IK Multimedia Xpansion Tank 2 Group Buy

[samsam]

Excellent, nice one Squids.

Changing the bender range did the trick and I'll explore the mod wheel now.

So many sounds to explore, so many life commitments at the moment (busiest I've ever been in my life), so little time.

[Squids]

What a twit I am. I've been following the Xpansion Pack Group Buy thread over in the eSoundz section, and I forgot all about this one. Now I come over here and discover you guys are at page 43!!

Man, I've been missing out on all the fun.

I joined the GB today and picked:

Acoustic Guitar Collection 2
Bass Collection 2
Cinematik Collection
Electric Guitar Collection 2

I had all the earlier guitar collections, but didn't have the Sonik Capsules stuff which is included in these new collections. Some of that Capsule stuff is fantastic! Lots of different articulations of the same instruments to give you a lot more versatility. I'm very happy to have these new additions to my ST library!

Which one do you think has higher quality samples/articulations: acoustic or electric guitar?
My references to the guitar samples are Acoustic Legends and Lyrical Direct.
Harry

Acoustic and the Electric are the same in quality I think. The acoustic has some particularly beautiful sounds on it... but it is not apples with apples comparing it with a product like Acoustic Legends which has streaming instruments in Kontakt... and is 10 times the price. On an instrument to instrument comparison of course Acoustic Legends is going to be more expressive and do more but that's to be expected. If they did a 4 for 1 deal for $50 on their virtual instruments then even I would say "get that!". I'd say get it anyway even at the higher price. I really like David Das and Vir2. They do some really good work! But, one thing that differentiates the products is the specific samples themselves... all specs comparisons aside, the actual RECORDING SESSIONS and INSTRUMENTS are different. Someone might fall in LOVE with the Larivee acoustic or the Martin 12 string or some other instrument on Acoustic Guitar Collection and even if they have a more expensive library that is technically better (more expressive, more everything etc.), there could very well be a character and charm to the Larivee that just does it for them... can't be replaced for what it does sonically. Those are the kinds of things that make it worth getting even if you already have something like Acoustic Legends.

So, to me a deal like this offers two particular things to two different levels of budgets one may have. If you're on a TIGHT budget then this is a way to spend less money and get a wider variety of sounds - some of which are approaching (but not intended to match) the deluxeness of an instrument such as the one you mentioned and some of which clearly are not but there are still these "gems" in there to find regardless of specs... but, since that person is on a budget they may have to compromise a little bit and are probably prepared to anyway.

Then there's the person who CAN afford to get whatever they want - Acoustic Legends, this one, that one - Instruments for $200-400 each etc. but then why would they get this? Well... why not? For a mere $50 they can get some sounds that are sure to have their own unique character to them and they may find some inspiration in the box. I think it is hard not to! So what is the value of inspiration? To me it is huge. I want to load up a sound I can't stop playing for an hour straight. Or a sound that works in the mix and comes through for me in the studio where time is precious. I personally like variety (it's the spice of life).

As I say often, it has its place. Remember Sonic Reality does Kontakt-based larger instruments too. We've been working on our own massive guitar instrument and it will be released at some point. But it will have less variety, more detail in the performance elements and be many gigabytes in size and cost many times more than this... would I say get that instead of this? Not necessarily. Maybe even both! One will have tons of variety and the other will have detail. I find both to be useful.

[Squids]

Squids, something that seems to be missing with the MIDI control mapping though. You can't seem to reverse the values. If it were possible, you could map the mod wheel to the volume of two different patches, and reverse one and essentially fade between them. Does that make sense?

Am I missing something? It would be great to be able to do, and I've mentioned it to IK, but that's about it.

Brent

Haha. Yep. I totally agree and have been asking for this feature for YEARS. I stopped asking because apparently it would have been too difficult to do in the current SampleTank or so I am told. But there is a big update planned for SampleTank in the not TOO distant future... and I am sure this will finally be possible.

[barbecutie]

IK Multimedia Xpansion Tank 2 Group Buy

Now 4X1! Currently at 1725 users! Need 2500 users for 5X1!

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

[zedd]

I joined the GB today and picked:

Acoustic Guitar Collection 2
Bass Collection 2
Cinematik Collection
Electric Guitar Collection 2

Which one do you think has higher quality samples/articulations: acoustic or electric guitar?
My references to the guitar samples are Acoustic Legends and Lyrical Direct.

I would agree with everything Squids wrote a few posts up.

I don't think either package has more articulations or more detail than the other, and both are quite different sets of instruments. But the quality is top notch, even if there is not as much detail as in some other products. Like Squids, said, many of these instruments have a particular charm, and if it suits the song you are working on then the instrument is golden.

Even some of those tiny piano instruments that don't have additional velocity layers can sound awesome. They might not have the expressiveness of a more detailed sampled instrument, but they can sound spectacular in a recording.

If I were you, I wouldn't choose between Acoustic and Electric guitar. I would defintely grab them both. There are some really great sounds in both those collections. And I would grab the basses too. The drums you could probably skip if you've been in the recent Group Buys.

And the Cinematik Collection... I love it. I wish there was an additional Cinematik Collection 2 to choose as well!

[Teksonik]

You know not every type of music needs a Rhodes Piano, P Bass and dry drum kit. Wavestation presets are perfectly usable for ambient style ect........ So "usable' and "bread and butter" can mean very different things to different people.

Having said that I don't expect SampleTank to do Wavesequencing. I have other plugins for that. I look at SampleTank as a highly evolved version of my ancient Roland U220. Something to load and layer sounds from Concert Grand to Vocal Ooohs and to emulate them with some degree of realism. SampleTank certainly fills that need.

I remember paying $250 bucks for a set of 10 floppy disks for the Ensoniq Mirage that couldn't have been more than 8 megs total. To get several gigs of samples for $50 seems like a pretty good deal.

So my question remains. What does the future hold for the SampleTank and Sonic Reality team? Any plans for larger samplesets for SampleTank?

[Harry_HH]

Which one do you think has higher quality samples/articulations: acoustic or electric guitar?
My references to the guitar samples are Acoustic Legends and Lyrical Direct.
Harry

Acoustic and the Electric are the same in quality I think. The acoustic has some particularly beautiful sounds on it... but it is not apples with apples comparing it with a product like Acoustic Legends which has streaming instruments in Kontakt... and is 10 times the price. On an instrument to instrument comparison of course Acoustic Legends is going to be more expressive and do more but that's to be expected. If they did a 4 for 1 deal for $50 on their virtual instruments then even I would say "get that!". I'd say get it anyway even at the higher price. I really like David Das and Vir2. They do some really good work! But, one thing that differentiates the products is the specific samples themselves... all specs comparisons aside, the actual RECORDING SESSIONS and INSTRUMENTS are different. Someone might fall in LOVE with the Larivee acoustic or the Martin 12 string or some other instrument on Acoustic Guitar Collection and even if they have a more expensive library that is technically better (more expressive, more everything etc.), there could very well be a character and charm to the Larivee that just does it for them... can't be replaced for what it does sonically. Those are the kinds of things that make it worth getting even if you already have something like Acoustic Legends.

So, to me a deal like this offers two particular things to two different levels of budgets one may have. If you're on a TIGHT budget then this is a way to spend less money and get a wider variety of sounds - some of which are approaching (but not intended to match) the deluxeness of an instrument such as the one you mentioned and some of which clearly are not but there are still these "gems" in there to find regardless of specs... but, since that person is on a budget they may have to compromise a little bit and are probably prepared to anyway.

Then there's the person who CAN afford to get whatever they want - Acoustic Legends, this one, that one - Instruments for $200-400 each etc. but then why would they get this? Well... why not? For a mere $50 they can get some sounds that are sure to have their own unique character to them and they may find some inspiration in the box. I think it is hard not to! So what is the value of inspiration? To me it is huge. I want to load up a sound I can't stop playing for an hour straight. Or a sound that works in the mix and comes through for me in the studio where time is precious. I personally like variety (it's the spice of life).

As I say often, it has its place. Remember Sonic Reality does Kontakt-based larger instruments too. We've been working on our own massive guitar instrument and it will be released at some point. But it will have less variety, more detail in the performance elements and be many gigabytes in size and cost many times more than this... would I say get that instead of this? Not necessarily. Maybe even both! One will have tons of variety and the other will have detail. I find both to be useful.

Thank you for reply (zedd, too). My question was very simple and straight, i.e. wanted to hear user opinion of these packs to make a possible decision between them. Therefore no reason to be so defensive, everyone understand that price tends to correlate to quality without veery long explanation. I gave the reference point just to clarify what I find relatively good quality. According to these answers there are no RELATIVE differences BETWEEN the quality of the ST acoustic and electric libraries, right? Harry

[Squids]

So my question remains. What does the future hold for the SampleTank and Sonic Reality team? Any plans for larger samplesets for SampleTank?

I can only speak for my own company, Sonic Reality. For our larger sounds (and believe me we have them... we just released the 130 Gigabyte EpiK DrumS - A Ken Scott Collection and will soon be releasing Neil Peart Drums which in Kontakt is over 30 gigabytes for one drum kit) are being created for our Infinite Player which is essentially Kontakt 4 format with an expandable third party library "gateway" to use with Kontakt Player or the full version. You can read all about those products here: www.sonicreality.com/products/

As for our plans for SampleTank and its future... without any public information about any future updates to SampleTank I can't comment in too much detail except to say that ST never was intended to be a full sampler. It is a rompler sample-based sound module with great built-in effects and multi-timbral/layering capabilities. I think the intention is to remain being THAT animal and if that's the case we will continue to make sounds that take advantage of that type of engine... what I think will change are not necessarily the sizes of the sounds (although we will to some extent do more elaborate sounds in the future for ST and they will likely be larger... not gigabytes larger but in the megabytes so it can still be used with RAM quickly) but the possibilities with the programming/processing we are able to do.

So that's a little glimpse but if anyone is holding their breath for SampleTank to become Kontakt, Structure, Halion... - let the breath out slowly and remain in a relaxed state. You are getting very sleepy... sorry, I was hypnotizing again. That's not what SampleTank ever was and not likely what it will ever be. However, it is good that it stays a powerful Rompler Workstation if that's the case because this is a needed piece in the virtual instrument set up for many people. The "workhorse".

[Squids]

Thank you for reply (zedd, too). My question was very simple and straight, i.e. wanted to hear user opinion of these packs to make a possible decision between them. Therefore no reason to be so defensive, everyone understand that price tends to correlate to quality without veery long explanation. I gave the reference point just to clarify what I find relatively good quality. According to these answers there are no RELATIVE differences BETWEEN the quality of the ST acoustic and electric libraries, right? Harry

Some of you think I am being defensive when I am not and this is going to be really hard to communicate clearly if we continue thinking this way. I put effort to compose an articulate response like that and it'd be a waste if is just written off as being "touchy" or "defensive". Perhaps we'd be on the same page if anyone thinking that would consider reading responses like this one in a different light. I am giving some helpful advice here not just to the person whose quote I am responding to but to everyone reading. This is afterall a public discussion board. If anyone puts the notion out there about a comparison then people are wondering about it too. In this case if someone was wondering what to expect between the two libraries or in comparison to products in a whole other price range like Acoustic Legends I'm going to be compelled to offer my 2 cents about that into the mix... if not for your benefit (if you're saying that you only want to hear from other users) then for other people's benefit who do want to read what I have to say about it... and I think what I wrote is probably helpful to someone.

[kbaccki]

According to these answers there are no RELATIVE differences BETWEEN the quality of the ST acoustic and electric libraries, right? Harry

I have both, and I'd say your conclusion is accurate about relative quality between acoustic and electric libs.

Keep in mind though that these are relatively simple rompler instruments, which is the gist of what Squids is getting at... so when you start talking about "articulations" and bringing up names like Lyrical Direct or whatever, then we might get some crossed messages in the discussion. For the electrics you'll get a few types -- strat, tele, LP, pedal steel, gretsch, etc. -- but the "articulations" available for each are relatively simple, as you would find in a low-mem workstation synth or rompler or old school sample pack (ensoniq, akai, etc.), as opposed to your heavy duty kontakt library with scripting and every articulation known to man. So... for the strat, for example, you'll basically get picks, mutes, pulls, harmonics, and some slides, but you're not going to find trills, pinch harmonics, some special chord mode, a smart legato mode, etc. etc. But I think you realize that... just reiterating...

[androidlove]

The second time I joined I only received 3 choices

from the group buy page, "1. Buy your FIRST title for only €39.99/$49.99* and immediately receive 2 MORE titles of your choice FREE FREE! "

Ooooook

still there

[2ndStringer]

There are 749 users needed to get to 5 for 1, in 37 days. That might actually happen! So far I have Cinematik, Strings 2, Voices, and World Music. I really like the French horns in the ST2 library, so I had those on the 2nd and 3rd strings of my synth guitar as I auditioned patches on the first string. I found lots of useful stuff in the libraries I have. Some of the evolving pads are not so good for synth guitar, because they cut off before they have completely evolved. That is one difference between synth guitar and a keyboard. The key plays for as long as you hold it down, but with a guitar, as soon as string vibration gets below a certain threshold, the sound cuts off abruptly. Some patches deal with this better than others. I sometimes have to go in and edit the midi to fix this.

On the other hand, the synth guitar has an advantage, because you can put a different patch on each string and experiment with layering sounds on the fly. It is amazing how different a patch sounds in the context of something else.

I did find that I often had to turn the level down in the stuff in Cinematik or Strings 2 to make it fit with the French horns from the ST2 library. In Strings 2 the reverb was also often too heavy for my taste, but easily fixed. There are also some subtle pads that had very low level. Turning up both the level and the gain made them audible, but still low.

If it gets to five, I will probably get either the pianos or hip hop. I don't do hip hop, but it looks like there is some interesting stuff in there. In my view this is a tremendous deal for $50. It's not all perfect, but there is lots of usable stuff.

John

[JavaJ]

I have been playing all night- went with the Nashville Pop Grooves (sounded like a good base acoustic loop collection to help with my songwriting).
My wife actually helped me pick my second one- the Trip Hop Collection. She like the demos online- and the kits are pretty fun to play with.
So I will now take a break and play with what I have before choosing my 3rd and 4th title. I would love to hear any newbie opinions on the packs they choose. I was listening to the Cinematik demos- and they were mono- so they didn't inspire me. Then I watched the Youtube video on it- and now question if I would ever use it. I was thinking it might be somewhat Omnisphere like- but don't think so.
Any cool suprises out there. I don't need any guitar sounds. I have a lot of basses on my hardware synths. Would love more atmospheric stuff- but don't see that really on offer.
I am leaning towards some more construction kits as my little girl has fun playing with them (and if I can inspire her-then that was $50 well spent regardless).

One odd thing I did find with the interface- I noticed there is a combi section at the top middle- it appears to be filled with Sample Tank 2 combis and nothing that can be used with the 1GB base selection. Is that supposed to be there (may have been an oversight).

[zedd]

Some of you think I am being defensive when I am not and this is going to be really hard to communicate clearly if we continue thinking this way. I put effort to compose an articulate response like that and it'd be a waste if is just written off as being "touchy" or "defensive".

It's a tough crown, huh Squidly?

I'm not sure why some are interpreting your posts in that kind of light. For me they are coming across just as constructive as always.

Thanks for posting those Cinematik child presets, they were just a drag and drop away from working perfectly. I went through each one of them, and actually subdivided all the Cinematik presets into folders like "Dreamy Trance", "Percussion", etc., so that I can find what I need more easily in future.

That is something I recommend for everyone. While you are going through your new instruments, you might want to divide them into appropriately named folders. Sometimes just a folder for putting your "favorites" is handy so that you don't spend a lot of time searching for that perfect instrument that you know you have in a long list of others that aren't quite what you're looking for. But remember to always copy the 3 component files of the parent instrument as well as any ".stip" children that belong with it.

[barbecutie]

Friendly bump to next page.

BBC