PavlovsCat

He is into this kind of sound. In fact, you two would likely hit it off very well. Super nice guy, who's been one of the main people who encouraged me to attempt to play music again (I only started really trying to play again in 2021 after an injury in 1999 stopped me; even though I never stopped buying stuff and kept a DAW on a laptop to fiddle with, I never tried playing/recording full songs until 2021) and he's a really talented keyboardist, like yourself. He's done some music for indie video games and his day job is working for a major games developer managing major releases (he was previously with Nintendo and later worked on one of my son's favorite video games, Forza Horizon; he seems to handle the games my kids love). I'll send him over the info.

Nick, dead serious. When I saw this thread, I thought, Orchestra Tools doing a synth library??? Excellent developer, but I wouldn't expect them to do a synth library. But then seeing you praising them for a synth library -- a guy who is massively into synths and knows his stuff -- that got my attention. So I'm listening to the video walkthrough and agree it does sound very cool. I'm sure I could have fun with it, but I'm not sure it really fits the music I've been working on to date. I think I'm going to send it to my friend Thorstein who's big into synths like you -- the friend I've watched some of your videos with. I'm guessing he'd end up buying it just like you!

I've seen a lot of users post praise Falcon and don't ever recall seeing a single post from someone who owns it who didn't say good things about it, which is pretty compelling. In time I may pick it up. I just know that I really don't like the UVI interface / user experience and wish the developer would spend some time improving it. I already own several UVI instruments, but the user experience is so poor, that I rarely use them and likely would have bought Acoustic Samples fantastic sounding Wulrie library if it was in the KONTAKT format or if UVI had a better user experience.

AAS is one of the friendliest, easiest-to-deal with plugin devs I know of. I own a bunch of their instruments. I can't say that any of them are among my favorite synth sounds, but if you like the sounds, their plugins run well and their support and treatment of customers are superb.

I was checking out GGD One Kit Wonder: Classic Rock, which I thought sounded really good in the YouTube demo. What are the reasons why you don't like it? Is it the sound? Do the kits lack detail?

This seems like a title that's definitely going to be part of KOMPLETE standard on up if you're interested in that. I'd say pick up an old version of KOMPLETE that allows you to update to the newest version, and next time there's a half off upgrade sale, you can get the update for $90 or less from resellers with cclarry's codes. I usually do.

Same. I have this too. I would recommend that this is a freebie well worth picking up. If it was permanently free, I would put it on my recommended freebie list (I once did).

I've seen you and other Falcon users post that you love it in the past. But I never really understood how it all works. As a Falcon user do these libraries/synths load through that interface? I really don't like the UVI interface.

I'm absolutely guilty of writing long posts, I tend to write fast, and it's like the old quote about a short letter taking longer to write than a long one, and that is the case here. When I write long posts it's because it's something complex and significant. That said, I also realize that a lot of people don't want to read long posts. So I'll tell you what. I'm going to commit to writing shorter posts moving forward starting now. Dead serious. [EDIT: I edited/shortened some of my earlier posts. ]

Of course, no one is asserting that all 40,000 community members at VI-Control are all terrible people. I've interacted with some wonderful people there. The worst behavior comes from a small, but aggressive group. However, just like bad actors on Facebook, X and larger social media vehicles, the bad actors are usually the ones with the loudest, most aggressive behavior. Mike, unlike Frederick, the previous owner, doesn't do anything to keep the bad behavior in check and sometimes Mike participates in it. Add to that the group think/mob mentality that's fairly pervasive at VI-Control and personality cults, and you have a toxic mix.Frederick at least used temporary bans on some of the worst bad actors who engaged in cyberbullying. That no longer happens under Greene. If you contrast that forum with this and other civil forums, you'll find that civil environment didn't occur by accident. It starts at the top with ownership with good ethics, ethical policies and consistent enforcement of those policies. As far as your shot at me for long posts. I'm clearly guilty of long posts. But your analysis on why I write long posts is wrong. I don't write "essays on pet peeves," I write long posts when I've seen bad ethics, libel, toxic behaviors and cyberbullying -- and in this case, a developer/forum owner's obsessive mission to destroy a fellow developer's business and reputation. IMO, that's worth writing about. Just look at what's happened in every thread in this forum since Greene egged on an attack on 8Dio on VI Control. You can't mention 8Dio anymore without someone saying they won't buy them due to Greene using his forum to attack a competitor based on lies and distortions. Sadly some people are going to believe Greene's unethical smear campaign.

The only surprise about this library is that NI didn't release this one long ago. I suspect it will be a great seller for them.

I've tried to make this point before. Some people think that the 8Dio vs Greene stuff is political. It's not. I've known Mike for two decades. I once gave him some marketing advice. Greene is very political (liberal). Troels and Tawnia are very non-political. Mike makes posts bashing the former president and his followers. So people who've asserted that the whole thing is political are dead wrong. Greene's rage against 8Dio has been over 2 things (1) he's furious that their pricing will change what people are willing to pay for libraries, causing him and other developers to have to lower their prices and destroy the present profit margins on sample libraries he's counting on and make it harder for small devs like him to make a profit when selling small numbers of units (Realitone titles aren't big sellers, so he's going to need to learn how to sell a lot more units to maintain the same profits he currently gets, because his margins will be smaller). and (2) Tawnia pushed him hard to stop cancelling any discussion regarding the Henson controversy and Mike's ego is not exactly small and his temper goes off easily. I've read their correspondence about this stuff. Tawnia attempted to appeal to Mike not to censor the conversation on the CH matter citing that she has two LGBTQ employees and a close family member who is LGBQ and this conversation matters to them. Greene was rude and dismissive and the whole thing went downhill fast and Tawnia criticized Greene's decisions and Mike is not someone who handles criticism well. Since then, Greene has been hyper-abrasive in his communications with 8Dio, primarily with Tawnia, not Troels. And he's expressed to me privately that he loathes her and has zero interest in wanting to work things out. Mike even tried to persuade me not to deal with her. It's a vendetta. I actually tried to get Mike to be reasonable and offered to facilitate a Zoom call with 8Dio's two owners and Greene, but Greene refused and told me he never wants to talk to them or have them at his forum, it's very accurate to say that he despises Tawnia and it's not reasonable, it's completely emotional and I know it's goes back to her criticizing him and his anger over their discounting of their libraries impacting prices for orchestral sample libraries to come down. As far as Cakewalk forums, I've been coming here from the earliest days as eDrummist and never thought it as toxic, but maybe you saw things, I didn't. All I know is it's not now, despite that once in a while you see toxic behavior and I've been stalked by a few people who don't like me. But compared to other forums, this is still the friendliest forum of its kind I know. As a marketing/branding pro, I actually do believe 8Dio should be suing Greene. He claims they're litigious, but didn't provide any examples of any of his claims. But this is an instance where they likely have a very good libel/harassment case and I suspect that Greene's email trying to persuade a consultant (me) to never work with them reflects harassment. At a minimum, it's as unethical as hell.

Dead serious, if a strings developer released a library called Abbey Road: George Martin Strings, that would be my dream strings library! I'd want a quartet ALA Eleanor Rigby and a larger orchestra like used on other tracks. If you remember when Kirk Hunter released Pop/Rock Strings around a decade ago, that was basically the idea behind it. Kirk and I were talking about ways of configuring libraries and I told him I thought a library aimed at pop and rock musicians/producers for around $99 USD could really be a good seller. I would love to see a developer tackle that today. I am a sucker for seeing the words, "Abbey Road."

If I'm going to be completely candid, 8Dio has long been the whipping boy of VI-Control's tribe of personality cult wannabe composers who are eager to bully developers Greene doesn't like. It's a toxic series of personality cults and group think easily swayed by one semi-quasi talented semi- pro composers and the group trashes whatever that semi-pro composer trashes and praises whatever he praises. I'm basically paraphrasing what a number of pro composers have said about that forum, one of them being Christian Henson who shared -- prior to the tweet controversy -- that he finds VI-Control so toxic he can only handle limited doses before taking breaks. I agree with using it as an input, but always keep in mind that the bias there is pretty ridiculous and driven my group think. Pros don't really enjoy that forum (there was a time, a long time ago that Hans Zimmer used to go there as well as some other popular pros, that I knew a little bit from developers) and now that a developer owns it, it's gotten far more toxic and most of the full-time pros have abandoned it.

Wow, that does sound is beautiful. I've seen a lot of posts praising Performance Samples. Do they sell the solo cello alone? I've been looking for a dry solo cello with great tone and great scripting. I've been looking at Sonixenima mostly. As they have a cello library -- actually two-- that just sound gorgeous to my ears. I know people have recommended the Embertone Blakus one, but I simply don't love the tone of the cello. And getting back to my point about pros vs hobbyists, I want a library that features great, intuitive scripting that I can play/record once not have to screw with midi editing. I'm just a hobbyist musician recording songs I wrote during my semi-pro playing days and covers mostly to entertain my kids and handful of friends. So, I'd love to get your thoughts on Performance Samples stuff if you think this solo cello might be a fit for me. I have your word there's no one hacking up a lung in and of the samples for that library, like their freebie?

Yeah, I'm just sharing. It is perplexing owning libraries from a developer who privately, then publicly attacked me, lying and defaming me in a series of defamatory character attacks all because he was trying to discredit me for posting that he makes very good libraries but the customer support is non-existent following my putting in 4 customer support requests over 11 months without any response whatsoever and the guy claimed I was lying (his defense was that he only ignored 2 customer support requests from me over slightly more than 3 months; which one would think would be bad enough in and of itself). As a follow-up, foranyone who remembers those threads, the dev stated that he was going to make a script that allows a viola library in question to be played polyphonically that he said he'd have available in Nov 2022. It was only after I publicly, very politely, posted on VI-Control asking the status on the promised update that he eventually delivered the update, in August 2023 and I politely thanked him. But I've since learned from one of his associates that he's ill-tempered and not good at following up on things, then I was PMed by another Fluffy customer who witnessed the VI-Control thread who shared his bad experience with the dev, and then an influencer I know told me about his own bad experience with the developer. I've provided consulting to 3 dozen devs over two decades, and some of them witnessed me being defamed, and that's a character attack on my reputation. So it's a lot more serious for me than a hobbyist who hasn't done work in this industry. I love the dev's vibraphone library -- and I own a bunch of other vibraphone libraries -- but using it reminds me of my terrible experience with the guy. But even so, @satya, if you have the full version of KONTAKT, it pains me to say this, but my opinion is that free Fluffy Audio flute library is the best quality free flute library I know of. That's easily the most wordy and awkward recommendation of a sample library ever!

I'm glad you just made that list! If he told me that he had full KONTAKT, I was going to recommend Fluffy Audio's full flute,and that's a really sleazy, ill-tempered developer who attacked me on this forum and VI-Control after I shared that he had ignored my 4 customer support requests over a period of 11 months. I later received a PM from one of his contractors sharing that the guy is known to have a really bad temper and behave badly and have since heard from another Fluffy customer who had a bad experience and an influencer who had a bad experience. Even more, only last week, I found the developer was posting in a developer's group on Facebook posting about me in a pretty insulting manner for sharing my experiences with his non existent support. Two developers responded by saying that my posts seemed very reasonable and he should be trying to resolve the issue instead of attacking a customer. He ignored their responses and then went on to call me names in the forums. Even so, I think his free flute library is pretty good and I like their scripting, but considering my experience with the guy, it's pretty hard to recommend anything from Fluffy Audio.

Well, the production costs are one-time costs, unless, as you pointed out, you need to go back and make refinements. But royalties are not one-time or fixed costs. Royalties are paid on each unit sold and sample developers often have royalty agreements with musicians and may also have them with an engineer or a coder who worked on the library. Additionally, if it's a KONTAKT Player library, they take a piece of the cost based on your sale price, which doesn't apply in the 8Dio case, but is a factor for many KONTAKT library developers. As far as hearing other sounds in a sample library than the recorded instrument, there is a free library by a well-known orchestral strings library developer (okay, it's Performance Samples) -- I think it's for a solo cello, but it may be a viola or violin -- where you can hear someone clearing their throat and it's loud enough to make that note unusable for me, especially when you hit that note more than once in a performance. Going back a long time ago, I had an old EastWest library where you can hear someone cough at the end of the recorded note. I remember sending it off to other developers years ago for a laugh. I seem to recall it was a G# or Gb in a bass or electric guitar sample library in a lower octave. There's another library -- okay, I'm going to withhold the dev's name because I know him (it's not Orange Tree Samples or 8Dio, FTR) -- where a drummer, a well-known rock drummer from decades back, makes a loud yelp as he hits the snare drum.

I only have Vol. 5, but the arpeggios are definitely the main feature of it and I agree with everything you wrote for the volume I own. I have had fun playing around with it, but I've never actually used it in a production and I don't think I'm going to pull the trigger on this deal. But I still think the libraries are pretty cool and the dev makes good quality libraries, so if these appeal to someone, I think they're high quality and it's a great deal.

You already know we'll miss you. I think it's great that you're enjoying your life on these trips. Have a fantastic time, make some new memories and enjoy the warm weather! I'll be eager to here about your adventures when you return, my friend! - Peter

@satya Orchestra Tools, a very fine developer, IMO, has two free flute libraries. One is a standard flute and one is aimed at jazz. https://www.orchestraltools.com/sinefactory Sonixima has a free KONTAKT Player flute library, but it's more of a texture instrument than something you'd use for a solo flute part. But you may want style find a use for it n your production along with a solo flute. It is cool in its own way, IMO. https://sonixinema.com/products/brute-flute-freebie If you have the full version of KONTAKT I can provide more suggestions. I hope this helps!

Are you looking for a standard orchestral flute or a more ethnic type flute? And are you looking for a solo flute or an orchestral ensemble section. Also, do you have the full version of KONTAKT, because I have another list for that and I'm certain that I've come across decent free flute libraries for the free version of KONTAKT. Off-hand, if you're looking for an ensemble section, there's the free Spitfire BBC Orchestra plugin, and I think there's a flute in Labs. I'm away from PC right now, but I'll be back in a short while. If you can answer those questions, I bet I can find a flute for you.

I have several of their plugins and really like this developer. I just wish they'd finally make their plugins VST3.

In any event, realizing how an orchestral library can cost more than a half million dollars to produce, might help folks understand how the sampling business can be pretty cutthroat and how the controversy in the sample industry over the sample developer who owns VI-Control having a year's worth of public meltdown rants about 8Dio "leading the race to the bottom" (referring to 8Dio selling orchestral sample libraries at very high discounts impacting the cost that buyers will pay for these libraries) came about. Orchestral libraries are especially costly to make, and small developers, like VI-Control's owner, don't sell a lot of product, so marketplace changes result in dramatically reduced the price he can sell his libraries at. It also means all of the projections they originally did regarding revenue, break even point and profitably are out the window. For example, if you invested $200+K in the production of a library and are running a small business that brings in less than $1 million per yr, and did your projections based on selling a certain number of units at $299 each and the marketplace had since changed so that you need to re-price those libraries at $99, your profit margins have radically declined and you now need to recalculate everything. These are serious challenges. You have to change your breakeven point. Let's say it was 6 months after release and at the new price, it will be 1.5 years if you can't increase sales volume by 3x. If you have enough debt from the production costs of multiple libraries that you have yet to break even on, it could end up in bankruptcy. This situation is the basis of Greene's rants against 8Dio over the past year. While I can certainly empathize with the situation marketplace changes in pricing put small developers in, it's just a standard part of business. But this public controversy does reveal the kind of fears and cutthroat, let's destroy competitors' type nastiness that has long been a part of the sample development industry. Of course, this is not atypical of other industries, but I think that sample buyers can often be unaware of the nature of the business and think they're all just friendly competitors. Some are, but some very much, are not. Consider this excerpt from one of Mike Greene's rants against 8Dio after someone posted sharing an 8Dio flash sale a VI-Control (also, SPOILER: Mike doesn't know Cory Pelizzari, he's never even had a single PM or email with him, as per Mike himself, but note how he leverages Cory and the a claim he knows is false from private correspondence when he claims that Cory was threatened; this is a pretty obvious con job):

Huh? How does knowing production costs allow you to take the leap that you understanding profit margins when you have no information on sales volume or royalty agreements? If production costs are $605k, then you have a bunch of other costs to bring a product to market (e.g., packaging, marketing, sales, file storage and distribution, creative, etc.). Let's say that brings total costs to around $620k. If you price it at $400, you'll need to sell 1,550 licenses to break even on production; of course, if you chop the price down to $100, you're going to need to sell a lot more units to break even. That doesn't include royalties for musicians and any contractors involved in the production or account for the costs of distribution, customer support and credit card processing. It's really not possible to discern a profit margin when you have no information on that, on the number of units sold or royalties that need to be paid on a library is, well, just plain incorrect. What was your logic?