# Best Service Engine VST, Thoughts?



## GOODmusicONLY (Jan 14, 2022)

Anyone here familiar with Best Service?

I cama across their plugins the other day and was blown away by the quality of their libraries some dating back to the early 2000's sound AMAZING today!

Probably will get a few this month..

Curious if anyone is a current user or have tried them in the past?

Thanks,
Brandon


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## Rudianos (Jan 14, 2022)

I suppose the Best Service engine is functional. It does feel dated. But yeah some of their libraries sound great! I wouldn't hesitate on the Kontakt ones. But if Best Service cannot realized that their fonts look very dated ... what else are they missing. I had a couple of freebies on there, harmonica and melodica LITE. Functional I suppose.


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## GOODmusicONLY (Jan 14, 2022)

Rudianos said:


> I suppose the Best Service engine is functional. It does feel dated. But yeah some of their libraries sound great! I wouldn't hesitate on the Kontakt ones. But if Best Service cannot realized that their fonts look very dated ... what else are they missing. I had a couple of freebies on there, harmonica and melodica LITE. Functional I suppose.


Haha! Yea the UI is definitely old school.. 

Im definitely going to look into their freebies for sure! Im curious to know more from a UX perspective.. 

I'm looking for something I can use with the least amount of knobs/parameters that still offer a great sound.. Thats how I came across their products.

I'll definitely do some further researcher!


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## hessproject (Jan 14, 2022)

The Tarilonte libraries are some of my favorite that I own. The engine is another story...


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## GOODmusicONLY (Jan 14, 2022)

hessproject said:


> The Tarilonte libraries are some of my favorite that I own. The engine is another story...


Thanks @hessproject Im going to look into The Tarilonte libs!


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## danwool (May 1, 2022)

I just updated Engine from 1.x to 2.8 because I assumed it would allow GUI size options or scaling, but it looks like it does not. Is there a pref I'm missing? 

I've always been pulling for Engine as an alternative to Kontakt. It's stable and well thought out, but completely illegible on 4k monitors....my eyes aren't _that_ bad, but I have to use Mac Accessibility features just to see what I'm doing


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## Quasar (May 1, 2022)

Like most I suppose, I don't find the UI friendly at all, but this is not a deal breaker because the bottom line is I can load the libraries that use it (I have ERA II, Vocal Codex, Nada, and a French Musette), save whatever as a track template in Reaper, at which point I can simply recall the track, bypassing the UI entirely.

And unlike NI with their loathsome Native Access, you can still port your activation to an offline machine, which is exponentially more important to me. So for this reason alone I like Engine 2 a million gazillion times more than I like Kontakt.

The one thing that does bother me, is that a few times (2 or 3 times with Nada) the license status seems to go "missing", and I've had to contact Best Service so as to not burn my finite number of allowed activations. They've been totally cool about this, but I do wish it was more reliably stable in this regard.


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## danwool (May 1, 2022)

Quasar said:


> I can simply recall the track, bypassing the UI entirely.


This sounds like a Reaper-specific solution. Am I correct that there is no way to scale the size of Engine 2's GUI?

I might agree with you re Engine v Kontakt, but I avoid using Engine entirely because of the microscopic UI.


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## MarcMahler89 (May 1, 2022)

Some of their more prominent libraries, especially Emotional Cello/Violin, have received an engine upgrade in, if i remember correctly, 2021. Yes, the UI still looks a bit dated, but personally i dont care about that at all. If its functional and clearly arranged, and it certainly is for my taste, then thats all one can wish for - and the sound still holds up very well  For example concerning solo strings, i still mainly use their Emotional Cello/Viola/Violin line. In some regards (tone shaping possibilites & articulation flexibility) its even MILES ahead of their competitors.


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## Quasar (May 1, 2022)

danwool said:


> This sounds like a Reaper-specific solution. Am I correct that there is no way to scale the size of Engine 2's GUI?
> 
> I might agree with you re Engine v Kontakt, but I avoid using Engine entirely because of the microscopic UI.


I do not believe there is a way to scale it. Everything about this software is like going back in time to 1998 or something. The font is absurdly tiny and the layout is difficult to decipher. Just the way it is, unless or until they choose to modernize it.

To me it's like an ugly car that runs okay. It still gets me where I want to go, so I don't really care what it looks like. None of the graphics affect the sounds of the libraries.

But I would think any DAW would allow one to customize a track's settings and then save it as a template for future use.


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## danwool (May 1, 2022)

Quasar said:


> But I would think any DAW would allow one to customize a track's settings and then save it as a template for future use.


Since I'm not entirely sure what this means, perhaps not. But regardless, there are extensive parameters available in Engine. One presumably still has to work with Engine's UI at some point. 

I could care less about the aesthetic of Engine. Looks fine to me. It's just too small. If there's an Engine 3, maybe this will be addressed.


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## Quasar (May 1, 2022)

danwool said:


> *Since I'm not entirely sure what this means, perhaps not.* But regardless, there are extensive parameters available in Engine. One presumably still has to work with Engine's UI at some point.
> 
> I could care less about the aesthetic of Engine. Looks fine to me. It's just too small. If there's an Engine 3, maybe this will be addressed.


All this means is that you have a track in a DAW. You can decide what to do with the track. So you load a virtual clarinet, route it to a buss or the master, set a MIDI channel, maybe pan it or add an EQ, reverb or whatever...
...Now you have a clarinet track set up the way you like, and you save this track as a template, meaning that the next time you want to use it you just open the track from the template. You don't have to recreate its contents or settings.


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## danwool (May 1, 2022)

Oh. Obviously I can do all those things. Right. Setting up an Engine instrument in a template is a chore because of the GUI, but after that I don't ever mess with it much.


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