Dimension Pro Electric Pianos

I don't know if I would get DP for the electric pianos. Rhodes definately not, but the Wurly is ok(4 very similar that more or less sound like EQ is different). The rhodes show just about no response at all, just two characters more or less.

The hardware modeled emulations of MrRay(2.2 or 73) and MrTramp is much, much better response, in my opinion. It's free to use as well, but I will donate some to this guy. Really nice stuff. www.soundfonts.it is the url.

And the emulated ones have a lot of settings to vary the sound and response more to taste. The sampled ones are pretty much what the creator of samples likes.

But there are a lot of other reasons to get DP of course.

Well, that's basically because a "right" sound just doesn't exist. Sound quality is just a subjective perception, which is always compared with the pre-cooked idea of what is something which "sounds right" in our head. In the acoustic piano thread, you will see that many users sometimes prefer a more synthetic, looped, compressed piano to one which really sounds like a real piano. The same applies to any sound, sometimes unreal is good.

The MrRays are great, no doubt. However, they won't do it for me. They are good and warm in the hard registers, but the tines are just not there, as they are not in any of the modelled pianos. Samples are static and to recreate them perfectly you'd need a huge set, but still the way to go for the best ep's imho. Here's a snippet I played, rendered in both MrRays and DP piano.


http://www.rgcstuff.com/External/EP-DP.wav
http://www.rgcstuff.com/External/EP-MrRay22.wav
http://www.rgcstuff.com/External/EP-MrRay73.wav


I really find DP ep's to be much more responsive to playback, specially if you use a heavy/mid action controller. Still, the rays are a great achievement for not using samples.


-René

Thank you everybody for your opinions. I agree that it's a matter of taste. I've tried MrRay and MrTramp and got a mixed feeling. It's great, but it's lacking something. I kinda like MrRay73, but, as Rene said, I wish it had more tines to it. I think I could use it in a context, though. From the samples here, I think DP Rhodes also sounds beautiful, but it just doesn't have the edge (the bite) it needs for some styles. Perhaps it has if played a bit harder, I don't know. :)

MrTramp, in my opinion, sounds far and away from real Wurly (or whatever a Wurly sounds to me), and I wish this is what DP could come at least as a fine alternative.

But rest assured, I would not buy DP just for the electric pianos. ;)

Rene - I could have chosen a better term than "right". Certainly you and your team are expert at sampling and delivering high-quality sounds in your instruments. Let me just say that for me, as someone who spent many years on gigs w/ a real Rhodes, the DimPro Rhodes just doesn't do it for me.

However, BTW, I did purchase Rapture at the clinic. And I will most likely purchase DimPro when the full Garritan Personal Orchestra is ready for it. I like the idea of a common user interface, and even though it probably doesn't matter, I like "keeping it all in the family" i.e. using a Cakewalk host and Cakewalk synths. At least for now!

I have two dreams for the Cakewalk synth/sequencer line, one long-term, one short-term.

Short-term: That someone would publish a complete tutorial, start to finish, soup to nuts, on Rapture. Written for the beginner to the advanced. With plenty of test projects, i.e. sounds to create, and much on step generation and modulation routings. A similar product would be the "Missing Manual" series written for various computer applications and published by O'Reilly.

Long-term: That Rapture and DimPro would evolve, possibly augmented by a similar drum-centric app, to be a complete production environment for modern dance, film-score mock-up, etc. This would be along with the evolution of Sonar and P5, which next version should move pattern-based composition even further into the mainstream (back into the mainstream!). Now that's not to say that Rapture and DimPro are not almost there in their current state. Just that they keep evolving. More patches for Rapture, the Garritan Personal Orchestra promise realized for DimPro. Those two evolutions would go a long way towards the complete production environment I mention. All within the Cake universe, and all using the same interface (GUI of DimPro and Rapture being very similar).

All of that being said, Cake has it going on in my book. These instruments are amazing!

Long-term: That Rapture and DimPro would evolve, possibly augmented by a similar drum-centric app, to be a complete production environment for modern dance, film-score mock-up, etc. This would be along with the evolution of Sonar and P5, which next version should move pattern-based composition even further into the mainstream (back into the mainstream!). Now that's not to say that Rapture and DimPro are not almost there in their current state. Just that they keep evolving. More patches for Rapture, the Garritan Personal Orchestra promise realized for DimPro. Those two evolutions would go a long way towards the complete production environment I mention. All within the Cake universe, and all using the same interface (GUI of DimPro and Rapture being very similar).

I would LOVE the next instrument to be a GREAT drum centered one. I don't know what I would want exactly but something combining velocity with redrum with bfd etc.... just a great all around drum synth the way Dim and Rapture are for what they represent :)

Great news!!! I love that concept of LL Session. :)

ORIGINAL: lfm

ORIGINAL: Kelsin
I would LOVE the next instrument to be a GREAT drum centered one. I don't know what I would want exactly but something combining velocity with redrum with bfd etc.... just a great all around drum synth the way Dim and Rapture are for what they represent :)

I do not think DP is fit to do drums because you don't have multiple ouputs. So it's pretty useless for that I think. If to go deeper into drums I feel that multiple outputs is a must to be able to treat different part of drumkit separately as needed.

There are so many specialized plugins for drums I think and DP can never compete with these anyway.

The strength of DP in my way of seeing it is to playback a variety of sound and to fix zillions of presets based on those to get other characteristics out of them. The combination of effects and tweaking is really interesting.

We were having a slightly OT conversation, I wasn't saying DP is great for drums, I was hoping that the next instrument Cakewalk makes (after Dimension and Rapture) was a Drum centric one.