antler

Which ones did you get?

Ah yes - forgot about those plugins!

The 100-limit appears to be gone too. It's worth checking out their 2023 roadmap video - their vision/plan is certainly cool https://musio.com/coming-soon/

UI design seems to borrow heavily from Sonible.

I do wish they'd make two adjustments with respect to their JamPoints: Put a readout of how many can be used in a transaction. I know I can pull out a calculator and multiply the price by 0.7, but (1) it'd be more convenient to see immediately how many I can use; and (2) I wouldn't have to guess for rounding up/down. Always deduct the points that are about to expire first. The last time I made a purchase, it deducted some points I got for free and left the ones that were about to expire.

Here's my personal take on it: Things like fixing scripting bugs, or making sounds work with a free update to e.g. SampleTank would reset the timer. MODO Drum was a special case. The update added three new kits (I think) and some code updates to the host plugin. It was a significant change such that they wanted to charge for it (e.g. how Cubase charges for x.5 updates); note how the version number jumped from 1.0 to 1.5. But it wasn't significant enough to call it MODO Drum 2. As the plugin update (1.5) wasn't free, the sounds also were not free. Either that, or there were no changes for the existing kits that came with MODO Drum 1.0. That said, my relationship with IK is nothing more than being a customer and occasionally talking to Peter on this forum. For all I know, the above could be completely invalid.

I seem to remember Peter saying the counter would be reset if there were updates.

Well, if a user's lifetime is shorter than the business' the user probably won't be complaining about the deal 😁(an attempt at humour) Bear in mind that this is a new subscription service for a new software product, and Cinesamples is probably trying out a few ways to sell: try different options; see what sticks. This actually seems like a good deal, and Cinesamples certainly have a great back catalogue that they say will be ported over in addition to new instruments too. The deal (which may or may not be available in future) is similar to the Melda and Voxengo 'all' bundles: buy now, get everything, and all new products too. It's possible this deal is to get early adopters into their userbase. They can help iron out initial bugs and improve the product. It can also help them with organic marketing via word of mouth, which will be seen as more trustworthy than big-name reviewers that could potentially be 'persuaded' to give good reviews.

That's something only you can answer. The deal is good: there's some great stuff in there. MODO Bass is probably my favourite bass VI, the tape machines are CPU hungry but do something magical on the master bus, and lots of other great stuff in the package too. But, if you're just starting out there's an argument that says it might be better to learn the basics with your DAW's stock plugins (which are typically very good these days); when you get a feeling for what does what, you're then in a better place to demo and decide what plugins you want/need (if any). Syntronik is sampled from real synths. It's less flexible because it's sampled, but some say it sounds 'better' because of it. So it depends on whether you need a more realistic sound, or the flexibility to program it exactly how you want. And then there's the question of whether someone can tell the difference once it's in the mix. The software can be downloaded as often as you need (as long as you don't abuse the system I think), but the sampled sound libraries (for SampleTank, Syntronic, etc) must be downloaded within 180 days. If you want to download after that, you need to pay a small fee to reactivate the downloads. So if you do buy, it's recommended to download everything even if you don't need it yet, and archive it. I think I read somewhere that if IK update the libraries they will reset the counter so you can get updates without paying.

Good point. For some reason, I thought 299 was a sale price. I've got enough Jampoints for the full 30% discount, making it approximately 209 (I think). However, 30 points will expire in June. I guess I'll have to take a gamble on whether a sale price will be lower than 209.

(Short) funny story: I decided to have a look on some other sites to see if they stocked Total Studio 4. When I did a search, I found Total Studio VI. I interpreted that as being roman numerals for 'Total Studio 6'. It took a moment for me to realise it was the Virtual Instrument edition of Total Studio (the previous one) 😁

I suppose there's a possibility that they'd use decent/high quality headphones with their phone. Then again, they still probably wouldn't hear the difference when it's competing with the sound of the Tube/Subway.

I believe the animosity is related to how Toontrack discontinued Superior Drummer 3 upgrade pricing.

Fair enough - we should all use what we're happiest with using. As the saying goes, different strokes for different folks. It's music, and there is no right or wrong answer. For me, EZKeys was never about the piano sound. It was about the MIDI engine/inspiration: I'd end up piping it to Pianoteq.

Sounds in the Superior range are essentially unprocessed. Adding EQ, compression, and other effects in line with the rest of the mix will give best results.

Ah, ok - ignore my misunderstanding. I interpreted your comment saying you "would support them when that time comes" to mean you would pay for it.

This question comes purely out of curiosity, but how would it then be any different from Kontakt? A user would end up paying for either option.

Not always. Either that, or somethings up with some of my libraries. For example I've got Shevannai, but it doesn't appear in my Add/Remove programs list. Thanks. Forgot about that option.

You can remove them by deleting the folder, and registry key: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Native Instruments\<LIBRARY NAME>

Very true. But a little further back than that, they had back-to-back sales for at least a year. When the prices went up, they also had a website redesign, 'streamlined' their catalogue, and decided to make everything Player-compatible. I suspect they're stable, but I don't think the price hike was them deciding to start being greedy. Not sure if it still applies, but I remember reading a while ago that part of the price goes towards giving royalties to the musicians that worked on the libraries too.

Just a guess, but could it be that the latest update uses features in 7? Seems fairly strange considering it's a relatively old library. Edit: Never mind - I misread your post and didn't realise you already have 7 installed

Wow. I do this just for fun and have no interest in Musio so this doubly isn't an issue for me. I do wonder what it means for library music/soundtrack composers though. I kind of see this as an experiment. Hopefully the movement won't encourage others to go down this route too. It's funny - back when I was starting out, I had some Waves collections in my wishlist. As time went on I ended up buying plugins from other developers for better prices (this was before the $29.99 movement). I ended up with enough such that I never did end up buying anything from Waves. I have some freebies, but I could never get myself to install them because of the licensing scheme and WUP.

I agree. It was just a rarer form of subscription where you get to keep using the product when you stop paying. Other examples of this model include HitFilm (video production) and ReSharper (software development plugin).

Are you sure? I thought this was Cinesamples' version of Composer Cloud, i.e. you can 'keep' it if you bounce it. I could be wrong: I'm not interested in a subscription product, and haven't read the fine print.

Also free this week is World of Warships — Starter Pack: Ishizuchi. It's an add-on, but the base game is free too.