Just grabbed Diva demo again.
It is superb. It’s the smoothness of the filters, envelopes and glides that gets me.
It feels like I’m playing hardware.
(And the jBridge trick seems to work nicely!)
Thanks for hat tip to Diva.
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If you think Diva is smooth, try Serum - it takes that to the next level. I think it does it by actually having oscillator/LFO/envelope waveforms defined by computable functions rather than wave tables, meaning they can be generated at any frequency to any level of granularity, thus also minimising aliasing distortion at high frequencies.
This is why it’s so CPU-hungry though…
Neil
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OK, here’s my list:
- Piano: Addictive Keys, Pianoteq 5
- E-Piano: Pianoteq 5, Lounge Lizard
- FM Piano: Dexed
- Hammond: VB3
- Standard rompler: Korg M1 --> strings, brass, mainstream sounds
- Evolving pads, atmospheres: Korg Wavestation
- Allround synth: U-he Hive
- Solo Synth: U-he Hive, FabFilter Twin, OP-X Pro II
- Sampler: TX-16 W
- Guitar Amp: Scuffham S-Gear + various brainworx stomp effects
- EQ: TDR Nova, FabFilter Pro-Q
- Reverb: Valhalla Vintage Verb
- Delay:FabFilter Timeless
- Bread-and-butter effects: Plug-and-Mix bundle
- Amp sim (when S-Gear is too big a gun, e.g. after E-Piano): Voxengo Boogex (free) + 3Sigma impulse responses
Beyond this, I use a couple of free plugins for chorus, flanger, guitar stomps … - less copy protection to worry about …
Cheers,
Torsten
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Hello !
here is my list:
- Audjoo Helix
- Omnisphere
- NI Kontakt
- NI FM8
- NI Absynth 5
- NI Massive
- OP-X II Pro
- VB3
- Valhalla Plugins
- FabFilter plugins
- GVST plugins
- Pizmidi plugins
- Waves plugins
- Eventide plugins
- Plogue Bidule
Kind regards
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I am currently playing as a hired gun in 5 different bands. 3 are cover bands, and the other 2 are mostly originals.
I bought NI Komplete a few years back when I owned a Receptor. I may just update it to the newest version, an amazing piece of software.
Also, I bought the Korg Legacy collection at last year’s sale. I owned a Wavestation SR back in the day, so I had plenty of patches to start out with.
I carry a Hammond XK3C for the organ stuff, and everything else gets run from my Yamaha S90es. Works great as a master keyboard, and has some amazing sounds too.
Ohh… and I built my own rack mount PC. Intel i7, 64GB RAM, all solid state drives, and Win7 tricked out via Brad’s amazing “book”. The puppy fires up (Cantabile and all) in under 60 seconds.
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Just in case, I hope you noticed all the free patches for the various instruments at the http://www.korguser.net page when you login. There is a bank by Richard Devine for the Wavestation way down near the bottom, and a ton of things for the other synths in the Legacy Collection all over the place down there.
Terry
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Different beast, but it’s all good!
Note on the use of jBridge with Diva - ‘Prevent main host control’ needs to be enabled on my system, otherwise the bridge will crash when the GUI is closed and reopened.
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Sure feel sorry for the guys who bought Nord products. Yes, they are the best sounding hardware synths, but no better than VB3, Lounge Lizard and any of the major piano plugins. I have a motif classic 7 as my backup in case my LT goes south. Motif 7 sounds great, and is a fantastic controller in master mode. Lots of flexibility with the 4 faders and 4 dials. Paired with an MPK 261. I use Omnisphere 2, The Grand 3, and VB3 for worship, Lounge Lizard VB3 and my Motif 7 Classic for my classic rock band. Sylenth, Massive, Izotope Vocal Synth (for vocoder), Breaktweeker for those typical hooks for DJing Private parties with a couple electronic musicians, using O2 for that of course. I use Cantabile Solo simultaneously with Ableton Live 9 controlling both with my MPK261 (is that possible? Yes, it is). Sound through a UR28 with three Stereo outs, Ableton using Yamaha driver for outputs 3-6 (3 out for click and vocal triggers, 4 for mono bass and 5-6 for Stereo Track out for Ableton) and ASIO4All mapped to outputs 1 and 2 for stereo live play of Cantabile Plugins. I am trying to figure out what more I want. It’s sad. Maybe C3 Performer?.
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I want it. Serum is no longer my next plugin anticipated. I understand that Serum is CPU heavy. I wonder how this is.
Well, to find out, I ran it on Cantabile 3 on my Core i7-4770R 3.2GHz machine with 16Gb RAM and an SSD, with audio buffer set to 192 samples. Some sounds, like the monophonic bass or lead patches incur a load of typically 15-20%, but load up one of the rich polyphonic pads and it can be jumping around from 50-70%, with occasional spikes up into the 80-90% region. This is with just one plugin loaded…
Neil
I just bought avenger and it’s kinda the same problem, high CPU, but does depend on your part programming Ofcourse.
You’ve gotta learn me that, how I run C3 from within Reaper and even select songs from the reaper side?
I had only run Diva on my studio machines which are very similar to RickRepsher’s (racks, 64 gig, SSD etc) and hadn’t really given Diva a bash on the old Lenovo T410.
Just running ASIO4All on the internal sound card at 128, with jbridge hosting Diva, performance mode on (doubling the latency to a reasonable 256) 4 note polyphony is hitting is hitting a max of 60%, averaging 40%.
That’s pretty ouch but OK… it’s still well playable.
And then…
I flipped on Diva’s multicore support. The Cantabile meter dropped to an average of 15- 20%. There is an occasional spike which can probably be tracked down - and of course it’s patch dependent, exactly as it is with Omnisphere.
From here on I have had to rewrite everything I thought I was going to say.
Diva was reasonably under control. It was the only plugin instantiated in C3.
I flipped 2C’s Breeze reverb into the picture. None of 2C’s stuff is light on the CPU. Breeze has been a good live solution, especially when bridged in performance mode (who cares about a few ms of predelay on a reverb?) As soon as it was switched in, C3 went into overload with regular +100% peaks. Turn off Diva and run a Synth1 into Breeze and we’re back at a non-peaky max of 16%.
Turned off multicore in Diva. C3 Load drops back to a non peaky sub 40% load with Breeze running.
These things interact differently, and there is voodoo involved.
Yikes. I am running omnisphere also. I bet there would be dropouts with the two.
How do you do that? That sounds very cool!
How do you do that? That sounds very cool! Accidentally posted this at the bottom.
Actually, were you asking me? For me, I have two programs sharing one audio interface with three stereo outs and one Miidi controller with three ports (MPK261). Two different asio drivers control one USB sound module. I use my mpk 261 to control both ableton and C3. I am looking at Ableton being my C3 performer possibly. I can run my software synths right from Ableton while launching the songs. Technically I can pass on C3 if I need. Running all synths from Ableton at a Show in 12/21 that is not too big (couple hundred and pretty low key). I plan to experiment during our show with running all within Ableton (no C3 at all). Only hitch is that without C3, my CPU gets pounded more (if running all from within Ableton).
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I downloaded the beta of u-he’s Repro-1 and this thing is SICK. It will cut glass. Gonna have to get the official release now that it’s out. But anyhoo, my main stuff at the moment is:
VB-3
Lounge Lizard (usually through Guitar Rig)
Arturia V collection; mostly the Minimoog, Synclavier (that thing is also AMAZING) and CS-80
Omnishpere 2
M-tron Pro
and of course Kontakt for various pianos, pipe organs and what-not
Oh, and much Hollow Sun awesomeness. For the $$ they have so much cool stuff- the INIL choir, 130P Music Lab, Stringodyne…
And last but not least, the myVST Taurus Pedal VST, another little bit of free sweetness.
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NS2 organ doesn’t even get close to VB3; I’ve A/B’d them a lot.
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I don’t know what NS2 is, but it seems like us old guys who have owned and giged with a B3 favor the Nord and VB3 sound. I have played the Nord and loved it (keyboardist from a previous act set up next to me and let me use it. Wow! Sounded great!). However, the price was preventative to me. VB3 for 50 Euros is a stout contender for the Nord. VB3 has been my bread and butter since 2013 (or earlier, I can’t remember. Was wanting the Electro 2 at the time). NI B4 was cool, but VB3 still holds it for me, and B4 is discontinued. Found VB3 while I was saving for a Roland VK7. The VK7 sounded great, but, again, I couldn’t buy it right away. I have been on the hunt for an organ sound that doesn’t make me cringe (those cheesy sampled ones). Leslie simulators have consistently fallen short (Except for Nord and VB3 for me). I, now, exclusively use VB3. I expect Guido to give me some royalties for this testimony.
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