I usually find these freebies are a come on to make me buy something else. I see i get 50 free instruments with it. Anyone got it already and any advice on the usefulness of the sounds? any list available?

I don't want to clog my hard drive with stuff i'll never use.

Bob - I just installed it this week on my PC, and so far it seems like there's some decent stuff in there, at least for someone like me, who just needs a few additional good-sounding VST instruments. You can download the instrument list from a link at the bottom of the product page on the Info section. It's filled with a lot of loops and stuff like that but there were a couple useful ones in there that I like. As with other vendors, you have to download and install an app that let's you install and manage their products. The process to download and install the apps and the Sound packages was a bit more cumbersome than Kontakt Player for example, but once in place, it seems pretty manageable.

The sound components and VST files are quite large, many GB if you grab them all. The problem that I've encountered, which I have not fully investigated, is that it looks a bit too resource intensive for my PC, at least the way I have it set up now. I've been able to install and use Kontakt Player and some VST's and instruments from Spitfire Audio, and those seem fairly stable so far. It looks like the IK Multimedia stuff is a bit more resource intensive vs. those other two. Again, just based on my limited experience.

As far as the instruments themselves, they are pretty impressive, and they sound pretty good but the customization and control options in them are a bit overkill for me - there are literally multiple screens that control the instruments and response and MIDI controls, way beyond my current knowledge level. They also have a free processing tools like Guitar Rig 5, which is free, and pretty sophisticated.

Regarding their non-free offerings, they appear mostly focused on guitar and a lot of synth sounds, so you may want to consider that too.

Finally, I noticed that there were some pretty sweet instruments available in the SampleTank CS 3, the free predecessor. I found a posting in their forum where someone stated they were able to request CS 3 after trying out CS 4 and them import the instruments (which will definitely work - it shows that as an option in CS 4). I contacted their support and asked if I could get CS 3 so that I could import the instruments and requested politely twice but they said no, they need to keep me on CS4, which I understand, but it was kind of a bummer. They did respond right away, though, even though I had not yet purchased anything.

I know there are a few people here that have talked about and have IK Multimedia products, so you can search previous postings, but I hope that others can give some more feedback on their experiences with it.

That is exactly what the Free version is - it is a taste of the full library. But if you don't have these sounds in some other package and think you may use them, then it is definitely worth the price. Its FREE!



I agree 100% with you. So the trick is to install in such a manner that you can take it off if and/or when you discover you have never used it.

I have the much earlier full version SampleTank 3.0. It is huge, so I was able to install all the sounds on a secondary internal harddrive in \\Sampletank3 directory. There are tons of sounds that I simply don't like and have over the years acquired other libraries for these instruments. But there are still sounds which I find to be very nice, so I keep it around. Plus I paid dearly for it.

Oh, and regarding the complexity of the GUI. Most of the big packages have this complexity to edit the sounds to the extend a sound engineer would do. But, don't let the scare you off. Just don't use all those whistles and bells and knobs and things will sounds fine.

Bottom line, I bet you will find something in this package you like.