MAGIX

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.

Spread the word.

A 'Must have' percussive library - not so many good free set like it :)Some really nice percussions in there, for sure sit well in almost any mix :).

I've used already Yellow Tools Independence 2, upgraded to version 3. But during the phase before the handover to Magix I've abandoned it and tried many other Samplers and find me after years back again with Independence. From my point of view this product is currently underestimated on the market. Let me try to bring it to the audience where it should be.
My deep respect for the developer.

Thomas.