weird. My “installation” email just says “contact merchant for license” (as seems to be the case with some others here), and support hasn’t responded on this either.
UPDATE: got it now. Took about 2-3h or so? Fair enough, and maybe good to know for other prospective shoppers 
Similar issue here, except the wait is more than a few hours now. Fyi:
"Thanks so much for your purchase!
We apologise, but there will be a short delay in getting your serial to you as we ran out of serials! We thought we had enough, but it’s been the perfect storm of overwhelming demand and holiday open hours as we now have to wait for Native Instruments to reopen their offices and issue us with a new batch!
We are hoping this will be with you in the next couple of days. You’ll see the same installation instructions arrive again by email but this time with the serial in there.
Sorry again and thanks for your patience!
Derek
S+A"
Ah, the old “we ran out of bits!” Classic online purchasing problem.
Had been contemplating purchasing Choreographs ever since it was introduced. Finally pulled the trigger and have zero regrets. Lovely device.
I received the missing part a day later and am also completely blown away! Well worth the short wait.
I’ve been watching the ENGINE overview video recently and I adore the dry sound generated at 10:57 of the video, where Clone is being demonstrated. I’ve looked through some (not all) of the waves and don’t think I’m finding it. Does someone know if that is an included waveform and if it is, what the name is?
pretty sure this is FM Bell under the digital section !
I’m literally playing with Choreographs right now and I’ll check it out!
Seems like this is it!
Pro tip on Choreographs (that I only just discovered): in the Preferences (P) menu you can determine how the tuning is updated. The “new trigger” setting essentially works like a sample and hold where the pitch value is only updated once a trigger comes in. I was kind of annoyed at first when using LFOs to modulate tune because it seemed like there was no way to avoid swoopy glissandos. Using this method, you can create sequences from LFOs in a way somewhat similar to modular 
I’m on the fence about Choreographs. I have Cycles and Landforms and love them but I feel like S+A have a very specific sound and I’m not always convinced that what comes out has a sound distinct from the software itself (even when using your own samples).
I mean - they do sound beautiful but as someone said above, it sometimes feels like the heavy lifting has been done and that it’s hard to NOT sound like you’re using S+A.
I’m not sure if I’m making sense and maybe this is just my own hang up but I’m wondering how are people finding Choreographs compared to their other plugins - especially for creating unique sounds?
Looks like the price of Auras has been reduced to $99 in honor of S+A’s fifth anniversary, but the price reduction appears to be permanent. Does anyone know if this is indeed the case?
I’ve personally been getting a lot of joy out of using it with my own imported samples and using the S+A samples to kind of bolster what I’m running through it. I think if you have other gear and sound sources to send through it or other ways to process the sound coming out of it, it can be really diverse and unique sounding engine to work in. If you are working in the box with it on it’s own though it will have that ‘S+A sound’ you are describing.
I’d say of all their instruments, Choreographs is their most “mainstream” software instrument. And I mean that in a good way! It’s really really well designed, with a lot of intuitive ways to get motion and effects, but in a way that to me is less “signature” S+A
So to mean most neutral sounding of their four offerings?
It has a lot of very well sampled basic waveforms, it is set up like a 3-osc synth and it has a pretty nice sounding filter, so yeah, it can do normal things and it sounds pretty good. That said, if you want a bread and butter polysynth you should get one… Surge is free. Choreographs is less flexible than something like Surge in a lot of ways. BUT, it does a fair amount of things that nothing else does.
Also keep in mind that Choreographs has an undocumented MIDI out capability (undocumented as in SLATE+ASH were unaware that you could do this when I asked them some questions about it and I guess some hosts can’t route MIDI from one instrument to another.) I find that it is a pretty incredible experimental arp/euclidean sequencer for other synths as well.
AURAS is, imo, a total steal at $99. Even if you don’t have an MPE controller (and especially if you do!) it is an incredible set of sounds that all respond to modwheel in really fascinating ways. The COLORS library that is included with it is not to be slept on, a very flexible mod-matrix setup allows for a lot of flexibility. Of anything S+A have done, AURAS has the most psychedelic sounds by a mile, imo. The amount of work that went into making it seems immense… $99 is a great price. Makes me wonder if they are going to make an AURAS 2 or something like that… it’s Kontakt implementation is fine, but pretty far behiond their other libs.
I have no problem whatsoever with folks that are adamant about using their own source samples with the S+A stuff, but man, their sample libraries are simply stunning, really high quality and mindbendingly creative. I use a lot of sample libraries in my work and have only found it to be a massive creative boost akin to composers using musicians and they never end up sounding like the presets… most of the S+A stuff has really immediate controls there that quickly take you somewhere besides the loaded up state anyways. So here’s one big upvote for sample use not being some kind of creative shortcut or cheating or whatever.
Thanks for the comprehensive response, very helpful!
I don’t need a bread and butter synth, that’s for sure. I was just trying to gauge if I needed another S&A plugin as I have two that have somewhat of a distinctive (recognisable) sonic signature if you know what I mean (maybe Cycles less so).
Cheers again.
Ah. Then yes. The answer is more clear. It sounds very distinct.
this track has 3x choreographs and 1x cycles. I made it for Jamuary using my “max 30 minutes” constraint for track creation, so it might give you an example of what is there for you in an immediate sense. All the melodic patterns are made with sustained keypresses… in the sequencer the song is all whole notes. And I feel like I’m right saying that these sounds bear very little resemblence to the presets I started with – the UI puts everything right in front of you to dial in better and better sounds once you get a sequence going.
The choreographs sounds are rhythmic, with precise attacks that can get nice and chirpy, the star here is the envelopes and sequence-y modulators combined with the arp and sequencer in my mind. And the sounds are rich and distinct thanks to the excellent fx section. Landforms and Auras are pad machines in my book, cycles can sequence but not melodically (past the source material) – choreographs is different in sound and system.
Could you share some pointers on how one would go about getting this to work?
@n9n9n9 Is AURAS capable of sounds other than orchestral/film soundtrack-y type stuff? Pretty much everything in the demo vid on the S&A website sounds like strings/atmospheric kinda vibe. Which is fine, but I’m interested to know if there’s a broader palette ? Cheers!
Sure thing - look here: