Carl Ewing

Should be $20,000 by next Christmas. Expect some "80% off the entire bundle!" when they have this enormous overpriced ecosystem while completing with something like Native Instruments Komplete.

You calm it down with a bit of purging. Always have the purging. It makes room for more stuff! Stuff those hard drives. Stuff them good. Nothing sadder than a spinning disk platter with empty space. This is what your system should look like after Black Friday:

Anyone have good experience using this? I tried uploading a few premasters, and whatever this thing is doing sounds absolutely awful compared to the professionally mastered versions . And it's not subtle, no matter which setting I put it on it just sounds even worse than an Ozone preset. The algo doesn't seem to understand the music it's listening to at all. Free indeed.

Ummm - is it just me, or do those strings sound terrible? Like circa 2007 sample library terrible? Yikes.

This site seems sketchy af. Anyone have experience with them? The downloader also looks proprietary - as in, the license they give you cannot be used with copy from the developer. I'm skeptical.

Oh - it expired!? Sorry. Thought it was still going 'cause the sale price was still up. ^Ignore. Seems code still valid.

If you buy directly from the TheNatan store, you can use this code: "SANJAYC21" and get 6 of their plugins (including VYBZ and Tape Piano II) for $30. https://www.thenatan.store/shop/ Just add the $39.99 bundle and use code above. It came from this video by that Sanjay C reviewer on Youtube (in the description):

There are two version for each library - one DI where you can use your own amps / cabs, and the other with Amp baked in, but not the cabinet. Cabinets / effects can be added / customized in the instrument. It's phrase recordings - but it's very customizable. If you look at this part of the video - that whole section at the bottom (just above the keys) is totally customizable. You can change the whole rhythm, time signature, notes, chords - adding rests, extending parts, up / down strokes, pulling different clips for parts of the phrase, or adding clips that aren't actually in the phrase. And they try to cover as many chord variations as possible (minor / major, 5th, 7th, etc.) It's pretty awesome. There are 7 libraries, covering a bunch of genres (rock, funk, blues, ambient, etc.) Edit: actually the video below is a better example of the editor (around 17:40 mark):

Tried Riffendium? You can customize every note and beat of each phrase, as it treats phrases more like editable step sequencer like you'd see in a synth. It's got limitations, but it's the most customizable phrase based guitar libraries I've used.

Slowly completing my Audio Things collection for dirt cheap! Just need Wires and Fog now. Will wait for next promo!

I got these with MPS 3 way back, so should definitely be in MPS 4. I think what's new is NeoVerb.

Ronroco is great - instrument (5 mic positions with mixer, and 4000 samples with round robin) and loops, and although a bit old (2014), it's usually on lists of best free Kontakt libraries. Was originally through Samplephonics, but now on the Noiiz site as free download: https://www.noiiz.com/sounds/free_packs/703 What is sounds like:

This is almost an instant buy - but it's missing Nordisk Contrabass. But very cool developer imo. Some cool stuff in this bundle imo.

If these libraries could be resold, I would agree! But I have no warm fuzzy feeling looking at the graveyard of sample libraries I own, that I over paid for and are now obsolete. Haha. (sad laughter)

I don't get it - for the cost of that thing, you could have like 2 .5 years of Composer Cloud, no? (*based on subscription sale) I don't see the appeal - even looking at the update of $300, for sure in that 2.5 years they are going to want another paid update. So you buy one item, and then keep paying for updates, for one product - whereas you could have every product they make for $20 / month for years.

I feel that exclusion list is just trolling at this point. They just want to keep reminding us that we can't have the things we want.

All good. I'm an idiot. It was actually telling me how much free space I had, not how big the library was. Haha. Apparently I can't read.

Anyone know why download is saying 219GB download? Site says 70GB for Total Bundle (7 libraries), but Pulse Downloader is telling me 219GB. Holy cow. Maybe they threw some Orchestral Tools libraries in for free.

Yes! Every time they do a survey I say "REVERB!" for every answer. And I think they are underrated for lofi stuff. Those Unfiltered Audio plugins are incredible, and beat out a lot of companies that specialize in that stuff.

I work in genres where sampling and loops are part of the art. I wouldn't use loops on a violin concerto - but will absolutely use them in rap. Because messing with loops / samples to create totally new ideas - especially smashing genres and production styles together - is fun as hell. But if I need to write a concerto, I can do that too.

This is why I like Plugin Alliance subscription. A whole year to try stuff out, and that huge voucher that covers the cost of the subscription - I wish more companies did this.

Totally. After cleaning everything up, I kinda forgot, and the first project I worked on I was scrolling through sounds and thinking "holy shit, I love all these sounds. What library is this??" Haha. So. Much. Time. Saved. Although the first time purging everything took about a week (purged stuff from Kontakt library patches and synth presets too), but workflow improved like 500%.

I always go through these big libraries and delete everything I don't want, and put what's left into an organized-by-genre sample library database. Took about 1.5 hours, but in the end, I only have the stuff I like, trashed the rest, and got it down to 3GB from 22GB And now I know the only thing going on the drive is stuff I can use...which I know will save me time down the road. Don't even want to know how many days I've spent scrolling through sample libraries over the last 20 years (I don't know how anyone could buy that Samples From Mars everything pack - that seems like a total nightmare) - finally decided to always filter through new purchases right away, and get rid of the crap.

Tried the Retro Fi demo. It's a HUGE miss imo. Much better alternatives in Sketch Cassette or RC-20. And do they have an AI program spitting out all these artist / producer testimonial quotes? It's sad how many of these artist will just shill literally anything on the market, even if they're giving terrible advice...likely influencing people with not a lot of money, who likely trust some of these names. It's shameful. Watch that Focus video of him trying to use it. He knows it's awful, and 100% he tossed in the trash can once cameras were off. This is straight out of a Chappelle Show skit: "These were clean drums that I programmed myself." Other guy is like "Maybe you could hire a guy for that?"

Man - the vocals in that Shymer Youtube demo are super pitchy. Might be a decent sounding library with a week of Melodyne work.