Christian Jones

33 minutes ago, InstrEd said:

We don't want Lar to get a heart attack now training like Rocky!

Hey man, there's no easy way out.. there's no shortcut home 

Anyone still use Da Capo? $112 right now anyway. 

41 minutes ago, cclarry said:

Slightly lower prices at Best Service

https://www.bestservice.com/project_sam.html

Both Swing and Swing More together for $ 496.30

5 minutes ago, cclarry said:

Bernard Herrmann is $369...for Mr. Jones

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/bernard-herrmann-composer-toolkit/

Hmm I'm seeing $374 but yeah that's still too high, they just did a tad over 25% off there

1 minute ago, cclarry said:

Nothing..the clock stopped and now nothing shows

Well did say it's not just about deals, but connecting with the community..

1 minute ago, cclarry said:

Please, please, please be on sale...

What do you want, bbcso? 

23 minutes. Then what? 

15 minutes ago, Fleer said:

Sounds like something you’d better avoid. 

Nah I got it and it's cool. Actually my gf got it and gave it to me last summer, or I think it was her iirc. Maybe it was someone else but I just know I didn't get it on my own but I've had it for a while now and it ain't bad actually. 

2 minutes ago, TracingArcs said:

60% off just over a month ago from Christian Henson for 24 hrs.

Dang. I hope they do that for Bernard. Then I'll be forced to spend money I don't have. I mean I have it, but I shouldn't spend it. But I mean I will if I have to. Then I'll hold on to it.. until I can buy another hard drive and a bigger case for it

1 hour ago, Fleer said:

Joshua Bell Violin. Best of the best. 

What about the George Michael sax? I got that some time ago 

What's the best deal they've ever offered in recent times? 

I need the Bernard toolkit. Man I'm not used to paying $500 for a library. I just got Fluffy Spaghetti Western deal so I'm not supposed to be buying more $#!t. I forgot that I still need to order the Bare Knuckle black dog humbucker from the UK and that'll be over $200. My sample library wish list right now is the Bernard Herman toolkit, Project Sam Swing and Swing More and that's it really as I like the niche stuff. Often too you can't just buy a library like Bernard; you may have to buy a hard drive for it too which in my case means I'd need to buy a bigger case and it just never f'n stops man

27 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

You bestow upon me a frightening responsibility, Mr. Jones.

I agree

2 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Skaka has become my go-to shaker maker for when I don't need all the bells 'n whistles of the likes of Shimmer Shake Strike. Ridiculously easy to use, I'd been looking for something like it for years.

Just noticed it's been updated since I bought it at its introduction, with 10 new instruments added. So thanks for the post, Larry. I essentially just got a new percussion instrument for free.

Just so you know, 9/10 when I see you recommend something buried in a thread somewhere I almost always buy it. Like Blue Street Brass and most recently that snap, clap and stomp thing called La Snap or something.. idk, it was $29 for all 3. I think you said you bought it like a random candy bar while waiting in the checkout line and it ended up becoming very useful. I remember $#!t. 

So Shaka then? 

4 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

How do you like the Spaghetti Western library and what do you think about the developer's scripting and attention to detail? Granted, I'm not interested in that specific library, but I'm curious about the developer's strengths and weaknesses. 

Oh it'll be a minute before I can fire that lib up, as I'm remodeling my songwriting studio and it's gonna be a minute before I can even install it. But I like niche libraries and I listened to all the YouTube shillers I could on it 🤣.. I'll get use from it for sure, I love grimy stuff like Mtron mellotron sounds and old grimy choirs and strings. You know how it is when you're watching a YouTube rundown of the sounds and one patch jumps out at you and sells you on it, and for me that was the outlaw choir, which sounds kinda like some drunk cowboys going "Ahh" and some other grimy stuff. There's a cool baritone guitar in there but I'm a baritone guitar player myself so doubt I'll use it but you never know. My big thing I struggle w/ on Kontakt w/ libraries is the fact that I tune my regular guitars to Eb and my baritone strat and 5-string bass to Bb (or A#, whatever), so I struggle w/ transposing some libraries flat to accommodate. Orange Tree's Bass Pair, though, let's me tune it down so I think that library will work great for me - lol, but I still haven't fired *that* one up either. 

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

From leading  digital marketing for two decades at big brands to starting my own dot com, as I wrote earlier, influencer marketing is really just sales shilling. It's really just the P from the four Ps of marketing (promotion). It's not the stuff of objective reviews and the reality is that these influencers are not very honest or self aware about the bias that getting free product, making money from selling the product via affiliate marketing links and getting kickbacks plays in their objectivity.  Again, I wasn't calling Reid a shill. I doubt he even makes much money from affiliate links in these forums. But the reality is, developers give influencers free product and money to promote their products, so calling that stuff reviews is more than a little disingenuous. Influence marketers are peddlers, not legit reviewers. They don't call them influencers (which is influence marketing) because they're objective. It's about the power they have to influence others to buy things. 

Ah yes, that 'innate human bias when free stuff and money's involved' we were bantering about back when we were talking about Greg/Orange Tree's stuff and I believe you said you're friends with Greg. Yeah I could see how some publicists wouldn't like a guy who doesn't always play ball lol. If I didn't drink alone I'd buy you a beer to pick your brain more 😁. Thanks for reminding me of Cory! 

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

Exactly. Granted, I totally intended the humor value in my idea, but it's a serious idea too. Nobody has Larry's depth of knowledge of deals. I think Larry doesn't even realize the value of that knowledge. I think what I like even more is that influence marketing has created an army of shills -- people who will say anything for freebies and money. I'm a marketing professional and have been doing the profession and writing about it for decades, but the advent of influencer marketing is not something I think is a good thing for society, for consumers. It's incredibly difficult to discern when you're seeing an honest review and one where someone is motivated financially either by free product or money. Larry has built up a degree of trust with us.  Larry is no shill. He's hyper-opinionated and we may disagree strongly with his opinions. But I never doubt that those opinions are sincere, and because of that, I value even opinions that are very different than my own. 

Another thing Larry does that's telling, he doesn't post affiliate links. A lot of influencers -- read that most -- post affiliate links. It is the ultimate BS  / shilling when someone pretends to be objective and then is an affiliate. And that's coming from someone who has ran a major affiliate program.  Let's be clear, affiliates are salespeople for the products they're mentioning. There's nothing more to it. So, affiliates are a terrible place to look for objectivity. But since influencer marketing became mainstreamed, a heck of a lot of faux reviewers use affiliate marketing. And the reality is, in my consulting, I've steered brands to affiliates. I LOATHE the ethics of it, but it is a part of how companies promote these days. But it's really been a bad thing for consumers looking to honestly research products and services. 

Okay, rant over. 

It does seem impossible to get an honest opinion (or at least to be fully forthcoming) from these people on YouTube. It's made me go back to just cruising threads on here and places like VI Control (and even Gearslutz/Gearspace) to see what real world folks who often do this work as a grind and  who will make nothing off their post have to say about something.

Like this post I dug up last night that expresses the same thing you wrote to Reid up there about having too much and the virtues of limiting yourself: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/thoughts-on-orchestral-libraries.115499/

And this other post I dug up last night from a dude who seems to own just about every sample library and was shelling out some no bs at length opinions on sample libraries I'm interested in, and this kind of post is exactly what I need and yet seems nearly impossible to get from a YouTuber: https://gearspace.com/board/showpost.php?p=14587089&postcount=5

https://gearspace.com/board/showpost.php?p=14587727&postcount=8

I still like YouTubers like SLR to show me some sounds, but they rarely give many cons.. like for the Fluffy Audio Spaghetti Western library I just bought, their review mentioned zero cons that I recall, but if you look on VI Control you'll see users posting how they love the SW library but that improvements can be made, and even the Fluffy dev agreed w/ them and said he'd be putting out updates to SW asap. Guys like King Lar, Reid.. and bitflipper here is another guy whose opinion I follow for this type of stuff and I almost always end up buying what I see him recommending, which most recently for me was Blue Street Brass. YouTubers are good for showing me the way the interface works on something, and some of the sounds but you'll probably have to read on forums to find out the everyday real world cons of a given library/app. 

And curious @PavlovsCat did you pick up one of the cellos yet that you were asking @Reid Rosefelt about a few posts back?

So who else finally broke down and bought the Spaghetti Western library? I think that'll have to be it for me for the rest of the year. 

Also, when can I get the BHCT for free deal? 

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

@cclarryI'm making the ccLarry Dealometer a thing, Larry!  But I think you need to trademark it. It could be HUGE. I love the idea that you give a verdict on whether a deal is Larry worthy or not. It must happen!!! 

Yeah for me when I see King Lar say that something is $#!t I nod and stop reading and go shop for something else. 

2 hours ago, Fleer said:

Still waiting for a better deal on that EP-88S. At this price they once used to include the Matrix pack. 

Yeah I got that 50% off deal recently with the free Matrix pack, probably some summer deal. That reminds me, I should install it huh

NU METAL is on sale!! 

5 hours ago, husker said:

Probably time for me to upgrade to the full collection.  Love these instruments.  @Time+Space - how long is this sale good for?

What are your favorites and how do you use them? 

I'm gonna watch this when I wake up later.. probably the price won't get much lower than this is what I'll likely be telling myself. It's over 20 gigs.