Steinberg HalionSonic is good for such bread&butter sounds.
They switched to software licencers some time ago, so no more hazzle with dongles as with older Steinberg products.
Edit: The actual version would be HALion Sonic 7 Collection … I’m still on HALion Sonic 3 …
On Windows (I know this thread is a Mac joint) Xpand!2 has been kind of hard to go wrong with. Pretty sure the 2GB sample library is now about 20 years old I think and the Ui had VGA Tiny Pixels Holdover Syndrome, but the library was some nice clean work and they really checked the variety boxes very diligently and the little 4x submixer setup actually offers a lot of solves. Even the FX are not horrible. Have to say those guys did a pretty nice job with it.
FWIW, I downloaded the betas for all of the AIR VIs that I have (or had) licenses for. I could only find the iLok license keys for 3 of them, so that’s what I installed. They may have added VST3 and Apple Silicon support, but that’s it. They haven’t touched the UIs, and that’s the reason I hadn’t installed any of them on my new laptop, which has a 4K display. The “new” versions are just as difficult to use from a UI perspective as before. Too bad. Hybrid 3 and Xpand! 2 are decent sound sources.
Thanks for the tip! I successfully ‘reactivated’ my Hybrid 3 on my MacBook 
Just keep in mind to deactivate the GP license before the system is wiped. To my experience the Deskew support desk is rather fast, but there are no guarantees…
Little tip, may help… check out the accessibility features specifically the Zoom feature in MacOS. Might help. As I recall the default is [Cmd]-[Opt]-[+] or [-] to zoom in out. Several options for mouse tracking etc I think.
I’m on Windows, running it at 200% on my laptop OLED 4K display. Xpand! 2 is kind of workable for me, but Hybrid 3 is more difficult for these old eyes. BTW, these are the beta VST3 UIs. Neither UI is adjustable in size. If they are, I haven’t discovered the method to resize them.
Just wanted to say thank you to all who replied on this one. Lots to think about and explore, many potential solutions. This community is one of GP’s biggest strengths.
I have and use them both often. Windows also has a magnifier accessibility feature that may help. Also I tend to make a GP widget(s) and control them that way from a GP rackspace panel.
Another thing that’s maybe a bit more of a deep dive; but for a stage gig might be well worth the KONTAKT prep time, is flushing all the samples, pre-loading by rehearsal to have only the ones needed, then saving that - from KONTAKT - as a custom stack or whatever they call it. Not a snapshot but a full binary custom instrument. I can’t remember the proper proprietary official KONTAKTENTERMINOLOGIA but somehow KONTAKT gives you a means to do just that.
I understand that this method can load blindingly fast too if that few more seconds is really critical and your going to miss a flashpot or something… do stages still get blown up and stuff? I don’t know what the kids like to see these days…
The kids nowadays probably like to see what we liked to see. To quote Ron White “when you’ve seen one, you want to see them all.”
j/k
I actually have NO idea. I came before the mosh pit era. Not sorry I missed it. 
Concerning Kontakt, there are a couple of different things you can do. The first is called “Batch resave” and the second is removing all of the instruments samples that aren’t being used (not sure how/if this would even be useful in a live situation).
Batch resave to reduce instrument load time
This is pretty “talky”, but it may be helpful to see what the article above is discussing.
I do indeed hate the licensing phone home requirement for Zenology Pro, however it is generally the first plugin I go to in starting anything that isn’t a piano or guitar part. For anyone who has worked in the Roland hardware world, Zenology Pro just speaks to you and the workflow is very easy. It also sounds AWESOME!
Me too, as even for a lifetime key ,you need an Internet connection once per month. As soon as they stop this, I will buy it. But, they will probably never do it. 
Well, at least it isn’t like the UAD plugin activation model… (see my rant from earlier today)
Cant go wrong with the Triton/Triton Extreme for Bread and Butter keyboard sounds.
It has about every type of sound in one module so makes quickly browsing for patches easy. Also has fast loading time and is stable.
Its basically like carrying a Real Triton to a gig except Gig Performer makes it easier to organize your patches.
For specialized sounds it isn’t the best but better than alot of stuff and easy to get to.
One thing I enjoyed is the Reason Rack plugin particularly the Id8 instrument, I would recommend the Triton over it but I had an incident where I couldn’t license Gig Performer and pulling that out in a Rehearsal I was quickly able to switch sounds on the fly which is a hard task for a computer setup without gig performer. So that little module can be a life saver.
Hmmm — Unfortunately, I would’nt be that sure about this. It is not the first time that we hear about crashes of this plugin. 
This sounds great OP-X PRO - Sonic Projects:
It is true that is sounds very good and the famous song libraries is huge. But, only the last version of OP-X Pro 3 is optimized for working with GP. Forget older versions.
