Xpand! is in the Digistore

[whtrabit]

Didn't see this posted in this forum.

[crizdee]

Hi,

How can we get hold of Xpandi in the UK?

Chris

[Avid]

The Xpand! CDs should be available next week in the European localized DigiStores, including the UK store.

[PMoshay]

anyone who has used it wanna share your thoughts?

[sleadley]

I have been using it solidly for the last couple of weeks. It is great! Now, naturally I want more sounds but what do you expect for Free? The quality is great and the Processor hit is pretty good. All in all I would say it is well worth the money!
my 2c
Simon L.

[KimSira]

Hi
How do we get a hold of one of these in Australia, from the online store?

Cheers
Kim

[Vagn Luv]

Am I right when I conclude that u won't be able to import ur own patches into it?

F.ex I have 25 GBs of sofsamplecell patches that I havent been able to use since Digi discontinued the softsamplecell, and left many of us stranded. I thought Kontakt would save my butt, but as Native Instruments take pride in ****ing the customers over, they released Kontakt2 without samplecell support - even though they advertized it as a feature. Nearly 1½ year later they still haven't released a patch to correct this (and many other bugs), so I've secretly been having dreams of Digi releasing their own RTAS/TDM sampler.

[McMasters]

Just received my Xpand in the mail and installed it.

The first thing I did was check out how it handled the sounds. I saw the sounds folder was filled with 28 sub-folders. (very cool) So i checked deeper and the folders are filled with presets with ".tfx" extensions . All sized at 4KB (on a hard drive, 10k on the DVD), so these must referance a larger sample file. Now there is no shortage of presets. In total the presets take up 4.6MB on disk (2,695,264 bytes)

So doing the math 2,695,264 bytes divided by 4,000 bytes gives you about 673 presets. (nice) And the bonus is that alot of them are usable.

The largest file on the disk is a file called the "Xpand!.dat" which is approx 607.2MB (636,670,770 bytes). That file gets installed in your library/application support/digidesign folder. Isn't it better to keep the samples on a different hard drive?

I have only used it for about a hour now and have absolutely NO complaints.
It is simple and straight forward to use. It sounds very good.

Will it replace my sampletank?
Not completely, If digi releases some new .dat files with more speacilized sounds, like an "orchastra.dat" -- "acoustic piano.dat" --- "vintage drum machines.dat" or "brass and woodwinds.dat", then, yes it will slowly replace sampletank.

Will it replace Kontakt or Giga?
No, there is no way to edit, construct or map out your own samples. So if you are into the "deep editing" kind of sampler. This product will NOT make you happy. Xpand! has a quick "i am what I am" kind of feel.

When will I reach for it?
I will reach for it first, since it is new and I want to play with it. And most presets sound really good with a little tweak here or there.

THANK YOU DIGI. GREAT WORK. I MAKE MY LIVING WITH YOUR PRODUCTS.

As far as Xpand being proprietary. Oh well, so is SampleTank and Reason. If Digi puts together a large sample library for this thing I will buy it. I have far too many samples from too many different manufacturers I have used in the past. (over 50GB) I have found that trying to keep them all and convert them is a daunting task.

Besides how many 808 kick drums do I really need?

[milko]

Hi
How do we get a hold of one of these in Australia, from the online store?

Cheers
Kim

I got mine from Musiclab for free.

[hearttimes]

Besides how many 808 kick drums do I really need?

Assuming you sampled the 808 kick only, with it's two variables, (tone and decay) and broke down each knob to ten settings a piece, 100 kick drums should cover you pretty well.