BF/CM Ultimate Acquisitions

[Lawrence]

Archtop is on sale for $39!! I love it to death.

Edit-oops-never mind. I was thinking of the Impact Soundworks Archtop, which I think is exceptional for vintage jazz and other things.

[byzantium]

Thanks Lawrence - yes I saw that as well, unfortunately based on the demos and walkthroughs at the moment I'm a bit smitten by the Orange Tree version over the Impact Soundworks...!

[soundbylaura]

Thanks Lawrence - yes I saw that as well, unfortunately based on the demos and walkthroughs at the moment I'm a bit smitten by the Orange Tree version over the Impact Soundworks...!

If you don't need it right away, the best price will come when they do their annual Group Buy.

[byzantium]

Hey thanks Laura. From a quick google, that Group Buy usually seems to be in the Summertime.

[Lawrence]

Hey Byz-what moved you most about the OTS? It sounds great, but was it tone or ornaments and such?

[byzantium]

Yeah Lawrence the tone - again just based on the demos and walkthroughs - the OTS seems have to have a great attack, and one of the presets is very John Scofield-y! (along the playing is great). The IS sounds good too and seems to have more sustain and might have a wider range of producable sounds from washes to distorted to 'indie', but to me it sounds perhaps a bit more 'standard electric-y' than the OTS, which seems to have more of a personality, unique-r / niche-r sounding? The IS is an incredible deal though at $39. Maybe I'll get both! Naw can't afford that!

[Joe_D]

As far as archtop libraries go, I have them both (OT and IS). The tone of the IS archtop is much more to my liking. Specifically, the low notes are clearer, the instrument has a smooth, less twangy attack, and the gauge of strings allows lower octaves to play more in tune (to my ears). Plus, it has two pickups recorded separately, so you can dial in some pretty different raw tones (you'll have to add some processing if you want the fullest range of possible tones, though -- that's fun to me, but might be tedious to some). I guess I should add that my favorite archtop jazz guitarists are Jim Hall (the IS library is a recording of am archtop model made for Jim Hall) and Pat Metheny (his archtop sound is smooth and rolled-off; polar-opposite from his steel-string flattop tone). IS works great for Joe Pass, Herb Ellis, which to me is sort of the iconic archtop tone.

The OT archtop doesn't sound as jazzy to my ears (and I gig regularly with several excellent jazz guitarists; none of them are quite famous, but they're well respected and have played with heavyweights). It works great for bluesy, character stuff, though. I don't like the quacky attack of the low notes. I should say that I love OT guitars in general, and the interface, playability, and plentiful and diverse presets are great.

[byzantium]

Thanks for the great help Joe_D, much appreciated. Darn I just missed the $39 IS deal (I might have gotten both given the low price) but I ended up plumbing for the OT anyway, and I'm pretty happy. Much as I love Metheny, I"m hoping the OT will give me maybe a bit more character as you say, maybe even a Walter Becker type sound with a tiny bit of crunch on it. But I won't have time to play with it for quite a while alas. PS I also have the IS Django gypsy, and it's great. Thanks again.

[trumpoz]

Given I just purchased a new car, I resisted the BF/CM sales. I PURCHASED NOTHING!!!!!

I also want to buy CSB when it is released as well as the crossgrade to Dorico early next year.

[Guy Rowland]

Just a bit more feedback, I spent the MORNING unzipping and sorting the Samples From Mars bundle. Have to say its largely disappointing... I feel I should have passed this point in my life, sampled synths played on a vanilla Kontakt interface or randomly mapping-allocated Battery drum kits badly labelled and of wildly varying volume. There's some really nice stuff in there, but unless there's a REALLY specific drum machine sound I don't have or something (and I have a LOT now from other sources), its just not worth fighting through all the disorganisation. And since I have so many of these synths in good virtual equivalents, its struggling for a reason to exist.

As it is I've filed the more sound effecty stuff in my sound effects collection where it will come in use, certainly not begrudging $19 but if you missed it I shouldn't lose any sleep over it.

[Luciano Storti]

Completely understand where you’re coming from with this, Guy. That was my first reaction in seeing the lack of GUI: a groan.

However, I look at it like this: there are some gems in there from synths I will never own. I’ve already been purchasing hardware synths, creating sounds and then sampling said sound into my self-made Kontakt GUI. There I can further manipulate the sound to make something new. So in that regard, this collection suddenly affords me raw files of HW I might be interested in. If you would like to try my humble little interface, I can upload it. It will at least allow you to mold the sounds further.

In the end, wouldn’t loose sleep over not having this collection either :-)

[Guy Rowland]

That's interesting, Luke - is your interface something for the whole lot or just one product?

Certainly plenty of raw material though for manipulation, and maybe that's the best way to view it. Otherwise, for any one synth it tends to be a fairly small selection of presets, only accessible via Kontakt quick load and without any other controls. I have Korg's MS10 for example, which not only has presets but - hey - is a whole actual virtual synth. Or the Acid pack - lots of acidy reso stuff, but as static samples not so useful as it needs constant variation for the genre. There's loops, but they're loops. Given my Arturia collection, Omni with its huge raft of synth sources either sampled or wavetabled/filtered, some U-he... well ya know.

Also for the rhythmic stuff, quality control isn't great, I'd expect unified layouts in Battery, similar overall levels, whereas both were all over the place.

So as it was, I was most interested in the sampled effects, which could be used rhythmically or, well, as effects.

[Luciano Storti]

You are certainly well-stocked, Guy, given the synths you have listed in your possession. I’m not short either, but I do find enjoyment in creating my own presets (dubious of originality, mind you) and having them exclusively for my projects.

The GUI gives you quick access to several pages of Kontakt’s under the hood controls: Amp Envelopes, Filter Envelopes, Filter selection for the main filter and resonance, arpeggiator, LFOs and some pitch control, FX page, polystep and mono/poly mode with additional voices and detune. All standard Kontakt stuff, but at the surface level.

The way to transfer the Mars collection would be to load a patch, click the wrench icon, open the mapping editor, copying the zone in there (I’ve mostly seen only one group in the instrument I’ve inspected so far, so it seems like a rather quick process), and then pasting it into my template.

It’s a work in progress (I’d like to change my FX list and add tempo sync to the pitch LFO) but it does work for me.

[Guy Rowland]

This sounds like a very useful container, Luke - have you thought about making it more widely available?

[Luciano Storti]

Not really, but I'm happy to post for to try it. Gotta run out now but will do a bit later.

[Luciano Storti]

Here's my little GUI, along with a very crude video showing how to set up the zones from other instruments. Once the setup is done, you'll need to save the new Kontakt instrument as its own patch inside the Instruments folder. You can choose to save the samples along with it, or simply keep them where they are. A few CCs are assigned to AMP Envelope, Filter and Resonance. You can check these under the automation tab in Kontakt, as per the video.

CFM-SynthExplorer

If you have questions or hiccups I'm happy to help, we can either move this to PM or I can make another one of my crude videos... :-)

[Guy Rowland]

Luke, this looks terrific, why not put that video on YouTube and move this to a dedicated thread? It'll definitely get lost in a zip file here and I'd have thought would be of considerable interest to a lot of members.

It looks not too bad to do this to a patch, but of course in the SFM bundle there are hundreds, if not thousands of patches which is a little daunting, would take a day or two to do it all. But if there was a particular sound I liked, this could be a good bet.

It's a shame Kontakt doesn't have template instruments, would be perfect for this.

[Luciano Storti]

Sure, if others could use it, I’ll start a new thread! I simply thought people weren’t too keen on Kontakt synths and well, I’m not a programmer so it’s really quite set up to my personal preferences.

The SFM bundle has a lot of sounds, yes. I’m going through it still, picking out the patches I like, then importing just those into CFM Synth Explorer. A bit tedious, I admit, but once complete, it’s quick and rather painless to create something out of those patches.

NB: some of the patches in SFM are effected in some way, if you like those effects, they’ll probably get lost through the import if they’re using built-in Kontakt effects. If the effects are printed with the sound on the other hand, it will be fine, though possibly trickier to manipulate.

[Guy Rowland]

Gotya. In general I guess I'm not a huge fan of Kontakt synths either, but I figure they're much more useful in your wrapper than not.

All of which may beg the question why I bought the bundle in the first place, so I have sudden need to self-justify. First I thought they did more with the stuff than they clearly did, and second I have an insatiable need to have as many drum machine sounds as possible. But I think what I mean by that is as many GOOD sounds as possible, well set up and arranged and good to go. For me, Samples From Mars fails more often than it wins here, and the glaring inconsistencies and apparent lack of care really do bug me. There are some gems there, and some great patches, but for me we're in to panning for gold territory.

[Luciano Storti]

Posted:
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[jafmusic]

Jaap, Glory Days Big Band Horns, by Orchestral Tools. Simple laziness on my part. And Springsteen ain't bad either ;-)

Wow - nice sounds!

[soundbylaura]

Since I am a dealhound I'll update with my best BlackThanksHanaMaZza deal(s): used TimeSpace loyalty points to pick up Ozone 8 Standard for $84 and in the process got the 2000 bonus points they were giving for iZotope purchases. Turned that around and used it to knock $17 off the already-on-sale Big Fish Audio Neo Folk and got it for $3.99.

And I won some stuff! Sonniss SFX did (is doing) a 12-day giveaway with one winner each days scoring $600+ in sound effects, and I won on Xmas day.

Then this morning I won an Ample Sound VI of my choosing from Creative Sauce on YouTube! I'm probably going to go with their new Chinese pipa.

Happy holidays indeed!

[Thomas Mavian]

Wow! Good findings and big congrats on the winnings!