IK MixBox – $19.99

[LinkedMusicians]

EDIT: I picked up MixBox last year for $29.99, and it was probably the best effects value I’d ever known. While $19.99 US presents an incredible value for an effects package of this quality, I’ve learned since making this post that MixBox has been discontinued by IK. They’ve promised to continue to support it — but I haven’t seen how long that support will last — but will not be going beyond the current product version.

Included effects
Sunset Sound Reverb Collection

Sunset Chamber
Sunset ISO Booth
Sunset Live Room
Sunset Plates
Sunset Spring
Amps

American Vintage T
British Tube Lead
Cabinet
Flexi Amp
Jazz Amp 120
Modern Tube Lead
Preamp
SVT Classic
Tone Control
Channel Strip

Channel Strip
EQ 81
EQ Comp
EQ PA
Delay

Digital Delay
Reverb Delay
Tape Echo
Distortion

Crusher
Distortion
Lo-Fi
Overdrive
Overscream
Dynamics

Black 76
British Dynamics
Bus Compressor
Compressor
De-Esser
Limiter
Model 670
White 2A
EQ

British EQ
EQ PG
Parametric EQ
Vintage EQ-1A
Filter

Env Filter
Filter Formant
Filter Phaser
Filter-C
Filter-M
Filter-O
Filter-R
LFO Filter
Multi Filter
Wah 47
Modulation

AM Modulator
AutoPan
Chorus
Chorus C1
Electric Flanger
Ensemble
Env Flanger
Flanger
FM Modulator
Multi Chorus
Opto Tremolo
Phaser
Rotary Speaker
Slicer
Small Phazer
Tremolo
Uni-V
Reverb

Ambience
ConvoRoom
Digital Reverb
Hall Reverb
Inverse Reverb
Plate Reverb
Room Reverb
Spring Reverb
Stereo Imager
Saturation

Phonograph
Saturator-X
Tape Cassette

https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/12451?a_aid=66fd59ee09bb9

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41

[Xandre]

What’s the sound quality of the modules compared to the Amplitube/T-Racks versions?

Xandre
Chaos Scatterbrain with a plethora of 4 bar loop projects, and barely any songs

[Peter DeLegge]

On Xandre said

What’s the sound quality of the modules compared to the Amplitube/T-Racks versions?

I would think it is identical. @peter-ik can you answer Xandre’s question?

FTR, I paid $29.99 US last year and thought it was probably the best deal I’ve ever gotten on plugin effects, which is why I deemed it a “No Brainer.”

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

2

[Fleer]

I thought this one was dropped by IK?

1

[Peter DeLegge]

On Fleer said

I thought this one was dropped by IK?

I wasn’t aware of that when I created the topic. But after your post, I used AI to see if IK or an IK rep had publicly stated that MixBox was discontinued, and sure enough, it has been. In fact, IK has also discontinued Syntronik, and SampleTron but will continue supporting the titles (I don’t know how long that will be the case). Companies have to do that kind of stuff to keep the ship sailing as smoothly as possible, so I can’t fault them for doing what they need to do. But those were all excellent products, so I’m sad to see them go.

Last year, when I picked up MixBox for $29.99, I thought it was the best effects deal I’d ever gotten. I’m going to edit my original post to make sure that people are aware that MixBox has been discontinued. I think I’m also going to remove the NO-BRAINER status.Thanks for the tip, @fleer.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

4

[Fleer]

Yep, sad.
Hope it’s coming back, tho.

2

[Peter DeLegge]

On Fleer said

Yep, sad.
Hope it’s coming back, tho.

Same for SampleTron. I was thinking about sending Dave Kerzner (who made those libraries from his collection of Trons) an email or DM to ask him if he’s going to release those libraries in another format, such as for Kontakt. He actually released a Kontakt library of a lot of those samples over a decade ago that I have and it still works and sounds great. If Dave let’s me share his response, I promise to share it at LinkedMusicians. As a major fan of Trons, I think Dave’s libraries are superb and I would love to see them live on.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

2

[patrickwichrowski]

I have Mixbox and super recomend it. The extra reverbs from Sunset are pretty good and I really needed the AKG BX-20E. I don’t have all the T-RackS yet, but even if some mixbox modules does not have all the fine controls from the T-Racks versions, it does most of the job with less cpu hit. Its easy to create presets from 4 or more modules stacked. Some guy converted the Synthronik presets FX to Mixbox , good!

Its about situation:

– Need 1 or 2 FX modules, go T-RackS.
– Need 4 or More maybe Mixbox can help achieve that sound with less cpu stress, controls of the modules side by side, with that stack saved as a preset the can be used in multiple DAWs.

😉

https://linktr.ee/patrickwichrowski/

https://patrickwichrowski.bandcamp.com/

4

[GoncaloL]

I didnt know that Syntronik was being discontinued.. that is not an old product at all and is a big red flag to me.

For us mac users this kind of pratice with “recent” products is really worrying

2

[Peter DeLegge]

On GoncaloL said

I didnt know that Syntronik was being discontinued.. that is not an old product at all and is a big red flag to me.

For us mac users this kind of pratice with “recent” products is really worrying

Syntronik was released in 2012. My background is in technology marketing. Thirteen years for a software product line like this one is a pretty good run. It is in no way a red flag or worrying. While I would love to see both products stick around — especially SampleTron — a product line extension (in this case, these are both product line extensions of SampleTank) that stays on the market more than 10 years is by no reasonable measure worrying or a red flag. It’s just sad to see for those of us who really love these products.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

2

[Fleer]

OTOH these were upgraded to version 2, both Syntronik 2 and Sampletron 2 being only a few years old, which is why I’d think IK would launch version 3. Then again, maybe there was some intellectual property at stake, IDK.

2

[Peter DeLegge]

On Fleer said

OTOH these were upgraded to version 2, both Syntronik 2 and Sampletron 2 being only a few years old, which is why I’d think IK would launch version 3. Then again, maybe there was some intellectual property at stake, IDK.

2021, 4 years ago. I don’t find that at all surprising. Now, I only know Peter T from IK, and we’ve never discussed this with him, so this is not based on anything told to me from anyone from IK, but any product extension can fail to meet expectations at any point after release and be eliminated. Every brand does it, and if they ceased to eliminate products that didn’t meet expectations, they’d be bankrupt in no time. It’s just a bummer for those of us who enjoy these product lines.

IK doesn’t exactly prioritize SampleTank and related libraries / product lines (which is what those are, just Sampletank libraries with different skins and customizations). Sampletank 4 was released 6 years ago. I would NOT be surprised to see it phased out. The fact that a retailer — Humble Bundle — recently sold SampleTank 4 for $1 US isn’t something you’d expect for a well-performing product or even a product line you expect to thrive (IMO, that greatly devalues a sub-brand).  I’d love to see ST 5 come out that was deep sampled and in the same league as Kontakt 8,  Pianoverse does provide evidence that IK is capable of doing an excellent job at producing detailed sample libraries. I’d love to see it and it can only help push developers forward.

But a company can only effectively support, maintain, and manage so many sub brands, so when you look at the size of IK (it’s a small company) and consider its breadth of sub brands, it’s no surprise that it is going to have make tough choices.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

2

[Brian]

Well Sampletank has been on the market for at least 20 years- I know because I have owned it for at least that long.  I think it was the first VST I ever bought, to use with Band-In-A-Box, before I got into regular DAWS.  I can understand why publishers retire stuff- especially for Apple, as they don’t really care about providing any backward software compatibility of their new hardware.  Totally off music topic, but (maybe?) on marketing.  I went to Walmart today for household essentials and saw a cardboard display for “Dunkin'” deodorant.  I would never have thought up donut scented deodorant.  There’s a challenge for you @Peter!  🍩🙋‍♂️

1

[Peter DeLegge]

On Brian said

Well Sampletank has been on the market for at least 20 years- I know because I have owned it for at least that long.  I think it was the first VST I ever bought, to use with Band-In-A-Box, before I got into regular DAWS.  I can understand why publishers retire stuff- especially for Apple, as they don’t really care about providing any backward software compatibility of their new hardware.  Totally off music topic, but (maybe?) on marketing.  I went to Walmart today for household essentials and saw a cardboard display for “Dunkin’” deodorant.  I would never have thought up donut scented deodorant.  There’s a challenge for you @Peter!  🍩🙋‍♂️

I also bought SampleTank with version 1. Back then, I loved it. I know I bought it a long time ago because I wrote songs about my son right before he was born and when he was an infant, and I used a bunch of SampleTank libraries to do so. To think, in those twenty-plus years they’ve only had 4 versions. So anyone who thinks I’m merely defending IK, that’s not at all it. I’m just stating the basics of brand management. For a small company, IK has a lot of brands, and many experts would say that they may have too many brands / product lines to manage effectively, considering their human and financial resources. Look at how long in it is between versions for SampleTank. I think version 1 to 2 was more than a decade, wasn’t it? Or am I thinking of 2 to 3? For a software product to go that long between major versions, it’s surprising. But then we do have other examples in this industry, like XLN’s AD2 and BFD3. But the top tier in the sample library world moves much faster than IK can keep up with at that pace. NI does a new major version every year, right? That’s what moves many of us to update Komplete every year (during the Summer sale!). For me, the least surprising IK product line for them to close out would be SampleTank, because they wait so long in between releases, and the product gets so far behind the competition — and the fact that they recently worked with a partner to sell it for a dollar. Of course, the product line isn’t focused on being state of the art,  but it always falls so far behind the competition that it’s no longer a serious player. It’s not going to be in the consideration set for the serious composer anymore. I mean, that’s fine. It’s clearly for the amateur market. But then you still have retailers offering the price for close to what superior competitors are asking, and the biggest sign that it’s not selling is IK selling through Humble Bundle — which is really a bit of a last resort for products that aren’t selling — for a buck. That would never happen to a successful product. Once a company lets that happen, that low price becomes the perceived value of that product line. So, even if they have ST 5 in the wings. It devalued that brand. I would never do it. I’m sure the brand or VP marketing rationalized it by thinking “we’re putting the product in a lot of hands and that establishes a marketing relationship with those consumers.” On one hand that’s true. but it does so much damage to that brand, it’s simply very unlikely to pay off and far more likely to harm the brand’s ability to command a fair price in the future.

With small companies, the reality is, very often, that they’re just not very strategic. They’re reactionary. But otherwise, overall, if a small company has a lot of brands — and even NI is a small company — and the new product takes off, brings in a great deal of revenue (relative to their other brands/product lines) and the margins are as good or better than other product lines, of course, they’re going to allocate more resources to that product / product line and that will likely mean that they will have to make cuts with lesser peforming product lines. Clearly, when they’re selling SampleTank for a buck, the entire SampleTank family of products is likely not their best performer or even a good performer. Right now, with their hardware products, new much more competitive lines like Pianoverse and their guitar line of software and hardware like Tonex, that looks clearly like where they’ll focus their resources. If ToneX is thriving, it would be an easy choice to allocate resources (human and financial) towards that product line than to invest them in an old, stagnant and neglected line that is seeing sales decline (which is clearly the case for the eliminated products and SampleTank overall) and would  need to be re-invigorated. Cutting the SampleTank product line extensions make me suspect that IK could be contemplating other really difficult decisions, like cutting the entire SampleTank line (again, they could go in the opposite direction and be looking to re-invigorate the brand). It appears rather obvious that they simply have too many brands and product lines to manage for their company size, and if they can’t afford to add the staff required to manage all of it, they need to make cuts or sell off the lines to other companies, if they’re valuable enough for that. It really seems incredibly obvious that what they’re doing is allocating their resources towards the new lines like Tonex, which, if sales are good and there’s a lot of potential for growth, is likely a very wise decision.

On a deodorant note. Back when I was actively writing my online publication on marketing and branding strategy, the PR agency that handle Axe deodorant contacted me, trying to persuade me to write about Axe body spray or some product line. The contact shared with me that the brand management team thought the product smelled awful, but it tested really well with teenage boys. But Dunkin’ Donuts scented deodorant? That’s different. I don’t know. But if there was Cinnabon, I’d be all over it! Haha.

Okay, I woke up in the middle of the night after dozing off really early, and what do I do? Write a long post on marketing and branding strategy. Isn’t that what everyone does? And yeah, I realize, most of you aren’t looking for that here! But for the few who find it interesting, here it is! This is basically the kind of writing I used to do on my marketing and branding strategy publication. Basically, it’s exactly it, only this is focused on the audio production market, which, as you can see, interests me a great deal.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

5

[joegyork]

Interesting discussion – I had no idea Syntronik was discontinued either – I got Syntronik 2 on a Group Buy a while back for around £35 so not a massive investment but I would be sad to see it lost (not that I have done anything meaningful with it as my composing has been pretty much on hold since then due to limited time and even more limited inspiration. I really hope that they don’t stop supporting Sampletank though as I have over £100 invested in Total Studio Max (the one that featured all the ST Version 3 instruments as well as Philharmonik (which I have done stuff with) and a shedload of other stuff. I also have ST4CS (I think) – the one with 30Gb of ST 4 instruments. I’d be very sad to see those become unusable but take the point on the Humble Bundle deal

3

[Peter DeLegge]

Okay, I got played by a troll.

I deleted dorkinshiningfoil’s troll posts and banned his account and IP after his last post (I don’t see a point in keeping inflammatory posts designed to cause problems and nothing else; when I see that someone’s clear intent is to troll, which violates our site’s policy, I remove the posts and the person from the site permanently). His first post looked clearly like someone who came here to troll, but I was patient and kind to him, considering that he just might simply be an honest person who didn’t read the site’s rules and lacks self-awareness. It was a red flag that he didn’t bother to comply with the registration form rule to supply a real first name, but used his username. I PMed him to answer his off topic questions and address some of his shots at the site, asking if he had additional opinions about the site that he wanted to share, that he could post them in the appropriate forum in the suggestion box subforum. Instead, he ignored that and decided to come back to this thread and make an inflammatory final post, making clear that he came here just to troll and leave. He wanted to post his own affilate links on the site and lashed out at me when I told him that it violates the site policy.

In the future, I’ll be faster to act on posts derailing a thread that appear to be nothing more than a drawn-out troll, which was his was clearly the reason he registered here — well to post his affiliate links.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

3

[MagicRuss]

On Peter DeLegge said

On Fleer said

Yep, sad.
Hope it’s coming back, tho.

Same for SampleTron. I was thinking about sending Dave Kerzner (who made those libraries from his collection of Trons) an email or DM to ask him if he’s going to release those libraries in another format, such as for Kontakt. He actually released a Kontakt library of a lot of those samples over a decade ago that I have and it still works and sounds great. If Dave let’s me share his response, I promise to share it at LinkedMusicians. As a major fan of Trons, I think Dave’s libraries are superb and I would love to see them live on.

Your friend who keeps the beat.

That’s a shame to see SampleTron discontinued.  I thought it had a good set of non-traditional sounds in addition to the classics.

2

[jude77]

This whole thread was incredibly informative.  I had no real idea about the inner workings/thinking of software companies and this really pulled the curtain back for me.  I would be very interested in seeing more posts along these lines.

3

[GoncaloL]

On Peter DeLegge said

On GoncaloL said

I didnt know that Syntronik was being discontinued.. that is not an old product at all and is a big red flag to me.

For us mac users this kind of pratice with “recent” products is really worrying

Syntronik was released in 2012. My background is in technology marketing. Thirteen years for a software product line like this one is a pretty good run.

Syntronik if im not wrong was released in 2017 and Syntronik 2 in 2021.

1

[Peter DeLegge]

1. On GoncaloL said

On Peter DeLegge said

On GoncaloL said

I didnt know that Syntronik was being discontinued.. that is not an old product at all and is a big red flag to me.

For us mac users this kind of pratice with “recent” products is really worrying

Syntronik was released in 2012. My background is in technology marketing. Thirteen years for a software product line like this one is a pretty good run.

Syntronik if im not wrong was released in 2017 and Syntronik 2 in 2021.

Okay, I just looked it up again, but this time I went beyond Google AI overview answer (where I got the original dates). You’re correct, @goncalol.

Considering that ChatGPT was stating that I had died throughout all of 2024 (they corrected it early this year), you’d think I would know better than to trust AI.  I stand corrected! But I did get a lot of mileage with my friends taking screenshots asking ChatGPT about how I died, and just plain dark humor. Okay, until my daughter told me that it was freaking her out to see that AI was telling people I died. It was fun while it lasted, but I’m sure there are plenty of people that still think I’m dead. LESSON: Always question the answers you get from AI. I’ll use the responses for a quick forum post, and I do use AI in research in writing articles, but I always check every source it provides to ensure it’s representing things accurately. But for a quick post, I didn’t take the time to verify the info. My bad.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

1

[Peter DeLegge]

On jude77 said

This whole thread was incredibly informative.  I had no real idea about the inner workings/thinking of software companies and this really pulled the curtain back for me.  I would be very interested in seeing more posts along these lines.

Haha! You’re probably the only one! As you can see, I enjoy writing about this stuff.

After years and years of seeing people forum posts stating that the digital audio production tools industry is doing poorly and attempting to explain to them that it’s actually doing quite well (which, let’s be honest, is rarely effective with people who don’t value facts in the first place), I finally wrote a blog post to share the facts. I’m confident that for all of us who love making music — or just dabbling with the tools —  even the doom posters, it’s great news, because it means lower costs for those tools. And we’re seeing it with effects plugins, with sample libraries… Although we’re unlikely to see it with physical gear due to US tariffs (so far, the tariffs only impact physical goods, not software) which are resulting in dramatic price increases for a lot of gear made in China.

The DAW, Plugin, and Sample Library Market Is Thriving, and That’s Great News for Home-Based Music Creators

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

2

[patrickwichrowski]

On MagicRuss said

That’s a shame to see SampleTron discontinued.  I thought it had a good set of non-traditional sounds in addition to the classics.

SampleTron has one of the best libraries of Tron and related. My only complains are that the last update messed with the graphics slowing everything in old PCs (I had to revert back to previous) and the name of the banks are little too diverse sometimes from the classic names they are known for.

Have the “Genesis – Watcher of The Skies” tape ready is a total winner for me 😀

https://linktr.ee/patrickwichrowski/

https://patrickwichrowski.bandcamp.com/

21

[Peter DeLegge]

On patrickwichrowski said

On MagicRuss said

That’s a shame to see SampleTron discontinued.  I thought it had a good set of non-traditional sounds in addition to the classics.

SampleTron has one of the best libraries of Tron and related. My only complains are that the last update messed with the graphics slowing everything in old PCs (I had to revert back to previous) and the name of the banks are little too diverse sometimes from the classic names they are known for.

Have the “Genesis – Watcher of The Skies” tape ready is a total winner for me 😀

New album soon!

My love of the Tron goes back to my childhood. Although I didn’t really discover Genesis until HS. I became a massive fan, and fell in love with Phil Collins’ drumming and Tony Banks’ keyboard playing. True story — maybe I’ll delete this later — but the guy who did the Genesis and Phil Collins videos was from my neighborhood, and my mom was friends with his mom and arranged for me to ride to the concert with Phil Collins in his limo for my birthday. But my youngest sister was killed in an accident that week. (I’ll delete that part of the post in the future, but it’s undeniably a part of my story).

I would buy every album that Phil played drums on as a teenager, and, beyond Genesis, I especially enjoyed his drumming with Brand X. I used to keep a Pro-Mark drumsticks / Remo drumheads poster on my wall with Phil’s photo on the wall from years earlier when he had long hair and a beard, which regularly led to my friends saying things like, “Wait, is that Phil Collins when he had hair?” as if they never could beleive there was a time when he had hair. I’m pretty sure that this was the photo:

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

11

[MagicRuss]

On patrickwichrowski said

On MagicRuss said

That’s a shame to see SampleTron discontinued.  I thought it had a good set of non-traditional sounds in addition to the classics.

SampleTron has one of the best libraries of Tron and related. My only complains are that the last update messed with the graphics slowing everything in old PCs (I had to revert back to previous) and the name of the banks are little too diverse sometimes from the classic names they are known for.

I don’t have M-Tron, but SampleTron is better than any other Tron library I have.  The one thing I’d like to change most though is their preset browser.

1

[Author]

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