What's in Your Receptor?

[Scot Solida]

I'm just curious about how folks are using their Receptor, and what plugs are working out for you. No reason, just seems like it might make an interesting discussion.

So, what's in it? What freeware do you use a lot in Receptor? What licensed plugs have you bought? And how about unsupported things? What do you plan to buy for it?

Also, how is it performing for you? Do you go beyond choosing patches from the front panel, or do you use a computer to edit deeply?

To answer my own questions...

The freeware stuff that I have been using a lot are (in no particular order):

1. FreeAlpha. A good, basic polysynth that seems to stack well.
2. Triangle I & II. Easy leads and big basses.
3. Big Tick Dual Delay. 'Cause I like delays.
4. All the Kjaerhus stuff. Good bread n butter for getting a "workstation sound".
5. MDA stuff. 'Cause it does the job nicely, thank you.


Commercial stuff I have bought (or came with it):

1. Albino 2. Speaks for itself. Modulation galore, and a good sound.
2. daOrgan. Sometimes I don't want to mic up my Hammonds.
3. RMIV. 'cause I have lots of kits that I have made, and its dead easy. Plus, LinPlug's crossgrade policy is tops.
4. FM7. Kick ass FM, with an inexpensive crossgrade.
5. Kompakt. I do so much commercial sound design for Kontakt-based things that this was a no-brainer. Good library included, plus I have literally gig upon gig of patches I have created from my own samples. My ESI-32 never gets booted up since I got this.
6. EMM Knagalis. Aw man! I LOVE that Sitar! Who forgot to unplug the lava lamp?
7. MTRON. Erm...'cause it is MTRON, man! Between this and daOrgan, I could pretend at being Tony Banks all day.
8. Vertigo. This is one awesome plug-in! Fantastic resynthesis for bizarre effects. It sounds lush and full. A perfect tool for space music or industrial mayhem.

Unsupported:
1. M42 Nebula. After endlessly bashing about at my crippled versions of "Watcher in the Skies" on MTRon, I pretend I am Klaus Schulze.
2. CM101. Bread. And butter.
3. CM303. Squelch, zip, buzz!
4. PolyIblit. It might be the best-sounding free VA out there.


This is just a partial list, but these are the things I keep going back to. Kompakt, Vertigo and MTRON get the most use...the latter two being my "boot up" instruments. I don't use Receptor so much for analogue kinda stuff, but if you have seen pics of my studio, you'd understand why. No, I tend to use it as a sampler/workstation. It is like having something like a Triton or Fantom, but with all of my own patches and samples. I could use a better reverb on board, but I just run it through my TC stuff for now.

Receptor has been doing very nicely in its latest incarnation. It got off to a rough start, but has settled in nicely with the latest version. I had some trouble once, but it was my own fault, and the folks from MUSE actually called me on the phone and talked me through getting it up and running! That's support, man!

I initially thought Receptor was a simply a good option for live work, but I have since found that it is an essential part of my studio stuff too. It is far, far quieter than my rack-mounted PC. When I need certain PC-only plugs, I'd rather fire this up than the Windows box. I recently upgraded the memory to 768 Megs with off-the-shelf RAM. That was easy enough to do. I'll probably drop a gig in eventually.

I use the Remote program on the Mac to edit it. It's kinda funny seeing Windows plugs on my Mac screen...

I'm digging my Receptor a lot these days. Nice work MUSE.

[tconrardy]

Hey Scott

good to see ya doing a thread like this, and thanks for pretending to be Klaus Shultze yeah: M42 is really nice on receptor.

As many of you know, I've been experimenting quite a bit on the unsupported method, and now have a HUGE number of instruments to choose from. I found I had to create my own bank called "TC personnel" in which I can put in my own multi-presets of my fav plugs and have them work together. These include M42 ( of course) Albino2, WusikStation with Vox'd and second wave soundsets, EVE with the Mini-Moog and Evalon soundsets, Big Ticks Rhino and UGO's nice synths like Texture and Rez. I also like using arpegiators to get things going live, such as Wheel of Fortune ( the original version skinned by UGO) and Kraklies EZ-Poly. I also have a wave player that a fellow synthedit dev made for me..very generic with the default SE skin..but it works. I use it to play loops: drum beats and algorithmic loops I created with programs such as M, Music Mouse and other unique "atari Apps :-)Which reminds me: recently made a multi-patch that has diiferent midi channles assigned to several plugins for multi-timbral operation to play Tunesmith ( algo app by Jim Johnson) on. It pumps out 6 tracks including percussion..very nice using receptor for this.

I also plug in my Peavy electric guitar and use it for an effects processor. camelPhat2 is an excellent cruncher for this. ( BTW: you can download my guitar patches from Plugarama)

I like playing things live and recording directly to Tracktion on the PC. Really saves on CPU as well.

Anybody else?

TC

[bluedad]

as I'm preparing to get back into live gigging, the idea of receptor is rather attractive. If it can pass the Soliday test, then it sounds alright to me. I just wonder how easy it would be to get versions of most of my commercial stuff
(komplete) without having it cost another arm, maybe a couple of legs.

[Kriminal]

The only two ppl i know who have Receptor are Scot and Tim, and thats cos they got it free

BTW, what does 'know to work, but unsupported' mean? What do you have to do to have a VST 'supported' ?

[Scot Solida]

Krim: "unsupported, known to work" means that the plug will work in the machine. See, if a Windows plug-in has an installer, that installer would have to be rewritten by the MUSE team, since technically, Receptor aint Windows. However, it is possible to drag the .dll files of plugs into Receptor using the Remote software on another computer. Many plugs work just fine this way (including, apparently, Karnage, though I couldn't get it to show up...must try again with the last version). In addition, some plugs can be installed on a Windows computer, and you can drag the resulting .dll file over to Recpetor. VStation is like this.

Where it gets tricky is with challenge/response kinda things, I think. However, I think even some of those can be made to work.

Bluedad:
Receptor might make a good live box for you. The only problem I have had is with certain massive multis I have made taking a long time to load. More than I would be comfortable with onstage. However, there is a solution to this. I have been creating a pair of multis than have every plug I need for a set...mainly Kompakt, daOrgan, MTron...well, you know! Each of these can be sent program changes from the master keyboard or sequencer. If I work it out right, I only have to change Receptor setups once (so THAT'S what those long modular improve noodles are for!).

I certainly feel that I could trust Receptor to be stable onstage at this point. But then, I have also gigged with a laptop. Still, I feel a little more secure with Receptor tucked away in a rack than I did with my laptop on a keyboard stand (though my studio PC is now rackmounted, too ). Latency isn't an issue (as I posted somewhere else on this forum, my old Prophecy had more latency!), and I like having most of my sample-based things in one box. My next gig will consist of Receptor, the big modular (!) and my K5000W driving Receptor from its keyboard and sequencer. Maybe my Nord for quik leads.

[Scot Solida]

as I'm preparing to get back into live gigging, the idea of receptor is rather attractive. If it can pass the Soliday test, then it sounds alright to me. I just wonder how easy it would be to get versions of most of my commercial stuff
(komplete) without having it cost another arm, maybe a couple of legs.

Bluedad, I forgot to say...NI's crossgrade policy for Receptor is pretty reasonable. I think it cost me something like $29 to crossgade FM7. Needless to say, not everything in Komplete is available for Receptor. Kompakt, Pro53, B4 and FM7 are, though, so it will depend which ones you want to take out.

Some crossgrades are free, by the way. LinPlug's are, and some others.