Basic Pre-purchase questions

[TomDM]

The question isn't whether or not to buy a Receptor. It's what version to buy?

My initial needs are modest. We would be satisfied running the East-West Bosendorfer 290 on the Receptor. But, in the future I can see adding GPO which I already own and perhaps some other orchestral samples.

I don't own the East-West Bosendorfer and I'm not sure if I would also need to pick up Kontakt 2 in order to use that sample package. In the more distant future I'd like to be able to run the Synful Orchesta package as it matures.

I see that the two areas of options have to do with memory and harddrive size with spread of about $1K between the 256kb/40gig to the 2gig/160gig.

Whats the minimum memory one should entertain for the East-West Bosendorfer and any of it's required products? What's the minimum hard disk size that might be required for the plug-ins I've mentioned.

Is it better to get TWO smaller Receptors to share the load between the above or 1 fully loaded Receptor?

I wish I could be more specific; but, the whole concept is so new to me that it's difficult to be sure that I'm covering all the bases.

Thanks.

Tom

[Hybernation]

The question isn't whether or not to buy a Receptor. It's what version to buy?

My initial needs are modest. We would be satisfied running the East-West Bosendorfer 290 on the Receptor. But, in the future I can see adding GPO which I already own and perhaps some other orchestral samples.

I don't own the East-West Bosendorfer and I'm not sure if I would also need to pick up Kontakt 2 in order to use that sample package. In the more distant future I'd like to be able to run the Synful Orchesta package as it matures.

I see that the two areas of options have to do with memory and harddrive size with spread of about $1K between the 256kb/40gig to the 2gig/160gig.

Whats the minimum memory one should entertain for the East-West Bosendorfer and any of it's required products? What's the minimum hard disk size that might be required for the plug-ins I've mentioned.

Is it better to get TWO smaller Receptors to share the load between the above or 1 fully loaded Receptor?

I wish I could be more specific; but, the whole concept is so new to me that it's difficult to be sure that I'm covering all the bases.

Check out the Collosus/Receptor bundle from East/West: http://www.soundsonline.com/sophtml/det ... ku=M-REC01

I did this and then replaced the 256 with another 1GB so I ended up with 2GB/160HD. Sweet thing is you can pick up the B290 for 1/2 price when you get this (as well as others).

The 2GB Steinway that comes with Collosus isn't bad. B290 is good as well. Kontakt2 can play them all, and you can save K2 versions of those instruments with your own custom effects and DFD settings. Granted, DFD is a bit of a hog on Receptor, but I think this will improve over time (I hope anyway). Also, SampleTekk makes some very good pianos (like TSO, SteinyD) that work well on Receptor under Kontakt2.

If you do go for 2 receptors (wish I could) it would be ok to get smaller HD and maybe only 1 or 1.256 GB on the other one, and run synths/organs on it (non sampler-based things).

[TomDM]

Thanks!

I've considered your suggestions and they seem to be the right way to go from a financial point of view.

One of the issues that I face is that in our team there are two people... an artist and myself. I concentrate on the technical issues. I like to have two identical systems so that I can explore the capabilities of the systems from a technical and software point of view so that the artist can concentrate on composing and performing.

The nice thing about the Receptor is that it should be portable from one computer or MIDI controller to another so we might be able to get by with just one for a while. That's certainly not true of VSTs and products loaded directly into the computers themselves.

Thanks for the input.