Seriously folks - I am an Apple developer and have used and written software for Apple products for decades, so I am not generally against updating MacOS versions, but so many music software vendors advise against upgrading yet that I would hold off on Tahoe for now.
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lmao RIP
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Finally, even I have something from Fender 
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This is actually very impressive:
Subscription only though… (it makes some sense, however, as they likely will keep adding more stuff over time).
EDIT: it seems Melodyne users get a smaller subset of these licks/samples (and the engine) for free…
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That’s really cool. It’s taken the core of Melodyne and moved it in to being a creative (rather than reactive) tool.
I’ve always said Melodyne is one of the most important plugins I own - this takes its concepts to the next level.
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Yep, seems very cool indeed. I wonder how it’d fare with other time signatures and more non-diatonic chords!?! Will be exciting to try for sure!
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@howard - what do you think about this offer?
I’m especially interested in Triaz, but the rest sounds also interesting.
But … is it?
Please keep in mind that I want to use it with the AKAI MPK Mini IV and transfer stuff to Fender (aka Presonus) Studio One for the final mix.
What do I need weird, deep, dirty, in your face, not be ignored beats and bass.Think: Meat Beat Manifesto on steroids!
These are sample-based drum machines and generally the sale price is pretty much what I would expect. I would not pay more. What you would then also need is to find sample packs that worked for you, if the included ones did not (factoring in the effects in the various plugins).
First a note on that they are. Basically for drum machines you have three choices and all are good: drum samplers (plays back pre-recorded drums you download in sample packs, with various effects, on MIDI triggers) and drum synthesizers (synthesizes new drum sounds, plays on MIDI triggers) and hybrids of the two. All of them should either feature a Roland-style drum sequencer or some other way to sequence beats standalone, and of course all will work with the standard DAW MIDI piano roll.
Those look decent. You probably already have a lot of what it does built in to Studio One (with its samplers and sample packs). There’s many other options for drum samplers and sample packs as well. The thing these are offering is a nice UI tying it together, some effects and additional functionality - but you can likely build a lot of it from parts you already have.
As an alternative, for drum synthesizers check out Sonic Charge’s Microtonic (my favorite after all these years), or for classic Roland clones check out d16 Group’s Drumazon 2 (TR-909), Nepheton 2 (TR-808) and Nithonat 2 (TR-606). These are drum synths or (for Nithonat) a somewhat canned hybrid that emulate the classic Roland gear used by many electronic music bands in the '80s and '90s. The closest for MBM would be the 606 (which they used).
A lot of industrial bands, including MBM, also used the classic Kawai machines like the R-50 and R-100. For those I think you’ll need sample packs.
Personally I really love Microtonic.
All of those are top tier.
For Drum Samplers that Wave Alchemy bundle looks nice, good UI and some neat twists.
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Also don’t sweat it too much because these things - both drum samplers and drum synths - are all versatile and you’ll be good with any of them. The Roland drum synths were used way outside their own domains very effectively in ways that would surprise you. For example, while the TR-909 is best known for techno (it’s basically the Daft Punk sound), this was the first usage of the 909 on an album:
And while the TR-808 is THE sound for fat hip-hop bass drums, this is also an 808:
And of course with a drum sampler, you can find and download any sound samples. Both are excellent choices.
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Yeah! In combination with Patternarium and BeatSpace this is totally cool! Thanks!!!
Don’t care about sounding like any original TR model or anything classic for that matter. Just want stuff to be deep and nasty, so Microtonic seems great for my purpose
The only thing missing seems to be effects, right?
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More or less. It has some (distortion, eq, pitch modulation, noise into a filter, etc) but you will want external compression, delay and reverb.
The nice thing about it is it’s a synthesizer so the possibilities are less limited compared to a sampler.
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This is what convinced me:
And (great to get “inspiration”):
For my little AKAI I need to map controls manually, right?
Depending on what the pads generate it might just work, otherwise just use MIDI Learn in the DAW
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i have been running across a bunch of plugins that have been ported to ios/ipad that are just killing it. i recently got tekno drums, flip sampler, chord board and playbeat 4, and roland just announced they are bringing their zencore engine/Zenology GX synth soon. AUM turns your ipad into a crazy good midi interface that you can connect your hardware to. there’s a lot more good stuff out there too. all are good deals (well the price hasn’t been announced for the GX yet) compared to their big boy VST versions. for anybody looking to unchain from their imac, this is a really fun way to make music on the go.
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Does anybody (ie @howard) have any opinions about the Kontakt player?
You need to get used to the user interface…
Also the (free) Kontakt player alone is not doing much; you need modules to produce sounds - there is a gazillion of them available, but none of them are free (AFAIK).
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Yep - I’m pondering about buying a module as this has exactly the sounds I need. But I read some remarks on Reddit etc that were not happy about Kontakt.
Bottom line message to the developers was: “make some d@mn VST’s, you fools!”
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NI in general gets a lot of flack but Kontakt (and samples for it) are so ubiquitous that there’s really just one large scale competition (UVI with it’s ecosystem and Falcon.)
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UJAM!?!
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Nearly all of UVI’s products are sample packs for UVI Workstation and/or Falcon with a thin VST wrapper in some cases. They are very heavily sample based.
They also have some outstanding effects though; I love Sparkverb, Thorus and Phasor.
I also really like Falcon, but it’s too bad that I really hate Falcon. If you have used it you probably know what I mean. I have bought it twice and sold it twice in annoyance.
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