Can We Start the Hype Now?????? StudioPhonik!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ephraze619]

Is it safe to stain our drawers with the news of a StudioPhonik release this month??!!!!

And if so, will there be a discount for people who purchased Workstation 2???

Let the hype begin people!!!!!!!

[Squids]

Announcement about it will be made official this month. Release is scheduled for next month. Some changes have been made about it. More news coming. There's at least 1 gigabyte of extra content though that's not in Prelude (that is FREE to all SPK Group Buyers).

[zedd]

Announcement about it will be made official this month. Release is scheduled for next month. Some changes have been made about it. More news coming. There's at least 1 gigabyte of extra content though that's not in Prelude (that is FREE to all SPK Group Buyers).

I'm excited about this... can you give us some hints or a screen capture or something?

Back in February you mentioned some exciting developments involving new features in SampleTank and/or Studiophonik... but we still remain in the dark. How about throwing us a bone?

[Squids]

Announcement about it will be made official this month. Release is scheduled for next month. Some changes have been made about it. More news coming. There's at least 1 gigabyte of extra content though that's not in Prelude (that is FREE to all SPK Group Buyers).

I'm excited about this... can you give us some hints or a screen capture or something?

Back in February you mentioned some exciting developments involving new features in SampleTank and/or Studiophonik... but we still remain in the dark. How about throwing us a bone?

The bone is this. Studiophonik will be released as an ST library with an ST engine but no dedicated GUI (at least not for now). People in the SPK group buy will be able to get the additional 1 gigabyte of sounds for free. IF we ever do a dedicated software GUI for it (which would be fun) everyone who bought the Prelude can have that too! But, I don't know if that is going to happen given the route SampleTank development is going... now, since I opened that can of worms I will tell you that YES there are future developments for SampleTank and they are impressive. They will enhance what you can do with Studiophonik sounds for SURE! I am sure you can imagine but of course I can't spill the beans about any details on the next phase of SampleTank except to say that I think you're going to like it. It will essentially do MORE than anything you thought the SPK GUI was going to offer feature-wise. In fact, SPK's GUI was just going to be a reskin with no extra features... but we pushed for a LOT of features and the GOOD news is we've caused those features to be developed. Only we didn't want to wait even longer for those features AND there's going to be a few changes in how it handles content so... that's all I can say about that.

In the end, it's about time we released the full Studiophonik Collection to the general SampleTank using public (not just those here on KVR who were privy to the Prelude version). It's been way WAY too long. So, you'll be hearing an announcement very soon that the Studiophonik Collection (among a few other things, including a complete surprise) will be released around May/June. Another sound collection product is also being released THIS month too and it is exciting for anyone who doesn't have it (you may ).

[vespers75]

Excellent news about the new Sampletank developments! Unfortunately, we probably won't get the new Sampletank for another another year or so, I'm guessing.

[zedd]

...I will tell you that YES there are future developments for SampleTank and they are impressive. They will enhance what you can do with Studiophonik sounds for SURE! I am sure you can imagine but of course I can't spill the beans about any details on the next phase of SampleTank except to say that I think you're going to like it.

That sounds fabulous! I am only concerned that they might not maintain backwards compatibility and that it will be unable to read older SampleTank projects.

I am presently going through the nightmare of having discovered that the original Amplitube 1.x (which was officially discontinued with the release of Amplitube 2.x) is NOT compatible with my new Intel Mac computer. I have so many song projects in progress which use those original Amplitube settings, so I am upset by the many hours this is costing me to deal with the mess. It is beyond me why they have not made the effort to make Amplitube 1.x Intel compatible because it really does sound quite a bit different than Amplitube 2.x and has a very special charm to it.

In any case, I am now worried that they will probably discontinue the original T-Racks now that T-Racks 3 is out, and probably when we get to Snow Leopard, all tracks with the original T-Racks won't load. And the same threat exists with SampleTank, if they discontinue the old version.

Squids... please use your squidly powers to encourage those IK guys to make sure this stuff remains compatible or at least continues working in new OS environments. Not all of us work on projects and finish them in a timely fashion and then move on... I have 9 years worth of songs in various stages which I am still slowly bringing to completion. I want these plugins to keep on working.

The bone is this. Studiophonik will be released as an ST library with an ST engine but no dedicated GUI (at least not for now).

I'm a wee bit disappointed with not having a dedicated GUI just because I was hoping I could keep the Studiophonik Sample Library completely separate from the ST Library. My SampleTank library has gotten so big that it significantly delays the opening of my projects... I wish there was a way to split up the library and have different instances of ST reference different Sample Library locations. Maybe this is already possible and I am just a nincompoop?

One thing is for sure... my new MacPro is not as "speedy" as I might have wished in many departments (including the loading of my ST library), BUT it has dramatically sped up the time it takes to save SampleTank presets. It used to take about a minute or more on my G5, and now it is only a few seconds.

Great news about all this upcoming stuff! I hope my post doesn't sound too much like a rant. I'm definitely excited about these new products... just concerned for the longevity of what I have already.

[Squids]

Excellent news about the new Sampletank developments! Unfortunately, we probably won't get the new Sampletank for another another year or so, I'm guessing.

I don't think it is a year away but it is also not a month away either. I'm very excited about it because it enhances what you can do with all of our SampleTank format sound collections and more. But of course I can't SAY more. Not yet. But you know I will when I can.

[dgkenney]

Studiophonik being released

People on k-V-r saying nice things about Pro Tools 8

Surely these are signs from the book of Revelations foreshadowing the end of days

Dan

[Rycast]

So Studiophonik is not going to be a stand-alone plug-in like Sonik Synth 2? You're going to need Sampletank?...

[zedd]

So Studiophonik is not going to be a stand-alone plug-in like Sonik Synth 2? You're going to need Sampletank?...

Squids... I've been thinking about this.

You said that the decision was made not to package Studiophonik with a dedicated GUI "(at least not for now)". But if it might eventually be come with its own GUI, wouldn't it be possible to still release it as a VI that will show up as a separate instrument called "Studiophonik" in our instrument folders which will act as a different product and refer to its own sample folder? It doesn't matter if the GUI is exactly the same as SampleTank... it can be a clone of the GUI as long as the DAW recognizes it as a separate VI from ST. This would be great, and probably wouldn't involve more than a few minutes of programming, I imagine.

That way the instruments could be loaded into either SampleTank --OR-- into this version of SampleTank which will be called Studiophonik. And then if you updated Studiophonik with its own GUI at a later stage, it can continue to refer to the same sample folder. This will make the product easier to manage, if there is new or updated content, and will resolve my issue of a bloated SampleTank library. The flexibility of being able to refer this product to its own separate library folder would be a definite advantage.

Any thoughts?

Perhaps the new SampleTank will address this somehow, by allowing different ST instances to refer to different Sample Library folders perhaps... or maybe by just allowing a much more efficient loading of the library list?

[Squids]

So Studiophonik is not going to be a stand-alone plug-in like Sonik Synth 2? You're going to need Sampletank?...

Well, first of all, Studiophonik was always going to BE SampleTank just reskinned (like the others are). But the reskinning of a previous SampleTank version to what is being developed now is not something IK wants to do when they're happy to just give people that get Studiophonik the current SampleTank 2.5 engine for free to use with it instead. The only loss is the aesthetic "skin" - which believe me I miss! It was my idea that whole Neve-lookin' thing! But, it's not my decision. We just make the sounds. The GOOD news is that there will be future development on the ST engine that will enhance what one can do with these sounds though and that's really the guts of it. Also at that time there may be more aesthetic possibilities as well... so without getting into any details I am not allowed to get into, let's just say that in the long run it'll only be better and for now it won't make that much of a difference using the ST2.5 software as its player vs. a separate skinned ST2.5 that has the SPK look. But, again, it wasn't up to me. If we were able to do our own skins like we do in Reason and Kontakt we'd have done it. But SampleTank is more complex for graphics (and can also have more graphic elements like different layout, knobs, buttons and other bells and whistles) and plus there's a whole system that has to be set up for its serial/registration and everything all that has to be done by IK and the way it was going it was going to take even longer to come out so I just said "Okay, let's release then as it is!!" I mean it could go on forever this way so... we've released the Prelude and now we've got another gigabyte of sounds and that's the Studiophonik Collection!

[Squids]

Zedd, I think a future version of ST can address this perhaps. But of course I can't say much about it.

[zedd]

The only loss is the aesthetic "skin" - which believe me I miss! It was my idea that whole Neve-lookin' thing! But, it's not my decision....and plus there's a whole system that has to be set up for its serial/registration and everything all that has to be done by IK and the way it was going it was going to take even longer to come out so I just said "Okay, let's release then as it is!!" I mean it could go on forever this way so... we've released the Prelude and now we've got another gigabyte of sounds and that's the Studiophonik Collection!

Okay Squidly! I'm sold! Thank you for the explanation.

It sounds like you are working hard to do all you can do, and ultimately that is what matters most to me. Sometimes we have to make a few minor compromises to get where we are going... and we can live with that. I'm planning to love Studiophonik in whatever package it ends up coming in.

[Squids]

Sonic Reality is a sound company. We partner up with different software companies to create different products. We like to do development in SampleTank because of the ease of use for musicians (love that it is all consolidated into one interface like that) and the built-in effects, Stretch, loop sync, PSTS... some cool features in that box that I use musically myself all the time. Studiophonik is a cool concept taking SampleTank and going as far as you can go with it... without streaming and other things you might need for mixing mic channels. It's a nice lighter way to have variety but more control... then there's the presets that can be made in a way that only IK's processing will sound (and you can imagine in the future that's only going to improve given all the cool developments IK has made like TR and AT).

But, that's one avenue of sonic expression. We also have the Infinite Player/Kontakt stuff which gives us more freedom and control. We can also do larger streaming-sized instruments and when it comes to mic mixing control you can have all 16 channels at once for one sound. Not as laptop-friendly as Studiophonik but certainly STUDIO-like and the control is just getting better and better with our developments on that platform. Then, as you may know, we also do sounds for Stylus RMX, Reason and other popular sample players... including BFD2 which we are developing kits for.

So, as a sound company we offer sounds done in different ways and in a variety of formats that suit the sounds. How the sounds are packaged sometimes depends on the partner if THEY are distributing it (and IK tends to distribute most SR sounds that are done in ST format which makes sense - and there's a cool surprise for a lot of ST users this month from IK and SR). But since SR distributes most other products that have our sounds these days we have more control over the GUI and packaging... and that's also fun for us as well. We can do more updates and releases exactly when we want them (or when we can do them) and there's less red tape (no pun intended ).

[Talvin]

Another month has passed. Any news??