Analog Dreams 'is a heavy plugin, there's no denying that'

"MUST HAVE", " new X thing is INSANE", "Why you NEED x plugin". That's the classic bag of tricks a gearporn youtuber uses every time he talks about a piece of hardware or software.

All these NI instruments are a nothingburger and I agree with most of you. It's fabric XL in a NI box and nothing that you can't create yourself if you have access to the PC plugin.

I am more excited of what you can do with keygroups xl and a bunch of free single cycle waveforms.

Ultros wrote:LOL @ compression. comprehension*

I was waiting for someone to catch it

MGoolas wrote:"MUST HAVE", " new X thing is INSANE", "Why you NEED x plugin". That's the classic bag of tricks a gearporn youtuber uses every time he talks about a piece of hardware or software.

All these NI instruments are a nothingburger and I agree with most of you. It's fabric XL in a NI box and nothing that you can't create yourself if you have access to the PC plugin.

I am more excited of what you can do with keygroups xl and a bunch of free single cycle waveforms.

Nothingburger

MGoolas wrote:
All these NI instruments are a nothingburger and I agree with most of you. It's fabric XL in a NI box and nothing that you can't create yourself if you have access to the PC plugin.

I am more excited of what you can do with keygroups xl and a bunch of free single cycle waveforms.

I get why the NI stuff gets hyped; as its big deal for the youtube beatinfluencer crowd/synthinfluncers crowd.

Also Maschine/NI fanbois also feel this is a big deal gamechanger; but its not a far cry from the sounds already available within the NI eco system.

Regarding analog Dreams specifically, I did not rate those sounds, they had a somewhat static, inorganic, sterile tone imo.

I would of preferred if they came with Soul sessions as that is the better sounding play instrument; but i guess the other play packs will come in time.

Personally I am not over-awed by the NI integration; yes its good move business wise, but I am more interested in what else is coming from Air instruments; as they have done such a great job thus far.

Now if they somehow was able to get kontakt player running standalone so u could run 3rd party libraries; that would of been more impressive, but maybe with the next gen hardware this would be possible.

MPC-Tutor wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTNgZQIqAuA?si=-D5rYhf1yQLXLLM0&t=361

Just saw this video where he refers to Analog Dreams as being a 'heavy plugin'. Not knocking this guy personally, this is more a rant about how people seem to be falling over themselves over the NI plugins, building up some mystique that really isn't justified IMO.

These NI plugins seem nothing more than a re-purposed Fabric running a different sound library. In the original Kontakt instrument, each patch effectively consists of two very small single velocity keygroup instruments, each made of 15 WAV samples (notes C1 to C5, note stride 3), total instrument size ranging from just a few mb up to around 30mb.

So when you load a patch, you are effectively loading a 50MB instrument. This is the pause you are seeing, it's no different to the pause you would get when loading a 50MB kit or keygroup instrument in the browser. This is what makes the plugin seem 'heavy', but it's just pausing to load samples on the fly.

The instruments themselves are basic, they do not even feature multi velocity or round robins.

Technically it seems there isn't much going on there that is not already present within the MPC already (for example, the touchscreen 'blending' of patches is just like the XY pad interface with a different GUI). This is not running a modified version of Kontakt or anything like that.

Not saying it isn't a good sound set or a useful UI to mess around in - in fact I'd love it if Akai made a repurposed Fabric UI available for everyone to import their own instruments into. People just need to step back a bit with the hype.

I wholeheartedly and completely agree 100% with you. Even though someone could be snarky and say, "no wonder why you say that because you are selling your own expansion." I can safely claim that all your products are heaps above this nonsense.

The fact that nonsense like Analog Dreams is taking code from sample engines they wrote a decade ago, stripping away controls, putting a colorful GUI on top of it, and selling it again to a new unsuspecting audience is an atrocity.

I much prefer completely optimized Sampler patches from the extensions like yours. I am the happy owner of some of your extensions and know a thing or two about sampling, so I can tell a lot of love and thinking went into these, and they speak quality. I prefer quality over quantity any day of the week.

Keep up the good work.

P.S It also says a thing or two about the "expertise" of YouTube armchair product specialists and reviewers and the sad state we are in right now. To make it clear, I wouldn't complain if NI expansions (that are actually heavily stripped down versions for the AKAI ecosystem ) are like $9 with a clear explanation. But they are being hyped to nonsense.

T

tomatoattack wrote:I wholeheartedly and completely agree 100% with you. Even though someone could be snarky and say, "no wonder why you say that because you are selling your own expansion." I can safely claim that all your products are heaps above this nonsense.

Thanks, appreciate the kind words. To be clear, I don't have any issue with those plugins from a quality or pricing perspective, my point was more about how each one seems to be built around approx 120 very simple keygroup programs and the underlying software is clearly not Kontakt,but (and for the benefit of some observers) 'IMO, it appears to me as a layperson without any documented evidence that' it's something they've put together from existing 'MPC components' (and why wouldn't they?). But surely no more 'heavy' than loading a 50MB keygroup program (again, IMO....)

I think £25 for 120 keygroup programs with a nice GUI that allows touchscreen blending of the 2 parts and some modulation & FX is actually a decent price (except when you remember that the Kontakt version of Analog Dreams is free!).

If you have kontakt.. many people don't have any NI period.. why not get some sounds that are more integrated with your system if you want some NI flavor? Especially if you don't even use a computer.. these have an audience, people get mad that everything is not made for everybody.. Akai never claimed this was a new engine or that current kontakt owners should buy these..