Summer Sales

[MisterB]

Amplesound just started their summer sale on all their products. I think they have among the best sounding virtual guitars out there, but also the most intuitive part builder in their riffer engine. They also have some pretty exotic ethnic instruments. Sale is on til August 1st.

 

https://www.amplesound.net/en/purchase.asp?id=25775

 

Toontrack has a summer sale on a number of their products (virtual keys, bass and drums). No end date given on their site, probably August 31.

 

https://www.toontrack.com/take-it-ez/

 

No affiliation with these devs but their products do seem to make their way into all of my productions.

 

 

 

[MisterB]

Another great developer is OrangeTree Samples (https://www.orangetreesamples.com/) who do things a little differently with their sales. They have a group buy on until July 12th, and it has now reached its maximum discount tier, which is 60%. I typically use Amplesound guitar sample libraries because of their riffer engine which I believe is a really great way to build guitar parts, especially those that use a combination of chordal and single line work. However, Orangetree have their own engines built into their libraries, with more articulations and a larger suite of effects, certainly making for a more flexible lead line.  Make up your own mind.  Orangetree uses Kontakt.

 

Again no affiliation with Orangetree, but they have some great sample libraries (I have three of them), and have among the best guitar sample libraries available.

[MisterB]

Just a quick note to say that Neural DSP are currently having a sale of 30% off their Architype Nolly X guitar amp-sim. I am not a guitarist, but I do use VST guitars, and this is certainly the best amp-sim I've ever heard.  It's possible that they will have an end of summer 50% sale off all their plugins, but if not, the next sale will likely not be until Black Friday. This specific sale is only on until August 5th. 

 

I'm not affiliated with Neural DSP, but they make the best amp-sims I've ever heard, and I've now switched all my guitar sounds to Neural DSP amp sims. The Nolly X is very versatile, with amp models going from clean to extremely heavy.

 

https://neuraldsp.com/plugins/archetype-nolly

 

 

[john]

Music have a 50% off sale going just now on their lifetime license.

 

https://musio.com/

 

It’s a smaller library than Native Instruments beast of a library, and it doesn’t use a lot of cpu, and doesn’t use Kontakt as a base framework.

[MisterB]

On 7/26/2024 at 5:39 PM, john said:

Music have a 50% off sale going just now on their lifetime license.

 

https://musio.com/

 

It’s a smaller library than Native Instruments beast of a library, and it doesn’t use a lot of cpu, and doesn’t use Kontakt as a base framework.

 

Looks good. I would love to ditch Kontakt and it's good to see NI have some competition too.

 

 

[john]

7 hours ago, MisterB said:

 

Looks good. I would love to ditch Kontakt and it's good to see NI have some competition too.

 

 

 

I went for before I had posted and I am still exploring the library. The samples so far are of a very good quality and cover some holes in the NI library. They deal with expression and nuances somewhat differently to NI. If I had time I would write up a review.

[VSThost]

On 7/25/2024 at 8:15 PM, MisterB said:

but they make the best amp-sims I've ever heard,

They make great plugins. Other picks: ML Sound LAB, S-Gear, and TH-U.

[MisterB]

If you're looking for a great voice VSTi, Synthesizer-V by Dreamtonics, and all their voices are currently on sale for 20% off.  They have eight English speaking voices, as well as Chinese and Japanese voices. 

 

Synthesizer-V has singlehandedly changed what I do with my spare time, and has allowed me to become a songwriter, and producer of vocal songs. If you're not a singer, this could open up new opportunities for you. All of my vocal work is done with Synthesizer-V providing the vocals. 

 

Sale is only til August 6th, so get in there quickly!

 

They have a new product too called Vocalflex, which can morph between voices that you train it on. You can also use their Synthesizer-V voices with it, but not those of third parties, without specific permission from the artist you're taking it from. They have very rigorous security to encourage only ethical use. The requirements were too invasive for my liking, but its a unique and potentially ground breaking new product if you're okay with the privacy invasion.  Synthesizer-V is a product that licenses voices from singers, and all voice packs were created in association with vocal artists, so there's no such security in place with that product, and you can be sure that the voices are ethically sourced. 

[john]

Hey

 

I don’t know if it counts as a summer sale, but it is summer, and it’s a sale (at least at the time of posting!)…

 

Phil Speiser Smoother plug in normally $89, for now $14.99.

 

A task I regularly do when mixing is cutting EQ holes in tracks to allow tracks to cut through without them all adding together to create frequency spikes and general muddiness. It’s not the only use but it is worth it just for that. Watch the vids on the page, particularly the one about masking and you will instantly see ages of saved time.

 

Cheers

 

John