Old timer, obviously late to the party here. Firstly, thanks to @phatboy303 and other contributors for the camel audio alchemy sound bank project. I was able to pick up 29 v1.5 sound banks. I also have the latest edition Alchemy Player v1.55.0.3373P from Computer Music magazine. The clock is currently ticking on the demo and I'm not sure what I will lose when it reverts to Player. Can anyone please explain what the differences are between Full and Player? Also, as has been mentioned above regarding Team VR releasing only the Player version; has anyone put out a full version, definitive release yet?
Also, is it worth it for me to install the Expanded Player version over what I have now? Even though I'm an old timer, this is all new to me and I appreciate all the advice I can get.

 

Hi old timer... Alchemy Player can´t edit or modify any parameter or save any user patch. You can play it only as is, which is a lot enough for me. VR releases are the full not the player. If you think you CM version will expire, just delete all, clean register and all traces of Camel Audio, install the Extended Player and the 29 soundbanks, download last VR release and extract it in another disc so you can grab the dll´s. Once done just replace such dll´s in your vst folders and enjoy a full version of Alchemy for the rest of your life. This synth´s worth the effort.

 

Hi rudolf,
Thank you for the direction. Here's what I did: before you responded, I installed Alchemy expanded. That was pretty straight forward. I also installed the 29 official sound banks. This was not so straight forward as I didn't know exactly where to copy and paste the presets, so I put them along side the already installed presets. So I loaded it up and it took quite awhile to scan. Happily, I was able to access all 29 sound bank but not the other sound banks that apparently came with expanded edition. BTW, the demo notice said week 3 of 4.

Next step, I tried substituting a DLL from the "Camel Audio Alchemy Player v1.55.0 WiN X86 X64 ONLY Patch 1" download. I only patched the DLL. It claimed to turn my demo into the real thing. Didn't seem to work. So I grabbed the "Camel-Audio Alchemy Full v1.55 CE R5-V.R" release, which I'm hoping is the latest. Now it shows v1.55.0.3368. I didn't understand fully what you meant by extracting the exe file to another disc, so this evening I installed it to another hard drive with some temporary vst folders I created. However, it looks as if it installed or rewrote files in the Program Data folder so I don't know if there will be any problems there. Anyway, it came up as being registered to Team V.R., and seems to work, although it crashed my DAW the first time.

A benefit of this FULL version over the player expanded, is I noticed more presets are showing up for the 29 sound banks. In addition, the extra Sound Libraries that came with player expanded, didn't show the presets until the full version was installed. So that's good news! One thing I have to clear up is that most of the presets (if not all) from the 29 sound banks have doubles (or 2 of each), apparently as a result of me not knowing exactly how to add them to the file structure. Also, I did not run any registry cleaning or file deleting at all. Do you think it will be an issue? As far as not having the ability to edit sounds, I don't think that will be an issue for me either. I'm not a sound designer and there are more presets than I would need as it is. This does look like a good synth and we now have a veritable wealth of presets and sound banks to enjoy and play with.

 

Hi AudioTee. Good to know you have your Alchemy working, now you can edit and save the patches you like in a user folder, this may take months but will be rewarded. This is a real great synth, my favorite along with Omnisphere. Have fun and don´t worry for the duplicated patches, it´s a little issue you´ll be accostumed to. Cheers.

 

Here's an update in case someone's listening. Quote- "One thing I have to clear up is that most of the presets (if not all) from the 29 sound banks have doubles (or 2 of each), apparently as a result of me not knowing exactly how to add them to the file structure."
So I deleted the duplicate presets and now only have a few duplicate names, apparently some of the banks use the same name for presets? There's not many so I can live with this.

I suggest users keep the expanded player edition(or any player edition) dll file in a safe location because with the patched version Alchemy would crash my DAW within 2 minutes when I tried to re-scan for presets. So I put the player dll back in the vst folder just for the scanning process. After the scan, put the patched dll back in the vst folder. I don't know if other DAWs will react the same, but that was my experience.

 

Anyone know where I can get the expansions? Drop me a pm

I've got a couple but I think all are gathered by now?

 

is Alchemy still working for you, after the last windows update?

 

I'm still on Win10 1803 and no problems. 1809 caused problems for my PC, so I rolled back.

 

I'm on the latest update now and Alchemy still works here. If you can't get it going and really want it, you can try re-installing or rolling back Windows.

 

Hi guys, i'm super late to the party of course... but have been reviving Alchemy on my mac and also the mobile one on an old ipad... Adding banks...
I read something about 29 (?) banks - how to get them?

Sorry to revive this old thread but this plugin was gold!
I would love to make an archive.

Cheers

 

Hi. I have a question about presets. Some presets are included in file xxx.CamelSounds (.aaz files )and some are in a separate folder Presets (.acp files) just to copy to Alchemy's Presets folder. What is the difference between aaz and acp files? And now I have installed aaz and acp files in eg. C:\ProgramData\Camel Audio\Alchemy\Presets\Arp Dimensions\Arpeggiated

 

Last edited: Jun 9, 2019

I'll also jump into the thread, with news (hopefully toward others). I was super late to discover Alchemy when I did in late 2018, and so I could only get Alchemy Player while staying legit (no pirating). I eventually discovered Alchemy Player Extended, which finally let me use all the presets from the full one, plus all the other libraries from the community release (which even Apple made free for their users, previous buyers must be salty).

That being said, I couldn't load 3rd party presets, cause it would complain that I need the full version, and even after trying the UserData trick, it wouldn't work. Until... I found how to do it. I use FL Studio, and when I was messing around trying to find a working solution, I saved one of the 1st party presets as .fxp. I then opened the .fxp in Notepad, and I found that the content was the exact same than a .acp, except the .fxp header on the top. So I copied the content of a 3rd party .acp and replaced the content of the .fxp while keeping the header intact. I then load the .fxp, lo and behold, it works! I loaded a 3rd party preset.

Now even tho it would work, it would be very unorganized and inconvenient to use, also the fact that loading alot of them would crash the DAW. Tried on Cakewalk by Bandlab, it crashes too. So I searched a bit more, and I found out that Komplete Kontrol (which recently became free to get without buying a Komplete Keyboard) will do a better job at it. The preset files used by KK are .nksf, and it works the same as a .fxp, with a header and the rest is just the content of the guest plugin's preset. So I did the same manipulation of replacing the content of a preset with the one from a 3rd party .acp and keeping the header intact, and boom! Working! Now we have a better preset manager and it does not cause any crashing.

One last thing, that is most likely exclusive to FL but I can't confirm it, it's the hability to browse the parameters of a plugin and use the standard control to make Automation for example. Well when browsing Alchemy Player's parameters, we can also find all the controls of the full version of Alchemy and we can even tweak them. Seems the controls are just hidden but can still be used, which is neat.

All in all, this allowed me to get use of this one-of-a-kind plugin, and it quickly became my favourite vst. I will continue to use this plugin for as long as it still works. I hope this could help someone.

 

I just wanted to make an update since my last post.

Using Virtual Box, I have set up a Windows 10 virtual machine and installed Alchemy Player Extended + All the libraries on it, and I enabled "Try Full Version" afterward. I also installed Komplete Kontrol on the VM and host Alchemy inside of it. I installed VST Host to host it all, cause it's a simple interface and supports PC keyboard input to play notes. I have added a shared folder in which I can share files between my normal Windows and the VM. I have then made a save-state of the virtual machine, and everytime I launch the VM it will restore the state it was when I made the save-state.

Result: I now have an endless "Full Version" trial of Alchemy (it will always say "Demo Week 1/4") , which lets me use all the functionnalities of the full version, minus the "Source Edit" since it's not available in the demo. So I can create/modify presets at my will, then once I'm done, I can save them using Komplete Kontrol so that they become .nksf, I can then locate the saved presets in the NI folders (usually found in C:\Users\[your name]\Documents\Native Instruments\User Content\Alchemy) and copy them into the shared folder. From there, I go back to my normal Windows, I go to the shared folder, and there I will find my .nksf Alchemy presets, which I can then use in Alchemy Player, the same way than in my last post.

This is a much better experience than having to edit the presets by hand, as it does not require any preset file editing whatsoever, it will get the same result, but in an overall much easier way.

May Alchemy Pre-Apple live on!

 

Welcome to the ship Zepto. Agree with you about Alchemy, it´s really special. Maybe you don´t know yet that there´s a full 1.55 release by a certain team which, at least in my Windows 7. works flawless. You can PM me if you want more info about it. Long life Alchemy!!!

 

Thanks for the reply @rudolph .

If you're talking about the Team VR release, I'd prefer to stay out of the crack zone: hoho double meaning sentence

If it wasn't for the fact that using cracked plugins (even discontinued ones) is a problem for monetization and general ethicality with other people (ex: KVR people. I.E: They didn't even give me a chance. I was explaining the same thing than in my first post, not even about Warez technically, and despite that, I got permanently banned with the reason "Warez". Still pissed at them btw ), I would be using them.

Not to say it's an absolute issue, but I have decided to keep stuff as legitimate as possible to be safe. The only exeption are presets, I will not be turning head to those, I'll get them if I want them.
_____________
Here I go again, typing a resumé... I'm not blaming you @rudolph , I'm still thanking you for wanting to help me. And once again:
Long Live Alchemy!!

 

I see no mention of where these 29 libraries can be found. I'm a longtime lover of my Camel Audio. I even often play some Dream voices notes for a few minutes just to hear them again. Can someone tell me where to look for these libraries? Please advise. Thanks! - Byron

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2019

Hi, sorry to be reviving an old thread but where is the link for these libraries?

 

They don't allow the links here AFAIR, but go to the sister site and search: "alchemy soundbank" and you will see them.

 

Thanks very much. I have found a list that might already be what I'm looking for but won't know until the stuff downloads, fingers crossed for me Really grateful that there's a community like this to help!

 

Last edited: Apr 4, 2021

I sent you a private message.