IK SampleTank sounds on sale

[KuruPrionz]

No affiliation, I do have and use IK Multimedia products. I always wait for sales and they always have them.

 

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/news/?id=st4librarykrazydeal&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=st4librarykrazydeal

 

Both Claivtube and Alternate Keys are worth $20 each in my opinion. I have both of them. Clavitube is fun played on guitar with a Fishman Triple Play but it reminds me of 2 good friends back in the day that both played in Top 40 cover bands and had Clavinets running through Fender or Marshall amps.

 

Alternate Keys is mostly reed sounds, I thought it sounded really good. Be a nice bit for Americana styles.

 

I'm going to download both Cinematic and Orchestral Percussion packages and see which one I like the best. I have $8 jampoints so I could get one of them for around $22.

 

Just passing it along for all the plugin junkies... Cheers, Kuru

[KuruPrionz]

Tonight I spent a little more time reading and listening. Cinematic Percussion has more "world" sounds, Orchestral Percussion sounds very European.

The sounds are full and rich, very good sounding samples.

 

There are plenty of recordings online but no demos to download. I am more inclined to want world sounds at this point. I got the Cinematic Percussion set.

 

Some of the instruments have quite a bit of ambience on them, but many are dry. I would have preferred all dry, so it goes. There are some clever bits, like holding down some of the keys on some instruments plays a roll instead of a hit. The rolls are authentic to the styles played on the instrument, the 3 different Darabuka sounded very Middle Eastern for instance and there is more than one type of roll.

 

They did a good job of capturing a range of sounds on most instruments, the gongs have quite a few different strikes and so do the hand drums. It's entirely possible to put a realistic sounding drum part together. Adding some other acoustic and electronic drums and percussion should give me more than enough fun stuff for recording. It only plays in SampleTank but they do have a free SampleTank Custom Shop version with some free sounds and any sounds you add from IK will play on that so it is sort of like NI Kontakt Player in that respect. I have SampleTank 4 LE or something, got it when it was on sale. Cheers, Kuru

[Mark Schmieder]

I probably still have some sound modules, as it's really hard to resell IKM products (they max you out after two resales, even for add-ons, and you have to beg them each time to "open up" your quota). But I'd say those percussion add-ons are the best of the lot, being that they are compatible with Miroslav Philharmonik as well.

 

My issues with all the SampleTank stuff are baked-in to the philosophy of the product, apparently, and people should be aware of them before they spend too much, lest they be disappointed. Everyone's needs and likes are different, so all power to those who loved SampleTank. But as these aspects aren't so well-known, they can surprise some people. For instance, lack of flexibility in combining articulations or mixing different mics. And to my own ears at least, most of the miking is atrocious, mystifying me as to the chosen mic distances and other aspects -- even when there are multiple mics involved. There seems to be ambience on close mics, yet some are TOO close.

 

I originally upgraded to the latest ST Max, due to the huge list of Latin American (especially Brasilian) instruments that are rarely if ever covered elsewhere. I found them all 100% unusable in a mix due to the miking as well as the playing. But some of the oddball pianos are interesting and fairly well done, as well as that American acoustic guitar add-on (though pianos and guitars obviously have a lot of competition).

 

The overall GUI to ST hasn't changed much over the revisions. For those of us who heavily customize our settings, it is quite cumbersome to navigate in terms of lack of linearity of workflow. Apparently there are some who like it, but at most I have heard two people over the years say that. Mostly, the people who go into ST just want specific sound banks and are attracted by relative affordability.