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