UVI Soundware - gosh, what a lot of stuff

[chagzuki]

I've got my €100 voucher so put towards soundware and there's so much available, perhaps about 400 hard drives worth of samples, I could spend forever trying to figure out what to get.

I'm leaning towards Drum Designer, not for the sequencer, but I like the idea of having that versatility in shaping the character of drums. I've seen reports of unresolved bugs, but the threads in which those were mentioned were old, so it's quite likely they have been fixed now. But not guaranteed.

Then there's more synth stuff than someone could play in a lifetime. You could probably spend ten years just running through the presets, which, in all likelihood the majority of which would lose any specificity in a mix. So that 'authentic' sound would probably be recreatable within Falcon via synthesis, and in a mix you wouldn't hear any difference. I could be wrong, maybe there are some specific instruments within their libraries that have a very unique character that's impossible to replicate. So I wonder if there are any which folks here think stand out?

I've listened to quite a few demos of different products and generally they all sound good, but so far I don't think anything has stood out as sonically unachievable through other means.

[mixtur.se]

Beat box anthology is also good if you are into drum design. World suite gets some use and my new favorite is the augmented piano. Have drum designer and don’t have any problems with bugs, but I guess others could have. It’s a great idea but it has a few workflow issues and has limited choice for more acoustic sounds (for layering), oh and there are no toms. I’d like to see more presets as well,
So far I hand found the ultimate drum design workflow but DD is among the best for sure.

[chagzuki]

Interesting. Do you find the layered approach to drum creation particularly useful in comparison to other processing options? One of the reasons I was keen to make Falcon my main sonic tool was options to non-destructively e.g. modulate an EQ on a snare, so it's all adjustable in the project. And it's easy in Falcon to mute the transient of a drum and insert a new sample... very good for that sort of manipulation, so I'm not sure if the streamlined workflow of Drum Designer with all its in-built sounds will add a lot or just a little.

[LanceEsgard]

The Augmented Piano, Attack EP88, Toy Suite and World Suite all stand out to me. The Augmented Piano is by far the most comprehensive sampling of a prepared piano (beyond the earlier IRCAM Prepared Piano) and the Attack EP88 is the same for a tacked electric piano. I got both of those on a recent sale and have been very pleased with the range of sounds. I haven't got the Both have sounds which at the moment aren't easily replicated using other means (except possibly with the EGP, which is a prepared hybrid electric piano with fewer preparations than the IRCAM Prepared Piano or the Augmented Piano).

A lot of the synth stuff, orchestral stuff, synth collections and foley sound effects have similar (but by no means exact) alternatives so they don't stand out as much but that doesn't mean that UVI isn't a worthy source of getting them. Especially if you really like the UVI Falcon and/or the UVI Workstation.

It isn't just a matter of 'can these sounds be reproduced by other means' but the ease of the workflow and how much control there is over the sound (to the extent desired).

The Toy Suite stands out because it is the most comprehensive collection of its kind I have come across. There are individual samplings of some toys and some small collections are there, but the Toy Suite covers an area normally not seen as with enough demand to warrant a serious professional collection.

There are alternatives to the World Suite in terms of many of its instruments all being in other 'World Instrument' collections but the scope of the the UVI World Suite sees a number of instruments in there I haven't seen elsewhere. It is also distinctive when it comes to having multiple models of the same instrument.

But as always, how much use you get out of something depends on whether the sounds fit your needs and how you work to begin with.

[Hewitt Huntwork]

I have Mellotron plugins from G Force, Toontrack, and Arturia but UVI's Mello is my favorite.

[K-Bee]

Synth Anthology and World Suite owner here. Great stuff that I use all the time. To me UVI really is a top notch developer, I just wish the libraries would run in Kontakt. Obviously, that will never happen of course.