I’m not a guitarist per se (mostly focus on the NS/Stick now, which is sort of not a bass and not a guitar either). In the end I realized I can get Helix Native for super cheap right now - basically, same price as the discounted Tone King, because I have one of the Line6 hardware products which is good for a “crossgrade”, AND they’re having a sale on software on top of that.
Theirs are not the best amp-cab emulations I’ve heard, so specifically for playing electric guitar I might get something else. But it’s a super thorough / versatile and familiar package and everything sounds at least decent, sometimes really good.
I might look into NeuralDSP and demo them next time they’re having a sale - they’re a local business and a friend of mine worked for the guy’s other company (Darkglass), so kind of want to support them at some point in any case. The Tone King seemed brilliant in the audio demos, didn’t want to install an actual demo and try it out because I think my software budget is now spent…
(But just as a hint, if you own any of the Line6 Helix series hardware products, you can get the native version for $50 right now, which was a no-brainer for me…)
I don’t play guitar and demo’ed them with the Dvina, one of which is strung with cello strings which are below guitar and above bass range. I could also see using it on my kyma physical modeling stuff and general purpose dirty up a sound.
I did think some of the presets were reverb heavy so I made it a point to bypass those a lot while demoing. My initial thought was that I may play with 3rd party verbs and effects at the end of the chain as the built-in one sounded clear and bright at first blush (without being harsh) but also appeared limited in range.
Just FYI, this is the first time after launch I see Rhizomatic Plasmonic being discounted, now 99 EUR / USD: https://rhizomatic.fr/
I’ve probably recommended it earlier in this thread already, but it’s made by the creator of Absynth, and slowly becoming one of my fave synths ever, hardware or software. Physical modeling combined with subtractive synthesis, great sound, easy to program, supports MPE nicely, most fun you can have with a Linnstrument if you happen to be, well, me.
It’s easy to get MPE patches out of it that kind of sound and respond a lot like an acoustic instrument, but one that doesn’t and can’t exist in this world. There are several very good physical modeling plugins out there, but somehow the mix of features and overall timbre hits the spot for me here.
Where did you see the sale, if you don’t mind me asking? I see the bundle price, as well as the price for Choreographs (which doesn’t seem to indicate that it is a special intro price or sale of any kind).
Sound Particles offers interesting possibilities for sound design. i guess it is mainly aimed for media composers but can also give interesting results with musical material.
Havent tried it but every black friday i am thinking giving sonic lab plugins a shot.
Also I am intrigued to Divisimate and using it to build performance templates not for orchestra but for synth racks
The release of Choreographs inspired me to get back into Landforms. I hadn’t played it for a while due to the cpu spikes. Going into the Kontakt settings and disabling access to multiple cores helped my performance in Ableton dramatically. Playing it with Grid all day, super fun.
I’m loving Choreographs but it’s very CPU hungry. Running up to 27% on running just one iteration of it on a track which means a lot of freezing and bouncing of tracks instead.
Still some truly amazing sounds and possibilities in there!
The Slate+Ash stuff runs really well on Apple Silicon. I had problems with a 2017 era MBP and a 10-core 4.6 ghz i9. But the M1Pro runs it well. I think that Kontakt’s timestretching is the blame.
Fwiw today I was running 10 instances of Choreographs (all init patches no presets) on an M1 Pro with 16 gb of ram. No hiccups. Don’t recall for sure but don’t think I went over 12 or 13%.
