Upgrading equipment...what to do

[JuanSOLO]

I noticed that buying the boxed Live 8 upgrade nets me the "Essential Instrument Collection". It seems this is just as the name implies: lots of digital instruments. Am I correct?

Not really lots of "digital," more like lots of sampled piano keys, saxophones, guitars etc.
I got that thinking I would use some of it, I never have.

[login]

I noticed that buying the boxed Live 8 upgrade nets me the "Essential Instrument Collection". It seems this is just as the name implies: lots of digital instruments. Am I correct?

The EIC are mostly acoustic instruments and some synth/acoustic hybrids. All of the are of good quality. They are multisampled, which means that they are recorded in multiple ways.

But they are not complete synthetizers like operator, analog or third party plug ins. (You can't design an specific sound out of them).

[heuristics]

What is your max budget.. $800?
I havent used reason since 4, but I've found much better workflow and ease in arranging with ableton.
I do like the synths in reason though..

[Rabalder]

Go analog

my first thought, but after reading through the OP, I decided not go there yet.

haha. Im busted..

[joshrrr]

Please consider going second hand for everything except the computer (and, maybe, the headphones)

[PFN78]

So I downloaded the Suite demo and started playing around with it.

My thoughts? I played with it a little, tried lots of the included instruments (played here and there with settings), and thus far I'm not too impressed. Some stuff sounded okay, but the vast majority of the included instruments seem rather weak. An Android app I use, for instance, seems to have a better clav sound than the included clavs in Suite 8.

Now maybe there are better plugins (downloaded a demo of a VST plugin, but can't find it), but thus far I'm gonna hold off on purchasing anything.

[EDIT] What I may do is just buy Live 8 and get lots of plugins for my needs. I question if Suite really does what I need it to, plus the synth1 plugin seems really nice after playing with it for awhile.