PavlovsCat

Again, I believe our opinions are exactly what define who we are. Most people believe it is what they believe is what defines them. People usually want that to be the case. I'll leave it at this. If you're in a group that's been targeted, what you're now defining as opinions are much more significance than you now give them. If you're in a hated group, you don't have the luxury of embracing people's strong hatred of you. I can tell you personally. I've been literally physically brutalized for my ethnicity as a child and I've witnessed it done to others. You don't always have the option to embrace people's hatred and I certainly wouldn't agree with that idea. Let's just agree to disagree and get back to deals. I think there are some things we agree on, like the hope that people will evolve and that dialogue is the best course.

I didn't put words in your mouth and I certainly would never want to do that. You started posting by disagreeing with me, countering what I wrote with, "And as opinions go, they don’t define a person. " That is your exact statement. But you and I have always been friendly and I don't see any reason not to continue the tradition. And yes, I agree with the hope of your sentiment that opinions evolve, but the reality is some evolve and some do not evolve. There are many people who agree with Christian's anti-trans views that have no interest in evolving. And I personally prefer to keep the dialogue open, as I previously stated. My Jewish grandfather not only served in WWII, he came back home to the incredibly antisemitic neighborhood where I grew up that remains incredibly antisemitic today. In my old neighborhood your family hides that it's Jewish. One of my neighbors is Jewish and his employees don't know and regularly say antisemitic slurs and remarks, so he doesn't share that he's Jewish with his own employees. So yes, I do have a hope people that hold strong prejudices will evolve, but we still have the reality that in the current day, their currently held views do great harm to the groups they hate. Christian shared a transphobic video by an individual that uses hateful tropes of trans people as mentally deranged pedophiles. It's not a whole lot different than racists in Blackface or tropes of Jews with outrageously large noses. One of my vendors came out as trans several years ago. Sadly, she became the target of hate online. She didn't have the option to have a civil dialogue with the person attacking her. But I empathize with groups that face attacked realizing that I'm not in their shoes and the onus should not be on them to have to dialogue with a hateful bigot. It's easy for those not in that situation. I don't think it's a realistic option for all targets of hate speech to just chill while people are attacking them, even though my desire is for everyone to be able to dialogue. I wish it was possible to have that dialogue, but that's certainly not reality. Adults who have strongly held bigoted views are commonly not interested in changing those views and don't want to be told they're wrong. So, my DESIRE is that society can listen to one another to dialogue and folks like Christian may come to a place of empathy, that doesn't change that there is hurt and damage that he's caused that further hatred, hateful trope and intolerance and I think that must be addressed and there should be consequences for his actions. So yes to dialogue no to what some people call cancel culture (although I completely support people saying I'm not going to buy from a brand because they just stated something bigoted against others), but it doesn't change that vicious acts have consequences and they should have consequences. My hope is that caring non transphobic people are in Christian's life that can show him the hurt he's caused people and that he can come to a place of empathy for the people he recently acted against. But there's no guarantee that he will ever change his views. He may continue to hold those views for the rest of his life, so opinions CAN sometimes change, but we don't know. All we can deal with is what people say and do.

I take your WWII grandfather and raise you a grandfather! I have two grandfathers that were WWII veterans! Haha, seriously. But you clearly missed my point of sharing that one of my grandfathers was a Jewish WWII veteran. My other grandfather was a Christian. My underlying point is sharing that he was Jewish WWII veteran was because he was fighting a war against a group of people (the Nazis, specifically) who had an opinion that people of his ethnicity should be put to death -- that of course, didn't affect our non-Jewish/Gentile grandfathers. The opinions of the Nazis crossed a hard line into hate and intolerance. Now, I'm not equating Henson with Nazis, FTR. I am addressing your comment that peoples' opinions that reflect hate and intolerance are insignificant. Now, perhaps those opinions don't impact you and your family, so you don't find them very problematic, but to those they directly impact, they're incredibly significant. I certainly don't disagree with anyone's right to state an opinion and I would have preferred that Christian stayed on Twitter and that people could engage in a respectful civil dialogue. But, putting my communications pro hat on, when a business person uses a very public outlet to profess a hard line clearly bigoted view against any group, there's going to be consequences. So, the end result was unsurprising. Beyond Christian's bigotry, he showed incredibly poor judgment, and there's no doubt he would agree with me on that. So, in the idealist sense, yes, I do wish people could discuss things openly. But when someone starts out by putting out declarations opposing another group's fundamental existence and using hateful tropes to disparage that group, it's pretty clear that you're not interested in dialogue and in social media, I hope that you will agree that making declarations against an entire category of people is unlikely reflective of someone interested in engaging in fruitful discussions and the group that is the target of the hate is obviously not going to embrace it, but feel threatened, even more so when the person engaging in the hate holds power or influence. IBTL

As the grandson of Jewish WWII veteran, I disagree with your view that opinions don't define a person. History shows otherwise. Opinions represent peoples' thinking, and a person's thinking is literally the way we define ourselves, by what we believe.

FTR, Christian is back on Twitter and regularly tweeting and never stopped making YouTube videos. In fact, he just tweeted 5 minutes ago.

So, would you go as far as saying that the Gorilla engine release is worth going apesh*t over? Sorry, I couldn't resist.

I'm coming that this from an objective, communications point of view. The problem was not Christian having an opinion, the problem was hardened intolerance and, yes, it is anyone's right to have their own intolerant views, but when you express those views publicly and you represent a business/brand, of course you're going to alienate whatever group you are advocating intolerance against and people who oppose intolerance and it will have a negative impact on your brand and that, unsurprisingly, is exactly what happened (Christian made a tweet announcing his unity with two well known anti-trans celebrities, one who has made numerous very offensive anti-trans videos). For example, Christian could have communicated that he doesn't understand or agree with a group of people without taking a hard line siding with people who hold very extreme positions and he would not have ended up getting major news coverage and having hate group leaders that he would never want to associate with praising his thinking. Once Christian took that hard line, he drew a stand and chose to alienate people and the fallout is very unsurprising. So that's the difference between an opinion and holding an extreme view that stigmatizes and denies human rights for a group of people. BTW, I'm not in the group of people Christian lashed out against. I'm a pretty standard run of the mill married once straight dad with kids; but I am a fan of both human rights, respect, kindness and free speech. I also am a fan of accountability. Again, merely having an opinion isn't the problem, it was the anti-human rights, bigoted aspect of what Christian tweeted, which the company he founded has stated it does not agree with and Christian now regrets. Of course, Christian legally had a right to tweet whatever views he has, as long as he wasn't advocating violence (and he didn't). But there are consequences when you take hateful stands against specific groups of people. That's all it is. Here's another musician's media outlet reporting on the incident: https://www.gearnews.com/spitfire-audio-transphobia-row-co-founder-christian-henson-steps-down/ [EDIT: I'm adding this because there are some hyperpartisan members of the forum and I want to make clear that this isn't a political issue, as some have wrongly assumed believing Henson is a conservative. He is not. In fact, Henson has not a fan of the US' 45th president. Consequently, this issue really isn't about political ideologies, it's entirely about bigotry and intolerance and how we respond to it. To those who call Christian leaving twitter for 4 weeks cancel culture -- and personally, I would have preferred that Chris stayed on Twitter and that there was a dialogue between him and members of the trans community established -- Henson temporarily turned off his Twitter account for a month and it's back on now. No one cancelled him and Spitfire's CEO responding to the controversy by saying that Henson was on leave is very stock crisis management that is nothing new. But Henson never left YouTube. In fact, just a week or two following the infamous tweet, Henson uploaded a YouTube video clearly made after the incident (because he references it) where he shares he was at AIR Studios working on a new sample library, which made it obvious he was still working for the company he co-founded. So he absolutely wasn't "cancelled." He lost a lot of Twitter followers and I'm sure there are some people who will not buy from the Spitfire brand following this matter, but I wouldn't consider that cancel culture, it's just consumers voting with their wallets. Once again, I wish there had been an open dialogue and an opportunity for understanding. Of course, the reality is that those events are often engineered by the public relations professionals, but I do believe there's still a societal benefit to such actions. While Henson can maintain any opinions he likes, publicly promoting anti-trans views with a hardcore anti-trans video is a very aggressively hard line attack against trans people. That's without question and that is why this became global news. My hope is that the end result is that Chris and society comes out of all of this with greater understanding, greater empathy and greater acceptance of others.] Also, IBTL.

You can read about the story from MusicTech. https://musictech.com/news/industry/spitfire-audio-co-founder-christian-henson-take-a-break-jk-rowling-graham-lineham/

I have contemplated that. I would love to get insights from anyone who owns that on how it compares to a detailed sampled cello library.

Come for the freebie, stay for the WUP. You had me at WUP, Larry. Up with WUP, people!!!

When my last coffee machine died, it was terrible! I had to wait three days or so for the next one and survived on instant coffee. I don't know how I made it through. I suppose it's a testimony to perseverance. Okay, just writing this makes me want to start another cup. Seriously. Starting now....

@cclarryAny guesses what 8Dio is going to discount next? They've done guitars, strings, brass and drums. I'm hoping they put the pianos on sale next. Specifically, I'm interested in the upright piano. I like the tone of it.

I got them all too. I was born a pianist, but my three siblings needed me to play drums in the band they put together, so I ended up playing drums professionally for two decades. So that's my excuse for buying all 3 sampled drum kits, even though I knew ahead of time that they weren't configured for my VDrums. They sound good and they're cheap as it gets for a high quality, detailed drum sample library.

I think we need to get Larry's deal tips on vacations! Funny, Larry, like you, I'm no gambler. Not for any religious reasons or anything like that; primarily because after taking a class called Probability and Statistics in college I was cured of any desire to gamble (true story)! I've been to Vegas maybe three or four times, always on business, and maybe blew a total of $60 USD on slot machines! Have fun, Larry! It sounds like that should be easy to do on the trip.

Where would we be without coffee?! Seriously, I'm a huge fan.

I have seen a lot of praise for all three of those at VI and the demos sound good for all of them, but I was looking to keep my purchase under $100 USD. What do you find most useful for rock or folk rock productions -- basically situations where one goes for a dry sound as opposed to a larger room?

That's useful. I really appreciate the "library shootouts" people do that use the same midi part for different libraries. In fact, I've done that with some of my libraries for my own personal use.

Okay, I think I decided what solo cello I most want. Sonixenima Solo Cello. If anyone has it, I'd love to get your thoughts. That said, as I recently bought Have Audio's NORDISK KONTRABASS and PMed the developer who told me about an upcoming huge discount of NORDIC CELLO for Black Friday, I think I'm going to pick up that too -- for more unusual cello parts. Demos of both libraries sound great to me and they're very different from each other.

That is a beautiful, pristine sounding upright, but I am after uprights that are closer to the realm of character pianos.

BTW, if 8Dio puts their piano sample libraries on sale for the same kind of price as their drum libraries ($20 USD), that would be impossible for me to resist. I think I only I've only bought two of their piano libraries in their SoundPaint format, and they're nice. As they don't require sophisticated KONTAKT scripting -- which, IMO, 8Dio isn't very good at; it simply doesn't invest the effort in creating intuitive scripts for the string libraries -- it's less of a concern for piano libraries, so I wouldn't hesitate. I'd love to pick up their upright piano library. So, I suppose, that would be on my BF wish list, as would Toontrack libraries that I can use in SD2 and the solo cell library I already mentioned. There are still 4 or 5 AD2 drum libraries I don't own, so possibly those too. Yeah, I'm one of the sample/plugin hoarders for sure. Larry is my Sam from Cheers or Walter White, you pick the preferred analogy!

I agree with your analysis that developers are in a race to grab our BF funds. The recent 8Dio flash sales coming every week are a prime example (and they've hooked me). But my instincts -- and some inside knowledge from a few developers -- leads me to believe that there are going to be plenty of great Black Friday deals this year. Even more, with Larry back, everything is in line for killer Black Friday deals. My wallet and bank account are very afraid of what is ahead.

The code only works for brand new customers on their first purchase. It's a typical referral program. They work by incentivizing current customers to bring aboard new customers, that's the only purpose of the discounts for the new customer and the corresponding $15 credit for the existing customer who brings them on board. Some folks here are scamming the system by opening up additional accounts to keep pretending to be new customers. That, of course, violates 8Dio policy and gives them the right to close accounts and ban those folks from updates or future purchases.

That's my dilemma. I own SD2 and I love it. If Toontrack re-introduced upgrade pricing from SD2 to SD3, I would jump on it. I own a bunch of SD libraries, which won't work in ezDrummer, so I haven't pulled the trigger on buying ezDrummer 3. But I have been thinking, if the upgrade pricing for ezDrummer gets heavily discounted, I'm just going to buy that, even for the additional drum sample libraries that it comes with alone. But the non-upgrade pricing for SD3 is too high for me. Plus, I am pretty bothered that Toontrack doesn't offer upgrade pricing for SD3 for SD2 but still offers ezDrummer upgrade pricing. They had a limited window where they tried to force previous owners to upgrade and I really found that promotional tactic problematic and didn't bite on principle, expecting that if they had a reasonable person in charge of marketing, they would eventually reverse course on that bad tactic. Of course, that never occurred. So, sorry for the long version. Considering all that, do you think it's worth picking up ezDrummer for the upgrade pricing just for the new kits that come with it?

Man, what's scary is that everyone posted stuff that I would also end up grabbing if there were a killer Black Friday deal, Every single post above this one with the minor note that I own SD2 and ezDrummer and have been uncertain about pulling the trigger on an upgrade to ezDrummer3 or just wait until SD4 comes out (SD2 runs great on my PC and they pulled their upgrade deal for SD2 owners long ago -- really terrible customer loyalty, IMO, but nonetheless, I find Toontrack makes the best acoustic drum sample player plugin there is).

I agree on everything you wrote @simon. I do use PocketBlakus all the time and I own two 8Dio solo libraries (I find the 8dio's Deep Solo Cello and Intimate Strings solo cello disappointing from a scripting standpoint and even the character of the samples; they're not intuitively scripted; they're huge dumps of articulations like the early days of sampling). If NI KOMPLETE upgrade has a half price deal, I'm definitely going to bite on that. I thought the NI Strad demos and Emotional Cello demos sound really good -- and I've seen a lot of musicians who really know their stuff recommending Emotional Cello over at VI Control. But those libraries both regularly sell for a lot more than the ones I'm considering, so that's the only reason I've counted them out. I'll share that the developer of Nordic Cello PMed me back at VI Control what he's going to be selling his cello for over Black Friday and it's a killer deal. That said, I haven't heard from anyone who has that and would love to hear some user feedback. I only know the demos.