PavlovsCat

I just registered Mic Room, which I bought a couple of months ago for something like $9 USD and I now have two free plugins / effects I can choose from. I also just bought MixBox and will register that next. This group has been really helpful and most of you know a lot more about mixing, mastering and guitar effects --and really any kind of effects -- than I do, so I thought I would ask for opinions here and figured there are others who would also find the advice and insights from people who own and use the effects I'm considering valuable. I own Opto Compressor, Classic Compressor and more reverbs than I'll ever use, but, from this list, I only own the CSR Hall Reverb, so if anyone thinks there is one or more great reverbs on the list worth checking out, please let me know. I regularly play Orange Tree Samples guitar and bass libraries and while I use the presets most of the time, I also have a blast using amp sims with the libraries. I own Guitar Rig, United Audio's Electrum and the free edition of Amplitube along with various additional amps and effects I've picked up and I realize there's a lot of debate over the best amp sim, and my opinion is that I like the sounds from Amplitude better than Guitar Rig, but I buy each new version of KOMPLETE, which includes Guitar Rig, so I don't want to spend money buying updating Amplitube too. If I had to pick my favorite real life amps, it would be Vox. But I love Fender, Marshall, Mega Boogie and other amps too. So, I was thinking the Fulltone collection might be a really good pick. What do you guitarists think? FTR, I'm a former rock musician -- and while I like/love all different genres of music -- most of the stuff I play and record these days is rock, from acoustic indie rock to classic rock covers to folk rock to prog rock. I would love to get people's thoughts on IK stuff on the list they think is worth checking out.

Cool. I've had M-Tron since the first version and I love it, although I agree that it is due for an update. To those who don't already have it, if you love Trons, M-Tron is a great choice and the developer is super friendly and nice to deal with. Highly recommended.

I look at it this way as someone trained on piano, organ, and drums and only a handful of guitar lessons and never became proficient on guitar (and later got tendinitis, so playing guitar isn't an option anymore), so candidly I look at creating my patterns in Evolution's strum engine like being able to tell a guitarist exactly what I want played and then s/he plays it. So yes, like playing any sample library, if you want to create a realistic performance on say drums, you're going to need to learn how a drummer actually plays. If you never took piano lessons and want to create your own realistic piano parts, you're going to need to figure out how a pianist plays. While that may sound intimidating on the surface, it's really not complicated. But from decades of seeing posts on sample libraries and hearing people's music, I think it's still something many DAW and sample library users overlook. So no, you don’t need to be a guitarist to get a realistic performance from Evolution. However, if you want to create your own parts from scratch, you're going to need to understand the basics of how rhythm guitar patterns work and what makes strumming realistic to achieve realistic guitar parts It's the same for people who don’t know the basics of piano, organ and other instruments, even drums. You need to learn the basics of any instrument to use a sample library and pull off an authentic performance. Evolution is a fantastic tool, but to achieve a realistic sounding guitar part, you still need to understand what makes for a realistic guitar part. Of course, with Evolution you can use sound presets and preset rhythm patterns as a starting point, but chances are you're going to need to have additional single note parts, riffs, leads, etc.

That's exactly the kind of functionality I'm thinking of too.

I don't know if it's possible, but I would think it would be great if there were Evolution add-on rhythm guitar strumming packs. I know that I'd use them and I suspect many others would too. @Greg Schlaepfer is it possible to make additional rhythm guitar patterns for Evolution guitars? I mean, could it be similar to the process for a user to download and install KONTAKT snapshots in KONTAKT or would it be much more involved than that?

This is great feedback for a developer and I know that Greg listens closely to his customers. One of the realities of doing customizable strumming like Evolution has is that creating your own patterns is inherently going to be more work than using a loop player like NI Session Guitarist line or UJAM's Virtual Guitarist line. If you commit to spending a good hour watching the videos on using the strum engine and then apply that, in my experience, you'll be blown away at what you can achieve. But, it's never going to be as simple as playing loops, as you're just playing back a recording of someone strumming a pattern, which, of course, restricts a user to exactly what was played. You can't do things like insert a muted strum on the 4th quarter note of a measure like you can do with Evolution. The caveat is, you need to invest the time to learn how the strummer works to do that as opposed to just playing someone else's pre-recorded patterns (loop). So, personally, some of the time I want to start with preset patterns. I want the instant gratification like you get with a loop library-- but without the inherent restrictions of loops (not permitting customization of patterns) that makes using loops a dead end path for anyone like me who wants the ability to make guitar parts their own. Which leads me to agree that I too would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to have more Evolution preset rhythm guitar patterns. I actually think that having a larger number of preset patterns would basically kill any desire to ever turn to a guitar loop player. That is, I own KOMPLETE (the standard version), so I have a few NI Session Guitarist loop players from that and they can be a lot of fun as a place holder -- just no brainer devices where I hold down a chord and the players plays loops of a guitarist playing various patterns for that chord. But you're stuck with the same patterns and while they're super basic, only so many are going to fit your needs and your songs guitar parts will easily be identified as loops from that player library. It's just very limited, like any collection of loops. I want to be able to make patterns -- including presets -- my own and not even being able to tweak patterns ultimately ruins these players for me. Evolution is the closest library/plugin there is for attaining realistic sounding guitar from a keyboard. Consequently, I think the ultimate solution for serious and demanding users of guitar sample libraries would be Evolution expanding its collection of preset rhythm patterns. I think it would make the best virtual guitar solution on the market even better.

Is anyone else getting hit with a bunch of Facebook ads for Andrew's (Aversa) email marketing services (he's the owner of Impact Soundworks)? I did a double take. I'm guessing I'm seeing it because of the ISW thread here and perhaps I did a search and that's how I got the ad. Andrew and I had a series of online chats over at KVR long ago, but I never met him in person. But I'm pretty sure this is him. Not really important, but I was surprised to see a small sample developer pitch me his email marketing expertise with his "academy." Just unexpected. https://www.aversaacademy.com/

Larry, Bapu and you seem to know about every developer on the planet. I thought I knew about a lot of them, but it can't hold a candle to you three.

Hopefully, because you'll be busy sipping fancy drinks on a cruise to some beautiful island. At least that's what I hope you mean.

If you tell us the style(s) of music you do, I'm certain we'd all have recommendations. I mostly do rock but everything from acoustic rock to hard rock to verging on prog rock and regularly use every Evolution guitar, including the ones with Jazz and Blues in the titles. I'm currently working on redoing an old rock song I wrote and doing leads with Evolution Jazz Archtop and using Guitar Rig to give it a really cool blues rock sound. I'm using Evolution Songwriter for an acoustic guitar and Evolution Vintage Violin Bass for the electric bass. I'm also using Evolution Rock Standard and Evolution Infinity. I used a bunch of Evolution guitars and bass on this short version of an old song of mine and did the slide guitar riff with Slide Acoustic (it's one of those libraries that I'm inspired by every time I load it up). I'm just an old former drummer that also plays keys and never was a singer, so it's nothing impressive, just hobbyist level stuff, but every track was played in live with no midi tricks-- at most, I fixed some mistakes here and there. If I can pull that off, anyone can. The instruments I have in my basic rock template as my starting points are Evolution Rock Standard (Les Paul), Evolution Stratosphere (Strat), Evolution Songwriter (acoustic guitar), Evolution Vintage Violin Bass (its a Hofner like McCartney plays, but I also use the Fender Precision and Jazz - Roundwound and Flatwound -- libraries A LOT too). But those are just my starting points. https://on.soundcloud.com/hMRz9

Agreed. My closing point before the inevitable -- and warranted -- lock. My original point was in response to someone's attack on ISW's post, the defense of piracy and the claim that piracy has no real impact on developers, I believe it was one of Bruno's posts (FTR, no one should get the idea that because we don't agree on this issue that I don't appreciate Bruno, because I sincerely have long appreciated Bruno's posts in this forum). I was well aware I wasn't going to persuade Bruno and Carl, I was writing for those reading with an open mind as someone who's known and advised a lot of small developers to share the damage piracy does from their perspectives, and, of course, to counter the perspectives being expressed that attempted to justify piracy and claim that it does not cause any real harm. I also wanted to provide insight into how someone can empathize with developers, loathe piracy, and still be highly critical of developers that damage the user experience for legitimate users due to what I would consider prioritizing anti-piracy measures over user experience. I am not a fan of i-lock and software companies that make legitimate users spend a significant percentage of a purchase towards anti-piracy measures, as I do agree that many of these measures are a loosing battle (I think it was missed by some in this conversation that NI's KONTAKT and Player libraries are easily hacked, and most of the small developers I know of who are, what I would consider, obsessed with piracy, refuse to release their libraries in the KONTAKT format due to what they consider insufficient anti-piracy measures; I could cite developers I've had conversations with -- because there have been several, but I won't out of respect for their privacy). IMO, while anti-piracy measures are necessary, creating the best user experience possible should always be the priority. I attempted to ensure Bruno and Carl didn't confuse the impacts very small sample developers face -- which was the point I was making -- and not go down rabbit holes about the piracy faced by giant corporations (realizing that a lot of the research, data and even arrests/ legal that exists is related to large corporations, not small developers for obvious reasons, i.e., the span of reach, volume of piracy and monetary value). I provided it as insights into the known facts about piracy. It conveys how piracy impacts a company's revenue, that users of piracy do not fit the stereotypes being espoused as simply poor people, young people, etc., but we already know they include middle aged, very wealthy and famous composers. That was the point of my sharing the Cinesamples lawsuit and similar situations developers have discussed with me (the Cinesamples lawsuit provides a solid example that this problem exists and harms small sample developers). Anyhow, if a moderator sees this, I'm in agreement with kitekrazy that the thread should be moved or locked. Any points anyone wanted to be made have already been made and I don't think this thread is of much interest to most forum members at this point. Back to deals.

Our Walter White! Or, more mildly, he's Sam from Cheers or Dr Johnny Fever. Still, we care about Larry. He's the lifeblood of this forum.

Take that as a compliment, Larry. People care about you to the point they worry when several hours go by without a post. I just figured there weren't any worthy deals to post, but once the thought was out there, questioning if something could be wrong, I did want confirmation you were okay. Hopefully, we'll hear from Abacab at some point. It's been a while and now I'm concerned. It may just be that other priorities got in the way of our little shared love of plugins and libraries, but it'd be really nice to just know he's doing fine. It's funny, just from these little interactions, you can truly care about people you've never met IRL and I think that's one of the special aspects of this little group you don't find in every similar online community.

Yeah, when I have a really bad experience with software or a developer, I feel compelled to warn others. As you know are well aware, that doesn't always turn out well. Still, I'm not letting that stop me. I do feel compelled to warn others about InMusic's very problematic history of buggy software and poor support. Fortunately, I don’t think InMusic's CEO will come on the forum to libel me for sharing my experience and I don’t foresee InMusic has inspired sycophant fanboys the way some small sample developers do.

Ah. Drumsynth 500. It wasn't mentioned in the photo, all I could see was the Boom logo. I really can't imagine, after my own experiences with AIR plugins having major issues and the company taking several months to fix those problems (after acknowledging them at KVR), as well as after reading about many others having major issues year after year, that I could spend $100USD or more on any software owned by InMusic. That brand ruined its reputation for me. I've held off spending $49 USD on BFD3 because of my bad experiences with other plugins and lack of fixing things for extended periods of time and a ton of users posting serious problems with the plugin. Maybe after a few years of people posting great things, but probably not before then.

Are you referring to Boom, the plugin in the title? I would estimate that it's around two decades old. Just to give an idea, here's a thread where people were talking about it sounding dated -- back in 2010. Of course, a lot of people might want vintage drum machine sounds, so that may not be an issue for some, but it's definitely a very, very old plugin and I don't think I've seen many recent reviews. https://gearspace.com/board/rap-hip-hop-engineering-and-production/500939-anyone-actually-using-boom.html

I'd like to give a hypothetical-- based on common scenarios in the sample development industry. ABC Sample Developer hires musicians, an engineer, technicians and KONTAKT coder and books a studio to record a string quartet. He pays the studio $200,000 and beyond the upfront fees, some of the independent contractors have a royalty agreement based on the sales of the library that will be made. Let's say the total upfront costs end up at $300,000 USD. Then the developer spends an additional $7,000 on licensing fees. The developer then spends an additional $50,000 USD to promote the library. Then the developer has additional costs for his direct staff and his own time. But even without this, he now has $357,000 in costs that library needs to pay back just to break even. So from here, let's say the developer sees $100,000 in revenue over the first year of release, while there is the equivalent of $300,000 in lost sales due to piracy. Now, with some of the logic stated by some, all of that $300,000 is irrelevant, because it never would have happened, but that's actually counter to known facts. All piracy is not merely from poor people who can't afford to make a legitimate purchase. Consider when someone in this forum misappropriates a code intended for a specific group of people that provides a massive discount and posts it in forums, including this one, it can result in major losses of revenue for a small developer over what otherwise would have been received. Yes, some people who never would have made a legitimate purchase at regular price use that code and complete a purchase, so that's additional revenue. But that case is ignorant of the economics of software licensing and royalties. There are fixed and variable costs for sample libraries as Andrew shared. So you might think-- if you aren't aware of accounting, finance or economics principles-- that software licenses sold at 80% off don't lose money, and it's complex to understand, so it's probably easier to understand the concept of getting to a break even point and selling that low is going to require a massive amount of licenses to break even, and that amount of sales may be unrealistic for the product. In any event, it's not as simple as cutting the cost of every product by 80% will result in enough sales revenue to equal the revenue that would have been made with a smaller number of sales at a much higher price. Suffice to say that it can be more difficult to understand and less tangible than a case of theft of physical goods, but a loss occurs, nonetheless. While some who purchase at the extreme discount may never have purchased at regular price or during a typical sale, it likely still will not compensate for the licensing/royalty fees incurred and the fixed costs of supporting those customers make the losses even greater. Others who used the misappropriated discount code would have made a purchase at regular price and instead made a purchase at 80% off; this is the most direct form of loss in this scenario. Think back on a developer who invested $357,000 in developing a library and has only made back $100,000 by the first year. That lost revenue can have a major impact, like resulting in the developer not being able to meet the monthly payroll, or needing to use other funds to meet royalty agreements. And that developer still has to pay support cost for the customers using the misappropriated discount-- unless the developer voids those sales (which some have done). It's not as simple as when someone steals someone else's physical property. It's pretty easy to calculate the cost of someone stealing your car as compared to the cost of intellectual property theft and intellectual property theft can be complex for people to understand, but that doesn't make it less real. The losses of revenue and their negative impacts on peoples' lives due to piracy are just as real. It's just not as easy to understand. And with sample library piracy we're often talking about very small businesses. Impact Soundworks probably only has several employees -- if even that. Some of the smaller sample library developers are 1 -3 employees and everyone else they use are independent contractors. Even the largest sample developers aren't big companies, they are still small businesses. Pirating sample libraries has a much greater impact on a small business than pirating of say blockbuster movies from a multi-billion dollar movie studio, because these small sample developers, like ISW, have a much smaller market and they're small businesses not making billions. In fact, some of the smaller ones may worry about paying back their investment/investors when they rent out a studio to record a sample library. They could be mortgaging their homes and having everything they own riding on a sample library's success.

I asked the AI a follow up question, how many arrests for software piracy are made per year. Here's the response: Estimates of the number of people arrested for software piracy each year range from 18,000 to 35,000. Piracy is a federal crime and can land you in prison for a year or longer. Here are some other statistics about piracy: 37% of software running in the world are unlicensed 2 out of every 5 copies of software running in the world are unpaid 17 million stream-rippers in the United States in 2018 16.5 million illegal book downloaders in the United States 3.2 billion visits to software piracy sites per quarter worldwide in 2021 126.7 billion viewings worth of US-produced TV episodes are pirated every year 70,000 jobs a year are lost in the United States due to music piracy Malware attacks due to unlicensed software packages can cost up to $359 billion annually

This is not just a little wrong, but fantastically wrong. There has been a great deal of research as well as arrests and lawsuits. I'm going to be a bit lazy in sharing and just use Google's AI result (of course, some of this is very elementary, so feel free to have a laugh) : 37% of software worldwide is unlicensed. Lost revenue from software piracy by corporate users was $12.2 billion last year. Lost sales due to software piracy amount to over $11 billion annually. Software piracy is a global problem, with China, India, and the United States being the top three offenders. Common types of software piracy include counterfeiting, end-user piracy, internet piracy, hard disk loading, and client-server overuse. Software piracy is illegal and considered a crime. Businesses or individuals who are caught selling pirated software can be fined as high as $250,000 and jailed for up to 5 years. Software piracy can increase the chances that the software will malfunction or fail. Software piracy can also forfeit access to support for the program, such as training, upgrades, customer support, and bug fixes. Software piracy can also increase the risk of infecting your PC with malware, viruses, or adware.

If it's a big YouTuber, you can be fairly confident that they are using an NFR sample library the developer gave them for free. I've even arranged some of those relationships and I have recommended that developers even give NFRs to smaller influencers, if they reach the right audience. Developers/companies look at the cost of giving a YouTuber / influencer free product (and often sales commissions AKA affiliate marketing; the biggest YouTubers commonly want money up front to do a "review " or tutorial). YouTubers with a really big audience expect money upfront to do a "review" / tutorial and the amount they charge is commonly correlated to the size of their audience. Consider that developers/companies are comparing the amount of reach and influence an influencer has over their audience to the cost of reaching those people with the same level of awareness and influence/credibility using other methods, like their own sponsored content, advertising, etc. You can very accurately say that influencers are in a business of building credibility with their audience and then monetizing that credibility to sell to companies by doing things like product walkthoughs and what they call reviews (SPOILER: it's as unbiased as asking a salesperson at a car dealership to give an unbiased review of a car they sell). Of course, there are also a lot of people on YouTube who use pirated software and sample libraries in their videos, but if you're only looking at "big Youtubers," they're almost certainly going to be using an NFR library a developer gave them directly.

The foundations of the opinions expressed in some of the posts are gut feelings based on assumptions, and to be candid, it's simply not informed by a knowledge of the known facts about piracy -- and there's a lot -- gathered from research as well as from arrests and lawsuits, like the lawsuit I cited. These facts tell us about the reality that those who engage in using pirated software and they don't simply fit common stereotypes of those who use pirated software that some are expressing in their posts. People who use pirated software are not merely poor people, young people or simply from certain low income areas. I cited the example of major composers engaged in using pirated libraries and violating license agreements to convey that. These are affluent individuals who can easily afford to purchase what they use but instead chose piracy. That example is counter to the gut feeling use of stereotypes expressed about who uses pirated software and it's important to understand that fact to have any kind of meaningful conversation about piracy. Yes, there are many people that use pirated software who are poor, but it's false, and counter to well known facts / information to assert that piracy is really just confined to those who can't afford software. In fact, it's wildly wrong to state or imply that. Like everywhere else, facts SHOULD trump gut feelings and stereotypes. Piracy is not merely something exclusive to poor people as some are asserting and implying. The evidence is incredibly clear on that and the examples I cited earlier of well known composers-- very wealthy individuals-- using pirated sample libraries and intentionally violating license agreements, is a good example that piracy isn't merely something poor people do that has no correlation to the revenue of the companies whose products are pirated. Anyhow, I'm not under the false impression that I'm going to be able to persuade anyone of the wrongs of piracy through a series of forum posts. I just wanted to make a point about the realities of software piracy and its impacts. Back to our regularly scheduled deals posts...

That statement is plainly objectively false. The term piracy originally applied to high seas theft. I suspect your issue is that this is intellectual property and not physical property, so it's a bit more complex. But it is inherently theft. Here's Websters Dictionary's related definition of "piracy": Definition 1: an act of robbery on the high seas also : an act resembling such robbery 2: robbery on the high seas 3a: the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright b: the illicit accessing of broadcast signals Without getting too academic, yes, because intellectual property theft in the case of software piracy isn't restricted to the original version of something that doesn't make it excluded from being theft. I believe that your real point is that damages are more severe in the case of physical property theft. I don't think it's an apples to apples comparison, and I think it greatly discounts the ethics problems with software piracy, so here is a point I'd make. And to be clear, I'm not some great champion of rampant capitalism at all costs, I am just convey, at a basic level, that piracy has impacts upon revenue, business operations, and employment, as well as touch on the fundamental ethically problematic aspects of it -- as numerous posters have referenced the ethics of pirating. So, yes, likening the magnitude of someone using a pirated copy of a plugin doesn't seem on the same scale as someone stealing your beloved personal possession. However, consider the cases of pro composers using pirated sample libraries and misusing their license resulting in a developer missing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue that would have been used to pay back investors on an orchestral sample library, the developer's employees and then there are the various independent contractors that worked on the library who often have royalty agreements that provide them a cut of sales (musicians, engineers, coders, etc). So while intellectual property theft -- which includes software piracy-- isn't identical to physical property theft, it's still theft and it has negative impacts on peoples' lives.

Okay, I just googled it and there's a thread from back when from VI Control (the link in the OP to the news article no longer works). But this was the case I was talking about, Cinesamples. And long before it went to trial, the sample developer community was discussing it and there was very famous film composers NOT NAMED in the lawsuit that developers claimed had been using pirated sample libraries and violated license agreements. Also, I had written it was more than a decade ago, just guessing from memory. It turns out it was 11 years ago. Not so bad. Hmm... Cakewalk won't allow me to share the link to VI Control. If you're interested in finding it, the title is "Cinesamples Awarded $379,050 in Digital Piracy Case."

I don't recall how the developer found out, I think one of the composer's employees reported it (I could ask the developer who told me; I definitely remember the first person who told me about the situation and lawsuit; but I don't think it's worth bugging him for the trip down memory lane). But it was a well known developer and it eventually was reported by Sound on Sound and other industry publications. Still, I don't want to say names. I learned about it from a couple of developers I had consulted to prior to the news coverage. One developer explained to me how it had long been rumored that some major film composers who had staff that completed their compositions. Candidly, until that point, I had no idea that this is the way that some of the most successful composers work (that is, by coming up with a motif and passing it on the employees to flesh out). Candidly, that was far more interesting to me than the piracy issue, and a bit creatively problematic (just my opinion) than their bad ethics with sample libraries. People find all sorts of convoluted ways to justify bad behavior (relating to how people justify piracy), but I always assumed that when I heard a movie soundtrack by a specific composer that the composer actually did the entirety of the work of creating that composition. So, it was during that whole major composer piracy lawsuit that I became aware of how many big name composers workflows really work.

I largely agree, but there are some things that sample developers know that may surprise you. I think it's been more than a decade now, but there was some very high profile composers that were caught using pirated libraries and in one high profile case, that I believe went to court, a composer had his staff illegally sharing his licenses on their computers. The big surprise there was that some well known composers engage in using pirated sample libraries and/or intentionally violate license agreements. Although, no doubt, that doesn't represent the average person using pirated sample libraries or plugins. I've long tried to persuade sample developers that I've known to prioritize the user experience over obsessing about piracy. I'm not a fan of developers who sacrifice a better user experience for their obsession with believing they can make their work uncrackable. I also resent when their obsession with that intentionally makes for a poorer user experience plus adds significant costs for legitimate users. Piracy sucks, but as a legitimate user, I don't feel good about it negatively impacting my experience or resulting in my having to pay for dongles-- something purely at my expense because of a developer's obsession. That's just my opinion. I realize some folks will disagree.