I’m more hopeful than you concerning Studiophonik, I think it will be a lot like what you describe. I own both SampleTank and Sonik Synth from IK/SR so I have some experience of their sound design. These two VSTi:s cover a lot more sonic ground than Studiophonik will. They’re more or less software equivalents of a workstation synth with a large number of patches from all kinds of instrument groups which sound nice but don’t go very deep when it comes to articulations, velocity layers etc.sonicsmurf wrote: About the package 'Studiophonik' (not yet released), I can only hope that the "band instruments" that it will contain will really be of the highest quality. And I strongly doubt it! Because traditionally, all these "one-mand-band" instruments, synths and whatever was produced in the past, were awful! The target group for such instruments was people who for example played a bit of piano, but simply did not care about a "perfect" hi-hat sound. Now, what I am looking for would be based on the concept that an audiophile who is fully aware of the real sounds of *several* instruments (because he actually plays several instruments) will have a combination of instruments that each one are of the highest possible quality. I mean, if in a (real) band the guitar player has an expensive instrument but the bass player uses a cheap old thing, it makes no sense either. But there is one bigger problem with these "1-man-band" keyboards:
I mean, every time I tried something like that, the promises were much bigger than the results! and usually they include in their package a whole pile of useless stuff. Really, I do not need 20 extra free Acid/Techno basses in the same box when all I want is... *sigh* a handful of real instruments that can be used to make.. real music. Just like Supertramp had only a few instruments, and a drummer had only one drum kit, one that sounded great, and that was good enough for playing a whole 2-hour set of different songs - yes, all with the same drum kit. Is it really soo Eighties to dream of something like that in the age of digital sound production machines?
Studiophonik on the other hand will focus on a small selection of drumkits, basses and guitars (with some percussion, keyboards and brass to round out the library) which will be much larger in size and more detailed than the ST and SS instruments. The drums, basses and guitars in ST and SS are already quite good and very playable so I have high hopes for Studiophonik. Add to this the on-board effects which will draw from IK apps like T-Racks and Amplitube and you should have a very nice package.
/Yoss
