Proudly collecting music gear and software for no purpose

[Machinesworking]

NI have a few solid plug ins that everyone uses.
I use Kontakt, Guitar Rig and Maschine all the time, but I rarely use their synths at this point, too many other better options out there.

I also own a lot of software so there's that. If I was just getting Komplete and Live I would be amazed by Komplete.

[beats me]

If I was just getting Komplete and Live I would be amazed by Komplete.

If you’ve been upgrading Komplete regularly since version 6 you are a little less than amazed at this point. Won’t get into specifics right now, but I am a little more interested in the products in the KU 11 upgrade than I was going from 9 to 10.

[beats me]

Vengeance released their softsynth Avenger that is more editable than Nexus, recently I think or at least to me. Can’t link cause my work has the site blocked. Vengeance is pretty much the definitive cliché of all things EDM but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good. I have a couple of their effects plugins that are essentially shortcuts to common EDM/DJ clichés that would otherwise take automation of multiple plugs to pull off the same effect and if you aren’t big on these clichés you probably couldn’t be bothered trying to make them yourself. Maybe you just want to toss an EDM cliché effect on a jazzy down tempo track just because you easily can. Not really in the market for another $200 softsynth though.

[Richie Witch]

I agree, Vengeance makes some great products. I love Philta and their multi-band compressor. Just goes way beyond the traditional, so I was excited to see the demo vids. Avenger looks amazing.

These days though, I'm forcing myself to put my hardware to more use, so can't really justify another softsynth. But if I was traveling, with a laptop-based studio, Avenger would be a must-have for me.

[beats me]

Maschine Jam looks like it actually has some pretty innovative performance features. THE BIG QUESTION: Can you record your performance into an editable complete track?

I like the fact that it has built-in performance effects so you don't have to roll them yourself. If you aren't big into creating performance effects there's probably a lot interesting ideas and parameters you probably wouldn't think of.

[Machinesworking]

Maschine Jam looks like it actually has some pretty innovative performance features. THE BIG QUESTION: Can you record your performance into an editable complete track?

Since it's just a front end for Maschine, I couldn't see how it would be able to.

I picked up Arturia SparkLE off craigslist a while ago. I haven't gotten around to learning it entirely yet. It's a gamble, it was crushed by Maschine, but it looks like for my purposes it might make more sense. I just want a decent drum machine that works well with DAWs. Maschine is much better without having to integrate it into Live etc.

[beats me]

Watched about an hour’s worth of Maschine Jam tutorials on a subscription site and concluded other than the touch strips for performance it really brings nothing new to the table, especially if you own Push. If you are going all in on using Maschine standalone I could see it being useful. Since you can map Jam for Live I’m assuming you can equally map Push for Maschine, or at the very least rack up Macshine so you still have access to the library with the sequencing capabilities of Live. Is there still the issue with Maschine when you load a new preset it undoes all the MIDI and audio routing you setup?

Now that I’ve played with Push a bit I really wish Live had a tagging browser more than ever. It’s great that you can browse user folders with the knobs and get audio previews, but not so great if you have something as common as drum loops in 100 different folders following standard sample library folder structure. I really hope this is a feature of Live 10 and it would be an instant buy for me if that is all they added. Seems like a no brainer for the type DAW Live is.

[beats me]

Used Native Instrument’s Access app for the first time that replaced Service Center. Pretty snappy and streamlined and I like the fact that it doesn’t bug me to authorize software I don’t have the serial for (software I sold the license for, not cracks) or download updates to obsolete software that spits out errors every time I try to update it like Service Center had been doing for years.

I also like the fact that it just lets you enter serials and then figures out what it is and auto installs it unlike Service Center that would scan your drive when launched and give you a list of installed software you need to enter the serial for. Come to think of it a nice option would have been if the software isn’t registered it gives you a 1 click option to uninstall the software.

[beats me]

With a Christmas bonus I ponied up for Spectrasonic’s Keyscape on NYE. I figure it’s the only piano/electric keyboard plugin I will ever need. But their download app doesn’t work. It just says download initialized but it never asks me where to download to and doesn’t start downloading. So yay, with the holiday weekend that extended into yesterday for a lot of companies, no response from support yet. If their server was down I'm sure they have a lot more people to respond to than just me.

[chaibuka]

With a Christmas bonus I ponied up for Spectrasonic’s Keyscape on NYE. I figure it’s the only piano/electric keyboard plugin I will ever need. But their download app doesn’t work. It just says download initialized but it never asks me where to download to and doesn’t start downloading. So yay, with the holiday weekend that extended into yesterday for a lot of companies, no response from support yet. If their server was down I'm sure they have a lot more people to respond to than just me.

Nice! Post some comments once you check it out. Most people say the Rhodes is one of the best. Wouldn't it have been better to get the box set. I think you only get one free download.

[Machinesworking]

Watched about an hour’s worth of Maschine Jam tutorials on a subscription site and concluded other than the touch strips for performance it really brings nothing new to the table, especially if you own Push. If you are going all in on using Maschine standalone I could see it being useful. Since you can map Jam for Live I’m assuming you can equally map Push for Maschine, or at the very least rack up Macshine so you still have access to the library with the sequencing capabilities of Live. Is there still the issue with Maschine when you load a new preset it undoes all the MIDI and audio routing you setup?

Now that I’ve played with Push a bit I really wish Live had a tagging browser more than ever. It’s great that you can browse user folders with the knobs and get audio previews, but not so great if you have something as common as drum loops in 100 different folders following standard sample library folder structure. I really hope this is a feature of Live 10 and it would be an instant buy for me if that is all they added. Seems like a no brainer for the type DAW Live is.

Maschine Jam I thought looked pretty good if you were all in on Maschine and Live. My issue is being not all in on Maschine, and that Maschine Jam is currently only deeply integrated with Fruity Loops, Bitwig and Live.

A favorites style tagging browser would be great! so you could create snare, kick, clip, percussion virtual folders etc. That would allow you to use percussion from Spark for instance inside Lives Drum setup.

Maschine has each pad on a separate MIDI channel, that would be some crazy routing to get it all to fit into Lives Drum Racks. Mostly I just wish Maschine allowed for easier integration with DAWs in general, and freaking had separate MIDI tracks to allow you to sequence say a fucking cymbal crash in it's own pattern without having to create a designated pattern where the only fucking difference is a cymbal crash...

[sporkles]

FabFilter managed to scare me into buying Pro-R with the additional holiday discount, and I have to give it to them: it's the most intuitive reverb I've ever tried, and get sounding, too.

[beats me]

With a Christmas bonus I ponied up for Spectrasonic’s Keyscape on NYE. I figure it’s the only piano/electric keyboard plugin I will ever need. But their download app doesn’t work. It just says download initialized but it never asks me where to download to and doesn’t start downloading. So yay, with the holiday weekend that extended into yesterday for a lot of companies, no response from support yet. If their server was down I'm sure they have a lot more people to respond to than just me.

Nice! Post some comments once you check it out. Most people say the Rhodes is one of the best. Wouldn't it have been better to get the box set. I think you only get one free download.

Support responded back and I had to do an install work around involving showing contents of the file. It’s a Sierra issue.

A bigger Sierra issue is I downloaded the huge file to a folder on my desktop which now gets uploaded to iCloud by default which of course put me over my iCloud storage limit. Dragged the folder to another folder on my HD and it started the process of moving it to the folder and pulling it off of iCloud. That was last night and the progress bar hadn’t budged as of this morning.

I didn’t want to just trash it because Spectrasonics only allows you 1 install download, don’t know why or how hardcore they are about it. I thought about getting the hardcopy but we live in a download society and don’t see that changing.

Tooled around with it a bit last night and I think the electric and hybrid pianos will get the most usage. The traditional pianos sound great as well but I have a ton of those and I couldn’t tell you which concert grand I need or which library has the best. I think it’s a sounds good in the moment decision.

[Tarekith]

I was just trying to install Omnisphere yesterday and ran into that same install issue. Not the iCloud one though, I don't use that automatically.

Anyone using Omni2? I'm curious if the newer gui is retina ready?

[beats me]

A favorites style tagging browser would be great! so you could create snare, kick, clip, percussion virtual folders etc. That would allow you to use percussion from Spark for instance inside Lives Drum setup.

I think an elegant solution for tagging samples for Live would be right click on a sample, group of samples in a folder, or folder from the main browser and there would be a tag option in the menu to create a tag or add tags already created. Then there would be a tag folder in Live’s locations. Make the information part of Live’s warping file. Simple and I don’t think it would be that hard to implement.

Trying to make that apply across third party plugins would probably be a little more difficult and for a later revision.