fitzroy

Just noticed the Cinekinetik collection among the (new?) qualifying items ... but it's not available in the Custom Shop

Mastering version for $15 next?

Definitely a good deal. As I was writing above, I might get a Solo later on for traveling (and consistency with my Axe I/0). But your post did remind me of the nice, permanent 15% discount U.S. customers get in comparison to us Europeans, due to IK's lovely 1:1 exchange rate. European company to Europeans: da price is da price European company to U.S. buyers: So if you're in the U.S., you better start going crazy on this group buy. You owe us at least one freebie! ?

I doubt it. IK likely considers your Amplitube 5 bundleware/free software that comes with the product you're "really" buying - the Axe I/O. There's definitely a problem with some of that. I bought the Axe I/O + Amplitube 5 Max. That bundle (still) is $/EUR 50 more expensive than buying just the Axe I/O, the same as for your Axe I/O Solo and Amplitube 5. Which means it's definitely not free bundled software. So the fact that it doesn't even make one eligible for a Max upgrade is just petty, there's no other way to put it. One could argue that for most group buy participants, the freebies are implicitly paid software (i.e. they wouldn't buy the qualifying software at the retail price, so they divide its cost over the total number of items picked up, qualifying + freebies). But in the case of the Axe I/O bundles, we're talking about explicitly paid software. The fact that it's heavily discounted shouldn't matter - just as it doesn't matter when you buy software from them at an "80% off" sale (which you can resell and does count for crossgrades and upgrades). Don't let this discourage you from joining the group buy. For a lot of people it will end up being the sale/bargain of the year. It's just the (call it weird, or unpleasant) stuff one needs to be aware of.

Let us know how that goes. I'm pretty sure ARC 3 with the mic is a popular choice (I'm also considering it for my second purchase). It would help if IK clarified the issues arising from shipping (the only) hardware as part of the group buy (as well the extra promo running on it - free T-Racks Deluxe), so anyone interested would know if/how shipping might impact on eligibility for freebies. I'm guessing that the order date would/should be the defining factor? So if you order, say the Arc 3 + mic on August 30th, you'd still get T-Racks Deluxe once you register the hardware, even if it's after August 31st (the end of the free T-Racks promo). As for the group buy, maybe the time allocated to choosing your freebies (30 days), should start from the delivery date of the hardware. This might be especially important if a lot of people order the Arc 3 bundle towards the end of the group buy, which might, in turn, slow down (?) processing/shipping.

Hard to blame them with the value they provide, especially during their sales. I mean I'm not fond of their marketing approach, but who cares? I've already picked up in this group buy, for not a lot of money: MODO Bass - very nice MODO Drums - won't replace my beloved Toontrack collection, but nice, like the interface, sounds good enough, and an awesome sketching tool at 10Gb Hammond - awesome Sampletron - awesome In the queue: Sunset Sound (demo-ed it when it came out, liked it), Mixbox (don't 'need' it, but I suspect it will be very practical to use), Space Delay and a couple of tape machines, Clavitube. I might also get in on a lower tier for the new Cinekinetik stuff. And maybe some synths (though I wish one could control the Syntronik synths from Sampletank, a la Analog Lab). Can't really complain about anything after this, can I? But I do hope it picks up a bit towards the end and we get to 10, 10+ freebies.

Why would you expect to get $199 credit for it? $149 is the crossgrade price you see when logged in. So you can get anything that's $149 or below (also when logged in).

I don't think it works that way, though I may be wrong. If you're buying, say, the Arc 3 software for $199, Amplitube 5, for example, will not be available as a freebie, as it was $299 at the moment of your purchase of Arc 3. So a FIRST purchase of $199 would only get you freebies that are $199 or less at full, retail price.

We're talking purchasing strategies here, taste doesn't matter (I don't care about Miroslav either). For Syntronik Deluxe, I'm not sure you'd get the upgrade price from Syntronik if the latter was picked up as a freebie. But then again, the difference is only a few synths, which you could pick up cheap with a third group buy purchase at the $50 tier. And yes, this path probably ends with 'but what about buying 500 gear credits, and waiting for a Total Studio 3 Max sale where I'm allowed to use them'.

You have to make one purchase to unlock crossgrades, that's the point of a crossgrade. So you have to own something that unlocks the crossgrades first. As I was pointing out above though, you'd have to make sure that the system allows for this (i.e. that the crossgrade pricing is immediately available after that purchase), and also check with their upgrade/crossgrade checker for the qualifying items.

Looks like the $299 tier items that you can't get this way are: Syntronik Deluxe, T-Racks 5 Deluxe and Miroslav. Everything else should be available. And yes, with gear credits it's even better.

That $299 tier would become the $199 tier for many items (not all, for example not T-Racks 5 Deluxe) , once you make a qualifying purchase at $99. The MODO's, Sampletron, Syntronik, Amplitube, would all be in that tier. So you'd have access to them with that second $199 crossgrade purchase.

I think what he/she means is that if you don't have anything from IK and want to get in on the $299 tier, you're better off buying something for $99 first, which would unlock the crossgrade price at $199 for most (all?) items. Then you can make a second purchase for $199 to get you the higher tier (crossgrade) freebies. In the context of the group buy, you'd gain a $99 item (plus however many freebies will come with it) by going $99 + $199 instead of $299. Provided that the crossgrade prices become available immediately after that $99 purchase, even during a group buy (I have no idea), it does make sense to do it this way.

Many of us, having long been victimized by IK's pop-ups alerting us about the stuff we don't own, have all of them. Not to play them, just to keep our sanity. Past that, there's good bits in everything on your list. If you like Fender amps, the Fender collections are a must. Not necessarily better than the competition (e.g. I prefer PA's, and especially Fuse's, bassman; S-Gear's amps are at least on par, etc.) but solid throughout.

It will be interesting to see how this progresses from here. Based on the reactions I've noticed (forums, other social media, friends), you have, on one hand, people who are after 3+ of the bigger items. This group seems to be quite content, in general, with the idea of getting 5-6 freebies, anything beyond that being a nice bonus. The second group is formed by people who are interested in 'smaller' items (so mostly the $99 tier and below) , who are hoping for 10+ freebies, to make this group buy stand out (compared to other occasional IK/dealer sales and/or the perspective of a good sale on the Total Studio 3 Max). Those in-between these two groups form the last group; they want maybe 1 or 2 bigger items (mostly because they already own the rest) and would want a decent number of extra (mostly cheaper) freebies to convince them to jump in, instead of waiting for the TS3 Max sale. Given the way this group buy is advertised by IK (once-in-a-generation promotion, biggest ever group buy, goal of 25,000 participants), here is hope they'll be patient in letting this grow towards 10 freebies (by extending the group buy if needed). That should get all the groups discussed above interested.

I'm in. I don't have much IK apart from the Axe I/O and (all of) Amplitube, so plenty of decent options to go for. Hoping for 4-5 freebies, at least.

I demo-ed it, thinking I'd probably buy it at this price. I can't seem to find a way to like it though. Some people highlight the importance of playing with the input gain to make it sound right (through your DAW, no input gain control on the plugin) while turning up the channel volume(s), but that didn't help much either. We're spoiled with some great amp sims these days and this one, to my ears, is not one of them. Cheap though so it might be good value, except that I already own a bunch of so-so amp sims that I hardly ever use. I know, we all do ?

I find the Train II very similar to the Chandler for cleans and (soft) crunch. So similar that after adjusting the EQ's and playing them through the same IR's, I can barely tell them apart. Which makes me wonder whether I need the Train II.

Hey, for a freebie, that's not bad at all! The EQ / Tone section is what I like the least, I find it heavy-handed and I couldn't get it to be transparent/neutral no matter what I tried. They need to make it possible to demo the pro version (duh). And yeah, think hard about that price.

Two mediocre demos, no way to demo the actual plugin, $55?

For those interested, I've seen it go a couple of times for a bit less ($70-80-ish) on KVR, so that might be another option, if you can wait and are searching for the absolute best deal. To my ears, for clean/crunch, S-Gear is top notch. There are other great plugins for cleans, with different flavors, which I use and love (Plini, Fuse's F-59, some of Amplitube 5, plus a few more). Like those, I think S-Gear is pretty close to perfect in what it offers, but they each have their respective strengths.

You mean you bought GP3 caring about GP4 when GP4 wasn't even announced, but now that the latter is out, your GP3 is useless (as in money down the drain)?

As a few of us noticed/commented at the time, that crazy last sale, when GP3 was $39.99 (so $15 with a voucher), made it quite probable this would happen. I bought it for $25 (with a voucher) during an earlier sale, and while I'd love to have GP4, I personally don't feel cheated. I basically bought a pretty great tool for not a lot of money, that I'm free to keep using. I'll simply decide if/when to get GP4 down the road, depending on PA's future sales.

You're way off. I've sold bundle parts before on KVR, if they were duplicates. And I bought bundle parts that others were selling. You don't need to be a 'plugin broker', or make a living, or even a profit on KVR to do that.