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I'm still holding on to M5 v1.???.
I recently took a look at Kontakt 2. The supplied library is an awesome starter set. The 75 page preset pdf revealed just how expansive this library is.

However, I took a good look at the file sizes. Some instruments were in the hundreds of MBs. But many were in the single digit range. M5's starter set, altough more narrow in range, includes some relatively beefy instruments. 50MB is at the low end, many are 100MBs or more, and some are several hundred MBs in size.

I'm really comfortable with M5's interface. Just enough detail. Sometimes too much is...too much.

In the past I struggled with whether or not to get the PlugSound Box. I predicited I would use 2-3 out of the 6 modules. I went with MSI and daOrgan instead.

As someone who grew up in the age of vinyl, (Yep! 78rpms were still in use), my definition of looping comes from "looping" my finely crafted passages as Parts in the Alesis MMT8 while I "kicked out the jams" on my 6 string. I don't have any criticism of audio loops, I just never used them. I also don't listen to mp3s.

But at this point, PS Pro looks like it has plently of goods for decent price.

Any other thoughts here???

Just an FYI:
I was searching for "bread & butter" (acoustic piano, electric bass guitar, acoustic bass, organ, pads, various synth sounds, single hit drums and kits, etc) and PS Pro delivers Exclamation

The various flavors of acoustic piano (grand, jazz, mellow, soft,etc) sound rich and pleasing to the ear. Same with the bass and organ sounds. There's more than enough single hit drum sounds to feed my MIDI loops. The acoustic guitars triggered by my MIDI guitar controller sounded pretty convincing.

I like ethereal pads and some filter sweeps (not a big fan of buzzy sounds) and there's plenty here. The review (posted earlier) indicates that some sounds may not
be inspiring in isolation. Their true value may be realized when they are layered with other sounds. Time will tell.

I'm guessing that the Orchestral sounds are a subset of the MOTU Symphonic Instrument (which USB produced). So I didn't gain anything here except to maybe have the most commonly used sounds readily avaiable from one interface.

The effects sound really good, but I haven't really dug into them yet. (These days, I record dry, and generally mono, then build my sound stage in the box).

The interface was a quick study because of my familiarity with MSI. In Export Mode, one can set Keyswitching (Key Range, Velocity Range and Key Switch), Streaming, and assign up to 16 or 17? direct outputs. Cool stuff!!!

The installation instructions were very clearly written with some nice illustrations to avoid misinterpretation. The install was accomplished as outlined.

In terms of performance, I was able to load 14 voices without clipping in Digital Performer. Buffer size for playback was 1028 samples. I had enough cpu resources for the interface to remain responsive. (Mach 5 on the other hand starts to exhibit significant stress with 8-10 voices on my system).

Set up for Stand Alone functioning was very easy. For live playback, performance with a buffer of 256 samples is...not bad.

My first soundmodule back in 1989 was a Roland U220 playback sampler. It had all the bread and butter I needed at the time and still sounds rich to this day. So, in my case as I move away from hardware modules, PS Pro was a good choice!

I use the suitacse piano and wurli sounds, electric basses, clavinets and many of the drum samples ....all good for the $$$.

RMC206 wrote:I use the suitcase piano and wurli sounds, electric basses, clavinets and many of the drum samples ....all good for the $$$.

Yeah, I agree. I just picked this up and am pretty happy with it. It's chock full of a lot of nice sounding bread-and-butter patches. And it comes with some bonus orchestral sounds that are low MB -- helpful for sketching score ideas.

And, with modules upgrades, it allows me to funnel those great sound from UltraFocus, XtremeFX and Charlie through it (FYI, the module have new names).

It does require iLok for those who care about such things.

I say if you're looking for a single VI to cover a lot of baseline sound needs, Plugsound Pro is a great way to go. It's worth the price tag.

I'm sure that if I had sprung for PS Box I would have been happy. But I'm glad I waited. This new interface has been a breeze to work with, especially after using MSI for a while. There is also more than enough quality sounds to
keep me going for a looooonnngggg time.


PSP is definitely high quality bread and butter.
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