AIR Velvet flash sale

The guys at AudioDeluxe are having another sale. Amongst others you can get AIR Velvet for 20 bucks - definitely worth it! At the moment, this is my favorite ePiano VST for live.

Cheers,

Torsten

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I’d like to add my $0.02 and say that, yes, this is a good deal (and it ends in 32 hours).

Velvet is on sale at plugin boutique for $19:

https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/1559

  • Paul
2 Likes

I bought AIR Velvet yesterday. Here are my thoughts (keeping in mind piano is not my first instrument).

I never was a big fan of FM e-pianos or the ones on my M1 back in the day (too bad I couldn’t appreciate them for what they were). They were nothing like that Rhodes everyone rented in LA :smiley: or the Wurli’s on so many recordings. When I discovered Lounge Lizard I was very happy but I’m not great at adjusting parameters to get sounds I hear on the covers we play. If I knew what I’m doing I could probably get Lounge Lizard to sound more what I have in mind via velocity curves and adjusting the tines etc.

On the other hand AIR Velvet right out of the box sounds much more like what I’m after. I had headphones on and for a second while playing the “Broken Rhodes” preset I thought my Axiom 61 had magically turned into a hammer and tine keyboard! The bell like tone is easier to achieve than with Lounge Lizard. The effects are very good also.

4 Likes

Thanks for the tip off. I am away on hols at the moment, but at that price it is worth a punt to see if is better than the EPs in my Kronos and its EP-1 engine.

Velvet is without question my favorite Rhodes emulation. It is such a joy to play!

Terry

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Well, I purchased it, but will need to get back from hols to try it out. At the flash sale price, it was worth taking a punt, and I’ve heard people say good things about it :slight_smile:

I bought Velvet quite some time back, do like the sound, but for an emulation, it takes some time to load for me. Even when pre-loaded, it will hold up a song for about 20 seconds to load. It uses 3 GB disc space, and requires minimum 4 GB ram and recommends 8 GB. That is hefty for an emulation, if that is what it really is. This is why I’ve stopped using it. Again, just my personal experience with it. I started using E-Instruments, which contains samples and runs in Kontakt. After pre-load, it switches quickly on all songs.

I haven’t noticed any delay loading, I’ll revisit that to make sure I don’t get a surprise.

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I don’t get any significant delays with Velvet in my setups. And its RAM footprint is pretty benign - will check the exact amount next time I’m at my studio machine…

Cheers,

Torsten

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I get about a two second delay, but only when I change instruments, i.e. from a Mark I to a Mark II. When it’s the same instrument, there is no delay at all.

  • Paul
1 Like

Thanks guys. I’ve tried to figure out why it is so slow to load, when sampled programs load just fine. For the most part, everything I use loads very quickly with no problems. I looked throughout the AIR website to see if samples were used on this, but I’ve yet to find out whether this is a true emulation or a hybrid. The specs suggest hybrid.

It loads just about instantly. Under 2 seconds.

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Hi Corky,

From what I could track down it is a hybrid that leans toward it’s samples. It was sampled extensively and then the emu part they had created to play the samples was tweaked by a guy named Dave Lebolt whose instruments were used to make the samples. He was a pro player for many years and his keyboards were used to make it so he knew how he wanted it to feel and perform when he played it.

Dave

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Thanks Dave. As I suspected.

Still though, 20 seconds to load ain’t right.

Very true. I couldn’t use it anymore. Slower than some Arturia plugs, lol. I plan to dig deeper into it , just very little time to spend on it. If I get a couple of days where I am not traveling and gigging, it will be on my list of 1000 things to do today. If I do find the problem, I will post it here.

Thanks for the heads up. And something to be aware of. RAM specs don’t worry me too much, and my HD is SSD. So I will report back my experiences.

If nothing else if I decide not to use it live (Kronos EP-1 is instant and adds no load to Cantabile :wink: ) it could be a good tool for the studio.

Just sat down at my studio PC: Velvet creates a RAM footprint of roundabout 210 MB on my system. So nothing really scary…

Cheers,

Torsten

2 Likes

Ahhhhhhh, iLok!

Now that I git that out of the way.

My first venture into a computer based system was a Muse Receptor. Much of the software on that unit used iLok. I can’t begin to tell you how many issues were traced back to the whole iLok concept.

When I first started moving towards a PC based system, I made a conscious decision to avoid iLok like the plague.

Imagine my dismay when I looked in my email, found the registration for Air Velvet, and one of the first lines says “download the iLok License manger here.”

I thought I may have missed the fact they use it on their website… but I see no mention on their product page.

How do the rest of you deal with it?

Rick