jackson white

iirc, you use kontakt. if so, would be interested in ur comments on drums in kontakt, both ux and quality wise.

yes. use it pretty much daily with no problems other than; 1) the initial rollout of InMusics mandatory authorization -requirement- every x months/days or everything gets locked out. BFD would be deauthorizzed without warning after what seemed to be an arbitrary time frame (perhaps based on when a specific product was authorized). reauthorization was dependent on internet access and InMusic server uptime and who knows what else. 2) one with a 3rd party expansion that sorted itself on it's own, so perhaps some other issue? the showstopper was (and still is) their implementation of a proprietary (dodgy) and mandatory authorization -requirement- inflicted by a trojan horse update with the InMusic relaunch which hijacked a 4 figure investment in Fxpansion. No warning, heads up, t&cs, etc on the fundamental change in user expectations based on prior experience with the core team. pretty sketchy way to treat a loyal user base. and then there's anecdotes such as this. i expect not everybody (or even most?) need what BFD offers, but for those who do, there aren't any comprehensive alternatives. best practices here include; 1) maintaining a dedicated PC to run the pre InMusic version of BFD. 2) rendering drum trax for all projects to audio, both pre/post FX (++cost in time/storage) 3) actively looking for a replacement, including the potential for a competitve product. after all, how many more eqs/comps/saturation plugins do you need when you can have more drums? ... for $49, you can have a pretty good time with it, expecially if you play. I'd pay 10x for a DRM free version.

ya, it's just an eq, but this^... is why i have and use it. the trident is the other one.

"The Helios Type 69 consoles are known for their smooth and harmonic sound, heard on legendary records by Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, The Who and Black Sabbath. Lindell’s 69 Channel Strip faithfully recaptures this classic tone in plugin form.:" (demos with loops/clips from last week) the overview would be about 20 mins shorter without the adjectives and basics splaining. all snark aside. Lindell has been pretty good and useful. don't need another channel strip, but this is about the only alternative to the UAD version. wondering if perhaps a Trident channel strip might be next? worth buying to provide some incentive?

and add some real value

my sense as well. been looking into Reaper for x-platform projects but gonna hold off to see how Next stacks up. would rather spend my bandwidth on music than a learning curve.

Will, my bad, was referring to AA cpu hits which end up sounding like digital barbituates or very "varispeed" ?

ya, i can do this with just a few Acustica Audio plugins

finally?! the topic that should be -so- much more interesting than all the subscription/gibson/etc angst. imagine it's a bit too early to get into it but intrigued by the potential, wondering about the roadmap, perhaps a new thread makes sense?

in Studio One?

if you really want to get into it, the fundamental mechanism of how hearing actually works is pretty fascinating. https://www.npr.org/2020/10/16/923973253/jim-hudspeth-how-do-we-hear-and-how-do-we-lose-our-ability-to-hear

tinnitus? https://hms.harvard.edu/news/scientists-regenerate-hair-cells-enable-hearing?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily Gazette 20230420 (1)

.,. same in my network. if the changes/strategy/investment leads to basic cross platform support, that would address the one major missing feature with Sonar. (currently exploring candidates for a common project platform to improve productivity across a diverse group of musicians/projects) ... np with calling it Sonar here, but if they gonna rebrand. might have considered a new name given the history/baggage and overall tendency for far too many to repeat nonsense as if it were fact on public forums. ? and assuming there's no issue with NeXT. ? ... ^^ showstopper otherwise, i only look at what you get for what you pay but believe it's a better investment to own a good tool that you're going to use very day than rent. imo, too many subscriptions tend to spawn feature bloats to justify subscription costs and end up compromising the usefulness / robustness of core functionality. ymmv

in general, find them to be very solid/usable across the board and a preferred alternative to UAD which initially set the standard (for me). sound quality, robustness and price are all key. Arturia FX have won out with extra usability features you would expect for a digital platform (= productivity++), plus unique innovative offerings that go well beyond me too emulations. fwiw, not particularly obsessed with vintage emulations. might still prefer some UADs (probably because i've used them longer?) but pretty well covered between Arturia and Overloud GEMs. ymmv.

interesting, hearing something similar from those who led me to the original version. they had started with the 50s, loved them, i picked up the 65s, nice improvement at the time, but for some reason the latest round has not "inspired" anyone to go for the 80s. heard some comments wrt to upper mids for heavier guitar oriented material, but haven't demo'd them so no clue if it's somehow related to size? newer design elements? or something else...

no doubt. personally found them to be a bit fatiguing when pushing to get a mix done (same as NS10s) but only noting the difference after trying out the Focals, which were notably 'better' for midrange clarity and much easier to listen to for longer periods when working on dense arrangements of acoustic sounds. btw talking the evo series as being a good bang for he buck, not their high end models. iirc @bitflipper might have some perspective based on the most recent models. NB all the comments in the link on room treatment ...

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=86799 the openers noted here are all decent candidates, Kalis getting some buzz (the latest thing but no personal experience), use Focals all the time in a project studio, never got on with Adams (or NS10s)

if AI is anything like "Automated Attendents", nobody has anything to worry about... my latest experience with reverb.com was completely brain dead...

.bfdlac (proprietary lossless compression) imho, still the best for well engineered acoustic drum samples with velocity levels to emulate realistic performances, great cymbals, versatile, wide range of kits including support for 3rd party expansions, but not sure that's still viable given the current ownership. SD3 has some kits featuring "raw" samples which might be equivalent. have yet to dig in (no demo mode, promo clips did not help). had tried SD2 in the past, found them "over processed" at the time. EZ Drummer has some interesting kits, but assume they're a subset of SD with the same sonic attributes, but have not given them a shot. kinda the same for AD2, pretty meh overall, but good/easy/lite enough for rough demos. SSD5, others were pretty focused on specific genres with production baked in, so not very flexible or usable here. NB BFD3 has a proprietary authorization scheme that requires online access every 90 days (or so). It has not been pretty, but seems better and somewhat stable atm.

to be fair, had issues with their initial attempts to launch UA Connect, gave it another shot and... no native versions of anything. checked my account. There are 34 plugins in "My Plugin Library". have to assume the "legacy" versions don't count for anything despite having paid for 3 cards + additional plugins. iirc, they wanted full price for the "collections" when they came out for what was zero value added over what i was using. never saw an upgrade offer, but that was before the Deals forum here (and using Cakewalk). i tried. moving on.

great. gotta love that loyalty program. i own a card, they must have figured i'm already bled dry. not here. it does here. the potential discounted price had me thinking it might be worth paying for the native versions for older projects if (when?) the current card fails. fwiw, was derailed (rather expensively) when a card failed just after warranty was up. factoring in the cost of a 2nd card on top of their premium pricing put me on the path of sourcing native alternates for everything in their catalog. they are good/useful, but hardly exclusive these days. ymmv.

i have the "legacy" versions of these, thought i'd give it a shot, logged in to my account, code does not work... there are quality alternatives to all of them, with less overhead and more features.

sans the vid, but the link that made me check this thread. was imagining a few "alternate" endings given the GoT connection, but that's just me. and then there's Old Yeller...

? for the chile rellenos @ El Arroyo.