Carl Ewing

I own $5000+ in Arturia hardware, and a bunch of plugins / software instruments and my price is still $199. So someone who owns nothing could spent $50 and get the same collection. Customer appreciation FTW.

I've had 3 Faderports break on me over the years, and have had problems with the motorized fader (and power supply) more times than I can count. They are cheap pieces of plastic. This looks like a tank. Time will tell on this particular device, but SSL is generally pretty reliable on the hardware quality front. And I'd rather buy once and never worry, then constantly replace / fix a cheap pos. I've never been too enthusiastic about this trend of super cheap hardware interfaces / controllers. I took a risk on the Audient Evo 16 for a secondary rig, and it's been nothing but problems throughout the first year. Ya, it cost $550 for what is an equivalent IO device to my RME UFX (which cost $2500 I think), but I've had more problems with the Evo 16 in the first year than I've had with the UFX I in almost 12 years. (Note: Have had no problems with the Audient ID14 or Scarlett 2i2 on my mobile rigs.) I don't mind paying a premium if it's reliable.

Ah - interesting. I was always under the impression that Soundspot was Plugin Boutique's own development team. Good to know.

Windows 10 came out when my first kid was born. My kid is now 46.

I use many of the products in CE daily - anyone doing a lot of scoring work would be. And considering I often pay hundreds, if not around $1000 for a single library from other companies, paying a couple hundred $$$ a year for an extremely broad set of new sounds is a no brainer. Like I said - there are single products in Komplete that have equivalents with other companies that sell for the same price as the upgrade. Hell, there are products INCLUDED in Komplete from other manufacturers or from NI that sell for the price of the upgrade (eg. Action Strings 2 is $300 from Sonuscore). If you're starting from scratch buying Komplete (specifically during sale season), you could pick up Ultimate for $600. That collection includes more content in any genre you can think of (EDM, orchestra, rock, ambient, scoring, world music, jazz, funk, sound design, etc., (plus a whole suite of 30+ effects including Ozone 10 Standard) than anything else available at that price. It is the best deal on the market. Period. Doesn't matter if you use 10% of what's there or all of it. Nothing comes even remotely close, except maybe a Composer Cloud subscription.

I doubt many people update during regular pricing. There's a 50% off sale every single year. Checking invoice, I paid $240 for CE 13 upgrade in 2021. Will be cheaper for this upgrade. https://www.bestservice.com/en/komplete_14_collectors_edition_update.html

Upgrading from Komplate CE 13 gives me: Kontakt 7 Full Choir - Omnia Action Strings 2 Playbox Sequis Piano Colors Ashlight Lores Session Guitar: Electric Vintage East Asia Session Bass: Prime Bass Session Guitar: Picked Nylon Session Guitar: Electric Mint Super 8 Deft Line 40's Very Own Drums 40's Very Own Keys Knif Audio Knifonium bx_Oberhausen Unfiltered Audio Lo-Fi AF Focusrise Console SC bx_Console N bx_Limiter True Peak Ozone 10 Standard + 37 expansions, including 10 Massive X expansions, which I use extensively. All for $226. Or I can buy Damage Guitars for $200. There are companies that sell products equivalent to Ashlight, Choir-Omnia, Lores, Piano Colors, Action Strings 2, Picked Nylon for the price of this upgrade. The current sale price for Ozone 10 Standard is $135, which is included in this upgrade. I think your understanding of deals needs to be recalibrated lol. Also - would very much like NI to just start offering a $199 / year subscription for Komplete CE. Many people upgrade every year anyway (been on Komplete since version 1) so just get it over with. It also makes no sense to own any of these products individually, considering the Komplete sale prices every year, and considering individual products still require fairly regular paid updates, and many of their products (including flagship products) have been discontinued entirely.

NI / Komplete have always had EXTENSIVE preset databases in all their instruments. There are literally 1000s of presets inside Reaktor across all their Ensembles. Always have been. 1000s of presets for Absynth, Massive, FM8, Battery and on and on. You can hear these presets on 1000s of albums (in dozens of genres), and in 100s of tv / film / game scores, by some of the best song writers, producers and composers in the industry. Kontakt's ginormous factory library has also always been jam packed with presets. Presets have always been integral to modern music, going on 50 years now. Notorious talentless slackers (hehe) like Phil Collins, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Gary Numan. Queen have all used them. Some of these presets are iconic to disco, pop, rock, jazz, latin music. Some presets designers, especially for classic synths and drum machines are legends in the industry. If you've ever used Omnisphere, then you're listening many patches designed by Eric Persing, who's presets are a staple of music from the 80s (jazz / jazz fusion, pop, world music, hip-hop, etc.). Guys like Howard Scarr are critical to Hans Zimmer's scores, and other patch designers are critical to some of your favorite artists. Also - just as a rant - if you go to a store and buy an instrument....you're using a preset. You didn't build the acoustic guitar. Or the drum kit. Or the piano. Or the violin. You're enjoying all the wonderful engineering & craftsmanaship of someone else, and paying for the privlidge of using their sounds in your music. Nobody faults a music producer for not building the instruments in his studio. And nobody faults Stevie Wonder for using the Horner Clavinet Model C on Superstition, which sounds exactly the same in the song as it did when it came home from the store. It's no different than pulling up a preset in Omnisphere. Presets don't allow you to make or produce great music. For the same reason that buying a $50,000 guitar ain't going to make good music for you, even though it sounds incredible right out of the box...with no effort on your part. Relax about presets. Relax about loops as well. The greatest artists in modern music use them for a reason. Speaking of which - see how many iconic songs you can hear in this preset demo of the CR-78:

Never touch these companies (eg, Spitfire, OT) except during holiday season sales. Prices have always been totally absurd. Avoided OT for years, and picked up the entire Ark series last black friday for a much more reasonable price. And instantly regretted it. Absolutely 100% not worth the asking price, nor the 50% off price. And people complain about subscriptions like Composer Cloud, which is like 10 terrabytes of high quality products across a huge range of instruments for $200 a year. And here we have NI selling OT's Time Macro for $200....and that's 50% off. lolol.

Been using Spaces I for years and years. Have Spaces II as part of Composer Cloud and use it regularly. Is the upgrade worth it? Yes. A lot more features / tweaking options and a much much larger IR and preset database. $50 is a no brainer imo.

First, it's not AI. It's just data processing. And very dumb / unsophisticated data processing at that. These are human programmed algorithms that don't self learn and have to be told what to do. AI is a bullshit corporate term to make people buy stuff and make stocks go up because people are gullible and like Terminator movies. "One shots" - as in a cymbal crash? Or one shots as in a 10 second vocal hook? One shots can mean anything. Define examples. If an "AI" algorithm is flagging stuff that would be difficult to copyright in and of itself (i.e. a relatively generic drum one shot) then the algorithm is broken and should be tossed in the trash. And maybe that's the case, but I have a hard time believing that multiple artists are getting flagged for using something other than unedited melodic or rhythmic sounds. Although - considering the loop licenses, that should still be fine as long as the loops are incorporated into a larger piece of work. And if those are still getting flagged then yes, that's a huge problem, and entirely the fault of these platforms (i.e. Youtube), since the user has the legal right to use them and should not lose ad revenue because of Youtube's (or adsense or adrev, etc.) crappy algorithm. However - this seems like a solvable problem, by having these algorithms "learn" the vast database of sample libraries (updated regularly), and exclude all those samples from content flagging. Having said all that - you've totally changed my mind (and watched a couple Youtube videos on the subject) - this does seem like a major problem. I agree. I was wrong. This needs to be fixed.

Unless you're using extraordinarily generic melodic samples and have zero production or arrangements skills this is never going to be a problem. The people getting these strikes are literally just copy pasting melodic loops that are generic af "hey baby, let's party ya ya" or full on generic af guitar riffs and not even trying. Lol. Sampling is a multi-decade long old art form that isn't for old f***s or basement dweebs who have no idea what they are doing. Here's why places like Loopcloud are a goldmine - because you have terrabytes of content to create literally anything you want just by using your brain. A breakdown of the sampling in Prodigy's "Smack my Bitch Up." This is how sampling took over pop / hip-hop - it's fun as hell, and creative af: And the actual commercial track:

Not enough black turtlenecks and string harmonics.

Ah - yes - this is called moving the goalpost. The shareholder complaints (including lawsuits) and near 24/7 internet outrage porn over Adobe's subscription switch also made the claim that it was terrible business decision and nobody would want it. Regardless of their near monopoly status in their industry. Revenue proved the opposite. Completely. It was grand slam success across the board and eventually led to 100% subscription model BECAUSE customers opted by a factor of 4x for subscription over stand alone products. Let me repeat - they offered consumers both options - and consumers chose subscription by a factor of 4. Them's the facts. As of 2023, roughly 20% of the $40 trillion dollar credit card processing market is subscription processing. That keeps going up, and up, and up. It will eventually take over virtually everything involving distributor-to-consumer sales. This applies to companies with near monopolies (Microsoft, Adobe) or industries with multiple subscription models competeting against each other (eg. what will now happen with Plugin Alliance and Waves, etc.). Do you think this happening because subscription models are bad for businesses; a one way ticket to bankruptcy, and consumers hate it? Or do you think it's because it's enormously profitable and something consumers clearly want / use? One answer is correct and is proven year after year by revenue / profit models for (almost) every company that switches to it. Waves will likely do very well with this model despite the angry minority screaming away on the internet. And small developers will think this is opportunity to capitalize on angry consumers. This will fail, like it does in all industries where large competitors who can afford a robust subscription infrastructure wipe out smaller competitors. Happens every day.

Subscriptions are extremely profitable and significantly cut down on overhead / developer size / ecommerce headaches, and help with piracy (last one is debateable). That's why companies use them. This isn't to say these models are always successful. Some fail spectacularly. Time will tell if Waves does well with it. Complaints about subscription services likely make up half the internet at this point. Adobe went through hell with theirs, even prompting a Change.Org petition and an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to all the criticisms from designers and shareholders. Despite that, SEC filings showed that customers were choosing Creative Cloud over CS at a ratio of 4:1 prior to their move to pure subscription. In other words - the angry minority were completely overshadowed by the majority of customers. I assume it will be the same with Waves. If I were to judge by internet forums, virtually every software company (gaming, music, design, etc.) should be out of business because of consumer complaints. Yet, most of them...especially those running subscriptions....are doing extremely well. This Waves switch is likely no different - it's probably a welcome change for the vast majority of users, most of which likely never hang out on / post on forums. I think companies are starting to realize that internet forums are a total ****hole of outrage and have stopped listening to them when making critical business decisions.

Very nice. This has been on my list for a while, ideally to replace the UAD equivalent on a non UAD system. Free works!

Have had nothing but problems with the EVO 16. Bought it for a secondary studio in another country I work in. (Having an RME UFX in main studio back home). Some of the worst / buggiest software I've ever experienced in a hardware unit. Firmware upgrades have made it worse and worse over the last year as well. This thing has bugged out on volume settings multiple times and blasted 100% volume through the speakers - and then freezes requiring pulling the plug to reset. Out of all the bugs I've experienced this is one that should NEVER happen. Ever. In any audio hardware unit. Period. It's what I get for buying a rushed product with poor quality control. Seeing that they're dropping their prices further only guarantees Q&A will get much worse.

I own a lot of plugins in those bundles. Been using many of the ones that are natively available via UA Connect for months. (Working mobile and don't bring UA hardware in my mobile rig.) Adding any of the bundles to my cart while logged in gives me full price. I guess I'll just keep using them for free lol. Only ones I really care about anymore are the Lex 224 and LA-2A collection, as I find them superior to alternatives from other companies. Everything else has been replaced already. Too little too late imo - UA should have been competing natively years ago. They've long been surpassed by competitors.

I have this in my account. If I go to "My hardware" there's a text link that says ""Looking for your bundled software". Click that and it takes you to all the free stuff. There's A LOT of stuff, including the LANDR mastering promo (5 free masters, 2 months subscription). I think they maybe moved the page and now have a link from the hardware page. Here's the list in my account: 1. Fast Balancer 2. 70% off Fast bundle. 3. Amplify Studio 4. Abelton Live Lite 5. 3 months NI Komplete now subscription. 6. XLN Addictive Keys 7. XLN Addictive Drums 2 + Studio Rock ADPak 8. Softube Marshall Silver Jubilee 2555 9. Antares Auto-Tune Access 10. Relax LX480 Essential 11. Brainworks "hitmaker expansion" plugins. 12. Antares Auto-Tune Unlimited 3-month trial. 13.Red Plugin-In Suite 14. Focusrite x Splice 15. Focusrite Drum Tracks 16. Landr mastering / 2 months studio sub + 5 free masters. 17. NI Massive 18. iZotope Ozone elements. There's definitely new stuff in that list that was not there last time I looked.

It's a sales forum. Post sales, discuss products on sale, compare to other products and other sales. It's not rocket science. Aren't there literally 100 other forum categories on this site to discuss other things and bitch about the industry? WTF is this reply? lol. 99% of people don't care about the inner politics of forums, and come to a forum that says "deals" and expect to see "deals" (as many of them as possible) and discussion of the products that are "deals" which is exactly what I see on VI-Control. More sales posted, more developers represented, higher quality discussion across the board. I don't care what some forum member did in 2005 or April 8th 2011 that made this forum such and such and that forum such and such, and bullies and wtf are you on about? It's a deals forum. Post deals. Discuss products and deals. Vi-control is better at this. Clearly. Anyway, moving on.

The more I see comments here about instruments, the more I realize Vi-Control is a much better forum for deal discussion. Check the discussion of this sale on Vi-Control. Comparison videos, discussion of the Majestica Pro upgrade, specific discussion about the good / bad patches of this specific library (i.e. strong low strings, weak high winds, lack of reverb control, etc.), quality control of specific patches, alternative suggestions (from 8Dio or other manufacturers), Here it just seems like people who have little to no experience with products (or perhaps little experience with composing) sounding off about a sales / promotion grievance or trying to downplay what is clearly a very successful company in virtual instruments. Which helps absolutely NOBODY who might want / need this library... Here's what informative posts look like: It seems this forum is just endless IK Multimedia and Plugin Alliance spam, missing half the actual sales of instruments throughout the year, and most of the conversations devolve into complaints about marketing / promotional practices and little substance about actual products. Maybe time to unbookmark.

Not sure why people are concerned about text size, etc. on high res monitors. Modern OS's are fully capable of scaling - resolution was a concern maybe 5 years ago, since many apps / OSs struggled with scaling. I use 3 monitors. Main monitor is a Dell 38" Ultrawide. Its resolution is 3840 x 1600. Other two monitors are LG 27" 4Ks with resolution of 3840 x 2160. All look amazing. I could not even imagine working on 1920 x 1080 - even my mobile laptop rig is 3840 x 2400. Never had a single issue with text readability or UI scaling.

Beautiful library. The legatos are incredible. Glad I held out for 3 years on buying a new string library (aside from some OT Ark stuff). Got the loyalty price of $250, which - if you buy during intro - also includes the full Solo Strings suite when they're released. Well worth the wait - will be my default strings going forward. Played them all day yesterday and just loving them.

Debating a few of the Creative Packs. Anyone have a favorite or any experience with them. Was just looking at Umbra, but seems a little overpriced for a few world-style instruments / articulations.

Finally got my UA LA-2As back with UAD Connect. (No longer have the hardware). All my other LA2As were uninstalled. Nothing beats those emulations. They are exceptional.