Any Opinions on UVI World Suite?

[woafmann]

Wow, thanks for such a thoughtful and enlightening reply, Gamma-UT! Much appreciated.

Now that you've had a chance to dive into the library a bit, from what you know about it now, in your opinion, do you think it's a solid buy at $299 (no Falcon discount for me)? Or do you have any overall recommendations on other libraries? Not really interested in paying full-price for any East West stuff...Ethno World 5 seems cool but a bit high priced...Seems like it's either UVI World Suite or piece together something from various library authors.

Any other words of wisdom to share? Really appreciate your time, Gamma-UT!

[Musical Gym]

Never buy direct from vendor unless there is no other option.
UVI has sales, so I would hesitate to pay full price. UVI Synsations, which they sell for $199 has been given away for free in the past.
If you search jrrshop.com, they often have good deals; you can use coupon code FORUM or GROUP to get further discounts and also visit their Blowout section/site to sometimes get even lower prices on the same product.

https://www.jrrshop.com/uvi-world-traditions

https://www.jrrshop.com/catalogsearch/r ... e&dir=desc

You may find that developers who concentrate on single instruments rather than packages have more authentic sounding offerings.

[woafmann]

Hey Musical Gym! Thx so much for the good advice and the coupons. How very kind of you! I'll check out jrrshop or just hold out for a spell and see what deals come down the pipe...The Uilleann Pipe that is

There are some nice deals at jrrshop I see. Thx again!

[Musical Gym]

FORUM and GROUP codes are always worth trying. They're standard on-going codes provided by Uncle E who posts jrrshop offerings in the Bargain section of KVR.

[woafmann]

Gotchya. Thx for the tip! Definitely good to know.

[autodafe]

I had World Traditions (and a bunch of other UVI stuff...)
My Uograde price showed directly in my account and was something like 164 euros.
JRRShop doesn't carry updates form World Traditions (I have asked).

[Musical Gym]

a lot of good info on youtube

http://www.zero-g.co.uk/store/world-ethnic-c30.php
50% discount for 24 hours with code WEC50

[woafmann]

I had World Traditions (and a bunch of other UVI stuff...)
My Uograde price showed directly in my account and was something like 164 euros.
JRRShop doesn't carry updates form World Traditions (I have asked).

Did you take the plunge and get the World Suite? Thoughts on the library? I think I'm going to wait for a sale since I have no upgrade path with UVI.

I had read that "World Traditions" wasn't a very useful lib unto itself...Not a lot of love being shown towards it in the forums...

[woafmann]

...and that's a nice discount...Thx for the hookup, Musical Gym!

[Gamma-UT]

Wow, thanks for such a thoughtful and enlightening reply, Gamma-UT! Much appreciated.

Now that you've had a chance to dive into the library a bit, from what you know about it now, in your opinion, do you think it's a solid buy at $299 (no Falcon discount for me)? Or do you have any overall recommendations on other libraries? Not really interested in paying full-price for any East West stuff...Ethno World 5 seems cool but a bit high priced...Seems like it's either UVI World Suite or piece together something from various library authors.

Any other words of wisdom to share? Really appreciate your time, Gamma-UT!

The question is: what do you want to get from a library like this?

There's a lot of it: overall it's a lot of GB. The sampling is very good on the whole, though some instruments got a lot more love than others it seems. The playability of the instruments varies - for some the keyswitching works well. For others, it's going to take some work to come up with a strategy for producing convincing lines. Dulcimers, for example, come out pretty well because of this. The left-hand, right-hand coordination needed for wind instruments is often a lot trickier.

Developers who focus on a small number of libraries tend to be much better at building scripts that make the instruments more convincing out of the box because the scripts detect legato playing and insert the pitchbend transitions for you. This is something you don't really get with World Suite because it's such a big project.

It comes down to how 'real' it needs to be. Sometimes I prefer to use physical modelling to simulate the behaviour of instruments without bothering too much as to whether it captures a specific real-world instrument. Sometimes, you really want it to sound like actual bagpipes – for that, it seems a well-scripted specialised library is the way to go (other than simply finding/hiring a proper bagpipe player). And then, in the middle, you have World Suite for where you don't get the right feel from PM and can't get a more specialised library.

I got the discount, but I feel World Suite is worth its full price (to me). YMMV.

[woafmann]

The question is: what do you want to get from a library like this?

There's a lot of it: overall it's a lot of GB. The sampling is very good on the whole, though some instruments got a lot more love than others it seems. The playability of the instruments varies - for some the keyswitching works well. For others, it's going to take some work to come up with a strategy for producing convincing lines. Dulcimers, for example, come out pretty well because of this. The left-hand, right-hand coordination needed for wind instruments is often a lot trickier.

Developers who focus on a small number of libraries tend to be much better at building scripts that make the instruments more convincing out of the box because the scripts detect legato playing and insert the pitchbend transitions for you. This is something you don't really get with World Suite because it's such a big project.

It comes down to how 'real' it needs to be. Sometimes I prefer to use physical modelling to simulate the behaviour of instruments without bothering too much as to whether it captures a specific real-world instrument. Sometimes, you really want it to sound like actual bagpipes – for that, it seems a well-scripted specialised library is the way to go (other than simply finding/hiring a proper bagpipe player). And then, in the middle, you have World Suite for where you don't get the right feel from PM and can't get a more specialised library.

I got the discount, but I feel World Suite is worth its full price (to me). YMMV.

Thx again for your time, Gamma-UT.

I suppose for me, passable realism (barring hiring actual musicians) is what I'm after...For the price. World Suite seems realistic enough for the price point and with so many instruments.

I'm sure there was a ton of envelope tweaking to get things to sound the way they do in the demos...This is something I'm prepared to, and expect to do of course. If money were no object, I'd hand-pick each instrument from boutique developers, but alas, for so much sound at $299, it seems like a no-brainer. Not expecting "out-of-the-box" realism (although it would be nice)...Just passable realism after CC editing.

Although I'm mainly interested in the uilleann pipes, sitar, and duduk, I think I would find good inspiration in the other patches, especially the plucked string instruments.

Really appreciate everyone's time in this thread.

[Mikelo]

Hi woafmann, have you looked at forest Kingdom 2 and Era medieval 2 by best service? Might be worth checking out. I think they still have a buy one get one free offer.

[woafmann]

Hi woafmann, have you looked at forest Kingdom 2 and Era medieval 2 by best service? Might be worth checking out. I think they still have a buy one get one free offer.

Hey there Mikelo and thanks so much for the helpful tip...I had checked into Era II before, but decided to browse through an hour-long patch walk-through...Seems amazing, really...Better than I had originally thought. Unfortunately, the fine print in Best Service's BOGO deal doesn't include it Too bad because I was seriously considering it!

I would LOVE to have me a medieval library at some point considering it's one of my favorite genres of music.

Still on the hunt!

[woafmann]

In case anyone wants to know: I just tested out dropping "Epic World" and "Era II Medieval Legends" into the cart at BestService and it's showing Epic World as free...I guess the fine print means that you can't get Era II for free, but it counts toward the BOGO deal. SWEET!

[Mikelo]

In case anyone wants to know: I just tested out dropping "Epic World" and "Era II Medieval Legends" into the cart at BestService and it's showing Epic World as free...I guess the fine print means that you can't get Era II for free, but it counts toward the BOGO deal. SWEET!

Awesome! I think the cheapest one goes for free.