Id say Phoscyon 2 is better than v1, but YMMV. Quanta 2 is absolutely fantastic.
@BriocheBaps
For sure, but is it better than Novum? It looks like the answer is no. Take a look:
Of course it works on my system, I just couldnāt manage to make it run back then due to account issues. You need an account if you want to run the demo. Anyway, currently Iām checking v2. And the piano roll is absolutely disgusting, I hate it. Thereās no way I would work this way, but luckily thereās a step sequencer just like in the original, too. The only piano roll Iām forced to use is the one in the riffer of my Ample sound guitar VST, thatās more than enough pain. I will never get why people are using piano rollsā¦
Aha, cool. 
Thatās 21 synth plugins and a couple of pianos/organs, right? Well, thatās exactly what I donāt want. Iām interested in using as less synth plugins as possible because theyāre all doing the same stuff, thatās why I dropped 99% of my plugins. Serum, Omnipshere and Sylenth1 are the only subtractive synths Iām using regularly. I just āneedā one additional granular synth like Novum.
If you guys are interested in buying some good stuff check the Softube website. Youāll get a discount up to 76% on most available VSTs. Iāve purchased the Weiss Compressor/Limiter yesterday. But Iām sure there are a lot of good deals out there.
ROFLā¦ In this case though itās so so much quicker than the old school step crap. You have got to give this specific simple piano roll a chance as you have everything on the screen. Itās about how fast we get things done hence why we still prefer trackers but in this case using the little piano roll definitely gets me there faster.
Well we donāt have to use any of the sequencers though, it can be played like an ordinary VST but then it gets a bit tricky to get the accents, slides etc. that makes it sound 303 thatās why I like the Host Note feature.
Something like that, 33 instruments for $299 at BlackFriday sale and youāll get Juno 6, Prophet 5, Minimoog, ARP2600, MS-20 etcā¦ itās most of the greatest synths from the good old days and the sound is superb, I really like this old stuff. I bought Softube model 72 and model 84 before getting the Arturia v collection and while they are 100% excellent the Arturia collection would have sufficed and been much cheaper as well in the end. Sure you can do a lot with just a few great modern synths but we still need the perfect synth that can emulate them all.
Perhaps Novum is ābetterā in terms of the raft of features it has, and perhaps I am biased due to needing to justify my own purchasing decisions, but if I was buying today and both were the same price I still think I would pick Quanta 2. Novum struck me as more geared towards scoring and sound design, much less for more immediate sounds in the kind of music I tend to make - Quanta has a great GUI, multiple oscillators that can be fed into the granulator as well as directly out to beef up a sound and a simple installer without the need for challenge/response, online DRM or a āsoftware centerā installer.
Novum does look stellar though, the spectral separation is great and the built in FX look great - I donāt tend to use many built-in FX though, reverbs and delays I like to have as sends but thatās just me. If you get Novum Iād be very keen to hear your views on it as it remains on my radar.
Itās round about the same amount of time for me, because the readability is better when using the step sequencer. If there wouldnāt be a step sequencer next to the piano roll I wouldnāt buy. Probably both will be used from time to time, but generally I will always prefer the step sequencer.
Of course, just like in v1, but I always prefer the sound you get when using the sequencers.
For sure. Itās understandable to buy emulations of the favorite hardware. But Iām pretty sure thereās no big difference in terms of the sound in comparison, and Iām talking about the different subtractive synths. Itās always the same sounding sound, it doesnāt matter who built the synth. If thereās a difference, then itās VERY subtle.
Iāve purchased Novum yesterday and played around with it. Itās absolutely fantastic for sound design! You can create everything and more. Iāve created amazing pads within seconds. Itās very handy, easy to use and the possibilities seem to be endless. I mean, check the quick overview by the developer and you know what Iām talking about:
The fact that you can switch waveforms, timbre and more is fantastic. Within seconds you can create something complete different out of any sound. I consider this to be primarily a synth and not an effect device. But I assume you can do effects with it as well. But for granular effects Iāve bought Portal about a year ago, which is cool and now available for half the price.
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This āguitar fxā bundle seems to be interesting, i bought it for 42 eur at plugin boutique, to have an official lexicon 224 emulation. It still seems to be available at uaudio: https://www.uaudio.de/uad-plugins/plug-in-bundles/uad-guitar-fx-bundle.html
Attention: uaudio does not allow to resale your licenses. So even the offers seem to be quite exepnsive. Not recommended to buy at all! Also requires always-on internet connection of our DAW!
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Same with their essentials bundle if you donāt own or plan to own a UAD audio interface as most of these come free with their hardware, but if you donāt plan to I can definitely recommend the essentials UAD Essentials Edition | UAD Audio Plugins | Universal Audio ā¦
FREEBIES
Arturia are giving away their new Efx REFRACT free from December 21st until January 4th 2024.
āA stereo multi-effect with versatility at its core. Combining unison-based processing with a variety of secondary effects and modulation options.ā
ā¦ and Baby Audio just released a new freebie called Beat Slammer
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I now got a refund from Pluginboutique (worked flawlessly), since those uaudio plugins do not work offline, the ilok license manager process will connect various times to cloud.ilok.com and also transmit unknown data, while the plugins are used in the DAW. A no-go for me. Imagine you take your notebook somewhere without internet, now all uaudio plugins will not work anymore. Also what data is transfered all the time?
AFAIK you need to clearly state this with checkboxes above the order button then, something like āI understand that these plugins need a permanent internet connection in order to workā and āI understand that these plugins cannot be soldā. Plugin Boutique doesnāt do that, and uaudio.com neither, where you have to actually register the plugins to your ilok account.
Great that pluginboutique refunded me. I would suggest to all uaudio plugin owners to do the same, since uaudio obviously thinks that there is no problem with these practices. After realizing that these plugins require always-on and canāt be sold, the price wasnāt even good. These are not the best plugins in the world either.
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Iāve tried Efx Refract, seems to be completely useless to me. The gui is funny though, they seem to added a 3d renderer, or maybe itās just an animated gif, hence the file size. Maybe Arturia realized that, too, or maybe it is kind of a beta test for this gui rendererā¦
I like Acon Digital Multiply much more, which also is free.
I believe you can get a USB dongle (crap) instead. The transmitted data should just be some encrypted registration info but who knows as we have no clue what we sign up for these days as agreement terms are written with a gazillion words that no-one want to spent hours on reading.
In my opinion the fear of getting virusses from cracked software should be enough deterrent these days.
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Ehehe started critics in the UAD thread at KVR, after 10 minutes 5 employees or fanbois stepped inā¦ They have no problems at all even with multiple ilok dongles or something.
Itās going to get worse and worse as people have been dumbed down somehow.
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The Him DSP Sub Ninja currently for free:
https://dsp.thehim.com/
Enter āPROJEKTORā as code in the shopping cart. Similar to psyscope or something, also works on arm mac.
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Nice. A good scope being essential for clean and tight low end 
Looks like itās only free for 14 daysā¦ Then you gotta pay to keep using it, no?
Still, might be worth the 30 bucks. Iāll probably stick to my current scope, but might be worth trying. Looks like itās got some nice features
Oh? I did enter the code in the shopping cart. So I purchased it for 0. You, too? Well honestly, seems to be a lame plugin somehowā¦
Oops, noā¦ I am the fool here 
Actually I think this is pretty great. The LP filter is super useful for seeing near-infrasonic frequencies that can cause honking on big systems, and the feature set seems quite useful so far. Think this will be my go-to scope from here on
Anyone working in dance genres that plays (or wants to play) big systems might do well to pick this up. Good for getting kick transients clean and sorting out the sometimes chaos of the low end
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Available for $22.99 until Feb 10, 11:59 PTS.
I hadnāt heard of it before. Demos sound decent. And it is giving me some Eventide Shimmer with a hint of Black Hole vibes.
@BriocheBaps, if youāre still after that kind of a sound on a budget, now might be a good time to strike?
Thanks for the heads up, i ended up getting this for free through Plugin Boutique:
It sounds beautiful. Just need to stop procrastinating and make something. And reply to messages lol.
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