Depends on what you value in terms of workflow. I use Riser a lot, but I don't actually use risers like you think of them in EDM. I like it as a super fast way to create moving parts in soundscapes.drunken jesus wrote:I've thought about getting it but haven't pulled the trigger, the only things that really interest me are Hybrid 3 and maybe Structure (I dunno if it's significantly better as a rompler than xpand it's rarely mentioned in comparison to sampletank or kontakt) are the other synths really special? I'm pretty well covered as far as synths go and I don't really think these would provide anything I don't have.
Structure has a big library, most of it is not up to Kontakt quality, but, some of it is useful. What I really like about Structure though is that it is a much faster way of throwing together a sample kit than Kontakt is.
Strike is also a somewhat dated sounding acoustic drum set, but, if you do electronic music, especially house, it's nice because it has some nice features regarding complexity modulation and allows you to replace acoustic drums with samples. I like it for creating hybrid drum kits that I am going to use i n a context where acoustic authenticity is not the top priority.
Vacuum Pro can be a bit awkward but has some features that are rare. It has two cascaded filters with adjustable slopes and built in heavy saturation. This allows you to create M!2 style pads but the saturation definitely adds a flavor that isn't in most synths.
I use some of the effects a bit more than I thought that I would. Especially the pumper, the diffusion delay, and the pitch shifter. They're not going to win audio quality awards, but they are useful in certain contexts.
I like Velvet a lot. The front panel dynamics controls allow me to quickly tayler it to my playing mood.
Mini-grand is absolutely not my favorite piano, but it loads so quickly that it gets used a lot more than I thought for sketching things out.
I agree that Loom could be better, but, I think that at the price, it's still useful.
If I scored my purchases by total cost divided by hours of actual use, this would have to rank as one of the best values of last year. Right up there with Eventide's bundle and the HGSounds groupbuy.