strav100 wrote:I got Notion-SLE on a whim a year ago but haven't used it much. I upgraded from Sib 5 to 7. What a disaster. There is no playback with 7 - it's a mess. So I'm looking at Notion again seriously - I have the VSL Special Edition and SE Plus sounds, so is there any point in upgrading to full Notion 3?
There are significant advantages to upgrading to the full version of NOTION, which currently is version 3.2, and one of the significant advantages is that you can use VSTi instruments from a virtual festival of third-party sources, including all the IK Multimedia virtual instruments, which incidentally are on sale in the superb 15 Year Anniversary Group Buy 2x1 promotion, where you purchase one qualifying product at a 15 percent discount using the 15YEARS promotional code and then you get a free software-only downloadable product of equal or lower MSRP value, which if 5,000 users participate goes to 3x1, which maps to getting a second free software-only downloadable product and can map to an overall discount in the range of 75 percent . . .
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NOTE: The rules for the 15 Year Anniversary Group Buy promotion are a bit complex, and understanding the rules requires in-depth knowledge of the IK Multimedia product line, as well as how to qualify for crossgrade pricing and what counts as a "hardware" product, but it is not so difficult to discover the algorithm that maps to the greatest discount, and there are posts about the various strategies in the IK Multimedia FORUM . . . ]
15 Year Anniversary Group Buy (IK Multimedia)You also can use VST mixing, mastering, and special effects plug-ins, but the key distinctions are (a) approximately 10 GB of NOTION orchestral and symphonic sound samples and (b) the ability to extend your sound sample palette with a virtual festival of third-party VSTi instruments, which is quite handy if you want to explore other genres like
Rock and Roll,
Rhythm and Blues,
DISCO,
Pop, and so forth that have a lot of synthesizers and electric guitars, where for example this is one of the
DISCO or
Pop songs I am developing for my pretend musical group (The Surf Whammys), and everything except the singing is done with music notation and IK Multimedia virtual instruments in NOTION 3, where the NOTION 3 generated audio is recorded as soundbites in Digital Performer 7 via ReWire on the Mac, where it is mixed and mastered with T-RackS 3 Deluxe (IK Multimedia) with loudspeaker monitors that are calibrated with the ARC System (IK Multimedia), which is fabulous . . .
"Feel Me" (The Surf Whammys) -- July 28, 2011 -- MP3 (8MB, 300-kbps [VBR], approximately 3 minutes and 38 seconds)Fabulous! 
P. S. With the full version of NOTION 3 and a carefully selected set of VSTi instruments and a DAW application like Digital Performer (MOTU) on the Mac, you can do songs in
any genre, which is simply amazing, really . . .
Really! 