MAGIX

Independence Free is a lite, free (obviously) version of MAGIX's Independence Sampler. It comes with a very generous suite of about 2GB worth of sampled instruments. They are all excellent quality, with the drum kits being a particular standout. It's honestly worth the download & fuss of installing it just for the drums. But there's also some other nice percussion, electric piano, guitar, bass, and a smattering of synths. Since it's free and the samples range from good to outstanding, it should be an easy 5-star. But the setup is a bit bizarre and the workflow / UX is not the most intuitive. You have to download the base product first, and then you have to download the library separately. It's a custom installer, so you're at the mercy of MAGIX's servers and workflow here. This could be a lot simpler but I'm sure they have their reasons. The interface is on the more difficult side compared to other samplers out there. You may need to read a bit of the manual or watch a video on Youtube to figure out the basics.

You can test it free for 7 days without giving any info, but then you need to register with an e-mail after that. Overall it's a great FREE product with some excellent samples that's worth some of the fuss of setting it up and a less than friendly user interface.

Pros:

• Excellent quality samples, especially the drum kits.
• Very generous 2GB library.
• Good CPU / RAM performance.
• Free (!).
• Unlike other free VSTs that have been around for a long time, this is still 100% supported by its developer.

Cons:

• Installation is a bit of a pain and slower than it needs to be.
• Interface is not the most user-friendly, but reveals itself over time.
• A few other random quirks (e.g. there's an acoustic piano, but it's only available as a default instrument, not menu selectable. Weird!).

Slow, blurry, unintuitive, the samples can't be used in commercial projects, I uninstalled it in 5 minutes, really garbage.

This is my favorite video editing tool but even in 2022 this trash can not open mp4 video codecs from YouTube for editing. And mkv.

The most unstable instrument plugin I've ever come across.

Verdict: Unreliable, unstable, outdated.

Background:
I hadn't used a DAW in years, so I wanted an entry-level DAW to start working on music. I chose Music Maker by Magix and Independence came with the software.

At first I thought the problems with Independence were due to my setup or configuration. After all, I had no reference point to compare it to at the time.

I opened support tickets, and as an IT professional I am no stranger to troubleshooting or communication errors to the support desk. But getting help with this problem has been proven to prove futile.

Unfortunately, I had also chosen to buy instrument extensions for a not insignificant amount of money.

After spending an enormous amount of time debugging and trying to get this plugin to work stably I gave up. Deleted Music Maker and Independence and moved on. Something I haven't regretted in terms of actually being able to produce music.

I can't recommend Independence to anyone, I found it useless.

Whether I'm composing, arranging, mixing or mastering. Pro X has me covered.

The creative workflow is just incredible with fast graphics acceleration and MIDI routing signal capabilities.

I can use as many plugins as I need. Comes with 47 great sounding virtual instruments. This is just the few.

features on top of my mind, but the Take Composer, which allows me to see all of my possible combinations to create great lines and grooves, is definitely an extremely useful tool. I've tried and still use a number of Daws, but Samplitude Pro X is my personal winner.

I have pro x2 n x3. I found them to be the most confusing n difficult to get familiar with as their idea of"logical" n "intuitive" is very different from other daws that I've used. However the real issue is the awful n virtually non existent customer service. It took weeks sometimes to get a response n often it wasn't a useful one, meaning I had to contact them again n again over one issue. Also, you have to have your serial number handy in order to do anything on their site, including updates n downloads which is absolutely the stupidest pain in the rear. I'll never buy anything from them again.

Independence is a great tool to have when you want to have a variety control over your sounds that other samplers seems to miss. Granted, this VST has not been updated in sometime, but it contains features that some new samplers even lack. MIDI Bank & Prgram changer for layers, presets saving & recall for effects & modifiers, internal VST fx & instrument support and more... all with being low on the CPU. Using it as is, you can make this a mainstay of your virtual setup. I have the version qithout sounds, as I prefer to roll my own, and it suits that purpose very well.

This full fledged DAW is the best kept secret of the music industry. It's very suited for general multi-track recording, mixing and mastering work, as well as for adding sound effects to movies, animations and cut-scenes in games. In fact, I used it as a games sound engineer, and I've been swearing to it ever since. Here are som things I feel like hilighting:

• Very optimized, uses little CPU and RAM compared to other DAWs I've tried.
• Sound quality: What comes in, goes out. There's no degradation, hidden limiters or anything. It's a professional tool.
• Reliability is good: It's really as stable as anything running in Windows could possibly be.
• Supports both 32 and 64-bit VST plugins, and the support is good and stable.
• The feature set is endless. It may look simple, but there's far more than what meets the eye at first.
• Sync to video files which can be displayed on an external monitor. (This also performs super fast if the video file has many i-frames.).
• The object editor. Something I take as granted these days is apparently entirely missing in most other DAWs. How do people survive without it?

The default settings are a bit odd though. You really should change the default keyboard layout, or you will probably go crazy and would never get to like the program. I'd also change a setting that makes it record to a new .wav file every time you press Record, instead of one big file. But once these little hurdles are out of the way, this thing is the bomb.

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