Arturia - NI - IKM

[MicMan]

I use the Arturia V Collection all the time. It's my main synth package, and I really enjoy it. I spend a lot of time on the Synclavier lately, although just about everything there is getting use. I think Pigments looks really good. The new OB-Xa isn't as flexible as Sonic Projects' OP-X ProII, but it's not quite as boring as it initially seems. The OP-X presets tend to be wetter, with more delay and reverb, which makes them more exciting off the bat.

For NI, I use Kontakt for all my sampled VI's. I'm heavily into Spitfire's offerings, and use a bunch of other packages by NI, Sonic Couture, Imperfect Samples, and some others. I've just begun hosting it in VEPro, per others on the DUC's advice, and it makes large sample sets possible which seem to choke PT. I'm not using any other NI VI's. I don't really see anything there that I wouldn't get from Arturia.

I have IK Multimedia's Amplitube. SVX was my main bass amp sim for years. Honestly, though I'm moving more to UA's amp sims, when I use a sim at all. I really mostly just use them for bass, and seldom for guitar amps. I might use one on a Rhodes sample set every now and then. I think IK Multimedia did a really good job with their cabs and room settings. I think that's the main key to getting a sim to sound anything like a real amp.

[PatriotsBiker]

Thanks, folks. That's quite a bit of help.

I used to use Studio Drummer and the various Abbey Roads kits, but switched to Superior Drummer 2(then 3). I've been meaning to look more deeply into the XLN(IIRC) that Jack suggested a couple years back. There always seems to be a priority pop up elsewhere when that starts to gain focus.

I've not tried the new Kontakt, nor Massive yet, obviously. Perhaps I'll dig into that more. 6 days left on the sale, I think. Aside from that, I'll keep an eye out for the nest Arturia sale and jump.

I guess I need to thank IKM for their upgrade prices being so high a couple of years back. It's not difficult to ween off them at this point. I don't think I left a single plugin instance in a song, and just a few bits of percussion or accent bits like a trumpet or a Banjo sound that seemed to sound just right, IIRC. All printed, so if I ever revisit those songs, I don't need any of it unless I want to redo those small parts.

For whatever insane reason there might be, I've found it much easier, so far, to hunt down things I've needed in the limited subset I have that came with the Arturia Key Lab mkII. It kind of resembles the one stop search I had with Sample Tank in that regard.