PavlovsCat

Astro??? I love Astro!

Lots of speculation why Behringer pulled this and if it's temporary or permanent. (I wasn't able to pick it up before it was taken down and thought I'd share a video of someone walking through the synth's presets). The developer behind Tone2 is publicly sharing concerns that Behringer has infringed upon his intellectual property rights. Some are wondering if that has anything to do with the synth suddenly being pulled with no statement from the company.

So my guess is that their email targeting got some things wrong. It's not rare with small retailers. They're mostly using Shopify and connect it up to some email marketing SaaS, and this stuff can be tricky, so there's a fairly decent probability of user error. Hence, when some people on the email list who don't actually own a library get sent an email with an upgrade offer for something they don't own and others who don't own the library don't get that same email. Email lists are very highly personalized these days with tons of criteria that determines what an email subscriber sees. If the person administrating the software gets something a little off, you can wind up getting offers that weren't intended for you based on your buying behavior.

I admit, while I've given SoundPaint advice and am friends with their CEO, I want to buy Alien drum and searched my email for that deal -- which I am guessing would be expired by now. But I didn't get it and I'm on the 8Dio and SoundPaint email lists. I already own a few detailed hang drum libraries (including SonicCoture's), but I'm in love with the sound of the hang drum and this library sounds gorgeous -- plus I've really gotten deeper into programming SoundPaint than any other sampler. But I suppose I didn't get this email because I don't own the KONTAKT version of Alien Drum.

We could always do a Reddit or, if enough people are interested, I've always contemplated starting a forum that was much like this one, but where developers were more involved and users could get their attention to have a good channel of feedback, but without the kind of developer-centric, money driven approach of VI-CONTROL, the inherent bias of having a developer against competitors and with strong policy and enforcement against shilling, bullying, trolling, political, and discriminatory posts. I've ran several forums over the decades, but they were all tied to business. I am here out of my love for music, so I'd love to do it. I've talked to several developers over the years who said they'd participate if I did it. The greatest challenge would be building the traffic, the users. I know I'd want cclarry there -- Larry is what made this sub forum what it is. Anyhow, it would be a hobby project for me. But considering that digital has been my living since the 90s, I think I can create something better for musicians than what exists. But I'll only do it if a bunch of people are on board, and we'll need moderators too.

These posts make me wish the forum added a section where we could trade vsts and sample libraries. A lot of us here buy a lot of stuff, and find out some of it isn't a fit for us, but someone else may love it. If anyone knows how to make that happen, I think it'd be a great feature.

Those promises mean little if they file bankruptcy (a chapt 11 or a 7). But let's say they go under and hold to that promise, then you have a bunch of sample libraries in a proprietary format that work until your OS or DAW has an update that causes a conflict, then you're out of luck. At least KONTAKT has a pretty stable company behind it. If they had a similar offer for libraries in the KONTAKT format, that had less features than their regular KONTAKT versions as is the case with Musio -- I would have grabbed that in a heartbeat, of course.

They started out by positioning Musio as inferior to the KONTAKT versions but later made statements that made that less clear. It seems like they're changing things. I'm definitely watching and may come aboard in time. Of course, they make some gorgeous libraries. I just want a little more confidence that this player/format will be around in 3 years before I commit to another sample format/ plugin.

I get your point @GoncaloL and I think traction at forums, social media and YouTube is a decent reflection of popularity of a developer's brand and, in this case, sample libraries/plugins. Cinesamples is a very established brand in this industry with a solid reputation for excellent quality libraries. I think the challenge is related to it being existing multi sample libraries on a new platform. The initial communication from them (Mike) was that these libraries would always be inferior to the KONTAKT versions, so I think that communication had an impact on the market reaction. Add to that, a lot of this market is heavily invested in KONTAKT. That doesn't mean they can't succeed with a proprietary sample player platform of their own, it just means it's a lot more work to persuade the market that this platform has some value that makes it worth switching. In this case, Cinesamples is appealing on trading price for functionality. I think that's a big part of why the line hasn't had a more enthusiastic response. I'd also consider that one of the partners had left Cinesamples right before this product launch and that may be why some of the market isn't enthusiastic about a proprietary player from the developer. Personally, that was the reason I didn't buy their lifetime deal. Companies that do lifetime deals are desperate for cash and aren't able to get it from investors. Add to that, Mike's communication that the Musio format would always be inferior to the KONTAKT versions and the strategy was to try and upsell Musio customers to KONTAKT versions and I passed. All of that said, I do think this offering and the pricing is worthy of much more attention. Maybe the developer will make some adjustments that will change all of that.

@jude77 Just think, for two whole weeks we can create deal threads without finding out Larry already posted about the same deal already! But two weeks-- I seriously doubt Fleer can go that long without creating a thread about how much he misses Larry and before you know it, we'll all be joining in! Oh well, I suppose for the next couple weeks I'll start some deal threads too (and hopefully won't find that Larry already posted them before he left!).

Hey. It's one of my favorite places too! Sadly, I don't live there. 😢

There's a whole other aspect to the attacks on 8Dio from Greene that most people don't know or understand. Greene leveraged people's biases to get them to line up on his attacks on his competitor. Greene since deleted the post. But he falsely claimed that 8Dio's CEO threatened a boycott of VI-Control by developers (to pull their monthly sponsorship fees and advertising) due to Greene censoring LGBTQ forum members from discussing Greene's friend Christian's controversial tweet. 8Dio's CEO actually showed me the correspondence Greene referred to in a post where he claimed she threatened a developer boycott of his site. She never even implied a boycott. She merely told Greene that she was pulling 8Dio's sponsorship and advertising from VI-Control in protest to Greene censoring LGBTQ members, including 8Dio employees from discussion. I could clearly see what set Greene off in that correspondence. She criticized his ethics -- and I know that Greene has an authoritarian nature and rages when criticized even slightly. She made a harsh criticism of his censorship and the toxicity of his forum (this was several weeks prior to the attack thread and Greene's numerous attack rants whenever anyone started a thread at VI-Control about an 8Dio sale -- he would attack them and accuse them of being shills for 8Dio and then go on extended rants claiming 8Dio is destroying the sample industry by heavily discounting -- leading "the race to the bottom" -- a phrase he often uses with regard to 8Dio). Sarah, who turned her 8Dio fan thread into an attack thread after 8Dio refused her pitch to buy her fan project scripts for 5 to 6 figures (for a retired library that only pulled in $400 USD its final year of sale). later shared with me that she did feel that Greene leveraged her bitterness for his own purposes and no longer feels that he's a decent human being. It also wasn't lost on her, that as a trans woman, that Greene was leveraging anti trans sentiment of some forum members to try to turn them against 8Dio for their pro LGBTQ stance.

It's such a complex story. I should state that I'm a marketing strategist in real life and years ago, I would often offer free or low cost advice for small developers whose plugins and sample libraries I use. It started with helping out one who got in trouble for infringing on Roland's trademarks and asked for help on KVR. I shot the guy some links to quotes of mine in business publications like Forbes and Wired, so he knew I was credible and would consider my advice seriously. From there I ended up giving advice to more than three dozen developers in this industry -- I even met up with some on unrelated business trips, like meeting Ben from Camel Audio on a business trip to Scotland (I'm an American). But I largely stopped doing that several years ago, as I simply don't have the time anymore. So those developers included Mike Greene and the developer who basically mentored Mario in the industry, got him his start. But I get that most folks don't care about the ethics of a developer, but a competitor running a forum using it to attack his competitors is incredibly ethically problematic. Then you have the fact that it was literally coordinated with a fellow competitor (Mike Greene owns Realitone and Andrew Aversa, who employs the thread starter and Mario, own Impact Soundworks and the two owners are friends and have privately harassed 8Dio's CEO-- she's sent me screenshots of demeaning, harassing, and gaslighting PMs and posts from a developers forum they're part of that they directed or sent to her; I'd call some if it clearly sexist and bullying -- I'm a man, BTW and not prone to making such observations lightly). If you see the 8Dio thread with mainly just my very long posts, each one came from various 8Dio threads where Greene attacked posters for creating threads, claiming they were shills or after Greene's angry rants that 8Dio was destroying the industry by deep discounting. In various threads, Greene personally, or through surrogates, attacked 8Dio's CEO using misogynistic terms, libelous remarks... In his private emails to me, he lavished praise on me for being a "good guy" with integrity and "heart of gold" while trying to persuade me to hate 8Dio's CEO. It was bizarre and obsessive in a way I can only liken to HS mean girl behavior. I cced 8Dio's CEO and blind cced developers-- informing Greene. It was days after that, Greene created a thread with my posts, inviting people to attack me. Of course, after I cc'ed 8Dio's CEO replying to Greene's defamatory emails, Greene became furious with the guy he praised for his ethics and heart of gold only one email prior and banned me (permanently, it seems) from his forum. As you might expect, Greene took to his forum to post that I was banned from his site after that. I emailed him that I couldn't care less about posting at his forum, but I don't appreciate him creating a thread of my posts out of contact inviting his forum members to make attacks on me. It does speak to his toxic behavior and toxicity of his forum.

I love this thread, if only to witness the back and forth (borderline trolling of each other) by jngnz and fleer. I appreciate both of you. I hope you two can appreciate each other, even if you don't see eye to eye on everything. I'm not sure if jngnz is necessarily being intentionally funny, but even when I'm the target, I do get a kick out of his posts.

Just think of how much money the rest of us will save in the next two weeks!

Have a great time, @cclarry! I look forward to the pictures and learning about your latest adventures when you get back.

I'll spare linking to it. But I'll summarize it. Last year, the owner of VI-CONTROL, who owns a sample development business that I've given some advice to started going off publicly on 8Dio after they pulled their sponsorship and advertising from the site due to some practices he engaged in 8Dio's CEO objected to on ethics grounds. That's a story in itself, but I'll spare that one to keep this simpler. Within several weeks, a hobbyist KONTAKT scripter who pitched her fan project at 8Dio for 5 to 6 figures and was turned down, modified her popular pro 8Dio thread into a defamatory series of attacks on the developer, finding every person she could who had disliked the developer. She found her co worker, Mario, a scripter I go back two decades with through KVR and a mutual developer friend, to join in bashing 8Dio. He told a false version of a story claiming that 8Dio's founder threatened him for giving a bad review of a library nearly 15 years prior. It was used to create a false narrative that 8Dio threatens reviewers. It was a lie, and I confronted Mario in the thread to share that back then, I was the person who gave him the advice on how to handle the situation. Mario posted that I was telling the truth, but that Troels was very harsh with him. What happened was that Mario had worked for a competitor and made a post comparing the library he worked on -- but hiding that fact -- and praising it as superior to the library from Troels company. When Troels saw what Mario was doing, he was upset by the dishonesty and told Mario he could be sued for what he was doing and it could ruin his reputation in the industry to do shill posts. At the time, it was rumored that Mario was engaged in piracy, and Mario was concerned that Troels might take legal action. My advice was to apologize for what he did and to never engage in similar acts. But because Mario lived in Europe and Troels company was in the US, it was cost prohibitive and highly unlikely legal action would ever be taken. Anyhow, so I posted the story in the thread. Mario acknowledged I was telling the truth and VI-CONTROL's owner, Mike Greene sent me a PM telling me he just deleted my posts and Mario's responses, that he hates 8Dio and told me to stay out of it. Greene and I later had a series of emails about the matter. What non industry people don't know is that the woman who started the thread and Mario both work for 8Dio's competitor, Impact Soundworks, a fact they hid until someone brought it up and then Impact Soundworks owner made some posts in the thread. Its a case study in defamation and bad ethics. Anyhow, since then, Mike Greene started going into sales threads about 8Dio, interrupting them with angry rants that 8Dio is destroying the industry by pricing things so low. In the original attack thread, Mike actually furthered on false attacks against 8Dio that he privately acknowledged to me that he knew to be false. I confronted Mike. He acknowledged that he was furthering attacks that were not based in truth, that maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, but it didn't matter because 8Dio is bringing the industry down with their pricing and urged me to refuse to consult to them and have nothing to do with them. His comments were defamatory and cc'ing Mike, I sent the emails to 8Dio's owner, who I've since developed a friendship with, that happened as a result of me stepping up to get the truth out. Prior to that, I didn't know 8Dio's CEO and only spoke with Troels once, 15 years prior. Sadly, the defamatory attack on the developer has been picked up by most music making related forums, including this one and Reddit. I was friends with two people used to attack 8Dio and I knew both stories were lies. I later learned the story of the scripter from her and from Troels and found that also wasn't being presented honestly. The one thread through all of this? 8Dio's competitors, Mike Greene and Impact Soundworks, Andrew Aversa, egged it on. When I privately asked Sarah if she'd be open to having a call I facilitated with the 8Dio folks to try to work things out, she replied to me that she wouldn't be comfortable with doing that because of her boss Andrew Aversa -- again, an 8Dio competitor that employs Sarah, who made the thread; Mario, who joined in the 8Dio attacks with a false and defamatory story -- neither of them ever disclosing that they worked for an 8Dio competitor. Then VI-CONTROL owner Mike Greene, also an 8Dio competitor and the owner of the forum that 8Dio just pulled their sponsorship and advertising from. Greene had claimed that 8Dio is litigious and that they "sicked their lawyer" on him. What forum viewers don't know is that even that remark is dripping with insincerity to support the defamatory attack on Greene's competitor. 8Dio's lawyer is actually Greene's close friend's wife. As a side note, in the time that's past, 8Dio has never filed a libel suit (FTR, I would have, in their shoes), I think we can all see that the claims made about them were bogus, but as their competitor owns a forum where he deleted more than one hundred posts by people in defense of 8Dio (including my posts and Mario's responses to me acknowledging what I wrote was true) and Greene dishonestly claimed in a post near the end of the thread not one post he deleted defended 8Dio. The thread is a great example of how Greene weaponizes his forum to attack his competitors (8Dio isn't alone, Greene has attacked other competitors on his forun; however, 8Dio is the only competitor he's attacked where I personally knew two of the main stories being used to attack them were false). Again, this defamatory attack by two competitors and their employees still lives on in Google suggestions for 8Dio, I urged Greene to delete the thread and after I cc'ed 8Dio's CEO on our correspondence and tried to persuade Greene to take corrective action, it's clear that he won't. He later edited his attack rants on 8Dio and created a thread of my responses to his rants, completely out of context and he invited his forum members to attack me, which one member here, who had a history of making political, racial and anti LGBTQ references in posts years ago that I publicly objected to took advantage of. Of course, you can't become an outspoken critic of a forum owner and call out his poor ethics privately and publicly and expect he won't retaliate. But know that I witnessed the attacks on 8Dio as an acquaintance of two of the individuals used in the attack, and Mike Greene. When that attack thread started, I didn't know the 8Dio folks, I knew the folks who lied and shared that they were lying and I was also a friend of an influencer the OP leveraged in her attacks and that the story she shared about him was also a lie. That led to 8Dio's CEO contacting me and our since becoming friends.

Garritan GPO -- which I brought back in the day -- had a very different strategy. GPO targeted hobbyist / beginners. Garritan established a new category and led the way for a market strategy that led with the education market by marketing heavily to schools, forming relationships and giving educational discounts. Garrison established that market. I know, my friend, Kirk Hunter was a part of the early marketplace. 8Dio hasn't established a new market, however, looking back, I'd say their founder, Troels, was definitely one of the early pioneers of creating extremely detailed sample libraries with ToneHammer (along with one of the owners of SoundIron). What 8Dio is doing is dramatically bringing down the pricing of professional libraries to a price point that is very accessible to many hobbyists (FTR, while I've given then some minor consulting advice, I never advised them on their 8Dio line, just SoundPaint). To your point, it is much easier for a developer to bring down prices on mature libraries whose production costs have already been paid off and their current costs are largely related to ecommerce/data/sales, royalties and promotion. Of course, it would be more challenging to sell a new library at these kinds of price points. However, if a developer finds they can sell 10x as many products by lowering the price 80%, it easily could result in the developer deciding to price new libraries at similarly low price points.

Man, I've had a bunch of conversations with 8Dio's CEO and she's been very passionate that prices for sample libraries need to come down. But it's one thing to discuss ideas, it's a whole other level to see those ideas happen. It's an amazing time to be a musician who uses sample libraries. Yes, lowering prices for libraries makes them more accessible-- which is great, IMO. It also can bring out enormous hostility from competitors in this business, which I witnessed from the inside in this case. My hope is that 8Dio's moves like this to dramatically reduce prices of premium sample libraries result in prices coming down overall for sample libraries. The market has become mature. It's still experiencing healthy growth, but tighter margins will absolutely mean that some marginal players won't survive. It also means that paying back production costs of very niche libraries is going to take a longer period of time-- which was a giant part of why a couple of competitors launched a public smear / defamation campaign against 8Dio last year -- and unsuccessfully tried to keep me from sharing what was going on (I actually didn't know the 8Dio's CEO until then). Anyhow, even if this deal doesn't appeal to you, it does represent something major for the industry.

I bought the ezDrummer Big Rock from our forum MVP / GOAT cclarry in the past (I highly recommend cclarry as a seller) and got a great deal. It's a very cool ezX if you're looking for big, boomy, Bonam-esque rock drum kits. I'm still hoping Larry has more ezX's and SDx's to sell!

There is a big opportunity for customers to get the company to change course. If enough customers can unite and voice a clear and consistent opposition to the company's new direction, there's a chance they may listen. If you go back 15 years, companies largely didn't take consumers calling for boycotts or defections seriously, but in recent years, companies are seeing how a rapidly growing opposition to a new strategy reflected in social media posts can be a red flag that they are pursuing the wrong strategic direction. If someone who feels strongly wants to do something like create a Change.org or other petition, I think it could go a long way. Of course, we have recent examples of developers in this industry changing course rather quickly after customers voiced strong dissent -- most notably with Waves. Anyhow, if someone wants to take the initiative, I'd sign on. I own a license of Studio Pro 3 and have been waiting on BandLab to announce their pricing model/decision for the new Sonar before deciding if I want to transition over to Studio One Pro or not. This move by Presonus makes me LESS prone to upgrading my license with them. Hopefully Bandlab is watching this unfold and taking notes.

I chose Koko's version because I was a fan and saw her live many times. Plus, I worked with her record label when I was in college and got to meet her at the label's Christmas party. This is the original version, which I also love (a littlte trivia: Bob Seger, from Larry's state, covered the song a year later, changing the lyric to "Come to Pappa" because, unlike Fleer, he didn't have the nerve to sing, "Come to Mama" -- which could have been epic!):

@Fleer Every time I see you post "come to mama," I immediately think of blues legend Koko Taylor singing this song.

Thanks, gentlemen! I'll put Musical Sampling on my watch list. I do remember a thread about StraightAheadSamples, @Craig Fowler and their demos sound very compelling to my ears. I've just cut back on my spending and only buy during major sales. Clearly, there's no shortage of extremely talented developers out there. Thanks for helping me navigate through the pack to find the best ones, guys.

I never see many posts about this developer, and I only have one freebie they gave away some time ago (a trumpet for KONTAKT). But that freebie is really nice and I suspect this developer is top notch based upon that and the demos. Even though I'm not in the market for an oboe, the demos for this sound superb. I'd love to hear from those who own their libraries. Is this indeed a very talented developer that deserves more recognition, as I suspect is the case? How playable are their libraries? Do they have any libraries you'd strongly recommend we check out?