8Dio Steel String Guitar

[Conduit]

8Dio just released a new kontakt instrument, which is incredibly beautiful, as well as impressively realistic. I play guitar and I still want this.

Anyway, for all you people who want to add a splash of real instruments into your music, this is a great way too. It's also on sale up until February 1st, so its a good time to pick it up if your interested.

Get it here.

[PonE-Sharp]

8Dio. My wallet. It is yours.

Also, could you post a link to the site, please?

[Conduit]

Added the link to the first post

[itroitnyah]

Wow, this is really impressive. Money is of short supply here, and I don't own Kontakt anyways, lol. Oh well.

[PonE-Sharp]

Mother of libraries, this thing takes forever to load! I just hope it doesn't use up all my memory for FL studio...

[Conduit]

Could you post a short review once you have some experience with it? I want to know if its worth the money, since I don't exactly have a lot to spend in the first place.

[PonE-Sharp]

Could you post a short review once you have some experience with it? I want to know if its worth the money, since I don't exactly have a lot to spend in the first place.

Yeah, give me a day or too. I haven't really had a chance to test it much due to work, but I'll definitely be playing with it at every chance. I feel like a kid with a new toy.

[itroitnyah]

Alright, so as it turns out, FL Studio's plugin "DirectWave" can actually play Kontakt files, so if I did spend $139 on this, I could use it even without Kontakt! Yay!

[Dr_Dissonance]

Well, I was hiding away, but saw this thread and thought "Hey, I already have it! Lets see what others are doing."
I haven't actually used it yet though.
I am actually here because of Itroitnyah's comment.
IT WON'T WORK WITH DIRECTWAVE!
Why? 8Dio encrypt all their samples. This means it won't work with anything BUT Kontakt. A bummer I know, but ah well.
Just thought I'd speak up before you end up spending money on something you wouldn't be able to use.

[itroitnyah]

Haha, don't worry, I don't plan on buying it.

[Foxtrot89]

I'm curious as to how it handles strumming chords. I share a house with 4 other folks, so recording an acoustic is pretty much out of the question.

[PonE-Sharp]

After playing around with it a little I've found that it while it CAN be used for chords, it doesn't do it well. Most of the guitars here seem to be designed for solo play or very fast Spanish/medieval sounds. Perfect for me, but I doubt I'm the majority here. I also get the feeling they played a real guitar on their demo, as I cannot get my Natural Fingered to sound so fluid as theirs, and their sounds go on longer than the keys are pressed, and that doesn't sound like reverb that's keeping them going.

As far as it's built in effects go, I haven't messed around too much with them, but they don't seem very versatile, Specifically the reverb. It's so negligible you'll probably never hear it, even with all of it's cranks turned to 11. One effect I do like, though, is the velocity curve. This allows you to easily change the velocity in the form of an automation rather than doing each note individually, which I've noticed to be disappointingly absent from a lot of other Vst's, specifically East-Wests.

Another neat thing they have that they don't tell you in the video is the teal keys. These keys are samples that are pitch bent to frequencies a Dreadnaught normally wouldn't be able to hit. This makes for some nice bass samples if you don't have a Bass Guitar VST (I've actually yet to find one worth while. If anyone here knows of a relatively cheap one, please tell me.) Not only that, I couldn't even tell they were pitch bent until I read it in the manual.

All in all, a pretty decent vst, if a little specific.

[Foxtrot89]

I record my guitars in my dorm room.
If you know what you're doing acoustically it can change everything.

Getting the sound I want isn't terribly difficult, it's just not pissing off the other four people off that's typically the problem. Until my dad took his variax back I was using it to record "acoustic" stuff.

Keep in mind the "room" I'm currently set up in has a front and back door to outside (lots of through traffic) and has no closable door leading into the rest of the house, so everybody will be bothered by it, not to mention TV from the other room, people opening and closing the fridge that's 10 feet away, the obnoxious thumping of a house full of people who don't know how to walk quietly and my girlfriend's computer is about two feet from the one I record with. My current setup just isn't acoustic friendly.

Basically I have to line in with everything I record. All my amps line into the computer where I use cab sims and such too. I have one or two days a month where I'd be able to record acoustic, so I'd use a library like this as a rough sketch for when I can actually record the parts.

edit: For what it's worth, I'm thinking of giving orange tree sample's Acoustic guitar a shot. The artificial vibrato sounds a little sketchy, but overall it sounds decent for my intents, and perhaps others would find it a suitable sample library.

For bass, it depends if you want acoustic or not. For electric there are a handfull of decent libraries. NI-Scarbee basses sound nice, though they're not really for heavier genres. Pettinhouse has a bass library or two. (both of these options are ~$100, so they're fairly cheap) Prominy has a picked bass that's a little more suited for heavier stuff. Trillian has a lot of nice basses in it, but that's getting pricey. It's got all sorts of electronic, synth and accoustic bass sounds though. Well worth the money.