Amicus717

Update: Emailed them about the Ceres check-out problem, got a prompt reply... "In our haste to make Ceres free, we ... well... didn't make it free! This has now been fixed, big apologies! Please go ahead and try again Customer Support @ Auddict" I tested, and it does now work properly.

Can't seem to pick up the Ceres freebie. "Order cannot be zero" when I try to process it through their purchase system. I wonder if it's only available as a freebie if you buy something else along with it?

This one has always tempted me, and I've heard good things about it. Anyone here use The Orchestra? Any thoughts?

Nov 26th until Dec 2nd. Full details and pricing are here: https://www.vsl.co.at/en/News/2019-11_Black_Friday_Deals

I will bravely and completely resist buying all of the things I'd like, but totally don't need...That's the first hour. An hour later, I'll buy all the things.

The CDN price is almost $900.00 - that's a bit less than I paid for Komplete 10 Ultimate. Their stuff sounds really nice, and very useful, but I wouldn't pay even half that.

It looks like a broad mix of prices, with most sitting around 50% off. But there are some outliers: Majestica is going for $178 (goes $598 on Dec 1st), which is a pretty fair discount... https://8dio.com/instrument/majestica/ That particular library doesn't interest me, but its probably worth looking around their site for the specific stuff you are interested in and seeing what deals are on offer.

Gorgeous...and bought!

Available soon, $130.00 https://www.productionvoices.com/product/the-halfling/

Also, for very basic stuff, Da Capo by Sonokinetic. Good sketching tool.

Make sure you Wave at the Lab as you leave.

Miroslav's control features are ancient and/or kind of odd, and aside from a few select instruments, I barely use it at all. I have much better stuff in my collection. I got Epic Orchestra when I bought VI Pro 7 (as a Cubase user I already had a dongle), and it's great sounding, etc, but it is not a full orchestra by any means. And while there is a really nice selection of stuff, I suspect Tiger is correct and its primarily a showcase for VSL's sampling and programming skills. I do use it -- the cornet, oboe d'amore, etc, are in my current template -- but it is not a main library by any means. Both Miroslav or Epic Orchestra are essentially products that fill in the gaps of an already solid library collection, and Epic Orchestra sounds much better than Miroslav, and uses much more updated program and design.

Available here: https://8dio.com/instrument/harmonium/

VSL Special editions 4,5,6 & 7, hopefully the next time they do their semi-regular 30% off deal...

Really enjoyed this one. Clear and clean mix, and nice overall production with good polish. Also, nice writing. Lyrics are entertaining.

I really like it. Nice combination of sounds, and the mix is really good.

Sounds very nice! And you can't argue with the price.

I have Symphonic Sketchpad. It's not bad at all, and is pretty much exactly what it says it is: a sketchpad for orchestral ideas. The sounds are decent and useable, including some minor gems -- the piano is quite nice, for example. The sounds are fairly dry, and the mix of microphones are quite useful for blending this library with others. The interface is quite configurable and easy to use. It's pretty efficiently put together, and you've got everything you need to make fairly comprehensive sketches with it. I sort of look on it as a really no-frills Albion ONE (well, kind of...), and plan to use it on my laptop when I travel. I doubt it will ever make a regular appearance in the orchestral template on my main DAW -- I have too many glossier and more specialized libraries to draw from. But when I visit my parents in Florida, or whatever, I can see this being a really useful tool for working on new music ideas. It sounds good enough that you could make some pretty nice sketches with it, and it's fast and easy to use. I like to write music really quickly and with minimal fuss, and Sketchpad has been pretty good at that, so far. For what it's worth, at $99 its great. I would have been somewhat unhappy if I'd paid $299. As always, YMMV...

It's a pretty harsh copy protection scheme, and I'm irritated by their "we'll meet you in the middle and you can purchase replacement licences for a 50% discount" rhetoric if your dongle goes missing. Making folks re-purchase something they've already bought because there were unlucky isn't "meeting in the middle". FWIW, if your dongle breaks but you still have it, you can return the broken dongle to VSL. If it was out of warranty, you can recover your licenses for 20 Euro per license. If the dongle broke within its 2 year warranty period, you get your licenses back for free and a new dongle to go along with it. Regardless, it's rather a cash-grab, and made me pretty reluctant to keep buying into their ecosystem. But their stuff sounds good enough that I did anyway, and I now own enough VSL licenses that getting the $70 copy protection scheme was something of an irritating no-brainer.

Terrible, terrible news...

Looking forward to trying this. Gotta admit, the VSL stuff is really growing on me - I find that I'm using their libraries more and more as I go along, especially their woodwinds, brass and percussion, despite the fact that I don't like their licensing policies and copy protection. I still use a lot of Kontakt libraries (all my goto string libraries are Kontakt), but VSL's Special Editions (both the originals and the newly Synchronized ones) have elbowed their way into my template and pushed aside some of my old mainstays, like the EastWest libraries. I almost never fire up Play anymore. The VSL stuff sounds very good to my ears, and it's really configurable - you can setup the patches in all sorts of ways to suit your preferred playing style, etc. And Ensemble Pro is great; I picked up VEP 7 during their last sale, and offloaded some of my libraries to my second PC (some of my kontakt libraries, ironically), and VEP has run them flawlessly.

Available here -https://cinesamples.com/product/cinesymphony-lite Also comes with a $50 off coupon for any CineSymphony Core product...

Available here: https://projectsam.com/library-category/the-free-orchestra/

Available here: https://soundiron.com/products/hyperion-strings-elements Of note: Those who bought Micro should see a discount code in their email, for additional savings...

I think that sounds pretty damn good! The playing is tight, of course, and its a great piece of music. But I'm really astonished at how good the little Behringer digital mixer sounds. The whole recording has a super-polished sound to it. Nice bass solo, by the way