ST3 Poll

[dsan@mail.com]

I guess at least 50% of the "very disappointed" and "money back" voters are just haters, probably they don't even own ST3...

I guess you probably also guess at the winning lottery numbers and haven't hit those right yet either.

There's no hate going on in this camp. Been an IKM customer for likely longer than you are old. Paid full prices for ST2, Miroslav and SS2.

Bet you caught ST2 for cheap in one of the fire sales and caught the same deal in the upgrade that long time supporters got too.

Some things - what's not to like? GUI is larger and more readable. FX is laid out well to be able to tweak and adjust. Many other features to like as well I'm sure.

The sounds though are not to my liking. I find them toy like.

Others will disagree, that's fine. I hope they enjoy them.

But I will not ridicule them because they have a difference of opinion.

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[mhog]

Actually I bought ST2 in 2004 boxed and full price. At the time ST was a must for those who needed to emulate hardware rompler workstations in a DAW. Ten years later you cannot call anything "a must", there are tons of products and everything is quite similar in terms of results and quality, even on an IPAD (see Animoog and such). As I wrote, the poll lacks the "as good as I expected" option. The ones who expected something "stellar" are just naive. ST3 has everything ST2 had + more readable GUI + new sounds. So I wonder how can a ST2 user be "deeply disappointed" by ST3...

[neverenoughfunk]

Actually I bought ST2 in 2004 boxed and full price. At the time ST was a must for those who needed to emulate hardware rompler workstations in a DAW. Ten years later you cannot call anything "a must", there are tons of products and everything is quite similar in terms of results and quality, even on an IPAD (see Animoog and such). As I wrote, the poll lacks the "as good as I expected" option. The ones who expected something "stellar" are just naive. ST3 has everything ST2 had + more readable GUI + new sounds. So I wonder how can a ST2 user be "deeply disappointed" by ST3...

you are 110% correct here...

i feel the major problem with ST 3 is the 3 to 5 year hype... in theory ST 3 is only a rompler... i.e. bread and butter sounds... but the hype made it appear that ST 3 is the best thing since slice bread... in fact... just bread and butter sounds... but if one is honest with themselves... what did you really expect?

[kbaccki]

The ones who expected something "stellar" are just naive.

What the hell are you talking about? Do you think the IK team sat in a room and said "eh, let's just give 'em something that's 'OK', nothing more...". Given the current state of sampling and synthesis, yes, I do expect there to be a little bit of a "wow factor" w/ a $300 product. Just look at the competition. Listen to the rudess YouTube demos. He's very artful with what's in ST3, but honestly it sounds like better versions of ST2 content... which is... whatever. Call me naive.

ST3 has everything ST2 had + more readable GUI + new sounds. So I wonder how can a ST2 user be "deeply disappointed" by ST3...

Maybe they think the new sounds are just OK to mediocre to crappy? Not to mention overlapping and/or inferior to what they already have. So they're left with a new GUI (with flaws) and 64 bit, and minus 32 bit compatibility.

[dsan@mail.com]

For me the expectation was for quality sounds out of the box.

I'm not finding that, yet. Perhaps I haven't delved deep enough, yet. But I'm running out sounds to test.

For some, the sounds are stellar. That's ok. It's all subjective any way.

I've heard better and have other VST'is that deliver superior sound quality. Not toy like but like a real instruments.

You hit the nail on the head neverenoughfunk - the hype - has caused many of us to raise the bar in our minds of what to expect of IKM. We hold them to a higher standard than some of the other developers because of what they have delivered in the past and some feel they have missed the mark and let us down - because of the hype.

So, aside from the lack of superior sounds, I have not faulted ST3. Sure, there are some things I would like to see improved, GUI could be re-sizable, browser could use some help, the ability to type in a value in the mixer since trying to move with a mouse one cannot get it tight enough, things like this and so on.

But it certainly is not what the hype indicated it would be. You suggested so yourself

Just one poor musicians' take on the matter

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[dsan@mail.com]

Actually I bought ST2 in 2004 boxed and full price. At the time ST was a must for those who needed to emulate hardware rompler workstations in a DAW. Ten years later you cannot call anything "a must", there are tons of products and everything is quite similar in terms of results and quality, even on an IPAD (see Animoog and such). As I wrote, the poll lacks the "as good as I expected" option. The ones who expected something "stellar" are just naive. ST3 has everything ST2 had + more readable GUI + new sounds. So I wonder how can a ST2 user be "deeply disappointed" by ST3...

Everything except the naive part

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[mhog]

Given the current state of sampling and synthesis, yes, I do expect there to be a little bit of a "wow factor" w/ a $300 product. Just look at the competition.

Competition?! As far as I know, the only competitor is Halion Sonic, which costs the same but needs a dongle. Or you mean "Kontakt", "Machfive" and such? Those are not workstations, but samplers which can load dedicated libraries ten times bigger than the whole ST3 library...

[dsan@mail.com]

Does being a rompler excuse a software from providing top quality sounds?

I believe Nexus2 is a rompler?

About the same price as ST3?

Contains top quality sounds?


Happy Musiking!
dsan

[Bombadil]

Does being a rompler excuse a software from providing top quality sounds?

I believe Nexus2 is a rompler?

About the same price as ST3?

Contains top quality sounds?


Happy Musiking!
dsan

I was messing around with the vocals in Omnisphere last night. It was night and day compared to ST3, and Omnisphere is a Rompler, unless I have misunderstood the term. It is also not significantly more expensive than what the full price of ST3 will be to new customers. Of course, this depends on one's definition of 'significant.'

[mhog]

Does being a rompler excuse a software from providing top quality sounds?

I believe Nexus2 is a rompler?

About the same price as ST3?

Contains top quality sounds?


Happy Musiking!
dsan

IMO in a so called "workstation" (ST3, Halion Sonic, Trinity, Triton, Fantom, Motif and such) you can find from mediocre to quite good sounds, not "top notch". If you are a creative one you can build your own original "top notch" patches trough multi+efx chain process, otherwise you have to look for other products (dedicated XXXgb libraries or niche instruments, e.g. "Diva", "Pianoteq" and such). Sampletank is very good for what it is: a general purpose workstation with "cheap/decent/good" sounds in a list of 4000+. Infinite possibilities for the creative ones.

[kbaccki]

Given the current state of sampling and synthesis, yes, I do expect there to be a little bit of a "wow factor" w/ a $300 product. Just look at the competition.

Competition?! As far as I know, the only competitor is Halion Sonic, which costs the same but needs a dongle. Or you mean "Kontakt", "Machfive" and such? Those are not workstations, but samplers which can load dedicated libraries ten times bigger than the whole ST3 library...

You're splitting arbitrary hairs. All of those products and more are in the $300 +/- market, and the sound quality and functional capabilitirs aren't even close. If u said ST3 is a decent $150 rompler I might buy that argument. At $300 it doesn't have the horses to compete with Steinberg, NI, UVI/motu, nexus, etc. That's just based on what I've heard and what I'm reading over past fee days
Maybe the demo blows me away.

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

Seems like a reasonable difference of opinion here, to me...as long as we don't get back into the "sampler/rompler" semantics argument again

[dsan@mail.com]

I should have probably used Omnisphere as my example since I own it and was gauging Nexus2 by the demos at the ReFX site

You are correct Bombadil.....got that WOW! factor immediately when I opened Omnisphere.

But I did pay a lot more for it than I did ST3 (even at ST3 full price). I think it cost about $450 when I bought it.

Regardless of price, the quality should be there in a product.

Sorry, it's just how I feel about things.

If you're gonna do something do it the very best you can. IKM can do better, IMHO. They've already proved they can with previous product.

At the time ST2 WAS top notch in the sound department. ST3 is no where close to what can be done with today's technology.

Sorry, good enough is just not good enough.

They can do better; I want them to do better because they can and I want to see them around down the road producing top notch product.

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[mhog]

You're splitting arbitrary hairs. All of those products and more are in the $300 +/- market, and the sound quality and functional capabilitirs aren't even close. If u said ST3 is a decent $150 rompler I might buy that argument. At $300 it doesn't have the horses to compete with Steinberg, NI, UVI/motu, nexus, etc.

It depends on what you expect. ST3 is a Kontakt replacer? No. I own both and I can tell you they are very different instruments. If you need a "top notch" modern dance oriented workstation, Nexus2 is much better (but it needs a dongle and the dedicated libraries cost 55€). Again, the only "competitor" I can see in the market is Halion Sonic.

[BBFG#]

Seems like a reasonable difference of opinion here, to me...as long as we don't get back into the "sampler/rompler" semantics argument again

Option C, Sample Player...
It's only semantics to those that insist a player that doesn't sample is still a sampler.
To the rest of us, it is a definition of a term which denotes its actual abilities.