Amicus717

It's going to get MUCH worse: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/after-nearly-30-years-crucial-will-stop-selling-ram-to-consumers/

From what I've read and heard, prices will stay high and maybe even keep climbing until the A.I. bubble pops -- and who knows if that will actually happen anytime soon?

I have both, and for my purposes (and to my ears) Forest Kingdom 3 is better. I'm referring to the wind instruments in FK3, just to be clear. FK3 also has percussion, string, vocal and soundscape patches, which Ancient Kingdom doesn't really cover. But Ancient Kingdom does have some nice stuff, and for $61 I'm satisfied with what I got.

So I don't need this at all - I have about 20 libraries that cover this ground in detail; and I've made a really deliberate effort the last few years to slow down my buying because I've already got more libraries than I'll ever be able to use. But hey, why not? $61 is kind of a ridiculous price, and there is bound to be a few things in this library that will make it worth it. So I grabbed it this afternoon. Took a while to download, but I've been playing around with it for a couple hours... I think it's ok. Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of Opus, nor EW's overall design philosophy and patch breakout, etc. But there is enough unique stuff here to make it worth buying (for me, anyway). I like the Double Shepherd Flute, and the three Duduks; and the Viking stuff is pretty good. I will find them useful. The Lithuanian bagpipe has a power-drill-to-the-earhole kind of vibe that I quite enjoy (for real, it's the kind of sound that can cut through a dense orchestral mix if you want to give the proceedings a nice little touch of ethnic edginess). There are some things I don't like. I found the overall sound of the library to be a bit...I dunno, foggy? Kind of hazy, to my ears, and with a certain lack of focus. A lot of messing around with the mic and built-in reverb settings was required to get a sound and vibe that worked. I also found some of the instruments to be a bit inert and drab. Eg: The Native American Flute in this package is just not very lively sounding, compared to, say, the Native American flutes in Eduardo Tarilonte's Forest Kingdom 3. The EastWest patch is not bad. It's basic and decent, and would work fine for a lot of projects; but Eduardo's patches are so much more interesting to the ear. So, overall Ancient Kingdom is certainly a decent value at $61, but so far I'm kind of glad I didn't pay more. As always, YMMV.

"John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars" - I reviewed it for Sun Media way back in the day. So bad you can't even enjoy it as unintentional comedy.

Albion Orchestral Selects was available to me at $129 because I already own AlbionONE and Loegria. With this code, it was $64! Pretty good deal

Their Facebook page is still showing a little bit of activity, and they responded to a request yesterday for clarification on their status -- but only with a copy-and-paste of the website message. I've invested a chunk of money in their libraries, and that just makes me nervous...

I totally don’t need this library. I’m totally going to buy it. Of course.

My turn...men's league hockey tournament in Montreal in 2008. I don't remember why my men's league team chose Philly colors. And we were too cheap to put on a logo. But man, did we have a great time playing together! More than a few of my team-mates were dudes I played with since we were in grade school. I don't think any of us are limber enough to get back out there, these days. The Leafs won the series against a really pesky Senators squad tonight, and it took longer than we all hoped, considering we were up 3 games to 0, at one point. Whew! I'm thrilled, but now we get the Florida Panthers, and that's gonna be a tough hill to climb. They're basically the Sens on steroids. This one's gonna be a grind.

Thanks, Rain! A good start so far, but this is going to be a tough series. I dunno if the Montreal can handle the Caps this time around, although I think they should be able to make it hard on them. But the future is bright for the Habs, and Hutson, Demidov and co getting some really valuable playoff experience.

Heck of a game, too! Max Domi OT winner.

You will find no who here agrees with you more than me. I played a lot of hockey over the years, but my body can't handle it anymore -- too many accumulated hurts, although nothing as dramatic as a broken nose or lost teeth. Just a lot of wear and tear on my knees and shoulders, and one really bad ankle tear. But I did almost get into a fight with Dave "The Hammer" Schultz at a Pro-Am tournament in 2006. That was fun.

Info here: https://projectsam.com/bundles/the-sound-of-adrenaline?utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter

Info here: https://www.strezov-sampling.com/products/view/arabian.html

Epic. She also gets my vote to be the fulltime game analyst for the Leafs on Sportsnet.

I hadn't been by their site in quite a while, but today I was checking out their Halfling library and noticed most of their stuff is currently discounted: https://www.productionvoices.com

I use Vegas Pro Suite 22, which just released in the fall, and it's a nice upgrade on their previous versions -- a lot more stable than previous versions of Vegas (at least, on my machine, anyway), and I've always found the Vegas interface to be really intuitive. I'm hoping this signals that they're making a go of it after their restructuring. I think it's a good product, and you don't have to subscribe to their Vegas 365 service. You can just buy it outright, which I much prefer.

The same person who thought up OneKnob Pumper, I suspect.

Wait, what?...

Scott Haplin was the impromptu drummer. Passed away in 2008: https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-who-keith-moon-scott-halpin Pete Townsend had some nice things to say about him in this article...

I tend to mix it up a lot, but as a general overview I use a combination of: CinePerc from Cinesamples NI Symphony Series Percussion (the only Symphony Series library that delivers the goods, in my view) Spitfire BBCSO Vienna Synchron-ized Special Editions Spitfire AlbionONE (the Easter Island hits, in particular) Orchestral Tools Ark 1 FWIW, if I had to choose just one of the above, I'd actually choose the NI Symphony Series Perc lib. It's a lot better than it's Symphony Series siblings, to my ears, and has fairly comprehensive set of instruments, plus a consistent control mapping across the various patches and articulations that works well for me. And I find it fairly easy to blend with other libraries. The other Symphony Series libraries do not thrill me at all, and I barely use them, but the Perc one gets called up a lot. Hope this info helps.

I have both of those percussion libraries. They are ok. The timp patches sound good, but are pretty basic in terms of articulations. There are single hit patches using soft, medium and hard mallets, plus crescendos and rolls in a variety of dynamics. I find the velocity layers change a bit abruptly, especially for the soft mallets patches. So in my view: very basic stuff, but decent enough to use for simple projects. Personally, I don't use these timp patches in my projects at all, since I have much more complete timp libraries available. The loops and percussion combo patches in these libaries are much more useful to me, and I do fire them up occaision. The various metal and drum patches are decent. Overall, I think $19 is a fair price. Frankly, I wouldn't pay more. That's just my experience, as someone who does full orchestral mock-ups. YMMV. Rob

From Eduardo Tarilonte: "I am beyond excited to introduce to you “Quetzal, Ancient Sounds of Mesoamerica” along with the brand new Engine player. This unique sound world brings to life the mystical era of Mesoamerican civilizations and allows you to experience the sounds of a forgotten time up close. Discover a majestic collection of clay flutes, original reproductions of the instruments of the past, and be inspired by ancient drums and over 80 soundscapes. Quetzal offers over 7,000 individual samples and more than 50 playable instruments. With elaborate multisamples and various articulations, Quetzal provides a versatile and authentic sound palette for any production. Experience the magic of Quetzal as it becomes your gateway to a realm of ancient wonders and timeless mysteries. I really hope you enjoy it and find it inspiring for your music. Thanks as always for your support." https://www.bestservice.com/en/quetzal.html

I have Adventure Strings, Soaring Strings and Adventure Brass. They are quite good for the stuff I do.

Mine is 45% also...