In case you VAC crowd might be interested:

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/sp ... thsgiving/

I picked up Reaktor...

Don't worry, most of us have the sense to not dismiss everything that's not hardware as useless.



Reminds me that I need to upgrade my copy of komplete.

Yeah I should bite the bullet and go Komplete. They have an offer on for kontakt owners for Komplete.... but it will have to wait.

I might have to try that sometime. I've had Absynth before but fuck it's really not userfriendly, some good sounds but annoying to work with.

Absynth and Reaktor have some steep learning curves for sure, but not a lot does what they do in hardware.

Except for the V Synth and the Nord Modular :p

Hrm back when I had real hardware in spades I spent most of my time programming and not enough composing. Learned my lesson.

But I am a long standing geek so progs like Reaktor, Audiomulch, Bidule etc all fascinate me. I have to discipline myself not to disappear down the damn rabbit holes these things represent.

I have Absynth and its useful. A softsynth with a real character. But I usually turn to Dimension Pro and Rapture for a digital quality and UltraAnalog or DCAM for that VA sound these days.

I do miss my hardware but this software does me fine (not that I have any choice in the matter). Actually its the tactile aspect of hardware I miss more than the sonic differences.

Reaktor provides opportunity to get into DSP programming. Assuming I ever have the time...

I do what I can on hardware. But seeing as i'm not very financially well off, I use software when it's acceptable.

I love love love Rapture.

I hate NI, but Reaktor for $99 is pretty much a no-brainer. Tons of ensembles.

Its funny but... I have this feeling of unease with NI stuff... no idea why. But $99 for Reaktor... yeah no-brainer.

The user interfaces usually feel like they were designed by German androids. Which they were. And I hate that stupid blocky font they use for all their stuff.