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IK Multimedia Total Studio 2 Max review


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Talk about a BIG bundle - IK certainly put one together with Total Studio 2 Max - but is it a worthwhile investment for your studio? Check out the review to what Craig and I think of this substantial software suite.

 

 

http://www.harmonycentral.com/expert...l-studio-2-max

 

 

If you have any questions about the review or the software, please feel free to post them here. :wave:

 

 

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I love the IK Multimedia stuff, I've had it for years and used it often, mostly Sample Tank and Amplitube. I tried using Sample Tank as a plug in on my live rig for a while but it tended to cause strain on the i7 equipped firewire MBP that still ran older int/ext HD's and I feared it could crash. It might fair better with the newer Thunderport and SSD stuff.

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I've tried a bunch of the amp sims from NI, IK, Waves, etc., and always keep coming back to Amplitude the most often. Especially the Fender collections.

 

I also bought MODO Bass when it was on sale at initial release, and it's my go-to for virtual bass now. Very tweakable, and I've been able to get close enough to the "Lesh" bass tone I've always loved that put me in bass heaven.

 

I tried SampleTank a long time ago and found it a bit buggy with a clumsy interface. I assume they've improved those aspects - can I get a confirmation on that assumption?

nat

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I have a lot of the components of this package—namely Syntronik, MODO Bass, T-RackS 5 MAX (including the new Leslie), and the Amplitude Fender Collection and Bass Players Bundle. Of these, the only problems I've had have been with Syntronik: 1) the installation was a bit of headache because you have to download over 25 different large files and then install each one separately; and 2) version 1.2 wouldn't pass AU validation on my system, so I had to downgrade to 1.1. Fortunately, that's not a big problem as 1.1 works fine; and 1.2 is mostly an upgrade to enable the new Syntronik Deluxe, which I haven't yet purchased.

 

All of these plugins are high-quality. I'm happy I own all of them, including—and perhaps even especially—Syntronik. (I am, after all, a keyboard player.)

 

Best,

 

Geoff

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I'm not using Thunderbolt drives ATM, just internal SATA drives (both SSD and HDD), and stability was a non-issue for me.

 

 

It's always more nerve racking to use a computer live and the more software that's loaded up the greater the chances of something going wrong. I had SampleTank loaded into a virtual rack within DP with the various samples I wanted for the night loaded on some different channels, I never tried to play more than one channel of ST within a song and I didn't attempt to load new samples into any channels of ST during the night either but I would often see my DP resource meter going into the red. I use DP because of it's ability to have an endless list of sequences within the same file. Switching through these "chunks" is what has always made DP such a popular program for live performance use. I don't recall that it ever actually crashed but it was obvious that overall performance was slower.

 

I was attempting to use ST in a method similar to the way I was using the Roland Fantom XR rack synth in multi-timbral performance mode although with that unit I could switch out samples and play several channels worth of sounds with no problems. The thinking was that if I loaded all the samples up into ST when I started DP right off the bat there wouldn't be slow downs associated with loading new samples as I went along. Since that time I've seen it mentioned that perhaps it's better to load an instance of ST for each core of your processor. I've long moved on with some new hardware and other solutions so I didn't revisit it.

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