Amplesound - Martin D41 Free Lite version

It's roughly 10% of the samples of the full package (up to the 4th fret only, 2 vs. 4 round-robins), 16- versus 24-bit files (not a problem) and no slides or harmonics. Should provide a nice taste of the full package and perhaps even be useful on its own. I'm gonna give it a go too.

The "G" is an electric guitar, a Les Paul. A subset of the 4GB full instrument. Probably worth a download as well.

Got AGML installed. It's a 208MB rar,  728MB decompressed. Installer includes 32- and 64-bit VST plus RTAS and AAX versions, plus a pdf showing the differences between the free and full versions (user documentation is online only). I only installed the 32-bit version, which was 701MB installed. Both a standalone executable and a VSTi plugin are included.

The installer asked me where I wanted to install it (I put it on my sample drive) but did not ask where to put the DLL, so after installation I dragged the dll into the cakewalk plugin folder and ran the scan.

I dropped it into an existing project with a finger-picked acoustic guitar and got instant gratification. First observation: it's more CPU-hungry than my other libraries. The project ran at about 69% on the first core before inserting AGML; after adding AGML it jumped to 83% and required bumping up the ASIO buffers to be able to play without dropouts.

Sound was quite good in solo, but I had to roll off a lot of low end to make it fit into the mix. This is normal and not really a bad thing, because you'll want that fat-bottom sound when featuring the instrument on its own. 

AGM is not a Kontakt library. It comes with its own integrated player. That's a plus for those who don't own Kontakt. At AGM's price point ($169) it's more expensive than most Kontakt-based instruments such as Pettinhouse Acoustic Guitar at $99. It's competitive with Orange Tree Samples' product, which at $179 requires that you also have Kontakt and Vir2 Acoustic Legends ($200) that uses the free Kontakt player.


Bottom line after first impressions: if you don't currently have a nice acoustic guitar sample library, grab this freebie at once before they change their minds. If you already have a bunch of AG libraries, this won't add much to your collection (but the full product might).

After some additional experimentation, my enthusiasm for the product has dimmed a little. Sound quality is good and I like the controls. But this is one seriously resource-hungry VI, on par with Diva (but without the quality settings to mitigate the problem). It makes Omnisphere look miserly by comparison.

I think I'll stick to Kontakt-based instruments.

I found that out the first time I ran it. Then it keeps popping up "BUY NOW" dialogs, stealing focus from whatever plugin you'd been working with. I will probably uninstall it later today.