Is Total Studio MAX worth the money? (IK Multimedia)

[bedjka]

Sorry for the negative intervention, but imo ik multimedia's success is more due to their marketting skills than for the quality/price ratio of their software.

I have been a happy Sampletank 2.5 and Miroslav Philharmonik 1 user, but, the years passing by, the quality of the sounds has not improved proportionally to the enormous price they are charging now for both.

Therefore, i had to find my happiness elswhere, and for much less money, if not, for various instruments/samples, for free.

[RikkShow]

I own Komplete and many IK things.
Tracks-5 - mostly great stuff, but weak on reverb and modulation FX. NI has great modulation and reverb, but kinda weak on EQ and compressors.
Sampletank/Syntronik - very tired and old stuff, ST4 is very buggy as well and after spending 6mo with IK support I gave up. Sure you can find a few nice sounds, but it is not worth the frustration and money to enter as a new user. Forget doing some sound design in ST4.
Amplitube - great stuff overall and the Fender units are nice.

Just wanna mention Halion 6 - big learning curve, but the quality and depth is staggering, so a good idea to add to Komplete as Halion is a layering monster and you can even export you creations as a VST3! A sound designers dream if you learn it, but you need to RTFM, so if that ain't your thing, then buy something simple instead. Seems to be a lot of "undisclosed" Yamaha quality in there.

[ztrauq]

When I saw the "upgrade" price from 2 to 3 the first thing I wondered was what the heck were they smoking? Just because it's version 3 doesn't mean you charge $300 for it! Not to mention a lot of it is just filling in the stuff that should have been in Max 2 in the first place... It's like they're taking a page from the Plugin Alliance book of not selling things properly. If the price was reasonable I might have jumped on it, I do like a lot of their stuff, but it's like they're actually encouraging people to just wait until the next ridiculous discount...

[Trensharo]

I own Komplete and many IK things.

I own:
Komplete 13
Absolute 5
Total Studio 2 MAX + SampleTank 4 MAX

I would not buy Total Studio over either Komplete or Absolute. If you need AmpliTube, then just get that and save some money.

I don't have any of the IKM stuff installed anymore, on any of my systems.

Absolute is fine, but I think if not a Cubase user most people will bias to Komplete. I would, as well, because you can always upgrade to Ultimate or Ultimate CE in the future and just add on top of the base package. The Steinberg stuff is really convenient in Cubase, though, due to the integration into the Media Bay.

I will often start off brainstorming using the Absolute Stuff and then move to more "heavy duty" sample libraries later - when needed.

Also, I find the workflow for HALion 6 or Sonic [SE] 3 to be more efficient than Kontakt (regardless of DAW - for example setting up Outputs, etc.). So avoiding that hassle in the beginning allows me to defer the distractions until later.

Not sure I would ever buy HALion on its own unless it was for the Synths or I was a sound design geek/library developer, though. There isn't a sizeable ecosystem of 3rd party sample libraries and the HALion Factory Content (not to be confused with the additional libraries in the Absolute bundle) isn't amazing.

That being said, if you do a lot of sampling, HALion is probably the best on the market. It is amazing for that task (that decreasing numbers of people do, or and many who do it are in markets where things like MPC and Maschine are dominant and will just use those tools).

I am not sure how anyone can seriously state that Philharmonik 1 or 2 sound on par (or better than) NI Symphony Series. Get off of that crack, please.

[Bombadil]

IK's stuff is getting better. Sampletank 4 is their greatest weakness, but the newer stuff is great. The B3X, Sampletron 2, and A5 are a huge step up and MODO Drum and bass are good, Miro2 isn't what I hoped, but still a lot of useable content. Due to the latest grope buy, I have almost everything except some of the boutique options in A5. I hope Sampletank 5 reflects IK's potential for good instruments when they set their minds to it.

[starflakeprj]

I had Lurssen Mastering Console, and cross graded to Studio MAX 2 during a sale, bought from JRRShop (in USD with no sales tax added) at a very reasonable price. But when Studio MAX 3 was released, I couldn't justify the upgrade price from the IK Multimedia shop, where I was charged in EUR + 25% sales tax was added since I live in Sweden. So I sold my Studio MAX 2 license instead, didn't really use anything else but the Lurssen Mastering Console anyway.