[ddots-l] Dimension Pro Expansion Packs
- From: Bryan Smart <bryansmart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 04:41:49 -0400
Yep. It makes sense why the Ensoniq stuff would sound better. A lot of what we
have in the Proteus Packs comes from the Proteus 2000 and the other romplers in
that generation from E-Mu. In fact, many of the Proteus generation samples were
still carrying forward in slightly upgraded from the original Proteus series
(late 80's/early 90's). All of the sound design for those presets was done to
target a rompler. When a company designs for a rompler, they are always space
conscious on the samples, since they know that they'll be trying to cram the
samples for many instruments in to limited memory. When you're sampling that
way, you only want to add detail to the samples until you reach the earliest
point of diminishing returns. The proteus samples don't use extremely short
sustain loops, and they are sampled at fairly regular intervals up and down the
keyboard, but they're nothing to be excited about in terms of what we have
today. Back then, though, even the Proteus sounds were pretty real, and there
were a lot of them, and, in a rompler you could get them on the cheap.
The Ensoniq library is older (about 1986 for the earliest stuff, maybe), but it
was designed for samplers. On a sampler back then, you didn't need to be so
stingy about making the samples as small as possible. I mean, the sampler had a
limited amount of memory for loading sounds, but, as long as the samples
weren't so large that you couldn't load all of the instruments that you needed
for a song, you were fine. You could have a huge collection of sounds on
floppies (or CDROM if you were rich). Of course, Roland had a big sampler
library, and the 1980's E-Mu sampler libraries were good, but we don't have
access to those.
The Ensoniq sounds are both worse and better than the E-Mu Proteus stuff. Many
have multiple layers (though I've rarely seen more than 3, other than in a
special showcase sound). The variety of sounds is much wider, though. When
you're planning what sounds will go in to your keyboard, you might throw in
special or strange stuff, but that is way down the list after being sure that
pianos, organs, strings, basses, guitars, brass, winds, drums, percussion, etc
etc are all well represented in the limited memory. On a sampler, adding more
sounds is just adding more disks. Ensoniq could always keep making more disks
of stuff to sell you for use with your EPS or TS. The Ensoniq sounds are old,
to be sure, but they have a very different character from the other samples
that I use. I don't think that their texture/layer/combination stacks and
atmospheric effects will ever get so old that I can't use them for something.
Same thing for all of the special effects recordings (like a mini version of
the Hollywood Special Effects Expansion). Of course, all of the hits, stabs,
and musical effects have been on more number 1 dance, R&B, and hip hop songs
over the years than I can think of. People still use them, also. Pianos,
organs, and other categories seem very dated, though, but sometimes a sound is
good for the strangeness of it, the tambour, or for other reasons besides the
high fidelity. Sometimes, the old strangeness of it seems interesting in sort
of a mysterious retro way that I can't exactly put words to. It is cheese, but
some types of cheese is interesting. There is a huge set of drums (over 100
kits) that is dated, but that you'll immediately recognize from all sorts of
80's songs. It's a great set, but only if you appreciate it in a certan way.
The other volumes in the set have some fairly high quality sounds. I think that
it is good that they had one large solid volume of quality retro sounds to
complement the collection.
I highly suggest that people go and buy the Dimension Pro expansions while
they're still on sale. You might buy some specialized softsynth later to cover
a certain type of sound, but, with all of the expansion packs to fill in the
holes in the stock library, Dimension Pro becomes a very capable go-to synth
for general purpose sounds. I have something like 10,000 presets now, with over
15GB of samples. And, just so you know, Dancing Dots can't sell it to you. They
are only available for purchase directly from Cakewalk. So, I'm only telling
you to buy them for your own good, not for any financial reason. *smile*
For anyone that just wishes that they had more sounds, or that they want
something fresh sounding to inspire them, since accessibility is really good
for Dimension Pro (either through the native support in CakeTalking or through
the hot spots), I think that it would make sense for people to expand Dimension
Pro as far as it could go before looking at other synths. Unlike older tools
that people have used like Hypersonic, your Dimension Pro sounds will keep on
working in Windows 7, and in 64-bit Sonar, so you can standardize on it for
quite a while to come.
The least expensive way to get everything is to first buy the Digital Sound
Factory expansion volumes 1 through 10 as a full set. That will give you most
of the sounds that DSF has created or ported to Dimension Pro (and add about
4,500 new presets to Dimension Pro). Individually, they'd cost $600 as a set.
DSF will sell them to you all at once for $399. However, if you already own
Sonar 8.5, Cakewalk has an offer where you can get the full set for $249 or 199
Euros. This set covers everything from really new to really old sounds. You can
read about it or buy at the link below, but don't take too long to think about
it. Cakewalk will probably pull the $249 special offer in a few days, and then
you'll be spending $399 for the full set.
http://www.store.cakewalk.com/b2ceuro/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=30-TMTP1.00-2RE
The other big set of sounds comes from the E-Mu Proteus Packs. These are a set
of expansions that duplicate all of the presets from the Proteus 2000
generation of modules from E-Mu. Since this was E-Mu's everything and the
kitchen sink effort, these modules included everything they had new at the
time, plus everything that they had from back to the original Proteus
generation. There are 6 packs , I think, one for each module that they
duplicate: Proteus 2000 (general purpose rompler), Virtuoso (the orchestral
module), MoPhat (the Hip Hop/R&B/Dance module), Planet Earth (their world
instruments module), Xtreme Lead (dance/electronica), and the PX7 (their
acoustic drums module). This is a really huge set of sounds (over 3500 in all).
When you buy them all together, they're called the E-Mu Proteus Pack (used to
be the Proteus Complete Pack). Right now, you can buy the Complete Pack
directly from Digital Sound Factory for $149 (it's normally $249).
http://www.digitalsoundfactory.com/cakewalk-dimension/cakewalk-dimension-proteus-pack/product_info.php/cPath/49/products_id/216
So, for $400 total, you can have a huge (roughly 15GB) library for Dimension
pro with nearly 10,000 presets.
Bryan
-----Original Message-----
From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Gordon Kent
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2010 10:17 PM
To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ddots-l] ensoniq sounds
I have to say that Ensoniq really did a lot of things right with the resources
they had at the time. I had both an sd1 and a ts10, and both had their good
points. The upright bass on the sd1 still stands out, I have some tracks that
I used it in that I still use in my live act. They had a nashville fiddle
sound that I haven't heard topped by anything out there now. I still have the
ts10 which crashes after a few minutes, but I want to sample the fiddle before
I throw it out. I did do that a while back for the old akai s900 sampler and
it really worked. And they did have some decent guitar sounds and the strings
on the sd1 weren't bad either.
Gord
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bryan Smart" <bryansmart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2010 8:04 PM
Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Omnisphere sounds
I think its worth the $250 special price. Not sure what they're selling it for
in the UK.
Volume 1 is a good general purpose set of new samples/sounds that expands the
default library.
Studio Orchestra is very good. It's much better than GPO, or the Virtuoso 2000
set. Lots of stereo programs, programs that use alternate samples when played
legato, etc. Very worth it.
The acoustic kits are good when compared to the Dimension Pro kits, but aren't
what you'd expect from a high end library like Superior Drummer or Adictive
Drums. They are in general MIDI format, though, and that has some practical
uses. They're much better than what is in Session Drummer.
The Guitar and Basses pack is pretty good. The instruments are multi-sampled.
They're certainly a profound improvement on the stock guitars and basses.
The sound effects library is very good. It's like the Hollywood Sounds library
that comes with Sonar, but there are hundreds of programs, all grouped in to
categories like animals, water, tranportation, etc. Its great for dropping in
foley effects on your songs.
The Ensoniq set is good if you want a real retro sound. The E-Mu libraries are
a little old, so that they aren't very ontemporary, but they aren't old enough
to be retro. The Ensoniq stuff is circa 1988 or so. I wouldn't call them
cheesy, though. The libraries for those instruments was considered very good
for the time, and lots of those sounds are in many top-40 and platinum selling
records from the time. I'd even go to some of the percussion and effects sounds
for a track today, even without going for a retro sound.
Another good feature is that all of the drum kits (about 150+ of them) are all
laid out in Ensoniq format.
I didn't think as much of their piano expansion. That is kind of rediculous,
anyway. We have so many libraries with gigs and gigs of samples, and plugs that
model pianos, who needs another 500MB sampled piano? The real use for something
like this isn't to have the ultimate piano, but tl have workstation like
combinations. If you want a piano and strings, or a piano and voice pad, it is
really bad if the piano side of that is the stock Dimension piano. This pack
contains a lot more useful combinations with a much higher quality piano.
All in all, you get something like 5 or 6 thousand presets with the whole pack.
I think that its a good value, especially now with the discount.
Bryan
-----Original Message-----
From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Phil Muir
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2010 6:31 AM
To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Omnisphere sounds
Hay Bryan. Totally agree with your comments about the programme browser in
Dimension Pro. Dimension is pretty good but as you said, you can't easily
locate what your looking for.
Bryan wrote: I'm thinking about sharing my presets. I think that would be
alright, since you can't use them without purchasing the libraries (and their
samples).
Phil replied; that should be fine as if you don't have the packs in question
then, you wouldn't be able to run them anyway.
Bryan wrote: I really think that Cakewalk should do something like this
themselves,
Phil replied; agreed.
Bryan wrote: though. Dimension Pro has its faults, but with the fragmented
standard library, where you never know exactly what you really have, it makes
Dimension Pro seem much worse than it is.
Phil replied: totally agree. So Bryan, do you think it's worth purchasing the
Digital Sound Factory: Vol 1-10 set that is on offer right now for Sonar
8.5 customers? Am thinking about it. I already have all of the E-MU stuff,
and do on occasion reach for it, when I am looking for a particular brass sound
that I require for a backing track that I am working on.
Regards, Phil Muir
Accessibility Training
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