PavlovsCat

Thanks for making that, @Hillmy. It was very considerate of you.

Is there an audio demo of it somewhere? I couldn't find any on the web page or on YouTube.

Howdy, my fellow plugin and sample library hoarders! While I always enjoy Computer Music, I did want to see what this freebie was all about. In my experience, Tone 2 makes some nice plugins, so I'm interested! For others who are interested, here's a video on UltraSpace by the Computer Music folks that can help you quickly understand the effect.

I was contemplating putting together a thread, maybe with a poll where we could vote on our favorite pianos. Mainly because I think it'd be great to learn from each other. For example, I have all the free Labs stuff, but I tend not to use it because the libraries aren't as detailed as my paid libraries for KONTAKT and SoundPaint. But knowing you from the forum and PMs -- I'm now going to take another look at the Autograph Grand. @OutrageProductions do you know how many layers Autograph Grand has?

When you wrote scrolling through the ones you have, I can relate -- and I think a lot of folks here can. I've accumulated so many piano sample libraries over the years, from NI, SampleTekk, e-instruments, Toontrack (ezKeys), 8Dio, SoundPaint, XLN (Addictive Keys), Orange Tree Samples, Embertone, Production Voices, Spitfire, SonicCouture, etc., and filled up multiple hard drives with sample libraries that I've been committing more time to pruning then I ever have. The hardest sample libraries for me to delete (psychologically) are the libraries I've paid for (while I've bought a few sample libraries secondhand, I have yet to attempt to sell a sample library I've purchased). Of course, it's far easier to delete something you got for free. I've long considered buying the Alicia's Keys library, but I had expected it would be included in KOMPLETE standard at some point. I have friends who own it and like it. I like the tone of it. At $50 USD on sale, it was always a maybe. At $13 USD, I bought it as soon as I saw the price (thanks @cclarry!). One edge we hobbyists have over pros is time. Pros -- at least some of the time -- have urgency to purchases. For instance, they'll need a certain type of instrument to fit a project they need to deliver in say, a couple of weeks. Sure, hobbyists may seek out a certain type of instrument to complete a project -- but we aren't on a timeline that has an economic impact. We can "wait it out" until there's a sale. Time's also in our favor when it comes to mature sample libraries. That is, there's clearly been a trend in the sample library business to heavily discount mature libraries, like NI is doing with Alicia's Keys. It makes sense on the balance sheet too, of course. As, when a library is introduced, a developer needs to pay back their production expenses, and libraries like Alicia's Keys surely paid back those costs years ago, so at this point, the costs are basically data storage and transfer, marketing and royalties incurred for each sale. In other words, they can afford to sell it cheap.

13 bucks? Insta buy for me (I bought it as soon as I saw the deal, although I can't help but wonder if it will end up in the next KOMPLETE standard, which I faithfully by with each new version). I've contemplated buying this in the past, but never picked it up. At this price, it was a no-brainer.

I wrote that because I so often see posts when people bring up "Texas Twang" that they don't do that style, so they pass on it without realizing it's a Telecaster; it's pretty versatile. To give you an example, someone in a subteddit I joined: "Love the OTS samples. This one sounds fantastic. It's probably a good thing I don't really do this genre or it'd be a must-buy." And I think he largely passed on it primarily because of the name making him think it's not right for other styles. A lot of people hear the "Texas Twang" name and think that's really the only thing the guitar does, but it's a Telecaster. They've been used on everything from blues to R&B to jazz to Motown to country to all different kinds of rock, including punk.

I love Evolution Texas Twang and use it a lot. I think because of its name, it can easily, and wrongly, be pigeon holed. It's a Telecaster. It's great for rock, blues, R&B...

I've had a chance to check out @Scott F. Thompson's sampled honky tonk piano and wanted to share my thoughts. I really like the character of the piano that was sampled. It definitely has charm. This isn't a pristine sample library. There are some noises in some notes -- creaks (piano bench?), something mechanical -- but I don't really find that hurts the library for the intended style. The biggest downside of the library, IMO, is the lack of dynamics. I believe there are only two dynamic layers, so you can play this piano loud (forte) or really loud (fortissimo). The compressed (Zip) file for the library is 346MB. It's for the full version of KONTAKT. I don't know what minimum version is required. Hopefully, Scott will return and tell us.

I did use that a long time ago (literally probably 15 or so years ago). But I stopped using it after finding internal strummers in guitar VSTs -- first with RealGuitar and later with Orange Tree Samples Evolution libraries. I actually went to Greg (OTS founder) after he released his first guitar and bass libraries to share my thoughts on what I believe a virtual guitar plugin should do, greatly influenced from my experience with stuff like the Cakewalk CAL scripts, RealGuitar, Steinberg's Virtual Guitarist -- because I thought he could build a better version of that stuff and I wanted as a user, but as marketing strategy pro experienced in bringing products to market, I thought my expertise could help him in his business (that is, it would kill two birds with one stone; I'd get what was basically the product I wanted and he'd get a product for his company that was an innovation; at the time, I later chatted with folks from most of his competitors who tried to duplicate the Evolution line like Impact SoundWorks, Big Fish Audio and others that attempted to reverse engineer Evolution and privately acknowledged doing so to me. Anyhow, so flash forward and you'll find the strummer in Evolution libraries is light years beyond that Cakewalk arpeggiator. You can set the timing on a strum, you can use standard sustained notes, mutes, palm mutes, harmonics, chugs, scrapes... It's amazing, but the downside is that it probably takes 15-30 minutes to really understand what you can do with it, so it's not dead simple like starting with a loop-based strum player like Native Instruments Session Guitarists, but, of course, loop players are incredibly restrictive. That said, for someone where those libraries are out of their budget, I think the Cakewalk scripts are an option worth considering, although I still think the strummers connected to guitar libraries are far more realistic. I think the freebies from Ample Sounds include strumming.

Hi, @Scott F. Thompson. I was listening to the demo on my phone and the piano sounded pretty good. There's not a lot of info about it. As you created the library, can you tell us a little more about it and tell us what version of KONTAKT is required? I'll download it and try it out when I can. Thanks, Peter

They've been repeatedly running this deal on ADSR and AudioPlugin Deals -- often for $99 USD -- for years. I've seen influencers that get a kickback promoting CloudBounce, but I'd be interesting in getting an objective review (that is,a real review -- one where the person giving the critique isn't financially compensated by CloudBounce). Can anyone here who's used CloudBounce give a review or link to an unbiased.uncompensated review? The Trust Pilot reviews of CloudBounce are often brutal. CloudBounce has a 2.3/5 average on Trust Pilot. But most of the terrible reviews focus on CloudBounce's subscription / repeat billing practices, which isn't relevant for a lifetime deal. Of course, I'm interested in the quality of the mastering the tool produces and most of the reviews that mention that are flattering, however, it's pretty much impossible to discern who has expertise to judge the quality of CloudBounce's mastering services. That said, I found one reviewer at Trust Pilot who claimed expertise as a mixing engineer is a case study in megalomania. It's pretty over the top, so I don't find it very reliable: "In my capacity as a discerning mix engineer for esteemed artists, I undertook the endeavor of mastering two tracks...My credentials as an academic engineer, boasting a track record marked by hundreds of millions of streams and sales, underscore the gravity of this critique...In summation, as a mix engineer entrenched in the upper echelons of the industry,...My counsel, rooted in experience and a commitment to the sanctity of artistic expression, is resolute..." Umm. really??? Was it really too much to simply state your expertise with something like, "I'm an experienced pro mix engineer that's mixed hundreds of tracks over a xx year career with hundreds of millions of streams," and then give a review of the service? Consequently, I have still yet to find a credible review from a non-compensated audio pro or a credible audio journalist. If anyone knows of one or more, please share it. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cloudbounce.com

You can hide Player libraries from the panel. I know I've done it to hide libraries that I rarely use. (Although, off hand, I don't recall how I did it! I'm sure you can google it to find the answer. )

You can find plenty of old posts on this forum about this and other sample libraries from Aria Sounds, and the consensus here, other forums and on social media regarding this library is that it's very poor. I do know a developer who bought it and his opinion was that it's unredeemably poor quality on multiple levels. I've seen dozens of posts about this library and I've never once seen anyone make a positive post or recommendation for it yet.

I have all of the above too. The reason I enjoy using these is that they're dead simple. Like the EQ and compressor, which do a really good job of simplifying making your own customization to the settings the AI starts with. Izotope is excellent, but the Fast plugins are even easier to use when making tweaks. That's the reason why I like them, especially for the EQ. It's all about the GUIs. I think this video does a good job of explaining it. If you watch this, I think you can easily decide if they're for you or not. From a performance standpoint, they're excellent. They're made by Sonible, a plugin developer that produces very high quality effects plugins, using their AI technology and algorithms. If you're an advanced user who has a strong grasp of these kinds of tools and can use an EQ and a compressor like a pro, I think you can take a pass on these plugins unless you want to take advantage of the AI analysis.

Hey there, how are you doing?

Best post of the day. Thank you for considering how poor Amber feels about all of this.

I bought the whole set a year ago or so and can recommend them. They're super easy to use, so they're especially useful if you're more into playing or singing and not as knowledgeable on the technical aspects of mixing, as they use AI and plain language to help you EQ and do other tasks.

It all sounds awesome. "Far better than I expected" sounds like this trip gets two thumbs up. The Chacchoben Mayan Ruins at Costa Maya sound especially interesting. I appreciate how different these places are, that you could get into the Mayan ruins and then also appreciate NYC. Also, I can't help but think that you've stumbled across a band name idea: CCLarry and The Spider Monkeys. I'd listen to that band and even wear the t-shirt! I think you should start a a travel blog with all of the adventures you've been having in the past year! Hmmm...maybe ccLarry's Travel Deals Blog!

So @cclarry, it all looks awesome. I'd love to get your brief thoughts on each place and what you liked best about each place. Did any one place you visited stand out as an absolute favorite? I realize that each place has its own unique qualities, but I'm wondering if one of them was really extra special. For example, I love New York. It's super exciting. If you want to have fun, it's kind of impossible not to in NYC. But for my tastes, nothing touches my soul as much as nature. So, I'm always going to pick natural beauty for my favorite places in the world (for me, nothing beats anywhere in New Zealand, but Christchurch is the closest I've been to Heaven). What places on this trip really stood out to you as favorites?

Okay, Alan, so you've taken the research to another level! This is indeed the same guy behind the two websites linked in my earlier posts. The fact that Gibson consented makes it clear, this guy, or rather his LLC, owns the rights to Wurlitzer. Well, hopefully he can turn out a good Wurlitzer name worthy electric piano soon. I would imagine that a factor, at least in the US, would be that Gibson hasn't used the Wurlitzer trademark in the category of musical instruments in far more than a decade. This entrepreneur in Germany is at least considering licensing the heck out of the Wurlitzer name. Also, due to the fact that you're so into this too, I have to ask, are you a fellow Wurly affeciaonado or did the content just interest you? My guess is that we lost everyone else with this -- but at least this mystery has been solved. But what about the Wurly trademark -- the one I searched the USPTO trademark database on last year. I didn't find this guy had a USPTO trademark for that (including different spellings). Did you? When he approached the dev demanding money or he would sue him, I searched specifically on wurly/wurli/wurlie and I don't recall he had anything registered for that. But I did find at least one of the German entrepreuner's Wurlitzer trademarks. I also found that a small sample developer registered a trademark for "Wurli" at that time. But based on my understanding of US federal trademarks, they're not a guarantee that the registrant is the owner, as the IP law firm I mentioned earlier puts it: "A federal trademark registration means that you carry the legal presumption of ownership of the mark and possess the right to use it. "

Ha! So it sounds like you're an IP attorney. Is that right? Not challenging your knowledge, this copy from an IP attorney firm does a better job of making the point IP lawyers have always explained to me: "A federal trademark registration means that you carry the legal presumption of ownership of the mark and possess the right to use it " That is, it is not the USPTO guaranteeing that you're the rightful owner to that trademark, it just gives a date when a claim was made and live, conflicting trademarks were not found in the database at that time. My understanding, and I do recall having dealt with another company claiming common law rights to a registered trademark a company I was with used. To make this a bit more relevant to this, if a USPTO trademark search finds no live claims on a trademarked name (not a logo), but someone registers it but doesn't use it in commerce, their trademark claim doesn't necessarily trump a company that was using it unregistered in commerce for 30 years during the period of registration. For example, Gibson let the Wurly trademark lapse, but a small opportunistic developer registered it for use by his business. If Gibson still has been marketing a product using the Wurly name, my understanding is that the small developer with the federally registered trademark still may likely not have a case for infringement against them. Is that correct or incorrect? So the withdrawals to opposition from GIbson you referred to in 2019, does that pertain to using the Wurlitzer trademark for musical instruments? And is the owner of that trademark the same party that has the website referenced in my original post?

Okay, this is funny, now there's two of us on the case! I'm not sure if that's the same guy that contacted AcousticSamples, but he registered a bunch of US federal trademark claims for Wurlitzer, but as I mentioned, a registration is really just a claim to the right for a trademark -- it doesn't necessarily mean that you are the rightful trademark owner. In 2020, Gibson was certainly the real registered owner of the Wurlitzer trademark, so I think the above individual just wasted his money and didn't bother to use a trademark attorney. The reason that I searched the USPTO last year was to see if anyone was making a claim for Wurly/Wurli/Wurlie and the last legitimate registered trademark came from Gibson, but they let it expire. You could go today and register a trademark for Wurly and it would likely go through. It wouldn't mean much in court. (I'm not an attorney, but I've spent a good deal of my career working with trademark attorneys and these are trademark basics; Fleer however, is an attorney). I know that Gibson did have a battle with a company out of Germany over the Wurlitzer trademark in the early 2000s, but Gibson won that battle and I suspect this guy was not part of that based on the fact that he seems to be a one man show. Also consider that the guy behind the websites claiming that he owns the right to Wurlitzer, claims that he got the rights in 2021, not 2020. He's likely registered a bunch of trademarks believing that he could get them because there's a bunch of dead trademarks from Gibson. Of course, without using them in commerce, he won't have much of a claim and I would think that Gibson's common law use and history would likely make his trademark claim meaningless. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm knowledgeable enough in this area that Interpol quotes me in their documentation on international trademark laws.

I have all of the Labs libraries on one of my drives, but I probably should just delete them, as I really don't use them. I think they're great for their intended purpose, attracting newbies to the Spitfire brand. But I think, if you have a collection of detailed KONTAKT libraries, it's unlikely that the Labs libraries are going to meet your standards, and it was never Spitfire's intention to do so. As far as paid libraries from Pianobook, they've been doing that for at least a year. I have no idea how well they're selling.

A German trademark site lists that the fellow claiming to own the rights to Wurlitzer trademark founded the company as an LLC in 2021 with 3,000 Euros in capital. Hmmm.... I have a hunch that making a deal with Billy Ellish that he uses on his website might require a bit more than 3,000 Euros. I'm just sayin'... https://www.companyhouse.de/WURLITZER-Licensing-UG-Neustadt-an-der-Aisch