PavlovsCat

There are some killer deals going on at Loot Audio right now and I wanted to highlight two small developers that I am a customer of, whose libraries I can recommend. As I'm not an influencer getting kickbacks or making money off of this like influencers do, I am going to give my unedited opinions about what I love and don't love about these libraries. All of these libraries require the full version of KONTAKT. MAJETONE This is a really under-appreciated developer, IMO. I love the tone he gets out of his drum libraries. They don't feature amazing scripting and they aren't flawless, but they have a certain magic to them and they're amazing deals at the present sale prices, IMO. The vibe of his libraries is really special. What I don't love? The way he maps the ride cymbal so that if you hit the key/note with medium or high velocity, it crashes. I've contacted him and recommended he maps the crash to a different key. Also some of the samples -- like the hi hat samples, have a bit of noise in them near the end. Again, I've let the developer know. But even so, these aren't dealbreakers, IMO. Not for the price and they don't make the libraries unusable. Truck Drums 2 WAS $18.73 NOW $3.75 A small drum kit that captures that Bonham "Levy" sound better than any drum sample library I know of. My only issue with this developer's drum kits is that he maps a ride cymbal on the same key as the crash, so you need to use very low velocity to get a ride cymbal sound. I have asked him about fixing that, I strongly doubt that many users like it the way it's mapped. I believe that I bought this library at full price and it was well worth it -- a bargain for all the fun it's been. https://www.lootaudio.com/category/kontakt-instruments/majetone-industries/truck-drums-2 This is the best video I know of to illustrate the sound of the Truck Drums 2: Kensal Drums WAS $18.73 NOW $3.75 A small drum kit that sounds beefy for a no-brainer price. The ride cymbal mapping and some noise in the hihat samples (particularly for the closing hi hat on G# are in need of a fix, IMO, but I can live with it). https://www.lootaudio.com/category/kontakt-instruments/majetone-industries/kensal-drums-majetone Kensal Club Date Drums WAS $43.70 USD NOW $8.74 A really good sounding small drum kit. I haven't bought this one yet, but based on the demos and other Majetone drum libraries that I own, I'm confident that it's good. https://www.lootaudio.com/category/kontakt-instruments/majetone-industries/kensal-clubdate-majetone Coy P does a review of the library: Extended Glockenspiel WAS $43.70 USD NOW $8.74 A lovely sounding glockenspiel that has had its range extended and features sound design presets. I haven't bought this yet, but based on the demos, the walkthrough video and other libraries I own from this developer, I'm confident that it's good and I'll eventually pick it up. https://www.lootaudio.com/category/kontakt-instruments/majetone-industries/extended-glockenspiel The walkthrough video: BEN OSTERHOUSE It's been a long time since Ben Osterhouse was a bit of a well kept indie developer secret find. The world seems to have discovered this very talented and creative developer's genius. But I'm sure there's still some folks who have yet to try his libraries. They're really different, really good and when they're on sale, they're a phenomenal bargain. I bought this library at full price -- it was the first library of his I purchased, and it quickly made me a fan. Sospiro Strings WAS $49.32 NOW $24.66 Slow, emotive strings. It features 4 different length swells and 3 sustained articulations recorded on bass, cello, viola and violin. The bang for the buck for a library of this kind, at this quality level, is simply amazing. https://www.lootaudio.com/category/kontakt-instruments/ben-osterhouse/sospiro-strings-ben-osterhouse-kontakt A review of Sospiro Strings and another of Ben's libraries:

Yeah, yeah, deal, but who is this Larry Shelby dude and why is his using cclarry's photo?

Okay, I went from feeling bad for you to envious! Three more cruises???? You're living the life, buddy! Sweet!

I'm sorry you're dealing with that stuff, Larry. I hope the travel insurance works out and possibly you can do everything you planned at a later date.

I picked up this developer's Wurli electric piano library back when he first introduced his electric piano library collection and gave it away free and to be really candid, it just sounded really bad to my ears, even when treated with effects and I've since deleted it -- and I love Wurlis and have numerous freebies I won't delete. In fact, it's the only time I can recall a developer's freebie stopped me from making a purchase of any of their libraries. But that was a few years ago and I've wondered about their other libraries. Are there any happy Insanity Samples customers here that find there's a library of theirs that warrants me giving them a second look? Their sale prices are relatively low.

I guess they figured, Larry's gone this week, so there's no big hurry.

Hornet does seem to have a sale going on almost constantly. But they're a good developer and their sale prices make them an excellent value. Thanks, @Kirean and @satya, you two have been doing a great job keeping up on deals in cclarry's absence. I'm sure I'm not alone in my appreciation.

I'm still dealing with my oldest recently leaving for college. This is a lot to take at the same time.... ... And this is the story of how the cclarry support section of the Cakewalk forum began. You see, it's not actually people asking cclarry for support, they're people who need reassurance and support when cclarry takes time away from the forum to do stuff -- you know, like live is life and have fun. But there was a time once when they worried cclarry would never return. A terrible time for all Cakewalk forum members. The trauma can be a bit much for them.

Is anyone else already starting to miss Larry? <Sniff.> That's just a cold! Come on Fleer, I know you do too. And Larry hasn't even left yet.

We'll miss you, Larry. I hope you enjoy yourself.

I don't think being a commercial developer is, in itself, problematic. I do know some that don't make deals with influencers that I would consider less than honest. When I first learned about Cory, I shared a link with a developer friend I knew would respect what Cory was doing and wrote -- "You should send him your libraries to review. I think this guy does a public service by doing honest reviews and in the end, those kind of videos make sample library developers libraries better -- but we both know that most developers don't like it. Yet it's good for users and for honest developers. I'd love to see influencers like this succeed." That developer's response? He was already in touch with Cory and was as big a fan as I am. If a developer makes excellent products, prices them fairly, represents them honestly in promotions and communications and treats their customers well, I'm good with them. I greatly appreciate those who make things for free -- I'm very grateful for it -- but it's not a viable or sustainable model that can support a person. There are honest business people out there (of course, they're imperfect). Unfortunately, they're not the majority. But they definitely exist.

Thanks for the kind words. I absolutely agree with that workflow-related opinions and sample library sound opinions can be highly subjective and that EVERY forum member's opinion -- including mine -- should be taken with a grain of salt. A workflow or library that I don't like may be a great fit for someone else. I only sharing my experiences, tastes and preferences and can't speak for anyone else -- and definitely am no expert (A LOT of forum members here know A LOT more than I do about mixing, mastering and all sorts of audio; I was once a working musician, but I never knew much about the sound engineering side of things; I played drums studios and my most popular band had two sound engineers, but I only ever made demos on my own where I mixed everything and I never knew what I was doing and am only know learning that stuff). I'm well aware that others perspectives may be very different than mine. When I'm seeking advice on sample libraries though, I do highly value the opinions of others at this forum -- realizing, of course, they have their own workflow and sound preferences that may be quite different than mine. I've really found a lot of value in hearing from other users at this forum. It's one of the big reasons I stick around and spend very little time at other music-related forums anymore (I was once very big into KVR, where my username is still eDrummist).

I thought I would be proven wrong when I wrote 72 hours. I checked my email and saw that you weren't joking. Yes, folks, they really did extend the sale!

Um, the plugins are $2. I get a 25-cent cut on every sale made from my affiliate link. I kid, I kid. I shill for no one and I'm not part of any affiliate marketing programs for any developers, just a paying customer who's never even had an email or PM with the developer (Hornet Plugins). My goal is to have angry irrational, ill-tempered developers with bad practices lash out and libel me in public forums. Again, I kid. It's completely unintentional. My take is that these forums SHOULD BE for users, not developers. They exert their influence in other forums driven by ad revenue from those developers, so they tend to be heavily moderated/edited in favor of the developers, especially developers who pay and negative commentary about those developers tends to be heavily censored. That's no accident. That's one of the many aspects of this forum that is so great. Bandlab does an excellent job of keeping it musician/user-centric and not developer-centric at the expense of open discussions, and critical discussions about bad experiences with developers.

Sure, but now I'll have to wait as long as 72 hours before any of those go on sale!

While I don't love Waves, this tutorial series features really concise videos that I've found really useful. This video is just a basic intro, you'll want to go beyond it, but I found it's a good starting point.

@El Diablo On a related note. I just bought another plugin from Hornet Plugins yesterday after a thread in this forum. I searched Google and YouTube to find any "review" videos of the plugin. Not even one moderately successful influencer had covered the plugin. Some influencers, like White Sea Studio -- whose videos I really enjoy -- have done reviews of Hornet's other plugins. It's easy to see why. He's a small developer of low-priced plugins that aren't going to generate much revenue for these influencers -- either through him giving them free products (that's priced cheap anyhow), affiliate program (I don't think he has one), advertising (I don't think he does much, if any, advertising) or cash in exchange for a "review. In one sense, if you review products like his, they get A LOT LESS searches that Waves or Izotope. However, you could look at it as something you do to build your audience, as few developers are covering his plugins, you can be a big fish in a small pond.

I have -- on your advice (which has always been super helpful. I think ou know that I very much appreciate you and how helpful and encouraging you have always been!).

I realize the sale is over -- and it will probably be as much as 7 days before the next one -- but I just wanted to say that after taking @MusicMan 's advice and buying the HA2A, I tried it on drums and love it. I haven't even tried anything else yet! I've picked up a little more than a dozen of this developer's plugins and especially like this one and the Spring Reverb and the prices on both were ridiculously cheap (the Spring Reverb was recently free). So to those wondering if this developer is any good, in my experience, he is definitely good. As he constantly has sales, it's pretty easy to pick up his plugins dirt cheap. Thanks again, MusicMan!

Well, from what I know the pressure Cory received wasn't based on a legitimate claim that he engaged in defamation. It was frivolous. I communicated this earlier, but it appears it was overlooked. The situation that occurred though is that it had served to intimidate Cory. I believe him. I also know -- only from years of PMs that go back 20 years and a mutual friend -- Mario /Evil Dragon, that he also faced a similar legal threat from 8Dio long ago. It appears that they have been really aggressive with developers over the years and I think both Mario and Cory are pretty nice people but neither is knowledgeable on laws -- and they don't know about US laws (both live outside the US, where 8Dio is based), and when a company threatens to go after them legally, I believe them both that they were scared (plus I know from a mutual friend that what occurred with Mario did serve to scare him). So again, I do not believe the threat of a defamation lawsuit was legitimate -- and for the record, that's civil law, not criminal law. The fear was about a company suing someone without money and the financial and reputational harm it could do. As Ted wrote above, opinion is protected. Let's say an influencer says in a video: "I bought XYZ Company's plugins and I found that it crashed my DAW, it had numerous bugs and sounded terrible. All in all, I think the product is complete garbage. I wouldn't recommend it if it were free." Now, if everything he stated was accurate, it is not defamatory. However, if he lied/exaggerated when he claimed the plugin crashed his DAW and about it having bugs when it actually ran perfectly and had zero bugs, he has engaged in defamation. But subjective opinions are not defamation. I have written in this forum, that I find 8Dio's string libraries don't have intuitive scripting, that they tend to be dumps of articulations. Now, that is highly critical and the developer is definitely not going to love that. If that were in an influencer video, I could easily imagine the influencer getting pressure to edit it out, based on past history. But if I was threatened that I would be sued for defamation, it would be a completely frivolous claim. Why? Because I was sharing my honest observations/opinions. That said, a person or business could still file a defamation lawsuit that it would cost you time and money to defend. When I last year shared that a developer had ignored every support request I had for 11 months until I finally took to Facebook to try to get him to respond to me. I was complimentary of his libraries but stated the lack of support was a deal breaker. I had hoped that he'd contact me to respond. He did respond by deleting my post and blocking me on Facebook. I made a thread in this forum to share the experience. When the developer emailed me, he finally responded to my support requests. At first he apologized for deleting my FB comment and blocking me. When I told him that I wanted to buy more libraries from him but I was concerned about his lack of response, he became hostile and insulting. I told him that when he didn't respond to my support tickets and then blocked me on FB that I shared the experience on at the Cakewalk forum, but since he now was in contact and things were being resolved we could share that things were resolved in this forum. The guy became upset and instead of making friendly posts, he made posts calling me a liar, claiming I threatened him and was mentally deranged. All of those public statements are clearly defamatory and resulted in his posts being removed from this forum and VI Control. That is the line of defamation. Oxford Dictionary defines it as "the action of damaging the good reputation of someone; slander or libel." Now I am able to share exactly what occurred between us without concerns of defamation -- even if it's incredibly unflattering to the developer, because it is factual/true. If you make something damaging up or exaggerate, it can cross the line into defamation. The bottom line is, if you report facts and share what is clearly your opinion and not something asserted to be a fact, that you are likely to not be engaged in defamation,

Just curious, I don't have GR7, I'm still using GR6. Does GR7 load the user presets you made for GR6?

I was just waiting for one of the regulars to recommend it! You guys all know a lot more about this stuff than me and seriously, I've taken folks advice a lot here and I really don't recall any major disappointments. I usually test plugins out first, but it's like $2.24 USD, so I just pulled the trigger after your recommendation! Thanks. Besides, I've only been learning how to use a compressor in the last several months and I believe I don't even own a dozen yet. So I need to catch up with the rest of the group.

Okay, critiques of Hornet's sales tactics aside, what do you think about the quality of the HoRNet HA2A , forum members? It's dirt cheap, but is it good? I didn't find out much about it in searches. Opinions?

But you're probably basing it on the less than honest thread at VI-CONTROL and the mob mentality attack on 8Dio. Consider that the person who did that was am independent contractor working for an 8Dio competitor was pretty angry that 8Dio turned down her 6 figure pitched project for them. She wasn't wronged. She was leveraging Cory and some other folks she was aware had bad experiences with 8Dio. I actually went back and forth between Troels and Cory trying to work things out. I make no money from this stuff, I just did it because I could see how the person that started the thread operates, I realized that she and others weren't disclosing that they are 8Dio competitors -- notably four people posting were affiliated with Impact Soundworks and weren't interested in fairness, nor was the site owner. Let me be clear too. I don't think the person who created the thread and the other developers were acting upfront in that. There was a lot going on they didn't disclose. It was a vendetta take down of 8Dio by two developers and their contractors. If you think those other developers or the person who launched the attack were the good guys who don't engage in ethically problematic behavior, we'll have to agree to disagree. Cory was leveraged to be exploited to make an argument. He chose not to be part of that attack. I attempted to work things out between Cory and Troels. If you've seen my opinions on 8Dio's and SoundPaint's libraries, I'm pretty critical. I will say this, because Cory shared it on YouTube. The person that he worked with wasn't Troels, but his wife. I doubt that Troels is even aware of what occured between the two. But if you're looking to gather the story from a rejected contractor not honest enough to disclose that she works for a competitor when doing an attack thread, I'd suggest reconsidering what you witnessed. It was easily a defamatory attack by competitors. And I'm not exactly an 8Dio fanboy. But that thread was dishonest, deceptive and in a highly controlled environment where dissenting opinions were quickly deleted by the competitor/forum owner, who weeks ago was just told by 8Dio that they were pulling their advertising from VI-CONTROL and sought other devs to join them. The competitor that owns the forum was deleting dozens of posts that disagreed with the attack; by his own words he deleted dozens of posts. It was witnessed by many community members, including me. So my take, I believe Cory's version of events. I think the person in question was aggressively pushing him to edit his videos. While a lot of developers do that, she allegedly went a step further, which is crazy, but it intimidated Cory. The fact is, the other players in that thread are at least as bad. The only good guy in that equation wasn't participating -- Cory-- because he knew his story was being used to prop up other attacks that had nothing to do with him.

I would suggest you start by figuring out what you think are the most valuable influencer reviewer videos you know. Figure out what you like about them, figure out what you think is missing and do your best to put together a solid outline for your video. As far as proving that you're not just looking to shill to grab free products, I'd recommend that you're just really thorough and sincere. If you're doing that and you're good on camera, it will likely shine through and you can tell people in your videos how you operate. With Cory, it's rather obvious when he does a video and discusses serious issues with a library that he's clearly not shilling -- a developer isn't going to pay for that. But a review doesn't have to be negative to be believable.