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Addictive Keys is a powerful tool for musicians, producers and songwriters, setting a new standard for virtual keyboard instruments.
With its unique sound creation ability, smart workflow and fast loading times, Addictive Keys is suitable for any production style or music genre. Mix and match different microphone perspectives, add professional effects and advanced envelopes to create truly unique sounds. Two years in the making, Addictive Keys is the ultimate blend of engineering, innovative design and creative expression. The standalone version is perfect for spontaneous jamming and live performances and the plug-in version support all major DAW hosts. Get the Studio Grand Free Version now, the Addictive Keys engine is included!
Addictive Keys brings a new level of creativity by offering an ever-growing collection of instruments packaged in an intuitive and easy to use interface. ExploreMaps offer production presets sorted by instrument and style, the preview function makes it easy to find the right sound for a production - or the inspiration to write a new song! The combination of great sound quality, fast workflow and reliable performance makes Addictive Keys the perfect music companion – at home, in the studio and on the road.
The Studio Collection bundle offers three world-class instruments:
Studio Grand - a Steinway Model D grand piano
Modern Upright - Yamaha U3 upright piano
Mark One - a Fender Rhodes Mark I electric piano
All instruments are available for purchase separately.
The Studio Grand is available as a Free Version with 3 of the recorded 6 microphone perspectives and 49 of the 88 keys.
The Addictive Keys engine is included in all offers!
It loads fast: Nothing's worse than losing your creative spark while waiting for huge libraries to load! Switching between presets or instruments in Addictive Keys is lightning fast.
Lots of presets: With presets ranging from all natural to downright weird, you can count on Addictive Keys to keep you and your music creative. All presets come with a short musical preview to give you an idea of its sound.
Mix and match mic perspectives: Fitting a piano into a mix can be tricky unless you can choose and mix different perspectives. Construct your own sound to fit your song by mixing and matching microphones.
Memo Recorder: So you're playing and tweaking and suddenly come up with something great - just hit the Memo Record button and save it instantly. The performance and the exact settings of the plug-in are captured and saved for posterity.
MyCloud: Got a computer at home and one in the studio? Need to switch to a new computer? With MyCloud, all your presets and memos are safely stored in the cloud and synchronized across your computers.
ExploreMaps: A visual way of exploring the sonic possibilities of Addictive Keys and its presets. Some ExploreMaps even have quick, basic controls for things like tone and effects.
Roadworthy: Addictive Keys is slim enough to run on both stationary and laptop computers without compromising sound quality, making the standalone version perfect for spontaneous jamming and live performances. Fast loading times and reliable performance will get you through the concert with flying colors.
Production tools: Mix and match different microphone perspectives, utilize professional effects, advanced envelopes and shape the sound into something special. The ExploreMap concept makes it easy to find the right sound from the production presets, or provides a great starting point for further tweaking.
Unique sounds: The Addictive Keys software makes it possible for us to offer the complete setup used to record the instruments. Any 3 of the recorded perspectives are selectable and tweakable on separate channels in Addictive Keys.
Just play: Inspiration can strike like a thunder or be as absent as child at chore time. Either way, Addictive Keys bring sounds to your creative ideals or helps by tickling your musicality.
MyCloud: The MyCloud online service automatically keeps track of all Addictive Keys user files such as memos and presets, synchronizing them across your computers, making them easy to access from anywhere. Even better, the presets can be shared with friends and collaborators online.
Memo: The memo function enables spontaneous recording of melodies and musical ideas at a push of a button. All Addicitve Keys settings are stored along with the music, and memos can be imported into most DAWs by simple drag and drop onto a MIDI track.
Addictive Keys offers great sounding instruments in an easy to use interface making it the perfect companion for both the busy music producer and the musician on the road. Addictive Keys is free to download and uses an online installer to download, manage and update the instruments. Purchased products or free products added to your account will automatically be shown in the installer as well as available updates making it a breeze to buy and update the instruments. For more info on how to install or create an account please visit the support pages.
Gallery: The Gallery view shows general information about the installed instruments and those available in the online shop. The bottom of the Gallery page show thumbnails of the available ExploreMaps for the instrument. An ExploreMap contains a selection of presets with a preview function. Some ExploreMaps have macro controllers for easy editing. Click an ExploreMap thumbnail to load the full ExploreMap in the Explore View.
Explore: The Explore view is a great starting point when looking for a specific sound and shows a selection of presets in the chosen ExploreMap. Preview a preset with a click of the play button. Some ExploreMaps have macro controllers – a fast and convenient way of tweaking sounds without having to go to the Edit page.
Edit: The Edit view provides endless possibilities to manipulate the sound. The top section contains the instrument-specific settings as well as the advanced envelopes features. The mid section shows the channel strip of the selected channel and the bottom section is the virtual room mic selector and mixer. Mix and match up to three different microphone perspectives, add easy to use professional effects and advanced envelopes for filter, pitch and volume and take full control of your sound.
Session Settings: The Session Settings contain adjustable parameters for master tuning, mod-wheel settings, velocity response and a large selection of temperaments with variable pitch stretching. Almost thirty different pitch temperaments are available covering most needs. The first temperament called "As recorded" represents the original tuning of the recorded instrument - a good starting point because the natural pitch stretching of a keyboard instrument is an important part of its authenticity.
The Instrument-specific section let you access settings like body resonance, pedal noise and dynamic range depending on selected instrument.
Pitch parameters like "Dissonance" and "Sample Shift', 4 filter types, and envelope curves for pitch, filter and volume can dramatically change the sound and timbre of the instrument.
The channel-strip in the midsection on the Edit page shows an input selector, noise section, pre-EQ Multi Effects slot, 3-band EQ and a post-EQ Multi Effects slot. Each channel has its own channel strip.
Input Selector - Chose microphone-perspective as input source.
Noise - Seven different kinds of noise originating from a tube microphone, tape machine, vinyl player and more.
Multi Effects Slot
EQ - Three-band parametric equalizer with gain, frequency and bandwidth
The FX Section of Addictive Keys consists of two identical Delerb units (a delay that is fed into a reverb). Each Instrument Channel in the AK Mixer Section can send to these effects.
The master channel has almost the same channel strip as the input channels with the exception of the placement of the noise module at the end, along with a filter module.
The installation and authorization of Addictive Keys and all instruments requires an internet connection on your audio computer, and is handled by the XLN Online Installer application – available for download at: www.xlnaudio.com/install
Download, unzip, run it and follow the steps to install and authorize all Addictive Keys products. For detailed information about how to use the Online Installer - visit the install page above.
After the installation is complete, the standalone version of Addictive Keys will appear in the Programs Folder in the Start Menu (Windows) or Applications Folder (OS X) in the “XLN Audio” folder. Run the application and click on the [Audio Settings] button in the top left corner to set up the audio output and input port for the MIDI keyboard.
Addictive Keys can be loaded as a plug-in in most major DAW hosts. When using Addictive Keys as a plug-in, the Audio/MIDI settings can be adjusted in the preferences of your host software. For detailed instructions how to load Addictive Keys in your specific host please visit: www.xlnaudio.com/how_to_load_plugins
The Addictive Keys software is created by the XLN Audio Team: Mattias Karlgren, Markus Dimdal, Martin Eklund, Lars Erlandsson, Niklas Möller, Thomas Larnhed, Andreas Mood, Staffan Gustafsson, Kim Lindberger, Kristin Sjöström, Tore Jarlo, Markus ‘Majken’ Höglund, Andy Simon, Gustaf Svenungsson.
Product Concept & Design Lead: Lars Erlandsson & Martin Eklund
Content Concept & Design Lead: Andreas Mood
Project Management: Thomas Larnhed
Programming: Martin Eklund, Mattias Karlgren, Markus Dimdal & Magnus Lidström. Additional DSP Effects by PSPaudioware.com & Michael Ljunggren. RTAS Windows wrapper by Arne Wallander.
Web Development: Markus ‘Majken’ Höglund & River Cresco
GUI Graphics: Bitplant
Additional Graphics: Martin Eklund & Staffan Gustafsson, 3D Graphics by Upper First
Testing and Manual: Tore Jarlo & Gustaf Svenungsson
Please visit the instrument pages under specifications for credits regarding the content products for Addictive Keys.
MAC: Intel CPU, OS X 10.5 or higher (32 or 64 bit)
PC: Intel or AMD CPU, Win XP / Vista / Win 7 (32 or 64 bit)
4GB free disk space
Internet connection
Logic 8 or higher
Cubase 5 or higher
Pro Tools 8 or higher
Live 8 or higher
Garageband 6 or higher
If you have another DAW/Host than mentioned above or just want to make sure Addictive Keys works on your system and host please download Addictive Keys and Studio Grand Free Version and try, or visit the support portal for info and contact.
To our families and friends for all your support.
To Maratone: Max Martin, Tom Talomaa and Tomas Ljung.
Johan Lenander for all the advice.
Magnus Lidström for being awesome.
Thomas Merkle for the nice pixels.
Julian Storer for creating JUCE.
Per Larsson and Niklas Flyckt at Sampletekk for the excellent recordings.
The suave web dev team at River Cresco.
Dirren at 15kstudios.com & Peder Bergstrand for image wizardry.
To our excellent beta testers and preset tweakers.
The makers of fine teas and coffees around the world for keeping us going all those long hours.
Fresh pooooots!