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AAS Chromaphone 3


Larry Shelby

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How are their other products?

They are offering me their professional series for $179, which includes Chromaphone 3, Ultra Analog VA-3, String Studio VS-3, Objeq Delay, Strum GS-2 and Lounge Lizard EP-4. Or I could get just the Chromaphone 3 for $73.87 at Don't Crack.

I'm going to download some demos but second opinions are welcome.

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1 hour ago, Pseudopop said:

How are their other products?

They are offering me their professional series for $179, which includes Chromaphone 3, Ultra Analog VA-3, String Studio VS-3, Objeq Delay, Strum GS-2 and Lounge Lizard EP-4. Or I could get just the Chromaphone 3 for $73.87 at Don't Crack.

I'm going to download some demos but second opinions are welcome.

How are their other products? Super! I use Strum the least. LOVE Lounge Lizard and Chromaphone the most! LL is wonderfully playable. Very responsive. No velocity layers (as in sampled VIs). Full velocity range.

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1 hour ago, Pseudopop said:

How are their other products?

They are offering me their professional series for $179, which includes Chromaphone 3, Ultra Analog VA-3, String Studio VS-3, Objeq Delay, Strum GS-2 and Lounge Lizard EP-4. Or I could get just the Chromaphone 3 for $73.87 at Don't Crack.

I'm going to download some demos but second opinions are welcome.

I don't have Objeq, but generally AAS stuff is very good, plus they are good people who give excellent service in my experience. IMO Strum GS-2 is the least good. The add on sound packs in particular are probably the worst thing they do. Don't really use Lounge Lizard because it mostly isn't the kind of sound that I'm generally looking for and not because I consider it to be bad at what it's for. If you think of it as being $30 each then I don't think you will be disappointed.

Edited by paulo
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I love the sound of their stuff, but keep it to the "Session" versions and AAS Player with a pile of sound packs. Player works fine for me (except I've found no use for the Strum packs I got in bundles), the only feature I would add to it would be a way to mark favorites.

For those having CPU issues, a trick that has worked for me in Player is reducing the number of voices. This may seem like it would reduce the lushness of those ENORMOUS AAS pads, but I've never even noticed a difference when going from 12 (the default) to say, 8.

I think this is because some of those long, evolving highly effected pads have such long tails that voices can really pile up if I'm doing something with a lot of changes or arps. The thing is, if I'm doing something with lots of changes, long tails can get in the way anyway. 8 or even 6 voices works just fine. If I'm doing piano key entry, 6 note chords are kinda my limit anyway.

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For me, this is the AAS top three:

- Chromaphone: best model for percussion and strings (even beats String Studio)

- Lounge Lizard: second best E-piano model (yeah, Pianoteq reigns supreme)

- Objeq: creatively does for delays what Adaptiverb does for reverbs 

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Okay, this is pertinent for other Swatches/AAS Player users who may be reading this: The AAS Player and sound packs that use Chromophone 3, Ultra-Analog 3, and String Studio 3 have all been updated to the new engines and sounds and they sound fantastic. I did a 1:1 comparison using some favorite Cinémathèque ambient pads and the already-magnificent sounds were huge.

 

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Thanks guys. I went for the $179 deal. It's a bit more money than I wanted to spend at the moment, but after some investigation I'm pretty sure that it's the best deal I could get for Chromaphone, String Studio and Ultra Analog. I have some of the player versions but upgrading them to full versions would cost about the same amount, so I don't think that would have been a viable path for me.

For my purposes there is a lot of overlap between Ultra Analog and IK's Syntronik, but I found enough good sounds to justify the purchase.  Also, I don't actually have a lot of synths so having these expanded my choices significantly.

I guess now I have to start using synths in my music...

Edited by Pseudopop
typos
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It pays to contact AAS for upgrade pricing. I asked AAS sales support if there is a cheaper bundle price than 3 x $39 for upgrading my version 2 instruments to the latest versions - that was what was offered in the website. They offer me it for $69 which is much more reasonable.

Edited by Tomgu
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44 minutes ago, Pseudopop said:

Yeah, I get that. But if Chromaphone has a better string model it sounds like it does some things better than String Studio.

But there are also some things that String Studio does better than Chromaphone.

Pitch bends on String Studio sound more realistic.  In Chromaphone, Pitch bends simply raises or lowers the pitch of the sound - and that's all. (and it's very CPU expensive while it’s at it. )

In String Studio's Pitch bend, there is a slight change of timbre and resonance as the bend is taking place.  To my ears, this sounds more realistic than Chromaphone's. 

Both of these synths simply do certain things in different ways.  I certainly do not regret having both.

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I've read all four pages of this topic...

Reason; I was a big investor in the AAS stuff early on and some of the instruments I upgraded as they became available.

So, here I am, scratching my head, wondering if I should have a look at the latest version of Chromaphone.

It does happen to be my fave of the lot. But I have hardly used it at all this year. In fact, not at all. Not because it isn't any good. Chromaphone has simply been pushed to the back of my mind with all the library stuff I have been investing in and then there's the Eurorack stuff.

I have therefore started a project using V2.0 and if that goes well I may well demo V3.0

 

 

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5 hours ago, Pseudopop said:

Yeah, I get that. But if Chromaphone has a better string model it sounds like it does some things better than String Studio.

Which is how I feel about them, sound wise. And GUI wise, albeit less important. 

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7 hours ago, synkrotron said:

 

I have therefore started a project using V2.0 and if that goes well I may well demo V3.0

 

Start the project using Chomaphone 3 demo. You will thank me!! UI is much better. So is the sound engine.

Edited by Grem
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