e-Instrument Black Friday Sale

[cclarry]

Starts in 14 hrs

e-instruments - Black Friday Sale: 50% OFF select products!

Offer valid through December 1st.

https://www.bestservice.com/deals/e-instruments_black_friday_sale_50_off_4534.html

[PavlovsCat]

Wow, e-instruments Wurli is going for only $33.43 while the developer AcousticSamples "Wurlie" even PMed me on VI Control after seeing me praise his Wurli library as the best sounding Wurli demos I've heard for any Wurli library, but even with his upcoming Black Friday sale, it won't be discounted to anything close to this and he uses the UVI platform  and I greatly prefer KONTAKT, which is what e-instruments uses. Oh, the dilemma.

I even made a Cakewalk project featuring every Wurli library I own with me playing the main riff from Beck's" Where It's At" -- which I'll share, if anyone wants, after I make my next purchase. In fact. the AcousticSamples's developer PMed me that he'll give me the Black Friday discount now if I'm willing to do a shootout with his VReeds plugin that uses samples and modeling against other Wurli libraries/plugins, but his discounted price was still a lot higher than e-Instruments, but I was actually checking out his "Wurlie" library, not VReeds, and i thought the "Wurlie" demos sounded better than VReeds. So just minutes ago I just checked AcousticSamples site and found that they pulled their Wurli library. Sad. It sounded amazing. I sent the AcousticSamples' dev a PM asking if he retired the Wurlie library or if he's selling through a reseller like Audio Plugin Deals. I'll update this post when I hear back in case there any other Wurli fans interested. 

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


 

Edited November 10, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[Fleer]

Weird indeed. I quite like that Wurlie. 

[chris.r]

2 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

but I was actually checking out his "Wurlie" library, not VReeds

I was always interested in the difference between these two, sonically.

[PavlovsCat]

1 hour ago, chris.r said:

I was always interested in the difference between these two, sonically.

Well, I suppose the choice just got easier (the dev eliminated the "Wurlie" library). I just never heard demos of a Wurlie sample library that sounded that good.

I didn't mention it here before, but I did find this new developer, Skybox  -- whose demos of everything sound really, really nice -- has a Wurli library too that sounds good, but it's part of a package that's priced beyond my range (it's $129 USD). So if AcousticSamples have taken their Wurlie library out of rotation (there's a Leslie joke in their somewhere), I suppose I'm going to pick up the e-instruments Wurli. Only several weeks ago I picked up SoundPaint's Wurli -- and I know Troels' and he came to me for some branding/marketing advice years ago and I really like him -- but in all candor, that Wurli library is lifeless and I think it even has an issue that I reported and promised to send an audio file of to demonstrate (when I was doing my comparison of my Wurli libraries, SoundPaint's Wurli has this weird  spike of sound when I played a chord that occurs every time I play it back and it's the same MIDI file of me playing the riff for "Where It's At" and no other library -- of several other Wurli libraries I used for the clip, has problems). I think of the libraries I currently have, the Scarbee one that comes with KOMPLETE is my favorite and that's also pretty lifeless, but not as lifeless as SoundPaiint's Wurli.  I did like the SP Wurli for a short while after I bought it for one specific patch, I think it's called "aggressive," but that's it, it's a one trick pony. To me, the dynamics of a Wurli are an essential part of its magic and Scarbee's library does a meh job of capturing those dynamics while SoundPaint's miss them altogether. It's just lifeless when you get away from the aggressive patch -- which really just relies on effects to get a very one dimensional tone that sounds cool.

But a real Wurli comes alive when you play quietly and when you pound it. Its like a piano but it has another dimension that's like, in certain respects how a B3 can growl (even though a Wurli can't growl). It's tone has an edge to it. I love Rhodes too, but they don't have the same emotional connection for me. I do realize that I may truly be obsessed with Wurlis. Okay, if I don't hear back from the AcousticSamples' dev by tomorrow -- at latest by this weekend, I'm buying the e-instruments Wurli. 

Just imagine, after 21 years since an injury stopped me from playing, I played and sang this live with a Wurli sample library (the one in KONTAKT's factory library). I never played the song before (but I'm a huge Beatles fan). I just googled the chords and started playing and singing -- before I learned to comp vocals. (As you can tell, I was never a singer, but for a non-singer, I think I did okay). So even the NI KONTAKT factory with distortion and a Leslie simulator doesn't sound half bad. But I'm sure that e-instrument's Wurli would blow that away. I may go back and redo the song with the Wurli I pick up and Orange Tree Samples' Evolution Vintage Violin Bass (a Hofner) and maybe redo some of the sloppy playing. 

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[Craig Fowler]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

Well, I suppose the choice just got easier (the dev eliminated the "Wurlie" library). I just never heard demos of a Wurlie sample library that sounded that good.

I didn't mention it here before, but I did find this new developer, Skybox  -- whose demos of everything sound really, really nice -- has a Wurli library too that sounds good, but it's part of a package that's priced beyond my range (it's $129 USD). 
 

FWIW, Skybox have pretty regular 40% off sales. And now that APD have done 60% off the acoustic package (which would have suited you great for a character upright BTW), maybe they'll  go to town on the other packages too!

[Craig N]

48 minutes ago, Craig Fowler said:

FWIW, Skybox have pretty regular 40% off sales. And now that APD have done 60% off the acoustic package (which would have suited you great for a character upright BTW), maybe they'll  go to town on the other packages too!

If you bought the Skybox Acoustic bundle from APD, login to Skybox and add the full bundle to your cart. Then delete the acoustic package from the cart and it will apply an upgrade from acoustic coupon automatically. It discounts by more than the price we paid for the Acoustic bundle, $135.45 discount. The retail price at the moment of the Skybox bundle is $389 and after the discount it's $251.55, but I believe in the past the whole bundle was offered for 251 or so. So with any luck next time the full bundle is discounted, the upgrade price for owners of Acoustic will be even less again. 

Then there's the issue of the 145B being offered separately to the bundle... it'd be a lot easier to pay for an upgrade to the full bundle if it was just that. 

[Craig Fowler]

Thanks Craig! I really like the Skybox Acoustic bundle - would be keen to add some of the others at some point!

[Craig N]

I have been playing with the Wurli's I already own tonight and just discovered that the Sampletekk Tubed Wurli with Abbey Road Saturator adding a bit of grit and (unexpextedly) 3d depth, with IK Fame reverb on room duties, sounds pretty special!

[PavlovsCat]

UPDATE, for anyone who is paying attention to my excursion on Wurlis.

The AcousticSamples developer told me that he pulled the Wurlie library after he received a cease and desist (C&D) notice from someone claiming to be a descendant of the Wurltizer founder who owns the trademark. Now, I'm from a marketing and business strategy background prior to starting my own business (which actually developed from my writing and speaking on marketing strategy), but I know trademark law globally well enough that the legal teams at companies I worked at would turn to me for advice and Interpol actually quotes me in their documents on International trademark laws. I actually drafted the legal and privacy policies and the HR social media policies of some of the very large companies I've worked at where I've managed/led digital marketing for the legal departments at those companies. So, he shared their info. I dived into the USPTO, as I actually know a bit about the Wurlitzer Company. My mother worked for them as a music teacher. Beyond making pianos, organs, electric pianos and jukeboxes, they had retail music stores where they sold their instruments as well as Yamaha and Steinway pianos and various organ brands.  

So the person who claimed to have filed this trademark, as it turned out, looks like they were trying to extorting the developer. The "Wurly" -- yep, that's the way Wurlitzer actually spelled it, so that is the way I used to spell it until finding almost no one else spelled it that way -- trademark was abandoned in 2014, by Gibson. Gibson owns the Wurlitzer brand and trademark today.  The person trying to scam AcousticSamples doesn't have a defendable trademark (yes, people can get trademarks that are worthless registered) and their trademark registration doesn't even apply to musical instruments, plugins or sample libraries and I seriously doubt the registrant is any kind of heir to the Wurlitzer family company, which would be legally meaningless when the company was sold to Gibson long ago, including the trademark rights. 

Consequently, the AcousticSamples dev had pulled his Wurlie library because of this scam artist's threats and will be putting it back up. He does plan on doing a Black Friday sale. I don't want to say what the discount amount is, because he shared it with me. However, e-instruments Wurli is a lot cheaper. But unquestionably, IMO, based on demos, I've never heard a better sounding Wurlie sample library than AcousticSamples. I'll absolutely share the link once it's up, but as much as I love it his library, I suppose because of the price and that it uses my greatly preferred KONTAKT, I think I'm going to buy e-instrument's Wurli this weekend. But I may end of buying AcousticSamples library in the future. BTW, I did try to persuade the dev to release his libraries in KONTAKT format, but wasn't successful! 

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[Vernon Barnes]

9 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

 BTW, I did try to persuade the dev to release his libraries in KONTAKT format, but wasn't successful! 

 

Acoustic Samples used to produce Kontakt libraries, I have several legacy ones.

They moved to UVI some years ago claiming poor protection from piracy with NI. Their libraries were not Kontakt player comparable so very easy to pirate.  They must have considered UVIs iLok superior protection to NI registered library system. Of course this was long before Native Access.

[PavlovsCat]

2 hours ago, Vernon Barnes said:

Acoustic Samples used to produce Kontakt libraries, I have several legacy ones.

They moved to UVI some years ago claiming poor protection from piracy with NI. Their libraries were not Kontakt player comparable so very easy to pirate.  They must have considered UVIs iLok superior protection to NI registered library system. Of course this was long before Native Access.

Yeah, I remember when the dev made KONTAKT libraries too. He told me in detail why he switched to UVI, and it's primarily due to piracy issues. You're right, Vernon. Anyhow, I hope that he trusts me enough to not be afraid of the charlatan trying to extort him. In the end, he did confirm that they were trying to get money out of him. A legit trademark owner would have almost certainly sent a C&D letter. When I looked at the trademark registration it was for sports and entertainment use, it didn't even pertain to musical instruments or even jukeboxes. 

Along the way I also noticed a YouTuber, sample developer named Adam Monroe registered a trademark for Wulitzer, which I find just plain sleazy and completely ignorant of trademark law. The fact is, Gibson, which bought Baldwin, who bought Wurltizer, owns the registered trademark for Wurlitzer but let the registration for Wurly expire in 2014. Monroe registering the name Wurlitzer was a complete waste of his money and clearly he has no legitimate claim to the name. EDIT: I can see that he uses Gibson's trademark on his website as if he owns it, which is a clear violation of Gibson's intellectual property rights and a slam dunk in the courts. Gibson could easily sue him, but his sales are so small, they are unlikely to have noticed him. But still, having watched the guys videos and once considered his Wurli library, I lost respect for him after seeing what he was trying to pull. Legitimate, ethical people don't use and try registering trademarks that they know are owned by other parties; that's the realm of scam artists. But legally, it makes no sense. He clearly didn't consult a trademark attorney and registered that on his own. But a registration only means evidence that you have made a claim to a trademark on a certain date, it doesn't necessarily mean that you actually possess the right to use that trademark, which in the case of Monroe in this situation. Adam Monroe registered and is using a trademark -- Wurlitzer -- any competent trademark attorney would tell you is clearly owned by Gibson and consider Adam's actions less than ethical and he Gibson would easily win a lawsuit against him, he is clearly violating their intellectual property rights in violation of US (and other countries) law. 

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

As the forum is receptive to folks going on tangents. I'll share a little of the conversation I had with the AcousticSamples dev about KONTAKT and it reminds me of some of the epic debates another sample developer and I used to have on VI Control maybe 15 or so years ago. This developer, not AcousticSamples, but the one I used to debate with, would regularly do over the top posts about how pirates were killing his sales of his KONTAKT libraries. He even made one really infamous thread where he wrote that software piracy was destroying his marriage. I had replied with compassion for his being stressed about low sales, but asked him some basic diagnostic questions and found that he really had no marketing or promotional efforts for his business. He wasn't doing advertising, PR, YouTube videos, working with the media/influencers, etc.  He got upset with me -- even after I shot him a PM with quick tactics he could do right away to increase sales. He shared with me that he was spending a great deal of his days focused on piracy. I replied, this goes against everything you're thinking right now, but just entertain the idea of ignoring pirates for right now and put together a strategy focused purely on the legitimate buyers of sample libraries. He was incredibly resistant to the idea and told me I was clueless on piracy. Time went by and we became friends and he realized that I was in his corner and hated piracy too, I just saw things differently and in a manner that was more helpful for a successful business than spending a significant portion of your time on something that in the end, will not yield more profit to the business.

So, back to the AcousticSamples developer, I was making the case that, IMO, and I am not a software engineer, but I have managed some very major corporate websites and digital marketing that get more than 10 million unique visitors in the month -- with budgets over $10 million USD and working with some of the best user experience designers in the business and in my experience UVI has a less than good user experience and iLOK makes users pay a lot of money to fight piracy and I don't like the idea that so much of my money is spent on developers' who obsessively focus on piracy instead of making a better user experience. Anyhow the dev made clear that he will never create libraries for KONTAKT and he can't afford to sell his library as inexpensively as KONTAKT developers due to iLOK fees. 

I think he's probably a top notch developer. I wish he would switch to KONTAKT. From the demos, it sounds to me like he's made the best sounding Wurli library I've ever heard. I spent an hour last night helping him deal with this Wurlie trademark scam. So I do care about indie developers. But in the end, I think I'm going to be buying e-instruments KONTAKT library, because to be perfectly frank, I so dislike the UVI user experience, I almost never use my UVI plugins/libraries. But otherwise, if you like UVI's system and you want to pay more money because you believe they're winning the war on software piracy, pay that extra money and suffer a worse user experience for the privilege of feeling like it's winning against piracy.  For me, customer focused companies choose the user experience for paying customers over becoming obsessed with fighting piracy. There is a legitimate market out there.  Me and a lot of people will never use pirated software or libraries. I've turned down dozens of NFRs from small devs I've given advice to. I don't appreciate when they prioritize their obsessions with piracy over legit users, I think it's the wrong choice and I don't really want to fund that obsession.  That said, from decades of consulting to software companies, I do realize that even some well known composers have gotten caught with pirated software and improperly going beyond licensing terms having multiple employees using libraries that should have been using additional licenses. But, as a user and as a business person, I believe in prioritizing paying users of obsessing over piracy, especially for one man sample developer businesses. 

Edited November 10, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[Craig N]

@PavlovsCat Peter, I totally understand your point about developers not focusing their effort and time and resources on fighting piracy at the expense of marketing and engaging with the community and finding customers, but I can also totally understand how utterly demoralising it must be for a plugin developer or sample library developer to invest the money, time, effort, heart and soul into producing a product only to see it almost immediately listed on all the pirate sites for free. 

I totally support companies offering their products via iLok and if that successfully prevents pirates from ever getting access to a particular library, then mission accomplished. If that effort preventing piracy results in increased sales, even better for the developer. But at the end of the day, regardless of how much money they make, their going to bed at night knowing that your hard work is not out there being given away for free is probably worth more than any dollar value you could put on it. I could never begrudge them that. 

So ultimately both you and the piracy-concerned developers are right. They shouldn't have to adopt cheaper anti-piracy copy protection schemes that result in losing the keys to the kingdom. But at the same time, that should not be their primary focus, and sales will have a lot more to do with the quality of the product, and how well it is marketed, rather than the fact that it simply cannot be pirated. 

When is the last time you resented your house builder or car maker for requiring you to use a set of keys to access your house and your car? Those keys cost money, you have to keep a set of them with you in order to access what you paid for, if you lose them it's a big hassle to get a new set cut or the locks changed... there's quite the parallel. The biggest difference is that if you left your keys in your car, or left your house unlocked, it's YOU who would suffer, not the builder or car manufacturer. When's the last time you went out and left the house open and unlocked, or left your keys in the car when you left it parked somewhere? 🙂

Edited November 10, 2022 by Craig N

[Craig N]

What is it about the UVI user experience that you don't like, btw? Is it that you don't have Falcon, so you're stuck with what they give you with the UVI Workstation software? 

With Falcon, the UVI libraries are loaded in such a powerful playground. Kontakt seems so limited by comparison. 

I haven't been using Falcon and UVI libraries that long, so it's possible I just haven't dug deep enough to find the annoyances yet. 

[antler]

6 minutes ago, Craig N said:

When is the last time you resented your house builder or car maker for requiring you to use a set of keys to access your house and your car? Those keys cost money, you have to keep a set of them with you in order to access what you paid for, if you lose them it's a big hassle to get a new set cut or the locks changed... there's quite the parallel.

There's a slight difference though. Unless I become significantly stronger and use my house/car keys really vigorously and inappropriately, there's little chance that the keys will stop working. I hear iLoks are fairly robust these days, and yet many people still buy ZDT; I don't have to pay somebody $30/year for physical key insurance. There's also no risk (if I keep my keys completely safe) that one day I have to buy a new key because my locks auto-upgraded and my old lock doesn't work anymore.

[PavlovsCat]

@Craig NI greatly appreciate your weighing in with an intelligent opposing view stated respectfully. Hopefully we can serve as an example to others. 

I think you missed that I am not only empathetic to these developers,  I know what it's like to deal with piracy as a manager and business owner. In the two examples I shared, I spent time giving these developers advice that would have cost them money.  I became friends with one and I get along very nicely with with the other. What I was expressing was the observation that small developers sometimes become obsessed with piracy and that their obsession can result in a poorer user experience and significantly increased costs for legimate user. This isn't about my having resentment. I have a bunch of iLok plugins. I buy them. But I wish I didn't have to. I think it's a bad strategy for a small sample library developer to be willing to sacrifice a better user experience because they are so absorbed with piracy. 

In the end,  a developers' approach to the war on piracy is financed directly by me, the user, and when they make a choice of their  obsession with piracy being more important than user experience and I can see a high portion of the cost of a library going towards that obsession,  I think they are making a mistake. I'm certainly not saying ignore piracy, I'm saying that the user experience should be prioritized over piracy efforts and I think that it sometimes is not the case. 

Edited November 10, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

BTW,  let me make it clear that I like the AcousticSamples developer and I've never heard a Wurli sample library demo that sounds as good as his Wulie library. I spent an hour last night doing trademark searches and giving him free advice because I felt terrible for what some charlatan was doing to him. So anyone looking at Wurli's all my research leads to me believe this dev has a great library; probably (based on demos alone) the best one on the market,  IMO. Is it worth more than twice the cost of e-Instruments very good sounding KONTAKT library largely due to anti piracy costs AcousticSamples faces from iLok? That's up to the buyer. 

Edited November 11, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

30 minutes ago, Craig N said:

What is it about the UVI user experience that you don't like, btw? Is it that you don't have Falcon, so you're stuck with what they give you with the UVI Workstation software? 

With Falcon, the UVI libraries are loaded in such a powerful playground. Kontakt seems so limited by comparison. 

I haven't been using Falcon and UVI libraries that long, so it's possible I just haven't dug deep enough to find the annoyances yet. 

Yeah. I don't have Falcon and I've seen a lot of love for that here. I just have the freebie UVI and some of the synths. a piano and Mello. 

[Fleer]

29 minutes ago, Craig N said:

What is it about the UVI user experience that you don't like, btw? Is it that you don't have Falcon, so you're stuck with what they give you with the UVI Workstation software? 

With Falcon, the UVI libraries are loaded in such a powerful playground. Kontakt seems so limited by comparison. 

I haven't been using Falcon and UVI libraries that long, so it's possible I just haven't dug deep enough to find the annoyances yet. 

I agree. Since I’ve got Falcon, I tend to prefer it to Kontakt. Deep synth, diverse UVI instruments, wonderful sound.