Vernon Barnes

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.

The update plan is on sale too. $129 from $169. It looks like there are some serious updates due. Mind you I still find the workflows alien to me so I probably will skip and it will join Cubase 9.5 on the list of DAWs I didn't get on with.

Kontakt! Looks interesting but 700+ NKI files? Snapshots would be more manageable but I suppose issues with loading different samples could have prevented this.

I installed it just to get rid of the update flag in NA, I am on Kontakt 7 and only have 6 installed incase its needed in an old project.

I had not looked at Musio until recently and I have been trying out the 14 day free trial to see if I would but up for a subscription. The current roadmap for releases and new features is here. https://musio.com/coming-soon/?_kx=7bYm_UvUC-D5nnkU-7zfm17lQtGjIg5vkt1bZPzTVKjwj04Cq1orJhWdIT11iUCq.TQPahU Two things stood out for me with the current status. Lack of key switching so every articulation you intend to use has to loaded as a separate instance. Its good to see that key switching will be introduced soon. Lack of instrument specific interfaces, this meant the synths in particular were pretty mehhh as there was no way to do even basic tweaking of each patch, again this will be addressed soon. Improvements to the effects and mixer are also in the pipeline. I think I would tend to mix and add fx in the DAW so the current basic level of the current feature set was not as big a drawback as the other two. All in all I like Musio and the libraries a lot. I am particularly taken with the Gina Luciana flutes. I already had some of the Tina Guo cello libraries for Kontakt and find them excellent. I am working through the currently available stuff and only the synths have been a negative so far. I like the way you can quickly preview a sound before downloading. You only need to download the articulations you want to use which will help people low on disk space, of course this may change when they introduce key switching, Temptation to subscribe (currently $99 a year) is rising. Blowing 10 years subscription price on a perpetual licence does not make sense to me but the option is there.

That is where they get you. I may look again at what upgrading to Ultimate would give me these days but will probably stick, I have little intrest in the Play series and the expansions.

I just discovered the record function. You can record your playing into the song, This opens up quite a few possibilities. For example creating your own patterns and then using EZKeys to apply a chord progression, or recording a chord progression as block chords and then replacing the pattern with MIDI from the browser etc. -NICE

EW are aiming it at scoring fantasy films etc. Hence the name. It departs from conventional orchestra lineups ( like fantasy Strings) by adding other, older, instruments like Alphorn and Viols but it remains a straight library of real instrument samples with keyswitches and various mic positions.

Installed, and its very nice too! I am waiting for the rest of the series and the orchestrator to be released, It should be quite a powerful package. As for comparisons with Arturia's Augmented Brass, that is a real case of comparing apples and oranges. Which is best? well that depends entirely on what you are trying to do. Fantasy Brass is a conventional sample library with a fantastic, powerful sound, some different brass instruments and lots of articulations for each, Augmented Brass leans more towards sound design and manipulated sound. Both good in their own right but comparing on price is missing the point of both.

At least its something very different. I have some Novachord sample libraries, which I like but have not used in anger, I will probably pick this one up it up at some stage but I am in no rush.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water............. Greg comes along with a temptation that cannot be resisted.

Sequential Ciruits Pro One? Somewhat under represented in the virtual world.

Not free and sampled, UVI have just released Kawai Legacy with material from four Kawai synths and a drum machine. https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/57017-uvi-kawai-vintage-legacy-intro-offer/

89 Euros until 8th May then 149 Euros. https://www.uvi.net/kawai-vintage-legacy?utm_source=UVI+Customer&utm_campaign=59e76bf198-EMAIL_KVL_Annonce_2023-04-27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3375a13ef3-59e76bf198-28206933 I have it installed via my Sonic Pass sub. There is a lot here and it sounds pretty good! It follows the standard sampled synth route so you will be scrolling through hundred of presets but it does offer filter and envelope editing and plenty of FX to vary the sounds.

For me, the integration with Notion, the chord track and since v6 the lyrics.

I am trying to remember how much the Odyssey in the 1973 music shop was, I think it was a little short of £1000 but I could be wrong, but certainly way out of reach for a couple of students. When I started full time work the next year I was on £96 a month. Today someone doing 40 hours a week on UK minimum wage would be on around 17 times that, so making plenty of assumptions the original Odyssey would have been 16 to 17K in todays money. So £440 for the Behringer Odyssey is quite a deal. Apparently they have matched the original components as closely as possible and retained the original architecture but they have added the ability to switch between the three original filter types. The FX and sequencer have also been added but they are extras. Original Odysseys seem to be selling a several times the Behringer price but not the cult price of a original MiniMoog.

I have a licence but have not got into it, it seems pretty alien to me, which could explain why some people prefer it to CbB or S1. I have not paid the WUP so I guess I wont be upgrading.

50 years ago my friend and I would wonder into the music store close to the technical college we were studying at and have ago an a ARP Odyssey they had on display. Of course we soon wore out our welcome. We both knew our way around the college's EMS Synthi A pretty well and my friend was building a synth from plans in Practical Electronics. Of course if you could program a Synthi A an Odyssey was pretty straight forward but it was a bit of a mystery to the home organ salesman and he was convinced we were doing it wrong by not following the printed patch sheets! Anyway, I always wanted an Odyssey and last week I finally got one, albeit a Behringer clone. What a hoot! There is something about a real analogue instrument that is missing in the VSTi emulations. Of course the VSTis, like the one from GForce have more options, simpler tuning and pre-sets and sound very good but the experience is somehow lacking. Why an Odyssey and and not a Minimoog? I caught my imagination with features like the duophonic architecture, the ring modulator, sample and hold and ADSR envelope missing on the Minimoog. I am really enjoying the duophonic, particularly when using the ring modulator and this seems to work a lot better than virtual version. The Odyssey always sounded brighter than the Minimoog, probably because of the lack of the mellower triangle waveforms, the 12db/oct LP filter (on the first model) and the inclusion of a highpass filter. Behringer have included three LP filters from three different generations of the instrument so you can select a 12db or one of two 24db filters. The 4075 filter is particularly squelchy at high resonance. They have also included a sequencer and some effects, and it's MIDI along side CV and Gate inputs which would be handy with other analogue gear. I think the Minimoog had better performance controls with pitch and modulation wheels as opposed to pressure switches which I find a bit awkward to control precisely, Also the range switches on the oscillators would have been far more convenient in a live scenario. The Moog has three oscillators compared to the Odyssey's two but this is not such a disadvantage as it may seem as the Moog's third oscillator was often used as a LFO, the Odyssey has a dedicated LFO. So I am really enjoying a vintage analogue synth experience, I may be some time!

Yes, you can drag in any MIDI and save it as a user pattern which can then be used like proprietary MIDI. So you could play a couple of bars in an easy key like C and then play the pattern using a chord progression in any key you want. It's not ALL about the MIDI packs.

I bought the Odessey from Gear4Music for £449. All the UK retailers showing the same price but I picked them on delivery time. Its a nice bit of kit, very solidly built and sounds great.