AAS Upgrade

[GroverKen]

If you own any AAS instruments it might be worthwhile checking your account for discounts. I've just upgraded to Ultra Analog VA-3 with the Kicks and Snares pack for $39 ($40 saving on the normal upgrade price). No email received but I was just going through my account to see about purchasing the new pack. That's me got everything they produce once again!

[fitzroy]

Nice catch. $49 for me. Tempting

[Reid Rosefelt]

Kicks and Snares is the first AAS expansion they've ever brought out that I don't want.   I just don't have any need for more kicks and snares.  ?

Like most of you, I have a ton of duplicate libraries that can be swapped for new ones, but I'm not going to use one for that.

While AAS often offers giveaways of their expansions, the  one thing that AAS has yet to discount are their  instrument upgrades. Even when I've emailed them about that, the answer has been no. 

So I'm waiting for the inevitable release of Strum GS-3, to see what the upgrade will be for that and String Studio VS-2 and Ultra Analog VA-2. 

[paulo]

8 minutes ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

the  one thing that AAS has yet to discount are their  instrument upgrades. Even when I've emailed them about that, the answer has been no. 

Really? In my experience they have been quite open to a bundle type of deal that may not be an advertised one. Perhaps they just don't like frogs??

Personally I'm still hoping against all hope that they will somehow find a way to give Tassman a better look, but I guess Strum GS-3 is way more likely. That will need to be good though because of all their synths Strum is probably the least good.

[Fleer]

Life’s full of kicks and snares. 

[balinas]

I snares at folks and kicks ‘em if they need it!  

[scook]

1 hour ago, paulo said:

Personally I'm still hoping against all hope that they will somehow find a way to give Tassman a better look

This is pretty definitive and one reason I don't buy AAS products (Now if they made new VCV Rack modules it would be different).

From https://www.applied-acoustics.com/tassman-4/faq/

Quote

Why is Tassman 4 being deprecated? §

The deprecation of Tassman 4 has been a long time coming. Tassman 4 has been our biggest endeavour, filled with good and bad design decisions but ultimately, we failed to make it evolve. Additionally, Tassman 4 will stop working completely with macOS Catalina (10.15). With all this, we are no longer at ease in selling it actively. We are choosing to stop its development and focus our efforts on projects more adapted to today's music production workflow and devices.

 

[Grem]

4 hours ago, paulo said:

of all their synths Strum is probably the least good.

I have really worked with Strum and have found it to be quit a capable guitar synth. If you learn to work all the key switches, you can make some really real sounding strumming. I am a guitar player, not a keyboardist. So my skills in playing a guitar are far superior than my skills at playing a keyboard, much less playing a keyboard to make it sound like a guitar, if you followed that. : ) Strum is made for a keyboardist (a good one) to play realistic guitar strumming while recording. That's it's strength.

However, they give a lot of info on what's going on in the manual. I have learned I can use that info on a midi track to make some very respectable strumming along with say a piano or strings. And I am just scratching the surface.

[paulo]

9 hours ago, Grem said:

I have really worked with Strum and have found it to be quit a capable guitar synth. If you learn to work all the key switches, you can make some really real sounding strumming. I am a guitar player, not a keyboardist. So my skills in playing a guitar are far superior than my skills at playing a keyboard, much less playing a keyboard to make it sound like a guitar, if you followed that. : ) Strum is made for a keyboardist (a good one) to play realistic guitar strumming while recording. That's it's strength.

However, they give a lot of info on what's going on in the manual. I have learned I can use that info on a midi track to make some very respectable strumming along with say a piano or strings. And I am just scratching the surface.

That's why I said least good instead of bad. It isn't bad, but to my ears it needs to be more buried in the mix than the sample based versions do, which is perfectly understandable given that it's a modelling synth, but it has it's uses for sure. That said, to say that some of the add-ons they have released for it are a bit whelming would be a generous omission of under IMO.

What I meant about a v3 needing to be good is that a simple cosmetic re-skin to bring it onto line with the other v3's wouldn't be enough to make me upgrade.

[paulo]

13 hours ago, scook said:

This is pretty definitive and one reason I don't buy AAS products (Now if they made new VCV Rack modules it would be different).

From https://www.applied-acoustics.com/tassman-4/faq/

Yeah, I've read other things before where they pretty much said that it would never happen, but it's such a shame as a better UI would make it so much more usable.

 

[Magic Russ]

5 hours ago, paulo said:

That's why I said least good instead of bad. It isn't bad, but to my ears it needs to be more buried in the mix than the sample based versions do, which is perfectly understandable given that it's a modelling synth, but it has it's uses for sure. That said, to say that some of the add-ons they have released for it are a bit whelming would be a generous omission of under IMO.

What I meant about a v3 needing to be good is that a simple cosmetic re-skin to bring it onto line with the other v3's wouldn't be enough to make me upgrade.

I find that it's a great creative tool.  I will often finding myself coming up with chord progressions that I might not have found playing guitar.

However, I don't always find the sound convincing.  Maybe they could provide MIDI out in a future release.

[paulo]

1 hour ago, Magic Russ said:

I find that it's a great creative tool.  I will often finding myself coming up with chord progressions that I might not have found playing guitar.

However, I don't always find the sound convincing.  Maybe they could provide MIDI out in a future release.

Yeah, that's what I meant by saying that it has it uses. As with all the AAS synths I'm happy to have it (bought as part of a bundle rather than for itself) and like you I do use it for composition purposes, but I wouldn't upgrade to a newer version unless it offered something more than a redesign and a few new presets. I also find the strumming patterns to be a bit limited and it annoys me that if you change the sound then the strumming pattern also changes with it, but in fairness I have never RTFM so maybe there's a way to stop that and I've just been too lazy to find out.

[Reid Rosefelt]

22 hours ago, paulo said:

Really? In my experience they have been quite open to a bundle type of deal that may not be an advertised one. Perhaps they just don't like frogs??

 

Hey!   It's a bad idea to kick a frog's AAS.

Are you saying that you have gotten an upgrade  to a version 3 for less than $39?  Because throwing in an expansion or two (like this deal) to that doesn't improve the deal for me.

AAS has given away a total of dozens of expansions over the last year or two.  Or done it for a few bucks: Stack Social; Humble Bundle;  many times at  T+S;  Plugin Boutique; the yearly Christmas gift.  There have been others.   And each  free or cheap expansion one can be traded in for a brand new one, which my contact at AAS has always been happy to do. I have so many duplicates I don't even bother to pick up more.  I trade in every time there are three new ones I want, so as not to bug him too often.

But when I asked him once for a discount on an upgrade, he just gave me the usual price.

So has your contact at AAS given you a price for any upgrade or upgrades  lower than the sales price offered to anybody?

If so, then I will accept that there is anti-frog prejudice at AAS, which is too bad, because I have been a long time customer who actually bought a lot of their expansions at full price, before the free-for-all began.   ?

[Grem]

Paulo I didn't  take what you said in a bad way. I was just mentioning how I use it. 

And when you change the sound, it does change the midi associated with the sound. At first it was like wt*? Then I realized that before I change the sound, just drag the pattern I was using into the DAW. I think you have to change the way it gets  it sounds after that if you want to hear the midi in your DAW., not at my machine right now..

[paulo]

1 minute ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

Hey!   It's a bad idea to kick a frog's AAS.

I'm not. They are!

Seriously, I honestly can't remember the full details and out of fairness to AAS I wouldn't reveal them if I did, but way back when they did give me a bundle deal on the all synths bundle (because I already had a couple)  that made it into a no brainer and wasn't an advertised one at that time. Maybe it has been offered since then, but I wouldn't know because I already have them all so I don't look any more.

What I will say is that I've always found their customer service to be first rate other than when I asked a question re Objeq delay which they failed to answer twice.

[Reid Rosefelt]

By the way, may main critique of AAS is the way they handle NKS, which is awful. 

You should be able to load up Ultra Analog and then search for all the bass sounds, because each one is tagged.  Unlike all the other companies, they list each expansion as a separate instrument, so if you're looking for something you have to load each of them one by one and search the tags within it it.  It also means you have to search through three dozen or more libraries, when they only have three instruments.  Imagine if every Massive expansion worked like that? 

This is absolutely ridiculous way to go about things.  And it is the main reason why I don't use my AAS instruments as often as I do others, because it is so incredibly difficult to find my favorite patches.   I like the sounds but they make it too much work. 

I understand the reason.  Each expansion is both an expansion for the synth and an expansion for the player. 
The solution is simple.  Let the customer download the version they want.  I own player versions of Ultra Analog-3 libraries.  If I upgrade to Ultra-Analog 3, I could go and download the other one.  

If it's too complicated, just make it available to people who care about such things.

Don't forget that you don't need to even own any keyboard controller to search tags on Komplete Kontrol.  You can do it with your the arrow buttons on your computer keyboard.  You'll hear all the demo sounds too. 

I've always wanted to make a video on using the Freelance Soundlabs NKS.  I will have time in June, so I'll do it then.  I'll write my contact at AAS then and show them exactly what I mean. 

 

[Reid Rosefelt]

1 minute ago, paulo said:

What I will say is that I've always found their customer service to be first rate other than when I asked a question re Objeq delay which they failed to answer twice.

They have among the best customer service in the business.  No question about that. 

[paulo]

1 hour ago, Grem said:

Paulo I didn't  take what you said in a bad way. I was just mentioning how I use it. 

And when you change the sound, it does change the midi associated with the sound. At first it was like wt*? Then I realized that before I change the sound, just drag the pattern I was using into the DAW. I think you have to change the way it gets  it sounds after that if you want to hear the midi in your DAW., not at my machine right now..

Yeah I know that you weren't being snarky, I was just clarifying what I said in case what I said came across that way  which wasn't my intention. I think I figured out what you suggest re midi and changing of patches, but it would be much better IMO if you could just set the option to lock the selected midi pattern within the plug-in and then audition it with different sound presets. Maybe not a biggie in the grand scheme of things, but just something that has always bugged me about it.

[Fleer]

2 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

They have among the best customer service in the business.  No question about that. 

Absolutely!