Amicus717

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.

On 4/17/2025 at 12:22 AM, Rain said:

Living in the desert has done wonders for my knees and joints in general, but at my age, it's better that I forget about ever putting the skates on again. 

The Hammer, man! That must have been something! lol

All the best for the playoffs, brother. I'll be rooting for the Leafs and the Habs from Vegas. My US team (Boston) has a few tough years ahead I expect. But it's great to see the Leafs come out on top of the Atlantic Division. And the Habs somehow manage to make it into the playoffs. 

 

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. 

1 hour ago, Rain said:

And on the topic of hockey... How cool is that? I'm a big fan of both guys.

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

On 4/13/2025 at 11:01 AM, Rain said:

Man, hockey is awesome. 

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. 

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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

2 hours ago, X-53mph said:

The article is from March 2024 in which they said they hoped to secure investment within the next 3 months. 9 months on, if Magix is still in operation, I'm guessing they got their investment sorted.

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.  

3 hours ago, audioschmaudio said:

Waves also have OneKnob Wetter. Who on earth thought that would be a good name?

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

7 minutes ago, craigb said:

Has anyone mentioned that the stand-in drummer died in 2008 yet?

 

 

 

 

 

?

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...

22 hours ago, Max Arwood said:

Thanks Rob. Which ones do you use?

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.

9 hours ago, Max Arwood said:

I was looking for some nice timpani for a project I am working on. Anyone have any suggestions? I thought this one sounded better than what I have. 

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

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

Mine is 45% also...

7 hours ago, Nick Blanc said:

Lumina is on my wishlist for years now, but still too expensive for what I would use it for.

Lumina is pretty nice and I use it a fair amount,  but it strikes me as a library that folks will either use a lot or not at all, depending on what they spend most of their time doing.  I use it mainly for the solo legato instruments, which are lovely and also heavy on cinematic schmaltz, much like the rest of the library. If that's not your thing, it's a pricey pick-up even on sale.

I'm glad I have it, but it was a luxury purchase rather than an essential addition to my template -- I have lots of other libraries that could cover the same ground if needed. 

1 hour ago, Fleer said:

And €24 for the Sordino Strings on their own, 25GB worth. 
Got it as a Christmas freebie two years ago. 

It's a good deal. These string libs sound very nice and have lots of useful articulations and configurable elements. 

That said, I am not keen on the GUI, and I see them as a library that needs tweaking and careful keyswitching and the like -- these aren't the kind of patches you load up and start jamming with. They're the kind of patches you load up when you've finished your sketch and have the arrangement nailed down and can spend a lot of time tweaking in the piano roll. 

That's how I use them, anyway. As always, YMMV

I didn't even bother trying, this time around. I don't find the Ostinato libraries useful at all, and something about this annual, frantic click-and-refresh-a-thon for the limited freebie every year just makes me feel like a trained monkey on a leash. So I sat it out.

4 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

Who has it?

I do.

I personally like it the best of all my Sonokinetic phrase libs.

However, that’s really subjective; Sotto is exactly like all  the others, and I just happen to find the phrases and textures in Sotto to be particularly useful. But that’s just me. If you’re on the fence about the usefulness of their phrase libs or dislike them, Sotto won’t change your mind. 

9 hours ago, Fleer said:

Tutti Free any good?

Yeah, it's fun. Sounds pretty good, and it's only 400+ mb -- so it's not eating HD space.

It's a lot of short recordings, so while there isn't a ton of content, it's got enough to be useful. I can see me using some of these little patches.  

13 minutes ago, Fleer said:

I love their Ostinato libraries. 

Their orchestral sample-based libraries are pretty good, too.

Orchestral Strings has a lovely sound and lots of articulations and setup flexibility. Ensemble Woodwinds offers the same. The both blend seamlessly with the phrase libs. 

I find them a bit resource intensive, though, and they wouldn’t be my first choice for quick work or sketching. Neither are they good enough to eclipse my other options; basically, they’re a nice additional color in the palette, with some unique features. And a really irritating GUI.