PavlovsCat

I have zero to add, but if you guys take this conversation elsewhere, please link to it in this thread. I enjoy reading these stories and learning more about your musical/engineering histories.

Okay , I admit that I clicked the link because I was thinking a kazoo library, seriously? And thought I might post something funny about it. But it actually sounded excellent. I only have a freebie from this developer, their legato trumpet and think it's excellent. Their demos from their libraries sound superb. I'm not in the market for a kazoo library - in fact, my kazoo playing skills are pretty good (sorry if that sounds a bit cocky) and I own a couple of them -- but if I was in the market for a kazoo library, their library sounds like a no brainer from the demos. Can anyone who owns any of their libraries weigh in? This dev seems like a serious talent and I don't see them getting a lot of attention and after finding every demo I've heard sounded great and considering the quality of their freebie library, I can't help but think they should be on my shortlist and deserve a lot more attention than they get.

TL;DR VERSION I'd be interested if anyone who read the original VI Control attack thread that this thread is about thinks of 8Dio now? AN UPDATE TO THE STORY THIS THREAD IS ABOUT We're getting close to a year away from the original VI-Control 8Dio attack thread. VI-Control's owner and sample developer, Mike Greene, has continued to go on off the rails, F-bomb-dropping, reputation attack rants in literally every 8Dio related thread (with one exception) on his forum,, even when he's aware that the allegations he's representing as fact are untrue. He clearly is obsessed with a vendetta against a competitor developer and is using his forum as a weapon to damage their reputation. Like this Cakewalk forum thread, there have been many threads on various forums, a subreddit, tweets and all sorts of conversations on the web that came out of the original attack thread and just days ago, when a composer on X shared that he liked at a SoundPaint (a division of 8Dio) library, someone replied that 8Dio is a bad company and linked to the VI-Control attack thread on 8Dio. VI-CONTROL'S OWNER DELETED POSTS SHARING THE TRUTH ABOUT ONE OF THE KEY STORIES USED TO ATTACK 8DIO Having known one of the stories told in the 8Dio attack thread was falsely presented by Greene's friend who told it, as I was the person he received advice from 13 years ago, I had posted the true story in the original attack thread. Mario and I had interacted in that thread to discuss the facts (a developer that brought me in to provide advice, still has notes and in has sent them to me electronically; as he put it, Troels and I are telling the story accurately). However, Greene quickly deleted all of our posts and sent me a PM telling me not to get involved in the thread and later privately disparaged 8Dio to me. Greene later posted a lie that he didn't delete a single pro 8Dio post out of what he acknowledged where hundreds of posts he deleted. SARAH MANCUSO, WHO STARTED THE ATTACK THREAD, NOW ADMITS SHE WASN'T WRONGED BY 8DIO, JUST UPSET THAT THEY DIDN'T BUY HER UNCOMMISSIONED FAN PROJECT Sarah Mancuso, the person who started the attack thread, now has stated that she wasn't wronged, that it was fair and "8Dio was well within their rights" to not purchase her decommissioned fan project she wanted them to buy for 5 -6 figures for a retired sample library. Sarah acknowledges that while she used Cory Pelazzari as part of her attack, she never even attempted to reach out to him and never communicated with him at any point while she leveraged him for her vendetta attack. She also never once met, spoke with, PMed or emailed 8Dio's CEO, Tawnia Knox and when she referred to Tawnia as a phony, evil bitch, it was based on what Mike Greene's remarks to her about Knox. GREENE'S OBSESSIVE DEFAMATORY ATTACKS ON 8DIO SINCE THE ORIGINAL ATTACK THREAD CONTINUE ON VI-CONTROL AND VIA EMAIL Last week, I responded to one of Greene's recent rants against 8Dio where he cited the original attack thread claims and exploited Cory Pellazari in an attempt to legitimize his attacks (Mike actually knows some of the real story and despite claiming to be a friend of Cory has no relationship with him beyond using his name in attack rants). His attack started out ranting about 8Dio discounting their libraries too heavily. Greene wrote, that 8Dio is "leading a race to the bottom" regarding their pricing. Now let me share why many developers see Mike going on these rants as a conflict of interest. Consider an 8Dio orchestral library where they've publicly shared that the total production costs totaled of $605, 500. Then you have additional costs like royalties, marketing and distribution. A developer needs to sell a lot of units to recoup those costs. So you can understand why a small developer who sells in very low volume, like Greene, is considered about a more successful developer lowering the prices on their libraries in the same marketplace. As Greene has stated in his rants, it makes it a lot harder for him to sell enough product to break even if he has to lower his prices dramatically. And that part of Greene's rants are understandable. However, using his forum to make attacks on competitors and then defaming those competitors, it's not only unethical, it makes other developers concerned they may be on his enemies list in the future. But Mike deleted all of my posts in that thread and deleted or edited his rants I was referencing, then moved all of my posts -- which are now completely out of context -- to their own thread, without his full rant posts I was referring to (he's edited out at least 50% of the rant post of his I quoted in my original post and has created a new post from his claiming that I'm making these posts out of the blue in reference to the original attack thread that began in Jan 2023. I wasn't. I was referring to Mike's attack rants in every single new thread on his forum that has been created since the original Jan 2023 attack thread. Here's an excerpt of one of Mike's rants that came after the original attack thread: FTR, the lawyer that Mike claimed 8Dio "sicked on them" is actually a friend of his, or maybe it's more accurate to say, his friend's wife and she was friendly with him, as he later made a post to state. Mike then sent me a transparently manipulative email libeling 8Dio's CEO, trying to persuade me to not like her which I replied to cc'ing her. His email showered me with praise calling me a good guy, praising my character, ethics and "heart of gold" before he launching into the reason for his correspondence, character attacks on 8Dio's CEO, Tawnia Knox. He proceeded to attack 8Dio's CEO as a deceitful woman of poor character and a manipulator. His email reads like something out of the script for Meangirls. It's juvenile, petty. manipulative at a level an 8th grader can discern. The basic premise is that everyone hates 8Dio's CEO and I should too and he doesn't want them at his forum or to see me make a case defending them on his forum. While Greene's defamatory public remarks against Knox are that she can't handle criticism and is litigious and claims that he's merely defending his good friend Cory (who, in reality, he's never even corresponded with). Mike knows that he can't use that narrative with me because he's aware that I've posted a number of savage reviews on sample libraries, including several very harsh reviews of 8Dio libraries that Tawnia has seen and never once asked or even hinted that she would like me to edit or delete them. Consequently, Mike takes a different approach to attack his competitor with me, he claims that she's a phony and everyone hates her. From Mike's email to me: "Again, I’m not trying to convince that I’m in the right about any of the 8dio drama. None of that matters at this point. I’m just speaking to you as a friend, who I believe has been taken advantage of....Ask yourself this: If you were at ask people...' He goes on to praise his and my character and make defamatory remarks about Ms. Knox. The case Greene made in the original VI-Control attack thread on 8Dio was that the company's leaders cannot handle criticism and are litigious. Greene's new narrative in his email is that 8Dio's CEO is an evil manipulator and Mike, for some reason, really cares what I think of her. It's unhinged and unethical. I'm not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure Greene's posts and emails are libelous. One thing is certain, it's unethical.

I've helped a lot of small developers I think were very talented without charging in past years, but this is one developer where their work is consistently so poor, so far below even what I would consider mediocre, that I feel it would be a disservice to this community not to speak up. I've tried a few of their instruments and found them to be very poor quality. I seriously can't understand how anyone could buy their plugins and feel they got something that was good quality they would be satisfied with. Consequently, I would recommend that anyone considering Sound Magic search for the two extensive curated lists of free sample libraries I've created on this forum. One is a curated list of free sample libraries for free players, the other is a curated list of free sample libraries for the full version of KONTAKT. Those lists only contain free instruments I've personally tested and found to be good quality. I can also say that those free instruments are vastly superior to anything I've heard from Sound Magic and they're completely free. To anyone considering this, please instead look at my list of similar instruments at no cost and take the money you saved and do something worthwhile with it.

That is such a Larry post, I always wait a little bit before buying in case Larry has a second post. Nobody can beat Larry's ability to find a great deal... except for Larry, of course. The 🐐. [EDIT: It just hit me that GOAT 🐐 may not translate easily. It stands for Greatest Of All Time. ]

Great points. It was on a different topic, but I just was writing a post -- getting analytical (I used to write; maybe that's why my posts can be so long!). I think a bunch of people have pointed out that there's some major price drops that have been happening for effects. I think we're starting to see this in the sample world to some extent too, but not as big. And some sample developers are getting concerned that there are some big changes. I can go into details, but I'll spare everyone. The short version is, I think that the radical dropping of plugin prices is going to hit the sample library world next. Why? The markets getting really crowded and a bit stagnant. Waves dropped prices and the industry followed. I think that with lower prices for sample libraries that some subscriptions for sample developers might work -- IF they're priced right and they have a wide enough breadth of breadth of instruments. Will CineSamples Musio line work? I think it's very iffy and would say the odds are more likely it doesn't than does, especially if we see some serious pricing disruption that results in sample library pricing coming down, particularly on the higher priced libraries. My instincts are that we're going to see major changes in pricing for sample libraries in the coming year. There's been too much major discounting for it not to occur. That would be great news for us, but could mean for a bunch of shakeups in the sample developer world. I mean, I just spent the last week seeing how a sample developer is freaking out over another sample developer deep discounting, fearing it will lead to "a race to the bottom" and in one sense, it's driving the guy batsh*t crazy, but in another sense, he is kinda right. Once you get used to a formerly $500 USD library selling for 100 bucks or so, it's hard to justify -- especially for hobbyists -- shelling out $500 again. And I bet some of the more successful devs may be acquired.

When Steven was just starting out he called me up for some marketing advice. We really hit it off and he's a really fun and interesting person -- and he's written and sung some pretty cool rock songs (he plays drums too). We both share a love for the Beatles. He even told me, get the compay's name *Yellow Matter Entertainment"? Of course, I'm a huge Beatles fan! But I'm just a hobbyist and can barely even play for 5 minutes without stopping from tendinitis pain, so I limit my spending and would never buy a subscription, we already have enough of those for cable TV, streaming services, etc. I don't want more! But I did hear Steven's stuff is really good and it seems like the only subscription service I have heard people really say good things about and have yet to see anyone complain about it (as compared to some others like Waves). I suppose I haven't heard anything bad about Musio, I just haven't heard much talk about it at all, beyond when they had their lifetime deal. Every dev with a lot of plugins or sample libraries thinks about the subscription model, and I think the dev best positioned to pull it off successfully is NI/Izotope.

I think Steven Slate's company (or technically, former company) is the only subscription model in this business that I really haven't seen many people complain much about. How many folks here have it?

I had a couple of conversations with this developer and found he's a really nice person, so I do cheer for him. This library sounds gorgeous in the video walkthrough. I'd love to hear from anyone who owns any of his libraries.

I'm only looking for great deals at Plugin Boutique to pick up their freebies! Even though I'm not into the UJAM stuff, when some folks were writing about it here, I was thinking about trying it when I'm working out parts to see if it inspires me to think of new ideas. But otherwise, I really don't go for UJAM stuff. Just not my cup of tea. I tend to want to play my MIDI controller like a synth or a piano. I want to play the notes and chords and just have multisamples play when I hit notes not loops to someone else's MIDI -- even if they are a million times of a better player than me. My enjoyment comes from making the music I record myself, even if I play it terribly! It's still me playing it.

From buying a bunch of their libraries, I think $5 USD is about as much as I'd ever pay for a Rigid Audio library. They're okay, but nothing more than okay. Mediocre, IMO. I doubt that anyone buys the libraries at their list price, especially when they're constantly on sale for 90% or close to that off. But $15 for a Rigid Audio library? Now even remotely tempting.

As a former drummer, I easily get lured into all things drums. The specs on these drums look good, but I'm not in love with the sound or the fact that it's only GM mapped and not also mapped for Roland V Drums. But for : €19 , it seems like a pretty good deal and if you like the sound, you may want to pick this up. DAYTON DRUMS A raw, organic and soulful drum kit with amazing realism! Raw and natural drum kit for Kontakt Intuitive mixer with maximum sonic flexibility Extended range of articulations Great realism with up to 38 velocity layers Scripted round-robin, and left and right-hand sampling for snare drum Tempo-synced grooves and fill-ins with mod wheel variation Automatic snare drum MW rolls ‘Humanize’ knob for breathtaking realism 17 Kontakt instruments 1674 samples (24bit, 48kHz, mono and stereo WAV) 20 custom IR samples Total size uncompressed: 1.41GB full Kontakt 5.8+ required!!! list price: €49,- (+VAT for EU customers) !! great INTRO offer: €19 only!! https://www.loopsdelacreme.com/dayton-drums

Serious talent. Sorry, I enjoy your music too much and can't think of any suggestions beyond, keep it up!

Nice job, Nick. You're really good at coming up with catchy hooks and finding really good sounds.

I really enjoyed it, especially the groove.

El Diablo, you're a fascinating and unconventional artist.

Always top notch, very polished, kudos. Being a big fan of Neil Finn's songwriting, I can detect some influence (which I think is a very good thing). You've got the whole package, the song, the vocal, the performance and production. I wish you great success!

It's good to have @cclarry back! And there's also been a lot of other people posting deals lately. So this place really seems to be rocking. But I'm with you and not looking to bust the bank. I want to live like Bapu and Fleer on a pauper's budget. My talent level isn't worthy of that kind of investment.

Yeah, and we do realize the only way to get of this, right? Black October!

Man, I'm dying for a flash sale from Toontrack, but I don't do metal. I do love their libraries. Easily my favorite acoustic drum libraries and once you get into the SD3 ecosystem, it's hard to buy other formats. I own a bunch of AD2 stuff and I much prefer the way XLN treats their customers (thinking of how Toontrack only offered an upgrade for SD2 users for a limited time), but Toontrack's plugun and libraries are really head and shoulders above their competition, IMO. Granted I'd love to see AD3 or BD4 come and take things to the next level, but as for now, Superior Drummer lives up to its name. Although it's name does sound a bit cocky.

Totally. Because I'm a marketing pro, although my main work has been large brands leading digital marketing and advising large brands (like Unilever) or B2B brands, I don't spend much time with retailers. Still, I've given consulting advice to a lot of developers in this space. I've GENERALLY told the ones who rely heavily on holiday sales to consider getting ahead of Black Friday for the exact reason you just mentioned. Even more, I advise that when you do a pre-Black Friday sale, give your customers a pricing guarantee to keep them from hesitating, thinking you'll have a better sale on Black Friday. Basically, you want to do everything to take away anything that holds them back from pressing the buy button.

Man, @Nick Blanc aren't we at the stage where we don't even need to say bullshit before the word marketing? Granted, if I nerd out, I could say you're referring to PROMOTION, not the whole of marketing. But I do like your idea! I've always been a marketing pro with a soul. I even once found a kindred spirit in the oddest of places, a marketing lawyer at Fortune 500, a globally well-known brand that everyone here would know if I mentioned it. We both had ideas to make marketing more ethical and I championed her stand once and told her how much I respected her ethics and found she was moved to tears. Anyhow, everything we attempted went down in flames -- very quickly. But we tried. So your observation about ChatGPT. It's spot on. It's all the rage right now.

@cclarry Have you noticed that a bunch of developers are trying to get a head start on Black Friday? We might as well call it Black November.

I picked up the Solo Cello from Salu when it was originally on sale for €18.50 and am happy with it. I like Orchestra Tools.

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