8Dio - Shadow Symphony Bundle - $48 (Until April 7th)

[Kirean]

https://8dio.com/products/shadow-symphony-bundle

Includes:

Symphonic Shadows

• Kontakt VST / AU / AAX
• 7,141 Samples / 4.53GB
• 3 Advanced Mic Positions (Mixed, Spot 1 & Spot 2)
• 3 Separate Sections (Strings, Brass & Woodwinds)
• Custom Browser w/ Built-In Articulation Matrix
• Custom User-Interface w/ Built-In FX and Sequencers
• Custom Convolution, Microphones, EQ and Chaos FX
• 63 Presets, including DFD and Time Machine Patches
• Delivered by Download
• Kontakt 5.8.1 Full Retail (or later) Required

Synthetic Shadows

• Kontakt VST / AU / AAX
• 7,635 Samples / 7.57GB
• 13 Hybrid FX categories & 4 Synth Master Drumkits
• 100's of Analog Synths & Hybrid Instruments
• Built Into Our Famous Hybrid Tools User-Interface
• Downers, Risers, Boomers, & Pulses
• Droppers, Strikers, & Growls
• 20 Scoring Presets Out Of The Box
• Instant REVERSE, RANDOM, STACK, & CHAOS
• Delivered by Download
• Kontakt 5.8.1 Full Retail (or later) Required

[PavlovsCat]

Man, I've had a bunch of conversations with 8Dio's CEO and she's been very passionate that prices for sample libraries need to come down.

But it's one thing to discuss ideas, it's a whole other level to see those ideas happen. It's an amazing time to be a musician who uses sample libraries. Yes, lowering prices for libraries makes them more accessible-- which is great,  IMO. It also can bring out enormous hostility from competitors in this business,  which I witnessed from the inside in this case. 

My hope is that 8Dio's moves like this to dramatically reduce prices of premium sample libraries result in prices  coming down overall for sample libraries.  The market has become mature. It's still experiencing healthy growth,  but tighter margins will absolutely mean that some marginal players won't survive. It also means that paying back production costs of very niche libraries is going to take a longer period of time-- which was a giant part of why a couple of competitors launched a public smear / defamation campaign against 8Dio last year  -- and unsuccessfully tried to keep me from sharing what was going on (I actually didn't know the 8Dio's CEO until then). 

Anyhow, even if this deal doesn't appeal to you, it does represent something major for the industry.  

[kitekrazy]

17 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

Man, I've had a bunch of conversations with 8Dio's CEO and she's been very passionate that prices for sample libraries need to come down.

But it's one thing to discuss ideas, it's a whole other level to see those ideas happen. It's an amazing time to be a musician who uses sample libraries. Yes, lowering prices for libraries makes them more accessible-- which is great,  IMO. It also can bring out enormous hostility from competitors in this business,  which I witnessed from the inside in this case. 

My hope is that 8Dio's moves like this to dramatically reduce prices of premium sample libraries result in prices  coming down overall for sample libraries.  The market has become mature. It's still experiencing healthy growth,  but tighter margins will absolutely mean that some marginal players won't survive. It also means that paying back production costs of very niche libraries is going to take a longer period of time-- which was a giant part of why a couple of competitors launched a public smear / defamation campaign against 8Dio last year  -- and unsuccessfully tried to keep me from sharing what was going on (I actually didn't know the 8Dio's CEO until then). 

Anyhow, even if this deal doesn't appeal to you, it does represent something major for the industry.  

The first one to do this was Garritan with GPO.  Back in the Northern Sound Source days they banned EW since they gave him a hard time over it.  They failed to realize this was a starter type library and was around 4GB.  I still love GPO if you want to create something quick.   

Most 8dio libraries were developed for Kontakt 5.  There's not much overhead.

The problem with orchestra libraries is it's hard to reinvent the wheel. People are into shiny and new.   It's hard to comp up with new ideas for Strats and Les Pauls.  Wind instruments don't have new innovations.   I find serious professionals don't go for shiny and new.

[PavlovsCat]

2 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

The first one to do this was Garritan with GPO.  Back in the Northern Sound Source days they banned EW since they gave him a hard time over it.  They failed to realize this was a starter type library and was around 4GB.  I still love GPO if you want to create something quick.   

Most 8dio libraries were developed for Kontakt 5.  There's not much overhead.

The problem with orchestra libraries is it's hard to reinvent the wheel. People are into shiny and new.   It's hard to comp up with new ideas for Strats and Les Pauls.  Wind instruments don't have new innovations.   I find serious professionals don't go for shiny and new.

Garritan GPO -- which I brought back in the day -- had a very different strategy. GPO targeted hobbyist / beginners. Garritan established a new category and led the way for a market strategy that led with the education market by marketing heavily to schools, forming relationships and giving educational discounts. Garrison established that market. I know, my friend,  Kirk Hunter was a part of the early marketplace.

8Dio hasn't established a new market,  however,  looking back, I'd say their founder, Troels, was definitely one of the early pioneers of creating extremely detailed sample libraries with ToneHammer (along with one of the owners of SoundIron). What 8Dio is doing is dramatically bringing down the pricing of professional libraries to a price point that is very accessible to many hobbyists (FTR,  while I've given then some minor consulting advice, I never advised them on their 8Dio line, just SoundPaint). To your point, it is much easier for a developer to bring down prices on mature libraries whose production costs have already been paid off and their current costs are largely related to ecommerce/data/sales, royalties and promotion. Of course,  it would be more challenging to sell a new library at these kinds of price points. However, if a developer finds they can sell 10x as many products by lowering the price 80%, it easily could result in the developer deciding to price new libraries at similarly low price points. 

Edited April 5 by PavlovsCat

[Robert Engstrand]

13 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

competitors launched a public smear / defamation campaign against 8Dio last year

Sorry for being off-topic here, but can you link to some sources regarding this? I've completely missed out on this, but since I'm an 8dio customer, I'd would like to read up on it. Thanks.

[PavlovsCat]

4 hours ago, Robert Engstrand said:

Sorry for being off-topic here, but can you link to some sources regarding this? I've completely missed out on this, but since I'm an 8dio customer, I'd would like to read up on it. Thanks.

I'll spare linking to it. But I'll summarize it. Last year, the owner of VI-CONTROL, who owns a sample development business that I've given some advice to started going off publicly on 8Dio after they pulled their sponsorship and advertising from the site due to some practices he engaged in 8Dio's CEO objected to on ethics grounds. That's a story in itself,  but I'll spare that one to keep this simpler. 

Within several weeks, a hobbyist  KONTAKT scripter who pitched her fan project at 8Dio for 5 to 6 figures and was turned down,  modified her popular pro 8Dio thread into a defamatory series of attacks on the developer,  finding every person she could who had disliked the developer. She found her co worker,  Mario, a scripter I go back two decades with through KVR and a mutual developer friend,  to join in bashing 8Dio. He told a false version of a story claiming that 8Dio's founder threatened him for giving a bad review of a library nearly 15 years prior. It was used to create a false narrative that 8Dio threatens reviewers. 

It was a lie, and I confronted Mario in the thread to share that back then, I was the person who gave him the advice on how to handle the situation. Mario posted that I was telling the truth, but that Troels was very harsh with him. What happened was that Mario had worked for a competitor and made a post comparing the library he worked on -- but hiding that fact -- and praising it as superior to the library from Troels company. When Troels saw what Mario was doing,  he was upset by the dishonesty and told Mario he could be sued for what he was doing and it could ruin his reputation in the industry to do shill posts. At the time, it was rumored that Mario was engaged in piracy, and Mario was concerned that Troels might take legal action. My advice was to apologize for what he did and to never engage in similar acts. But because Mario lived in Europe and Troels company was in the US, it was cost prohibitive and highly unlikely legal action would ever be taken. 

Anyhow, so I posted the story in the thread.  Mario acknowledged I was telling the truth and VI-CONTROL's owner,  Mike Greene sent me a PM telling me he just deleted my posts and Mario's responses, that he hates 8Dio and told me to stay out of it. Greene and I later had a series of emails about the matter. What non industry people don't know is that the woman who started the thread and Mario both work for 8Dio's competitor, Impact Soundworks, a fact they hid until someone brought it up and then Impact Soundworks owner made some posts in the thread. Its a case study in defamation and bad ethics. Anyhow, since then, Mike Greene started going into sales threads about 8Dio,  interrupting them with angry rants that 8Dio is destroying the industry by pricing things so low. In the original attack thread,  Mike actually furthered on false attacks against 8Dio that he privately acknowledged to me that he knew to be false. 

I confronted Mike. He acknowledged that he was furthering attacks that were not based in truth, that maybe it wasn't the right thing to do,  but it didn't matter because 8Dio is bringing the industry down with their pricing and urged me to refuse to consult to them and have nothing to do with them. His comments were defamatory and cc'ing Mike, I sent the emails to 8Dio's owner,  who I've since developed a friendship with, that happened as a result of me stepping up to get the truth out. Prior to that, I didn't know 8Dio's CEO and only spoke with Troels once, 15 years prior. 

Sadly, the defamatory attack on the developer has been picked up by most music making related forums, including this one and Reddit. I was friends with two people used to attack 8Dio and I knew both stories were lies. I later learned the story of the scripter from her and from Troels and found that also wasn't being presented honestly. The one thread through all of this? 8Dio's competitors, Mike Greene and Impact Soundworks, Andrew Aversa, egged it on. When I privately asked Sarah if she'd be open to having a call I facilitated with the 8Dio folks to try to work things out, she replied to me that she wouldn't be comfortable with doing that because of her boss Andrew Aversa -- again,  an 8Dio competitor that employs Sarah, who made the thread; Mario, who joined in the 8Dio attacks with a false and defamatory story -- neither of them ever disclosing that they worked for an 8Dio competitor.  Then VI-CONTROL owner Mike Greene,  also an 8Dio competitor and the owner of the forum that 8Dio just pulled their sponsorship and advertising from. 

Greene had claimed that 8Dio is litigious and that they "sicked their lawyer" on him. What forum viewers don't know is that even that remark is dripping with insincerity to support the defamatory attack on Greene's competitor. 8Dio's lawyer is actually Greene's close friend's wife. As a side note,  in the time that's past, 8Dio has never filed a libel suit (FTR, I would have, in their shoes), I think we can all see that the claims made about them were bogus, but as their competitor owns a forum where he deleted more than one hundred posts by people in defense of 8Dio (including my posts and Mario's responses to me acknowledging what I wrote was true) and Greene dishonestly claimed in a post near the end of the thread not one post he deleted defended 8Dio.  The thread is a great example of how Greene weaponizes his forum to attack his competitors (8Dio isn't alone,  Greene has attacked other competitors on his forun; however, 8Dio is the only competitor he's attacked where I personally knew two of the main stories being used to attack them were false). 

Again, this defamatory attack by two competitors and their employees still lives on in Google suggestions for 8Dio,  I urged Greene to delete the thread and after I cc'ed 8Dio's CEO on our correspondence and tried to persuade Greene to take corrective action, it's clear that he won't. He later edited his attack rants on 8Dio and created a thread of my responses to his rants, completely out of context and he invited his forum members to attack me, which one member here, who had a history of making political, racial and anti LGBTQ references in posts years ago that I publicly objected to took advantage of. Of course, you can't become an outspoken critic of a forum owner and call out his poor ethics privately and publicly and expect he won't retaliate. But know that I witnessed the attacks on 8Dio as an acquaintance of two of the individuals used in the attack, and Mike Greene. When that attack thread started, I didn't know the 8Dio folks,  I knew the folks who lied and shared that they were lying and I was also a friend of an influencer the OP leveraged in her attacks and that the story she shared about him was also a lie. That led to 8Dio's CEO contacting me and our since becoming friends. 

Edited April 6 by PavlovsCat

[Robert Engstrand]

Thanks for sharing that story. God, what a mess. 😒

[PavlovsCat]

57 minutes ago, Robert Engstrand said:

Thanks for sharing that story. God, what a mess. 😒

It's such a complex story. I should state that I'm a marketing strategist in real life and years ago, I would often offer free or low cost advice for small developers whose plugins and sample libraries I use. It started with helping out one who got in trouble for infringing on Roland's trademarks and asked for help on KVR. I shot the guy some links to quotes of mine in business publications like Forbes and Wired, so he knew I was credible and would consider my advice seriously.  From there I ended up giving advice to more than three dozen developers in this industry -- I even met up with some on unrelated business trips, like meeting Ben from Camel Audio on a business trip to Scotland (I'm an American). But I largely stopped doing that several years ago, as I simply don't have the time anymore. So those developers included Mike Greene and the developer who basically mentored Mario in the industry, got him his start. 

But I get that most folks don't care about the ethics of a developer, but a competitor running a forum using it to attack his competitors is incredibly ethically problematic. Then you have the fact that it was literally coordinated with a fellow competitor (Mike Greene owns Realitone and Andrew Aversa, who employs the thread starter and Mario, own Impact Soundworks and the two owners are friends and have privately harassed 8Dio's CEO-- she's sent me screenshots of demeaning, harassing, and gaslighting PMs and  posts from a developers forum they're  part of that they directed or sent to her; I'd call some if it clearly sexist and bullying -- I'm a man, BTW and not prone to making such observations lightly). 

If you see the 8Dio thread with mainly just my very long posts, each one came from various 8Dio threads where Greene attacked posters for creating threads, claiming they were shills or after Greene's angry rants that 8Dio was destroying the industry by deep discounting. In various threads,  Greene personally,  or through surrogates, attacked 8Dio's CEO using misogynistic terms, libelous remarks... In his private emails to me, he lavished praise on me for being a "good guy" with integrity and "heart of gold" while trying to persuade me to hate 8Dio's CEO. It was bizarre and obsessive in a way I can only liken to HS mean girl behavior. I cced 8Dio's CEO and blind cced developers-- informing Greene. It was days after that, Greene created a thread with my posts,  inviting people to attack me.  Of course,  after I cc'ed 8Dio's  CEO replying to Greene's defamatory emails, Greene became furious with the guy he praised for his ethics and heart of gold only one email prior and banned me (permanently, it seems) from his forum. As you might expect, Greene took to his forum to post that I was banned from his site after that. I emailed him that I couldn't care less about posting at his forum, but I don't appreciate him creating a thread of my posts out of contact inviting his forum members to make attacks on me. It does speak to his toxic behavior and toxicity of his forum.  

Edited April 6 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

There's a whole other aspect to the attacks on 8Dio from Greene that most people don't know or understand. Greene leveraged people's biases to get them to line up on his attacks on his competitor. Greene since deleted the post. But he falsely claimed that 8Dio's CEO threatened a boycott of VI-Control by developers (to pull their monthly sponsorship fees and advertising) due to Greene censoring LGBTQ forum members from discussing Greene's friend Christian's controversial tweet. 

8Dio's CEO actually showed me the correspondence Greene referred to in a post where he claimed she threatened a developer boycott of his site.  She never even implied a boycott. She merely told Greene that she was pulling 8Dio's sponsorship and advertising from VI-Control in protest to Greene censoring LGBTQ members,  including 8Dio employees from discussion. I could clearly see what set Greene off in that correspondence. She criticized his ethics -- and I know that Greene has an authoritarian nature and rages when criticized even slightly.  She made a harsh criticism of his censorship and the toxicity of his forum (this was several weeks prior to the attack thread and Greene's numerous attack rants whenever anyone started a thread at VI-Control about an 8Dio sale -- he would attack them and accuse them of being shills for 8Dio and then go on extended rants claiming 8Dio is destroying the sample industry by heavily discounting -- leading "the race to the bottom" -- a phrase he often uses with regard to 8Dio).   

Sarah, who turned her 8Dio fan thread into an attack thread after 8Dio refused her pitch to buy her fan project scripts for 5 to 6 figures (for a retired library that only pulled in $400 USD its final year of sale). later shared with me that she did feel that Greene leveraged her bitterness for his own purposes and no longer feels that he's a decent human being.  It also wasn't lost on her, that as a trans woman,  that Greene was leveraging anti trans sentiment of some forum members to try to turn them against 8Dio for their pro LGBTQ stance. 

Edited April 6 by PavlovsCat