Vernon Barnes

EW Composer Cloud is working out well for me. There are a lot of instruments I would not have bought that I have found very useful and some I would have purchased I have not used much. I assume this will work out the same so I am tempted. Disc space, though, disc space.

My goto convolution.

Installed. Does what it says on the tin. Some earth shattering bass, a growl that should be easy to conjure up on most analogue synths but can prove illusive.

That was a good one, always good to get a few opinions though.

I don't think this has been posted before. Mike gets quite enthusiastic about the MS20 and Augmented series.

This one is very quirky. Probably my least favourite in the V collection but that said its capable of some very unique sounds. The groove 3 instructional video was useful in understanding the "unconventional" terminology and architecture.

I have been playing around with this a bit more and have gone from "wow, this sound good" to "not so sure" to "I really like it". It does seem to be mostly geared to si-fi and horror soundtrack scoring, but there is plenty in here beyond that. I particularly like the "orchestral hybrid" pads and the "world hybrid" leads. Using the mod wheel to morph between the layers can add a lot of expression and movement in these patches. The morph control also seems to be effective morphing between two arpeggiated layers with different settings. The edit controls are pretty straight forward, envelopes, filter cut off, resonance, modulation etc, and of course an arpeggiator for each layer. Less conventional is a ring mod for each layer, depending on the patch this can be anything form very effective to an awful din and is well worth experimenting with. I don't think is possible to change one or both of the sources in a patch but the pairings chosen seem to go together very well and are ideal for morphing. Its one of those composer cloud items (there are a few of them) I would have probably never bought outright but will end up using more than some libraries I may have bought.

My composer cloud licence is updated periodicaly. I am not sure how often as I am permanently on line. I don't know what the situation is with a permanent licence.

Installed! I had very quick preview of a few presets and it sounds pretty good and look like they are very tweakable. One big advantage over something like Syntronic is the audio previews in the browser.

Nuffin yet. I try again tomorrow.

There are also new 14 preset packs which are also available in the Analog Lab shop. These go for up to $14 each if you wanted to buy them without going to V9, Of course depending on the musical genres you want you are unlikely to want them all. Personally I was quite impressed with the previews of Piano Imaginarium which layers Piano V with Pigments. The videos above make the Augmented series more interesting to me now I can see the edit page and get some idea what the macro knobs are actually doing. All in all I think the upgrade is priced a bit too high particularly when you look at the cost of the full package so the jury is out here.

Today is supposed to be the day for CC users. Its not in Installation Centre yet. I will check back later.

Worth it IMHO

Riffer is a pretty unique feature in the Amplesound instruments. The factory riffs are great but if you want to create your own however you need to really understand how a bass is played, string selection, articulations etc. There is a lot of potential but.... Often I will just play the bass via MIDI for convenience and live with the lack of realsm.

I know it's unlikely, but has anyone here actually upgraded and if so any opinions on the augmented strings and choir and the "rebuilt" instruments.

Note that there are a few pre-sets for the MS-20, Augmented Strings and Choir in the new Analog Lab.

Cherry's is pretty good. Not sure about authenticity as I have nothing to compair it to but it sounds good. I quite like the way the HP and LP filters sound working together.

Yes, it presents as three modules, the sound source, the filter and the FX. You could use the sound source with a different filter or a wave folder for example.

I agree, I started out on an EMS Synthi A (the suitcase model of the VCS2) with a pinboard patching matrix in the 1970s so modular synths make sense to me. I particularly like unconventional signal flows, (lets put the reverb before the filter and VCA). At the same time a friend was building his own modules from plans in Practical Electronics which also helped understanding. Sometimes the hidden architecture of some soft synths can be a bit difficult to get ones head around. The current trend of giving controls abstract names like "Time" "Movement" etc. seems a bit alien to me particularly when the effect of the control is not consistent between patches. Back to topic, the AAS offering seems a bit basic compared to Cherry, particularly when you add in some third party modules but I am at least half tempted at this price (and I have a lot of PB reward cash and tokens so I could get it real cheap). Its a real shame one can't use Cherry, Softube and AAS in the same environment.

It does not look like both codes can be used together, the emailed code is very slightly better.

Also a update for Sonokinetic Toccata turned up in Native Access today,

Mmmm. I will be installing on May 12 and see if the sounds are as groundbreaking as they claim. Mind you I like "outdated" analog emulations a lot so the pitch is not aimed at me.

On the IK site I see 99 Euros for the CROSSGRADE which would still be cheaper if you have Jampoints. Full price is 199 Euros which would make the JRR price very good if you do not qualify for a cross grade. Not sure I need it though.

Installation / activation a pit of a pain, but not bad as a freebee

The temptation for me is it can also be used inside Softube Modular.