Steinberg Padshop - loving it!

[Cruciform]

Some notes about it and this piece that I sent to a questioner on KVR...

http://soundcloud.com/cruciform/continuum

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The opening pad is a preset, "Aurora". It's only had some EQ and compression added and then a touch of reverb. It's there to just give some extra depth through the first minute.

At around 5 secs the next pad starts, a preset called "Analog Emotion". I used a lot of automation on it, mostly the envelope amount, resonance, filter cutoff and volume to really produce the swells and pullbacks. Those are all parameters on the preset. I added a little eq and a touch of stereo widening to it but it's mostly just the sound itself, a really inspiring lush pad. It creates and carries the depth of the whole song with the chord progression.

At about 5secs the bass saw also starts but it's a Reaktor sound.

Coming to 10secs, the bells playing the melody are a Padshop preset - "Airy Bells". I used a touch of delay to them plus a Camelspace effect that adds some slight movement in the resonance but it's so subtle it wouldn't be overly missed if I removed it. Also a little eq to shape it into the overall track.

Also around 12-13secs you'll hear a high gated saw come in. That's a Padshop preset, and it runs through the whole song. For the first section it duplicates what "Airy Bells" are playing. Then from 1:14 onwards it's duplicating the Reaktor saw.

Padshop is a beautiful, inspiring instrument straight up-front. Lots of great presets to start from. Main consideration is if your DAW can run VST3. The lack of ability to load your own samples into it seems to be another consideration. Apart from that, I can recommend it highly.

[fusilierb]

very nice! You've inspired me to break this thing out this weekend.

[Cruciform]

Cheers mate. Seeing as it's included with 6.5 it would be criminal to waste it.

[Kolstad]

Wow, St. Padshop sounds like a merger of Absynth, Massive & FM8 with world textures blended in! Love that..

[Cruciform]

Hey Magne,

Just to be clear, the vocals and drums aren't from Padshop in case the ethnic comment was in relation to the vocals in particular.

[AndyKotz]

$50!!!

I bought it Rob!!

It says it'll work with my Mac Pro Quad/Intel (16GB) with OSX Lion 10.7... I sure hope so!

I have to check and see if it's 32 or 64-bit...

[AndyKotz]

Must be 32 bit... I just opened Logic in 64 bit and I didn't see Padshop!

[AndyKotz]

Well... that was a waste of $50 bucks!!!

[Cruciform]

Hey Andy,

It's VST3. Will Logic run that format? It's supported by Cubase, Reaper (I think), Studio One and not sure who else yet.

If you have no luck with Logic try installing Reaper (it's free to trial) and see if it works in that. http://www.reaper.fm/download.php

[AndyKotz]

I've always seen a VST and VST3 folder in my "Plugins" folder so I naturally thought it was supported by Logic, but it's sure looking like a "Cubase-only" thing. I have other VST's that I think are working in Logic but I'm still investigating. I can't find any info where it states that Logic supports VST3's...