Did You Snatch Up Any Black Friday/Cyber Monday Deals?

[Greg Mein]

There were a few that caught my attention but generally it seems that things I'm looking for don't go on sale.

 

Not specifically a BF/CM deal but there was a 15% off deal from Guitar Center I used to buy a couple of Xvive U4 in-ear monitor units. These came to my attention just two or three months ago when I was researching options for our duo gig. I didn't leap on them then because we didn't have anything scheduled at the time. Back then the price was really appealing at $183 but between now and then the price had shot up to $225! Now we're scheduled for a NYE gig so I used the GC deal to get them back down to within about $10 of their original price.

 

Then yesterday I saw that Amplitube 5 Max was on sale for $100 at the online retail outfits so I went to the source where I'm a reasonably well known customer and they let me use 30 "jam points" out of my pile there to bring it down to $70. I thought that was a good deal and look forward to trying it out.

 

How about you, did you jump on any good or great deals?

[KuruPrionz]

I did but not sure they are Black Friday deals. 

 

I got Invigorate by Newfangled Audio for $39.10, was a cross grade discount on the $49 discounted price.

Great plugin, Newfangled is part of the Eventide company, software is written by a former Eventide employee. 

It sounds great, the interface is easy to use and it combines compressor, limiter and overdrive functions with full controls and the ability to blend compressor/limiter or limiter/overdrive however you want. Great on tracks and also on the master bus.

 

I also got the new Cherry Audio GX-80 synth package. It just sounds fantastic. When you take into account the cost of the synths they combined, it's a ridiculous bargain. 

 

Congrats on the Amplitube!!! I've been using a couple of amps I demoed on Plugin Alliance - Fuchs Overdrive Supreme 50 (a Dumble clone) and Chandler GAV19t, which is sort of their spin on a Vox AC15 top cut and a Marshall Bluesbreaker with new features. Chandler makes high end studio gear, spendy stuff and they made a limited run of this amp, modeled it and created a plugin. I like both of these amps, different sounds and very versatile. 

[RABid]

I saved up for a while in preparation of Black Friday sales, then went wild. Was wanting Sugar Bytes Turnado and it finally went on sale for $79. There were a couple other Sugar Bytes VSTi's that I also wanted too so I searched the internet for a complete package deal. Found it at one site for $399. Looked on Sweetwater and the complete collection was $79, the same price as Turnado alone. So you can bet that I grabbed Sugar Bytes Complete. The next day when I looked again the price was upped to $399. My store rep called the next day and I asked if they wanted it back. He said no, he just called to tell me he was jealous that he never saw that price.

 

Thought long and hard and finally paid out for the Soundtoys Volume 5 bundle on the last day. Nothing in the package that made me think "gotta have it" like Sugar Bytes Turnado did, but it has a LOT of good usable plugins to make my mix sound better. It was just over %50 off so I am happy. They seem to be a really respected company.

 

Been wanting to experiment with glitch so I bought a bunch of VST's by GlitchMachines during the sale. Steep discounts knocked most of them to $5 or $10. Also grabbed a PluginBotique bundle for $50 that included Izotope Stutter Edit 2. I owned Stutter Edit 1 but the Izotope price for the upgrade to 2 is $99. That  bundle saved me $50, even if I don't make use of the other 4 plugins that were included. Phrasebox looks interesting and was in that buy. In a different purchase I got Scaler 2 and Melody Sauce 2 for playing around with computer generated music.

 

A few products from XLN. Addictive Keys trio (Rhodes, Grand and Upright), and the XO drum machine with an expansion. Wonderfull drum machine and XLN has great customer service. Even though I have Addictive Drums and a bunch of expansions, their new XO drum machine has a lot of great features like being able to create a pattern loop, then drag either the MIDI or the audio loop to your DAW.

[Anderton]

I grabbed Transfuser and Loom II from Air/Inmusic, $30 for the two of them from Sweetwater. I figure with ReWire dying, and because I didn't upgrade to the plug-in version of Reason, it was kinda DOA and Transfuser would provide the same kind of functionality. Granted, Studio One has a lot of those functions built-in, but it's a more a la carte kind of thing. Transfuser puts them all together in its admittedly archaic UI. Loom II I wanted because I don't have any additive morphing synths.

[GovernorSilver]

Newfangled Audio Invigorate - Never used a master dynamics plugin before.  Seemed like a good first one to buy, with presets by those who have more experience than me.

 

Tone Empire Goliath V2 - Never used a channel strip dynamics plugin either.  $19 seemed like a low-risk buy

 

14" M1 Macbook Pro - My fault for not reading the fine print before I bought my 2013 iMac with only 8GB RAM.  I got away with it as long as I was recording 1 track at a time into a DAW.  I finally tried recording 6 channels of audio at once - no extra plugins - and boy did the poor iMac struggle.   This M1 MBP was discounted to under $2000, so it was no-brainer.

 

Dell Ultrasharp U2723QE - External monitor for both the M1 MBP and my work laptop (Auto KVM).  Doubles as connectivity hub

 

Prophet 5 Desktop - Saw it discounted 15% off.  Now I can finally recreate all the Prophet sounds from those cherished 70s and 80s records... but I probably won't.

 

Joue Play - so I can experiment with the Prophet's MPE support.   Heard it's worth the hassle of installing the Pro download/code/whatever that's needed to unlock MPE control.

 

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, GovernorSilver said:

Newfangled Audio Invigorate - Never used a master dynamics plugin before.  Seemed like a good first one to buy, with presets by those who have more experience than me.

Don't hesitate to use Invigorate on channels, it's really good there, a versatile plugin that sounds fantastic and can be pushed in a variety of directions. Everything you need for channel tweaking is right there.

You can transform a bass instrument or a snare drum in a variety of ways. If you did the transformation in the total mix and got your bass or snare drum sound, the mix would be off. Give it a spin, I've found it universally useful. 😇

[GovernorSilver]

56 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

Don't hesitate to use Invigorate on channels, it's really good there, a versatile plugin that sounds fantastic and can be pushed in a variety of directions. Everything you need for channel tweaking is right there.

You can transform a bass instrument or a snare drum in a variety of ways. If you did the transformation in the total mix and got your bass or snare drum sound, the mix would be off. Give it a spin, I've found it universally useful. 😇

 

honestly I'm not that sure of the difference between channel and master plugin effects.   

 

I guess the only rule is to experiment and have fun.

[KuruPrionz]

Just now, GovernorSilver said:

 

honestly I'm not that sure of the difference between channel and master plugin effects.   

 

I guess the only rule is to experiment and have fun.

It appears to be a "comfort zone thing" that can be safely ignored.

Experiment and have fun is a privilege of owning all your own toys. 

There is nothing you can do that you won't learn something and sometimes it's the best thing ever. 

If you don't like the way something turns out, don't use it that way (or save the idea for a time when it could be useful).

 

Any plugin that shapes sounds can be used to shape sounds, any plugin that makes sounds can be used to make sounds. 

Dive in!!!!! 😃

[bill5]

Nah. I thought about a few things over at Sampletekk (90% discount is hard to resist!) but nothing there was grabbing me, even at those insanely low prices. And really I'm not in recording mode atm so there was little incentive anyway...

[KenElevenShadows]

I did, but it doesn't have anything to do with music. I picked up a travel duffel bag, WANDRD Hexad Access Duffel Bag, for 50%. Looks like the sale is still going for a short while longer. You can use it as carry-on but it's still 45L, and it has amazing organizational abilities, which I would love to have instead of just having a bag or suitcase. It'll be good for flying or car trips. It's also made for photographers, so it would be easy to use it for that as well as clothes. 

 

https://www.wandrd.com/products/hexad-access-duffel?variant=31506265178192

 

 

[RABid]

Two that I failed on...

 

Tried to do a year subscription to KelbyOne at the Black Friday price to replace my monthly subscription. Could not get it to go through. Decided to just cancel and use free YouTube videos. 

 

Tried to process the Reason+ annual subscription that was half price. The information on the page actually said it would add the year onto my current subscription. Tried and tried to get it to go through but with no luck. Decided that I really was not using Reason enough to justify the yearly subscription and set my account not to renew.