Left Behind - who hasn't been Raptured?

Funny subject title!

It's kind of weird. All of this giant hype and build up. A full week after the release date and it's like "all quiet on the Rapture front". Does ANYONE have this instrument? I haven't checked the P5 forum yet today. That's where bRock and his boys hang out usually, so maybe the action is over there. But I was hoping for a bunch of user reviews and user-made MP3 examples and so far nothing. Maybe no one has it yet.

I agree with you totally. Sub-standard customer service in this day and age is absolutely unacceptable. If you can't deliver a product on a certain date, then don't promise it. So far it seems that the only people that have this synth are the designers and a few reviewers and beta-testers. If they promised 2/27, then 2/27 is when it should have been in my local GC IMO.

I find this is becoming the norm these days. From video games (HL2, anyone?) to vapor video cards to Vista to PS3 to bluray to when we're pulling out of Iraq. Timelines are seldom met these days. I'm not really angry at Cake. I sort of expect this sort of thing. And I've already accepted the fact that Cake is a techie driven company - which means good product, bad marketing, and missed deadlines. It is what it is.

Audiomidi.com says they have it "in stock". They're usually pretty reliable. Now whether they have it "in hand" or "on its way" I don't know.

Yea I guess Sweetwater is the one. I have dealt with them and they do deliver. I was waiting on the edirol smart card audio recorder. But edirol won't ship it. You have to place a wait a see order then edirol will ship. I say that's not the way to do business so I just let that go. If edirol wants my money they can conduct themselves in a normal business fashion. But that is Edirol. Not cakewalk. My thing is this I like to support Local business and use Sweetwater for the hard to stock stuff. If my local won't stock it Then I do sweetwater because it just makes good sense to spread the money around. Don't want my local to go belly up. Same for Sweetwater.

There's the only reason for any lack of technical Rapture posts on my part.

Come over to my joint and you can ogle at the box. Then, if you promise to be good, I'll even let you read the first VI pages of the manual. That oughta give you a leg up on the tech talk.

You guessed it, FedEx dropped by today… Somehow they managed to avoid the wormhole that gobbled them up last time.

b rock

Just called Sweetwater and they say they have it in stock ready to ship ($199 + free shipping).

I'm still on the fence - would hate to have a "deal" suddenly appear in my email from cake for $149. Any chances of that happening in the near (1 month or so) future?

I just got a hard copy of Rapture, so they are pressed and shipping. I must say, the presets go far beyond the examples on the site. Now, whether it can be rotund or not, (y'all like everything like your sounds double-wide?) I'm working on that now.

Where'dja getit from AT?

I'm still on the fence - would hate to have a "deal" suddenly appear in my email from cake for $149. Any chances of that happening in the near (1 month or so) future?

What are the chances of it being bundled with p5 v3?
Perhaps they will bundle it and come out with Rapture Pro for sale? Sound Familiar?
I am waiting, well it paid off for z3ta+ didnt it? But While all of you were talking and enjoying it I was waiting....

Here are a couple of places that will have it or already recieved it and can ship asap.

Perfect: we have choices. Thanks, Mike.

ORIGINAL: cityrat

Cours I had to wait 10 min to get my "personal" salesperson.

How jive is that? I HATE that about that company. They stick you with a "personal technology engineer" at random the first time you call, then you're stuck with that guy for life. And what's with the lack of diversity within the sales engineer ranks there? All male, all white, mostly 30-somethings, mostly hair-challenged. I get their catalogs and now they have "personal input" on the various pages from these guys. I once spotted an African American gentleman, but turned out he worked in the shipping department. Same for women. I spotted one, but turned out she is in human resources. Are these guys kidding, or what? Okay, rant over.

To end on a positive note, Rapture is one BAD synth!

Okay, rant not over. These guys in general make me feel bad about my career. They sort of exude this "you'll never make it in the music business vibe". And their fearless leader in that is this Jeff Radke sales manager guy. I bet he's got a bunch of Def Leppard T-Shirts he keeps in real pristine condition.

Now, rant over.

Just called Sweetwater and they say they have it in stock ready to ship ($199 + free shipping).

Listen: Sweetwater just called me back (literally 2 minutes ago), and they got *three* copies of Rapture in early. It was supposed to be Friday, but those are in stock right now, for the terms stated above. Mine's on the way, so I thought that I'd pass this along.

Call (800) 222-4700, Extension 1289, and speak to Dave Brow. Tell him that "B" sent you.
[This has been a public service announcement, and in no way necessarily reflects the opinions or views of the Cakewalk organization, or this reporter.]

ORIGINAL: whitefalcon

I'm still on the fence - would hate to have a "deal" suddenly appear in my email from cake for $149. Any chances of that happening in the near (1 month or so) future?

What are the chances of it being bundled with p5 v3?
Perhaps they will bundle it and come out with Rapture Pro for sale? Sound Familiar?
I am waiting, well it paid off for z3ta+ didnt it? But While all of you were talking and enjoying it I was waiting....

I've got more Virtual Instruments than I need right now, especially in the VA (or virtual digital oscs with virtual analog everything else, whatever) synth department. The only way I'm going to end up with Rapture is if it's on deeeeep discount for ppl upgrading to P5 v.3 or something like that.

Still looking for a good acoustic drums solution though... DKFHS was ridiculously unmanageable (anyone want it?), and Battery 2... well I love the interface but the kit doesn't have enough velocity layers. I may be picking up the acoustic studio drums disc for it at a discount here pretty soon though, if I work Ebay right.

... looks interesting, though it doesn't really go into any detail on how many layers the various components have. At this point I'm only going to buy something (after shelling out $250 for DKFHS) new if they say, "well, the snare has x layers and l/r samples and the bass drum has x layers and the toms have x layers but no l/r samples...."

ORIGINAL: agincourtdb

... looks interesting, though it doesn't really go into any detail on how many layers the various components have. At this point I'm only going to buy something (after shelling out $250 for DKFHS) new if they say, "well, the snare has x layers and l/r samples and the bass drum has x layers and the toms have x layers but no l/r samples...."

I'm sure you've scoped this situation out thoroughly, but I've found in many years of programming drums that the overall sound seems to matter way more than how many layers of each drum are present. I realize that makes certain articulations more realistic. But for basic patterns, etc... I think just a couple of variations totally covers it.

2 thoughts: 1) The LinnDrum was able to achieve some amazingly realistic drum parts with only 1 snare sample. If you ever get a chance to hear the demo you would be amazed. I have it and could probably get it for you somehow. 2) Many drummers in the late 70s and early 80s like the great session drummer Jeff Porcaro prided themselves on making each snare hit sound exactly like the others. In other words he (and most likely his colleagues) were AGAINST variation. Of course that's for pop and pop-oriented stuff. But maybe the variation thing could be compromised.

On the other hand, the player (Nir Z) has tons of attitude, and the sound is really in your face. To me that's way more important.

Just my .02 of course.