Zolton

For those interested in the differences between lite and not-so-lite (according to the PB product page):

I was a fan of an older version of Loopcloud that let you index your own files without an active subscription. I think I may have mangled my library location somewhere along the way, but for tagging and some quick searching, it was pretty great. Sadly, later versions only tag and index downloaded clips, so the app is less useful without a sub. I've since moved to Sononym, which has the sort of "musicality comparisons" -- by brightness, harmonicity and noisiness (all app-defined), among others -- you mentioned. It's also a bit slow to initially index a large collection, but nothing so sluggish as Cosmos or ADSR. (Older versions of ADSR, at least -- I haven't tried that one in a while, but I had performance issues in the past.) Incremental updates are pretty quick, and Sononym also browses folders without full "library" indexing -- you lose the ability to compare in those, but browsing is quick and converting to a library is a single click. For real (eventual) convenience, I'm slowly sorting through the more interesting sample sets in my library using Sononym to browse and explore, and using symlinks to group similar subsets (hand percussion, hits and stabs, etc.). I plan to run the full "categorized" set back through Sononym and my DAW for quick browsing through, e.g., all the ambient drones or perc loops, and also hand various sets of one shot percs/drums to Atlas to make more focused maps.

Interestingly (for personal reasons, at least), both sale codes work for Ethera Sahara Voices, as expected/advertised -- but the $15 off first-order / newsletter code doesn't. That newsletter code works for other products, like Ethera Gold 2.5, etc., though. Sahara Voices seems to be a consistent exception for the newsletter code, though it meets all of the listed criteria (>$40, not a Vocaloid, ~1 year old and no longer labeled as "new"). That said, the difference with one code vs. another for SV is, like, three bucks. It's just an interesting maze of codes and qualifiers, is all.

For Novation peeps, Capsule appears to be the shiny toy du jour for the Novation Sound Collective, as well. The semi-fine print over there reads: "Sound Collective members can download Capsule's Neon sound library for free from their Novation account from 14th April to 22nd June (4pm GMT). Access the 30-day free trial to have all the capsules at your disposal." My impression from this thread about Capsule's launch is that you (eventually) have to pay for packs to use the player, so maybe this is effectively a 30-day trial? Or possibly more, but it's not entirely clear.

Yeah, that's my concern. I missed the discount angle -- stupid quick-twitch freebie reflexes! -- but I own a couple of plugins that provide codes to get Tails or Bass-Mint super-cheap, which would otherwise be tempting. I see that registering the Shadow Hills Compressor gives you access to a $99 coupon for Class A, which reduces to ~$30 with the second login trick. In the recent past, I might have thought that's an unintentional loophole they'd brick over quick -- but with any single plugin effectively available for $31 for the foreseeable future, maybe it's all anticipated at this point.

Yeah, this looks like a fairly nice version of what it is -- a rompler of glass/bell plinks with a few handy settings and extras in the player. There are around a dozen preset variations with various effects laid on, plus layers of birdsong and water sounds, if you prefer your plinkage on the woodsy side. Quiet Music seems to snuggle into a niche of meditative/ambient/low-key tools and the free ones (plus Healing; who says no to Tibetan singing bowls on sale?) I've snagged all have nice interfaces, clear functions and a few extra bells and whistles (sometimes literally) to make them interesting. Definitely niche, but I dig their style.

For anyone chasing down *alltehfreethangs4eva!!!1!*, it may be worth noting that there's also a free Classic British '73 emulation plugin in the WavDSP Analog Creator series on the site. Two possibly less encouraging things, from a logistics standpoint: 1. As the download page states: b. As one of their help pages states: Li'l messy, if such things unfloat your particular personal boat.

Ten dollah, according to the site.

As someone who literally learned what a DAW is around this time two years ago, I don't qualify to answer the original question. But if the experience of a fellow "not-knower" helps at all, I did try out the Dr. Device filter plugin for the first time on a track this week. It was pretty intuitive, comes with some nifty presets (some extreme-ish, others not) and a lot of fun to play with. I dialed what I was looking for in, more or less, without too much drama. The little balls in the XY interface were really cool to fiddle with, though one small word of warning (unless there's an easier path in the manual I admittedly didn't read, if it exists): you can "grab" each ball with a mouse click, then send it off at a desired direction and speed with a click release. But if you accidentally send it off at *lightning* speed, it's very difficult to grab again. And all your audio will sound like woo-woo cross-panning ambulance sirens in the meantime, if you have any modulation hooked up to the axes while you're desperately trying to recapture the bouncing ball. Your mileage will probably vary. I'm just not very bright.

An excellent point! I did just that with Battery 4 a few times, which opened up a large swath of sounds without any fancy effort. Probably the better way to go, for sane people who don't dream of converting a whole Sononym or Atlas 2 database into arcane XML for nerdy (but possibly wildly impractical) reasons.

I'm a big fan of Liquid Rhythm and sincerely hope WaveDNA is able to continue developing and improving on the ideas, though losing David Beckford obviously puts that into question. Based on the news from their site, Liquid Music v1.7.0 was released in late 2019, before his death in mid-2020. I'm not sure whether the company has stated any specific plans for the future, but the software has some pretty cool and unique aspects, if you "click" with them. For anyone interested in Liquid Rhythm, its greatest pain (for me) could turn out to be a huge advantage (again for me, or others who code a little). The software has a nice but smallish library of drum samples, with the ability to add your own. I tried that one at a time via the interface for a couple hundred (i.e., the "pain"), and it works okay, but is pretty tedious. Eventually, I discovered that these "instruments" you set up are stored in a pretty simple XML file, with the path info to the samples. I haven't tried it yet, but with a bit of creative fiddling, I suspect one could pretty easily drop in any number of samples with a list of file locations and a few lines of code to mimic the XML tags. I happened to catch a wild Black Friday sale at BestService to get LiquidMusic for ~$35. At the time, I wondered if that was a final "unload the merchandise" sale for WaveDNA, so I'm happy to see they're still up and running, at least in some form. Unfortunately, while the sale was "can't resist" for me, I also had a few things I'd planned to bu around BF, and I haven't had much time to explore LM yet. It does work in a similar way as LR, at least superficially with the instruments and patterns, but there's definitely more to it. I'm looking forward to having a deep rabbit-hole dive into it one day soon.

Not for nothin', but in case anyone was hoping to squeeze this in around twenty bucks with the code, the linked page also sez, in stern red letters: "PLEASE NOTE: This product is already heavily discounted. You cannot use the Ethera Loyalty code above when purchasing this product. The new newsletter subscriber $15 discount code will also not work when purchasing this product. To use this code the minimum spend must be $40." Personally, I'm waiting for ZG to decide that Sahara Voices released in April isn't "new" any more, so I can use the newsletter code next time it's on sale as an entree into the Etheraverse.

I took the plunge and did a bit of testing this evening, so I think I can answer this for Cakewalk, at least. (And what other DAWs would anyone care about, anyway? Are there even others? Who can say?) For instruments, nearly every plugin seems to work in Cakewalk. Some of these are 32bit, so compatibility with some other DAWs is dicey, but here's the rundown: Acoustica (minimal GUI, basically ROMplers/preset lists): Instruments, Expanded Instruments, Studio Drums Acoustica (full GUI): Pianissimo GSonique (32bit): Alien 303, Renegade Kastelheimer (32bit): Veldberg XD Memorymoon: ME80 (32bit), ME80 v2.5, Messiah (32bit), Messiah 2, Memorymoon Synth The separate registration for Cherry Audio (Voltage Modular) Ignite works independently, and the modules registered are included when running VM standalone or in Cakewalk. I believe the included VoltKitchen MinimogueVA also works, but I already owned that, and I didn't retest the version from Mixcraft. Ditto AAS Lounge Lizard Session and Journeys bank, GSi(?) VB3, Martinic Combo Organs F / V and Acoustica Nightlife (32bit), which I had previously installed (and some of which are free) and didn't test the versions from Mixcraft. Unlike these, QuikQuak Glass Viper is locked to Mixcraft and won't work outside it. Most of the bundled effects also work in Cakewalk, and many of these are also 32bit: Acoustica: 31-Band EQ, Pro Studio Reverb, VocalZap Epralux (32bit): ORB7000, POD4500 Online Mastering Studio EU (32bit): EU ProMixEQ-10A G-Sonique (32bit): DTC-1, Dubmaster Liquid Delay, Dubshox H8, FAT+, FSQ1964, GSXL 4070 EQ,M/S Envelope Follower+, M/S Harmonics Vitalizer+, M/S Stereophase Filter+, Pultronic EQ 110P, TrebleCream, Twisthead VS-206, VTD-42 Psychedelic Delay, XBass 4000, Zener Limiter LM-2Z Pentode Audio (32bit): PSEQ-1, TRW-1, VBE-1, VTC-1 ToneBoosters (all v3, so previous versions to those on the TB website, and mostly "demo" versions, which I believe remain functional indefinitely, but perhaps others can comment on the specifics): Barricade, Broadcast, BusCompressor, Compressor, DeEsser, Dither, Equalizer, EZQ, Ferox, FIX, FIX4, Gate, MultiFX, Reverb, TimeMachine (I can say that most of these from Mixcraft work in Cakewalk, though I happened to have a couple [Barricade, Reverb, etc.] previously installed, so I didn't test those.) I already have Melodyne Essential, so I didn't try the separate registration for that, but my best guess is that it works independently of the DAW, similar to Ignite above. I also had previously installed GVST GSnap and GTune, Voxengo Boogex and SPAN, AcmeBarGig Shred (32bit), all of which I think are free, and I didn't test those. The effects locked to Mixcraft include QuikQuak Fusion Field and Studio Devil Virtual Bass Amp. There are also plugins available under directories called "Legacy" and "Pro Studio Legacy" that appear to be earlier versions or outdated precursors of various TB, Acoustica and perhaps other plugins, but I didn't test any of those in Cakewalk. (Or in Mixcraft, for that matter. Leave the past in the past, eh?) Hope this helps! Edited to add: So far as I could see, the Alpha and Omni samplers are not among the plugins in Mixcraft 9 Pro's VST directory, so those may be even deeper "baked in" to the Mixcraft DAW. (Or I just missed them.) Also, as best I can ascertain, Cakewalk ignored the iZotope "Mastering Essentials" plugin included among the effects plugins. This may be because I have some other iZotope plugins installed, complete non-M9 DAW incompatibility or some other reason.

I did about a B/B- job of buying only the things I'd planned on, with the theme of helping me learn, organize and/or be more efficient: Atlas 2 Scaler 2 Sononym Unify ...without getting tempted by other shiny discounts -- except for upgrades to SynthMaster and LiquidMusic, which were on my list, but could have waited, and a nifty $7 accordian from Polkasounds (which is really nice, and incidentally includes a bonus deal if you're also on VI-Control, through tonight, I think). But my real once-in-a-millennium Black Friday coup was being awake at 3am Thanksgiving morning to pick up the item displayed below:

I definitely had to do the same, mostly (I think) for some or all of the older SampleTank libs. One odd detail, in case it helps anyone diagnose the issue: after registering in Program Manager and downloading, the libs in question were locked in ST4. But IK had unlocked ST3 for me earlier (so I could import a legacy library a while back), and the same libs worked fine in ST3. But until I ran the serials through Auth Manager, I got no love for them from ST4.

Sorry, sorry -- I was distracted by shiny objects and noisemakers. Here's the latest thoroughly scientific analysis of how the IK GB is going:

I think you'd probably feel right... https://www.pianobook.co.uk/packs/trumpetuba/ ...at home: https://www.pianobook.co.uk/packs/pandemic-pad/

One more for old times' sake -- but I'm not sure you're going to like it: Suddenly, the home team has to play a leeetle bit of catchup.

I dunno. Undiagnosed OCD, or some sort of childhood head trauma, maybe? I'm not touching it, whatever it is.

I mean, since you asked (and since I'm bored, waiting for some work stuff to finish up): I added a couple of other group buy-discussing sites for extra spice and context. You may extrapolate from these numbers various conclusions regarding "quality", "quantity", "community" or "cacophony" at your leisure.

But it's still number one in our hearts overall page count:

Just in case anyone's still watching the count update to update in October like a plugin-starved hawk, that translates to an hourly rate of ~7 -- minus whatever the 28 September hours after hitting 20k bring. This seems like a good time to thank IK and @Peter - IK Multimedia for a full quarter-year of fun. I fiddled around with the numbers a bunch, because it's a hoot -- but I appreciate the promotion, the support and all the hard work that goes into both. And as someone who had only ST4 SE and a handful of freebies before the group buy, I scored an entire slew of new goodies to learn about and play with. I wound up with four entries, all with fortunate discounts, and somewhere around 22k, I'll run out of wonderful things to discover, for something like 1/80th of the combined list price. That's absolutely mindblowing. It should be a fun winter.

I've taken Peter's direct quote of "Eastern" (many pages back in this thread) as official, which would make the "end of September" the rest of today and all of tomorrow away, around 36 1/2 hours now. I've seen others use the "Days Remaining" counter on the website as a guide, but (a) I've never seen Peter or the site itself claim that's an official "day-turnover" clock; (2) if it were, the GB would end mid-morning on a weekday (aka a "heavy" buy-in day) in the target time zone, which seems unlikely; and (iii) I've assumed they initialized the fancy website numbers at start-of-business on the day they announced it (August 5th), so the countdown counter started countering down then, but they didn't think to readjust it to reflect an end time of midnight.

The pace slowed a bit overnight (from 30+/hour to 20+/hour), but has usually picked up a bit midday (Eastern time). If things stay roughly on course, it looks like the count should hit 20k around midnight tonight, with a full day to spare. If things jump unroughly off course, then it's already down to less than 9/hour needed, which is basically "coasting speed": There are 37 hours to go. If the run-up at the end of August is any guide, the count added 1200+ in the final 36 hours of the month (though it was 700 away from 10k at that point, so there may have been a little more "oomph" behind the final push). At any rate, it seems fairly likely the count may be halfway to 21k by the time October rolls around. Huzzah!

Welp, that's how you flatten a curve (and then twist it backwards like a paper clip): From noon yesterday (hour 84) to noon today (hour 60), a cool 720 signups went in, good for 30/hour. Hitting 19k by midnight tonight would've been a nice pace; as it is, there are 10 hours left to pile the numbers on. The rate needed now is ~16/hour and falling fast. Even if the influx wiggles a bit, going from 18k to 19k took 46 hours and didn't pick up the pace until around 18 hours in. There are 58 hours left for 20k, and a ~5% head start on the last thousand. Numbers are fun!