[LinkedMusicians]

For anyone unfamiliar with U-he Twangström, check this out:

 

Looking it up with our Gear Reviews PowerSEARCH tool, I found a Computer Music review from 2019 that gave it 4.5/5 stars.

https://linkedmusicians.com/music-gear-reviews-power-search/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Twangstr%C3%B6m&gsc.sort=

 

Or you can look up the plugin here:

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/17-Reverb/5024-Twangstr-m

 

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

Welcome to LinkedMusicians, Will AKA @parallel-minds!

I’m going to tag a friend of mine and community member who does video game music to check this out @thor.

– Peter

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

On fretman said

Yes, make it the same for ALL the forums, please. Or, make it different for ALL the forums. I seem to have a thing for order,  not chaos.

The emoji reactions and will always be the same for all the forums. I think you’ve misunderstood something.

LinkedMusicians is a social media platform with forums. What I was asking about in the original post was changing the reaction emojis used on the social media walls. That system uses several reaction emojis and is entirely separate from the reaction emojis used on the forums. The forums all use the same reaction emojis, it’s technically impossible to have different emoji reactions on different forums, i.e., chaos.

My question is: do you like them and would you like it if we used the same emoji set for the forums? Again, the social media groups (right now OPEN MIC) use a different number of tree reaction emojis because it’s a different system, but we would use the same family.  Now it would be a bit more work to change the forums, so I wouldn’t do it unless people really like the new set (it’s much easier to change the emoji reactions for the social groups).

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

I’ve completed replacing the original emoji reactions in OPEN MIC with the new ones (above). I can replace them with the same ones for the forum too. What do you think?

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[LinkedMusicians]

@lamia6 Like me, you have a pretty diverse musical background — but in the end, I think you might also find this amusing. What do you think? My daughter is pretty candid when I show her designs, and she really liked this one a lot. So, we have the youth vote in — and it’s favorable!

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[LinkedMusicians]

I had too much fun making these. I had input from my daughter. My objective was to make these emojis fun and rock and roll. I’d love your thoughts. I’m not going to use all of them, because it’s too difficult to make out the features when they’re as small as they need to be for the reactions.

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2

[LinkedMusicians]

After trial and error, I replaced the LIKE reaction for OPEN MIC with a hand doing the sign of horns. The emojis are really small and it was difficult to make anything out. So, after trying some variations, I found one that worked best (the emoji you see above this text).

What do you think?

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13

[LinkedMusicians]

That’s awesome. I love it! Great job.

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

I just tried it. The problem is that with the layout, it was so tiny you couldn’t make out what it was. I even licensed the image! Well, back to the drawing board. I’m going to look for emojis that are cool and music-related that can be reduced to a very small size and still be easily identified.

• This reply was modified 4 days, 5 hours ago by LinkedMusicians.

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

I love it for the fun factor. My only concern is that some people might think we’re a metal community when we’re really an everything music community.

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[LinkedMusicians]

On Vst0nE said

when applied coupon its £0.66 to pay….not free

just tried USA address same $0.66 to pay so not free exactly

should it be free or not?

 

 

I just tried it, clearly the offer was modified since the post, that’s happened before with the PIB free with code deals.

But the fact is, now that it’s a measly $.66, it  qualifies you for a free plugin of your choice. I think this is a far better deal, and since I tried this, I’m going to complete the sale.

Mira still deserves appreciation for sharing the deal. I’m sure that most members will agree that this is a much better deal at $.66 for the monthly freebie. I already have the full version, so I’ll just give away the serial to one of our volunteers.

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

Great find, @Mira !

While I wish this was playable with single-note multisamples instead of being loop-based, it’s cool enough that I really want to play around with it. This could be a lot of fun when you’re working on early ideas and jamming.

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

You’d look really good in that shirt… 🙂

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[LinkedMusicians]

Hi, Brian. I was just about to post this one. You beat me! 🙂

I thought this plugin sounds pretty fun.

Best Service has it for a little less than UJAM direct. I think most of us own at least one plugin from UJAM — they gave away a bunch of freebies in the past year.  If you have any of their freebies you can pick up Latigo Percussion for $28.20 from Best Service — and get it for less using Best Coin (their loyalty cash).  If you don’t own anything from UJAM, it’s $37.93.

https://www.bestservice.com/en/deals/ujam_groovemate_latigo_intro_offer_7524.html?aid=ZBgL2roqVxRSujmR

It isn’t up yet at Audio Deluxe, but they often have the lowest price + they have a loyalty program, so that can further reduce the price + they have a free plugin with no minimum purchase. I’ll post it when it’s available.

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[LinkedMusicians]

On Vst0nE said

do you have direct download link please as i cant get through this foreign language

The link is at the bottom of the Instagram post. The small amount of text on the post was in English. The mixing engineer’s name is in Korean and English.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/fn2peixmpp5ok32aov9kh/ALDYjf9TBQnKvI8jXvSZRSY?e=2&fbclid=PAb21jcAQwyW5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA81NjcwNjczNDMzNTI0MjcAAafskakSjKBQ_YQq67X7JzxTgumnJsqWEpEkN2A-8TQsi39bpP_3akU3DlJR6A_aem_VWFk_KHkBuGbPn0LLQfGKQ&rlkey=mzgf7ub51p5mnkjcfq3ep5vqb&st=bntpj8o1&utm_content=link_in_bio&utm_medium=social&utm_source=ig&dl=0

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[LinkedMusicians]

UPDATE: I just added videos, most of them have preset playthroughs on the Best Free Synths page.

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3

[LinkedMusicians]

Does anyone think that any of the free synths from DAWJunkie should be on the list? Candidly, while I have chatted with the developer (Steve, who is an LM member), I haven’t had the time to check any of them out. I’m counting on our community to make recommendations.

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[LinkedMusicians]

@lamia6 Shouldn’t pretty much everything from the Usual Suspects be added to the list?

Granted, I realize that most of the people who use it are pirating, but it’s excellent — I’m told — and if you actually legitimately own the the original JP 8000 or JP 8080 ROM for use with their JE 8086.

https://theusualsuspects.io/

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[LinkedMusicians]

The sale is now on at Audio Deluxe too for $29.00. Like Plugin Boutique, AD has their own loyalty cash program and free plugin with your purchase. Be aware that the SPRING10 coupon code doesn’t work on this deal.

Using our Music Gear Reviews PowerSearch I found a review from Computer Music that gave UVI Shade 5 out of 5 stars. These were the PROS and CONS:

Pros
+Very extensive set of filter types.
+Good choice of modulators.
+Dynamic trigger options.
+Decent set of presets.
+External side chain.
+Intuitive graphic interface.
Cons
-Not much.

https://linkedmusicians.com/music-gear-reviews-power-search/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=uvi%20shade&gsc.sort=

 

Here’s the link to Audio Deluxe:

https://audiodeluxe.com/products/uvi-shade?sca_ref=9905602.8KvuZSaQ9x

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[LinkedMusicians]

@ttpenguins Thanks for catching that the copy does NOT include Big Steps or other paid expansions. I took that info from another source that apparently got it wrong (or there’s something from APD that he was told that I don’t know). Consequently, I revised the original post.

Here’s the info on the bonus pack that is included, which is the same one offered for free with purchases at the developer’s website:

Bonus Pack | Expansion for LittleOne
Bonus Pack is a selection of presets carefully chosen from all the commercial expansions released by Xhun Audio for LittleOne synthesizer. More and more presets will be added over time among with the release of new commercial expansions. The entire library can be downloaded for free. As for all the other expansions, it is compatible with LittleOne version 3.0 or above.

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

It appears that the 10% off code is still active, so you can bring the price down on this by 10% while that coupon code is still working:  STPATRICKS26

I’ll check into the Big Steps expansion.

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[LinkedMusicians]

Great share, @mira! Thanks, my friend.

I looked up “uvi sparkverb” using LinkedMusicians Music Gear Reviews PowerSEARCH and found the first two results were from Sound on Sound and Music Radar (which had a review originally featured in Computer Music Magazine). As SparkVerb has been around for quite a while, the reviews were from when the reverb was first released, 2014. Both reviews were extremely favorable and both had a table with pros and cons and the only con for each review was that the reverb was expensive.

If anyone wants to check out the results just click this link (FTR, the PowerSEARCH includes the latest reviews and archives; it contains the entire reviews at no cost from Sound on Sound, Music Radar (which includes Computer Music magazine review archives), Mix, Recording, FutureMusic, Tape Op, and a few more publications — all very high quality — I chose them personally).

https://linkedmusicians.com/music-gear-reviews-power-search/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=uvi%20sparkverb&gsc.sort=

Also, here’s the promo video for SparkVerb that’s up at UVI’s site:

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

A reminder, the 10% off storewide coupon code shared in the above post expires at the end of the day today.

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[LinkedMusicians]

On fossile said

thanks, for me, 40+ years of working with giant evil corporations seeking world domination (aka wall street etc) when i say “operations” – i mean as the corporate executive whole, not the folks on the front lines creating the products and maintaining them. 🙂 irresponsible compounding of debt is (in my speak) an “operating issue”.

anyways, i am hoping my few thousand dollar investment in NI and Kontakt platform instruments will be preserved… but i’m somewhat cynical that the same type of people running NI into the ground in the first place, will be able to discern the proper path forward…

I think you and I are in agreement that it is the actions of top-level management responsible for acquisitions, like the CEO and CFO, and strategy people that are responsible for NI ending up in insolvency. I wouldn’t fault the NI development, marketing, brand, support, HR, or sales staffs. They aren’t involved in all the acquisitions and resulting debt that led to NI’s downfall. Of course, I’d love to see, for example, Fender, buy at least Kontakt, and hire the team that has worked on it. While all of the debt they were under hindered progress, I think that team has done a good job and I have heard mostly good things from developers who work with them and still continue to have meetings with them through all of this.

@fossile, what company would you most like to see end up with Kontakt?

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[LinkedMusicians]

On Brian said

Good argument for Fender.  I would love to see them take in NI hardware and software, but not the other companies (Izo, etc) that were grossly over-paid for.  I suspect the seller of P.A. (to NI) is going to get it back for pennies on the dollar 🙂

I think the price any of these parts of NI will sell for is dependent on the competition for them. If there are indeed many companies discussing — and possibly — making offers, that, of course, lessens the likelihood that this will be a fire sale. That’s why the administrator’s first order of business is scrubbing the debt from the business, because it appears these are otherwise profitable sub-brands. If PA has been profitable and the debt is scrubbed, and there is competitive bidding, it could sell for a decent price.

The parties in these equations that is guaranteed to get a small fraction of what they put in are creditors.  So, they know that, and they’re just  trying to get as much as they can, knowing it will only be a small fraction of what they’re owed. But they don’t want a fire sale and there’s no need for a fire sale if there are numerous interested parties.

A fire sale would happen if these parts of NI had poor sales and were long neglected technologies, but that’s not the case. So, when you remove the debt, you have very attractive brands and business units. If the reports are true and the debt was at something like $240 million (that’s from memory — I wrote of it earlier) and the company was earning $25 million annual revenue, there’s no way those creditors are going to see anything close to what they loaned the company and no buyer would take on a company with that debt to earnings ratio. We can’t stress enough that the problem with NI wasn’t that their products aren’t competitive, the problem is all of those acquisitions made, buying companies when their prices were very high, and being saddled with massive debt due to that, especially when the market changed and interest rates increased. So, again, separate all of that debt from the picture, and you likely have an attractive business or businesses.

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[LinkedMusicians]

If the chatter around the NI M&A discussion is correct, the companies presently in talks with NI/NI’s insolvency administrator are Fender, Focusrite, Yamaha/Steinberg, InMusic, and Adobe — there’s also some social media discussion that deadmau5 and NI’s original founders (Haver and Galic) might be attempting to raise money to buy part of NI.

I have another blog post in the works that weighs the pros and cons of each of the above companies buying Kontakt (I’m just focusing on Kontakt due to my time constraints and my knowledge being the deepest with that product and its ecosystem). I would love to hear from our members, if they could pick the company that think would be best for the future of Kontakt, which one of those it would be.

My pick — by far — is Fender. It has proven that it knows what to do with an acquired software company with PreSonus. Focusrite would be a question mark. They haven’t been great when it comes to managing software. They’ve discontinued a lot of the software they’ve introduced. They definitely operate like a hardware company that doesn’t prioritize or even treat their software lines as equally important.

My concern with Yamaha is that HALion is already the second largest sampler in the industry and buying their competitor would create less competition in the marketplace, which would have negative impacts on innovation and pricing. InMusic would be a nightmare based on their terrible track record with software. Innovation would almost certainly stop as InMusic has a well-known history of not investing even in the maintenance of the software brands they’ve acquired (Air Music Tech and BFD top the list, but there are others). Adobe would be the the worst case scenario of all, as they would almost certainly turn Kontakt and any NI products into subscription-only, leaving current Kontakt perpetual license owners in a very bad position.

I’d love to get everyone’s thoughts. Again, this is a big deal to me because (1) most of the sample libraries I own are Kontakt formatted sample libraries (and I’ve spent a lot of money on Kontakt sample libraries) and (2) I have made a good deal of friends who are sample developers who I know are in a tough spot right now.

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2

[LinkedMusicians]

Now, I realize that I will lose some folks on this, but while one might think this is similar to what occurred with Gibson’s sale of intellectual property to BandLab, it’s actually quite different.

BandLab bought all of the intellectual property (IP), including the source code for SONAR, brand trademarks, and patents not the customer database or obligations. Gibson retained the legal liabilities and any remaining corporate debt of the original Cakewalk subsidiary. Of course, BandLab also hired core Sonar developers like Noel. Again, BandLab didn’t buy and takeover the Cakewalk customer database. We had to opt-in to BandLab’s database. With NI, the insolvency administrator is trying to scrub the debt from the parts of the company for sale and sell the various parts of NI, including customer databases as part of the core assets to ensure continuity.

When BandLab bought Cakewalk’s assets, they didn’t buy the obligations between Gibson and the users. That’s why those lifetime deals or any customer agreements didn’t have to be honored by BandLab. In effect, BandLab was saying to customers, “We didn’t make that deal with you, so we don’t have to honor it. That was with Gibson, not us.” Instead, BandLab attempted to buy the goodwill of the customer base by giving away product (what was once, and is now again, called Sonar) for free for a limited time.

From my understanding, the company that buys from NI has the option of doing what BandLab did and telling customers, “you’re not my problem.” The new buyer, for example, is unlikely to give your Komplete 15 license 10 years of free support — you bought that from a company with different owners, and legally, they’re not obligated to do that. However, not honoring existing NI licenses, while legally their right, would be brand suicide. So, I think it’s most likely that buyers will be honoring existing licenses to some extent, but likely limiting or ending support of older products. They may very likely do things like revise or terminate things like NI’s generous license transfer policy.

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2

[LinkedMusicians]

@fossile It appears that NI was well managed on a day-to-day operations level. It’s the acquisitions and massive debt vs. earnings that led to their insolvency. Their acquisition spree occurred during the post-COVID home-studio boom, so they paid top dollar for everything. When interest rates rose, all of their earnings went to paying down the debt (again, according to CDM’s report, their debt was roughly 10x their annual earnings).

So, it’s basically a given that there will be an asset deal — an intellectual capital transfer — where the buyer doesn’t inherit the debt obligations. No sane business person/company would take on the level of debt NI has accumulated. Those assets include NI’s user database and activation servers. Here’s where current NI customers should take note — the new buyer has a strong motivation to keep the activation servers running — they need to do that to maintain the value of what they purchased. So, it’s very likely that NI customers’ existing licenses will transfer to the buyer of the new company (let’s say Kontakt for this example).

For us long-time NI customers, when Francisco Partners first bought NI—they moved everyone over to the “Soundwide” ecosystem, and our serial numbers us there. Hopefully, that is what will happen in this case.

• This reply was modified 1 week, 2 days ago by LinkedMusicians.

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

On jude77 said

I’m glad to see you give this guy a shout-out.  He has a ton of plugins that really do sound good.  If you want to support him, but don’t want to go the full patreon route, you can also just make a donation of any amount you choose.

I’ve been recommending Analog Obsession for a long time. They’re included in the LinkedMusicians Curated List of Best Free Effects Plugins.

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1

[LinkedMusicians]

We presently have email alerts for the forum where members have the option to receive an email for every thread, or a daily digest of the emails from a forum/subforum (thanks to a fantastic web developer, community member and friend of LM, @lamia6 — she’s custom scripts, tweaks, and fixes on LM). I have contemplated doing an email that goes out for glitch sales and very short time-limited deals that are exceptional values.

No one else is doing it, and I think it would be extremely useful. The big thing — beyond the costs — that’s kept me from doing it is that it’s a lot more work. If activity picks up considerably at LM and people want it, I will seriously look into it. I’ve sent lamia6 a DM to ask her about some ideas I have to make it less work to accomplish (basically, I turn to her for my ideas on what’s possible! We’re both “idea people” — the major difference is that lamia6 actually knows how to turn the ideas into reality).

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[LinkedMusicians]

We (okay, I mean me!) added an Interactive Circle of Fifths. For those unfamiliar with the Circle of Fifths, its an important music theory learning tool. Like the Scale, Mode, and Chord Finder, these are custom tools for LinkedMusicians that I created for the site that are especially useful when songwriting and composing, but are also useful for all musicians. I labeled them Songwriting Tools because that’s when you’re most likely to be using tools to help you understand chords, scales, modes, harmony and the elements of music theory. Of course, all of that also applies to when you’re doing your own arrangement of a song/composition or soloing.

As always, your feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

The Interactive Circle of Fifths

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[LinkedMusicians]

Use this:

https://forms.zohopublic.com/mediaintegration/form/AASObjeqDelay/formperma/yI4V–Qp4CD9Q2pyvvJFOHODgHRp9mFxAzIkX44pxdI

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2

[LinkedMusicians]

On Xandre said

Do you think adoption of third party developers to create extensions is mandatory for any of the Kontakt alternatives to take over?

I think it all depends on the developer and the complexity of the libraries they use. From the conversations I’ve had with third-party developers, and a certain UVI developer I spoke with a couple of years ago — who I think is quite talented — was very clear that he was motivated to switch to UVI from developing for Kontakt, because he felt Kontakt was not strong enough when it comes to anti-piracy measures. I asked him what he thought of the scripting for UVI compared to Kontakt and he told me that he was able to do everything he wanted to do in UVI.

I’m not a developer or coder, so I don’t know how much work would be involved in porting libraries with sophisticated scripting to UVI. I know that is something that the  various sampler developers are all very focused on is making their sampler platform makes it easy for developers to port existing Kontakt libraries.  I could cite about a bunch of well known developers, but I don’t have permission. But pretty much all everyone with a sampler competing against Kontakt is focusing on this. That said, I haven’t spoken with anyone regarding the moves UVI is doing, and I do have a contact at Image-Line, but he handles their affiliate program. My guess would be that they would be making doing their best to make it easier for third-party Kontakt developers to come aboard their sampler. Any competitor is going to be doing that.

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[LinkedMusicians]

The Green Tag sale is over at Best Service, where you earn and can use Best Coin to further reduce the price, plus get a free plugin with your purchase (and support LinkedMusicians in the process).

https://www.bestservice.com/en/deals/big_fish_audio_green_tag_sale_50_off_7496.html?aid=ZBgL2roqVxRSujmR

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[LinkedMusicians]

According to industry chatter (which means this could be true or not true), Fender, Focusrite, Avid, Yamaha/Steinberg, InMusic, and AlphaTheta (Pioneer DJ) have all engaged in talks about acquiring parts or all of Native Instruments.

Of those choices, I’d greatly prefer if Fender took over Kontakt and its ecosystem. Fender has done a good job with software, based on their acquisition and management of PreSonus. I think Yamaha/Steinberg could also manage Kontakt and its ecosystem well, but they’re already a major software player in the digital audio space and own Kontakt competitor, HALion. Consequently, I prefer competition to one player owning too much (IMO) of the market. Avid would be an iffy choice, IMO. AlphaTheta seems to only be interested in NI’s DJ products, and that would appear to be a good fit.

The company I would not want to see with Kontakt and its ecosystem is InMusic. The company has proven to be terrible at managing software brands. They take old brands and don’t invest enough in them. They tend to treat old brands as cash cows, or close to cash cows. Look at BFD. BFD hasn’t had a version update in more than 10 years. It’s had more software problems than I could fit on a page. Then look at AIR Tech’s history of software problems. Then, when InMusic released a brand extension for BFD with BFD Player, it was a huge step backwards. BFD Player isn’t competitive with AD2 or EZDrummer. It’s a far lower quality product with sample libraries that don’t sound anywhere near the same league.

For my fellow music producers and composers, I recommend hitting the pause button on making NI purchases (that includes iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx products) until April to May 2026, after a preferred bidder is announced. Sales will always come around. Until then, purchasing any NI products and service is risky.

One more tip: Keep a PDF copy of all your NI serial numbers and purchase receipts. In an M&A scenario (as opposed to when a company merely buys the intellectual property of a company, like what BandLab did with Cakewalk) , the “New Owner” is legally obligated to honor existing licenses, but you are responsible for proving you own the products.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Best Mags / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

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[Author]

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