Deals On Gear and Software

[jast]

The best way to handle important financial decisions is to flip a coin. Obviously.

[jast]

Until 3 Dec, fxpansion offers 50% off on their core products, e.g. BFD3, their drum sampler.

[jast]

Until 2 Dec, UVI is discounting Falcon 2 and most other things by 30% (Falcon 2: $/€349 -> $/€244). Falcon 2 is one of the most flexible modular synths that I'm aware of, including a pretty powerful sampler. If you want to get into sound design and you like maximum flexibility at the cost of a steep learning curve, this is probably one of the best options. As always, the purchase gives you a $/€100 coupon for expansions... which are 30% off right now, too.
I don't think they ever offer it cheaper than this, but they do repeat this deal once or twice per year.

Some of the notable features include:

• a ton of oscillators (analog, multi-analog, additive, FM, drum, pluck, noise with 15 different noise types, organ, wavetable) and effects (e.g. filters, dynamics, reverbs, distorters, modulation effects) - unlike many others, Falcon can generate guitar and flute type tones. Oscillators and effects are fully stackable/chainable.
• Various sampler oscillators, e.g. pretty darn good time stretching based on IRCAM and granular synthesis. You can even use an array of similar samples and the sampling engine will seamlessly sweep between them while they are being played (you define the modulation yourself, of course).
• a scriptable MIDI event processor which allows you to e.g. write your own arpeggiation in Lua, a bunch of scripts are included
• modulate any parameter in many different ways

[ken]

Arturia is offering a Chorus VST for free until 12/29/20:

https://www.arturia.com/freegift-chorus-jun6

[Lunkhead]

Arturia is offering a Chorus VST for free until 12/29/20:

https://www.arturia.com/freegift-chorus-jun6

Sweet, thanks for the tip! That should be fun.

[vowlvom]

New free Granular Reverb from Audiothing:

https://www.audiothing.net/effects/things-texture/

Just downloaded, seems unusual and interesting!

[Lunkhead]

The topic of room treatment came up recently in Cybronica's thread about monitor speakers and coincidentally the stupid deal of the day today is for a 24-pack of 12"x12"x2" acoustic foam absorption panels for $99, a $140 discount off the normal price. You could try to use these to treat your room to deal with high frequency related issues.

https://www.musiciansfriend.com/stupid

These blog posts seemed pretty informative to me, about room treatment:

https://www.blackghostaudio.com/blog/ho ... -treatment
https://www.blackghostaudio.com/blog/th ... me-studios

[Lunkhead]

iZotope has the "middle" versions of some of their products on sale. These are not the cheap-o pared down versions, nor are they the expensive loaded up versions. They're usually somewhere around $250 but are on sale for $100. At least Ozone (for mastering), Neutron (for mixing), and Nectar (for vocals) are on sale, both directly from iZotope and via resellers. I used the cheap-o version of Ozotope for a good quick basic mastering pass, using it's automatic mastering. Neutron seems interesting to me mostly for the idea of putting it on multiple tracks and using it to help with masking and crowding issues in EQ. Nectar I'm the least familiar with but it aims to provide a one-stop shop suite of tools for making great vocals, and also includes some vocal masking assistance too. (Although, two of the cool features, dynamic masking and sidechain masking, are only in the pro version sadly.) Some of their bundles appear to be on sale too.

https://www.izotope.com/en/shop.html

I'm thinking of upgrading Ozone and maybe trying getting Neutron or Nectar. If anybody is already using Neutron or Nectar I'd be curious to hear what you think of them. Some folks dislike the idea of "assistance" in plugins but I'm lazy and usually operating at breakneck speed so I'm all for it, personally.

[vowlvom]

I grabbed a cheap upgrade for Ozone and Neutron recently, packaged together. Mostly for Ozone because the plugins I used to use for "mastering" were no longer being updated, but Neutron seems pretty handy too and I'm definitely not averse to any kind of automated assistance.

I never got anything I liked from the basic version of Nectar though. I'm sure it works for some but when I was trying to figure it out, I always preferred the sound of my voice with just EQ / compression over whatever Nectar was doing.

[jast]

The vocal tuning features of Nectar are extremely basic (even in the advanced version), I'm kind of undecided about the other features but I usually prefer processing the vocals myself. Personally I don't think Nectar is worth the money. That said, Ozone is pretty darn good (though not exactly a necessity for making music), and I guess Neutron is a worthwhile pick if you don't want to learn to do it yourself.

If you're considering getting both Ozone and Neutron, note that for just about the same price you get Mix & Master Bundle which also includes Tonal Balance Control 2 - which is more of a small utility plugin, but still. (If you ever pull the plug too early and notice a bundle like that too late, there's a very good chance you can ask their support to fix it up for you and/or make a customized offer for you. They're quite helpful in my experience.)

[fluffy]

Klōs guitars have now released a nice-looking travel-friendly electric guitar and bass. I have one of their original acoustic travel guitars and it’s pretty great, so I expect these will also be excellent. Not that anyone is doing much travel right now, but maybe by the time these ship that will be a thing again?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kl ... ref=26yztb

[jb]

Half off mic shields today. $49 down from $99. You should probably have one of these.

https://www.musiciansfriend.com/stupid? ... FJqlX2OW1w

[crumpart]

Half off mic shields today. $49 down from $99. You should probably have one of these.

https://www.musiciansfriend.com/stupid? ... FJqlX2OW1w

I have a mic shield, so I’m not exactly sure why I clicked the link, but I did and it’s not going to a mic shield.

[jb]

Yeah the deal expired, it’s a new deal now. No solar panels tho

[Lunkhead]

Right now the Stupid Deal of the Day is a pair of studio headphones at a steep discount. If you need some good headphones for recording and mixing, these are now only $40, down from $150.

https://www.musiciansfriend.com/stupid

Tascam TH-300X Studio Headphones

TASCAM's TH-300X provides the clear, uncolored sound that musicians demand in the studio, while providing plenty of power handling and isolation for tracking and live use. The closed-back design isolates the musician, preventing microphone bleed and feedback. The plush leatherette ear pads and adjustable headband make the TH-300X comfortable ...

Was: Regular Price $149.99 Savings: Your Savings $110.00 Your Price $39.99

[ujnhunter]

Right now the Stupid Deal of the Day is a pair of studio headphones at a steep discount. If you need some good headphones for recording and mixing, these are now only $40, down from $150.

https://www.musiciansfriend.com/stupid

Tascam TH-300X Studio Headphones

TASCAM's TH-300X provides the clear, uncolored sound that musicians demand in the studio, while providing plenty of power handling and isolation for tracking and live use. The closed-back design isolates the musician, preventing microphone bleed and feedback. The plush leatherette ear pads and adjustable headband make the TH-300X comfortable ...

Was: Regular Price $149.99 Savings: Your Savings $110.00 Your Price $39.99

I wonder what the difference is between these and the TH-200X (which I own a bunch of... and for the $20 each that I paid, are great) because my typical "X vs X" Google search isn't pulling up anything relevant.

Edit: After doing more research... it appears the TH-300X has a 5mm larger driver and wider freq response from 10-26 as opposed to my TH-200X of 15-22 along with some differences in impedance and max power... etc.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

I don't like the TH-200X but I was comparing them to the 7506's which isn't fair. They work fine for tracking but I've only used them a handful of times.
I did get the 200X on stupid deal some time back.

[ken]

The very solid Sennheiser HD280 headphones are $20 off for a bit https://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-aud ... headphones

[Pigfarmer Jr]

OOH, I'd like to try those. But I just bought a guitar amp so I'd probably ought not spend much more money right now.

[jast]

Native Instruments have started their yearly deal where you get 50% off all updates and upgrades on KOMPLETE, and also 50% off most other updates (e.g. Kontakt, Guitar Rig, Massive, ...). If you want to get started with NI's KOMPLETE, you can get the "Select" edition at normal price ($/€ 199) and upgrade to a more complete edition at half the normal update price, so for instance KOMPLETE 13 Ultimate would cost you 199+499=598 instead of 1199 for the regular license.

You get the same deals from all the NI dealers I've checked (e.g. Sweetwater, Thomann, ...), even for the boxed versions.
Offer valid until the end of the month.

[fluffy]

Also don't forget it'll come with a $25 voucher that you can't actually spend on anything useful!

[jast]

Totally forgot about that! I've not spent a €25 voucher on anything useful several times already.