PavlovsCat

You guys are absolutely right that there have been far better sales, but if you don't have Cello Textures, he's throwing in that library free with purchases in addition to 30% off, and, IMO, that can easily make this deal worthwhile. I LOVE Ben's Cello Textures library. It's a blast to experiment with and sounds beautiful. But considering I already have that library, this sale isn't very compelling for me.

Someone made a post on this collection in the forum last week and praised two of the included libraries as his favorite electric pianos. I'm in the car now on my mobile (parked in a lot), but I'll try to find the thread later. As far as what you're describing, the great deal of articulations, that primarily applies to string libraries, not the pianos / keyboards or tuned percussion and greatly reflects their aiming those libraries at pro users as opposed to people like you and me who want scripts to it all dead simple. I admit, I went through years of piano and organ lessons (ad drums too, but it's not relevant to this point) and I don't have a clue about the various names of string articulations in pro string libraries -- I've turned to my wife, who played viola as a kid. But the keyboard libraries are just like any other keyboard libraries.

I have so many saturation plugins at this point, I think I can stop buying anymore unless something really amazes me. So, another freebie...Why not?

Exactly. I own SD3 and ezMix, and have been hoping for a great deal on an SDx or even an EZx. Hopefully, they're coming.

With appreciation for Kitekrazy and everyone who took the time to post, I always wait for the last word from Larry before moving forward. No one knows deals and the marketplace like Larry.

I've seen and heard so much praise for this developer. I do mostly rock and acoustic singer songwriter music. Is there any plugin of theirs that I should look into? Currently I only have their freebie, I think it's called Super Massive.

FTR, I responded to Andrew's post in this thread because I thought it was fair to provide him with an explanation he asked for of why, I, a former Impact Soundworks customer, will no longer buy from his company due to their poor ethics. But I realize that 99.999% of the people in this forum don't care about any of this. I did send Andrew a PM offering that I don't think the community is interested in this conversation. I get how he doesn't enjoy seeing a customer saying that they stopped buying from his company due to their bad ethics, but this isn't the appropriate place to engage in that discussion at length -- and it's a complex situation. I really don't have an interest in further conversation on the topic, as I've already shared what I have to say, but my suggestion, @Andrew Aversa, is that there is another section of this forum where you could start a thread if you desire to do so.

You've made 11 posts in this forum, and -- literally -- around half of all of the posts you've ever made in this forum are trolling attacks targeting and disparaging me, and theyre all related to the attack thread at VI Control (his past troll posts have since been deleted). It's obvious that you're account is only participating in this forum in order to engage in trolling. I would ask people to report the nicolae account.

It is a fact that two employees of Impact Soundworks created and participated in a thread on the VI-Control forum where they made and encouraged others to make numerous defamatory attacks on an ISW competitor without disclosing their employment with ISW. We have a Harvard-educated law professor in this group who could confirm this. The Impact Soundworks engaged in libelous and harassing attacks on their competitor. Impact Soundworks owner, Andrew Aversa's statement above that: " Things only took a negative turn when Troels himself joined it - over 6 months later..." is patently false. I had contacted Troels to let him know about the defamatory attack thread on his company by two Impact Soundworks employees. Sarah had, at that point, changed the thread from sharing her scripts for a retired 8Dio library and praise of 8Dio's work to making vicious defamatory attacks on the competitor; modifying her original post to an attack that created a false narrative that 8Dio had serially attacked anyone who did a negative review of the company and that they are serial bullies. She had retitled the thread: "Adachi: Important update, 8Dio threatens reviewers and competing devs." Sarah went back 13 yrs -- even prior to 8Dio being formed -- to find stories from 3 influencers who had negative stories to tell and her ISW co-worker, Mario, who told a story I knew to be a false directly from Mario himself from 13 years ago. By the time Troels joined, Sarah, Mario and Mike Greene used lies and half-truths to create an angry mob they egged on to bully and demean Troels when he posted. By the time Troels saw the thread, there were more than a dozen pages of attacks against 8Dio and him personally. Sarah had scoured the web to find anyone who ever had a bad thing to say about 8Dio and brought in 3 influencers to create a false narrative about 8Dio. One of those influencers -- Cory -- was a friend of mine (he's since passed) and I knew about the story she presented and it wasn't being told honestly. Another influencer has a reputation for less-than-great ethics. And the other influencer basically just complained that 8Dio didn't want to pay her asking price to do videos for them. Because Cory was a friend, and we discussed this thread -- which Cory didn't want to participate in and felt that ISW was just exploiting him and was very uncomfortable with them doing that --I knew that Sarah, Mario or Mike Greene were telling a fictional story about Cory and not one of them ever reached out to Cory because they only wanted to leverage him to create their defamatory narrative against their competitor. Someone has since made a number of modifications to posts in Sarah's / Mario's / ISW's / Mike Greene's attack thread on 8Dio. But if anyone is interested and wants to compare what I've presented to Andrew's claim that the thread was not hostile to ISW competitor 8Dio until Troels participated, they can still see for themselves that I'm telling the truth by seeing the thread (URL is below). EDIT: The below URL goes to the attack thread made by two ISW employees against ISW competitor 8Dio. Andrew falsely asserted the thread did not become negative until Troels, founder of 8Dio, and it then "took a turn." Note that even the first post is a defamatory attack by ISW employee Sarah Mancuso on ISW competitor 8Dio. Prior to my telling Troels of the thread it had more than a dozen pages filled with defamatory attacks on 8Dio, starting with the original post being completely changed to an attack and the thread retitled: "Adachi: Important update, 8Dio threatens reviewers and competing devs." After Troels posted note how the two ISW employees viciously bully their competitor and name-call him and egg on an angry mob they fed lies and have truths, defaming the Impact Soundworks competitor. This is the thread: vi-control.net/community/threads/adachi-important-update-8dio-threatens-reviewers-and-competing-devs.116094/

Andrew, as I wrote, your employee, Sarah Mancuso, originally created the VI-C thread to share her KONTAKT scripts for a retired 8Dio library and praise 8Dio's libraries and later, modified her thread from praising 8Dio to attacking 8Dio, renaming her thread "Adachi: Important update, 8Dio threatens reviewers and competing devs." When Sarah modified her thread into an attack thread on an ISW competitor and failed to disclose that she's an ISW employee, that was, in itself, a conflict of interest. Maro, like Sarah, also concealed that he worked for ISW throughout the course of the thread. You're now asserting that their concealing their employment with ISW while attacking an ISW competitor wasn't relevant to the thread. We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Mario's story was well known to me because 13 years ago, Mario came to a developer for advice, and that developer brought me in to give Mario advice. Consequently, I knew the story Mario told very well. I also had the benefit of notes, as the developer still has the original notes and sent them to me. The story Mario told in the thread was untrue. Troels wasn't upset because someone did a negative review on one of his libraries as Mario and Sarah falsely presented. Troels was upset because Mario was shilling and disparaging his library. Mario created a KVR post that made it appear he was merely comparing two sample libraries he had nothing to do with and that one of them was a lot better. What Mario actually did was conceal that he was working for the developer whose library he praised as superior to Troels' company. It was unquestionably, unethical and I told Mario that back then and I recall that Mario, the developer friend and I all agreed that what Mario did was wrong. Even more, for context, the developer Mario worked for had stolen a good deal of intellectual capital from Troels company in the packaging of their library (the FAQs from ToneHammers website, legal copy, etc.) which, of course, is unethical and illegal. When Troels saw Mario's KVR post, he PMed Mario that the shilling he was doing was unethical and that he could be sued and ruin his reputation in the industry. Mario became very worried that he could be in legal trouble and that is why I ended up being called in by his developer friend to give him advice (although I agree that it would be more logical that they consulted a lawyer, they called me in due to my business experience). My advice to Mario 13 years ago was that what he did was wrong and that he should modify his post and apologize to Troels. Mario was most greatly worried about getting into legal trouble. I'll just share this so that people reading understand, because the context is very important to understanding the story. It was rumored back then that Mario was involved in the piracy world. I don't know if that was true or not, but I suspect it might have been true and a significant factor in Mario's concerns about getting into legal trouble. I told Mario that the logistics and costs of ToneHammer suing him when they were based in the US and he was based in Croatia was very small and Mario should just focus on doing the right thing and apologizing to Troels and avoid future unethical acts moving forward. To find that 13 years later, Mario -- who I've always gotten along with extremely well with -- was retelling this story in a very dishonest and misleading manner to defame Troels and 8Dio was problematic to me. That mutual developer friend and I had conversed and he still had his notes from 13 years ago. He had PMed me and told me that Troels and my story was accurate and Mario's was false. Again, he's a friend of Marios. There's no ill will towards Mario, we all love him. But he simply was not telling the truth and he and Sarah ethically, had a responsibility to share that they work for Impact Soundworks, an 8Dio competitor, but at no point did they ever disclose that fact. I was actually the person who posted that Mario and Sarah worked for Impact Soundworks that, I believe was responsible for someone later posting the question to you in the thread. I had made a series of posts interacting with Mario stating that I was the person who gave him advice 13 years ago and he was not telling the story honestly in the thread. It was a friendly exchange. However, Mike Greene (owner of VI-Control and sample developer Realitone; someone I've known two decades and once gave marketing consulting advice) deleted all of those posts along with hundreds of other posts, some of which questioned the fairness of the attacks on 8Dio. Mike had PMed me not to get involved in the thread, sharing his contempt for 8Dio and their owners to me (Mike later went on in private correspondence to try to persuade me to never work with 8Dio; acknowledging that his actions in the thread may not have been right, but that he detests 8Dio and believes that they were deserving of the treatment). Andrew, you misunderstood my remark, "When you later joined the thread attacking your competitor,..." To clarify: you participated in a thread where two of your employees made defamatory attacks on one of your competitors without disclosing their employment with your company. I believe that was not ethical. Obviously, you think your two employees hiding that the company they were attacking is one of your competitors and using a dishonest version of what occurred 13 years ago when Mario was working for a competitor and shilling in a fake review when your competitor confronted him is ethical behavior. We disagree. I think your participation in a thread where your employees maliciously defame a competitor is unethical. I knew that Mario was presenting a false story. I later learned that the story presented about Cory was false and from Sarah Mancuso and Mike Greene directly, neither had ever even reached out to Cory -- who was a beloved friend of mine -- and instead only leveraged Cory's story to manufacture a defamatory narrative on an Impact SoundWorks competitor that they attack and bully people who make harsh reviews about their sample libraries.

I don't own any Fab Filter plugins, but it seems like everyone I know who is a pro or a very serious amateur has praised FabFilter as the best in the business. If I wasn't already down the road with their competitors, and heavily reliant on AI tools, I would surely be picking this up.

That sounds terrifying! Well, now that the forum's back, there'll be no more need to do any of that.

I have not engaged in any insults directed at you, Andrew, that is untrue. I stated the facts and my opinion regarding Impact Soundworks' (your and your employees) practices, which I'm confident that any ethical businessperson would find unethical. I only addressed the matter after Husker posted in this thread to disparage 8Dio, referencing your company's (and Realitone's) defamatory attack thread on its competitor, 8Dio, at VI-Control. That is, Husker made clear that his unfavorable opinion of 8Dio was a result of your company's defamatory attack on it's competitor in that thread. (For anyone who doesn't know; Andrew owns Impact Soundworks. ISW makes a number of libraries that compete with 8Dio. ISW employees and Andrew himself created and participated in a vicious, defamatory attack thread against their competitors earlier this year at VI-Control. In that 40+ page thread two Impact Soundworks employees published false information to discredit and attack their competitor and harass and bully its co-founders while hiding that they worked for ISW. ) Your two employees/contractors hid that they worked for you throughout that thread while they defamed a competitor, and it took someone calling you out for you to disclose that fact on what I seem to recall was near the end of the threads 40+ pages. And while you were called out for hiding that Sarah was your employee (I realize technically a contractor) you continued to hide that Mario was also your employee (I realize that he now works for NI). In fact, I found your post in the thread not only hid that Mario was your employee/contractor, but it was also incredibly self promotional in a thread defaming your competitor which, frankly, was shocking in its lack of ethics, the sheer arrogance the post reflected, jumping directly into self-promotion for Impact Soundworks in a thread solely focused on attacking a competitor and a lack of self-awareness. I AM/WAS a customer of your company until witnessing you and your employees' unethical behavior in that thread. I would appreciate if you would not speak about me, an ISW customer, disrespectfully, as while I find your employees and your behavior indefensibly unethical and bullying, I have always been civil to you and your employees, even while engaging in criticism. My post responding to you in the other thread: Thankfully, Cakewalk forum isn't VI-Control, where the forum owner has a habit of deleting posts that don't fit his and your agendas. People here don't engage in toxic mob actions against developers or individuals like is common at VI-C. Of course, I fully realize that you're almost certainly going to defend your actions and your employees' actions -- there's no surprise there. I simply find the actions that you and your employees (contractors) engaged in to be blatantly unethical and, as a result, you've lost my business. I have done my best to articulate why in response to your questions. While it's not an easy conversation to have, I believe in being honest and open and letting you know exactly why I cannot continue to support Impact Soundworks. That's all there is to it. I don't believe there is an argument that could excuse what you and your employees engaged in. I'm simply not a fit for your company's ethics and was sharing that fact in this forum.

Your employee/contractor, Sarah Mancuso, took her VI-Control thread sharing her fan project scripts for an 8Dio library and showering praise on 8Dio libraries -- made prior to her employment with Impact Soundworks, an 8Dio competitor -- and transformed it into at a defamatory attack thread after 8Dio didn't buy her scripts and she began employment with ISW. She proceeded to edit her past posts from praise for your competitor to attacks in more than 20 pages of highly defamatory statements and engaged in bullying behavior against your competitor's two founders when they posted in the thread. It was incredibly vicious, and unprofessional. Your employee never even once provided support for any of the allegations made ( I knew two of the stories being told were being told falsely; as one of your employes, Mario, received advice from me 13 years ago on the matter and told me the story quit differently from what he told in the thread, as the original notes make clear). But simply engaging in a public defamatory attack on a competitor alone is profoundly problematic in itself, not adding in hiding that it's a competitor. Further, in addition to Mancuso, attacking your competitor and not disclosing her employment with ISW, she was joined be another Impact Soundworks employee, Mario / Evil Dragon who also concealed his employment with ISW, while making a series of defamatory attacks against an ISW competitor. When you later joined in the attack thread. it took someone else calling you out revealing that Sarah was your employee, but you still didn't disclose that Mario was also an ISW employee. But the ethics of participating in an attack thread on a competitor is simply ethically indefensible. My day job includes being a writer on marketing and business ethics with Ivy League accolades for my writing on both topics. I literally could write a case study on your company's attack on its competitor. I have been an ISW customer for several years and I have recommended some of your libraries and defended ISW -- I even defended you in this forum when someone was giving away a discount code intended only for specific customers (you made an appearance in that thread, and I believe I was the only person defending you). But what I witnessed your company and its employees in its attack and use of dishonest narrative that I knew first hand from one of your employees to be false, is something I cannot condone.

Things got so bad, I actually started recording a song. Anyone else?

Well, I'm glad we've found some common ground (The Beatles and The Blackhawks). Yeah, I agree that it's not a great song, but it was the only song left. I still found it a sweet way to wrap up things for what is one of the greatest bands of all time, IMO.

A cool dev. I've been a customer for a long time.

The answer is Yoko. She had the idea and gave the cassette of this song to George Harrison. So I guess that was a full circle turn for her, from breaking the Beatles up to virtually reuniting them for one last time. [Ducks for cover.]

Well, to your point. I snapped up their ostinato strings library as a past Black Friday freebie -- I thought it was last year, but I'll take BTP's word for it that it was the prior year -- and I found it very unintuitive, so I deleted it from my hard drive. On the other hand, their Carousel Organ -- I think that's still available sounds excellent for what it is and I think that's still available for free. It's very niche, of course, but if you're looking for a carousel organ sound, it sounds perfect, IMO. EDIT; Here are some links to their freebies that are currently available and may be something folks want to pick up: Carousel Organ (excellent) https://www.sonokinetic.net/products/instruments/carousel/ Sleigh Bells (excellent) https://www.sonokinetic.net/sleighbells/ Hurdy Gurdy (I believe this is one octave, and the one I bought from Edu Prado is far more useful) https://www.sonokinetic.net/products/classical/hurdygurdy/ EMP Mark II Electric Piano (it's okay, but I have much better sounding libraries of the same instrument so I ended up deleting it) https://www.sonokinetic.net/products/contemporary/emp/

Okay, I finally listened to the tuba demo and I completely agree with you regarding the tuba sample library. The tuba simply does not sound well recorded. And let me be clear, I LOVE almost everything else I've heard from this developer (okay, I didn't love his free piano). It sounds fantastic to my ears. It has a vibe I never imagined a sample developer could capture. And I've told the dev that at another forum. It's really like Cinesamples Piano in Blue. But the tuba does sound like a miss to my ears too.

I get that they weren't the star, the AI software was. But the fact is, Lindell Audio 80 Series, SPL Transient Designer Plus, Brainworx bx_townhouse Bus Compressor, and Brainworx bx_console SSL 4000 E were used on the production of that song, the final Beatles recording. If I were in charge at Plugin Alliance, I'd absolutely want my team telling that story. It conveys that Plugin Alliance is being used by top pros on some of the world's most high profile tracks. I don't think it's comparable to someone getting their face in a shot on a TV show. A highly qualified audio pro working on a track for one of the best selling, iconic bands in music history trusted that PA's tools were up to the task to use on The Beatles' final song. That's a pretty big deal, IMO.

Also, in past years they've given away limited quantities of paid sample libraries for free during the 12 days. So, if they continue doing the same this year, they might have a couple of days where they give away a few hundred licenses of paid libraries for free. Of course, they get snapped up really fast so you have to stay on top of when they make their announcements each day. I did pick up one of their libraries they usually sell for, I think, over $100 USD that way.

Man, I realize the guy is a popular influencer, but he's making money off of a ton of developers lately. I don't know what his rate is to do fake product reviews, but I'm guessing he's charging at least $10,000 to 15,000 USD to do a "review" video; Venus Theory was charging $5,000 before his channel ballooned. I'm guessing most people realize this, but his codes are just a way for him to use people to do affiliate marketing for him. So the developer pays him based on the usage of the code.

Recommended. I've been a customer for a few years and find Triple Spiral Audio and the devs whose libraries they resell are high quality and many just sound gorgeous to my ears. These are largely lush synth sound design patches and sample libraries. I've bought a bunch of their KONTAKT libraries and really don't make the kind of music that features these kinds of sounds, I just find them so beautiful that I've ended up buying them. I suppose most of them could be classified as ambient.

Smart of Plugin Alliance to capitalize on the making of that song and how their plugins were used. As a huge Beatles fan, it got my attention. Thanks for sharing, Larry.