Atmosphere gives Absynth a kicking

Well, well look at the timing. NI gives us the "good news" about paying more money for a set of sounds; while Spectrum releases a new module with 1000 sounds onboard which looks like it will give Absynth a royal kick.

I love my Absynth but think NI is getting a little too smug about it - instead of rewarding loyal customers with an ocassional crumb or two, they just want to squeeze out another few dollars.

Anyone thinking about buying Absynth should definitely give Atmosphere a listen.
http://www.spectrasonics.net/instruments/atmosphere.html

From reports it looks like it has way more playable sounds than Absynth. Too many of the Absynth presets are just useless envelope sequences, detuned grating noise or horrible flanging industrial grinds.

And notice how NI hardly ever bother to look at the forum anymore ?

 

agree NI should give us sounds

I absolutely agree: I haven't used Absynth for a while and thought I'd check in to see if there were any new sounds posted to get me inspired but was disappointed to find a "pay only" attitude. I can't even find or remember where I went to get a bank of free patches that was posted months ago. Have user free patches been removed?

 

In case you are unaware, the best forum I've found for Absynth is:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/absynth-users/
They have a growing library of patches.

 

atmosphere pros & cons

I generally find all products by Stectrasonics (and Ilio for that matter) to be of the highest quality. We recently started using their "Stylus" plugin at work and it is exellent - deep, and very programmable. BUT - you do need over 3 GIGS of drive space for EACH of these new spectrasonic plugins. Not so with Absynth. Also, while the sample libraries for these spectrasonic plugins are massive, and of very high sonic quality - you can't put in samples of your own. It's somewhat of an apples to oranges comparison IMO - Absynth is far, far more versatile in reality.

As far as having to pay for the new Absynth sounds, it's a little annoying. As I have stated on various other NI forums - registered users should get some sort of consideration in the form of a downloadable version with an appropriate price break -
seems like a no-brainer to me. This has yet to happen though.

In the meantime, if you need more sounds you MUST go to the yahoo group mentioned in the previous post - check in the files section - I bet you'll think twice about buying any Absynth sounds for at least a year. Cheers!

-BC

 

I get so sick of hearing people complain on here.
Im SURE you have exhausted all of the presets and tweaks of those presets in the huge library that comes with absynth....
give me a break

 

Got anything useful to add to this discussio Telxosss, or did you just come here to complain ?

 

Hi Spirit,
I´ve bought the Sonic Expansion and I thing it is a real expansion for the libary of Absynth. You have now more, "useable" sounds than before.
For example many stunning Bass Sounds.
I do not agree to the high price but I hope NI will gave us registered users a bonus soon. They should do.

Cheers

 

If you look at the credits on many of Spectrasonic's releases, Metamorphasis for instance, Eric Persihing lists Absynth as one of the sound sources he used to create the library.

 

I'm not saying that Absynth doesn't have good sounds. I own, use it, program it, adore it.

My point is that the competition has really hotted up, and Atmosphere looks like a better deal with more usable sounds from a company with a better attitude to its customers.

Merely an observation.

 

I think Athmosphere is a very interesting product with a lot of exciting presets. Though I see some disadvantages with it. First you have to load samples which a not as flexible as patches from Absynth and second you have to load megabytes for each patch. This means that you cannot change presets fast in a song context, because you have to wait until patches are loaded into RAM.

Absynth Sounds Vol. 1 - Sonic Expansion is a collection of 256 Sounds from 6 professional sound designers. They are all very experienced and need to get paid for their work. I think 49,90 is not too expensive for a 256 sounds collection. If you compare this to sound expansion cards for Roland Synthesizers for example where you get less content for much more money.

Just my thoughts....

Best,

Martin

Senior Audio Designer - Native Instruments

 

Props on the sound design Martin. You guys did an excellent job. I have to agree on the 3 gigs of space point. My poor aging G3 just didn't have the space or processing power apparently to run Atmosphere. I'll have to wait till I can afford a new computer.

 

Your point is well taken

...now that I've seen the price and heard the demos I'm sure I'll wind up buying them in the near future...

but

- you should still consider selling them in downloadable form online. BC

 

I agree-it WOULD be nice to see them available as a d/l.
ew

 

Since 4 days I use the new Absynth sounds in a trance part of an actual project. Every sound come through without additonal effects and I use aprox. 12 presets from Absynth in this track. I won´t miss the Sonic Expansion any more. All sounds are very tweakable and well balanced, thank you!

 

Hi Chris

The bass sounds really OK ? That's what I find is the weakest part of Absynth... they never seem crisp or well-defined to me - more like 8-bit samples.

 

Hey, Spirit

I didn´t use a bass sound yet so I can´t say how they are during the play, but after my first hearing they sound really pressureful and unique. Many SlapBass like sounds but with the typical absynth signature. Also sub basses,fretless etc. from every bass style at least one preset. I´m sure they are as great as the most other sounds, you only need to find a way to play out these sounds. But the expansion makes it very easy.

BTW: I have a question to one of the knights, I have bought the PC version but I know and have the original MAC Preset Banks,too . Why NI doesn´t make these MAC Banks availible for the PC Version as a X-Mas bonus or something like that, it won´t cost NI much and will deliver us PC Absynth User some extra sounds.

 

You haven't got any sound CD from NI as far, did you?

The're pretty fine packaged indeed ;-) Okay, the package design does not make a sound by itself, but isn't it nice to have stuff like this in your bookshelf? ;-)

gruß
aljen

 

I love Atmosphere. It's got so many possible combinations of presets, and filtering->modulation possibilities, that you _can_ make it sound unique to your style. And it's soooo fat. But... when I load up Absynth, and call up a few Bio-Morphik patches (from the Group) or a few classics from Brian, my studio sounds like the deck of some futuristic Enterprise. Atmosphere rocks here and now, Absynth is somewhere in Blade Runner land.

Gotta love 'em both, I figure!

Oh, and when Kontakt 4 (or whatever) comes out - who needs another synth?

 

aljen,

quote:

The're pretty fine packaged indeed ;-) Okay, the package design does not make a sound by itself, but isn't it nice to have stuff like this in your bookshelf?

LOL - I'm not that interested in the packaging - I hear with my ears, not my eyes ;-) I wonder how much the cost of packaging and art work (not that I don't apprectiate fine art work mind you) add to the $49.95 price? How much could NI lower the price if they didn't have to package it? That's all I'm getting at - I know selling and downloading the new sounds online isn't sexy from a marketing stand point but I'd rather have a choice of paying or not paying for packaging - which I'd most likely discard anyway. I'll stop kicking this dead horse once and for all - BC

 

new here....ya!

i was looking at atmosphere but my g3 wasn't going to handle the cpu requirements. it barely handles absynth....but i love so many of these sounds...the playable ones at least>
i look forward to harnessing this machine's potential......and will be enjoying the users' forum which you guys provided the link to.

thanks!!!

man called clay
evolution2000