Hi, I have read a lot of comments here and else where about Rapture Pro, most of them not very flattering, I am looking at purchasing it for my son who also uses Rapture, Dimension Pro and Z3TA 2 among quite a few others, I originally balked at it at release time because of the many unfavorable reports, but he keeps pestering me, has much changed since then ? I see 2 updates, but still read plenty of negativity. So where does Rapture Pro stand now ? are there to be any further updates ? or is it dead in the water ? Is there a demo ? I can't locate one.
 
Thanks

The demo is here http://www.cakewalk.com/P..cts/Rapture/Try-Rapture

Thank you, is the Command Center required to install and activate etc ? or can it be done without ?
and any comment on the current condition of Rapture Pro, are there still issues with silent patches and load times etc ?
is it still going to get updates ?
 
Thanks

The Command Center is part of the system requirements for RPro. I have not played all 15000+ programs in my installation but I believe the major issue of programs not playing was mostly a configuration problem. When the appropriate registry entries were made the legacy program played properly. IIRC, there was a problem with a Galbanum package not playing which was finally resolved with the last update. The load time issue was resolved by adding an index similar to DPro and Rapture (except it is built on the fly rather than using F5). I did not have many of the issues reported here. I primarily use the synth in SONAR.
 
Historically Cakewalk synths do not get frequent updates. There is not much of a history with the current Gibson Brand Cakewalk to speculate on the frequency of updates to RPro. The product has both phone and email support. The best people to ask would be Cakewalk Customer Service. They handle pre-sales questions.

The original iteration of RapPro had problems finding extra libraries, for the most part.  3rd party stuff.  All mine are now showing up in RapPro, without me having to do anything extra.  And like scook, I haven't hit every note for every program, but haven't found any missing samples.
 
Also like scook, Cake doesn't usually do updates once they have a synth up and working.  I wish they would make a concerted effort at new programs/samples.  Since there seem to be a few issues in rapPro Cake should hopefully do one last update, but it doesn't stop me from using RapPro as a main synth.  It is a relief to have 2 great old synths under one faceplate now, with even more programs and real time control.  Works great w/ SONAR's latest real-time audio recording of soft synths.  It is like Cake has an integrated plan or something.
 
@ 

We were told another update is on it's way months back, but then communication about it seemed to have disappeared entirely. There are some usability issues and many presets are not normalized (some sounds are loud, some are quiet).

Most of the issues were resolved with the last service pack, but we still await what we were promised. So far the silence is deafening.

There are also some big issues with Z3TA+2 still not fixed from years ago. I've come to the conclusion Cakewalk are just not interested in fixing their plugins unless hundreds of people are screaming from the rooftops. I thought Cakewalk would have changed here considering they do a pretty darn good job with Platinum, sadly it's business as usual when it comes to the plugins.

I will in future will be buying plugins from suppliers who are interested in fully supporting their customers, even if I have to pay more for it.

Ah ok, thank you all very much, I have been talking with a few people on other forums who have purchased Rapture Pro, and they have said similar to what you folk have reported that things are by enlarge fine with 'legacy' stuff now, and that things are generally better than they were at the start, however they also say that there are issues still remaining with Rapture Pro and it's own factory sounds, patches, with as has been mentioned here volume issues among patches and various patches not producing sound at all.
 
So we have discussed it and decided, at the detriment of my wallet, that my son would be happy to go with either Native Instruments Kontakt, or Serum or u-he's Hive coupled with IKM's Sampletank 3, and take advantage of the current group buy with the free expansions from both IKM and eSoundz, which could end up a good deal, rather than something which on all accounts doesn't seem to be up to the standard set by other parties in the game, and which may or may not receive any further development to reach that standard, basically being dead in the water. Much better to support companies who continue to support their products when there is such obvious shortcomings.
 
Thank you all for your comments, thoughts, and most of all honesty.

Kontakt is, of course, the standard sampler these days, but expensive.  And the standard library that comes w/ it is not as good for my purposes, any way, as Rapture.  But Kontakt rules if you add extra libraries to suit your taste.  Many are cheap, but not all.
 
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I rely on Kontakt every day - I also agree that the default factory library sounds are good, but within any given category they are pretty limited. 
 
There are libraries available for free and some incredible others that can cost quite a bit.
 
Even Native Instruments releases Kontakt instruments/sounds - like their new Brass expansion (cannot recall exact name).  I did listen to the demo, and it DOES sound mighty.
 
Dim Pro is the included free sampler provided with Sonar (not sure what comes in with anything other than Platinum, but Dim Pro certainly does).
 
some of the Dim Pro sounds are quite usable, and indeed I just literally yesterday afternoon replaced a solo violin I had been using Kontakt 5's factory content for, with a violin patch from one of the included expansion packs for Dim Pro that I had - from the Garritan Pocket Orchestra. It actually sounded much crisper and less reverb on the recorded samples themselves (with no effects - conversely, the Kontakt's factory content violin had too much reverb even with all effects turned off).
 
So, you will have to listen and decide for yourself - I ended up with both, and use Dim Pro for some sounds, and Kontakt for others.  I look at potentially picking up additional Kontakt libraries as needed for whatever projects I have coming up, or if I come across one that just sounds great enough to know that I want to replace/augment my existing libraries).  I do not seem to ever need to go seek out expansion packs for Dim Pro, because there are really really good libraries available for Kontakt and Kontakt IS indeed the king daddy sampler available on the market.
 
Bob Bone
 

Mostly it works for me. Over the weekend I had sonar crash while using it. Usually it works fine. I was using Galbanum when it crashed.