The Sound Board

This bundle is worth a look:

https://audioplugin.deals/palette-compl ... oom-audio/

I already own Palette – Runs & Arps and have gotten a lot of use from it. I think it’s worth the asking price for the whole bundle ($149). I have no experience with the other three titles (Palette – Symphonic Sketchpad, Palette – Melodic, and Palette – Orchestral FX); but judging from my limited acquaintance with Red Room Audio, this looks like it could be a very good deal.

Best,

Geoff

Toontrack's Alt Rock EZX is available for 66% off, first time discounted I think. This is Steve Albini's set, he of Nirvana, Pixies and PJ Harvey fame. This hugely popular and influential genre tends to get overlooked when it comes to drum kits.

https://www.toontrack.com/product/alt-rock-ezx/

Oh that does it. With my new 4TB NVME on the way, my will has finally crumbled.

The Opus Hollywood Orchestra is $299 for new customers. But for anyone with a part of the old version - I have strings and brass gold - it's $199. 1TB of instruments, strings, brass, winds, percussion, solo harp, solo violin, solo cello, the new orchestrator and the Opus software that will also run everything else.

Some unusually large discounts on Eventide singles here - https://everyplugin.com/catalogsearch/a ... %5D=20&p=1

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Nov 28, 2022 10:44 am Oh that does it. With my new 4TB NVME on the way, my will has finally crumbled.

The Opus Hollywood Orchestra is $299 for new customers. But for anyone with a part of the old version - I have strings and brass gold - it's $199. 1TB of instruments, strings, brass, winds, percussion, solo harp, solo violin, solo cello, the new orchestrator and the Opus software that will also run everything else.

$250 at JRR shop with code GROUP

The NVME plus housing is a good bit more than the EW deal.

Lawrence wrote: ↑Nov 28, 2022 6:09 pm The NVME plus housing is a good bit more than the EW deal.

Mine is internal, so it's only my old/new spare that has the £15 housing. £280 is a mere £70 per 1TB, which is what HOOPUS needs. I could have got a 4TB SSD for about £250 - likely stuff-all performance difference, but it looks a lot easier to swap the NVMe in my rig than the SSD, so that plus me getting a hot spare for my C drive swung it.

(HOOPUS sounds like hula hooping president)

Yeah, I wax talking about the unit itself.

I’m also looking for a 4TB but mine will need a home AND it’s time for a Thunderbolt 3 expander. Geez. Storage isn’t fun.

I’ve got one USB 3.1 drive with a spare TB, so I wouldn’t need to buy anything but the upgrade to HOOPUS.. Decisions, decisions.

much as I planned to skip the season, there are a couple things that I find really interesting...

UA's Hitsville Chamber sounds amazing. I use the Capital Chambers often, this would be a nice alternative. At $349 I'll likely add another $25 and get the Pick3 which is really a Pick6. Not sure what else to get, the Hitsville EQ is fairly obvious, and I am impressed by the C-Suite C-Axe, although these days I don't need it often. Since I need to pick six I will have to revisit demos for the 175/176, and a couple of the Sonnox plugins. There just aren't six plugins that I really want...

I may also wait till the Hitsville Chamber goes on deep discount and avoid further cluttering my plugin folders<G>.

The other deal that has my attention is Spitfire's Ton. I've picked up previous bundles and found them to be, on the whole, very useful. This time around I am really interested in the Fragile String Evolutions (I have Studio Brass, the winds are not as interesting to me).

There is just something to their EVO/Evolutions approach that adds some real "life" to the samples, or more accurately to productions that use the samples.

Something to consider anyway...

I really really thought I was immune this year to the gear lust. Mwah hah hah. Though quite a lot of what I bought wasn't strictly Black Friday. The roll call of shame:

u-He Zebra Legacy (amazing now-permanent bargain, probably didn't need it).
Waves Lil Tube (freebie, don't need it)
Waves BB Tubes (intro discount, still haven't tried it)
East West Hollywood Orch Opus edition (this WAS Black Friday, just beginning the download era)
Crucial P3 NVMe 4TB (think this was a regular discount, seems to work great)
Bohemian Cello (free update, nice to have)
zplane elastique aax (black Friday, very nice timestretch algo in Pro Tools which means I can dispense with my rental X-Form and stop the annual updates)

Yup - I know the drill. I started out with a list of 3 or 4 on my wish list. Two of the bigger ticket items got scratched, but quite a few lower priced items took their place. Well, they made it to the list, still not sure which ones will make it to my "collection".

Of your list I think the Zebra Legacy was a good choice - it is an amazing synth, even if you never stray far from the presets. The 4TB drive is also on my list, but I will probably wait a bit in the hopes that prices continue to drop before I run out of space completely!

This was Year of the Hardware Upgrade:

- New Mac Studio: no discount but I did save $97 by having it shipped to a friend of mine in a county with lower sales tax.

- New Dell OLED 34" ultra-widescreen monitor: a splurge (even on sale), and a risk. There are some reports of audible coil whine, so we will see. Also bought an articulating arm-mount for this (with a $10 off coupon).

- New Motorola modem: patiently waited months for this to drop down to $70 & was rewarded when it fell to $60.

- Two new hard drives to use as backup drives for the new Studio and the new Air I bought earlier this year.

But my best Black Friday win was buying a used Presonus 1810c from a reputable music store for under $300 and for some reason they sent me a brand new unit! Score!

With all of that, my software spending was minimal:

- swapped out my Samplephonics/Noiiz subscription for Loopcloud at 50% off, so no change in amount-spent there.
- Trying to get Tsugi's DSP Motion at 50% off but it keeps getting rejected. I've sent them a note about it.
- Grabbed an upgrade to Waves Horizon for $50.
- Finally updated my Source Connect for $39, a necessity with the new 'puter.
- Spent 73 cents at Loot Audio on some drum thing I'll never use and got AudioThing Bubbles for free.
- Bought the 4 EZKeys midi packs that were on sale last week, $47.

Eek I missed the upgrade to Nexus 4.5 from my list. It is a considerable improvement, unlike the original 4.0.

Guy and I went for some of the same things including the BB Tubes, u-He Zebra and the 4TB SSD. Mine needed a Thunderbolt 3 extension hub as I’ve run out of inputs. Not bad at $90 from OWC.

That HOOPUS upgrade will come around again. I held back for now.

I've got a solid case of sample anhedonia, probably due to an absolute embarrassment of riches on multiple drives, so nothing tempted me in that regard.

But, I did snag UAD Capitol Chambers for $49, so that's a win!

Blake Ewing wrote: ↑Nov 30, 2022 5:01 pm But, I did snag UAD Capitol Chambers for $49, so that's a win!

I predict that you are going to LOVE the chambers! Not the longest stretch in the world! $49??? That's amazing.

Hey, Guy - I know that you briefly mentioned the Nexus 4.5 upgrade recently, but with the inevitable 'Holiday Season' thing they do, I've finally had a look and - it sure looks like the lid is taken off the mechanism in there a bit more. Considering it's $80 for basically a ticket to get more access to tweak, I was wondering how you've found it?

bbunker wrote: ↑Dec 01, 2022 1:43 am Hey, Guy - I know that you briefly mentioned the Nexus 4.5 upgrade recently, but with the inevitable 'Holiday Season' thing they do, I've finally had a look and - it sure looks like the lid is taken off the mechanism in there a bit more. Considering it's $80 for basically a ticket to get more access to tweak, I was wondering how you've found it?

It's now a great half-a-synth! It's still not a full synth in as much as you can't freely start programming, add oscillators etc. You can't switch out samples. But there's an awful lot you can do, and the interface is so much better to see what you're working with. There are templates for those who do want to prorgam sort-of from scratch, and they come in varieties of oscillator configs. For me it will remain an editable ROMpler, but now there's a lot more to edit. The SQs are more useful because it's quick and easy to eliminate or change the elements that you don't want or need. My one big big request is that they add multi-outs.

They just added a Christmas freebie btw, which then made me realise I'd missed last years so added that too.