I like to compose/sketch/doodle with a VSTi and my go-to one is Applied Acoustics Lounge Lizard.
The one I miss is NI B4 II - why did I ever get shot of it?.. moment of madness I think. Ah well, there are others I know but B4 was a good friend.
I had the three session VSTs with a £20 Korg Nanokey II.
During their various sales I have upgraded those to their full versions. Certainly Lounge Lizard is a cracking synth. The other two are very useable too.
Ultra Analog VA-2 has lots of great sounds and can be made to sound rich and aggressive with a little coaxing, even without resorting to the distortion control.
All three are light on CPU and easy to recommend, especially when deals can be had.
Chromaphone is getting upgraded to version 2 in the coming weeks. I might check that out too at some point.
LoL! I have what is precious 'enough for my needs/'genre it looks like, but I will stay curious for new and old stuff, I simply do not know about every gem out there for the good & bad.
Surelly VSTs have not reached the potential best yet and we have more to look forward to is one way to say it.
Might Youtube more from now on though before I jump on installs, jeeeezz.
So this was for me about only one area 'genre' and now misc100 brought up another sexy 'genre' needs-topic-thing.. ohh maaaan.. good!
Owners of Komplete 10 Ultimate'ness is missing what, I am wondering. + ?
Only have NI Maschine with the basic bundled stuff + gifts, so a potential customer of that one I could be one day, maby, perhaps.
Turned out I got NI Vintage Organs on my HD waiting to get installed along with some other gifts waaaaiting, to get installed..
Thanks Softie and now, let's LoL.
Checking out NI-stuff is my tip of the day.
Ps, and 'everything' under one roof does not bother me either.
Ps2, thank you Softie, twice! & NI, very generous and you got my attention. :P
Just the other day I read some things about Independence, and it indeed seems to have some users behind it. Although I'm a pretty dedicated Kontakt user myself, I'm part of a team that is always interested in ways of getting our free libraries out to folks.
So that brings me to Sforzando and the sfz format which is free. Recently, one of our team programmed the SMDrums in Sforzando and I can't tell you how impressed I am. It has a very clean simple GUI, but still offers the important controls to create your drum tracks.
Not only that, but it has DFD, which is so important and makes it very easy on the RAM.
It's also set up so that you can create your own drum keymaps which can be so important for e-drummers.
We're still working on it but are hoping to get it out soon.
If there are many users behind it, I can't find 'em! I feel like I'm the only one. I use it for just about everything.
I can see where the interface could turn a few people off, for sure, but I love the workflow in Independence. The big down side is the lack of 3rd party libraries, but I usually buy wav or SFZ sample packs and just roll my own instruments in Independence.
I've tried to like Kontakt on a numerous occasions, and it sounds great, but there is just too much clicking around and every instrument works differently - just not my bag, I guess. I have Komplete Elements right now, and there are some nice sounds (and synths on the Reaktor side), but I just never use it.
I built the SM kit for independence with multiple outputs to the DAW, round robins, multiple velocity layers with cross fades and separate channels for OH and room ambience (room using the built-in convolution reverb in Independence). The kit is awesome and mixes in the DAW like a live recorded kit would. I also built some Independence kits using the excellent Drumdrops multi-velocity, multi round-robin, multi-mic .wav sample packs. With these kits, I can't imagine ever moving to a dedicated drum plugin like EZ-Drummer, Addictive Drums, etc.
On the down side, it's impossible to say how much longer Independence will "live" - Magix picked it up from another company to add to their DAW bundle. Support seems to be good right now, but it has admittedly been up and down over the past few years.
Finally, your Sforzando kit sounds interesting. I have done a bit of SFZ programming and I was seriously looking at Sforzando as a sample player instead of Independence because of the SFZ format being open and plain text. However, the lack of support multiple outputs is a big show stopper for me, unless that has changes recently. As I recall, the output opcode was ignored by Sforzando. Please, please, please correct me if I'm wrong!
I wondered about Independence Pro and thought about getting it, but it just seemed kind of old and expensive. With luck you can catch Komplete for less and KU for a bit more. Plus Magix just seems like a weird company. Still if it is ever on dirty cheap sale I might try it.
I got Independence Pro 2 on a fire sale four or five years ago at my local music store. Yellow Tools (the former owner of the product) had it on sale for $100 CDN on a boxing day special and the local store slashed that by %50. So I scored the whole Pro suite for $50 CDN. I admit I probably would have never purchased it otherwise - I had never heard of it before. But after working with it, I can't imaging being without it now.
When Magix took over, they upgraded me to 3.1 free of charge and I also got the 3.2 update free of charge later - can't argue with that!
Last edited by mkdaws32; 02-01-2016 at 12:38 PM.
Reason: More information
Turned out I got NI Vintage Organs on my HD waiting to get installed along with some other gifts waaaaiting, to get installed..
Thanks Softie and now, let's LoL.
Checking out NI-stuff is my tip of the day.
Ps, and 'everything' under one roof does not bother me either.
Ps2, thank you Softie, twice! & NI, very generous and you got my attention. :P
Yes, poor fella had to defend his right to make controllers for synth's he may not like himself!:
Quote:
Originally Posted by a user on youtube -NOT HERE:
"I don´t understand the discussions here about sound quality of the vst instrument. Its a hobby for me to build Controllers.I´m not a musician. At the end they must work. Nothing more nothing less. It doesn´t matter to matter if a vst sounds well or not.
Criticized my work but not the VST Instrument. I´m not the developer.
Thanks"
It's a good sounding soft synth. Worth adding to any collection (if you aren't a hardware or nothing type, or one of the VA is totally stupid brigade).
I think it was very cool project in a kinda obvious way so, who cares about Youtube-Tarzans or what it's called.
I will try this myself tomorrow and no funny installs I hope.
I think it was very cool project in a kinda obvious way so, who cares about Youtube-Tarzans or what it's called.
I will try this myself tomorrow and no funny installs I hope.
Tomorrow may be too late to save "66% off", if he goes through with ending the 66% off sale today, as stated on this site and in his own web page.
Unless of course the 66% off sale ends and the 75% off sale begins!
Tal-Sampler is doing it for me in a big way lately.
They priced it just about right - any more and I'd have said 'no don't need it'.
I like TAL and rate their delays and even reverbs. The free Roland emus are good if not a little cpu hungry. Don't like Roland stuff enough to buy a full emu from them. Maybe the 101 thing later on, perhaps.
I see a lot of fuss about the dacs and what have you that are emulated with the Tal-Sampler, but I don't really care about that. It does sound good and raw, for sure. Wouldn't want to get too much more academical about it.
It's simple to use. The demo is a joke with its limitations. Don't really want to say too much more about that, apart from: if I like it and use it I will buy it. VST makers are really taking the piss with their demos and totally ignoring just about ALL their potential customers. If I like it, I'll buy it, like everything else I own. 'Nuff said.
I might even end up buying some of their other stuff. It just really makes me lose respect for a developer though, when they so blatantly ignore their paying customers. D16 are another lot that do that. And lose sales. Oh well.
Tal-Sampler, it's great, and if you get it - get the free libraries that come with it - well worth the effort.
I seem to prefer modern gui/workflows/capabilities synths since a i'm at a computer and I want more & (different) than the past even if it is cool to be able to re-visit old classics.
I expect spiders to be online so that's all I have to say about that.
Location: Adelaide, South Australia (originally from Geelong)
Posts: 5,598
Quote:
Originally Posted by bladerunner
It was 1981 when I first heard Jarre - when I was 5! Jarre and John Foxx's Metamatic were pure magic to me. My Dad has always had pretty decent stereo systems so it was Wharfedale's that I was listening to them on (no idea what model though..).
I was 12 when I first started writing and it was a Korg Poly800 and a Roland TR505 that I had. I paid £75 for the 505 and £80 for the Korg from my local music shop - they were both second hand. Here's where I kick myself over and over in my mind - upstairs in this shop there was a black and gold ARP Odyssey - for £50. I didn't have a clue what it was at the time.. sniff.. wonder where it is now.
£50 for an Odyssey!!! No wonder you kicked yourself over that one. Being a black and gold one, I wonder if it had the 4035 ladder filter?
Quote:
Originally Posted by bladerunner
That is an awesome array of gear you have - and have had. Very jealous and looks like you've played a fair few I haven't. You clearly have A LOT of experience I was being a bit over the top with my damning wasn't I.. just my opinion at the end of the day and - wrongly, really - I'm letting the kvr fanboy stuff get in the way of that - which, of course, has nothing to do with the sound of those synths.
If you feel that way about them then that's how you feel - who I am to say you're wrong - you're not. It's all in the ear of the beholder and, as someone pointed out earlier, expectation bias is always present in some form or another. I'm the one clearly in the minority here. I wouldn't say I'm an elitist (there's a few softsynths I really rate like SQ8L, Imposcar, Xhun audio Little One, Vaz and the Nord Modular) but I can let reading forums affect my views sometimes and come across like one..
I think we can all fall into that at times. I know there's been numerous times I've posted stuff here and come away with egg on my face.
I know what you mean about the fanboy stuff too. Sometimes I've come across as one of those but I don't consider myself as one by a long stretch regardless of how impressed I am with u-he and various other developers.
At the end of the day, these are all just tools for making music and we all have individual workflows, opinions and styles. It's a good thing our music production and tool choice isn't controlled by communists!!
At the end of the day, these are all just tools for making music and we all have individual workflows, opinions and styles. It's a good thing our music production and tool choice isn't controlled by communists!!
I agree of course, but limitations can also bring their own strengths. Sometimes we have too much choice, a nice problem to have.
There were some Soviet era synths that people still thoroughly enjoy!
Shostakovich managed to produce some superb music in spite of the Commie regime too.
... It's a good thing our music production and tool choice isn't controlled by communists!!
there never were any real communists on this earth. and where is the differenece between STASI and NSA? FSB and CIA? ARD and ZDF? (<- joke for the germans... )
but its a good thing that music is not controlled by anyone. not as in the middle age, when you could got burnt on a stake if you choose the wrong interval in a chord.
so its good not to be ruled anymore by christian church.
another danger is coming up: political correctness. dont know how this could affect music-making, but I think it will in strange ways. similar to the witchhunt for smokers and social prosecution of meat-eater.
and maybe Trump will consider some genres of music as terrorism and then you have to face waterboarding or worse.
so in this historic and actual context maybe communism isnt that bad a thing??? its another name for another dictatorship.
and music stands for freedom - at least I understood it that way.
Location: Adelaide, South Australia (originally from Geelong)
Posts: 5,598
Quote:
Originally Posted by Softsynth
I agree of course, but limitations can also bring their own strengths. Sometimes we have too much choice, a nice problem to have.
There were some Soviet era synths that people still thoroughly enjoy!
Shostakovich managed to produce some superb music in spite of the Commie regime too.
Bookmarked that YouTube link to check out when I have more data next weekend.
I agree with you about limitations and choices too. I still have fond memories of the days with a Studiomaster four track cassette machine, an Akai 4000DS two track reel to reel and a Juno 6. I still have a Juno 6 in my rig and I also still own my first Sony two track open reel deck and the DBX 154 noise reduction unit I used with it.
Too bad the capitalist U.S. and Britain gave up making audio tubes. But where are the profits in tubes that sound wonderful and last for decades? Now capitalist guitarists and audio enthusiasts have to settle for knockoffs that sound shrill, hard, rattle, and die after very little use.
__________________
It's time to take a stand against the synthesizer.