MachFive 3 Upgrade - Sounds

[metalmick]

I haven't used MachFive for about 10 years and have recently upgraded to a new PC running Win 10. This week I paid to upgrade from M51 to M53 but unfortunately the memory stick that contained the new program and sounds malfunctioned, the dealer is sending me a new stick but told me to download all the sounds from Motu's main site which I have done. There are 11 banks on the site including the two free AVI FX banks. My question is do these 11 banks include everything that is freely available to me as a Mach 3 owner? What about my original sounds on my MF1 DVD? I notice that the 11 banks come as single UFS files but my original sounds are normal files named backups, performances, presets and samples. Should I be adding these to my new MachFive Sounds folder and if so should I just be saving just the samples?

[mikehalloran]

You authorize and download the sounds from MOTU. The effects are authorized separately from UVI.

Except for an iLOK, everything you need is online.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

MF3 reads my ver 2 banks. Those were ported to ver 2 before ver 3 was released so I don't know if ver 1 sounds will port but I suspect they will. You might want to reserve them in the new version.

I'm sure others here will tell you you "should've" bought Falcon, which AFAICT is what the update to M5 would have been. All work on M5 is at a standstill AFAIK. Still, it's my goto for pretty much everything. The ExtremeFX stuff is nice. When you demo them, don't just play a few keys. Many of their samples are very different depending on the MIDI key #. It's a very deep library and great for atmospheres and backgrounds of all types.

There's no really good piano. I use True Keys and like it but I'm totally spoiled by my Yamaha grand and no digital or virtual piano is truly satisfying.

Orchestral stuff? Meh. With a little editing and EQ it's ok, but not so useful. THe biospheres banks are fun. Also, Star Drums has a nice clean sound and you can really customize the hell out of it. The Strat... never really got deep into it. They do tend to be memory hogs, those last two. Put them in their own instantiation of M5, as well as any other large instruments. That holds true of ANY VI in ANY host (Kontakt, et al). Placing them in separate instantiations spreads the CPU demands over several cores. Basically every fader used for a VI in the DP mixer will go to a consecutive core. Fun facts... Thank Magic Dave for that one! Sets of smaller instruments can be in a single instantiation, but large instruments need to be in their own. They can be such cu... cu... cu... CPU! hogs.

[mikehalloran]

From the SOS review:

Oh, and if you're wondering about how the new version gets along with MachFive 1, that's actually a moot point. Version 1 only runs on PowerPC-based Macs, and version 3 only on Intel Macs, so never the twain shall meet…

As far as backwards compatibility goes, MachFive 3 will open version 1 and 2 presets and multis with no problem, …

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/machfive-3

The M53 libraries can be used in the latest free UVI Player as long as your iLOK is plugged in—in case you want to use them with the newer UVI libraries that won't load into MachV (or in Falcon). Yes, Falcon is impressive but I'm not much of a synth guy so I've not bought it.

There's no really good piano. I use True Keys and like it but I'm totally spoiled by my Yamaha grand and no digital or virtual piano is truly satisfying.

MV3 includes the UVI Model D which isn't half bad. It's the same Steinway D VI included with DP 10 and various UVI packages or stand-alone for $49. I must have 4 licenses for that piano by now. Anyway, I like it and use it in Zoom choir rehearsals that I do online (my wife prefers the Alan Parsons Imperial but I think the choir hears the Model D better and I like the way it sits in a dense choral mix).

We're spoiled by a Bösendorfer 200 around here though my wife is really liking her new Yamaha P121 digital piano as a controller for these choir sessions I'm doing while our piano is having the action overhauled. Even though we get it back next week (yes!), she is getting used to using VIs in DP for our online work. Until we can feel comfortable going back into churches, schools and live performance, this is our life and I'm in no hurry.