Meh...

Each year I look forward to seeing what new wizardry PG Music cooks up for the new release. This year, I'm sad to say, I'm underwhelmed with a release that seems a fitting end to 2020. There's usually a new feature I'm super-psyched about or some RealTracks that I can envision using but not this year. Not really.

It's not that the new features or tracks are bad, they just don't blow me away like some past releases. It feels like a very low-key update. To me it's like the team said, "Well, we have to put something out there for 2021. I know! We'll enhance what's already there, slap some new Real Tracks on it, and call it a day!" I'll buy it before the end of the month and re-evaluate at that time, but nothing I see in the marketing materials that makes me think, "Wow! I can't wait to get my hands on that feature!"

Feature-wise, I believe I'll use the Utility Tracks and the fixing sour notes within the polyphonic audio the most I'm sure. The rest of the enhancements are pretty... meh. The ability to work with the audio, etc, is negated for those of us who use an external DAW. Maybe, I'll use it at some point? But I already do this kind of editing within my DAW.

The 24 bit announcement is probably the most exciting part of this entire release.

What really brings this 2021 release down for me though are the new Real Tracks. I haven't been this disappointed in years. There's an abundance of Jazz, New Age, and World Music on this release. None of that excites me in the least. I do use jazz basses on tracks from time to time and I know there are those who will relish these tracks, but for me and what I do, I'll probably never touch them. I would like to hear the "Bonfire" and "Sad Ballad" set 374, but there were no demos loaded on the webpage. I've wanted some updated bluegrass stuff for some time now, so I'm hopeful for these but won't know until I can hear the demos. I'm disappointed too that there wasn't more vocal stuff added this time around. The vocals made quite a splash when they were introduced so I'm surprised to see so little added.

Like I said, I'll pick it up as I do every year but I'm already looking forward to next year and hope it's not as flat as this year's release.