Kev1

I can see where you're coming from (I think). It would work in a quirky Final Fantasy setting. It's definitely a theme for a "weird" kind of game rather than a traditional guns-a-blazin' shoot 'em up, blam, blam, BLAM - I've just taken your head clean off, kind of game.

Very lovely. I wish I could play like this! It's like saying goodbye to an old friend, but knowing that you'll be seeing them again next year. My only gripe is that the sound of your piano sounds a little bit dull. Perhaps some crisp reverb would really make this track sparkle?

This is good. My preference though would be to have a long decaying reverb on some of the instrumentation so as to add that spatial awareness which marries so well with these types of games. "Good thinking material" which is what you need when planning a strategy/creeping forward/watching for enemies etc. Some of the sounds are a bit sharp and obtrusive which just need to be tweaked down in the mix so that they don't jump out at you and jar the already great atmosphere that you have constructed. Nice work.

I went from Silver to Platinum and have never looked back. Yes, you get 3 mic positions on all instruments (except piano), and the option of 24 bit samples, which have a wider dynamic range over 16 bit samples. Play's own reverb is processor hungry, but to be honest, the samples are so good, you won't really need any additional reverb. There are a mountain of DVDs to load up, which took me around 17 hours! I use this with Cubase 4 which works well with about 3 or 4 instances of it loaded. You'll need to have a reasonably spec'd computer as it works by streaming the samples from the HDDs. Depending on how ambitious you intend to be with your mock-ups will determine whether you should go the Gold or Platinum option. I do a lot of documentary work for Discovery and Nat Geo, so I need to have as realistic sounding libraries as possible. I've been using Cubase ever since Atari ST days (remember those???), so it's the only DAW I've ever used, and can therefore not comment on any other. As regards to your monitors, if you're happy with the sound, then carry on using them as your ears will already be calibrated to them and be able to make a more accurate judgement on mixes than you otherwise would having to get used to a new set of speakers. Plus, you don't have a huge budget to play with, so it would mean you could spend more on the kit that you really need. Hope that was helpful. Just noticed that the last post in this topic was in May! Did you get sorted? Which library and which DAW did you choose in the end?

If you can afford it, then try and go for Platinum - there are far more articulations at your disposal. I use that and am impressed with the 3 mic positions of all instruments (except piano) so that you can create really lush sounding textures by mixing in the surround mics, or just having quite intimate pieces by only using the close-up mics. It's a huge amount of DVDs to load up though - took me 17 hours! I use XP 32 bit, so it can only handle at the most, 4 instances loaded up in Cubase. After that, I find that I have to start rendering audio, as drop outs and splats randomly occur. I will be switching to Windows 7 64 bit in the near future with an Intel i7 980x chip (6 cores) and 12 gigs of RAM (the motherboard can take 24 gigs of RAM in total), so it should really fly.

A reasonable midi mock-up. There's some very nice peices in this. You must be bursting at the seams waiting for the live performance! I hope you will you be posting it! Nice work.

The unfortunate quality of the triggered midi sounds are not doing this piece of music any justice what so ever. I can see (and hear) that there is an interesting score going on, but you should really substitute this for the audio performance ASAP. I look forward to hearing it...