cakewalk dimension VSTi ?

joe90 · Post by **joe90** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 6:12 pm

Any one tried this with ableton yet ... ?

Be interested to hear what you think ..

cheers
joe

CWoodOne · Post by **CWoodOne** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:29 pm

Some nice stuff, friendly with Live. However, some of the samples are a little noisy, and the choir patches, well, aren't the best. Very easy to use,though.
Lots of bread and butter stuff.... maybe deeper than what I'm getting to at first glance also, but I like it. Rapture seems really interesting also.

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 10:24 pm

It ok - but not great in my opinion. Some of the presets are great, while others sound very mediocre to my ear.

FaX-01 · Post by **FaX-01** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 11:43 pm

huffcw wrote:It ok - but not great in my opinion. Some of the presets are great, while others sound very mediocre to my ear.

20 envelopes + 20 LFO's + 8 filters + 8 insert FX + 2 master FX per soundpatch TOTAL and well you can't bother tweaking some of the patches?
I would say none of the patches sound "very mediocre" myself.
And some just need little more than a mod matrix tweak to get extra expression out of them.

I would disagree.

Uniformly excellent sound set overall.
Sound quality is superb.
The strings and orchestral patches can be exceptionally expressive.
Great acoustic patches.
Very meaty basses and synth sound set.
Excellent electronica banks and pad banks over all.
Do you ACTUALLY own it HUFFCW ?
Just curious as it's a huge soundset (some 7 gig).
Easily sounds as good as anything I've heard churned out of a Yamaha Motif ES which IMHO is saying a hell of alot.
Great synth/sample play back hybrid.
Great patch categorisation and load/save management options.
Possibly the BEST sounding virtual PC instrument I've used and/or played with IMHO.
Very Good CPU consumption.
Highly recommend it here.

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 12:47 am

I have the one that comes bundled with Project5 - so maybe there are a lot more nice presets in the Pro version.

It is definitely a capable synth - and I certainly understand that presets need to be tweaked to get them just right. Maybe it's just not the sound I am after.

I did sit down with it right after playing Lounge Lizard - then heard the Dimension e-pianos that didn't come close to the expressiveness of Lounge Lizard - so maybe that skewed the rest of my experience.

Or maybe it is just that I haven't spent enough time with Dimension.

Anyway - I will have to give it a second chance.

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 12:51 am

Also - are the Pro pianos that much better than the standard ones? Because the ones I heard do not sound nearly as good as the Motif to my ears.

FaX-01 · Post by **FaX-01** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 1:31 am

huffcw wrote:Also - are the Pro pianos that much better than the standard ones? Because the ones I heard do not sound nearly as good as the Motif to my ears.

Yep...
There's some 4 gigabytes extra of sample content including Garritans Compact Orchestral samples in the Dimension Pro bundle so overall the sound set is atleast to my ears a hell of alot better.
Largest Piano set is roughly 198meg sample for the one patch.
The acoustic patches are great in Dim Pro and there's alot more syntetic style synth voices also.
Dimension in P5 is pretty good none the less but the sound set in Dimension Pro is a better rounded collection.
You can even do full import of rex files etc which is ahuge bonus :D.

Keyser Soze · Post by **Keyser Soze** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:09 am

Dimension Pro is very good!! Especially if you only have to pay the upgrade price. Lots of nice extra sounds which are crisp and clean (though you can make it sound how you like). If you only have to pay the upgrade price you'd be mad not to buy it.

joe90 · Post by **joe90** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 9:29 am

thanks guys...useful info !
joe

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 2:10 pm

Spent some more time with Dimension last night - and I will have to say the my opinion has changed (first impressions are not always correct).

I found I was able to make many of the presets very expressive and some are extraordinary. I still think there are a few duds (but all synths have a few). Also, I still don't like the acoustic pianos, but I am picky about pianos (I own a Steinway and nothing in the digital world that I have found can even come close to recreating the sound and feel - it's really an unfair comparison, and I am sure the Dimension pianos will sound great and will work fine for the vast majority of people.)

So, if the standard Dimension is this good, the Pro version has to be even better. And as others have mentioned, it's available at a great price considering what it includes.

bassntreble · Post by **bassntreble** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 11:34 pm

Dimension Pro is an excellent VI. I've had mine for about a month now and I can say I'm very impressed not only with the quality of sounds but the light CPU usage...

One drawback, for some of the bigger libraries (GCO patches) you need quite a bit of RAM. I currently have 1 gig in my G5 and plannig on upping to 3 Gig in the next few weeks. that should help a lot.