Hey folks,

my little endeavor serves three purposes:

1. I want to go completely legit (or at least as far as I can afford to go). My DAW (Ableton Live 9 Suite) and a few little other things already are. Now I really want to find out what other plugins are worthy of my hard earned money.

2. Please comment on the chord progression. Does it sound okay for you? Does it have potential? I'm a bit drunk right now (two weeks holiday, yaeh!!1) and having fun playing on my keyboard ... I came up with this little thingy and bounced it right away. What do you think?

3. Care to remix / alter? Make an 8-bar theme out of the 4 bars? Give it a bit more trancy feeling by changing the bass line, adding more bass layers?

Alright, here's the tune:

SI2_MIDI_files.zip (Zippyshare), Song_Idee_2.mp3 (Zippzshare)

- included are MIDI files for Bass, Pad and Pluck.
- it's in the key of D#(major)
- chord progression: c(minor), A#(major), g(minor), D#(major)-A#(major)
- bass: C, A#, G, D#-D
- no EQ, no compression, no fancy side-chaining, no buildup, no risers, whatever, maybe later if the basic chords and melody work .. just the synths with a few drums thrown in.

General consideration:

- If possible I want an easy hassle-free copy protection scheme when I buy licences. Like Dune 2 has. Simple serial no. No shitty challenge-response-only-one-activation-left-thing. I want to change my hardware whenever I want to (or whenever my drive breaks) and still be able to use my plugins.

- All sounds are generated with Synapse Audio Dune 2.5 - I'm still in the process of finding out if I should invest my money into Dune 2, Spire, Zebra 2 or Hive. But I guess Reveal Sound and u-he do have limited authorizations. So that rules them out, right? Any experiences with them as a legit license owner?

- I really love Fabfilter EQ but I simply can't afford their plugins. So I was looking for something more affordable and came across Voxengo. This Russian guy seems to code some really good sounding EQ and Limiter plugins. I put a little Voxengo Elephant 4 limiter on the master - quite nice. Also I hear about the Klanghelm compressors. And Tokyo Dawn Research (TDR) for more vintage style EQ. I have to try before buy them. But they are cheap, good sounding (I've been told) and got hassle-free protection. Any experiences / suggestions? Ah, and reverb - I guess VahallaDSP VahallaRoom is the way to go. Good, affordable, nice serial number based protection. Alternatives? (BTW Dune 2 already has a quite nice reverb build in.)

 

Voxengo makes really sold stuff for an extremely reasonable price. They also have a lot of free stuff on their site,

Klanghelm sounds great if you do not over do it and the price is right too.

A legit owner of U-HE plugins, they work great and the updates keep coming, though to be honest as far as sounds go there is a lot of duplication between synthesizers. You don't need an army or a wall of synthesis to do what you want to do. 1 or 2 Synthesizer can cover all the bases if you actually take the time to learn how to use them. The choice really comes from how you want to do the modulation and are you comfortable with the modulation matrix in any particular synthesizer this has always been where I personally have gotten frustrated or found something that I wanted to do that just was not going to happen.

 

Thank you for your advice, ArticStorm.

Regarding u-he: Heckmann sure has some nasty copy protection with time bombs and such. I don"t care, as long as I am entitled to authorized my plugins as often as I want to. I like to change my hardware a lot, changing CPU, adding another harddrive, changing RAM modules ... I simply can't spend money on products that can't be authorized after changing two hardware components. They may sound sweet, sure, but still. So the question is: Do u-he has limited authorization / activation regarding hardware changes?

Regarding Ableton stock EQ-8: Jupp, it's a good thing that Ableton improved their algorithm with Live version 9, but EQs like the Fabfilter Pro-Q2 really sound better. I did the test, dialed in the same curves with Ableton EQ8 and Fabfilter Pro-Q2. The Fabfilter EQ sounds better all the way, really (on so-call "natural phase" setting,) Don't let us dig into this EQ-discussion. but there clearly is a difference. Can one hear it in the mix? I don't know, but to me it seems reasonable to look for a good sounding EQ plugin.

Regarding Ableton Live stock reverb: Really? I have to look into it. Thanks again for your advice.

Voxengo has some really fine free utilities, that's true. On the u-he topic I couldn't get you, sorry, maybe I' m too drunk. LOL So you agree that u-he stuff sounds nice but most of his synths sound the same? Anyway, I agree with you that no one needs an army of synths. To me Dune 2 looks like a complete package with it's FM, VA and WT (wavetable) synthesis and nice sounding FX.

Any comments on my lil tancy housy thingy? Advices to improve?

 

The synthesizers cover a lot of overlaping ground.

Especially Bazille and Diva overlap a great deal on sound, very different GUIs and mod matrix but very similar capabilities.

Any sound Hive can make you can make in Zebra, ect...

 

As far as using stock EQ (& maybe more plugs) - I've always done it, just cause it's there. Im prolly not sophisticated (& don't have engine-"ears" =) enough 2 tell (placebo) diff between cheap & expensive EQ shit. To me, it's like beer - so many choices & makes so little diff!

I kinda can't say any good things about u-He. I only hv (negatv) experience of that one decent plug they do, which the AP wud try 2 go online / nag, despite being legit. Also had issues wi interface ttly freezing, which (seemed) 2b related. But, y'know, I'm just one guy, my opinion / experience prolly won't b yrs!

Sounds liek u already made ur mind up! No real qualms about the synth, rly. I dunno if u try Synthmaster or Omnisphere, both kinda jack-of-all-trades synths like u seem 2 want, worth buying 2 if u got the $. I mean, it's C/R auth, but prty painless? Gd spprt, also.

 

you are in ableton so simpler /sampler and operator contains cytomic drop (9,5+), but what about the others, so +1 to http://www.cytomic.com/drop , filter opening so crappy in all the soft based synths worth to buy it for the proper sound, +1 to all the valhalladsp plugins too

 

bla bla bllaaaahh

 

Alright, I got you. The price tag on each of u-he's plugins ais different. So are the OSC algorithms. diffrent filter algorithms. They sure know their business to make you think ane which one to spend your money.

@famouslut Hey mate (hope that is the correct term - you all seem to know English way better than me), thanks for your advice. You know, I really want to own Omnisphere 2. BUT it is way to steep to me. AND it has this awful R/C protection. Dare you touch your computer! Do I have the $? I'm preparing for xmas sales. But do I have enough to let Spectrasonics or KV331 tell me to buy another license because I touched my computer? No! Simple as that. Can't afford the risk. Maybe they are nice and let me use the stuff I own, maybe not.

@xbitz The built into Live Cytomics stuff don't have the oversampling feature of the paid-for Cytomics plugins. It's ok for the most part. Just don' use extreme setting with the build in Live Cytomics plugins.

Guess that's the best comment on my lil tune so far. The thing is: my little custom handheld device can not decrypt this curious MEDIA=zippyshare file link thing. @korte1975 care to post a clear link that simple devices would understand?

 

sureio

www14.zippyshare.com/v/kFpg90OG/file.html

 

ARGH!!!1 I like that: It's cosy, it's sweet, You wouldn't be surprised if I'd say: I like that. .. hahaha .. What is it? Old school house? 80s snyth line, right? Damn; gimme more, please. (Only listened through my handheld speakers ... gotta put this to my monitors ..)

okay, here are the facts: Im still drunk (more than before). I' ve prepared my meal (it sure is cold by now). BUT I love you for answering me. Hope I can give back. And especially you, korte1975. I know your sound from my youth. Please gimme more of that. Can we get in tough? PM me, brother. I'm off to my meal and bed. Love you guys and girls.

 

I wanted to show my appreciation to the creator of FL Studio that provided me gaining access to all of the necessary munitions for bringing all of the ideas in my head into actuality without further ado. For my workflow still all of the stock plugs work fine and I've not found any reason to append additional ones to the default list yet and I really don't want to pollute my computer with 3-rd party garbage. Please don't expect me to give a good account of myself why I do that.

 

U-he is simple registration number. No problem whatsoever, you don't need an internet connection and you can use them on as many computer as you want. People who had "problems" with them as far as I know are only people who used badly cracked releases.
And yes Bazille and Zebra (specially HZ) are amongs the really good synth out there.
Equality by dmg audio will cover all your eqs needs, but yeah the stock plugins in Live are good enough. Creative eqs you should check filterscape by uhe, it's fun and nice.
I have synthmaster and since 2.8 you have to connect to authorize it's very annoying, I think there is an "offline" method but I haven't tried it yet. Cheaper than Uhes synth (if you don't need presets, because then it's much more expansive) but with an annoying system to authorize. But the guy making synthmaster is cool, I wrote to him with a few issues, he answered right back. It has FM, PM, AM, RM, WT (not as cool as serum), VA, Vector, Additive synthesis. I don't think any synth does as much. It misses granular synthesis though. Should be in v3, as well as better wt. BTW the Summer Sale is on right now and synthmaster factory (1250 presets only, the other bundles have much more) goes at 64$. The standart bundle goes at 84$ (instead of 130$ regular) and it has more presets which you can choose from several packs. That's a HUGE sale for anyone willing to have a great synth that can do almost anything.
I don't know Dune2, I've never tried it but it looks cool.

 

Last edited: Aug 30, 2016

Actually, with Omnisphere, it's worse than that! If u move ur Sage (ie "samples"/data) folder, it will ask u 2 re-auth. But it's prty much static (+few MB per preset pack) so u don't have 2 move it around, rly. Smthn 2b aware of, b4 u start installing, tho.

Like someone said, easily worth (no brainer, rly) getting Synthmaster in teh sale, and looks like Spectrasonics will be doing sum new synth (Stylus 2?) soon, so hopefully sale then?