orangesporanges
My questions are, 1) do you like it? 2) Is the interface significantly better ,in your opinions 3) does it try to replace version 2 or does it stand on it's own?
1) Yes, particularly when used as the Default synth in BIAB.
2) Yes, definitely and in virtually all important aspects that immediately come to mind.
3) Both of these; replace and stand on its own are not necessarily mutually exclusive, depending on interpretation.
That is, ST3 can be used with or without all of the ST2-technology sample libraries (i.e. not only ST2 itself but Mirosloav Philharmonik, etc.). I myself find that integrating everything under one roof to be an advantage, particulary because I can't run Miroslav or ST2 in 64-bit Samplitude without running as admin directly or indirectly ("XP" mode).
Bitflipper mentioned that the best samples of ST3 are not up to Kontakt's sample library. I agree that as isolated sounds, this is true. However I have found in several cases that the Kontakt samples are too complex to mix well with other sounds so that this shared opinion can be quite misleading when taken as advice to avoid ST3 due to having sounds that are judged to be inferior.
ST3 is not CPU-light in my experience, even when using a quite capable machine, although this could be also due to the host DAWs (BIAB and Samplitude Pro X2 Suite), O/S (Windows 8.0), competition between plugins for CPU resources (especially my own acoustic modelling and Acustica Audio Nebula), etc.
Regards,
Dave Clark