rtucker55
Yes,
 
Thanks Greg and Orange Tree Samples for the Great Sale, Gifts, and Contests.
 
Besides going back to the Group Buy for the free Angelic Zither, I had to make another purchase while I was there. Hope that's OK. 

I don't know Rick - the last thing anyone would want is even more sales!  
 
For the record, I finally made my purchase of 4 just a few minutes ago. 

So, if you had to choose only 3 instruments from Orange Tree sample, what there would be ? I know the choice is dependant of your personal needs, but, despite that, what are the ones which make you tell : Wow, it's so expressive and easy to get this expressiveness that it surely becomes my go to instrument and I couldn't pass over it!
If you could help me to make a choice, it would be great. 
 
 
 

Thanks very much for the feedback jimusic !
Oh, it's a pity you haven't tried them already, just to have your first impressions
Precisely, speaking about the basses, I had a little struggle with most Trillian electric basses to get what I wanted (at least, I find certain articulations not very flexible), and maybe choosing the Cherry which seems to be very versatile, could do the trick (?)

Thanks a lot Jim for your help !

Ok Mesh, thanks a lot ! 

First thing I did was retrofit the Rick into an old project, made a bunch of tweaks to adapt the original MIDI, set the Rick for the necessary drop-D tuning. But I used no EQ or compression, just what came out of Kontakt unaltered. Very pleased with the result. It transformed the song from a so-so uptempo tune to an aggressive in-yer-face rocker. I think the Rush preset will be my favorite starting point.
 
One other thing I did: I chose 4 round-robins and saved that as a separate .nki. IMO that should really be the default, not 32. That dropped the memory footprint from 730Mb to 324Mb. Of course if you have lots of both RAM and patience, you won't care about that.

I really just chose 4 RR's to shorten the load time and use less RAM, and I haven't listened closely to the difference between the different RR options. I may, however, leave it that way.
 
All my other libraries have far fewer than 32 (which IMO is overkill; it's a bass guitar after all!), and I've never once thought "gee, this would sound so much more natural with a couple dozen more unpredictable variations!". In one library (not one of Greg's), I actually went in and removed two of the four round-robin groups in order to be able to use it at all.
 

Hey Jim: Not yet ! But I think to get Strawberry, Cherry (the Rick seems to have a typical "rock" color (excuse for my English) and I hesitate between Passion Flute and Mesawinds...

Oh edrummist : Thank you very much for the congrat, highly appreciated ! The current language is ok but for certain expressions,it's harder. Anyway, thanks again !

Announcing SLIDE Acoustic Guitar Library from Orange Tree Samples. Coming Mid October 2013.

Extensively sampled--Approx. 3 GB total

Duration-dependent release samples

Palm mute and slide tap articulations

Performance Effects: muted string plucks, string slaps, chugs

Timbre-correct slides - correct timbre of the guitar is preserved when sliding from one note to another

Realistic exciting of the strings when sliding or playing vibrato

3 dynamic layers, 2x round-robin

Compatible with KONTAKT 4/5 (full versions)

$89 USD

More details and audio demos coming soon!

gregjazz

Announcing SLIDE Acoustic Guitar Library from Orange Tree Samples. Coming Mid October 2013.

• Extensively sampled--Approx. 3 GB total
• Duration-dependent release samples
• Palm mute and slide tap articulations
• Performance Effects: muted string plucks, string slaps, chugs
• Timbre-correct slides - correct timbre of the guitar is preserved when sliding from one note to another
• Realistic exciting of the strings when sliding or playing vibrato
• 3 dynamic layers, 2x round-robin
• Compatible with KONTAKT 4/5 (full versions)
• $89 USD
  
  More details and audio demos coming soon!

 

• Realistic exciting of the musicians/sample users when they learn about the new acoustic slide guitar library from Orange Tree Samples. 

I have been playing with EB-Rick last night and today.  It really sounds great!  Amazingly authentic.  The factory presets are fantastic and get you close to Rush or Yes or Lemmy or any of the bass heroes who used Ricks.  
 
My only concern is that it is a real memory hog.   So, I followed Bitflipper's note above and created/saved some instruments nki's with only 4 round robins for each of the Bridge, Middle, Neck and the whole Bass instruments.  Even just using 4 round robbins this OTS Rick came very close to maxing out my memory on my home office machine, which has 8gigs.  If I load 8 round robins patches I get memory warnings.  I had to use the "purge" setting in Kontakt to lower the memory consumption, which is okay as it then only loads the samples actually used in the specific project.  I can then save that purged patch for that project as a patch and the Rick acts more like other Kontakt intruments with more normal or modest memory demand.  If I try to load any other Kontakt instruments on top of the full instrument with 8RR I get memory warnings.  At first the Rick patch even crashed my office system yesterday, but that was trying to run more Round Robins.  So, my advice is to make some smaller sizes of the nki's.  Here are the files I made/saved to fit my office DAW. 
 
Full Rick instrument 4RR nki  which uses 3.47GB= 91% of usable ram
Full Rick instrument 8RR nki  which uses 3.95gb = 95% of usable ram
Bridge 4RR 3.23GB = 87% of usable ram
Middle 4RR 3.22GB = 87% of usable ram
Neck 4RR  3.23GB = 87% of usable ram
Neck 8RR 3.69GB = 94% of usable ram
 
I have not yet tried any of the OTS products I just bought in this group buy on my home studio DAW which has more memory= 16GB memory.  Obviously it will handle OTS EB Rick better and more round robins.  
 
BTW, I also tried Strawberry Electric and Acoustic-Steel; neither of these were memory demanding instruments.  They had "normal" or modest memory demand in Kontakt
 
I should state AGAIN that the sound of this OTS Rick is amazing.  I have owned several Ricks before and still own a vintage 4003 Mapleglo.  To my ears the OTS Rick sounds very authentic to me.  My only concern is the heavy memory consumption and the fact that I may have to use "freeze" on the track with the Rick the first time throuch or at least use "Purge" and save that as a preset for that specific project.  I probably will choose to use Cakewalk's SI Bass to first lay down the track, and then replace it with OTS Rick once the editing of the midi is done.  Like Bitflipper said above, I suspect that replacing other Bass tracks with the OTS Rick will make the bass stand out in the mix.  Good advice sir!
 
Summary==Great, authentic sounding instrument, but very demanding on memory.

Thanks Greg for asking.  My dfd is set to 240000.  Don't know why it is set that high, but seems like it was recommended to deal with large sample libraries.  What should it be set at to run OTS Rick optimally?
 
Again, the OTS Rick sounds amazing.  Glad to know that it should not take this much of the memory.
 
 [Edit:  I just lowered the DFD to 30000 and it is loading the samples faster and taking up less memory to finish the load.  Thanks for helping and checking up on us]

I think the default value for the DFD buffer is 64 KB. Mine is set a little lower, around 48 KB--the instruments load faster and take less RAM that way, and I haven't notice any problems in performance.
 
Of course, if you have your samples on an SSD you can actually set the DFD buffer even lower, in the 4 KB range, but that's still a very expensive option considering how much space you'd need for modern sample libraries.

Thanks Greg and Bitflipper for the info.  Really helpful!  
 
Greg, yes I think a "light preset" would be helpful to many users--especially those with smaller ram sizes.  I also realize my issue was my hiigh DFD setting in Kontakt coupled with the lower ram size on my home office DAW.  [My studio DAW has 16gigs so it will not be an issue there, but I will check the DFD setting to make sure it works well].  At the very least I have made some usable 4RR patches for Rick.
 
I just lowered the DFD setting again in Kontakt.  By doing this, the OTS Rick loads quickly and does not tax my office Daw.  Thanks for this advice!  [[Edit:  I just unchecked the DFD box, and the Rick loads quicker, even the full 32RR loads fine.  So, I think I learned a lot from this purchase.]]
 
Again, the sound quality of OTS Rick is OUTSTANDING.  Well worth the effort to get it tweaked for my system.  Thanks for helping us out.