IK Multimedia Xpansion Tank 2 Group Buy

[barbecutie]

IK Multimedia Xpansion Tank 2 Group Buy

Currently at 1206 users!

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/xtgroupbuy

and

http://www.esoundz.com/details.php?ProductID=4293

BBC

esoundz user: BarBeCutie or see epointz referral thread below for other users:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... ht=epointz

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

IMAP is tres cool. I was playing some blast beats with an IMAP-mapped ST kit and my stepson came in and just said "badass"

[kbaccki]

I promised DarkStar I would post the OB Xpander patches that have a volume issue:

All Lead
Another Pad
Chime Pad
Floaty Pad
Shreik Pad
Square Pad

Only 6 out of the 34 total... If there's no plan to fix the original patches, then as Dave said, it's easy enough to save your own child preset with volume adjustments, as necessary. I've found that most of them only require enabling the eq/comp slot for the part and boosting the comp gain knob 6-14dB, then you can save that as a child preset. A couple require also boosting the individual channel volume from the default 100 to max 127 in addition to the comp gain knob adjustment...

I just wanted to also point out that the even though there are some minor niggles like this, the quality of the sample set realtive to price is high, IMO. E.g., the dynamics across multi-samples are relatively consistent, loop points are generally seamless, etc.

[rich_h]

I bought two lots of Sampletank XT for myself (hey, I had a bonus!) and while I have got all six expansion tanks as expected, there is only one Sampletank XT instrument listed in my user area.

You only get one XT license. I don't think that was made entirely clear by IK, but was mentioned in vague terms in the first XT reg email.

Really? Never mind, no big deal.

Especially as aforementioned daughter is currently well and truly in the doghouse!

[Squids]

I promised DarkStar I would post the OB Xpander patches that have a volume issue:

All Lead
Another Pad
Chime Pad
Floaty Pad
Shreik Pad
Square Pad

Only 6 out of the 34 total... If there's no plan to fix the original patches, then as Dave said, it's easy enough to save your own child preset with volume adjustments, as necessary. I've found that most of them only require enabling the eq/comp slot for the part and boosting the comp gain knob 6-14dB, then you can save that as a child preset. A couple require also boosting the individual channel volume from the default 100 to max 127 in addition to the comp gain knob adjustment...

I just wanted to also point out that the even though there are some minor niggles like this, the quality of the sample set realtive to price is high, IMO. E.g., the dynamics across multi-samples are relatively consistent, loop points are generally seamless, etc.

Another thing to check is the Velocity to Amp in the Velocity Panel. Sometimes analog synths have velocity set and they really shouldn't (at least from a purist point of view... obviously some people prefer it to have dynamics but the original usually didn't). Anyway, if a sound is quiet sometimes just turning the Velocity to amp down to zero is all you need. Otherwise putting the compressor works. There's also a LEVEL control in the Amp Envelope and this is the actual volume of the patch internally... it'd be an easy tweak for us if we could just save back the parent sound (which like I said I believe WILL be possible in a future revision but not now) but since we'd have to dig back into these proprietary developer tools... to go back in time and try to match things up amongst libraries that were done differently over the past 8 years is perhaps a daunting task unfortunately... however, I am glad you pointed out those specifics. Feel free to PM me or email me dave (at) sonicreality (dot) com if you have a list of specific sounds and issues and we'll have a look and see if a relatively painless update that isn't too confusing for the users (possibly thousands of them by the time this is over) and is really worth it. Volumes are easy to adjust and sort of a part of working in SampleTank for me... I am just used to it as a user myself. I usually just put the compressor on most of the time because I like the way it boosts the level and warms it up -vintagizes it a bit (made up word).

Thanks! I like the way you said what you said.

[Squids]

Everyone's pal DarkStar came up with a good idea for an esoundz bonus... first we have to hit 30 different places though. How many do we have so far?

[Squids]

hmmm seems I made a mistake by choosing symphony strings 2 - its mainly the same content like in symphony strings which I already own - I thought it would be some more additional stuff...

nevertheless a great deal anyway!

Oh man, sorry about that. Yeah the previous 6 Expansion Tank titles aren't sequels but rather "extended" with some additional content. You do have solo strings now that didn't come with the first one though. I believe the sound lists are up or will be very soon.

Did you get it from esoundz? If so at least you get an additional 1 gigabyte library on top. All in all should be worth it!

[Squids]

hmmm seems I made a mistake by choosing symphony strings 2 - its mainly the same content like in symphony strings which I already own - I thought it would be based on additional sample stuff...

nevertheless a great deal anyway!

...now THANKS for that hint! I also hoped that there would be additional sample material...

-> I'm wondering why ik multimedia did not make this clear before...

There IS additional sample material. But it does include all of the first Symphony Strings as well. The sounds lists are up now - sorry it took so long but it took us a while to do them.

[Teksonik]

Let me see if I can lighten the mood.....or kill it all together.

Combis? Did someone say Combis? I just loaded a set of 20 combis using "only" the XT content that comes with this group buy. Certainly not in the same quality waters as Squids but hey I had fun making them. Hopefully someone will have fun playing them as well.

http://www.kvraudio.com/banks.php?s=lis ... order=date


(Why are SampleTank Combis so big? 20 presets weighs in at about 4 megs)

Thanks for the combis Teksonik! I'm having great fun playing them

Thanks, glad you're having fun.

I really like creating combis using multiple libraries so sticking with the XT content that comes with the GB was interesting.

Now if we could only have per layer Arps with Latch in Sampletank...........

[t-willy]

The sounds lists are up now - sorry it took so long but it took us a while to do them.

they're hiding from me. where are they exactly?

thanks

lates

t-willy

[JavaJ]

I have listened some more to the demos (while I read the patch lists)- and am leaning towards the loops more and more. Can anyone comment on the ones they like the most. Not sure about the constructions kits- are they great idea starters for people. Since I don't have Stylus- I am thinking loading up on loops might be worth doing for the price (and may be a better compliment to my Logc setup- can anyone comment on the new loops versus what comes in all the packs in Logic).

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

The sounds lists are up now - sorry it took so long but it took us a while to do them.

they're hiding from me. where are they exactly?

If you go to the Group Buy page and click through to the Xpansion Tanks, then you will see "Read More" for each. Click that for whichever you'd like, then you'll see details and a "Show Sound List" link below. Thanks!

SampleTank really is a very quick workstation. With a little bit of research/knowledge of the tools used on the original recording and some ingenuity I was able to do a Floydesque take on the "Shine on You" Part I sounds in just a few minutes only using instruments from these Xpansion Tanks with no external processing of any kind (limited myself on purpose). I used sounds from Vintage Keys, Cinematik, and SampleOB Xpander (and only one from each for the pad, one from SampleOB Xpander for lead). Mind the few seconds of silence at the beginning - I also only took a few minutes to tweak the export http://storage.tinytoaster.com/STShine.mp3

[Santini]

I have listened some more to the demos (while I read the patch lists)- and am leaning towards the loops more and more. Can anyone comment on the ones they like the most. Not sure about the constructions kits- are they great idea starters for people. Since I don't have Stylus- I am thinking loading up on loops might be worth doing for the price (and may be a better compliment to my Logc setup- can anyone comment on the new loops versus what comes in all the packs in Logic).

Thanks to Squids and IKM for getting those up; I have a better idea of what packs I'd want to get in this deal; Cinematik is mine!

Anyhow, while going through the sound lists I noticed that the construction kit R.A.W. loops I picked up in the current audioMIDI no-brainer are almost the same as those found in their XT2 Loops counterparts.

For example, the contents of the Trip Hop R.A.W. Style Pack can be found in both the Trip Hop and the Down Tempo Electronica Loop Collections.

Trip Hop has the following listed in the 01 Menu Map Grooves THC Parent Patches list:

52_Paths, 55_dOiT, 56_Destiny, 60_Hoah, 62_Look, 66_Allright, 66_Beets, 70_Beets, 70_FX, 76_Hop, 76_IKnow, 78_Beets, 79_Random, 80_PureGarbage, 87_GoodTime, 91_What and 95_NoWay

Of that list and the following Loops + Slices THC listings, only 62_Look, 66_Beets, 70_Beets, 70_FX, 78_Beets, 79_Random and 80_PureGarbage represent content that is not part of the Trip Hop R.A.W. Style Pack.

Moving on, everything that's listed in Down Tempo Electronica can be found in the Trip Hop R.A.W. Style Pack. There appears to be no "new" content, if using the Style Pack as comparison.

However, the filesizes for Trip Hop and Down Tempo Electronica are 1.16 GB and 1.33 GB. The filesizes on my HD for the Trip Hop R.A.W. Style Pack are 1.03 GB for the WAV files and 600 MB for the REX files (content for the WAVs and REXs are identical). Apart from those working in the native SampleTank format, I'm presuming that something's been done with them, or SampleTank files are just bigger!

That said, I'm very happy with the quality of the R.A.W. Style Packs I picked up in the no-brainer, but I wouldn't choose their XT2 counterparts in this deal seeing as I have the majority of the content, albeit in a different format.

And JavaJ, I don't have Logic, so can't compare the loops found in those to the R.A.W. Style Packs I bought. They work and sound great for my purposes of chopping and mangling in my DAW and Maschine. As idea starters, I found Country Folk Rhythms and Trip Hop both fun to mess around with, as I wasn't quite covered in those areas in my existing collection of sounds.

[LetUBleed]

hmmm seems I made a mistake by choosing symphony strings 2 - its mainly the same content like in symphony strings which I already own - I thought it would be some more additional stuff...

nevertheless a great deal anyway!

Oh man, sorry about that. Yeah the previous 6 Expansion Tank titles aren't sequels but rather "extended" with some additional content. You do have solo strings now that didn't come with the first one though. I believe the sound lists are up or will be very soon.

Did you get it from esoundz? If so at least you get an additional 1 gigabyte library on top. All in all should be worth it!

np Squids - I got it from Esoundz and as I have written it is a great deal anyway - I have chosen symphony strings 2 just because I had no idea what to choose else ('m not using loops nor even guitar/bass samples) and you're right with the solo strings - I see thus all as a surplus to the deal

I can say that I am satisfied with what I have - and thats all that counts 4 me

[Squids]

Well, first of all, that "no brainer" was a one time limited thing. Those titles STILL sell for $49 each! So let's not get TOO used to the craziness as some sort of "standard" pricing.

As for this being a smattering of Sonic Reality sounds "from the Vault" (meaning from sounds we've developed over the years for ST format), most of the grooves from the R.A.W. series appeared in a past esoundz Group Buy we had called "ReTank" where we converted the Rex files into slice maps with midi. It was quite a popular group buy actually and the benefits of having the loops in SampleTank were that you could play the individual slices and even zone edit each one (as I do in the current video... long awaited for some that wanted to see that in action I'm sure). You can also conveniently do a lot of processing and most importantly... there is not other way to get a Rex file successfully converted to SampleTank + Midi in a commercial app (not that I know of and ST doesn't import Rex) so... if you watch my loop videos and think you might want to use those loops in ST that way then with the 3 for 1, 4 for 1 or however high this may reach it might be a good idea... and that's even if you did get the AM No Brainer! I mean, for essentially $12.50 to have it also in ST format would not be a bad deal. (ie. $49.95 divided by say 4 if it turns into a 4 for one... or $10 if it was a 5 for 1... you get the idea).

However, there is also something else we did that was never released before even in the ReTanks and that's menu map construction kits. I also play these in the video and they're a lot of fun. So even if you were in the ReTank Group Buy you may STILL want to pick up one of your favorite titles.

Down Tempo Electronica has a lot of the extended material from Trip Hop. Hip Hop has extended material from Dirty South. If you want totally different loop material then pick something else if you have those titles... or for the relatively little amount get those titles specifically if you happen to like them and want them to play with in SampleTank - this is the only way.

Now, guys, keep in mind that when this is over Xpansion Tank 2 titles will be $50 each! That is the normal price. So this is a PERFECT opportunity to justify doubling up if you have any of these sounds in another format or an earlier version. Just divide the cost of the multiple of products you get. Should be worth it!

Anyway, sorry for the delay in the sound lists. It was done over a week ago but took some time for them to implement. There are a few issues to iron out like that. It wasn't left out purposely.

Here are videos