PavlovsCat

Thanks for explaining that.

Haha! Do you own it? Even Lumineers songs would demand more than two layers; they tend to bang on the piano during choruses. That is kind of disappointing, even at its low price point.

I was thinking about picking up the Originals Firewood Piano, which is only $17.40 with the code. My only concern is that I've read (I don't know anytime that owns it) that it only has two dynamic layers and the transitions between them were not well done and because of that, it can make a good, smooth performances, with even minor dynamic changes, challenging. Does anyone here own it that can speak to that? I plan on using it for mellow singer/songwriter music along the lines of Damien Rice, Sufjian Stevens, etc.

But then we've seen your synth room. You're a complete addict. Outlier! I'm just having fun with you! Also, anyone who hasn't seen NIck's video with him in synth utopia, you really should check it out. It's very hard to watch and not be envious! Plus, the tune he's doing sounds really good, so everything about the video is cool, IMO.

I completely forgot about this drum plugin for my list of recommended freebies. I was checking out YouTube videos of it on my phone (yeah, not the greatest way to do that), but it sounds really good for a freebie. While it's definitely geared more towards metal, I like the snare a million times more than the snare drum in BFD Player. Only thing is, I always try everything out before adding to my list and my hard drives are pretty filled. @cclarry have you used this and do you like it? Anyone else who's reading who's used it, I'd love to get your thoughts on what you think of it.

I actually think that's a great idea. Okay, I don't immediately see how you'd make money off of it to pay for its upkeep, but I think the idea is pretty cool and even love the name -- and I've used the profoundly poorly named site called KnobCloud to buy used software -- that just doesn't sound good and I still want to erase it from my browser history. They should have called you for name ideas! PM me when you launch Pro Audio Graveyard! Maybe you can do it before Halloween for a cool tie-in.

I absolutely think it's possible for successful models to exist in the multisample world -- of course, they already exist for the loop world. I think the reason that the model can work in the loop world and not the multi-sample world is the demographics of the avg. age of user of loop libraries being lower than the multisample user. Okay, that's completely based on observations and no research. I haven't worked with any loop developers, just plugins and multi-sample developers. Again, without research, I think millennials consume loops at a higher rate than older generations (Gen X and Boomers) , which tend to be incredibly more resistant to subscriptions overall. I'm thinking of a recent consumer study on streaming subscriptions and it found that the avg consumer wants to limit his/her subscriptions to a max or 2-3 and generally is comfortable with adding new subscriptions due to the required commitment, as opposed to one-time purchases. As I recall, Boomers tend to be the most resistant of all to subscriptions. Whereas a middle-class Gen Zer doesn't think twice about paying for a Spotify subscription for ten bucks a month (or whatever) to avoid ads and listen to exactly what they want and skip as they like. Other than that, as I said earlier, business buyers tend to prefer subscriptions to perpetual licenses with software, they want to spread out payments. Consumers, for various reasons, largely don't feel the same way. But I do think that there are categories where, especially Gen Zers and millennials are largely more receptive than older generations. So, in the case of Plugin Alliance, I wonder, if they sell their subscriptions to a lot of studios and pros as opposed to hobbyists. I'd love to see the stats on that. Yes,. I am nerding out!

It's a real shame that NI operates this way (obsoleting this hardware by no longer updating drivers and not licensing out the technology to other mfrs). I now feel I would want to warn someone who was looking at NI hardware so that they understand what I just learned from this thread and everyone sharing. Thanks for this thread and comments everyone. It's the kind of stuff you don't learn from influencers who are sure to be promoting -- er, um, giving totally unbiased yet somehow highly enthusiastic "reviews" of NI's fabulous new line of controllers that never reference these practices. Ca-ching!!! I'd rather learn from you guys. Fight the power!

I actually shared a link to his story in an edit to the last post. I swear I was saying some hilarious responses to him. He told me that he's charging interest rates to poor people that end up at 1,000 percent and it's all legal. Being someone with ethics and empathy, I was disgusted, but instead of saying that outright I said, "Well, I am Italian, and I've already worked in the insurance industry, so I'm pretty sure that getting into loan sharking would fulfill some kind of ethnic stereotype gold medal, so I'm going to have to stick with no as I enjoy my status of having a soul." So yeah, I had an upclose experience with a major scumbag in the business of exploiting poor people, and that is the same thing the rent to own industry does in poor American neighborhoods. They charge poor people outrageous amounts of money for things like TVs, furniture and appliances, far beyond their value and they take advantage of poor people who aren't savvy. Rent to own is largely associated with those kinds of businesses in the US and if my business was using that model ethically, as seems to be the case with Arturia (whose products I love), I would call it something different like "play now and pay on installments with no interest." Well, something like that but catchier.

Wow, the fact that a small business person writes a message like that -- just Wow. It's clear that he realizes the strategy isn't working but he's saying we're sticking with it. Denial is the first stage of bad strategy. Hopefully, he'll have some kind of wakeup call before his business is in trouble. I love small developers and just because they make a mistake doesn't mean they should fail (not referring to Waves, BTW, who've made far more than one mistake). I guessed three months before they give up on this strategy, but this letter makes me think that process could be much faster. Or he's so stubborn he sticks to his guns and goes 6 months. I'm going to revise my guess to 6 months because he's literally rationalizing a strategy he clearly knows on some level is a bad idea by using sign-ups as a key performance indicator comparing it to past releases. I'm guessing they haven't had great success yet in sales and those subscriptions, while higher than past unit sales are not enough to pay the bills. That, in the end, is what leads some small business people terrible at strategy to a wake-up call. Looking at their staff, it does blow my mind that such a small business has someone whose job title is strategy executive. That's odd for a small or medium sized non consulting services firm. You just couldn't cost justify that at a small software company. As a former Fortune 500 strategy director, it just seems bizarre. What would he do all day in a full time role at a company with a dozen employees? Maybe come up with ideas like "Subscription software is the future for our company!" That's my guess where this idea came from.

The rent to own market and the reasons for brands using it is significantly different from the subscription model. I really appreciate that Arturia doesn't charge rent to own customers interest, as that is often how rent to own works in many industries. The subscription model isn't primarily used in this business to spread costs for big purchases, even though it can be seen that way. Consider Waves attempt at moving to the subscription model. They weren't targeting low income consumers. Most of their plugins are constantly selling for $29 USD. They were promoting access to most of their products to entice consumers. Rent to own targets lower income consumers or those with a very limited budget. From the brand's perspective, it moves people who previously were not likely customers into the realm of being customers. When it's done without charging interest, I like that model. In some industries it has outrageous interest rates, and that's a different story. And to well educated consumers in the US, the phrase "rent to own " has a bad stigma tied to retailers charging excessive interests rates exploiting the poor. On a personal note, a super rich very successful payday loan company founder and race car driver called me up after reading something about me he liked and tried to persuade me to lead marketing for his sleazy payday loan company maybe a decade ago. Offered me $1 million a year., a lot more than my normal income, Im sorry to say. Boasted about charging poor people interest rates that should be illegal (it turned out they were illegal). Called me an idiot after I repeatedly turned him down (he first offered half a million and kept going up and was very angry when I turned down his highest offer). Now he's a less rich guy in prison. I love a story with a happy ending. Edit: This is the dude in my story. I actually just found this on a search and read the US Justice Dept actually stated what he bragged to me about. Terrible human: "Joan Loughnane, the Acting Deputy United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that SCOTT TUCKER was sentenced to 200 months in prison for operating a nationwide internet payday lending enterprise that systematically evaded state laws for more than 15 years in order to charge illegal interest rates as high as 1,000 percent on loans. " https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/scott-tucker-sentenced-more-16-years-prison-running-35-billion-unlawful-internet-payday

I just want to say that I'm following along and find this thread really useful in helping decide what my next controller will be. In addition to the NEKTAR, I have an 88 key older Yamaha keyboard (I think it's the S08), an IK iRig and an old synth. I've always loved the idea of getting an NI controller because I use KONTAKT so extensively. But NI's announcement completely ruins that desire for me. Are there any third party controllers that use their KOMPLETE KONTROL functionality or do they not license it out to other manufacturers? If they do license it out, is there a manufacturer that licensees it that is better, that is, isn't as quick to make their controllers -- or more specifically, the drivers for their controllers-- obsolete?

So what compelled me to give my own review? Well, I am, in part, a writer, so I thought with all of the fake reviews from Influencers, how about doing an honest review that you'd never see from an influencer. Influencers are looking for free product and money from developers. They're basically independent contractors looking for money; in many ways they are the social media equivalent of TV infomercial pitchmen and women. They're not going to do a really honest, highly critical review because it will damage their ability to get free product and money from a developer. The review I did above would, without a doubt, ruin an influencer's relationship with a developer and stop the flow of free product and money from developer to influencer. Influencers commonly insert some critical remarks to create the appearance of objectivity, but it's always very minot by design, something they can spin as not a dealbreaker for those considering purchasing the product they're promoting. My review is actually a review, not a grift. I wish we all started doing reviews, because I think most community members are pretty honest and that's the antithesis of influencer faux reviews (they're really promotions). It's why I always ask people here for their opinions on libraries and plugins they own, because you can pretty much count on honest opinions.

Just curious. What are your thoughts on the sound of the drum kits and presets? When you wrote "not liking these" were you referring to the sound of the drums or what you had to do to install and use the software?

Well let's try again. Neither of us liked the preset kits very much. But because I really appreciated Drew, I ended up downloading and installing it and found I thought a couple of presets were okay. I spent time tweaking presets but found I couldn't tweak the snare drum enough to create a preset I loved. It was the snare samples that were the root of the problem. I found it thin and lacking depth and I think that's a huge part of why I don't enjoy the presets, because of the underlying snare samples. I found the Tom samples sounded good. I liked them better than those in most AD2 kits. I like how the toms were tuned, I like their character and how full they sound. The cymbals sound good. And it would be worthwhile for you to share your thoughts again. I recall you really didn't like the sound of the snare drum. Did you install the kit and go through each drum and cymbal? Would you mind sharing your thoughts again?

The server had an issue when I posted. Double post.

That's a really good idea for a poll/post. To be candid, I don't even know about those DAWs. Maybe if you don't get a lot of responses it might reflect that a lot of people aren't aware of the different open source DAWs and could use a basic primer on the various options.

Basic fact of most software subscriptions. Business buyers like them, consumers don't. From studies, consumers greatly try to minimize their subscriptions where a business likes the regularity and spreading out payments as opposed to making more significant ones every few years. The disconnect is that small business owners often skip research before attempting to execute these kind of obviously poor decisions, often because they don't understand how to use research (there's a ton of secondary research they could have studied and learned from; they clearly didn't). Because every software business desires a dependable source of recurring revenue, sometimes small business people can be blinded by their own wants without doing the research portion before embarking on a major strategy. I'm not saying large companies are always brilliant, we know that's not true, but they tend to better rely on research before making major changes to their pricing strategies. As we can see from Waves example, small businesses in this industry often don't put in the effort to properly research before executing strategies well known not to be successful with their target market. Funny, I was ripped to shreds by someone here who regularly mocks me and I wrote that on the day Waves introduced their subscription only model, explaining that the only question was how long before they change course. I believe I predicted it wouldn't last a week. The guy, who doesn't know my background, mocked me as an idiot. My guess is that this small developer will stay with this sure to be unsuccessful strategy much longer than Waves. How can I predict that? They currently spent very little to nothing on advertising and I don't think they're investing a lot in influencer marketing. Those two vehicles would be critical to make this a success. But even then, that would only be a success if they weren't mainly selling to hobbyists. If they were selling to businesses, like studio owners, things might be much different. Prediction: They'll do this for 3 months. It's a bit random of a guess, but based on experience advising developers and watching really bad strategy ideas happen in real time.

You and I were nerding out about drums (okay that's a very American expression, I just mean we were enjoying talking about drums), But I don't recall what we were discussing last. Heck, I can't even tell you what I had for lunch yesterday. So what was it you asked?

I just saw this in my feed. It's a very likable influencer who does a lot of Cakewalk how- to videos doing a walkthrough of BFD Player.

He's messing with our heads! He's a mod. He has immense powers.

I have that and it's pretty cool. Tracy seems really talented at making libraries that sound good and are easy to play to get good results. And he seems like a wonderful person.

Just avoid NEKTAR sustain pedals. I've had 3 stop working on me in three years. And yeah, I know you're thinking, he's a former drummer, maybe he's beating the heck out of it like Keith Moon on a bass drum pedal. I could subconsciously doing that, but I think it's just poor quality. I still have one working (I bought two that stopped working and the company sent me out two replacements, one of which stopped working after a year). FTR, their customer support is awesome, but the pedals are not, IMO. A friend recommended I buy a Yamaha sustain pedal. Anyone else have a pedal they'd recommend?

See, this group is really awesome, especially when folks come together to help others. It's not perfect, but most people here are really kind and generous. Feel good thread of the day. Now someone will report it for not being a deal and get it closed! Hahaha!

I can't recall if I've ever purchased any Indiginus libraries, but I will say that I really find the developer is a stand up guy. Around a decade ago, there was a composer at VI-Control who's a well known serial bully there and has been banned at least several times for outrageously terrible behavior. He was posting these very over the top personal attacks on a developer who's a friend of mine. I stepped in to confront the guy and, of course, the guy started going after me. But one of the voices objecting to the bully was the developer who owns Indiginus, whose name escapes me (Dennis?). He stepped in and wrote the most eloquent post about how wrong the bully's behavior was in attempt to stop it and he also had some really nice things to say about the developer being attacked. Anyhow, that was a decade or so ago, but I'll always remember that man's character. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at remembering names, especially when it's someone I don't know IRL. But I know that my friend Jay Asher (who's a regular at VI-Control and actually was involved in the thread I'm referring to and said he was going to leave VI-Control over it, but eventually came back) loves Indiginus libraries because he says while they're not necessarily as sophisticated as some of the competition in terms of detail (what many devs deep sampling) and articulations as Orange Tree Samples or Ample Sound-- the two premier choices for ultra realistic guitar and bass sample libraries if you're really picky about realism or a pro who plans to use the instruments in final, pro productivity, they're super easy to use. He's also a fan of Pettinhouse guitar libraries for KONTAKT which sometimes go on sale for cheap (disclosure: the owner of Pettinhouse is a friend of mine).