Carl Ewing

It's kinda funny though. Black Friday isn't till Friday, and I'm basically done with purchases except 1, which I'm waiting for, because one developer has a product launching on Friday that I'm waiting to check out. However - I do still think some of the best deals will start on Friday. I actually should have waited on a few things. For example, although I got a good deal on Hammer + Waves yesterday, there are now Black Friday coupons launched today that would taken off an additional 10% (or more). Tons of discounts are now being released through the usual "influencers" on Youtube that stack on some existing sales. This happened last year too. I got impatient. Got a lot of what I wanted through Audio Imperia, however, I still think additional discounts are going to come from somewhere starting Friday. This has happened before with other developers who launched sales early, and then incentivized further on the actual sales weekend. Seriously, I need more patience lol. While we're on the subject: Best Deal: getting 8Dio Silka for $30 because I already owned Insolidus. Worst deal: Probably Audio Imperia (and I bought A LOT). I know it wasn't a good deal, because some of this stuff was bundled for cheaper over 2 years ago! But I had a budget, and it came slightly under (with the crossgrade discounts) and just went with it. And will be using these libraries on a project starting Friday, so whatever.

I'll have to entirely disagree with you on subscriptions. What you're saying defies every single business metric on the subscription economy globally. Subscriptions are growing in every single industry across the board. And that's not going to stop. What will happen in audio is what happens in every other industry - some subscriptions will succeed, some will fail. But they'll be around forever. The problem with subscriptions in casual talk is that every single subscription ever launched since and including Adobe's Creative Cloud was deemed "a total failure" and "will never work". There's is always, and I mean, every single time, the statements "i've heard it's not selling well". This was tried with publicly traded companies (Adobe, Spotify, Netflix, Disney, AMC, etc.) but the quartlery reports showed the opposite. For private companies, we have no data to rely on, so it's rather meaningless to speculate. Time will tell. But there are few audio companies that have launched subscriptions and then abandoned them - and all of them have expanded content every year. Arcade, Plugin Alliance, Composer Cloud, Splice, Loopcloud, etc. are extremely popular globally. I see them in every single studio I go in, without exception. There are now a mainstay of the industry, and now baked into the budgets and workflow of thousands of commercial studios. (Musio will be no different. ) These corporations are not going to suddenly shut down these services to these studios / artists - it would make no business sense, since subscriptions are far cheaper to service (and easier to market) than a catalog of individual items, have far simpler infrastructure with low overhead and predictable monthly / annual revenue, and a massive paying customer base. I do agree having both options - subscription and traditional purchasing options are ideal - but depending on marketshare, that isn't always the case (see Adobe). I've had the subscription argument a thousand times. I always say "liking them is irrelevant - it all comes down to metrics". It's either working or it isn't. Everyone says they hate subscriptions (not realizing they are no different than what's been around for 100+ years with newspapers, gyms, cable packages). They are nothing new. And the hate clearly doesn't translate to reality, considering the largest corporations in almost every industry (Amazon, Adobe, Netflix, Spotify, Apple, Microsoft, etc.) all use them, and earn enormous revenue from them year after year. The subscription economy is projected to hit (and is ahead of projections) to hit 2 Trillion in 2025. Almost every single industry now relies on them - and they are more popular with young people than old. It would be virtually impossible to tell an 18 year old aspiring producer today that "we're shutting down Splice and Loopcloud and you'll start buying individual loop packs like we did in the 90s at $20 a pop, mostly filled with crap you don't want.". That's never going to happen again. I'm sure we'll agree to disagree. But I still think, Musio for $90, to try out the whole catalog is totally worth it, even if it's abandoned in the future. I honestly would have saved 1000s of dollars having a subscription for Spitfire Audio - I would not have bought half the stuff I own had I actually tried it out first. And so much stuff I've bought from them has now been abandoned. It's what I like about Composer Cloud. I once spent over $2000 on East West's Platinum Orchestra, Ra, Storm Drum 1 & 2, the original choirs library, etc. many years ago. All of those libraries got replaced within 5 years - they were all risky purchases, and all eventually required paid updates to Player edition for compatability. (None of them will even run in Kontakt anymore because they can't be authorized. Although they may have fixed that. Doesn't matter, I don't use them anymore. Although the Opus editions are MUCH better, and make those libraries more useable.). So it's $2000 down the drain. $2000 is 10 years of Composer Cloud at my locked in rate (on year 5 I think)...where I get the entire catalog, only install what I like, get new stuff to replace old stuff over time. And all libraries are getting ported to Opus player, which I don't have to worry about. This is why I like subscriptions. EDIT: As a note - I would like subscriptions less if I could try all of this stuff before I bought it. But after 20 years, I get tired of "buy and pray" with every purchase. I love being able to install an entire company's catalog and find the stuff I like and delete everything else (and potentially buy what I like later). It honestly saves so much money and stress in the long run.

I was thinking - if you're on a super budget, there's also Musio subcription - which currently has 3 months basically for free - so $90 for the year. That has the Voxos Choir. It also has all the solo instruments from CineStrings, CineBrass, CineWinds + decidicated solo strings like the Tina Guo Acoustic Cello, and Taylor Davis solo violin, and a few others. Voxos is fairly basic compared to other options, but it's definitely useful. Honestly, Musio sounds way better for what you're looking for, because it's so cheap for a year, and gives you pretty much all the content you're looking for.

Although I don't own it - I am specifically looking at Audio Imperia Chorus. This is the "buy it and don't need anything else" choir (for adult choir at least). I've used it before at a colleagues place and it really is the best & easiest to use choir around. However, even on the current sale, it's over $300 (price will depend on if you're a first time customer, or have other products). I think for price / quality, 8Dio is still the best. For the cost of Chorus, you could pretty much buy every 8Dio choir - Lacrimosa, Liberis, Requiem Pro (quite old), Silka / Insolidus choir. Which would cover a lot of territory, including children's choir. (Although AudioBro Genesis is the best children's choir around, by a mile.) There's also Strevos Choirs - like Chorus, these are workhorse choirs. I don't own them, but they are used extensively in the scoring community. Storm Choir is the big one, but it's also over $300. Then there's the male / female choir splits "Wotan" and "Freyja". I can't comment on these - have never used them, but they are very very popular. However. What everyone is waiting for right now is the release of Eternity (adult choir). It comes out on Friday. It's made by AudioBro, who also made the Genesis Children's Choir. They haven't listed prices, but the demos on their site make it likely that it'll be like Genesis, and likely be the best choir on the market. I would honestly wait until that's release, see what the price is. However - the AudioBro stuff can be a bit more involved (programming, etc.) so may not be right for you. Although, if it's like Genesis, hitting any note with sound amazing. Ha. So my recommend is to wait till Friday and see what the Genesis price is, and maybe get some initial impressions. If it's a decent price I'll probably buy it immediately. But with the style you said you're composing in, and needing ease of use, AI Chorus is the one. 100%. It's just pricey.

To follow up - ya, this Hammer + Waves collection is one of the best purchases I've ever made. This might the most beautiful keys instrument ever produced. I got the collection (piano, electric piano, chimes and prepared) and spent hours going through presets. It's both an incredible emulation of the core instruments (easily one of the best Suitcase 73 VSTs I've heard - I own a real own, and I could easily sell it now - it's the only emulation to get the random sticking mallets thing right), and absolutely stunning ambient effects machine. I had no idea the effects engine was that powerful. Some of these presets are beyond incredible. Just a gorgeous collection of sounds. On the 8Dio front - if you own either Silka or Insolidus, 8Dio will send you an invoice to get the other one for $30. You just have to message them. This Black Friday rules.

Seriously - so impressed with this Hammer + Waves stuff. I didn't grab the Wurli 145B yet - but good to know it's also high quality. Don't know if it's done elsewhere, but they designed a mechanical hand contraption to do all their recordings - basically repeating perfect velocities over and over again for round robins. And there must be a TON of round robins, because there's slight noise in a couple notes, but you have to hit the note at the same velocity like 20 times before you hear it again. And no worries on the advice. I yammer on a lot. Haha. Glad some info might be useful! I think you've mentioned before you did marketing for some of these companies? I've never used the Kirk Hunter stuff either. Sometimes there's just too much to try out.

Even adult entertainment needs symphonies. I can't compete with William's live orchestra though. He wins all the awards.

Oh. Professional composer (not using my real name!). I spend A LOT of time on library searching as I run a mobile system and multiple studio systems, so I have two totally different setups - one that is lightweight (as RAM, CPU, hard disk light as possible) and one that is heavy duty and with no memory, CPU, drive limitations. So I'm always looking for better lightweight libraries, which means trying as much stuff on the market as possible. This means comparing a lot of cheaper / lighter weight stuff (eg. Audio Imperia, Musio, 8Dio, etc.) against the monsters like Orchestral Tools. There's some surprisingly amazing lightweight libraries that do an excellent job. Audio Imperia I'm especially impressed with right now (I'm a complete fanboi this week) - I've picked up most of the catalog during this sale and endlessly impressed with how small / simple the libraries are considering the immense / quality / versatility of the sound. Really great for fast sketching, or getting a great sound with minimal computer setup. Definitely not as detailed / natural as the big brand stuff (and has a more full / forward sound that perhaps isn't great for intimate tracks...although Nucleus and Solo seem more on the softer side....especially the 'classical' mixes), but really impressed so far. I wish a colleague of mine was on this forum. He owns literally everything single thing on the market (it seems) and can go on and on about what each is good for. As a piano player yourself - I recommend another recent purchase: Hammer + Waves. This thing is incredible. I think you can get just the acoustic piano for ~$80 on sale. The sound design patches are possibly better than the acoustic / electric pianos. Insane the sounds that come out of this thing - especially the prepared piano (different library from acoustic) sound design / experimental patches. Just beautiful ambient weird stuff...that sound design engine is wild. https://www.skyboxaudio.com/collections/complete-bundle-instruments

Got Convolver for $10. Coupon code worked! This is a great tool. Allows you to take the envelope / characteristics of one sound and apply it to another. Similar to how a convolution reverb works, but you can take anything and apply it to anything else. (You can also just use it as a convolution reverb). So if you had a weird glitchy delay stereo modulated sample, you could apply it to a guitar pluck, and it'll give the guitar pluck all the same characteristics. Opens up some really crazy sound design possibilities. And if you use the Phase Plant browser, you can load your target sound into the synth, then just start browsing through any other sounds on your harddrive, and it'll auto-preview what your target sound would sound like with any other sound you click on applied to it. Just played with it for 10 minutes and it's awesome. For an example taken from one of the "how to" videos - guy recorded himself softly tapping on some objects in his house, then applied that recording to a harp sound, and the harp inherits all the soft percussive elements from the tapping recording, almost acting like delays against the harp's sustain. Super, super cool stuff.

I have Collectors Edition so have the full Komplete Symphony Series. I think the brass is extremely underrated. Although CineBrass Core / Pro are my primary brass, I'm still surprised Symphony Brass was received so poorly. There's some excellent patches in both the strings, brass. The percussion I think is absolutely excellent - it's one of the best orchestral percussion libraries for the price IMO. The winds are pretty awful though imo. About the NI Symphony strings. There's a funny video of a guy comparing the Komplete Symphony Series Strings with Spitfire Symphonic Strings and how similar they are. Understand that when it came out, people were specifically shitting on those Komplete strings compared to that specific Spitfire library. It's so funny. I think some people just have to mentally justify the money ($800 for Spitfire Symphonic Strings) they put out for these libraries. The string library was made by Audiobro (LA Scoring Strings, Modern Scoring Strings, Genesis Children's Choir), and the brass were made by SoundIron. I wouldn't trust impressions of that orchestra library - IMO it's much much much better than people give it credit for. I've used it a lot, and amazed it came with a Komplete Ultimate CE update. And for sure - I'd definitely recommend searching "Audio Imperia Nucleus" walkthrough videos. Very very good for the sale price. This is done with Nucleus: (And sorry to hijack the thread. I actually love a lot of 8Dio libraries!)

Actually - scratch my comments about Kontakt Factory Library 2 orchestra. Just spent some time with it. It's not very good and really limited. It's deceiving, because there are a couple spectacular patches (eg. the Cello / string spiccatos are strangely excellent), but it's really just a "hey, here's some basic orchestra patches if you don't already have any". My recommend would still be Audio Imperia Nucleus, considering the sale price + having strings, brass, winds, choir, percussion + being extremely intuitive / easy to use (meaning less customization) + quality is excellent for $225. And it gives you good crossgrade opportunities for their other products in the future.

Do you have Komplete 14? If so, you should have Kontakt Factory Library 2 which includes an entirely new orchestra library made up of selections from Orchestral Tools libraries (the really expensive ones). It surprised A LOT of composers, since it's a 1000x improvement over the old Kontakt library orchestra. There are some absolutely amazing articulations in that set. Audio Imperia's "Lite" libraries are also on sale for $80. Limited articulations, but Areia Lite (strings) & Nucleus Lite (orchestra) are pretty great for the price. Actually the full Nucleus library is on sale for $225. It covers the entire orchestra. Walkthrough video. The thing about Audio Imperia libraries is that they are great for hybrid styles - like using orchestra in pop or electronic music or rock. They have a very upfront sound, and 2 mixes, Classical (softer, but still quite full), and "Modern" (more full cinematic / trailer / pop music style). And they are dirt simple to use. I think I would go the direction of Audio Imperia based on your description of how you use orchestra. A lot of walkthroughs and reviews of their Nucleus, Aeria, Talos, Jeager, etc. libraries that should immediately show their unique tone. Their solo instrument is also quite good for pop music, as the mixes / recordings are quite forward sounding. If you want an idea of how forward sounding their libraries are -- for example, their spicatto patches -- here's a comparison of spicattos across 40 different libraries. IMO each Audio Imperia selection (Jeager, Aeria, Nucleus) stands out as the best for more hybrid genre use. Many others have that very warm cinematic tone that disappears in non-soundtrack mixes. But some stay that makes the AI stuff sound overly cold / machine like:

Ha. Ya, I have a lot of adult choirs, but most of them are either old, or I don't like them. Except 8Dio choirs - which sound gorgeous (especially Insolidus / Silka) but they aren't very flexibile. Was so disappointed in Omnia. It's the main reason I updated my Komplete CE edition. Voxos was also a huge disappointed, but got it with Musio, so no big loss. Same with being disappointed with East West's choirs via Composer Cloud. Interesting through - was checking out Voxos's childrens choir patches, thought it sounded pretty bland, then opened Genesis to compare and the first note I hit was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. Haha. That choir is incredible - also blows Liberis out of the water. So it'll probably become a battle between Chorus (sat through a couple hours of walkthroughs and love the sound / versatility) & Eternity - one of these will free up a lot of hard drive space after deleting all these other libraries.

Order also cancelled + refund. Went to JRR shop, got it for $85 with GROUP code. So still decent deal. And that granular engine is absolutely bonkers. Endless modulation possibilities, and it's set up sooooo much easier than Absynth or Omnisphere. Can do grain / position / randomization modulations in seconds, unlike Absynth which requires a PhD in engineering to get certain envelope modulations to work properly.

Same. And just when I was trying to make a decision on AI's Chorus. Will definitely wait and see now. This could be amazing. Also curious if they'll have crossgrade / loyalty pricing for owners of Genesis.

I'd agree here - Pro-R has some incredible features - especially with the addition of ducking in the v2 version. It's really an incredible piece of software, like all FabFilter stuff. I would never need another reverb again if Pro-R, with all its features, sounded like Cinematic Rooms. But honestly, those Pro-R features really make it versatile, I just find it takes way too long to get a sound I like out of it. Perhaps it's too transparent / clean, whereas I like grain / color (my second favorite reverb is UADs Lexicon 224 because it's so messy sounding imo)

Picked up all the ones I wanted last week with sub voucher: U2A , SA2RATE2, Masterdesk Pro, Amek 200 Console (already had 9099 from last year), Amek Mastering Comp and XStressor. I'm now grandfathered into Mix & Master bundle at $149.99 a year, so no brainer to get 6 of their best plugins per year for essentially $25 / each, and get to use everything else in the catalog all year. (but i forgot, subs suck, right?? hehe)

This is a very subjective question. I find Pro-R extremely cold. It has it's uses, but I rarely use it because I find it lifeless / sterile. no matter what the source is. I love Cinematic Rooms Pro & Seventh Heaven. I think CRP is the best reverb on the market - for pretty much any instrument, and by a wide margin. But some people feel the same about Pro-R. This is really something that needs to be demo'd in order to make a decision. But honestly, Valhalla DSP reverbs are $50 and I'd be entirely happy if these were my only options. But if I had a few hundred to spend on reverbs, my choice would the CRP. Again, totally subjective.

My experience back in early 2022 - i did get support from "Natan" for a Windows problem. Not a solution, but he responded pretty quick and let me know future updates would correct the problem (which they did), although the only thing I occasionally use of the bundle is Vybz & Tape Piano 2 (this v2 version corrected a problem I had).

To clarify - it's 2023 and prior - so the entire Cinesamples catalog (Musio versions) including anything released in 2023. It's about 75 libraries in my app (all CineBrass, CineStrings, CineWinds, CinePerc, all pianos, keys, solo instruments, synths, choirs, etc.) Not so far. I own CineBrass Pro & Core and a few other libraries already, which I use heavily, but I haven't switched to the Musio versions of CineBrass yet. From what I understand it's less mic options, no keyswitching for some libraries & not as much customization, I just haven't compared yet. I don't generally use a lot of keyswitching (and don't really like how CineBrass is set up in Kontakt), and prefer microphone blend mixes, so liking the app so far. Also - they've added keyswitching patches to a few of the libraries. There seems to be keyswitching patches for all the CineOrchestra stuff that I've opened. There is a Youtube review where the guy actually prefers the simplified versions of the instruments and explains why. Wish I could find that review again, it the one that convinced me to get it as we had a similar work flow (preferring single articulation patches, a lot of library blending, etc.)

I haven't grabbed any of the pianos (I have way too many, and was set on never installing another one unless it was Keyscape or Ravenscroft), but I don't like any of my upright libraries. Anyone recommend any of the Musio pianos? I have not heard much about any of them. EDIT: I guess I could spend a half hour downloading them all. So lazy.

I think it's the size. Especially with the addition of Fantasy Orchestra - which is basically an entirely new 120GB orchestra library (including choir) outside of HOOPUS. I have both Musio & CC, but the East West catalog is just absolutely enormous by comparison. $150 already seems insane, considering how much content there is compared to Musio. For data / articulation / mic position comparison, Hollywood Orchestra (OPUS edition) alone is 4 times larger than the entire Musio catalog.

You can get 1 year of Musio for $90 right now (3 months free). Or buy the entire Musio catalog for life for $300. Both the Cinesamples & East West subs are insane. EDIT: Musio is a bit of a beta test though. Finding quite a few bugs, but it's early days.

Oh - I don't actually own these so can't comment. Noticed in later comment that you bought them - definitely let us know what you think once you get a chance to play around.

Ya - they've allowed me to registered 3rd party purchases in the past - for example, from Time + Space way back when. Just had to send them the invoice / purchase info.