Stuff you shouldn't have bought

[PavlovsCat]

8Dio string libraries. The scripting is really disappointing, and I should have known that from owning Intimate Strings. Troel's is great at hyping his products and making demos, but very little effort goes into making them truly usable. With the exception of libraries that don't require much in the way of scripting, like pianos or percussion, I'm done with 8Dio libraries, specifically their string libraries, as someone in this group recently PMed me to say after I mentioned 8Dio. On the other side, I bought a viola library from Fluffy Audio (Trio Broz) that sounds really nice and is very well scripted and very playable. Oh well, lesson learned. Twenty years ago we didn't expect scripting, but today, there's a vast difference between a well scripted string or guitar library and one that is little more than a giant collection of individual articulations. I'm not looking to program performances, I enjoy playing. 8Dio string libraries are terrible in this respect.  If they offered refunds, I would want a refund on every string library of theirs I own and replace them with libraries I've learned are really well scripted and enjoyable to play. 

Edited November 29, 2021 by PavlovsCat

[Magic Russ]

1 hour ago, Amicus717 said:

 

3) 98.5% of the phrase-based libraries I've ever purchased. I don't say 100% because I'm ever the optimist and still have hope that one of them might come in useful at some point down the road.

I've actually had some good success with the animator in Session Horns, but it has taken effort and I don't know how well that counts.  Otherwise, I can't say that I have used any.

[Vernon Barnes]

43 minutes ago, telecode 101 said:

Pigments. I bought it without thinking much at the time as i got suckered in with the intro promo price. but I never use it.

It is a very good synth, one that covers most bases, but I I have not really got into programming it properly so I  am not getting the full value. There are plenty of decent presets though. 

[Vernon Barnes]

1 hour ago, Amicus717 said:

3) 98.5% of the phrase-based libraries I've ever purchased. I don't say 100% because I'm ever the optimist and still have hope that one of them might come in useful at some point down the road.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

THiS!

[Byron Dickens]

53 minutes ago, Carl Ewing said:

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.  

And there's nothing wrong with that. I don't want to sound like I'm looking down my nose at it or anything. There's certainly an art to being able to do that and do it well. It just doesn't work for me.

Hell, I love Blues and probably 97.6% of it is trying to rework the same material into something new.

[paulo]

2 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

What often happens on some forums is people will PM you if you want to sell certain items because you don't use them. Somehow they think I will give it away.   It annoys me to no end because you have something they think you want to sell it.  It ticks me off to no end.

 One person PM's me thinking I would sell my Cubase license for $85. 

I've had people do this with my vehicle and certain instruments.   I want to go into a tirade like do you see a f'ing for sale sign on it? Now I tell them they can't afford it.

When did people think because you have something you would be interested in selling it?  That's why there are garage sales, Craiglist. ect.  F'off and search places that sell things.

Reminds me of when I changed my car last time.....I usually buy and sell privately, but that was proving easier said that done on this occasion, so when I saw exactly the car I had been looking for at a local main dealer I moved quickly so as not to miss out. The dealer gave me a trade-in figure, but wasn't bothered if he had my car or not, so the deal was struck at one value with trade in and one for straight purchase. As there were a few days before I could collect the new one I put out an honest ad saying what I had been offered as trade in, but that the first person who could beat that by the end of the week could have it. One  guy called me and offered 50% less than what the trade in figure was. I asked him what made him think I would take far less than I was already going to get. He said that he didn't think it worth that much, so I asked him why he called then ? He had no answer for that, so I hung up. Over the next day or so, he called me many times, but I didn't answer because I recognised the number, so he left me 5 or 6 messages with each one upping his offer, but all were still less than the trade-in value. 

Sometimes it concerns me that these types of people walk among us....

[Byron Dickens]

3 minutes ago, paulo said:

Sometimes it concerns me that these types of people walk among us....

It concerns me more that they reproduce.

[PavlovsCat]

OPTIONAL -- TANGENT ON MY PAST CONSULTING TO DEVELOPERS AND GIVING MY OPINIONS ON LIBRARIES AND MY THOUGHTS ON INFLUENCERS WHO DO REVIEWS

The ability to express my opinion without a dev I've consulted to, like I did above, is a bit liberating. So I'm going to share a story to give some insights, because I think back in my eDrummist days, when I'd give the disclosure they I had done consulting to certain devs, a lot of times, someone would claim I was shilling or biased by monetary compensation. And while I think it's best for people to be skeptical in that regard, I want to tell the inside story. 

In the case of Troel's, many years ago, in his Tonehammer days, I spent maybe an hour on the phone giving Troel's marketing and branding advice.  I've done the same for a bunch of devs -- easily a couple of dozen. Basically, small devs I really liked and I knew couldn't afford me to do serious ongoing consulting, so I just loved what they did and wanted to help.  But I knew if I accepted free product a dev would be very ticked off at me if I criticized his libraries publicly -- it would burn a bridge.  In a couple of cases, even though I didn't accept free product or payment, a couple of developers got upset with me when I shared my opinion on guitar libraries. I had given advice to four different guitar sample library developers, but I shared my opinion here that I thought one was making the most advanced and realistic guitar sample libraries that exist. Man, did I get flack for it. Publicly and privately. It actually was the end of me helping small devs for free. 

But in the end, I've always felt that ethically, I still want to disclose a relationship -- but I didn't want to spell out that I just helped devs for free and potentially have other small devs coming to me  thinking I had more time to do free consulting (and frankly, this was largely before I had my second child, so I stopped doing it after my daughter was born; one small dev I refused money and product from gave me a free library as a gift for my daughter's birth, and I didn't want to be rude and reject that).  But I realize that my disclosure makes it look like I'm making money off of libraries I'm giving my opinion on or getting them free and want to keep doing so -- a lot like the way faux reviewers, influencers who give review in exchange for free product and then they use affiliate marketing to sell the product, which by a more honest name is shilling, and I find it ethically problematic. Yes, someone who has led affiliate marketing for a major brand finds that kind of affiliate marketing dishonest/deceptive/unethical. 

Think about it.  When you see a review by a YouTuber claiming to give unbiased reviews, they are very often registered sellers of the products they're reviewing. Yes, affiliate marketing is not really the true definition of marketing, it's really affiliate selling. Affiliate marketers are salespeople. Once more, these reviewers are  literally SELLERS of the products they're giving you what they always say are "unbiased reviews." Big brands give influencers big money, but even in the world of samples and plugins, there's opportunities for influencers. 

Let the buyer beware. FTR, I'll share this publicly for the first time, but I would often tell developers to give free product to people on KVR I knew to be poor, from developing nations. I found one developer who was already doing this. I won't say who that developer is, but he's one of my favs. So yeah, when I disclose that I've helped a developer, I'm okay with people suspecting I'm a shill -- it's a reasonable thing to assume and I think you're better off being suspicious of anyone with a relationship with a developer or someone getting free product and doing affiliate links claiming to be doing reviews. I've led affiliate marketing at a major brand and have also used it, but another name, more accurate, is that it is affiliate salespeople. So next time you're looking at a review from an influencer, take a look and consider that if that influencer has affiliate links for that product s/he is reviewing, s/he is not just a reviewer of the product, but also a salesperson for that product. If you think that's unbiased, I would suggest you look up the definition of unbiased. 

Edited November 29, 2021 by PavlovsCat

[paulo]

3 minutes ago, bdickens said:

It concerns me more that they reproduce.

That too.

[dubdisciple]

1 hour ago, telecode 101 said:

Pigments. I bought it without thinking much at the time as i got suckered in with the intro promo price. but I never use it.

Took me awhile to start using it, but once I started , it has become a workhorse. It does so many things well. It's not as intuitive as Serum but imho does anything Serum can do and things serum can't.

[dubdisciple]

For me it is the captain plugins. I bit at $39 but so far I find it horribly unintuitive and clunky compared to scaler

[PavlovsCat]

Just now, dubdisciple said:

For me it is the captain plugins. I bit at $39 but so far I find it horribly unintuitive and clunky compared to scaler

I have seen so many people who bought Scaler posting good things. I don't even recall seeing a single negative post about it. I took about the equivalent of one year of music theory lessons and that was during a day when the only tablets anyone knew of were either Tylenol or the ones Moses used. Is Scaler easy to learn? I admit, I am not eager to spend a bunch of time learning a new system. But if it really helps people creatively, as I'm reading in reviews, maybe I should be picking it up. 

[craigb]

I was recently painfully reminded of my Waves purchases from 20 years ago...  I cleaned out my storage unit early this month (first time in 30 years I didn't have at least one!) and what do I find?  My Waves Gold box and an unopened Waves Diamond box!  Even worse, at the time, I bought one of these:

When I was forced to sell everything back in 2010, this was put up on eBay (still NEW and never even opened!) hoping for an auction frenzy.  So I made the starting bid $300.  I got ONE bid...  *Ouch!*

Not sure what I can do about that new and still shrink-wrapped Waves Diamond box...  I doubt any of it is usable or transferable...  ?

That was over $4,000 well wasted! ?

[kevin H]

I used to take advantage of loop sales but got rid of most of them because I keep running out of drive space.  
 

i saw this deal advertised in another thread where you can get 1.4TB of sounds for $23.  I felt a cold shiver down my back at the thought hahha.

https://www.freetousesounds.com/shop/
 

[telecode 101]

46 minutes ago, craigb said:

That was over $4,000 well wasted! ?

Damn. Waves got you good. I got bunt by Roland once for $350 or so.

It looked like a good idea at the time.   I was gonna make my rock and roll masterpiece on a netbook. What a idiot i was. ??

Edited November 29, 2021 by telecode 101

[Marc Cormier]

22 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

I have seen so many people who bought Scaler posting good things. I don't even recall seeing a single negative post about it. I took about the equivalent of one year of music theory lessons and that was during a day when the only tablets anyone knew of were either Tylenol or the ones Moses used. Is Scaler easy to learn? I admit, I am not eager to spend a bunch of time learning a new system. But if it really helps people creatively, as I'm reading in reviews, maybe I should be picking it up. 

It's not easy to learn, at least in my case.  There are SO many things Scalar does, from just one view.  Funny thing is, I am stumbling my way into great output using the song and scale style suggestions, of which there are many!  I really love this thing.  The new guitar chord layout is excellent at making connections between notes on the keyboard.  If there was a freeform melody generator in this thing, I would probably start uninstalling Harvest, Orb, etc.  The only generator type plugin I haven't tried is Motif from Rast sound.  On sale today and seriously considering it, but I should probably just stop now and dig back into Scaler.  It not only helps in the creative process, but for someone like me that isn't a serious keyboard player, it will actually teach you a ton.

[artturner]

1 hour ago, dubdisciple said:

For me it is the captain plugins. I bit at $39 but so far I find it horribly unintuitive and clunky compared to scaler

but...but....but...Captain Plugins EPIC is coming!

(I can mock it because it sucked me in already...just put epic or cinematic or pro after any product and I must have it.) ?

[PavlovsCat]

27 minutes ago, Marc Cormier said:

It's not easy to learn, at least in my case.  There are SO many things Scalar does, from just one view.  Funny thing is, I am stumbling my way into great output using the song and scale style suggestions, of which there are many!  I really love this thing.  The new guitar chord layout is excellent at making connections between notes on the keyboard.  If there was a freeform melody generator in this thing, I would probably start uninstalling Harvest, Orb, etc.  The only generator type plugin I haven't tried is Motif from Rast sound.  On sale today and seriously considering it, but I should probably just stop now and dig back into Scaler.  It not only helps in the creative process, but for someone like me that isn't a serious keyboard player, it will actually teach you a ton.

Plugin Botique has all these great deep discount sales on everything but their product, Scaler. The result is, I never feel an urgency to pick it up and the learning curve is additionally causing me hesitation. I need to watch a video on it first. It's interesting how many people here are IT pros too, so I realize it's a very computer savvy group. I'm not an IT pro, but my expertise is in digital marketing, so I'm very tech savvy, but not at the level of people who code and program. 

[Fleer]

Wonderful world of WUP. 

[kevin H]

20 minutes ago, artturner said:

but...but....but...Captain Plugins EPIC is coming!

(I can mock it because it sucked me in already...just put epic or cinematic or pro after any product and I must have it.) ?

Sounds powered by phaseplant….so double epic