Glad to see them doing that. A stripped down demon version would be result nice too, but I know that is difficult to manage given their included sound libraries.
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Yeah I agree…Cycles is great but I’m feeling a bit ‘meh’ about Choreographs…probably would have passed on it if I could have demoed it.
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What do you all like best from slate and ash? I’d like to give them a try?
Found a sample pack for under $5.
So everyone is aware the Moog vst requires ilok which I loathe with a passion. Had I known I’d probably would have passed, but I’d already put up and registered the device through Moog (so unable to give away) before finding out.
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I screwed up and bought Choregraphs when it came out and now mainly just use it for ambient pad sounds, which is such a small part of my sound. I should have gotten Cycles, but these plugins just seem obscenely priced IMO. I’m not sure I can justify plunking down $195 for a plugin that runs on Kontakt again.
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Yes, the pricing seems a little much for what your getting. I have a tough time paying that much for any VST, even UHE. Most I’ve spent outside a DAW was what I paid for Omnisphere, and I could have stopped with that, but I’m an addict.
Tbh I’ve not had time to really do any of them justice but Landforms is cool if you do orchestral / instrumental type sounds and Cycles is very cool but you really need time to dig into it.
I think with Choreographs I had convinced myself that it would be more modular than it was. It’s really all about modulation which is great but most synths are about modulation these days.
Anyway, they do present a very good sound quality and in general are super powerful. To my ears they definitely ‘have a sound’ too, which while being very very good, can sometimes feel a bit over-determined (I don’t want to sound like my software!)
If I could roll back time I’d have just stuck with Landforms and Cycles.
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Is Cycles really that special or can a granular synth plus some chained FX/sequencers in ableton get the job done? Just curious. A lot of the examples I see of these plugs in use are guys who make ambient on very expensive hadrware and software,which doesn’t resonate with me.
Price: £FREE UNTIL 19th MAY - LIMITED EDITION!
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Well, like I said I’m probably the wrong person to comment on this as I haven’t written a piece with it yet but it does go about ‘granular’ and n a different, idiosyncratic way which I think encourages different results.
Someone on the line forum says that a cool thing to do is to hole two or three different keys down to get layered rhythms and sounds… haven’t done it yet but it’s on my list.
All of SnA come with pretty nice sampled sounds if that of interest.
But…I think you can do most things with a subset of instruments if you really dig in to what you already own.
I’ve been really digging Madrona Labs Kaivo for example.
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For anyone considering jumping on the Bitwig Studio wagon, there is a great deal at Sweetwater right now.-$100 for “crossgrade” and an additional $50 discount. $249US all in.
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I too was looking at something similar and I saw this sale, but even then the prices put it well out of impulse buy territory. In the NI realm, I’ve been debating a few routes for granular. (Side note: I’ve been wondering about a couple of external options including Novum as a VST because that one is super intuitive. I have Pigments, but this one feels more… fun maybe - which I like a lot.)
Assuming Suite & Komplete Standard, there’s Granulator (plus the Ableton spectral stuff) & Form / Reaktor on the NI side; but man is that thing CPU heavy even on an M1. On the paid end, there’s the Light Trilogy that you can throw your own samples in (and they do seem to come with interesting samples anyway.) I believe that bundle goes for half off at some points in the year, which makes it less than Cycles (just). Interestingly as @Prof_lofi says, there are some standalone Kontakt granular things too, although I’m not sure to what extent Kontakt does granular sampling in the same way or differently that a VST does. That could be a good thing though.
Something fun could be to see what (if anything) Kontakt brings to the party. On the paid end, Grainstates or Granulate 2 are a couple I’ve seen but I haven’t checked them enough to warrant buying. Also Grainstrument Lite and Granularis (have I said granular enough yet?!) are completely free to try, so you could dip a toe in there potentially. Any of these with Shaperbox/Portal or another rhythmic mangle effect thing that you might already have on the end could do some interesting things. That’s a chunk of stuff, but with the exception of the Light trilogy option - all of these are cheaper alternatives than Cycles.
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Awesome suggestions, thank you.
Yeah I don’t want to bash S+Acycles or anything, it is just such an expensive plugin that it would suck to buy it and then realize you barely use it. I think if I was an ambient artist, it would be a no brainer.
That said, I like to take samples and change them into new sounds. That is a huge part of how I write my tracks so when I saw Cycles I got really intrigued by it. I feel sometimes like I am spamming Tantra2 on the end of some tracks, just to make them sound even weirder and I’d like to try something new.
Track I am finishing now has Granulator 2, I used it on movie dialogue to kind of push it back and turn it into a sound bed. Granulator 2 is really really good.
I also bought an effect called Graindad, which is amazing. I am using that on a main vocal part. I usually randominze it until I get something close and then tweak it. It is a great alternative to a reverb delay, but is more of an effect than a sampler. Highly recommend if its on sale. It also can make super long tails that go on forever and clutter up your track, so its best to automate the on and off. Sometimes that can be awesome though, so I find myself recording those sounds sometimes to an audio track and then filtering it so it’s not taking up so much space.
Anyway just a few plugs I like to use and recommend. For something like Cycles I am always looking for a way to take a pad sound or vocal sound and transform it into something new. That would be a good example of what I personally look to do with these creative samplers.
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I’ve also wanted cycles for years but been put off by the price. I picked up Fabrizio Poce’s slice shuffler some years back as a consolation 
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I feel like we’re at the point where we need a thread just to categorise all the mangling options there’s so many out there! But yeah, it’s great fun to do so I see what you’re getting at in terms of reworking something out of a granular tool for sure.
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will Cycles run on the free kontakt player without any restrictions?
I believe so.
Good idea - done
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Newfangled Audio sale - you can buy individual plugins at the displayed discount, or buy 2 or more regular price plugins for 40% off. Note that several plugins here are already at leaset 50% off individually:
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