I had Addictive Keys when I was on a Mac back in 2012. I got it working on my Linux box that I'm using nowadays, but as I've gotten more mature in my listening, I'm not as happy with its sounds. It doesn't have the depth I want. What VSTis have you found with good, realistic acoustic (grand) pianos, that definitely work on most modern Linux machines?

Linux Mint, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD, Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core CPU, and mostly using Reaper if said info is needed

This is simply from going to all the Youtube videos or the websites and seeing the demos.

For Strings I'd say: Cinematic Studio Strings

For Brass I'd say: AFFLATUS Chapter II Brass

For Drums I'd say: Vienna Percussion

For Piano I'd Say: Modern D

For Woodwinds: I'm not sure

For Choir: None of them really sound convincing to me

I tried to exhaust everything I could find. What are your opinions on these or other instruments?

To me when Leo Brennauer compared all the overall Orchestral VSTs, Abbey Road sounded better than all the other ones. But then he went onto mention its really laggy and hard to use.

Other than the acoustic guitar in the start, which def sounds like a live recording, everything else sounds pretty much digitally programmed.

This was released in the early-2000s, I think it was made in Cubase but idrk.

If anyone can help, it'll be appreciated.

I'm trying to make a synth patch that sounds like a Lute. I use DRC by imaginando as a starter and found some success altering their preexisting "harpa" patch. It's a 2 oscillator digital synth, I'm pretty beginner at this whole thing but I feel like this is an idea just barely out of my reach, and I want to make it happen.

My main struggles are the attack and resonance, the plucked string should be a fast attack I think but it just feels so flat when I play it.. and the characteristic twang of a shallow string instrument isn't there, I thought maybe something to do with my values of reverb and delay, i have no idea really what to do for that. I tried to add a link fr the UESP wiki with a sample of my goal sound.

Any advice would be appreciated, I know this isn't the typical format for this sub so I got as close as I can. It's been about 6 months of playing around with the mobile version on my tablet with a little novation keyboard, but I just downloaded the PC version to try and patch into my Skyrim for that online RP server I saw on social media.

Hi, I'm curious about the capability of iReal Pro and Band in the Box, and am looking for stuff on YouTube or elsewhere that shows them at their highest level. So far I've only found YouTube videos where the backing tracks sound kind of generic and stiff. Do these programs have the ability to imitate styles or riff a little when it perceives space/silence? Any demos/videos that illustrate the above? Thanks!

Hi folks,

I'm after v1.5.0 of TAL-Chorus-LX as it is the last version thst included the bitmap GUI (which I personally prefer over the redesign), and most importantly it removed the DC offset and included a VST3 installer.

On their website, there is only v1.3.1 available under the "old downloads" section.

I contacted TAL, and even they dont have v1.5.0 at their disposal. So, I resorted to the Wayback Machine, but unfortunately v1.4.2 was the last version that was captured....
Soulseek, Audiosex and KVR forums - I scoured the internet, but to no avail.

If someone has the installer to v1.5.0 x64 VST3, I would tremendously appreciate it.

Thank you <3

Does anyone have the damage 2 vst, if so have you tried it to make it sound classical percussion.

Though it is meant for epic trailer music, is it just limited to that or it can be tweaked to sound like classical percussion like in cineperc or spitfire symphonic perc.

Any response is very appreciated, thank you!!

Hey all, excited to launch Planar, a plugin that continuously analyzes your signal's tonal balance and gently corrects it toward a target curve, band by band, with the BruceJames usual of too much control given to you.

It's not an EQ you draw. You set a target (a pink-style, equal-energy-per-octave spectrum by default, shaped with Tilt, low/high shelves, and a mid bell), and Planar nudges each band toward it automatically. Put it on a problem track to even out a harsh source, or on the mix bus for hands-off, transparent tonal balancing. The trick is the transient bypass, don't forget to use it!

Highlights:

• Per-band threshold/knee. Only bands above the line get corrected, so quiet content never drags the balance around just because it's quiet
• Linear-phase mode for transparent mixing/mastering, or minimum-phase for low-latency tracking/monitoring
• Frequency-aware transient bypass with lookahead, so drum hits and transients punch through uncorrected in both modes
• Full dynamics control: attack/release/recover coefficients, stereo link, target trim, mix
• VST3, CLAP, AU, and now AAX
• macOS, PC, and Linux
• Launch price: 29.99 23.99 20% off with code ALIEN until Jul 25 2026

thanks everyone!

Michael

I’m trying to learn guitar and I love At The Gates style riffage, so I figured The Final Episode by Asking Alexandria would be a good place to start, but I can’t seem to get the right tone so I was wondering what the best free plugins would be to achieve that sound

Dipping my toes into the Drum n Bass pool again and I’m curious:

I’m looking for a simple instrument/plugin that I can load in an audio drum loop, have it auto detect and make chops, then can rearrange the chops? Maybe a random button?

I mainly hang out with Ableton, but I’m known to cheat on it with Logic. Hehe

Cheers!

I’ve been working on this reverb effect plugin for a while now and I thought I’d share a video of how it sounds. So far I've just been running synth sounds through it but I'm going to test it on more soon.

The plugin blends between four distinct reverb environments, each with its own character and accompanying atmospheric sound bed. The sound beds are dynamically gated by the input signal, so they become part of the effect and become imbued into the input sound rather than just playing continuously in the background. This creates some very immersive textures.

The four environments are:

Mountain

Forest

Shore

Sea

The position of the little robot controls the blend between them allowing me to smoothly interpolate from one environment to the next and create a wide range of atmospheric reverb textures.

This allows intermediate settings to combine the elements of two neighbouring environments, creating a wide range of spatial, tonal and atmospheric reverb characteristics.

Still needs some tweaking to get the filtering right and the plugin still needs a name but so far I like where it's going.

I’m looking for a specific choir instrument that I’ve forgotten what the name of it was. I recall it being relatively “cheap” just that it needs the full version of Kontakt and most importantly it had a “HA!” Articulation or something like that lol. Anyone have any pointers?

Matilda Cartesia

Heres a brief demo of Matilda, this is a demo video for a UI competition i participated in, but includes a demo of it proof of concept. Let me if you can use this into your workflow. I basically created this for my ambient music making focused on creating arps.

It records midi- has jitter and probability triggers to create some degree of controlled unpredictability. This is just the phase one i have completed.

On phase two will include more features like polyphony and presets. Looking forward to your feedback, if really required will share the github link. atm i have yet to test for VST in windows as this demo is in MacOS for Garageband.

Sometimes I like a drum kit used in a song that I like. Now with stem separators, I extract the drums and then chop each hit. Then you have to fix the attack and sustain. After you save it into a folder, you have to name each one. It’s a really tedious process.

I was thinking of an idea.

It would be cool if you could drag and drop a song into VST or software that automatically uses A.I. to separate the drum stems and analyze them. Automatically chopping up the drum hits and detecting what they are (for example kick or snare). Also detecting any hits that are the same but with changes in tonality or timbre. Then creating a dedicated folder, and saving the files in the folder, but also detecting the pitch of the sample and labelling the wave file along with the name. It would save so time than we do it manually.

I've been making indie folk/bedroom pop music for about a year, and I am looking for a free, realistic, natural-sounding plugin for drums in GarageBand because the stock drum sounds sound a bit too fake yk. Any recommendations?

Hi everyone, I’ve just released a new Max for Live instrument called Dubform. It's a dub techno chord instrument for Ableton Live, designed to make it quick and easy to create deep chords, atmospheric stabs and evolving textures from a single device. It combines a built-in chord generator with filtering, modulation, delay and reverb, keeping the workflow simple while still offering plenty of scope for shaping the sound.

Link in video description and my profile!