The Group Buy + Offer Thread

The actual Black Hole plugin is on sale now as well for 50 Euro. Hands down my favorite reverb.

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God damn it lol, just dropped Ā£90 on the bundle of TAL Sampler and TAL Drum. My kids donā€™t need food do they??

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Let them eat beats :carrot::carrot::carrot:

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You can always feed them some Black Eyed Peas with some Red Hot Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins. Just add some Salt-N-Peppa. Maybe an Ice Cube. Or you can give them Cake and add The Sugarcubes to their tea. And donā€™t forget about eating Korn, or a slice of Meatloaf. With The Cranberries and Blind Mellon or Vanilla Ice for desert. And if you want to get fancy with the missus, you go to the Blue Oyster Cult. When you go to bed Iā€™m sure youā€™ll have a Tangerine Dream.

My comment was largely in jest lol, just bought it this morning - excited to try it out later.

@eretsua always appreciate a good pun, more so when there are so many in one go lol!

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There is this Softube Transient Shaper fĆ¼r around 10 available, no idea, if it is better than othersā€¦ I guess not.

But currently you can get UAD Polymax synth for free thenā€¦ I guess that synth sounds good, but also is very limited and hidden behind an ugly protection, too.

Any experience with it?

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PolyMAX is nice, yes itā€™s limited but what it does sounds great, itā€™s got that quality sound to it and itā€™s old school in a good way - just what the doctor ordered - but its copy protection require internet connection or USB dongle to run. But thatā€™s a good combo deal find if interested in either.

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Yeah PolyMAX is nice, simple in the best way in so far as the restriction is a positive. I betrayed my own iLok aversion for it, if that helps.

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Why is it your favorite? What makes it ā€œbetterā€ than others? Like for example Valhalla Vintage Verb (my favorite so far), that costs regularly 50 ā‚¬. Your plugin is on sale (75% off) and costs the same, which means normally it costs 4 times more than Valhalla Vintage Verb. Why is it worth such a price?

I already got it and I like it. But I also donā€™t know if itā€™s ā€œbetterā€ than others. Anyway, itā€™s good and does the job. You canā€™t do anything wrong if you spend less than 10 ā‚¬ for this.

Wait, you forced iLok to delete your account, you lost a lot of money (and working plugins) because of this, and now youā€™ve got a new account just because of that one synth plugin, thatā€™s surely not ā€œbetterā€ than others?

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Fair question. Like with many things, itā€™s a combination of things. First of, Black Hole is not a realistic reverb to simulate real world spaces. Itā€™s creative / sound design reverb thatā€™s way larger than life. I like that stuff.

One of the most important reasons is probably my familiarity with / bias towards it. Iā€™ve been using a version of that algorithm for more than 16 years.

Itā€™s my understanding that under the hood reverbs are a whole bunch of delay lines. The character comes from the modulation applied to them. Whatever Eventide chose to do to get their sound, it resonates with me. Same with Lexicon reverbs, I love those as well. I like Valhallaā€™s vintage verb, but I donā€™t love it. To me it sounds very different than the Black Hole.

Whether a reverb is worth 200+ euro? I still donā€™t own a Strymon Big Sky.

Iā€™ve been eying that pedal since it got first released. But always felt it was too expensive for me. So when the VST plugin version of those same algorithms got released at half the price (230 euro), youā€™d think Iā€™d be all over it. But I still havenā€™t bitten the bullet yet.

The flip side to that is that developers want to eat and buy new toys, too.

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Yes. Yes I did. Although, the road there was that I got PolyMAX for free so created a new account I was prepared to nuke again if it wasnā€™t worth it. I guess I was excited to get a synth from a ā€œpremiumā€ brand, but I liked the synth a lot so kept the account. I still try hard to avoid buying iLok managed software, Iā€™ve only bought the UAD Pultec EQ collection and now Blackhole. PolyMAX is nice, itā€™s ā€œretroā€ sounding but very fast to work with - the filter sounds gorgeous to me. As for what I lost, it wasnā€™t anything I loved - Decapitator is the only thing I ā€œmissā€ but yeah, I donā€™t understand myself mate, much less expect someone not stuck in my mind to.

As for why Blackhole is good, it is very different to a ā€œstandardā€ reverb - I would recommend listening to some demos as my words would fail to do it justice. Iā€™m looking forward to using it a lot.

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Definitely not. :slightly_smiling_face:
If you like Blackhole, you also might like Valhalla Shimmer, which is quite similar. The difference is it only costs 50 ā‚¬ regularly just like any Valhalla product, and not only if itā€™s on sale with 75% off. I also got Shimmer and a couple more Valhalla verbs and theyā€™re all very good. Nevertheless I always grab the Vintage Verb first while composing. I donā€™t even think of using other reverbs. And next to Valhalla I also got some Softube verbs. To me everything sounds more or less the same, at least in the mix, and thatā€™s whatā€™s crucial, right? :alien:

I just did. And indeed it really sounds pretty nice! BUT not ā€œ200 ā‚¬ niceā€ and not nicer than other (and cheaper) verbs. To me it looks like itā€™s a reverb primarily for bigger, longer reverbs in Ambient and Chillout music. But I donā€™t know why one needs this reverb for example for any kind of electronic dance music.

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I think it could have uses in trance, dub techno and other less extreme, but still unique, reverb applications. Iā€™m still happy with my ā€œworkhorseā€ reverb, Eos 2 by Audio Damage. Which has zero copy protection and supports Linux also.

Also, I barely ever, ever, pay full price. To me, if a company can do 75% off then thatā€™s the real price and the normal mark up is catch whales who gotta ā€œcatch em allā€ or others for whom money is less of an object.

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Softube VCA compressor is free until March 31st.

I think itā€™s a DBX 160 emulation, regular price $149

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Also donā€™t make the same mistake as I did and download their manager. Instead scroll down on the download page, you will find all the individual installers. Just open ilok manager and activate for your computer.

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Whatā€™s wrong with their download manager except the fact that every single time you want to run it you first have to manually delete the ā€œinstaller helperā€ in c/program fies/softube/installerdaemon in order to make it work, which of course is an unwanted behaviior? But in the end it works, Iā€™ve installed all my Softube stuff this way.

On macos (I guess same on Windows), it also installs a system daemon, which will permanently run in the background, only for using their manager. IMHO a pretty bad design, not caring about security, performance. You can also set such a daemon ā€œon-demandā€, so it only starts, if required, but no. Then it also should be quit, if you leave the manager, but no. I guess the idea is that you also can straight install from any of their plugins, or switch to the managerā€¦ But this could be also designed without a permanently, poorly coded, running system daemon.

Also it over-installs an old version of the ilok daemon, not sure if previously newer version will be overwritten or not, though.

If I can install it without an manager, I prefer that for sure. Imagine all the vendors, now you having like 10 managers and system services runningā€¦ :face_vomiting: Those managers often are programmed in basic or react and running a whole chrome engine in the backgroundā€¦ For sure not known to be programmed to run efficiently or saving your ram.

Falcon currently is ā‚¬/$199 until March 18ā€¦ It also is a midi arp and what notā€¦ Pretty cool stuff imo. Sadly still no demo, AFAIK:

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Synthmaster 3 upgrade (still alpha) now available for $29:

Well spent money! It can sound very analogue and also dirty, if you know how to use the shaper module. The GUI still only is a very funtional one, but itā€™s said there will be multiple skins with the final release (I guess around end of april).

If you find any bugs, you can report it into this excel table

and it will be addressed.

Verve Analog Machines Essentials - Tape Emulation by Universal Audio

Free through April 30th!

ā€œfour colorful UA-designed effects, giving you glossy tape warmth to gritty lo-fi saturation, Verve Analog Machines Essentials adds energy to drums, guitars, vocals, synths, or your whole mixā€

Thanks for the heads up.