PavlovsCat

Controversy aside. I have no idea if Christian cashed out his investment in Spitfire or if he remains a silent partner, but one would assume that considering that, at least until recently, he owned half of a business that generates more than 20 million pounds annually and has a net worth in the tens of millions of pounds, he's easily able to fund this new venture for as long as he sees fit. Plus, there's not too many people in the sample development business that know how to create a successful brand in this business at the level he does. I think it's probably just a question of what his goals are for this new venture. It does tell you a lot about what he was responsible for at Spitfire (based on what he's doing now and what Spitfire hasn't been doing since he left), and we can see that a lot of other orchestral sample developers have followed Henson's path in doing the freebies to get attention and bring new future customers in the fold. I think some folks naively see that as altruism -- just as they saw Pianobook as altruism, but it really isn't. It's putting future customers in the pipeline and was a very wise strategy -- but one that it appears his partner at Spitfire wasn't totally on board with, or hasn't found the right person to lead the effort in Christian's absence. The Labs+ teaser was a great example of fantastically bad marketing communications. A sub brand that gives away free product is silent for the better part of a year and its first communication is a cryptic message that tries to excite its target audience that they're now going to have to pay for future product. Really, really bad idea. Even if they were going to launch this new Labs non-free product, that isn't a good way to do it.

If we're going to be really candid, the Spitfire co founders were always proudly arrogant, and pretentious in their early days. It was very much on brand for them to alienate people in their early days. But Christian cultivated a much more likeable, approachable persona in his YouTube videos in the past several years when he realized the importance of growing the Spitfire brand. With the exception of his infamous tweet, I thought Christian really did well with the video format. I'd say he was probably better with the medium than any other sample developer I can think of (with apologies to my sample developer friends). I think this video is a bit meandering. But Christian is certainly capable of doing masterful YouTube videos for his business. I think it's been a factor in growing Spitfire to be one of the biggest players in the industry.

Another very nice freebie from Fracture Sounds. This dev produces some very lovely sampled instruments. I've been meaning to update my free sample library thread and this one definitely will be added.

Sounds great -- the song, the performance, and the production. , but that's no surprise coming from you. Great job! It sounds very original and I sincerely like it a lot. I get Neil Finn solo vibes with a bit more edge (which is a good thing, as I'm a big fan of Neil Finn). It's both melodic and has a great groove and strong riffs.

Nice. Marty Balin vibes on the vocal.

There's something strangely compelling about this. Cool and very different.

Great job!

Wow. I hear stuff like this and want to take down any of my songs. This is awesome. Great job. Gorgeous track. Well written, well performed.

Mike/Creative Sauce is a very likeable guy who does a good job at making helpful and entertaining YouTube content. I just hope that Sonar doesn't go subscription-only with Sonar, so that they'll be plenty of reasons for me to enjoy Mike's new channel (if not, he also has a Studio One channel...).

This is my cover of Procol Harum's Whiter Shade of Pale. I welcome any advice on improving the mix (unfortunately, I can't do much to improve the vocalist or musician). Thanks, Peter

NI changed the licensing for KONTAKT Player several years ago and they did reduce the costs for a developer to release free Player instruments (I can't recall the specifics, but I'm pretty sure NI negotiates prices with developers anyhow). Their revenue model employs a cut of the sales for instruments that use the Player, so if a developer decides to dramatically reduce the list price of a library, they'll want to renegotiate with NI.

Ah, if they were made since that thread, then that would make sense. Drew was just referring to what was released at the time, which I believe was only two expansion kits. But Drew had stated that the libraries made for BFD Player had more detail than the ones created for BFD3 more than a decade ago. EDIT: I just went to the site and saw that InMusic has been repurposing the old BFD3 kits to make BFD Expansion Packs. FTR, I'm not sure how they're getting around things like the BFD3 kits not having round robins (I realize they use programming to grab different velocity hits in BFD3 -- perhaps that's what they're doing with the Player too; I thought Drew had stated that BFD Player used round robins). I really like the demo for BFD3 Jazz Noir a lot, but the demos for the BFD Player Expansion Jazz Sticks expansion didn't sound anything like the demos for Jazz Noir and frankly, I was very turned off by the demos. I'd be interested in hearing the raw Expansion kit raw. @Drew Vernon If this is the same kit as featured on the Jazz Noir page? https://www.bfddrums.com/expansions/jazz-noir.html

Drew, a developer who works on the BFD team for InMusic, explained on this forum several months ago that the libraries for BFD Player are newly recorded and not compatible with BFD3. So, they're new and different, and not reduced versions. Drew had also shared that the new BFD Player libraries have more detail than the BFD3 libraries, which were recorded more than a decade ago.

I was just listening on my phone and I love the tone on those drums. Session Drummer? Isn't that the plugin from Cakewalk? I remember Platinum Samples making libraries for BFD 3. I didn't get them because I don't have BFD 3, but the demos sounded excellent and they were made by some legends. I'm intrigued.

It's cheap enough, but I find this entire line disappointing. And I really like Drew, one of the developers, who's posted here and on the BFD forum. He seems like a sincerely nice person. For those who can't afford paid options, I think BFD Player is worth picking up. But the drums aren't even close to the quality of ezDrummer, AD2, or NI's various acoustic drum kit libraries. It just seems like InMusic didn't allocate the appropriate resources make this product competitive. That said, at $12.59, there aren't a lot of alternatives. My hope is that they improve this line.