Camel Audio is closing shop! ;-( .......Alchemy is reborn!

[Michael Canavan]

Alchemy Beats for GarageBand on the iPad as an In-App purchase for 1.99 (or it will be Logic only, or it will completely disappear a la Redmatica).

look at it this way, at least MainStage will be $27 for whatever EXS/Alchemy with Redmatica tech gets implemented in in Logic and Garageband.

[bayswater]

Do we still think Apple is going to do anything with Redmatica that we'd recognize? It's been 18 months and 7 updates of Logic X, and nothing, not even a hint. There seems to be an assumption that we'd see some sort of Autosampler implementation, but it might have been something specifically related to EXS sample management that Apple wanted. Or even something new Rematica hadn't implemented, like an iOS function.

[Michael Canavan]

Do we still think Apple is going to do anything with Redmatica that we'd recognize? It's been 18 months and 7 updates of Logic X, and nothing, not even a hint. There seems to be an assumption that we'd see some sort of Autosampler implementation, but it might have been something specifically related to EXS sample management that Apple wanted. Or even something new Rematica hadn't implemented, like an iOS function.

You're correct of course, but I think the truth is they've only released one upgrade with significant improvements since he was hired, and it was less than a year before he was brought in so.... Updates for Logic rarely contain goodies like we sometimes get with DP, Apple is a publicly traded company and they can't afford to be caught alluding to speculative features, because of Enron oddly enough. A guy from the Logic team told us that once on the OSXAudio forums.

[bayswater]

These things are always a bit of a mystery. The money Apple has spent on some recent takeover is nuts. I've been involved in some, and sometimes the reasons are not at all what customers might think. E.g. a takeover of a company with a competing technology was actually for their real estate.

[daniel.sneed]

I was not on that point of view, but it makes sense.
IMHO, Alchemy has so much power under the hood, some features may interest many developers.
But chances are the buying company, if any, may not care at all about Alchemy and... Alchemy users!

[Michael Canavan]

I was not on that point of view, but it makes sense.
IMHO, Alchemy has so much power under the hood, some features may interest many developers.
But chances are the buying company, if any, may not care at all about Alchemy and... Alchemy users!

Sure, but Camel IMO is far more valuable left to their audio specialty, and hopefully whomever did buy them realizes that.

I own all three of their plug ins BTW, but I'm over being upset when software disappears. One thing I've thought about doing though is buying a Muse Receptor for my discontinued plug ins. Since it's just an OS made to work with the VST2.4 spec it won't be prone to upgrades causing bugs.

[David Polich]

I have to say, I've used all of their products, and I don't anymore. They just started sounding dated, and frankly there were superior alternatives to every single one of their products.

I'm sorry to see anyone go out of business, but honestly I won't miss these guys. And at least a few of them will probably go on to work for someone else and bring their talents along with them.

[mhschmieder]

Wouldn't Ableton Live be the more logical buyer? I seem to recall there was a strong partnership there, with lots of bundling. I might be confusing with another VI vendor though.

As I hinted, I never grew fond of the filters in Alchemy, but sometimes "cold" and "harsh" is just what the doctor ordered. I had to use Alchemy in small doses though; whereas Ultra Analog and Absynth can be used a lot on the same piece without pushing the timbre any one way or resulting in the notorious "stacking" effect that analog synths are guilty of (I'm always careful not to use the same synth on too many tracks in the same piece).

I always respected the company, and it was sad when they lost one of their top sound designers a few years back (I can't remember if it was health e.g. cancer or an accident while rappelling at Yosemite NP). All of their sound designers work across companies though; many on Absynth, and other non-mainstream VI's (i.e. ones that aren't emulative of traditional analog synths).

[daniel.sneed]

Trying to stay positive, even it's hard at the moment.

In near future, I'll have to make choice between Absynth and Iris2, which I own both, to do what I usually do in Alchemy.

For sure, different beasts, different learning curves, but my very first concern is now about their respective future.
I don't like to invest much time, and money, in building some skill to work with synth-sample libraries and creating my own patches, when they finally end in the dust.

Any insight may help me in that point.

[BKK-OZ]

Well, Iris just got updated to 2, not sure if any of the $99 upgrade deals are still out there.
Absynth has been stuck on 5 for (I think?) 2+ years.

I have both, and while I like Iris, I find it to be a bit CPU-heavy, and try as I might, I cannot fully get my head around it. I have come to understand Absynth pretty well, and I find I can get more flexibility out of it than Iris - Absynth being more of a traditional oscillator/filter type of synth.

[daniel.sneed]

[...] while I like Iris, I find it to be a bit CPU-heavy, and try as I might, I cannot fully get my head around it.[...]

Yes, Iris1 was heavy on CPU, but Iris2 is much heavier.
I'm not confident to use it live, because of this.
I'm reluctant to upgrade my trusty MacBookPro now, just for a few plugins which act as CPU hogs.

Glad to hear you get your way thru Absynth. Don't know why, but it does scares me somewhat.
I've found my ways thru Iris1, and Iris2, quite easily.

I miss a real deep browser in Iris, though.
Absynth browser seems very efficient to me.
I think Alchemy1.5 browser was modeled on Absynth browser.
Well... iZotope go ahead!

[mhschmieder]

I feel your pain. The synths I have put huge amounts of time into, for my own personal patch programming, are the very ones that became incompatible, got canceled, were stolen. Each time that happens, I return strictly to presets for awhile. Yet I usually at least do some tweaking of parameters, filters, etc.

[Luke]

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/23/app ... mel-audio/

Now we know why.

[Michael Canavan]

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/23/app ... mel-audio/

Now we know why.

Well the upside of this is if you're a Mac user MainStage is $30, and they will include what they do with Alchemy in MainStage.

Now what they need to do is make MainStage loadable as an Audio Unit in DP etc.

[BKK-OZ]

Glad to hear you get your way thru Absynth. Don't know why, but it does scares me somewhat.

A few years ago NI put out a training tutorial DVD done by the guy who developed the first couple of versions of Absynth. After watching the whole thing, I got an understanding of how it was all put together, so I find I can now navigate my way through Absynth reasonably well. The large number of presets also gives one a good place to start.

I am a huge fan of Spectral and Morphox from Linplug (and the older but still great CronoX). I find I use these couple of synths more and more. I also love me some U-He Filterscape VA - his preset browser is the best of its kind, IMHO.

I have Blue (Papen) but can't stand the preset browser, and am still to figure out how that thing works. Check out Linplug, cheap-n-good.