So... what will you get on Black Friday?

[SHall1000]

- Upgraded my Arturia effects and got the 6 latest plugs. One compressor, eq, flanger, chorus, etc.

Do you mean you owned FX Collection 1 or some single effects and now upgraded to FX Collection 2? Curious to know from what did you exactly upgrade and how much you paid for it. Thanks.

Good question! I basically bought the pre-amps and filters some years ago when they were introduced. They normally release 3 different FX in each release, and since then I been buying the 3 compressors, the 3 delays and the 3 reverbs, each time they release new FX.

I did not buy the last 6pcs (Chorus, Flanger, Bus Force, EQ, Phaser and Comp diode when they were released because at the time I didn't feel the need. Since then I seen reviews and listened to these FX and therefore I decided to get these latest 6pcs this Black Friday. Since I owned the other effects since before I got an offer to buy them for $69.

Okay, thanks so much for the detailed answer.

So, basically you paid $69 for 6 plugins now, which is in addition to the amount you paid for your previous purchases. So I am guessing you paid in excess of $200 so far.

You will be surprised to know that the entire FX Collection 2 (22 effects) is available right now as a crossgrade for only $69! You need to own V Collection though. If you own the freebie Chorus Jun-6, I think it is $99 - still insane value if you like (most of) the included plugins.

You might be aware, but if not, something to keep in mind for future...

Please don’t remind me how much I have spent with Arturia over the years, while lucky people are picking up bargains What makes it worse is I know I have only used a fraction of all the stuff in the collections.

[YnJ]

I got the MPowerSynth, and the FX Collection crossgrade for $69 as I already had the V Collection 8, and I got ROLI Equator2, and then I upgraded the Melda free collection for $25, which is well worth it for the full features, and Melda has given me five payware effects for free when purchasing other products over the last couple of years so I thought it was time I gave them some money and got some other effects from Melda as well

[LoveEnigma18]

- Upgraded my Arturia effects and got the 6 latest plugs. One compressor, eq, flanger, chorus, etc.

Do you mean you owned FX Collection 1 or some single effects and now upgraded to FX Collection 2? Curious to know from what did you exactly upgrade and how much you paid for it. Thanks.

Good question! I basically bought the pre-amps and filters some years ago when they were introduced. They normally release 3 different FX in each release, and since then I been buying the 3 compressors, the 3 delays and the 3 reverbs, each time they release new FX.

I did not buy the last 6pcs (Chorus, Flanger, Bus Force, EQ, Phaser and Comp diode when they were released because at the time I didn't feel the need. Since then I seen reviews and listened to these FX and therefore I decided to get these latest 6pcs this Black Friday. Since I owned the other effects since before I got an offer to buy them for $69.

Okay, thanks so much for the detailed answer.

So, basically you paid $69 for 6 plugins now, which is in addition to the amount you paid for your previous purchases. So I am guessing you paid in excess of $200 so far.

You will be surprised to know that the entire FX Collection 2 (22 effects) is available right now as a crossgrade for only $69! You need to own V Collection though. If you own the freebie Chorus Jun-6, I think it is $99 - still insane value if you like (most of) the included plugins.

You might be aware, but if not, something to keep in mind for future...

Please don’t remind me how much I have spent with Arturia over the years, while lucky people are picking up bargains What makes it worse is I know I have only used a fraction of all the stuff in the collections.

I completely agree with you on the usage of stuff in "collections/bundles". We know it's a trap but we still fall for it. Hopefully I will be able to resist it better in future.

[nirm123]

I don't agree at all. take for example Komplete, even if you're just using Reatkor, Kontakt, Guitar Rig 6, Massive X and the 6 Pianos and you bought it for 300$ (Summer of sounds discounts), it's still a great deal, saving you around 900$.

Thinking about it like "I'm only using 10 plugins out of 91, what a waste of money" is wrong, for me it's like "I'm using 10 great plugins that I would have bought even without the collection (like I really did with most of them before) and these great plugins were heavily discounted". Also, from the other 81 plugins, there would be a lot for you to explore and discover in the future and most probably you'd find at least 10 plugins you'd want to use as well, but even without it, it's a bargain.

If you buy Collections just in order to feel good about having zillion of plugins, that's a wrong choice, but even if you need only a small portion (relatively speaking) of the bundled plugins, and would still consider to purchase these specific plugins anyhow, some collections would be of a great value for you.

[machinesworking]

- Upgraded my Arturia effects and got the 6 latest plugs. One compressor, eq, flanger, chorus, etc.

Do you mean you owned FX Collection 1 or some single effects and now upgraded to FX Collection 2? Curious to know from what did you exactly upgrade and how much you paid for it. Thanks.

Good question! I basically bought the pre-amps and filters some years ago when they were introduced. They normally release 3 different FX in each release, and since then I been buying the 3 compressors, the 3 delays and the 3 reverbs, each time they release new FX.

I did not buy the last 6pcs (Chorus, Flanger, Bus Force, EQ, Phaser and Comp diode when they were released because at the time I didn't feel the need. Since then I seen reviews and listened to these FX and therefore I decided to get these latest 6pcs this Black Friday. Since I owned the other effects since before I got an offer to buy them for $69.

Okay, thanks so much for the detailed answer.

So, basically you paid $69 for 6 plugins now, which is in addition to the amount you paid for your previous purchases. So I am guessing you paid in excess of $200 so far.

You will be surprised to know that the entire FX Collection 2 (22 effects) is available right now as a crossgrade for only $69! You need to own V Collection though. If you own the freebie Chorus Jun-6, I think it is $99 - still insane value if you like (most of) the included plugins.

You might be aware, but if not, something to keep in mind for future...

Please don’t remind me how much I have spent with Arturia over the years, while lucky people are picking up bargains What makes it worse is I know I have only used a fraction of all the stuff in the collections.

I just emailed them about this, I own everything but the last 7 FX plug ins, and there damn well should be an upgrade path from that instead of the "crossgrade from V-Collection 8. Just give me $15 more off the price for owning most of it dammit!

In general though, I have had them to use for months and in the case of the filters for years longer than people who buy right now. I'm just tired of mediocre upgrade paths.

[LoveEnigma18]

NI Komplete is the only exception for me when it comes to bundles. It is the bundle I have used the most and it also was my first bundle purchase about 10 years ago when I bought Komplete 8.

[machinesworking]

NI Komplete is the only exception for me when it comes to bundles. It is the bundle I have used the most and it also was my first bundle purchase about 10 years ago when I bought Komplete 8.

I used to use it all the time, but for years now it's just really Kontakt, I pay for Komplete Ultimate 13 and use Kontakt and import the Maschine libraries into XO.

The bundles I use the most would be Arturia V8, and Sound Toys. With NI I should pay more attention to Reaktor, but the rest is just meh! to me at this point. So many great synths out there.

[machinesworking]

In terms of the actual topic, I completed my AAS All bundle upgrade. Bought Atlas, and getting Sononym. Probably Sononym will be the real winner here. Everything $50 or under.

[nirm123]

NI Komplete is the only exception for me when it comes to bundles. It is the bundle I have used the most and it also was my first bundle purchase about 10 years ago when I bought Komplete 8.

I used to use it all the time, but for years now it's just really Kontakt, I pay for Komplete Ultimate 13 and use Kontakt and import the Maschine libraries into XO.

The bundles I use the most would be Arturia V8, and Sound Toys. With NI I should pay more attention to Reaktor, but the rest is just meh! to me at this point. So many great synths out there.

While everything is a personal taste, I'm pretty sure that if you put time into discovering and learn (at least) some other plugins within Komplete, you wouldn't find them meh at all.

Sometimes people think that since so much stuff is packed into a bundle it must be of a less value, but for me (and currently I don't own it) Komplete has some of the "best in field" for many products:

1. Kontakt.
2. Massive X (while some basic stuff was left out, it sounds absolutely stunning and it's a hugely powerful synth)
3. Guitar Rig 6 (might not have the best sim-amps but it's a crazy multi-effect which has all the Komplete effects, not only the standard edition)
4. Reaktor (nothing quite like that)
5. Form and Rounds and other amazing Reaktor instruments which were and still are very unique and sound great
6. Some great pianos which again can compete with all sampled pianos
7. Replika XT - one of the best delays around
8. Strummed acoustic - The best acoustic guitar samples I heard (pros and cons is that whole chords were recorded, while it's less flexible, it sounds like...a real chords, and not isolated notes glued together).

and much much more...the major problems of such bundles is not any lesser quality of the plugins, but the overwhelming experience (which constantly grows as new stuff is being added) for people to really learn and dig into so many tools.

[LoveEnigma18]

NI Komplete is the only exception for me when it comes to bundles. It is the bundle I have used the most and it also was my first bundle purchase about 10 years ago when I bought Komplete 8.

I used to use it all the time, but for years now it's just really Kontakt, I pay for Komplete Ultimate 13 and use Kontakt and import the Maschine libraries into XO.

The bundles I use the most would be Arturia V8, and Sound Toys. With NI I should pay more attention to Reaktor, but the rest is just meh! to me at this point. So many great synths out there.

the major problems of such bundles is not any lesser quality of the plugins, but the overwhelming experience (which constantly grows as new stuff is being added) for people to really learn and dig into so many tools.

Exactly. It's the "overwhelm", not the money you spent, which was of course a bargain and that's why you bought it. The more the "bundles", the more the "overwhelm". But here we are. Black Friday caught me, but fortunately, I could also sell some stuff that I did not like or use to recoup some of the spending. I am also happy that I cancelled at least 4-5 things that I could have easily fallen for but was able to resist well. There's only a couple more things on my radar that I really "need" and will wait for them to go on offer.

[nirm123]

The only thing I really wanted was Softube Model 72 which I had before and sold, as I did with many other plugins, about 40 over the last 6 months, although some of them are really amazing, I just wanted to really scale down.

Out of the stuff I sold, Model 72 was the only was I regretted so when it was reduced to 43$ only for 2 days (which is a mindblowing low price for such an awesome Synth emulation + you get all the components within Modular) I bought it back.

[DJ Warmonger]

the major problems of such bundles is not any lesser quality of the plugins, but the overwhelming experience

Many people face this problem... they have no idea what they want ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[dune_rave]

In a nutshell:
resisted the Arturia v collection special offer,
sold my Hive2, and bought a used keyscape,
also spent few bucks on 1-2 snapins.

[machinesworking]

While everything is a personal taste, I'm pretty sure that if you put time into discovering and learn (at least) some other plugins within Komplete, you wouldn't find them meh at all.

I've owned Komplete since version 2. Consequentially I've got IMO better replacements for most Komplete synths and FX.

Absynth - Plasmonic

FM8- any number of FM soft synths.

Guitar Rig - used it for years, Amplitube is just better all around.

Massive- I'm in that small category of people who never really thought the original was that great, and don't get much out of Massive X either.

Battery- is useful for sure, but without a sequencer, you would think they would really load it with FX, and they don't, so I end up using Spark, XO and maybe Atlas if I gel with it.

Kontakt- is irreplaceable, it's still the main sampler engine for world class libraries, no knocking that except to say bigger companies seem to be developing their own dedicated sample players for their libraries so it may go sometime as well.

Reaktor- is amazing, it's a blast, only in Live and Bitwig is it replaced really.

I hate their Romplers, I felt burned by the amount of tweekable but still same same sounding walled garden Kontakt based Romplers in Komplete 13 Ultimate. Thrill, Mysteria, Straylight, Pharlight, Lofi Glow, Evolve, Evolve Mutations, Kinetic Toys etc. just a massive collection of adjustable loops, pads etc.

Anyway, it's not at all that I'm overwhelmed by their content, it's more like I'm burned out on how the whole thing is playing out. Absynth is abandoned more or less, same with FM8, and Battery. they churn out Romplers like theres no tomorrow, but they don't take care of the basics, VST3, resizable interfaces, M1 support, MPE support, all pretty much drastically behind the rest of the industry at this point, but there will be another 40GB FX drenched sample library with 8 adjustable controls.

I don't see that changing now that outside investors have stepped in.