Why the 3rd Party Plugins hype?

[steveLpx1]

...well, ok then...I guess I'm gonna end up being "that guy"...@Sascha Franck and @Ashermusic, I have really appreciated the contributions both of you have been making to the various discussions on this bulletin board and find both of your views and advise valuable, timely, and accurate. However, the above exchange has not been at all in keeping with my past experience or expectations. So could we all go back to our respective "corners" and calm down? The issues, circumstances, and problems we all have to deal when using these products are complicated enough without having to wade through emotional exchanges as well...(no offense intended).../s~

[Sascha Franck]

Fine with me.

[I.M. Groot]

As a longtime logic user who has created hit songs featured on the billboard USA charts

 

What hit songs did you create?

[kdog]

If you’re just getting started in music Logic presents an overwhelmingly good arsenal of tools, even if you’re a pro there is still so many good fx and plug ins - the Vintage EQ’s and everything they acquired from Camel Audio are amazing. As a composer I have a ridiculous amount a plug ins and libraries, and I still ended up using the Studio Horns for something last week because it just sounded better for the job - you can really get amazing results with the articulations. Mabye the Studio Strings aren’t the greatest but they sound a lot better than Abletons bundled sounds, Cubase is no picnic either with it’s bundled libraries - even most of Halion’s bundled stuff sounds like it was taken from bad samplers from the mid 90’s.

 

I agree DMD is not amazing but it’s no slouch, slap some smart controls on Ultrabeat and keep the music moving. DKD sounds amazing for sure, I have BFD / Superior Drummer and am always amazed how good those kits sound - must have had Massenburg record them or something

 

Logic also destroys Cubase as far as CPU effiency, it’s not even comparable. I use both all the time and am always amazed by Logic. Cubase also has horrible time stretching algorithms, no multrack warp / flex time editing / and the bundled sound content is mostly a joke. You can run giant templates with VE Pro and some slave PCs, that’s a huge benefit. But Logic can handle so much natively on one computer.

[simon.a.billington]

 

The first thing I really don't expect is my sequencer of choice being sold for peanuts. And hence being partially treated like peanuts.

I'd be a lot happier if they ditched all content, fixed the zoom, beatmapping, part handling, "capture last take..." and whatever issues and sell Logic for 400 (or even more). And yes, I would happily pay for updates in case things would be adressed the way they should be adressed.

 

This. Stop adding Alchemy presets and Apple Loops and bring EXS into 2019.

 

I still think this will be Alchemy. I'm fairly certain Apple will outmode it once it can seamlessly do everything EXS can do... plus more. Notice how every update usually includes lots of work on Alchemy and much of it is to make it more EXS compatible?? I kind of think Alchemy is new beginnings for EXS, they just haven't finished working on it.

 

It wouldn't make sense for Apple to to keep improving the EXS capabilities in Alchemy and then turn around and have to do much of that work again in upgrading EXS. I could easily be wrong though.

[simon.a.billington]

Well, I just got my Komplete Ultimate bundle - and there's HEAPS of things that the Logic plugins don't even come remotely close to. Sure, it's mainly the sample libraries - but the differences are really night and day.

 

So, my take would still be that they should deliver a few basic sounds and plugins, improve on the things that could benefit from deeper integration on a whole number of levels (namely the EXS and Ultrabeat) and otherwise call it a day in favour of concentrating on the core functionality.

As said before, I can purchase pretty as good (in most cases even better) plugins additionally - but I can't purchase a 3rd party fix for Logic issues. And adressing those is what I expect Apple to do. Anything else is just icing on the cake.

 

Yeah just got my update too. I hope at the very least they give the original Massive a bit of a refresh and continue to do maintenance updates for it for quite some time. Fortunately for me, I haven't spread it around too much in my recordings.

 

Personally, I also like to mix up the sound libraries I use, so everything doesn't just sound like its from Kontakt Komplete, or all from Logic, or Waves, as another example. Oh speaking of them, they have new bass plugin out, Bass Fingers. It should make a nice companion for my Bass Slapper. Not sure about these names though!!

 

I don't mind Drum Kit Designer, but I opt to use Addictive Drums now, as I have been slowly building up my drum libraries over the years, which are also compatible with their drum replacement plugin, Addictive Trigger. This kind of compatibly as worked out rather favourably for me. I do like where Apple was going with it's "Drummers" though. It will be interesting to see what machine learning can do with that concept, if Apple goes down that road.

 

I tend not to use Drum Machine Designer, I'd opt to go straight to Ultrabeat, which I don't use often either. Sure Battery does sound better on the surface of it, but then Bettery has inbuilt compression, eq and other effects. Once you run Ultrabeat through the same processes, it can sound quite competitive. The thing is Battery has scores of other presets and other sounds that can't be found in Ultrabeat. Especially with those new Komplete libraries.

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, I think Ultrabeat could be *the* kickass drum plugin. The combination of synthetic drums and samples is just great and especially its filters are *miles* ahead of anything you can find in Battery.

But it severely lacks of a whole truckload of things, such as the poor sample loading abilities, the abysmally fiddly interface, not enough cells, etc.

If they adressed these points and added something such as the "auto create sampler track" thing to it, it would likely be all I'd ever need. But as is, apart from occasionally opening it for the odd preprogrammed pattern, I actually never use it at all because it has a tendency of making me angry.

[simon.a.billington]

I think it would be awesome if they supercharged Ultrabeat, instead of going the DMD route. It doesn't make me angry though, just a bit frustrated I can't find anything fresh enough. Although it will do a classic 808 tip of thing fine.

[onewave]

The only reason i'm asking is because it adds up.

All the 3rd party top synths are not cheap. I doubt they're 50 bucks a pop. I don't have them personally, so I don't know.

 

So when people bitch at Logic for not having enough sounds, I always go: but it's only 199 for the whole thing, what are you complaining about?

 

the money part doesn't matter to me, i buy what i need. i like the synths (& effects) i use; i love working in logic, and would be using it if it were $1999 instead of $199. but i buy synth plugins for what they are, not because they're 'better' than logic's synths (athough, to be honest, i think they are); but that's just me, i speak for no one else.

 

again, none of this matters. we pick & choose our tools, and logic allows us to add as many AU's as we want. so, again, you use what you want, and i do the same. and, at the end of the day, a good EQ is a good EQ, whether it's logic's own, or fabfilter, or... whatever.

 

it's how we use our tools, and the end result, that matters most. would you agree?

 

First off, Let us not forget it was $1000 to get Logic Pro back in 2007, only twelve years ago. Worth every penny, you get what you pay for! Your certainly not alone on that, I've made the same investment over the years, especially with Arturia synths and even with Alchemy before apple bought it out.. I always like the newer innovations with 3rd party developers, U-he's Zebra is also really great!

[kdog]

Yeah Logic was 1000 and Space Designer was an extra 300

[Musician-X1]

I still think this will be Alchemy. I'm fairly certain Apple will outmode it once it can seamlessly do everything EXS can do... plus more. Notice how every update usually includes lots of work on Alchemy and much of it is to make it more EXS compatible?? I kind of think Alchemy is new beginnings for EXS, they just haven't finished working on it.

 

It wouldn't make sense for Apple to to keep improving the EXS capabilities in Alchemy and then turn around and have to do much of that work again in upgrading EXS. I could easily be wrong though.

 

I think this is a mistake if that's what's happening. The exs24 is easy on the cpu just needs an overhaul ASAP. In my opinion Apple should look at abletons sampler plugins or any other daw for that matter to get going in the right direction.

[skijumptoes]

Agree, EXS24 is super lightweight but it's been allowed to stagnate.

 

Logic team should be aiming for a similar design to Nuance (https://www.newsonicarts.com/html/nuance.php) I think that style of sampler would fit into Logic aesthetically and functionally well and compliment Alchemy.

[fisherking]

Agree, EXS24 is super lightweight but it's been allowed to stagnate.

 

Logic team should be aiming for a similar design to Nuance (https://www.newsonicarts.com/html/nuance.php) I think that style of sampler would fit into Logic aesthetically and functionally well and compliment Alchemy.

 

outside of opening exs-specific libraries (grand piano, orchestra percussion, the kirk hunter strings), nuance has been my go-to sampler for many years; love that thing! (vice is great too, for cutting up loops etc). new sonic arts=good plugins.

[Ploki]

I also swapped Battery 4 for Nuance, but something bugged me about sample selection - cant remember what.

 

I don't really like NI and want to shed it off, but battery 4 is just so damn good.

 

A redesigned Ultrabeat will probably be the thing to replace it.

[fisherking]

nuance is simple, efficient. fwiw, they have 2 drum libraries that are really really great; i've turned several people on to that...

[Ploki]

it is, but something bothered me about it, i can't remember what.

i have to give it another spin.

[Musician-X1]

I also swapped Battery 4 for Nuance, but something bugged me about sample selection - cant remember what.

 

I don't really like NI and want to shed it off, but battery 4 is just so damn good.

 

A redesigned Ultrabeat will probably be the thing to replace it.

 

 

Im interested to hear why you're trying to phase out NI? Im also doing the same but I would like to hear your reasoning if you wouldn't mind going into detail.

[Sascha Franck]

Im interested to hear why you're trying to phase out NI? Im also doing the same but I would like to hear your reasoning if you wouldn't mind going into detail.

 

I'm not Ploki and probably the wrong person to answer anyway because I just got my Komplete Ultimate upgrade - which is kinda like the opposite of phasing out NI.

 

Yet, I am quite dissapointed with their development during, say, the last decade, especially when it comes to Battery and Kontakt (the two single most relevant items for me to purchase Komplete).

 

Battery 4 is nothing but a re-skinned Battery 3 and it's even lacking of some features of V3 (such as proper "in kit preview" of samples). There's also a horrible lack of QA, just as an example, there's a whole bunch of one shot samples in the factory library that have embedded loop points (usually covering the entire sample range), so when you load them, they will repeat - which usually is the last thing you want from a oneshot sample. Sure, you can switch that off, but having to do so is just a completely unnecessary step. Really, this thing deserves no new version number at all. And it's a shame, really. If they had "stolen" (or "adapted") some features from Ultrabeat, such as the synthezising options and the pattern sequencer, and if they had added a nice slicing/mapping and MIDI export feature, Battery could possibly be *the* ultimate tool for all things percussive, but instead they decided to almost render it abandonware.

 

And as far as Kontakt goes: I have hardly ever seen such a clumsy, unfriendly interface. Everything is way too small, space is too tight and the colorschemes are abysmal - yeah, light grey with some slightly less light grey text on it, with some khaki and dimmed orange thrown in for good measure - that's exactly what the doctor ordered for better readability. Seriously, Kontakt would even make an eagle grab his reading glasses. Add to this it's still not resizeable - while the custom skins for the libraries are, which is really stupid as it should rather be the opposite. In a nutshell, it's absolutely no fun to do your own thing with Kontakt - and apparently, even some high profile library developers are complaining. No wonder, as they have to stare at that mess all day long.

Even if it's lacking of such a huge amount of things, after fooling around with Kontakt for a while, it's almost refreshing to use the EXS editor (and that should say something...).

 

Add to all this that NI is apparently not able to come up with anything that could even remotely be named a decent file browser (which should be quite a relevant thing in case you deliver metric tons of content, which is pretty much a huge part of what NI is doing). In fact, it's almost as if they had a nifty little internal contest going on whether they will be able to come up with yet some worse browsers with each new thing. Just have a look at Komplete Kontrol - which they developed to be *the* definite answer to browsing large amounts of patches. It's browser would have to be considered a joke if it wasn't that sad.

And let's not even talk about their latest adventure, the release of Massive X. Seems to be a nice synth (I can't install it due to the lack of AVX support on my MP) but it got delayed again and again - and now that they finally released it, there's no manual!

 

Anyway, I possibly shouldn't complain too much, my upgrade (from Komplete 4 to Komplete Ultimate 12) cost me €300 and I got a whole lot of really great things, especially some my arsenal was pretty much lacking off. But well, the flaws in large parts of their development are just too obvious.

[Musician-X1]

Im interested to hear why you're trying to phase out NI? Im also doing the same but I would like to hear your reasoning if you wouldn't mind going into detail.

 

I'm not Ploki and probably the wrong person to answer anyway because I just got my Komplete Ultimate upgrade - which is kinda like the opposite of phasing out NI.

 

Yet, I am quite dissapointed with their development during, say, the last decade, especially when it comes to Battery and Kontakt (the two single most relevant items for me to purchase Komplete).

 

Battery 4 is nothing but a re-skinned Battery 3 and it's even lacking of some features of V3 (such as proper "in kit preview" of samples). There's also a horrible lack of QA, just as an example, there's a whole bunch of one shot samples in the factory library that have embedded loop points (usually covering the entire sample range), so when you load them, they will repeat - which usually is the last thing you want from a oneshot sample. Sure, you can switch that off, but having to do so is just a completely unnecessary step. Really, this thing deserves no new version number at all. And it's a shame, really. If they had "stolen" (or "adapted") some features from Ultrabeat, such as the synthezising options and the pattern sequencer, and if they had added a nice slicing/mapping and MIDI export feature, Battery could possibly be *the* ultimate tool for all things percussive, but instead they decided to almost render it abandonware.

 

And as far as Kontakt goes: I have hardly ever seen such a clumsy, unfriendly interface. Everything is way too small, space is too tight and the colorschemes are abysmal - yeah, light grey with some slightly less light grey text on it, with some khaki and dimmed orange thrown in for good measure - that's exactly what the doctor ordered for better readability. Seriously, Kontakt would even make an eagle grab his reading glasses. Add to this it's still not resizeable - while the custom skins for the libraries are, which is really stupid as it should rather be the opposite. In a nutshell, it's absolutely no fun to do your own thing with Kontakt - and apparently, even some high profile library developers are complaining. No wonder, as they have to stare at that mess all day long.

Even if it's lacking of such a huge amount of things, after fooling around with Kontakt for a while, it's almost refreshing to use the EXS editor (and that should say something...).

 

Add to all this that NI is apparently not able to come up with anything that could even remotely be named a decent file browser (which should be quite a relevant thing in case you deliver metric tons of content, which is pretty much a huge part of what NI is doing). In fact, it's almost as if they had a nifty little internal contest going on whether they will be able to come up with yet some worse browsers with each new thing. Just have a look at Komplete Kontrol - which they developed to be *the* definite answer to browsing large amounts of patches. It's browser would have to be considered a joke if it wasn't that sad.

And let's not even talk about their latest adventure, the release of Massive X. Seems to be a nice synth (I can't install it due to the lack of AVX support on my MP) but it got delayed again and again - and now that they finally released it, there's no manual!

 

Anyway, I possibly shouldn't complain too much, my upgrade (from Komplete 4 to Komplete Ultimate 12) cost me €300 and I got a whole lot of really great things, especially some my arsenal was pretty much lacking off. But well, the flaws in large parts of their development are just too obvious.

 

 

I downloaded the massive x demo and got frustrated instantly when I seen somewhere that the manual said coming soon...they keep releasing products thet are half baked and then promise missing features are coming later. Im a Maschine owner and pretty much have given up on that altogether. Battery 4, my most used NI product is actually a downgrade like you said to the point where that's frustrating as well. Im not here to bash them, they've mad goo products but have dropped the ball as of lately. As for massive all I wanted was a resizable gui and a better browser. Speaking of which browsing their synths sucks to me and that's why I'm trying to phase them out as stated earlier.

[Ploki]

u-he Hive is my wavetable beast, i'm not really missing Massive at all.

I have no issues with throwing u-he money, since they have so far proven to be a healthy company with great sounding products and great updates.

 

But I agree with most of what Sascha said.

 

What i want from ultrabeat2 :

New interface (gosh that thing is fugly)

A better browser

 

The drum synth inside isn't half-bad really.

 

I'd switch to AudioSpillage Elecktroid since drumspillage is my go-to drum synth, but Elecktroid's sample browsing capabilities are in the same ballpark as Ultrabeat. They suck ass

[fisherking]

massive X is awesome; it's definitely a work-in-progress (hey, it's '1.0') but.. it SOUNDS great, is fun to play with, and works on logic X. am all about the sound...

 

i got rid of all my NI stuff some years back (the original massive, fm8, absynth, battery). i did hate the fact that they put files everywhere; NI is the adobe of music-app developers. but am less obsessed about files i don't actually see these days, and the synth is worth it.

[Musician-X1]

massive X is awesome; it's definitely a work-in-progress (hey, it's '1.0') but.. it SOUNDS great, is fun to play with, and works on logic X. am all about the sound...

 

i got rid of all my NI stuff some years back (the original massive, fm8, absynth, battery). i did hate the fact that they put files everywhere; NI is the adobe of music-app developers. but am less obsessed about files i don't actually see these days, and the synth is worth it.

 

 

What are your go to synths now after getting rid of them? Mine are sylenth, serum, KHS One, and the original massive. After reducing my plugins I actually got into hardware synths as well which is much more fun then tweaking and browsing NI synths.

[fisherking]

currently: massive X, dune 3, sylenth (a little), cypher2, flow motion. also, zebra2, arcsyn. and playing with FAW's 'sublab' for those deep, terrifying basses....

 

i use spire for (mostly) one sound, and icarus sometimes too. so, still a lot, but have gotten rid of dozens. i like to change things up a couple of times a year...

[jonljacobi]

Agree, EXS24 is super lightweight but it's been allowed to stagnate.

 

Logic team should be aiming for a similar design to Nuance (https://www.newsonicarts.com/html/nuance.php) I think that style of sampler would fit into Logic aesthetically and functionally well and compliment Alchemy.

 

I wish all of Logic looked like that.

[skijumptoes]

If you can get your head around it Synthmaster is a great plugin and features wavetable synthesis, think there's a free version too that's probably just worth picking up 'just cause'.

[simon.a.billington]

I still think this will be Alchemy. I'm fairly certain Apple will outmode it once it can seamlessly do everything EXS can do... plus more. Notice how every update usually includes lots of work on Alchemy and much of it is to make it more EXS compatible?? I kind of think Alchemy is new beginnings for EXS, they just haven't finished working on it.

 

It wouldn't make sense for Apple to to keep improving the EXS capabilities in Alchemy and then turn around and have to do much of that work again in upgrading EXS. I could easily be wrong though.

 

I think this is a mistake if that's what's happening. The exs24 is easy on the cpu just needs an overhaul ASAP. In my opinion Apple should look at abletons sampler plugins or any other daw for that matter to get going in the right direction.

 

Yet that would have been simpler to implement than something fully featured like Alchemy. Asides from some slight bug fixes, it’s had no work done to it in like a decade. My feelings is if it were going to happen it would have happened by now. Instead we got Alchemy, that does what EXS can do, plus loads more. Asides from the small amount of things they still need to implement.

 

You can dial down Alchemy’s quality which is higher than EXS24 to conserve CPU and I’m fairly certain that turning off features you’re not using and lowering polyphony will save you even more CPU. I honestly think it’s what Apple had in mind for the future of EXS.

[simon.a.billington]

massive X is awesome; it's definitely a work-in-progress (hey, it's '1.0') but.. it SOUNDS great, is fun to play with, and works on logic X. am all about the sound...

 

i got rid of all my NI stuff some years back (the original massive, fm8, absynth, battery). i did hate the fact that they put files everywhere; NI is the adobe of music-app developers. but am less obsessed about files i don't actually see these days, and the synth is worth it.

 

 

What are your go to synths now after getting rid of them? Mine are sylenth, serum, KHS One, and the original massive. After reducing my plugins I actually got into hardware synths as well which is much more fun then tweaking and browsing NI synths.

 

I stopped using Apple’s Documents folder like Day 1 that OS X Was officially released. It seems that half a dozen devs thought they’d use it as a place to store their files when there were more appropriate places available. I just stopped using that folder straight away and created my own Projects folder instead. I’ve barely touch the Documents folder in the last 15 years.

[Ploki]

yeah, i don't use it either.