PavlovsCat

Thanks for the recommendations. I should probably have some time on Sunday to give the preamp a try. I'm not proud to admit it, but I don't know much about mixing and rely heavily on AI tools from Izotope and Sonnible when it comes to limiters. Although, it's pretty hard to pass up a respected dev charging only $14.50 for a nice preamp or a limiter, so who knows.

Just a quick, simple thought. I'm not a fan of some of Toontrack's practices. I find things like their limited-time upgrade of SD2 to SD3 and forever taking away an upgrade discount very customer-unfriendly and just plain terrible idea from customer loyalty and brand image perspectives. On a much lesser scale, I find their lack of offering upgrade pricing from EZX to the related SDX is disappointing and also a missed promotional opportunity for Toontrack to upsell customers. Instead, Toontrack released a $15 per title resale fee. I would bet that nearly 100% of SD3 customers who own EZXs that have contemplated buying the related SDXs would agree with me that getting a discount on the related SDX would make them more inclined to upgrade and would also result in them feeling better about the brand. Agree or disagree?

Thanks for that insight. I have owned Custom & Vintage since it came out, which I'm guessing is more than a decade ago. I think Chris Whitten was involved in that one (Chris and I used to chat a bit at a drummers forum years ago, super cool guy who's played drums with a lot of artists I am fond of, like Paul McCartney). My honest take is that it includes a lot of drums I love in real life, but some of the recordings aren't great and the mixes can be dull and uninspired. When it came out, I was pretty excited about it. But with other Toontrack libraries to compare, I don't think it's in the same ballpark. The mixes are really meh to me and a couple, to my ears, are just plain bad (one preset named after a band used for the demos sounds downright awful to me; but of course, everything is subjective). Listen closely to the demos and the preset walkthroughs. I've ended up creating a lot of my own kits and tweaking mixes, but I often just take snares from C&V into other SDx and EZx I like a lot better.

I wish we had a permanent section in this forum that featured the reviews from the regulars here, like you, like Carl, like kitkrazy, giving their honest reviews. That is why I started doing it, because except for Cory Pellazari -- who I regret to say is no longer with us -- influencers are a terrible outlet to research sample libraries. They're influenced by free products, developer sponsorships and direct cash from the developers whose products they review. Even when nano-influencers review libraries, they're getting free product and hoping to get more free product in the future, so they're not going to trash a library they know isn't very good from a developer they have a relationship with. Whereas we're going to be honest. I've written some pretty savage reviews on libraries at this forum and you just shared your honest disappointment with a library. You'd never see that from an influencer for a product from a developer given them NFRs, sponsorship money or direct cash -- even when they're not getting cash payments, because going that far and saying that a library was a flat out disappointment will damage their relationship with a developer (the standard influencer grift is stating a couple of things about a library you're not crazy about, to create the appearance of honesty and build trust with followers). The best source of honest reviews are people right here. And while we don't really know one another, I think an indicator of someone's objectivity is often revealed when they don't praise everything. When they find some libraries that they feel were disappointments.

That's a very useful list, Bad Penguin or should I say Good Penguin? I bought EZX Custom Shop yesterday through Thomann and shared a link in an earlier Toontrack sales thread where someone mentioned that if you use BestService you can use their rewards (which I'm sure I have and didn't think of before his post) to bring the price down. So, I'm 90% sure that I'm going to buy SDX Indiepdendent before the weekend is over and will be comparing the two stores. I'm guessing the difference will be pretty small, but I'm still going to opt for the best deal.

They put Indiependent on sale. That's what I was waiting for. I bought Custom Shop EZX yesterday. I think that gives me all the drums I need for the rest of 2023, except for some KONTAKT kits from Analogue Drums. Thanks again, Larry. While I get Toontrack emails, I rarely pay attention to marketing emails.

I realize when I make a post like that, the person I've called out will be sure to troll me or make a nasty post about me in the future. Still think it's worth it. The reality is, most people don't want to confront bad behavior in forums, I don't either, but if we want it to stop and discourage future bad behavior, someone has to take action. Keep that in mind when you see that guy trolling me / ripping on me in the future, because it almost certainly will happen.

Your above point nails it. It seems like just about every pro and hobbyist composer/musician and developer in this industry I know of uses that exact word to describe VI-Control: toxic. Even Christian Henson, a friend of the forum's owner (I was too, but had a major falling out over his ethics since he bought the forum and I don’t forsee either of our views changing) publicly referred to the forum as toxic and said he has to take breaks between posting there (which, of course, he needs to do to keep his business's name out there, but he's made clear that he finds the environment f'ed up) . Therein also lies the dilemma for amateur composers researching sample libraries. Forums like VI-C are driven by the desire for the forum owner to optimize revenue, not to optimize around the best and most fair environment for community members. Conversations are largely manipulated through financial motivations and the personality cults that have emerged around even semi pro composers and even around certain developers and you get to this point where honest conversations, especially ones very counter to the forum owner's opinion or the highly manufactured group think opinion are ununwelcome. While I'm a businessperson, I still think like a creative person and am a strong believer in the importance of intellectual curiosity and respect for other's viewpoints and the culture that has been carefully cultivated is one of conformity with a very government- controlled media style approach. What I love about this forum is that due to the owner's philosophy, the policies that came out of that and good enforcement, it's user / musician/composer/producer centered, not merchant centered. Bandlab clearly doesn't care about making revenue from developers for this forum and that's great news. Consequently, there isn't the personality cults or a culture where diverse thinking is discouraged. Independent thinkers who might have opinions counter to the norms will get their ideas considered on their merits in this environment, not pushed to conform. As creative people, we should celebrate that. We should also realize the reason all of that terrible culture exists, because its highly profitable. Because a bunch of consumers gathered with their wallets in hands ready to purchase is an extremely desirable audience to mine for profit. Twenty years ago or more, forums were about community for the sake of community, but forum owners began to realize that communities centered around purchase research are a potential goldmine and that has changed everything -- and that is, very much, not in the interest of those seeking to do research prior to a purchase.

That post with your referral code is pure spam and violates forum policy. If anyone is looking for that discount, please PM cclarry, the man responsible for the Deals subforum existing. If anyone has earned that referral, it's him, not some sly spammer trying to deceive people. Please report that post.

If you've caught Carl's posts here and in a couple of threads, he's been giving some great advice. He isn't a big fan of Spitfire stuff, as per his earlier post. He clearly loves the Audio Bros stuff and it sounds beautiful to my ears, has a good opinion of Cinesamples -- maybe Musio would be a good fit for you? -- and wrote that 8Dio has the best quality to price ratio in the market. I don't know much but the VSL and Orchestra Tools libraries I've heard sound excellent to me. But I know nothing about workflows that's obviously important to choosing these kinds of libraries. To quote Animal (Muppets): "I bang de drum."

You know what I don't think I have is a really good detailed acoustic drum kit with roto toms in a format set up for Roland V-Drums If anyone knows of one for SD3, AD2 or KONTAKT please let me know.

I really like their work. Really well done sound design libraries. I'd recommend checking them out. They've long been a KONTAKT developer, but more recently, they've been making their libraries available for the free HALion Player too.

@Bapu Oops, their drums are available for Trigger format, I just overlooked it! I only have paid attention to the KONTAKT versions, because that's what I use, but I just looked at their site after your post and realized that every library I clicked on is available in the Trigger format and Wave files as well as KONTAKT.

Analogue Drums BF sale is now live and I'm loading up my shopping cart. Deep sampled kits are going for $14.50 USD.

Best prices I've found for these sale items is at Thomann Music. Custom Shop EZX and other EZX and EZK on sale other places for $27 are selling for $24.70 USD there, less than anywhere else that I know of. EBXs are $48 compared to $53. https://www.thomannmusic.com/toontrack_ezx_custom_shop.htm?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA6vaqBhCbARIsACF9M6kdx-uAnq6jLwg9Z7OhmpejkVakTcRcPKAeJx76arsglmj4X5-bnlUaAsTYEALw_wcB

Wow, those strings (and brass in the second video) sound gorgeous. I don't know about orchestration. I spent 12 years semi-professionally as a rock drummer but also played jazz, soul, fusion, funk and dance. But I was also trained on piano and organ. With severe tendinitis, I'm never going to embark on complex orchestrations, I just bang out simple rock songs. But I admit that I would love to have all of this stuff (and the reality is, I would use it very poorly). But your posts are a treasure trove of knowledge and passion for music that anyone exploring these sample libraries can learn from. I think that hobbyists and aspiring pros can be very misled by forums like VI-C where it's run by a developer and commerce motives, personality cults and peer pressure drive a good deal of the conversations and preferences. As BandLab has done a great job at keeping this community very user-centric, that's largely not a problem here. Your posts have always stood out to me as clearly reflecting a pro sharing insights as compared to the pervasive parroting of groupthink and steered conversations that come from the largest forum for cinematic sample library research. It's why I originally asked if you were a pro, because it was becoming increasingly clear based on the way you conveyed how you use orchestral libraries, the way your choices didn't reflect the amateur groupthink mentality at VI-C. And that's truly refreshing and that is why I value your posts in this forum so much. I seriously wish there was a section where advice from pros/experts like you could be archived, because I think your insights provide enormous value to most users, including me. Again, thanks for sharing.

Man. that's such high praise -- and knowing you're a pro composer and how critical you are -- even though I'm just a hobbyist on a limited budget and those aren't libraries in my budget nor libraries I would have much use for, after your praise, I feel I have to go check out the Genesis and Eternity choirs out, because, well, expectations are super high and I suspect I'll be blown away and I want to hear it for myself. I am, unquestionably, envious that you have a job where you get to enjoy this stuff as much as us hobbyists. On a Audio Bro note, they used to get mentioned A LOT by the VI-Control aspiring pro composer crowd a decade or so ago -- I suppose you can say that they had flavor of the month status for a time -- but the crowd moved on from them for some reason. Even here they don't get much attention. However, I take from your comments that they're still producing excellent libraries. UPDATE: Listening to the demos. As expected, they sound superb.

I really like the demos and that's a compelling sale price. But I'll be candid. While Soniokinetic makes very high-quality sample libraries -- and I own a number of them -- I sometimes find their user interfaces are unnecessarily complicated to the point that I've deleted a couple of their libraries only due to that fact. Perhaps I've been spoiled from straightforward user interfaces and working with user experience and usability experts in my professional life (cue a troll to mock me for sharing that). By comparison, if you look at e-instruments user interfaces, they allow the user to delve deep into controlling their libraries and make meaningful edits with ease. I wish Soniokinetic could make some progress in that area.

Once again, this is why I always want to wait a bit in case Larry posts an extra discount code. I know I say it a lot, but he is, indisputably the GOAT 🐐

Thanks for sharing that. I was interested in your perspective as a professional composer, and always am interested in it, and that explanation really was insightful. I totally get where you're coming from for feeling bad about criticism. Although, from consulting to developers, I'm well aware of why Spitfire focuses so many resources to free instruments. It's simply because that is a path to getting hobbyists and students hooked and becoming future paying customers. It's a smart strategy and it's consistent with how some orchestral library developers market heavily to the education industry. I think criticism, like you've shared, has enormous value to the community, particularly to less experienced musicians who can take what your insights and focus in on the aforementioned areas to assess these libraries more critically, and decide for themselves if these characteristics are to their liking or not.

There's an idea. I'll check out their spring reverb. I'm a sucker for those. I have, I think, 4 decent ones, but I'm still open to listening to more.

I recall that this developer has impressive credentials, having worked for many respected effects developers. What effects do you guys recommend checking out?

In addition to their libraries that come with KOMPLETE, I own their Electric W (Wurli) and Session Keys upright piano and can recommend both. I find both instruments are well sampled and the user interfaces and controlability of their instruments using their UIs is exceptional. I prefer the tone of the Skybox Audio Wurli 200A and the AcousticSamples Wurlie most of all, but the Electric W sounds excellent and $39USD for an instrument of that quality and controlability is a superb value. I'm contemplating whether to pick up their grand piano largely because their user interfaces make dialing in the sound you want so easy.

I'm intrigued. @Carl Ewing , why do you regret those purchases?

Custom Shop for $24.70 USD. Best price I've seen. Hmmm... But I can't help but wonder if Larry knows a discount code! https://www.thomannmusic.com/toontrack_ezx_custom_shop.htm?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA6vaqBhCbARIsACF9M6kdx-uAnq6jLwg9Z7OhmpejkVakTcRcPKAeJx76arsglmj4X5-bnlUaAsTYEALw_wcB