it's an extremely complex interface - much like their Genesis Children's choir, so it's going to take a bit to really test it out. Something like Audio Imperia Chorus is much easier for getting right down to playing. Eternity (and Genesis) take some manual reading. There's a massive amount of customization options (divisi, stage placement / mics, phrasing, consonant / vowel customization, etc.). However - just using basic vowel stuff like mmms, oooohs, aaaahs, etc. the polyphonic legato is as good as Genesis (i.e. amazing), and the staccatos are also excellent...although the upper dynamics are not as intense as something like Chorus. However...there are so many customization options I may be wrong about that...that's just in playing around for an hour. With the number of phrase options, this should be one of the best libraries on the market. However, I'm not yet convinced about the tone...especially the Male tenors and the Female sopranos. I find the performers they chose too "traditional" and emotionless when soft, and a bit shrill at max dynamics. But there's a lot of customization to deal with that (and the Expanded content splits each section - bass, alto, tenor, soprano into 4 separate groups each, each with their own mic placement / mic selection. That's A LOT of control. The manual reading will be intense. Haha.

Oh...It is 134.10 in my cart. (164.90 discount). Checking incognito, that's $15 cheaper than a new customer. So basically 10% off the sale price. Didn't feel it was worth it. The crossgrade stacking is where the discounts really kick in. So funny - I can get 134.10 for Solo, but got Jaeger for $142. Ha.

Okay - bought more ****. Pulled the trigger on a few vocal things. The list is now: 8Dio: Majestica Ultra (upgrade) 8Dio: Silka Choir (bundle upgrade from Insolidus) AudioBro: Eternity Adult Choir AudioBro: Eternity Adult Choir Expanded Audio Imperia: Talos Audio Imperia: Aeria Lite Audio Imperia: Nucleus Audio Imperia: Cerberus Audio Imperia: Jaeger Audio Ollie: LA Modern Percussion Cherry Audio: Polymode Cinesamples: Musio: $90 12 month sub. Excite Audio: Motion Harmonic Fab-Filter: Pro-R 2: Crossgrade from Total Bundle. Kilohearts: Phase Plant Kilohearts: Convolver Presets: Various Unfinished, String Audio, Leap Into Void Skybox Audio: Hammer + Waves Collection + Expansions Zero-G: Ethera Gold 2.5 Zero-G: Ethera Gold Intimate Voices Zero-G: Ethera Atlantis 3 ---------------------------------- Still deciding on: Audio Imperia Solo, Zero-G Ethera Gold Prometheus, Orchestral Tools Konduit, a new LiquidSonics reverb and Cubase 13 Pro (will probably wait for 50% sale next year). Will be happy when this madness is over. Gotta move some hard drives around lol. I ain't buying nothing again until....boxing day!

Awesome - thank you! This confirms what I thought from the official demos - it has a really great tone. A lot of synths try to emulate this kind of modular tone (really love Bazille / Reaktor for this kinda of thing), but everything I've heard from Konduit sounds gorgeous and much deeper than the VST counterparts. Should have bought it when it was on sale! Uggh.

Have you tried this out yet? I hesitated last second, and sale ended. Thought the demos sounded great - and in a particular noise style that I love - but also found it difficult to tell how playable it was. Some of these type libraries seem better suited to .wav file sample packs than instruments. Could not tell from the walkthroughs.

Holy moses that's an insane deal. No way it's legal. I've called the Feds.

Audio Imperia helped a lot with that - since their stuff, even on regular sales, don't have the stackable discounts they currently have. So I based it on regular prices, since I was buying so much, these discounts would have never been possible when buying single item sales. So I picked up $1845 worth of their libraries for $604. But - to give an idea of stackable / crossgrade discounts - I got Jaeger for $150 (reg. $699), but I had to buy one item first (Talos, which was already heavily discounted) to get the first 10% off, then used that to get Aeria Lite for $71 (this was mistake, I got the stackable discounts confused, although I still wanted the Lite version not full), but then got Nucleus with the stacking discounts (and maybe grossgrade as well?) for $202, which then triggered the crossgrade to Jaeger for $142 (combined with other discounts), and I added Cerberus for to that last order since the stacking was maxed (I think Cerberus came out to $80 or somewhere around that. I still wanted Chorus and Solo, but there's no benefit now because there's no crossgrade option. So I'd only be getting the loyalty discounts, which would give me a price 20% cheaper ($325) than a new customer sale price ($399), with regular price $499. I figure they'll do a 50% off sale eventually, so will wait. Like LiquidSonics, these stackable loyalty / crossgrade discounts, combined with regular blackfriday sales, can be really great.

Wait what?? Was this from a prior version upgrade? Or you started from scratch and got K14 CE for $410 total...and on a harddrive?? If so, please go to jail, that's stealing. I've been on Komplete since version 3. I don't even want to know how much it's cost me to get to 14 CE. (cries). Checking this public Google Sheet - Komplete 3 came with: Vokator, Reaktor 5, Pro-53, Spektral Delay, Kontakt 2, Kompakt, Intakt, Guitar Rig 2, Fm7, Elektrik Piano, Battery 2, BF Organ II and Absynth 3. That's it. And it cost $1499. Haha. Hahahahaha. Times have changed.

If my Excel sheet is correct, and it probably isn't because I'm dumb af, and after some additional software purchases today, over this sales season I saved just over $3500 (around 54% and not including hardware I bought) vs. buying at various sale prices throughout the year. The biggest savings vs. total cost was Audio Imperia because of the stacked discounts. Ethera series was also a good deal considering sale prices + 20% loyalty discounts. And I calculated based on the routine sale prices, not the regular price vs. BF price. So used sites like musicsoftwaredeals (and others) to figure out what things "actually" cost. It really does pay to wait throughout the year and just grab everything at once, unless some insane deal pops up throughout the year. So now that I've saved a bunch, I will buy something overpriced today and ruin everything.

I'm curious about this as well. I've only just now started to look at Steinberg's instruments - mainly because I know Cubase 13 includes a version of Iconica, which was surprising, so then started looking at other instruments. A couple of those guitars (Tguitar / MGuitar i think?) sound surprisingly good. Curious about other people's experiences with the stuff in Absolute.

That does not sound good to me for a cello. Doesn't help that he's not even trying to play it like a bowed instrument. But it really doesn't sound natural at all, even the sustains. However, it has a cool almost synth / acoustic hybrid tone that would make it useful for other stuff - especially since the envelope can be totally flat, even on soft sustained start. Would go well with distortion! Will check out more of their stuff, as I find some of the sample modelled stuff (like PianoTeq) great for sound design / experiments, but I don't usually think they sound convincing as acoustic instruments. As a comparison - although it's not released yet, this what the upcoming Performance Samples Vista II solos are sounding like. They've been releasing some scripting ideas they're experimenting with. This is more what I'm looking for, so I'm likely going to wait for it to get released:

Interesting. Hadn't tried it yet (have Musio). Just compared: The Kontakt version has two version - regular and "Classic". It also has two mixes - "Raw Mix" and "Tim's" mix. I've only ever used the "Tim's Mix". It seems Musio uses the Raw mix. I think Musio also uses the regular version and not "classic", and I prefer Classic with Tim's Mix. However - going back and forth between the "Raw Mix" regular version in Kontakt and the Musio version, they seem very close. But the Kontakt version is much easier to play, especially with dynamics. That might a scripting difference. I think it's the same samples, but the Kontakt one seems to respond better to mod wheel touches and legato seems much better. The thing about Musio though is that you would also get the expansion, which has 13 additional articulations (sul pont, pizzicato, fx, opens strings, marcato, etc.) which are an additional paid library for Kontakt. So I'd say that although it isn't exactly the same as the Kontakt version, it's still quite good, and you'd get the expansion as well. Definitely worth it. They've just added a solo Violin to Musio as well (Taylor Davis violin, which is seprate from the CineStrings solo stuff)) but I haven't tried it out much yet. That $299 is a crazy deal imo.

I'm not convinced by any of the demos I've heard. I think they've made them so easy to play on piano that they don't have a realistic sound. For example: They seem much more suited to big pop mixes, but not for intimate soloing. They do not sound realistic to me (at all). Compare to, say, Tina Guo Acoustic Cello (from almost 10 years ago): ^^ That is incredible sounding IMO. It's my favorite virtual solo instrument of all time. Actually, almost favorite. The Cinebrass Core / Pro solo brass (especially the horns) are incredible. Also from 10+ years ago - something was in the air 10 years ago, because not many libraries have caught up to these still. I think it also comes down the players. Nothing can replace a world-class soloist playing even single notes one at a time. They inject that artistic style into every single note. The Youtube demos of Performance Samples upcoming Vista II release are sounding very promising though.

I do most annual purchase in November / December, and although I had a large budget, I've been pretty conservative (yes, this is conservative lol): Audio Imperia: Talos, Aeria Lite, Nucleus, Cerberus, Jaeger. Considering Solo. The reg. discounts, loyalty discounts, and crossgrades made this releatively cheap. Cinesamples Musio: just the annual sub ($90 for 12 month). I'll probably grab the whole non-sub deal for $299 before end of year as I'm quite impressed with what's already there. 8Dio: Majestica Ultra (upgrade), Silka Choir (they gave me $30 deal for owning Insolidus) Excite Audio: Motion Harmonic (love this developer, use Console & Expanse a lot.) Kiloheart: Phase Plant. (Now convinced it's the best granular synthesis engine around, even eclipsing Absynth, Quanta 2. Maybe not Kaivo.) Audio Ollie: LA Modern Percussion Skybox Audio: Hammer + Waves collection + expansion. Presets: A few preset packs for Omnisphere. Looking at a couple more from String Audio / Unfinished. Cherry Audio Polymode: Got it for $6! Hardware: New flight cases for mobile rig. **Still to come: Choir purchase. Still can't decide between Audio Imperia Chorus + Performance Samples Oceania I & 2....or....AudioBro's Eternity Complete. Both Chorus & Oceania set come to the same price as Eternity Complete. And I've used Chorus & Oceania before at various studios and more than capable. Hmm. I can't decide yet. New solo orchestra library: Can't decide. I'm not inspired by anything I currently have except Tina Guo cello from Cinesamples and the solo brass in Cinebrass Core / Cinebrass Pro. I really don't like the scripting in most solo stuff I have, or find them dated sounding. (Cremona, East West, Joshua Bell, Orchestral Tools, stuff, etc.) Maybe Audio Imperia Solo, but there's solo stuff in the other AI libraries I just bought, and more in Musio, so probably unnecessary....for now. **Abandoned purchases that were on the list: Project Sam: Pandora KeepForest: Devastator Bundle Various boutique experimental libraries: Sonic Coutour, Ben Osterhouse, Silence + Other Sounds, Sound Dust, etc. Last year I focused on experimental stuff, this year wanted some mainstream generic stuff. Soundiron: Mimi Page Zero-G: Ethera Gold (3.0): still deciding on this. Orchestral Tools: Salu, Modus, and some of the Fabrik / misc. libraries. No sale, no buy. Maybe they'll do a proper sale at Christmas. Spitfire Audio: Albion complete. I own most, was considering getting Neo and Solstice individually, but only want a few patches from each so not worth it. Liquid Sonics: Was thinking of picking up another one of their reverbs. I still might. No plugins this year except one that was dirt cheap! It's a miracle. Really had self control this year. But the year ain't over.

Ya - it's $30 discount for owning Genesis ($469). I think it's too high for me considering it just got released and there's absolutely no reviews / detailed walkthroughs. As other forums have pointed out, one could pick up both Audio Imperia Chorus (if you quality for $325 loyalty pricing) and Oceania I & II bundle ($150 sale) for the same price. Having both of those would cover massive amounts of high-quality choir work. And I already know what those sound like / what they can do...and was looking at Chorus before Eternity was announced. And knowing Audiobro, Eternity will have crazy sales next year. I think I will wait.

Ha - it really is a beautiful library. But definitely comes with a warning that if you buy it and first load it up you'll probably be surprised how dry / harsh it sounds. There's a real wooden texture to it, that's probably closer to the real instruments than most libraries. I rarely ever use it by itself, because I'm just not good enough to mix it / program it properly. I hear demos of it all the time and think "I own that library, but I can't get it to sound anything like that". Ha.

I agree - this is a really annoying thing in this business imo. It's also amazing how that type of environment can impact real world trends. When everyone is buying the same brands / libraries, it has major impact on the sound of...say, trailers, or commercials and dramatic scoring. I see it less on the popular music front, perhaps because there's a lot more collaboration going on - where you get more distinct sounds. For example, you can here the same vocal libraries or string libraries or drum / percussion libraries being used over and over again in scoring (it's funny to look back on the 2000-2010 era where every score had Stylus loops and Atmosphere / Omnisphere presets and East West orchestra, then 2010 - 2020 where everything had Heavyocity drums and Spitfire strings / brass), whereas in pop music it's (at least) different singers or musicians and a wider range of engineers, instruments, studios, producers and gear on each album. The scoring industry really does have a sound - unfortunately - and that is really driven by these libraries and community loyalty to a few specific brands. And it's not because these brands / libraries are necessarily the best, or even the right library for a particular artist, but because of the marketing / peer pressure...and especially commercial pressure...to buy "the best" and sound like what's in style. But what's in style is largely influenced by what tools are being used the most, which is driven by the same marketing, peer pressure, commercial pressure, which just creates a feedback loop. The bonus of all this is that there is a major demand for unique sounding artists - in scoring at least. It's very very easy to stand out. Not surprised guys like Ludwig Goransson (Tenet, Oppenheimer, Black Panther, Mandalorian) or Daniel Pemberton (Into the Spiderverse, Enol Holmes, King Arthur, Michael Mann's upcoming Ferrari) have done so well recently. They don't come from the Remote Control world (Zimmer & Co.), pull from really diverse genres. Goransson produces all Childish Gambino's albums, and has produced a lot of pop & hip-hop - Adele, Timerlake, Kendrick Lamar, etc. No surprise he creates sounds nobody's heard before in scores, and that immediately gets copied & replicated in all the sample libraries...like that pulse from Tenet, which was already common in pop / EDM, but he pulled it into scoring, and has become the new "braaaaams". And Pemberton is very good at pulling from jazz, fusion, funk, electro, avant guard, etc. to create really cool and extremely unique scores that are (imo) way more interesting than the usual composer crew that score basically everything else. But ya - I do see those forums like VI-Control as extremely toxic, and I find it exceptionally difficult to inject any kind of "outside the box" thinking to any conversation. Apologies - i kinda rambled there. I'm probably talking out of my *****. Lol.

Ya - LA Scoring Strings was their first big library - and is an exceptionally detailed library - with reeeeallly deep programming features. Possibly the most advanced instrument scripting on the market. But it is also exceptionally classical sounding - i.e. quite dry / sharp, some would say cold, and can very difficult to mix. The legato is absolutely gorgeous though, and is highly customizable (you can get extremely natural long / deep bends that no other library has been able to replicate). Tone wise - complete opposite of most modern orchestra libraries, which have a much warmer tone and are much easier to mix with other libraries, especially in modern scores. Note: I use LASS a lot to back up wetter / warmer libraries. It cuts through mixes like no other, so great when you need certain leads or short articulations to cut through a mix. Here's a very short example of the LA Scoring Strings tone: (there are some great neo-classical / complex string arrangements done with it that sound incredibly good - it's short articulations, when programmed well, are second to none): IMO - it can be one of the most beautiful strings libraries around - many, many people are loyal to it's sound - but trying to mix with it - and learning how to program it - it takes a lot of time. Other libraries are much more intuitive and streamlined to just load, play, record and done. Anytime you open LASS you're likely in for hours of engineering. It's definitely a key reason (along with the very dry tone) why it faded from most conversations. But it's still highly respected, I find mostly with really traditional / classical types. However, AudioBro eventually released Modern Scoring Strings, which is also exceptionally well programmed / produced, but it still has quite a classical tone, but much warmer (imo) than LASS. Easier to work with & mix with, but requires some heavy manual reading. Short example (seriously, the portamento / legato in their engine is incredible): As for Genesis Children's Choir - well, it's just the greatest damn thing ever. It's just a "buy it, you'll never need another children's choir ever again". I played it for days when I first bought it. I'm very biased. I am a little bit concerned about the Eternity demo...as it has a much colder / plasticy sound than the children's choir (especially those sopranos), but hoping it's just the person who did the demo and that it's easy to tone it down a bit. Anyway - I've always been a big fan of AudioBro. I think they just took a much more classical direction that isn't particularly popular with certain composer crowds (especially VI-Control crowd, which seems to lean much more to the Hollywood sound - seen in the Orchestral Tools / Spitfire Audio obsessions). I totally get it, but I still find AudioBro libraries beautiful in what they do. But in a very specific style. (EDIT: I have never tried their Brass or Drum / Percussion libraries. I honestly don't even know what they sound like. I'm guessing they're very good, but I don't want to listen because then I'll buy them lol.)

AudioBro's Eternity releases tomorrow at noon (EST). I'm hoping for sub $300 intro price, or cheaper with crossgrade from Genesis Children's Choir. https://audiobro.com/eternity-adult-choir/ Genesis is possibly the greatest sample library ever created, so hoping that Eternity does the same for adult choir. But if it's priced too high I'll be back to looking at Audio Imperia's Chorus. This is the first library I've ever set alarms for to check reveal price on launch lol.

Unless you're making a soundtrack for a gloomy British detective TV series, most of their stuff has minimal range. I think they listened to an Olafur Arnold's album and thought "everything should like that! including our epic percussion!" Okay, not that bad. I just find all their libraries very dull, and at this point, extremely dated sounding, as they really went overboard with that warm & airy soundtrack style - think felt pianos, string harmonics, tape this, tape that, muted percussion, Max Richter, Olafur Arnolds, Nihl Frahm, Jon Hopkins, etc. which was very much in style in 2018 but is now relegated to terrible "slow burn" low budget Netflix dramas. I was also extremely disappointed in Hammers and HZP. It's unbelievable the amount of hype put behind those products, and they are not produced well IMO. I think their string and brass (with the exception of BBC) sound like the orchestra was on heavy doses of Ambien, and the legatos all sound awful. That's my opinion anyway. I understand a lot of people love their stuff, and a lot of great music gets made with their libraries. I just personally fall asleep every time I load one of their libraries. I also find it funny that "Collossus" is their "epic" Albion library, and it's possibly duller sounding than the low mod wheel settings on anything in Metropolis or Audio Imperia's Nucleus / Jaeger / Talos / Areia. (Also - LABS is seriously an incredible free library of instruments. Major props to them for making all that available for free. It's really a wonderful series, especially for composers just starting out. That alone makes me feel bad for criticizing their products.)

I have no idea. Maybe you don't spend much time using these plugins extensively in a professional context, but have strangely strong opinions about them?

I specifically said that you're getting the core Sonible AI tech for $50. And that's all recent tech - not ancient bits of code from the 80s lol. You pay the Sonible premium if you want the UI and feature set. Which is fine. But that Fast Bundle is excellent tech and hardly a joke. But you seem to be easily marketed to.

These plugins were designed based on the same tech in Sonible's Smart series. They worked in collaboration. https://collective.focusrite.com/blog/focusrite-and-sonible Sonible has a superior UI, and some additional features, but sonically, they are built on the same core tech, and I doubt anyone could tell the difference in an A/B shoot out. That free promo during the Masterclass was basically getting most of Sonible's AI tech for $0 dollars. I don't think many people realize that...and probably skipped the Masterclass promo and are now considering blowing lots of cash on the Sonible BF sale thinking they're getting a deal. And this promo puts the Fast Bundle at $51.68.

I own Albion One, Legacy I, II, III, IV and V - Collosus is $161 for me. I can complete the Albion series for $671. However - I've regretted almost every Spitfire purchase I've ever made (and I own a lot) - so I've learned my lesson. Good marketing though. They bamboozled me a couple times.