PavlovsCat

That's a worthy add to the Hall of Shame. That's exactly why I think we should keep it going (but in the other thread, if you're game to post it there).

Exactly. Influencer videos don't mean much to me -- and don't get me wrong, with my marketing hat on, I've done lots of planning and worked with Influencers on behalf of brands. But if we're going to be really candid, it's called influencer marketing for a good reason and its really just the promotional piece of marketing. Influencers are primarily just independent sales contractors. I'm familiar with the White Noise Studio guy. He's regularly taking compensation from the developers (based on his own disclosures and the brands then using his videos at their websites) whose products he "reviews" and his videos are often little more than hype videos for developers. It's the exact reason I love the de-infuencer trend and our forum members who share their honest opinions without similar bias, any kind of compensation (e.g., NFRs, cash, sales commissions...) or letting a developer have editing rights over the content-- and I can tell you that many developers aren't good with Influencers saying anything negatively critical about their products (I've heard that from Influencers directly) and do their best to push them to edit out any serious criticisms (they'll let them keep minor criticisms in to make a "review" appear more credible, but if an influencer brings up serious shortcomings, there are good odds a developer will object and I know of developers who've done that; the majority of sample and plugin buyers are unaware of this stuff, but those in the industry largely have an awareness of practices and the devs that are difficult to work with and don't handle criticism well, those who aren't very concerned with fixing product issues, after a while enough people share stories and developers earn or get labeled with reputations). This is also another great thing about this forum being very user centric as opposed to developer marketing centric and primarily focused on generating ad revenue. The ones that derive their revenue from developers can foster very developer-centric cultures and environments that discourage negative criticism of a paying developer. Bandlab forum policies have done a great job of ensuring a very user-centric community.

I created another thread, because I thought the idea of people adding more terrible cover songs is pretty amusing. I added a bunch more to the thread and if it takes off, I'm sure there's many more to add in the future.

I just put her in the Covers Hall of Shame thread I created for her amazingly terrible cover of "Lean on Me."

I agree completely with demoing plugins. I basically start with checking out video walkthoughs and then consider if anyone I know -- including folks here-- uses it and their opinion. If things make it past that step, I'll demo it. In the past, I often was buying stuff without demoing it. But after buying enough plugins that I found didn't meet my expectations, I started doing product trials before pulling the trigger and now it's pretty much a standard part of my decision process. I own the RX9 suite and De-Verb and am hoping someone does a direct comparison with the Waves stuff. I mostly avoid buying Waves plugins, but the Clarity plugin has looked especially interesting to me. I'm hoping that @Bapu, who owns all of the above (heck, he seems to own everything), will post his takeaway after comparing the Izotope and Waves plugins as he mentioned earlier in the thread he might do.

Lean on Me, Tammy Faye Baker Reelin' In the Years, Donny and Marie Lucy in the Sky, William Shatner Smells Like Teen Spirit, K-Pop Edition (to be fair, the purpose of this was to be terrible and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams) Gangsta's Paradise (same folks as above) American Pie, Madonna Paradise City, Pat Boone Stairway to Heaven, Pat Boone Panama, Pat Boone Smoke on the Water, Pat Boone Enter Sandman, Pat Boone I Can't Get No Satisfaction, Britney Spears Add your own nominations.

Fair enough point. Done. Newly revised title installed! I changed it to something that won't be misinterpreted. You know that I love your cover band Fizzy Pickle and I think I've liked just about every one of your band's covers on SoundCloud. Really superb work. I urge people to check it out, it is seriously good. I'll probably create another thread for the Covers Hall of Shame, because I find some covers, like the Donny and Marie and Lawrence Welk ones so bad that they're funny and I bet others have more to share.

My next nomination to the Cover Song Hall of Shame:

@Old Joad That's pretty funny. I'm going to retitle this thread to: "Cover Songs Hall of Shame -- The Worst Covers of All Time of All Time." I think these terrible covers are actually pretty amusing.

I think the brand image damage InMusic has created is far worse than just reflecting the impact of deep discounting -- although that is certainly one aspect of their past strategy. They've established a reputation for neglecting the software brands they've purchased and for making very buggy updates without doing fixes for extended periods of time. Considering that they've done this with multiple brands (e.g, AIR and BFD), I think the master brand (InMusic) has become tainted by this history to the point when a software brand has been acquired by them, some consumers are going to be suspicious of them --me included. Now, I don't think that negative brand image necessarily extends to hardware, but it does encompass software.

Funny enough -- or maybe not -- but Pat Boone and his soulless style is what first came into my mind when I heard that awful, awful, awful Donny and Marie cover version of "Reelin' In the Years." Maybe I should have titled this thread, "Covers Hall of Shame" and invited people to post the worst covers they've ever heard (hopefully no one would post any of the recent covers I've done of The Beatles, Zeppelin, Radiohead, etc.). That would actually-- potentially-- make for a pretty entertaining thread.

Fortunately, I haven't had any major problems with any of those three installers and I have a lot of each brand's products. I like Native Instruments, Izotope and Plugin Alliance's stuff a lot, so I'm very interested in seeing how all of this works out and if it results in even better deals on for customers of all three brands. I can't imagine getting much better deals on Plugin Alliance plugins, or on NI KOMPLETE, but I could imagine better deals on Izotope bundles. I haven't updated to the latest versions of Izotope's plugins and hopefully better deals are ahead this Black Friday.

To be fair, I was only being silly. But the Deals forum is non stop tangents too and I actually enjoy it and am a repeat offender.

I have a Wuzik story. I've experienced only two developers who never once responded to customer support requests in my more than 20 years of purchasing sample libraries and plugins (so I suppose those odds aren't terrible): Wuzik and Fluffy Audio. I picked up Wuzik's flagship synth really cheap (this was several years ago), but I couldn't get it to work, so I sent a support request. But never received a response. I was,of course, disappointed, however, over time I read so many negative things about the dev's plugins that I didn't try again or even have a desire to install it and ended up deleting the files and moving on, never bothering with Wuzik again. Flash forward to early this year and the developer of Wuzik sends me a Facebook friend request. I'm guessing it's because I'm connected to a number of sample and plugin developers personal accounts on Facebook that I've given marketing and branding advice to over the years and maybe he saw a post of mine somewhere, but we've never once interacted online or anywhere else, so it's a bit odd and considering my experience as a Wuzik customer, I thought it was quite a strange turn of events (a developer who never responded to my customer support request years ago sends me a personal friend request). He might be a very nice person, and I mean nothing personal -- it was very friendly of him to send a friend request -- it's just that odd.

Seriously, I truly have a good deal respect for you from this forum, because you will post an unpopular AF opinion or post a really brutal take on a library or plugin that disappointed you. To add my own unpopular opinion, back in the day, everyone seemed to love the Yamaha DX-7 and I really didn't care for it (yes, there are sounds here and there on it that I like, but overall, compared to other synths of the day, it really didn't do much for me). I even ended up buying a rack mount version of the DX-7, which I think is still in my basement in a box. I bought it on a deal, primarily because so many keyboardists I knew and respected told me how great it was. But after having it for a while, I still didn't find anything I loved about it. But I do like Jupiters and Junos and a bunch of different Rolands, Korgs, Moogs and other vintage hardware synths.

Interesting thread. Thanks for sharing this info, everyone. Also, man do we buy a lot of stuff (me included).

Off topic. We haven't discussed that video for probably a dozen posts! We switched to drummers, then Coltrane. We're going to discuss jazz fusion next. Stay with it, man. I kid, I kid. I'd love to get Donald Fagan's thoughts on the Donny and Marie cover.

Yep, I bought a bunch of the AIR plugins years ago for cheap and -- like many any other users -- I had to do a Windows rollback to get my computer working again after installing one of them. I went to KVR and found that there was a thread from several months earlier and AIR's tech support acknowledged that they knew about the problem but hadn't fixed it. It was several months after that when the problem was finally fixed, but it is an experience that me and others should not soon forget. I own BFD Eco but never took the cheap offer to upgrade to BFD 3 for $49 USD both because of my experience with AIR and what I've read in the forums about people having years of problems with BFD3. Consequently, I don't look at Moog Music being purchased by InMusic as a good thing. It's also a good example of why I believe it's just as important, if not more important, for people to share their bad experiences with developers and their products as well their good experiences. It can be really helpful to others. Only sharing our positive experiences is the easy path. No developers or fanboys get upset at you for sharing your positive experiences. Unfortunately, that keeps most people from sharing negative experiences. But I think the Cakewalk forum is a pretty good environment to do that. I suppose you could summarize that by saying that friends don't let friends buy InMusic software without sharing their own experiences. Friends, proceed with caution when you find out that InMusic owns the bargain priced software you are considering. It might not be as great as a bargain as it may first appear to be.

Thanks for sharing that opinion. I know, like me that you really like Ben's libraries, so calling it a favorite is high praise and gets my attention. I have contemplated buying Pathfinder Cello in past sales and will probably pick it up next time it goes on sale. I've really enjoyed all of Ben's libraries I've bought to date (which, I'm not sure offhand, but is probably around 5 libraries).

Agreed. I own several Rigid Audio libraries and have yet to hear one that I would pay $40USD for. I'm not saying they're bad; I think they make okay libraries, and it's completely subjective-- some people may love them -- but I just find them okay, a 6.5 out of 10, at best. I'll only buy them if they're dirt cheap. I find developers like Beautiful Void Audio, Karanyi and some others have synth patch libraries I find far superior to the Rigid stuff, but even then, it's a hard sell for me to drop 40 bucks or more on a synth patch library. The max I'd pay for a Rigid Audio library is probably 7 bucks. There's also Rigid Audio's long history of ridiculously inflated list prices that I would consider in the realm of deceptive practices to be really candid. So does a Rigid Audio list price really mean anything-- as you've pointed out, it really doesn't. NI's pricing for developers for the KONTAKT PLAYER has came down significantly in recent years (I forgot when NI lowered the pricing, but they significantly lowered it), so developers can now make a small investment to have libraries set up for the Player and the per license fee is very cheap.

I got into drumming because my siblings were forming a band and needed a drummer (piano was my instrument, but both of my sisters played piano and organ and were older and far more advanced players, so I became the drummer). But it was years later, at around age 7, when I heard The Who that I felt an unstoppable desire to be a rock and roll drummer.

I love Coltrane. He and Davis made some of my favorite jazz music of all time and my kids grew up on that stuff and love it too. Great taste! I'd like to think, if I didn't have a physical injury that stopped me from playing, I'd likely be playing jazz these days.

Oops. I didn't realize that. I'll correct my post. I don't own those two, but have been interested in them. What do you think of them?

Bill Bruford is one of my favorite rock drummers. I didn't know Alan White of Oasis name, but of course, I know their music. I was thrown that his name was Alan White, as there was already a pretty famous Alan White drummer out of the UK (Yes, John Lennon, etc; Yes is also among my favorite bands). I like both of those tunes you shared. Very cool and I wasn't familiar with either band, so I need to explore more! Thanks. I love learning about cool bands (new to me, in this case).

Porcaro's grooves were awesome. I went to a drum clinic for one of my childhood favorite drummers, Billy Cobham back in the 80s, and he was absolutely amazing. I saw Cobham and Vinnie Coliaiuta as the kind of drummer I wanted to be. But Cobham was incredibly egotistical and went on a several minute rant insulting Porcaro's drumming as untalented, uncreative and fluff drumming. But I loved Porcaro's drumming too. His feel on so many songs was great. His shuffles were killer. But if I could only pick one drummer, it would be Omar Hawkim. No matter what genre of music, he's an amazingly gifted drummer with great feel. Back in the day, drummers would always compare me to Peart, probably because I liked doing fast, precise fills, but while I love Rush, Peart was never one of my favorites. I was more inspired by guys like Coliluita and Cobham. So, now I'm transitioning to rock drummers, are you with me? If so, state some favorites!