🤠 8dio Misfit Bundle on sale $38🤠

[El Diablo]

The washboard.. a lot of finger raping, tapping, scrapes, bells, spoons, nothing that has a "playable tone" ... It's more like drums without the drums.  A tambourine without the circular disc as I can't spell symbols correctly. For some reason Google wants to spell symbols and not the actual symbols with the C.

Overall... Washboard is what it says it is...

[El Diablo]

I never tested the trumpet, banjo, other normal instruments...

Overall, probably not worth $38, even if you buy it for the Washboard, 1 Stringed Diddley Bow, Jaw Harp, and the Bucket Bass.

I'd say I should have paid $20 for this library.

Oh well.  In my pursuit the find unusual sounds!

[El Diablo]

Toy's'n'  Baby makes me wonder if any babys was harmed during production to create these sounds...

Alien, Grunt, Hiccups, Laugh, Phrases, Screams (horrible sounding, like a baby screaming), Tantrum, Words (only one word (Gee))...

[Carl Ewing]

11 hours ago, jngnz said:

Nope. It’s bad. Like, atrociously bad. There isn’t a single instrument or sound in there I had any use for.

Generally, my experience with the quality of 8Dio libraries has been extremely disappointing. I figured out they use the included phrases in their demos a LOT. So be prepared for the actually playable instrument to sound nothing at all like the demos for basically all of their libraries. Certainly the ones I got. It's borderline fraud.

They make some exceptional libraries (eg. percussion, choirs, solo vox, orchestra, hybrid, world), that are used in very high end productions.

Perhaps stop buying the $5 phrase libraries thinking they'll auto-write you a masterpiece? lol. 

If you can't make incredible music with their products than it ain't the product's fault. It's like blaming the joystick.  

 

[jngnz]

3 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

They make some exceptional libraries (eg. percussion, choirs, solo vox, orchestra, hybrid, world), that are used in very high end productions.

Perhaps stop buying the $5 phrase libraries thinking they'll auto-write you a masterpiece? lol. 

If you can't make incredible music with their products than it ain't the product's fault. It's like blaming the joystick.  

 

Can you not handle someone having a different opinion to yours without resolving to personal attacks hidden behind irrelevant facts?

Thanks for reminding me I'm here for deals exclusively.

[fret_man]

I've had these for a while and each time I include one of these instruments, I end up taking it out. They may be OK as solo instruments but they don't play well with others. Tuning is too off and the beat notes don't work well in the genres I write.

[PavlovsCat]

On 11/8/2023 at 12:29 AM, Carl Ewing said:

They make some exceptional libraries (eg. percussion, choirs, solo vox, orchestra, hybrid, world), that are used in very high end productions.

Perhaps stop buying the $5 phrase libraries thinking they'll auto-write you a masterpiece? lol. 

If you can't make incredible music with their products than it ain't the product's fault. It's like blaming the joystick.  

 

While your style is a bit harsh, I think you're making a very valid point and your perspective really does highlight the difference between how pro users vs many hobbyists use these kinds of tools. 

I find that many critiques of sample libraries in forums reflect a hobbyist perspective and a lack of awareness of how pros use these tools (i.e., the typical workflows pro composers of TV, film, games and trailers tend to have when using sample libraries). Granted, at VI Control it's more of a serious amateur crowd  (I would guess that less than 1% of their community are full-time gaming, TV, movie, and trailer composers).  Many hobbyists simply aren't adept with using pro level tools and often are skilled musicians or knowledgeable on music theory, how pros use sample libraries or sound engineering, so their expectations can be misaligned when encountering pro level tools, especially ones that aren't highly automated and production ready out of the gate. Personally, the workflow of most professional TV, film, gaming and trailer composers largely isn't for me. I'm not going to edit MIDI like they do or record orchestral parts meticulously like they typically do. It's tedious to me. If I can't play it live, I'm not interested. 

In this case, these specific libraries have been around for quite a while, and understanding 8Dio's roots focusing on the pro composer market is significant -- specifically pro composers who make music for games, trailers, TV and film. Hobbyists often have very different perceptions/expectations about usability and other aspects of sample libraries as a result of libraries aimed at the hobbyist market. That's precisely the MO behind the creation of UJAM, to target hobbyist users. Such tools are often a much better fit for many hobbyists than pro libraries. While I'm a hobbyist myself, prior to an injury I was a semi pro musician and I'm very inclined to use sample libraries that allow me to play things myself, like I do or once did with physical instruments -- even though I can no longer play very well. I'm not looking for loops, pre-written MIDI or highly automated tools. I'm looking to do it myself, which is aligned more with pro users. Consequently, I tend to be attracted to sample libraries that pro users are often attracted to.

I've worked with Orange Tree Samples on the development of the Evolution guitar line and they very much reflect my ultimate guitar libraries and they are amazing instruments with incredible depth. However, my instinct as a marketing strategist who has worked with a lot of sample and plugin developers is that most hobbyist users are likely only care about the fact that they can play guitar parts and the scripting magically makes what they play sound authentic. Most are not looking to go deep and tweak things, which pro and hobbyist power users like me also do. Most hobbyists are more apt to not go that deep. So when you understand 8Dio's background as a sample developer aimed at the pro market and you look at many of their libraries, they weren't designed to compete with the likes of UJAM to basically do everything for the user. They were created largely based on the experience of their founder, Troels and other pro composers involved in the company based on the tools they wanted/needed as compositions for trailers, games, TV and movies. 

More recently, 8Dio's work with their SoundPaint sampler, they're giving a lot more attention to the hobbyist, advanced amateur student markets. I think what they're doing with SoundPaint is pretty exciting and it's a great fit for hobbyists too. 

Edited November 9, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[pseudopop]

On 11/8/2023 at 8:29 AM, Carl Ewing said:

They make some exceptional libraries (eg. percussion, choirs, solo vox, orchestra, hybrid, world), that are used in very high end productions.

That is true. They also have some not so good libraries. Both of these statements can be true.

On 11/8/2023 at 8:29 AM, Carl Ewing said:

Perhaps stop buying the $5 phrase libraries thinking they'll auto-write you a masterpiece? lol. 

I'm pretty sure no one on this thread has done so. Some of us, me included, have been disappointed to realize that a product wasn't as flexible as the demos led to believe, because the demos used pre-recorded phrases but didn't point it out.

As a counter-suggestion, perhaps stop doing ad hominem attacks and try to keep the discussion friendly and polite? The world has enough negativity already without anyone adding to it.

On 11/8/2023 at 8:29 AM, Carl Ewing said:

If you can't make incredible music with their products than it ain't the product's fault. It's like blaming the joystick.  

I've used some pretty bad joysticks in my time that definitely limited my ability to play games. Like the hand grenade one:

It was impossible to hold the short stick comfortably. It was good for those games where you had to move the stick from side to side as quickly as possible, but that's about it. It gave me blisters, too.

I'm sure there were plenty of people who enjoyed playing with it, but it wasn't for me.