Dimension Pro virtual B3 vs 57 Drawbar Organ (powered by Kore)

'57 Organ beats anything in DIM pro hands down. You even have control over the drawbars.  It does not work in Kontakt which I think was a big mistake on NI's part.
 
Here is the review I posted some time back
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1877605
 
However do yourself a favour and check out the stuff from Genuine Soundware - Cheaper uses less resources and sounds much better.
http://www.genuinesoundware.com/
 
VB3 is the best emualtion around at the moment IMHO, only NI B4 II  rivald it and that's been discontinued for long time.
 
You get two manuals and pedel board, full control over all the drawbars, percussion, keyclick, distortion, leslie, microphone placement etc. I doubt if a sampled instrument will willr come close.
 
You can also down load the "Soundfonts.it legasy donation ware plugins" at the bottom of this page http://www.genuinesoundware.com/?a=downloads this included organized Trio which is an older, but still excellent, version of the VB3. (the Rhodes and Wurlitzer emulations in this pack are very useful too)
 
There are quite a few other threads, with some useful info and opinions such as this one.
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1924788

You are correct, it looks like I missed something in Dim Pro and I may have been doing it an injustice.  The following for the Cakewalk site. Note they are refering to this a VB3 as well, just to confuse matters.
 
 
The Virtual B3
--------------
Expansion Pack 1 features a new virtual emulation of the legendary Hammond B3(TM) organ. Each component of the original organ, including all drawbar levels, percussion level, keyclick, the rotary speaker, drive and cabinet simulator were precisely crafted to recreate all characteristics of this monster legend.
The Virtual B3 is packed in a sfz definition file, in the 'Virtual B3' folder.
Note that the three EQ on/off buttons of the element where the Virtual B3 is inserted must remain off, otherwise the EQ controls will adjust the drawbars level and the EQ parameters simultaneously. To EQ the organ sound, just chain the element and apply EQ in the client element.
Most VB3 factory patches are composed of three chained elements:
 
I will look into this, do a comparison and post my finding here, but it won't be for a few days. It was the tone wheel sets that put B4 II ahead of GSi's VB3. It will be interesting to see what version 2 of VB3 is going to be like. The buzz on the NI forum was it would be 64 bit native and have a completly new and improved engine.
 
Back to '57 Organ. if you want a taste you can download the free "Holiday Selection" pack for Kore player. one of the "instruments" is included.

Legion


Here's a keymap to the virtual B3 in Dim Pro: http://sonar.sonarama.com/index.php?title=Virtual_B3_Parameters

And I thought the Kore Interface was a bit of a Kluge - Looks intresting though, most of the key elements can be controled.

Hey guys - Legion mentioned above that the DimPro virtual B3 is from an expansion pack, correct?  Which expansion pack is it in?  I don't seem to have it and I'd like to try it out.

thanks man!  installing now.

Bonzos Ghost: Cool, I did not know that. So sampled DI without the cab would make them both sort of an X3 then and what you would call it would depend on the leslie emulation/impulse you then ran the sample through

But back to the original question.

I have had Dimension Pro's Virtual B3 and NI '57 Organ "side by side". The DIM pro organ is not bad and certainly very useful, but I think '57 organ has the edge. There is a colder, digital feel to the Dim Pro sounds, but in my opinion neither are as good as B4 II or VB3.

The Dim Pro Virtual B3 falls down in the amp and rotary speaker department. Like '57 organ it really benefits by being put through B4 II (inserted as an effect).

I got some very useful sounds out of Dim Pro by setting the rotary speaker depths to zero and routing through GSi's Mr Donald rotary speaker simulator. I also played around with some of the ACME Bargig preamps, putting them between dim pro and Mr Donald. Tamla Head seemed to produce the best results and I was able to get some good Jon Lord type sounds going.
 
The Dim Pro interface puts you off a bit, but if you were using, say a A-Pro keyboard with nine sliders to control the draw bars it woukd be a lot better.