PavlovsCat

7 hours ago, Wallace said:

Are there any good SDX recommendations for Pop / R&B / Jazz / Funk type of sound? Currently looking at just grabbing three from Hitmaker, Decades, Rooms of Hansa, and Stories.

I have a mix of SDx and EZx, but the library I love the best lately is Custom Shop. I think it would work well for certain types of R&B and funk.  The kits sound very different than everything else. 

4 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

It gets pricey when you start buying the addons. 

Yep. That's the major downside of Toontrack stuff. Absolutely top notch, but I'm not crazy about their prices. I have a few ezX for metal that I'm open to offers on if anyone's looking.  But even then, Toontrack charges you $15USD for each library you sell. 

I already own it, but it's great to see it at this price. It's my go-to acoustic drum plugin, my favorite by far and I have a bunch of KONTAKT acoustic drum libraries, and  AD2 and most of their libraries, but nothing comes close to SD3. Highly recommended. 

58 minutes ago, cclarry said:

Requires Full Kontakt

https://8dio.com/products/quintet-strings?variant=41932135071944

Wow, that's a crazy price. I just picked these up a few months ago. But I still haven't gotten around to installing my new SSD to download them.. The demos sound gorgeous to my ears. 

[DISCLOSURE: I've stated this a bunch of times,  but just to be transparent,  8Dio  is one of more than 3 dozen developers I've given consulting advice to over the years. Although I've only advised them on the SoundPaint brand,  not 8Dio.]

Apparently our friend Larry sucks at keeping secrets! 😆 

8 hours ago, jngnz said:

The Wurli or Rhodes any good?

I have the e-instruments Wurli and think it's pretty good. I find it's greatest strengths are in how you can customize the sound with the GUI. Especially for the dead key sound (I think it's the unplugged Wurli key sound that they mix in -- which is what I love so much about the AcousticSamples Wurlie library demos). I've created my own presets turning up that dead key sound that I like more than their presets. But I'd say it's a library I'm really glad I bought. I also bought the 145B from SkyBox Audio which has slightly different characteristics than the 201A -- it's more pristine. I have a bunch of Rhodes libraries, with the Famous E being my favorite and I quite like the freebie Rhodes from Fractured Audio too. 
@jngnz This was the video that sold me on the W.  I'd strongly recommend checking it out. 
 

23 hours ago, Simeon Amburgey said:

Fracture Sounds sent me a copy a few days ago and it is top of its class. I am planning on featuring it this Thursday during Piano Day ;^)

There is a FREE Blueprint based on some of their recordings for this one that I haven’t been able to check out yet.

Over the past months Fracture Sounds has made a huge dynamic shift and I think it comes from the addition of Angus and more from Dan Keen, they are definitely on an upward trajectory.

Stay tuned!
Joyfully,
Simeon

* I have been blessed to have a relationship with the Fracture Sounds team which has allowed me to experience and share their beautiful instruments.

They're clearly a  very talented group. I learned about Dan Keen from Pianobook, where he's given away some really nice libraries.  Something tells me if I watch your video, it will be very hard to resist picking this up! 

I love celestes, but I already own several celeste libraries I'm very fond of. The demo does sound beautiful and I think this developer has proven themselves to be a very talented, high quality shop based on tbeir freebies alone.

Maybe I'll pick this up down the road. I'm sure it would be a nice addition to my collection. I'd love to hear from anyone who picks this up. 

Get Reiya ROMpler by NN Audio for free, normally $24.95 US, via PLUGINOMAT. Expiry: April 17th.

Here's a video of its presets: 

➡️ https://pluginomat.com/product/reiya-by-nn-audio/?aff=stu

FTR, I did search to see if anyone posted this and there were two threads for the plugin when it was on sale at APD a couple of years ago, but nothing recent and it wasn't free. Still, in the time it took me to do that search and write the post, Larry probably already posted it! FTR, I have no idea of this plugin is any good or not. I listened to a little of the demo audio in the video on my phone, which sounded interesting. 

1 hour ago, Brian Walton said:

It is useful if you have dialing and a music/sound track separately.  make sure the DAW or NLE you use is compatible with the routing it requires to function properly.

Give it a trial, pretty sure they run fully functional ones for a few days or similar.

Great point, Brian. Thanks for making the point about compatibility. I'll try the demo before buying it. 

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Oh man, Past To The Future is SO much fun.

It's a collection of sounds from famous songs:

• CMI V : Art of Noise - Moments in Love

• DX-7 V : Berlin - Take My Breath Away

• CLAVINET V : Stevie Wonder - Higher Ground

• Mini V : Kraftwerk - Autobahn

• Modular V : Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Lucky Man

• CS-80V : Vangelis - Blade Runner Blues

• ARP-2600 V : Jean-Michel Jarre - Equinoxe 5

• Prophet V : Kim Carnes - Bette Davis Eyes

• Jup-8 V : Duran Duran - Save a Prayer

• SEM V : Doobie Brothers - What a Fool Believes

• Wurli V : Queen - You're My Best Friend

• VOX Continental V : The Doors - Light My Fire

• Solina V : Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart

• Matrix 12 V : The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds

• Synclavier V : Michael Jackson - Beat It

• B-3 V : Booker T Jones - Green Onions

• Stage-73 V : Led Zepplin - No Quarter

• Farfisa V : Pink Floyd - Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun

• Piano V : Mungo Jerry - In The Summertime

• Analog Lab 3 : Yazoo - Don’t Go

I'm nutzo for noodling around with stuff like that, just for fun.

I already have this installed,  but somehow didn't realize it had a No Quarter based preset. I need to check that one out! Thanks for the post, @Starship Krupa!

22 minutes ago, Fleer said:

Over 3GB worth

https://bunkersamples.com/trypack/

I love the sound of his viola in the demos; it sounds absolutely gorgeous. I'd love to hear thoughts on its playability and scripting from anyone who owns it.  I've had some DMs with the dev in the past and he seems like a really nice guy. 

What Bunker Samples libraries would folks here recommend? 

I didn't ask @Greg Schlaepfer, but from the shape, I think that's a Fender Jaguar electric guitar.  Although I'm sure all of you guitarists know it from the shape. In any event,  I love the tone! 

6 hours ago, Craig Fowler said:

Pricing seems a mite ambitious given Sampletekk's regular and generous sales!

That's the reality developers that engage in deep discounting face. Once they discount a product 70 percent or more, it can be very difficult to convince the market that the full retail price is the true value of that library. I've been a Sampletekk customer for two decades and they (Per) have been superb and worthy of recommending. But, to your point, we've all been trained to buy during their seasonal sales where they offer massive discounts and now, even seeing this library for far less than the regular price of $149 US requiring the full version of KONTAKT gets a less than positive reaction that the price is too high. 

On the positive side, this version includes a free sample player (Sampletekk's $149 version requires the full version of KONTAKT). While I agree with Kitekrazy that KONTAKT is superior to HALion, I think HALion is decent and HALion Sonic 7 is a good option for free.  I'm certain that the $69.99 US full retail price will be discounted in future sales promotions. If this went on sale at  $50 US or less, I think it would be very worthy of consideration for those who don't own KONTAKT.  Of course, even at that price point, there's a good deal of competition (e.g., grand piano libraries with free samplers such as NIs pianos on their 50% off sales,  XLN's Addictive Keys Grand on sale, SoundPaint's regular priced piano libraries, etc.).  

On a separate note, if this is indeed the same quality as the KONTAKT version,  the KONTAKT version is clearly not priced appropriately.  

I'm contemplating getting this for voiceovers in videos. I'd love to get some opinions from the experienced / knowledgeable mixers in the group about Vox Ducker and other, similar plugins, that are worth exploring. 

2 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

I called Native Access - Native Asshat.  I also told them kindness was exhausted after so many issues with it. You'd be surprised on that forum the problem solving is not from developers but users.  That's pretty sad.

I have yet to roll a 3of3 flawless Access installs.  The failure of installation is random.

They did not fix the NTKDemon issue in 3.9.

It's hard to be civil when a good company is eventually turning to crap.

It's obvious it's not just me that has the issues.   Others are angry when support posts the usual annoying links everyone has read.  Users spend a great deal of time trying to get Access to work.  Access is also a forced update. That is a no no. 

 All of this just to change the paint and mimic iTunes.  They are not the only ones going that direction. They are the only developers where their distribution software is faulty.   Unlike others if that fails you can download the updates from a website.  With NI you have to contact support.

 The problem with developers is they want the money but never want thick skin to deal with complaints.  I know you've been there.  Not dealing with a users anger and criticism tends to make more enemies than friends.   The only person I've ever seen do that is Scott from Image Line.  He's good at handling pissed off people.  He doesn't threaten them by knee jerk banning.   BTW id you are banned from NI you just register again with a different user name and email.

 

Okay,  I cracked up at with that.  It's not my style to communicate with people that way, but it's certainly not worthy of a ban. All they had to do is tell you no name calling. Sorry about that.  

51 minutes ago, Simeon Amburgey said:

Excited to see this get off the ground.

The first prototype has a really cool sound to it, almost like a nice round Horner bass at times, Running it through Recirculate is a lot of fun.

It is like a team from a secret sampling society;
Jon is “The Player”, Hunter is “The Blender GUI Master”, Owen is “ The Coder”.

For the Prototype, Owen is using the open source HISE platform for their instruments. I hear that they are also going to still introduce Kontakt based instruments. The Prototypes might be called proof of concept experiments to get things rolling as well as to get some initial momentum.

I have been big fans of what Jon, Hunter, and Owen have done respectively and look forward to seeing them succeed in this new venture.

*The fine print:
I have purchased instruments from Jon Meyer when first learning of his work. I have received NFR copies of their Pianobook Artists libraries via Spitfire Audio. I also purchased the first Somerville Sounds prototype in an effort to help support them and have offered to assist in testing future releases.

Joyfully yours,
Simeon
 

I hope that's right about KONTAKT.  I found the libraries that Hunter shared on Pianobook well done and imaginative. 

Also, kudos on the disclosure. I wish more influencers would follow your lead and do them.  As always,  like everyone else here, I look forward to listening to you play this stuff. It's always a blast and contagious to watch you enjoying libraries and music.  

It does sound good. I recognize Hunter Rogerson's name from Pianobook. He's shared some really nice libraries for free at Pianobook. He's one of the people there I follow. I'm interested in what he does. Although I wish they didn't create another propietary sampler plugin.  I'd greatly prefer if they remained with KONTAKT or another established sampler rather than create another plugin to learn, install, troubleshoot, and maintain. 

11 minutes ago, antler said:

I suspect KK means banned from the NI forum (and that his products still work), but that's just my interpretation.

That is how I understand what he wrote. I'm just surprised they would ban him and wondering what the heck would have resulted in the ban.  @kitekrazy,  as you brought it up, would you mind sharing at least, at a high level, what was it that resulted in NI banning you from their forum? If it was merely criticism of NI's products, that's pretty problematic. 

5 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

Just got banned from NI. 

  If you want to be a developer you have to take the good with the bad.  There's no shortage on the web to escape criticism.  The good ones try to turn enemies into friends. 

Wait,  you got banned from NI? If that's right, would you mind sharing? I'm wondering what the heck could have led to that. 

7 hours ago, mibby said:

Anyone who hasn't been scooped by Lars over the years just hasn't tried posting deals enough! 🤣

I did post one deal earlier this year that wasn't a duplicate of one of Larry's posts -- and I realize that this sounds kind of cocky, and maybe it is -- but Larry even liked that post. Yeah, it was pretty special. My shinning moment in the forum. 

I hope we can all overlook this thread and reflect back on that glorious past achievement. 

There, I changed the thread title to: "duplicate,  moderator please delete."

Oh, the shame. It's my scarlet letter. 

9 hours ago, cclarry said:

 

I swear I looked and searched.  I'm guessing I misspelled the name or something. 

Oh well. I failed. I'll put delete in the title. I'm no match for you, Larry! I'll stay in my lane and update my freebie lists this week!

I just cut and pasted this after seeing this dev's ad in Facebook.  A talented developer and a nice guy who's made a lot of libraries and freelance work for a bunch of well known KONTAKT developers like Impact Soundworks over the years. I'm just a customer of his who had a few emails with him over the years and thought he was really helpful and friendly.  

This is from his ad, not me:

"Unlock timeless melodies with Osiris: The Egyptian Lyre Sample Library. Save 75% today. Use code OSIRIS75 at checkout."

https://librewave.com/product/osiris/

2 hours ago, Kirean said:

It's not the same person in all of the videos. Seems like a bunch of different ones.

 

There's only one video from the nanoinfluencer with a video on the product page, The Sampliest. The rest, I believe, were made by the developer.  Granted, there's nothing different from most developers in his using influencers, as I mentioned, I've even connected developers up with influencers from Simeon who posts at this forum to Cory Pellazarri (who I thought was the most honest influencer in this space who I know of and we quickly became friends) to macro influencers for this space like Venus Theory (who I really like and I enjoy his videos, I think he's a genuinely nice guy and has always been super cool in our conversations).  What's different is how this small dev hypes up a nano influencer giving him a good fake review as if that's something rare. Nope. Give a nano influencer freebies and they do a video hyping up your product -- that is the way the game works. And yet this developer makes it seem like this nano influecer, whose videos reach a pretty small audience -- and hence, these are level of influencer called nano influencer who are trying to grow their audience and often will do a faux review video in exchange for free products and the hope of the developer sponsoring them in the future or paying them for walkthrough videos or other proomos. I enjoy Simeon's videos and have referred him over to some developers, and then he's gone on to do straight up promo videos for at least one developer friend of mine, Kirk Hunter. It's just the way influencer marketing works. These guys truly are just doing sales promotion for developers, but it gets scammy when they call them reviews, because they're not. That's when it becomes a straight up shilling game.  

Think of it this way. You're a small developer. You can buy ads and pay sponsorship fees at KVR, VI-Control, Bedroom Producer, Rekerd.org, Google's network, etc. which are really helpful for creating awareness of your brand/sample library/plugin. Google search is great for spreading awareness, but it can be really costly and unless you go after really specific keywords, you're reading A LOT of the wrong people, which is costly. With forum advertising and sponsorship you're reaching A LOT more of the right audience, but most of your advertising is building awareness for your brand and products. An influencer's business is all about persuading people to trust them, then selling that trust for cash and things of value to brands -- developers in this case. If you spend say $5k-10k for a non top tier influencer to hawk your product in a faux review, it will sell VASTLY more product than spending the same amount in advertising. So, influencer marketing is super popular in this space and really nearly every space. It's basically the same model as infommercials, except it's almost always inherently deceptive, as influencers almost always dishonest about their financial relationships with brands and what their business is about. My hope is that enforcement of regulations and consumer pressure will make practices at least a little more ethical. 

Influencers commonly start videos by declaring that they're completely unbiased when the reality is, they're really just salespeople being used to promote products that they're conpensated to promote. That's all there is to it.