Vernon Barnes

I tried the demo a while back. It's a beast with a price tag to match. It sounds great but I think it's for a real organist with the hardware and chops to do it justice. Most of us mortals are probably better with some of the Kontakt pipe organs.

Brings the sub in line with a WUPed perpetual licence. If you are WUPed you get a second licence. I use a dongle, much less likely to go wrong than a hard drive. Before I retired I managed around 50 dongle based licences (not music, eack licence $7.5K) used in locations around the world. These were moved from location to location frequently. We lost two in ten years, one we knew was stolen and another lost in international shipping. So I don't consider them that vulnerable.

It a very versatile instrument. Yes it can do the 70 quiz sound but so much more. A staple of jazz, soul and prog rock. Jon Lord of Deep Purple used it very effectivly for heavy rock. You do hear it on current records occasionally but I see no reason it can't be used in almost any genre. I think the appeal is in the organic ( no pun intended) sound of the electro mechanical tone wheels, something that has not been perfectly emulated until recently along with the mechanical rotary Leslie speaker. IK have got the closest yet.

It depends on your workflow. I work differently in that I write in the DAW, either recording MIDI or in the piano roll or score editor. I then send tracks to Notion to create a score for colaborators. I find it excellent as chords from the chord track and any lyrics are transfered across seamlessly. I have not really looked into transferring in the opposite direction.

Same here. IF I really wanted the extra plugins it would make more sense to go for the subscription.

Installed. Just waiting for the Orchestrator to be released now.

One subscription that is really worth considering.

Orange Tree's Famous E is absolutely superb. Works in Kontakt Player too. Waves Rhodes and Wurlie are very good and will probably be $29 each again at some point.

Nice freebie. Edit, oops I missed it was the session version. Still useful though.

Musio have just added another title to their subscription service, "Men of the North" and it sounds pretty good! https://musio.com/catalog/ They have also updated the Musio UI. This update is mostly cosmetic, no keyswitches yet, but does improve access to instrument parameters.

UK customers (others may avoid the VAT too) its £39 at Plugin Boutique with £1.63 back in virtual cash plus part of a token, and Comeback Kid free. And us can use any existing virtual cash and cash in any tokens.

I have had it for ages, I have rarely used the vst but use it as a module in Softube Modular a lot.

The update I did not know I needed! But its good and I am glad to have it. The new browser certainly makes it easier to find things across the various expansions. The A/B fader is a nice addition. The LFO fade in is a very welcome feature but I am not sure how much I will use the extra LFO waveforms but they are a nice to add . The Wow and Flutter could be interesting, I will need to have a play with those to see how useful they will be. The reverb is good for improving "straight out the box" sounds but I think I will be adding reverb in the DAW mixer in most cases. The amp effect is useful for adding a bit of grit. Incidentally the upgrade price did not show up until I had it in the cart, VAT was added to the £29 bringing it to £35.99

As I bought piecemeal there is no upgrade option. I may have been tempted by the Oddessy but I recently got the Behringer hardware recreation so I will pass.

Is it one that is useful beyond its design genre? Sometimes taking EZ patterns out of the original context can be a useful springboard for ideas.

I always thought the strum engine was pretty intuitive to program. I like to use a lot of arpeggios and it's good for then too. The NI guitars are good, but limited particularly if you want odd time signatures like 5/4 or 7/8 which OTS is good at. It won't go to 9/8 or 11/8 though. Amplesound is probably the most versatile, having both a strummer and riffer with drag and drop MIDI into a DAW, but its also less intuitive and more complex.

I see Harmony and Real Time Tune have updates in Waves Central

I must try to master programming Riffer again. It seems to hold the potential to create as good a part as you could get from a virtual instrument but really needs one to think like a guitarist or bass player with not just the note and articulation to consider but also string selection.

Installed. After the excellent Fantasy strings and brass I think it is a bit of a let down. What's there is very good but it seems to be lacking the depth of the other titles. It could really do with some low winds of some description and something a bit more off the wall like a Crumhorn or similar.

Its all pretty confusing It offers me Diamond as an upgrade but warns that I already own it. Others, like Gold warn me I already have a bundle containing this product. But for many other available upgrades its a mater of checking each item against what you already have.

Installed.? there is nothing left for me to buy

I am not seeing CPU hogging here. My last project contained two instances of Opus, one for ostinatos in Hollywood Orchestrator and the other running several brass and wind instruments and one of the Gold pianos without CPU issues. There were also instances of Kontakt, UVI workstation and Superior Drummer competing for resources. This was in Studio One 6 on a six year old computer.

Also an update for Hollywood Fantasy Strings.

I recently took out a annual subscription to Musio ($99). While I am waiting on some improvements to the player that are in the pipeline such as keyswitching I still find it very usable with a wide selection of mostly orchestral sounds with some synths and drum machines thrown in for good measure. Today I received an update notice by email. (see quote below). Installed - My first impressions. Industry Brass Pro looks like an update rather than a new addition CineBrass Sonore - these patches sound very nice. CineWinds Monster Low Winds - The winds have been the standout for me in the whole package and this library adds some very deep bass wind ensembles CineHarpsichord - Some very nice and usable harpsichords https://musio.com/

I do not have this one but I have several others of theirs. They are very good. There are no fancy Kontakt GIUs just the standard Kontakt instrument interface. Don't let that put you off, they sound great. I will probably pick this up too.