Just wanted to get some opinions on which is better? 

Studio Instruments or Cakewalk Sound Center? I am looking to add some of the Sound Center Add on instrument packs, but before I spend the money I thought I would ask experienced users...

Thanks

Hey Joden . . . what kind of music you create ? What version of Cakewalk product you have ?
What kind of computer specs ?

There's a lot of great software synth add on packs out there, and I believe Studio Instruments and Cakewalk Sound Center are even included in Sonar X-2 Producer version, so maybe an upgrade would be better money spent.

Let us know more about where you're at, and more help with your questions will arrive.

...

Knowing what you have already and the type of music you produce would help make a reply more relevant but based on what we know.


Studio Instruments gives you some basic drums, nowhere near as good as Session drummer 3 (which in in the Producer bundle), some OK strings, an OK Electric Piano and a very usable bass guitar. Its not expandable. Its in all versions of X2, so assuming you have one of the versions of X2 you will know this already.

I am not too sure about Sound Centre, I have never really used it but it looks like a basic ROMplier with content that overlaps Dimension Pro. DIM pro gives you all sorts of tweakability that is not in Sound Centre. My gut feeling is Dim Pro expansions will give you more bang per buck in the long term because of the more advanced features in Dim Pro. The LE version of Dim Pro is included in all versions, but only Producer has the full version.

Well I guess it really does not matter. Knowing what type of music you are working on and if you had X1 or X2 Producer might have been helpful.

Edit: Glyn's answer is about as good as it gets with the info at hand

Don't be a dick.

if youre going to buy expansion  packs go rapture or dimension. the soundcenter is totally buggy. iff you like the bass sounds in si pull them into dimension or rapture. imho dimension has better sounding drum kits than sd3.
soundcenter only runs 32 bit too which is limiting. not worth your $.

Cool, thanks guys - good info.

btw it is X2 Producer I have- And I agree, Dim Pro 1.5 or Rapture would be the way to go, but I noticed these expansions at only 19.95 and just thought I would ask, as I too have never really much bothered with either SI, or Sound Centre.

I am using mostly "bread+butter" stuff, with an occasional dabble in more synth oriented instruments.

...as for the guy who said don't be a dick, I wasn't....I just dislike irrelevant comments instead of replies directly related to the original question. Which I thought was quite succinct and crystal clear...a straight comparison between the two VSTs ...from people who have used them, or actually know something about them.

Thank you again to those who offered practical and related information. I think I will stick with Dim Pro..

Cheers

the one good thing about the soundcenter price point is that you get the wav and sfz files from rapture and dim pro that you can pull into any sfz synth to and program as you like but that's about it...

Yes that's true ST, and certainly something to consider. Thanks 

The thing that you wrote that was of most value was that Sound Centre is buggy, I did not know that. And as I am planning to use them live, then "buggy" is certainly not the way to go!

Cheers