The Sound Board

Didn't see this one coming - for current support plan subscribers, UVI's Falcon is now bundled with Pro Tools 2018 regular and Ultimate editions, along with a 2.6gb curated library.

I'm not sure how the licensing works - presumably you'd need the support plan to be current, and I'd guess you'd be able to get the standalone and VST versions not just AAX, but not entirely sure.

https://www.avid.com/pro-tools/uvi

Not showing up in my User Account, no info on how to get it. That's so Avid.

Thanks Guy!

Apparently Avid will be depositing licenses in accounts over the next 7 days, appearing in Products and Subscriptions. Unfortunately for me, the early word seems to be that these will be AAX licenses ONLY.

OK, one more clarification on this from DetroitT over at the DUC:

Found the Plugsound-Avid----Only works in Pro Tools

UVI Workstation works everywhere AAX, VST3 AU....

It's the Library that's tied to Pro Tools

UVI Standalone can't see the Avid Edition. (Library not a valid host)

So that's much better news for me. You'll need an active support plan, but at least Falcon apparently works standalone and - crucially - VST without restrictions. That extra PT library I'm not nearly so fussed about.

Has anyone recieved this yet? I keep checking my Avid account and other things have been added in the last few days, but not UVI Falcon. My support is good until Feb 2019, so perhaps I’m just impatient.

Was going to purchase Falcon at the last sale but held off. Glad I did!

My license has arrived, but not the download link.

Hey, it showed up. Or one of them did - I have a regular license and Ultimate, and the regular links came up. I've downloaded and tested, and the bad news for me is it really is AAX only - that initial information from the DUC forum poster is incorrect. There's no way to download regular Falcon unless you buy it - if I could, I'd test it to see if the license accepted it, but that door isn't open to me.

So for me, since all my music work is Cubase this is therefore strictly a demo, which is a bit of a shame.

I've tested it in Pro Tools with the regular factory content. Sound-wise it seems nice enough, though definitely seems at the digital end of the scale. When the two presets called Bass Analogue sound uncannily like a DX7, you know you're in trouble. That may very well not be representative of its analogue-worthyness, but it was a waving red flag calling them that

The browser is year 2000 basic - you have category folders, and that's your lot, which is kinda amazing given how how recently this product was designed from scratch. For basic tweaks, I did find the ADSR and effects sections and made them work, but the filter seemed elusive save for some handy front panel controls when they made them available in the patch. Overall It looks like a lot of heirachical menus, which isn't too appealing.

This is obviously just a cursory "what does it feel and sound like" first impression. I'm aware that I'd need to get my head around concepts like parts, layers and keygroups, which feels like quite a lot of homework unless I'm serious about using it for sampling, synthesis and sound design, which of course is its forte. When I have (a lot) more time, I may well dip my toe in that water to really give it a proper evaluation. As it is, I'm not kicking myself that I missed the UVI sale.

My UVI/Falcon has not shown up yet.

I did look under "Products Not Yet Downloaded" and found a license and it turns out it was for a year of the Complete Plugin Bundle - which is weird because I've never bought a subscription plugin/bundle from them. I always bought the "1 year of updates" package. I installed it last week and today PT started crashing at launch and phoning home any time I instantiated a plug, so I deleted the whole thing and de-activated it in iLok. WOW.

Laura - I got an extra (and therefore sorta useless as you get 3 activations per bundle) license at some point too, no idea why. They were bundling them last year with subs, maybe it's that? Does it have a date range attached in iLok manager?

As to the crashes... urgh, no idea. That bundle works ok for me, but there again I did only install Spaces and X-Form from it.

The date range corresponds to when I activated it, so 11/30.

Plug-in subs don't appeal to me as they don't fit in to how I like to work. I mean, I didn't even know I had it, so it's no big loss for me.

Yes, I have a few things in my downloads page that I don’t bother with, since I tried things from them that are troublesome or useless. So my default is to research through google first, ask myself if I really can use it, then only download if the answer is yes. Downloaded the Pro effects “first” collection today (figured it was harmless audio files) then the first effect I check out, a simple car idling, has weird clicks all through it. Typical!

Good to know your thoughts on Falcon Guy, although the engine is praised by some (like ED) my experience with UVI (especially after recently comparing them to my kontakt libraries) is that their sounds are always underwhelming and very ‘digital’ sounding (clear and clean but without warmth or character). Perhaps it’s just the sound design style of the company, but it falls far short of competition like U-He or Spectrasonics. Even though I own a number of their libraries, they have all quickly left my templete. So not getting a vst version (for VE Pro) is not a huge loss for me. At least I won’t be tempted by expansion packs.

X - again, I'm perplexed as you're quite right, those Pro Sound Effects are just WAVs and I've found their quality to be excellent. I actually just did a search for idling, found only one car (the Holden Fe 1957?) and it's completely clean for me save for the ends (it's a loop effect so doesn't have clean ins and outs).

As to UVI, yes I know exactly what you mean. For sample libraries its not a problem, but for synthesis I find myself responding in a similar way. Much as Falcon being effectively a demo for me is disappointing, its value as a demo is actually pretty high. I nearly bought Falcon in the sale this time and as of right now I'm very glad I didn't.