Re: A great example of how far music technology has come

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:21 AM, Chris Sewell <lunamusic@mac.com> wrote:
> http://www.spectrasonics.net/instruments/trilian_videos.php

Yes, I too think Spectrasonics focuses on great products! Since around
-90 I've been following Eric Persing's brilliant work with sample
libraries that now have led us to these amazing virtual instruments.
Make sure you have a big hard drive to use this one; Trilian's library
is 34 GB! If you go for Omnisphere too, that is a good complement it
means at least the double. And you also need RMX for a full
Spectrasonics based production facility. Personally I only use RMX but
this is an amazing rhythm tool for producing music recordings "in the
box". I keep a quite big RMX library plus the Logic STudio 40 to 59 GB
library on the Macbook. If going for more sample based instruments I
would need to start using an external fw/usb drive only for the
libraries and that feels  sort of counter productive with regard to
"the laptop philosophy" of portability.

As for Omnisphere, it has interesting arpeggiating capabilities that
may be hard to get elsewhere. I didn't like the sound of it in the
online demo videos though, which initially turned me off. But later on
I have heard from a film composer in the Logic community that many
others have made the mistake to discredit Omnisphere "at first listen"
and this person says that it really sounds much better when you have
it in your hands compared to how it sounds in the demo videos.

RMX seems more useful though, because of its excellent randomization.
It now supports any rhythm meter (just made a "reggae" in 7/8 with it)
and instant MIDI groove template import/export with a host
application. I've had great fun recording funk style guitar vamps and
letting RMX play them back with the "Chaos" randomization function.

For my own needs a synth as Alchemy is more useful though, than
Trilian or Omnisphere, because Alchemy can also be used for granular
synthesis stretching (where it sounds remarkably close to the looper
Electrixpro Repeater at slow speed vs few grains). Unlike the Repeater
and Metsynth Alchemy is fully "automizable" within a host application.
Riverrun (from Audio Ease) is another good automizable OSX granular
synthesis plugin, but it lacks the vast synth paradigm of Alchemy.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com