Dimension Piano Expansion Pack Reviews?

It's totally unrelated **** like this that makes me want to stop giving back anything here.

Yeah, that's it. My cover has been blown. I'm really the CEO of Cakewalk; vacationing in Florida while still secretly pulling all of the strings. Get real. It's totally unrelated **** like this that makes me want to stop giving back anything here.

ORIGINAL: inmazevo

Anybody used the Rapture expansion yet?

b,
I've learned some of my best new info from you, though I haven't actually taken the time to say thanks properly.

THANKS.
You're like the encyclopedia of Cakewalk and synths.
I'm regularly amazed. (personally, I think Cake SHOULD pay you something).

Take care,
- zevo

Just wondering. Inquiring minds want to know. For example, where is "Anytown - South of Miami"? Can't find that on Mapquest. Maybe it's closer to Boston than we think, LOL!

I don't think the audio demos do this expansion justice and, in fact, I was considering throwing together a short demo of maybe 4 or 5 patches from each category, but I wasn't sure how CW would feel about that (and I got too tired).

I installed using the EXE. The DMG must be a Mac thing or whatever, so I skipped it. Anywho, I like the expansion pack. The pianos are nice. Some of the Orchestral combos are really beautiful. Does anyone know what the 'KU' on the piano names stands for?

ORIGINAL: Nick P

You know, I was about to make a standard comment that these type of sounds are so common in so many synths almost to make them nothing more than white noise, no matter how good the programming is. But then I stopped to consider again how good Rapture sounds overall. It's just a great sounding synth. Completely devoid of harshness, but not overly "creamy" either. Right in the middle. So these "evolving texture" type sounds, so prevalent in so many synths (even dating back to the late 1980s and all through the 1990s, hardware and software), do have a certain pleasant flavor when rendered in Rapture.
I guess it's the "I can write a film cue simply by holding down a chord on one of these complex evolving sounds - I don't have to know anything about composing melodies, arranging harmony, or creating counterpoint or orchestration within my compositions, I just hold down this chord and the money rolls in" attitude that I hear in so many bad soundtracks, especially in today's bloated "reality" television market that makes me suspect of the "evolving texture" genre of synth sounds in general. Of course that's just my personal bias. When used by gifted musicians who have also put in the hard work to their craft, they can be combined with more traditional elements of composition to create new electronic/traditional hybrids that can be quite satisfying. So once again, it's the musical skills, not the tools, which play a much larger factor in a piece of music being of a high quality.

So the Rapture set aside, I would really like to hear some demos of the different categories of Dimension sets from the Digital Sound Factory. Obviously the acoustic pianos will be of top quality, but what about the orchestral instrument additions? What are they, and how do they sound (I've seen the screenshots of the browser, I'm asking for more detail than that). And what about the new Rhodes, etc...

Finally, it's kind of strange and cool at the same time that synth sounds cross over between the siblings (DimPro and Rapture). Either one has the powerful RGC Expression Engine, capable of very high-quality synth sounds. I guess the choice of which to use would be based on how much modulation you want to do, and how much overhead you want to invoke in calling up either one (I think Rapture is more CPU friendly, but I may be mistaken).

I smell a konspiracy....