Plug-in Sales and Special Deals Sticky Topic

[mhschmieder]

One thing that confuses me about the loyalty vouchers is whether they roll over, and also whether they apply to new products when they're on sale.

I either forgot to use my $75 on the newest product last month, or couldn't find a way to apply multiple coupons. I suspect it's one or the other, in which case my introductory offer was better than applying the coupon. And my voucher for November is also $75, but maybe wouldn't be if I had used last month's?

Whatever the case, it works out well, but it can be a bit confusing at times. And I own all of their products at this point -- though I rarely buy them when new, as I wait for reviews first.

[Klaus]

Harrison Mixbus is $29 right now. It does have a particular sound, and can be used with DP via Soundflower or JackOS, or standalone for simple mixes. At V4, it has become reasonably stable and usable. I still think they could do better by just selling the channel strips and bus strips as plugins in AU and VST formats, but they have a plan and they've stuck to it.

I recently got some AVA plugins from Harrison and like them... there may be spec. deals in the next time
Best
Klaus

[bayswater]

Harrison Mixbus is $29 right now. It does have a particular sound, and can be used with DP via Soundflower or JackOS, or standalone for simple mixes. At V4, it has become reasonably stable and usable. I still think they could do better by just selling the channel strips and bus strips as plugins in AU and VST formats, but they have a plan and they've stuck to it.

I recently got some AVA plugins from Harrison and like them... there may be spec. deals in the next time
Best
Klaus

I don't think they do the channel strip yet. As of V5, they've come up with a pretty credible basic DAW, and the 32C sounds great, so I withdraw my earlier comments.

[Klaus]

...I'm using / testing MB32C v5 - not the latest, the latest produces cpu spikes ( not like DP 7.24 ! )

I was talking about the AVA plugs ( AU / VST )
De-Esser, mastering EQ, legacy EQ and these are really sounding great to me...
They have a functional demo installer to !
Channel strip isn't one of their goals AFAIK ('yet' ? )

Best regards,
Klaus

[bayswater]

Channel strip isn't one of their goals AFAIK ('yet' ? )

Best regards,
Klaus

Yes, that's what I was saying. Mixbus has a nice layout for general small song mixes, but the real reason to use it is the sound of the channel strip and busses. They haven't put that in a plugin.

I have 32c V 5.1 and haven't experienced CPU spikes, but if you look at the Q&As you'll see that Mixbus uses more CPU than other apps because it keeps all the eq, compression etc for each channel running all the time. It's not CPU efficient and they acknowledge that. The only way to deal with it is to activate only the number of channels and busses you need.

[mhschmieder]

It's on their website; sale is good for 18 days. Also available at Sweetwater, Time+Space, and Guitar Center. Surprisingly, I no longer see NI products listed anywhere else.

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/deals/

Unfortunately, updates aren't included, and that's mostly what I need (Kontakt 6, Session Strings Pro) along with the new Middle East Discovery Series.

I've checked the details at Sweetwater and Time+Space (where I have a soon-to-expire voucher) in case they offer additional discounts on updates/upgrades, which aren't covered on NI's site.

It's a bit hard to tell if these are Thanksgiving specials, but Time+Space is significantly cheaper than other sources and has additional discounts from their marked prices, which already are lower than NI's official posted prices.

https://www.timespace.com/collections/n ... nstruments

It may be that we are dealing with a strong dollar and that their core prices would be the same as other vendors if buying in pounds sterling. But I'm probably going to go ahead and order something from them today. They only sell the collections; not single instruments -- presumably because only the USB drive option is available and download-only products probably no longer go through resellers.

For those who lost the link, here's the comparison chart of what's in all the versions of Komplete 12. This should help in evaluating the cost-effectiveness of taking advantage of the single-product 50% discounts -- especially considering that in some cases the price is the same as upgrading from a previous edition (e.g. Session Strings Pro to Session Strings Pro 2 is $149 just as if buying it on discount with no previous purchase history).

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/p ... n/compare/

After careful review, it seems there are the same $25 vouchers this time around with each of the Komplete bundles, so I may be just as well off to go ahead and do the full Komplete update (probably to the new Ultimate Collector's Edition), but maybe there's still a chance of further discounts on Black Friday itself?

One new product (Mallet Flux) has come out since Komplete 12, so the voucher might be useful for that one, but it isn't part of the Thanksgiving sale, so would still be $175. Yikes! Maybe Black Friday one-day-only discount?

UPDATE: I just ordered the Komplete 12 Ultimate Collector's Edition Upgrade from Time+Space for $499 minus voucher from previous orders. I mostly decided on the basis of the Percussion library, as I just finished re-tracking all orchestral and latin percussion parts on almost 100 projects and felt my choices were still lacking on the whole (particularly for latin percussion), and this seems the most detailed library so far, for many of those instruments (I have good mallets elsewhere though).

FLASH UPDATE: Back to the drawing board. T+S just informed me they won't have any more copies of K12 Ultimate Collector's Edition until mid-December and thus can't honour the sale. As the upgrade from K12 Ultimate to the Collector's Edition is $600 vs. the $200 differential when buying Collector's Edition from the start, looks like I'll have to wait until Black Friday and see whether Sweetwater or GC can honour a sale of that product.

UPDATED UPDATE: I was able to keep myself in the queue with T+S. I'd rather do that as my voucher would have expired otherwise anyway, and besides, I find that certain vendors list things in stock when they aren't (this is even true on eBay, which is against the rules), if they have "access".

[James Steele]

I was over at the Slate website checking out how long I have to upgrade at a discount from SSD4 and noticed that they have a non-expiring demo version of SSD5 that includes a decent kit apparently. Seems like might be worth something to snag. You can get it at this link:

https://ssd5-free.dl.drumclassroom.net/

[Rick Cornish]

We've all been inundated with Black Friday deals, so I hesitate to post one, except that I’ve been watching Finnish developer Oeksound for years and this is the first time their acclaimed Soothe dynamic resonance suppressor has gone on sale.

Regularly €149, it’s reduced to €99 (came out to $118USD for me) until 11/30.

Check it out at https://shop.oeksound.com/product/soothe/

[James Steele]

https://www.waves.com/lpn/black-friday-2018/free-plugin

[mhschmieder]

Direct sales at their website. Just the main collections for Berlin Strings, Winds, Brass, and Percussion. The expansions are not on discount, and the bundles are only discounted as much as the main collection so simply reduce the number of items in your cart.

That prices between $400 and $500, and slightly over $200 for Percussion. Looking at the PDF, the latter is quite extensive compared to any other orchestral percussion library, so might be worth a buy even for those who think they're already well covered for orchestral percussion. Lots more alternates and articulations than most, including for latin percussion and effects percussion.

It does turn out that the expansions can be used on their own, but they're not on sale so there's no rush on those.

I've listened to all the demos now and really only like their strings, somewhat the mid-range brass, and not the woodwinds much at all (which was all I really needed some alternates for).

The percussion examples don't cover much breadth so that would be an on-faith buy from looking at the user manual and noting the bang-for-buck, but I have the SonuScore Percussion from Komplete 12 arriving soon -- yet the Berlin library is definitely deeper and broader (including than VSL).

[toodamnhip]

We've all been inundated with Black Friday deals, so I hesitate to post one, except that I’ve been watching Finnish developer Oeksound for years and this is the first time their acclaimed Soothe dynamic resonance suppressor has gone on sale.

Regularly €149, it’s reduced to 99€ (about $113 in USD) until 11/30.

Check it out at https://shop.oeksound.com/product/soothe/

Thanks man. Running some tests now, seems like an absolutely amazing plug in that I really could use

[mhschmieder]

Somehow, I missed buying Omnipressor (which Brian May of Queen made famous), whenever it became available, so that now completes my Eventide collection, at only $49.

The Newfangled Audio Elevate bundle, and the separately available Newfangled Audio EQuivocate (also part of the bundle), are participating in this sale.

Resellers also honour the sale, but mysteriously are slightly higher; perhaps due to currency conversion or funny dealings with VAT and the like. I prefer to buy direct from a vendor though as it better rewards their development time.

[mikehalloran]

I was over at the Slate website checking out how long I have to upgrade at a discount from SSD4 and noticed that they have a non-expiring demo version of SSD5 that includes a decent kit apparently. Seems like might be worth something to snag. You can get it at this link:

https://ssd5-free.dl.drumclassroom.net/

I liked some of the things I saw and heard — plunked down the $79 upgrade to the full version. Ends 11/30.

Izotope has a number of interesting Black Friday deals. Ozone 8 Standard for $99 or with Mix & Master for $149 is very good.

https://www.izotope.com/en/store/deals. ... 6kEALw_wcB

I have something coming up in a few months where Izotope Breaktweaker may come in handy. Normally not my cup of tea but, for $49 including Stutteredit (something I can’t imagine ever using), I threw down. It includes all expansion packs, normally $39 ea at Sweetwater.

Iris 2/Trash 2 bundle is priced the same $49. I’ve had both for many years and use Trash as a creative distortion tool to to add definition to bass tracks — like Brylcreem, “a little dab’ll do you” (much less expensive than an amp like Carol Kaye’s Ampeg PortaFlex). Again, the expansion packs are included. Iris has been fun to play with and someday, I’d like to find a project where I can use it.

[cuttime]

For $10 I'm in.
https://www.embertone.com/

[mikehalloran]

$39 gets you forty-seven libraries. Many sound pretty good.

https://samplesfrommars.com/products/al ... -from-mars

Some debate on the users board as to whether these will open in the free Kontakt Player or if you require you require the paid version of Kontakt. I don't know but there are four freebies in there as well if someone wants to try them out.
https://samplesfrommars.com/

I'm still downloading but it appears that there are 46.5G of samples.

Get Every Samples From Mars Product in Existence

All the Samples From Mars is the culmination of 5 years (and tens of thousands of hours) of sampling our favorite, most inspiring (and usually vintage) hardware drum machines, synthesizers, and more, through some of the best recording equipment in the world. All of our samples feature 100% hardware processing - no plugins.

This download gives you every single product we've ever developed, and includes future 2018 releases. Each product is a single file .zip download that is formatted for Ableton, Kontakt, Logic, and WAV (with no duplicate WAV). Drum products are additionally formatted for MPC500, 1000, and 2500, Maschine, and Battery. We've also created a 1GB download that contains only the most essential samples from every product.

Update: 47.5GB total. A few downloads failed but trashing and restarting the offenders was successful.

If I use one or two in client projects, it will be well worth the $39.