CyberGene
Perhaps, CG, but PT costs pennies by comparison. I believe I paid about $49 for my last upgrade.
If I may be truthful, one of the reasons for my disdain towards ACD in general is the fact that I fell for all the hyperbole, “it’s the holy grail,” and I’m talking back when they actually shipped you a box with a bunch of DVDs!
Here, I’d been running Sonar Producer 8 on my good ol’ Dell without any problems whatsoever, but then the ACD arrived in a box containing 7 DVDs, and no, my trusted Dell could not handle this monstrosity, but I thought to myself, “hey, this is the holy grail, so it deserves a computer worthy of it;” long story short, I bought a new computer with a flashy SSD, faster CPU, more RAM, etc, and whilst the “note drops, and overall glitching” was gone, it was no more than something pretty lo look at but not something to get intimate with (if you get my point). I swore never to “fall for it again,” and ever since I’ve only owned the VI-Labs Ravenscroft, which I must admit, I didn’t hate (sounds like a mix between a harpsichord and a piano), but still the hassle involved in dealing with VSTs plus the never-ending search for the holy grail, and all the money that goes with it has led me to believe that I prefer my on-board CFX (P-515) even if it’s not as detailed, and I’m expecting on-board pianos to keep getting better (NUMA?).
Yes, I “blended” PT with my on-board CFX and the results were pretty good, but at the moment I don’t even have the computer next to my P-515, and yes, I’ve been fine with the CFX “bunch of samples” + modeled resonances (so sue me)!
