PavlovsCat

I'm at the point where I have probably two dozen paid synths and a ridiculous amount of free synths. I still haven't tired of Vital. But having all of those soft synths has led me to a very unusual place where I no longer have serious GAS when it comes to synths (I still have it for sample libraries-- especially pianos, guitars, basses, drums, strings, etc.) -- with the exception of the freebies from Beat. They've had some pretty nice freebies and this one definitely seems like one of those occasions. Support music making related publications, friends. A great deal of publishers are struggling these days. Beat really doesn't cost much for what you get out of it -- the helpful articles and the free plugins and samples. It also helps make me feel satisfied that I've gotten some new cool sounds every month so I buy less of the stuff I see on the forum!

The developer was very talented. It must be a decade since he passed on. But these synths were pretty good for pads, back in the day. I'm not sure if I'd try them on a modern PC. I'd be interested if anyone is running these on a Windows 10/11 PC with Cakewalk and if they run without issues.

Thanks so much for the encouragement, everyone. It's especially nice considering that most of you have much better quality performed songs on this forum that I really enjoy.

Although this library is 1.15GB, which really isn't that large, instead of making that same post in every 8Dio related thread, you seriously should send them an email. I know that the 8Dio folks don't spend a lot of time on forums. If you contact them, there's a real opportunity to make your case -- and, as you know, I'd love to see you succeed. I think it would be valuable if 8Dio offered "standard definition" versions of all of their larger libraries (they do this with some SoundPaint libraries, and frankly, I've personally used that option). The 8Dio brand has always focused on "deep sampled" libraries -- AKA highly detailed libraries. For example, their piano libraries contain pedal down samples and a good deal of velocities. But that focus on detail also means these libraries are very large. I think now that they've lowered prices a great deal, and made their libraries much more accessible to hobbyists, there are many hobbyists who would trade the detail to have smaller file sizes.

Yeah, one might think that real spiritual concerns would be more along the lines of lying, injustice, exploitation, cheating, stealing, fraud, deception, hate, intolerance, abuse, discrimination... but yeah, say the word "demon" and, well, I'll just quote the words of JI Packer, "...three thousand miles wide and half an inch deep." But there it is. I hear that Henson sacrifices one goat for each Demon Drop 😈 that's downloaded.

They're offended by Henson's use of the word "Demon" in the product title.

Controversy aside. I have no idea if Christian cashed out his investment in Spitfire or if he remains a silent partner, but one would assume that considering that, at least until recently, he owned half of a business that generates more than 20 million pounds annually and has a net worth in the tens of millions of pounds, he's easily able to fund this new venture for as long as he sees fit. Plus, there's not too many people in the sample development business that know how to create a successful brand in this business at the level he does. I think it's probably just a question of what his goals are for this new venture. It does tell you a lot about what he was responsible for at Spitfire (based on what he's doing now and what Spitfire hasn't been doing since he left), and we can see that a lot of other orchestral sample developers have followed Henson's path in doing the freebies to get attention and bring new future customers in the fold. I think some folks naively see that as altruism -- just as they saw Pianobook as altruism, but it really isn't. It's putting future customers in the pipeline and was a very wise strategy -- but one that it appears his partner at Spitfire wasn't totally on board with, or hasn't found the right person to lead the effort in Christian's absence. The Labs+ teaser was a great example of fantastically bad marketing communications. A sub brand that gives away free product is silent for the better part of a year and its first communication is a cryptic message that tries to excite its target audience that they're now going to have to pay for future product. Really, really bad idea. Even if they were going to launch this new Labs non-free product, that isn't a good way to do it.

If we're going to be really candid, the Spitfire co founders were always proudly arrogant, and pretentious in their early days. It was very much on brand for them to alienate people as sport. But Christian cultivated a much more likeable, approachable persona in his YouTube videos in the past several years when he realized the importance of growing the Spitfire brand. With the exception of his infamous tweet, I thought Christian really did well with the video format. I'd say he was probably better with the medium than any other sample developer I can think of (with apologies to my sample developer friends). I think this video is a bit meandering. But Christian is certainly capable of doing masterful YouTube videos for his business. I think it's been a factor in growing Spitfire to be one of the biggest players in the industry.

Another very nice freebie from Fracture Sounds. This dev produces some very lovely sampled instruments. I've been meaning to update my free sample library thread and this one definitely will be added.

Sounds great -- the song, the performance, and the production. , but that's no surprise coming from you. Great job! It sounds very original and I sincerely like it a lot. I get Neil Finn solo vibes with a bit more edge (which is a good thing, as I'm a big fan of Neil Finn). It's both melodic and has a great groove and strong riffs.

Nice. Marty Balin vibes on the vocal.

There's something strangely compelling about this. Cool and very different.

Great job!

Wow. I hear stuff like this and want to take down any of my songs. This is awesome. Great job. Gorgeous track. Well written, well performed.

Mike/Creative Sauce is a very likeable guy who does a good job at making helpful and entertaining YouTube content. I just hope that Sonar doesn't go subscription-only with Sonar, so that they'll be plenty of reasons for me to enjoy Mike's new channel (if not, he also has a Studio One channel...).