Soundwise

This track was recorded in the 2021. My last work before tendinitis took over.

BandLab link

Thanks for sharing your experience, folks! I've listened to all demos and was surprised how good does the Baritone sound! Vintage Gent is no slouch either.

I'd like me a piece of advice! If I were to purchase just one guitar library, which one to pick? I'm not looking for anything genre-specific, but usual logic common for normal instruments does not really apply here. Normally, a Strat would be a do-it-all for me, but virtual instruments are not limited with body shapes, tuning stability, noise interference, fretwork, feel, you name it.

One lib to rule them all. Which one is it?

12 minutes ago, jngnz said:

And if you want cheap headphone correction that doesn’t crash DAWs or emit random clicks and noise bursts like at least half of all Hornet plugins, get Toneboosters Morphit and support a dev with actual talent.

I have both (and then some). IME, VHS, dispite its misleading name, is a high quality plugin. I prefer it to Morphit in most cases. Not because "it sounds better", mind you. Rather, because it's even more CPU efficient compared to Morphit, and I can hear more details, minute nuances with VHS.

As always, YMMV. Peace!

If you are not a Sonarworks user -- don't pass this by. This is extremely good headphone correction software.

Already posted here:

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

They look great, work great, and sound great.

Agreed!

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I honestly don't see much room for improvement.

IK knows how to surprise us.  However, since the Tape bundle release, newer plugins are so CPU hungry, that I almost never use them. Unfortunately, the MixBox, being a great all-in-one solution for mixing, also requires a lot of resources, and thus is unusable.

Should the discussed improvement be aimed at CPU efficiency of all modules, that alone could make the upgrade worthwhile. Otherwise, I'm inclined to enjoy gazing at beautiful UIs on the "Internets", but use plugins that actually work.

I don't get contemporary obsession with ugly, angry, upset carnivore creatures, or filth, or blood. It's not cool!

Quite an impressive list of changes. And the last theme looks awesome. Pretty much like my favorite theme in code editor. ?

2 hours ago, IK Multimedia said:

The upgrade is the same product, you are shown the version for which you qualify when you are in our store.  I guess the difference in what the license is called may be important to someone who may want to resell their plug-ins later, so I see that but note it is the same exact set of plugins.

IIRC, upgrade to the next major version was a bit easier for the MAX license holders. Is it still true?

I bet that people who vote for the best Audio Interface and people who vote for the best DAW are NOT the same people.

I have almost everything, but the TEAC bundle and latest additions (The Farm Stone Room, Joe Chiccarelli Vocal Strip and FAME Studio Reverb).

Real value could be the MAX tier itself, not the aforementioned modules. Is it worth the investment?

26 minutes ago, cclarry said:

It was covered here...but all good!

 

I've seen that thread, but IMO this extension stands out and probably deserves its own thread.

Thanks for your understanding!

5 preset kits
3 snare samples, 2 kick samples,
4 tom samples, 2 crashes, 1 ride, 1 china,
1 hi hat

Preprocessed by David Bendeth
David's classic samples mixed into
top two velocities

https://www.jrrshop.com/steven-slate-david-bendeth-drums-expansion-for-ssd

https://www.jrrshop.com/steven-slate-david-bendeth-drums-expansion-for-trigger

No extra discount

54 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Not Installed!

I was sure I owned the Pro Version but a review of My Account says "no way Hose-A", yet I do get an offer of $123 since I own some "other" products.

Have you checked your user area? I see that $39 offer there:

My SpectraLayers Pro 4 license doesn't qualify. Oh, well. ?‍?️

What's the best software for stem separation? I mean, it terms of getting consistent results fast.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/arturia-fx-collection-5

7 hours ago, Fleer said:

So I got three of these. Now what…

You can run them in parallel and equalize three bands at once!

I've been toying with an idea of upgrading stock ceramic pickups on a cheap Squire Telecaster to alnico. It's a throw-away instrument, so I'm reluctant to make any investments into it, unless it proves absolutely necessary.

Spoiler alert: it doesn't.

I went through dozens of YT videos, comparing alnico and ceramic single coils. Then studied bode plots of both designs. Since I wanted a personal first-hand experience, I went to a local music store with a portable recording setup and recorded pricey teles with alnico pickups. As you might have already guessed, the pricier guitars sounded better -- more defined and snappy -- in the mix. That is, compared to the cheap Squire.

Then I decided to apply an FR as seen on bode plots to the stock Squire pickups using a simple EQ. Guess what! I'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference in a blind test.

On the other hand, I've been experimenting with Roland/Boss V-Guitar technology, which models different pickups and instruments. The end result, however, depends on the construction of the instrument, hosting a GK pickup or a similar system. If the modeled instrument is similar to the hosting one in construction (body type, scale, string gauge), then the modelling works as expected. It is very easy to transform Ibanez to Strat or Tele with Roland's V-guitar. But, in order to get good acoustic emulation out of that system, the hosting guitar must have heavy gauge strings installed, because that slinky-spanky character of the lighter gauge strings cannot be dialed out with just modelling.

In other words, I think that this plugin should be able to successfully mimic various pickup EQ curves. But I wouldn't expect it to transform your instrument into something completely different. 

5 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

So, I started going through Waves CLA-2A, IK White 2A, Softube / NIs VC 2A, even Brainworx BX_Opto, and any possible similar compressor I could find. Could not replicate the sound of that stem.

You were looking for a particular color.

5 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

This implies that all emulations are created equal. When they are absolutely not.

It doesn't imply that. And I agree, that they are not equal. They are equally good, however, because all emulations are based on particular prototypes, and the prototyped hardware units are not equal in many aspects.

4 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

Are you not impressed after using their plugins?

Although, the question was not addressed to me, hope you don't mind me sharing my 2 cents.

UAD emulations are top-notch. Period. However, this doesn't mean that other plugins don't sound as good or unable to beat UAD plugins in features.

Unless one is looking for a particular color (or believes that somehow plugins, that emulate hardware that was used to record smashing hits, can help with creating another smashing hit, since we all need a source of inspiration, right?), that person is all set with what he already has.

1 hour ago, LittleStudios said:

I had to roll back to v1.1.5 because every time I would attempt to open the stand alone version of v1.1.6 it would blip out of existence.

Works fine on Linux, though.

This TONEX is unbelievable! I never knew that people actually want a chromatic tuner tone profile in their signal chains, yet here we are.

If I had to pick just one word to describe the sound character of AA amp-sims, that would be "grainy".  Sometimes it's exactly what you need, sometimes it's too much, but the grainy character is always there. I also recommend to check out their cab packs. My favorite so far is Chromeless (based on Matchless). It sounds awesome and can be used across multiple genres.