PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production is the free version of sampletank worth downloading?

Although both IKM (SampleTank etc.) and NI (Kontakt etc.) run sales and discounts, I'll stick to IK for this one.

I had bought Miroslav Philharmonik CE at a sale price and downloaded the CS versions of ST2 and Amplitude to get the freebies. Philharmonik runs in its own player or SampleTank.

A few years later, IKM emails me an offer saying that if I bought/upgraded to SampleTank Max, I could get another of their premium instruments free. STMax included a few already so I decided to check it out—a bit pricy but it contained a number of VIs that I wanted including the Alan Parsons Imperial. Ok...

A few days later, GuitarCenter.com sends me a sale invite. I check it out and STMax is available for $299. !?!?! I double-check with IKM and all I have to do is register my purchase to be eligible for the freebie. So, for $299, I bought STMax and chose Miroslav Philharmonik II ($499 retail) as my freebie on registering at ikmultimedia.com.

STMax included ST3. I was on MacOS High Sierra at the time and everything worked great. A few months later, I had to update the OS to Mojave for another app and ST3 gave me major grief.

So, I contacted IKM Support and they said I would have to update to SampleTank 4. Really? I just bought (and bla, bla, bla…). Not only that, STMax still included ST3 so what upgrade path were they talking about?

I was not happy but I downloaded ST4 CS to see if it would work and that's when I discovered THE PLAYER IS FREE. Not only that, everything in my STMax and MP II bundles ran great — and still did when I purged ST3 from my system.

Instant free upgrade! Support should have told me this, of course, and I blasted them (gently) on their user forum for not letting me know this.

Since then, when the $99 upgrade to Total Studio and another inexpensive upgrade to Total VI came along, I rang the bells both times. I will never use everything I own, of course.

The Alan Parsons Imperial VI is the main one my wife uses. Although there's a Bösendorfer in the living room, it's rare that we record it anymore. She has discovered the convenience of VIs and as her engineer, I appreciate that.