Carl Ewing

1 hour ago, kitekrazy said:

Fanatical Producer Loop bundle - Forgot the point of my 3 days of clearing out loops was to reduce disk space. A dog returns to its vomit. I'm always a sucker for these type of deals.  Cheap and plentiful next failure is when ADSR will continue their lottsa loops for less.

I always go through these big libraries and delete everything I don't want, and put what's left into an organized-by-genre sample library database. Took about 1.5 hours, but in the end, I only have the stuff I like, trashed the rest, and got it down to 3GB from 22GB And now I know the only thing going on the drive is stuff I can use...which I know will save me time down the road. Don't even want to know how many days I've spent scrolling through sample libraries over the last 20 years (I don't know how anyone could buy that Samples From Mars everything pack - that seems like a total nightmare) - finally decided to always filter through new purchases right away, and get rid of the crap.

Tried the Retro Fi demo. It's a HUGE miss imo. Much better alternatives in Sketch Cassette or RC-20.  

And do they have an AI program spitting out all  these artist / producer testimonial quotes? It's sad how many of these artist will just shill literally anything on the market, even if they're giving terrible advice...likely influencing people with not a lot of money, who likely trust some of these names. It's shameful.  Watch that Focus video of him trying to use it. He knows it's awful, and 100% he tossed in the trash can once cameras were off.

This is straight out of a Chappelle Show skit: 

"These were clean drums that I programmed myself." Other guy is like "Maybe you could hire a guy for that?"

Man - the vocals in that Shymer Youtube demo are super pitchy. Might be a decent sounding library with a week of Melodyne work.

Objective is to create a list of $25,000 worth of software I want, then spend $100 on something I don't want (omg, 60GB of ambient drones for $5.99! That's ten cents a drone! Amazing deal!), and then next week realize I should have bought something I needed, cause now I need it and it's full price. 

This might be the worst reverb I've ever heard. I like it.

Babelson Bogo? Okay - I don't believe half of these sales are real anymore.

Goba Babble Boozles (3 mic positions) 30% off. Free boozle vintage valves with purchase over $45

Those Omnisphere extensions are absurdly over priced. Might have been reasonably priced in 2005 when there was less competition. As they are priced now, they are asking the price of Komplete 13....for a pack of essentially 4 Omnisphere preset packs. Most of which will be so overused in a year they'll have to release even more expansions. I would pay $99 for all 4. Maybe.

Also seems like a cash grab. Should have just updated Omnisphere to a new version which included those packs with a reasonable upgrade price. Noticed they are now offering "exclusive" FX with those extensions, so good to see they are following the gaming business model of developing core features and offloading them to "expansions".

So curious if this means the Lass 3.0 upgrades will be reduced tomorrow as well? Currently says: 

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NEW PRICES WILL BE UPDATED IN THE STORE AT NOON (LA TIME) ON BLACK FRIDAY 11/26/2021

...on this page: https://www.audiobro.com/la-scoring-strings-3/

Okay - that's a crazy deal. There's some very good stuff in those packs. $20 for all 20 is insane.

Just now, simon said:

I know, and apologies I didn't mean to sound snarky 🕊️

What I meant is that we are living in a world where $700 for some mass market sampled sounds for 3rd party sample player is considered a good deal - it's a bit mind blowing when you take a step back.

Totally agree. I want that Collection, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet. Learned my lesson overpaying for Spitfire libraries that I end up not using as much as I thought I would. I could upgrade my Komplete 12 CE for $400 and get WAY more usable stuff (Noir, Cremona, Mysteria, Raum, Play Series, Pharlight, Straylight and on and on.) Seems a bit absurd.

7 minutes ago, simon said:

I know it's 2021 but $700 for three  kontakt libraries (and a freebie) doesn't seem like a deal to me ? and that's half price...............

(full kontact not required  )

Like I said - IF you specifically want those libraries. Even with all of them individually on sale, it's still $250 cheaper as a bundle. So when are you going to get all of them on sale at the same time, with the freebie, which will be $200+ after Black Friday? So you'd be waiting for all 4 to be discounted.

You'd basically have to wait till each of them individually went on super sale, or wait for an even better overall discount. OP asked for once a year deals, and this would be it. Again, if you want these specific libraries.

Could be argued they are all over priced in the first place, but hey, I'm just going by the regular price vs. waiting an eternity for Spitfire to discount all of them even further in the future.

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1 hour ago, Sander Verstraten said:

Sooo what is your current top 5 of sales that are really worth it, in the sense that they once in a lifetime, or at least year? 

The only deal (so far) that I think is exceptional is Arturia's FX Collection 2 for $100 or less. But you only get that price IF you already own something of theirs. I only own one thing (Rev Plate 140) and qualified. That's like 30 quality plugins for $100.

Everything else so far seems like the usual bi-annual sale that we'll see again in the spring. Although that Spitfire Black Weekend Collection (Albion Neo, Bernard Hermann, Alternative Strings and Aperture) for $700 seems quite good in my opinion, IF you want those specific instruments. I wish their was a steeper discount for those that already own other Albion stuff though.

25 minutes ago, cclarry said:

So obviously he must have owned something in the bundle that gave him a discount that he wasn't aware of...
Or something...IDK

I own all the Albions except Neo, and I also get 699. Actually, it's the same price logged in or logged out, so they aren't giving any discounts to owners of any Albion products...even though I get a decent discount buying Neo separately ("complete your collection"). And, when checking "how is this price calculated" on the Black Friday Collection it mentions that 'complete you collection' discounts are also applied to Black Friday bundles, even when it's bundles of unrelated products - the bundle only has to include a product that will help you 'complete a collection'. 

Weird! 

Also - the "sold separately" price of $1247 is without everything in the bundle also on sale. But since they are all on sale individually, the total would actually be $934. So the savings are $234, not $548.

Uggh. I predict at least 4 dudes in black turtlenecks yammering on about felt pianos and atmospheric cello harmonics.

Just brings on the sale ffs.  

Everything?? Holy moses. Some very cool libraries from this company. Especially if you want to make a Tarantino-spaghetti-western-dub-jazz-fusion-surf-action-movie soundtrack.

6 hours ago, pseudopop said:

Loyalty vouchers are expiring on the 24th, so I expect their Black Friday sale starting after that. Waiting for the sale vouchers and Booms.

Yep. Got the big voucher from subscription - just sitting and waiting for the big sale. I believe someone asked about Black Friday sale on Twitter and they responded "It's not Black Friday yet."

This is a pretty good deal if you're into electronic stuff.

VYBZ, Tape Piano 2 and Brain are pretty fun and would be worth the $40 I think. Not much experience with the other 3, although 'Underwater' seems like something easily done with stock plugins. X-Eight seems to be reviewed well by some trap / hip-hop guys on Youtube. But for $40, this bundle seems like a no brainer. EDIT: I often prefer VYBZ over RC-20 for lo-fi stuff. 

8 hours ago, MusicMan said:

I bought a Scarlett 3rd gen, but outside of that date..

Did you register it? I bought outside of that date too, but had not registered the serial. Registered today and got the bundle.

1 hour ago, dasmode said:

I do not recommend buying AudioDamage from Plugin Boutique.

I bought a 914 MK from Plugin Boutique but can't get the update. I can only download the previous version from Plugin Boutique.

Plugin Boutique was unable to contact AudioDamage.
I have been writing a letter to AudioDamage for a whole year, but still have not received a response.

AudioDamage is a developer who will never answer your queries.

Ya - have had many problems with them in the past. They had a massive "server crash" a few years back and lost all registrations. They split the site into two (old and new site), and it became a disaster for updated versions of the plugin (available on the new site) that required old versions in order to update (on the old site). They had non-existent customer support, so I ended up abandoning a couple plugins until they FINALLY responded like many months later.  And they seemed annoyed that they had to help me.

Click on "support" and you'll see them addressing the "server catastrophe" at the top, and promising a solution. That message has been up for YEARS.

Will never buy from them again. Can't trust plugins in a project from a company that poorly managed. Boggles my mind how some companies can't get the bare minimum customer service together.

Nice. This means I'm 1 year closer to upgrading to Collectors Edition v14! And by then it'll probably be called "Native iZotope Collectors Total Bundle Music Production, Restoration and Instrument Suite with free license of BreakTweaker Expanded and Kontakt v7 Premium Subscription Edition 2022."

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$1600 worth of products for $49

If a $1600 tree in the forest falls to $49, was it really ever worth $1600? 

Perhaps, when sales are over they should announced that prices have been jacked 30x.

"We've increased our prices 3000% temporarily." 

On 2/18/2021 at 7:06 PM, kevin H said:

Agree, beside the built in modulation, it’s pretty much a clone.  Even the color scheme is similar.  Little Alter Boy to me is smoother.  But it you don’t have sound toys and make edm/hip hop and are on a budget at $39 it is cheaper than $99 for Alter Boy.  Although no WUP with sound toys.  

Have both, have used both extensively the past couple months. They have very different sounds and use cases. Vocal Bender is MUCH cleaner, and contrary to what you said, Little Alter Boy is MUCH dirtier...with a few features for more harsh sound design (i.e. the 3 modes + drive). However, Vocal Bender's modulation panel (+ waveform display)  and note specific features make it far superior when doing pitch / formant automation. If I need to automate pitch- say C to F to G# - it takes 2 seconds in Vocal Bender because you can automate using notes (with root key), whereas Little Alter Boy you have to automate the pitch wheel, which can be a huge pain in the *****.

For example - this entire feature set doesn't exist in Little Alter Boy, and is extremely useful (timestamped):   https://youtu.be/v50kOeJBTdQ?t=296

I like the sound of Little Alter Boy better (has a much grittier low fi sound...even in default mode), but much prefer Vocal Bender for complex automation. I really wish these plugins could be combined together, because they both have very useful features, and sometimes I want the sound of Little Alter Boy with the features of Vocal Bender (like amp modulation), and vice versa. 

$20 rolling bar stool with padded seat. No complaints. These high end fancy chairs look like they're made for slackers!

On 4/21/2021 at 11:26 AM, RSMcGuitar said:

Wish they knew not everyone wants to live in the eighties...

Considering the power of Amplitube 5, they are seriously missing an opportunity not releasing preset series targeting stuff like EDM or sound design or non bass / guitar instruments. A5 is an amazing sound design plugin - so much potential to show it off in other ways than Rock. I've used it on synths, vocals, sound scape shit, strings, speaker emulations for post. But rarely ever use presets, because they are quite limited in genre scope.

1 hour ago, mibby said:

I think that's one THE best subscription models around.  The rent-to-own by Melda is pretty good too, although that's a huge commitment.  Do you have to use the voucher all in one purchase or do you get "credits" you can spend anytime afterwards? (Too lazy yo look it up, sorry.)

Haha. Ya, I'm trying to find the catch. I had $140 in plugins in my cart, saw the bundle and realized for $10 more they send me a voucher for $200 - which I can use to buy what's in my cart + $60 extra + access to everything else in the bundle for a year.  What the?  I guess it doesn't look as temping when the giant sale isn't on, because what's in my cart would normally be over $600.