New Interlude Piano by Soitta Soundworks - 30% off

[Loot Audio]

Interlude Piano is a beautiful, evolving piano from Soitta Soundworks. It provides gorgeous, dynamic pianos with creative tone shaping for easy and flexible sound design possibilities. Interlude piano comes with 4 multi-sampled pianos:

• Soft Piano for intimate and emotional verses.
• Felt piano for subtle warmth and impact.
• Electric piano for punch and crisp electric vibes.
• Upright piano for your bread-and-butter piano needs.

https://www.lootaudio.com/category/plugins/Soitta-Soundworks/interlude-piano

 

 

[PavlovsCat]

A college professor of mine once told me that if you care about a business  you thought about buying from but didn't, tell them why you didn't buy from them. As the years went on and I became a business strategist and, now, a business owner, I wanted to do just that. 

First, this piano library sounds very nice. I might have purchased it, if it were available as a KONTAKT library.  Unfortunately, I am through with purchasing  sample libraries housed in a small developer's homemade plugins. It's too much work to install,  learn and maintain another plugin that easily could have been made as a sample library usable for a popular sample format, like KONTAKT. Buying software from a small sample developer -- often a one or two person business, sometimes, a side business -- has proven to be too much effort for the end result. IMO, small sample developers should focus on making a great, well coded sample libraries -- doing that is challenging enough for a small operation. Instead, when devs go down the path of attempting to code their own sample player, they are competition with  well researched, designed, coded and tested apps, like KONTAKT that were developed by teams that include professionals with sampling, programming, testing, user interface design and usability expertise. Expecting a single small developer with one to three employees to have all of these skills PLUS handle customer support is rarely realistic. Plus, the reality is, for those who have invested in KONTAKT or another sampler, the idea of having to add a different plugin that requires a new learning curve and maintenance is a burden I don't want to really want to deal with. I literally own hundreds of sample libraries and hundreds of plugins, I don't want more plugins to learn and maintain for every new sample library. 

MNTRA was, for me, the straw that broke the camel's back. The sounds are really nice and when the plugin works, the user experience is poor -- but some of the ideas are really clever. It has all sorts of problems that many users have reported in various forums. For me, that includes a library that doesn't even play at all. The developer contacted me several days after my support ticket to tell me that he was super busy and would get back to me in a week, but never got back to me. I eventually gave up and moved on and would absolutely never purchase from that developer again -- unless he started making sample libraries in a format I used, like for KONTAKT. I'm very empathetic to small developers and have provided many with free business advice in past years, but when you make the leap to paid software, you have an ethical obligation to provide a good product and good support; but many small devs get in over their head. 

Now, I realize that it's inevitable that some people will read this and disagree with me. That's fine. Some of you don't have KONTAKT and aren't invested in another sampler ecosystem. Understood. The developer could have made this for another sampler format, like Decent, UVI or in the open source  SFZ format and then you would not have to install, learn and maintain a new plugin for each sample library. 

Edited August 13, 2022 by Peter Woods

[antler]

41 minutes ago, Peter Woods said:

Instead, when devs go down the path of attempting to code their own sample player, they are competition with  well researched, designed, coded and tested apps, like KONTAKT that were developed by teams that include professionals with sampling, programming, testing, user interface design and usability expertise. Expecting a single small developer with one to three employees to have all of these skills PLUS handle customer support is rarely realistic. Plus, the reality is, for those who have invested in KONTAKT or another sampler, the idea of having to add a different plugin that requires a new learning curve and maintenance is a burden I don't want to really want to deal with. I literally own hundreds of sample libraries and hundreds of plugins, I don't want more plugins to learn and maintain for every new sample library. 

Got to agree with you there. It might sound silly, but it's been a factor in me staying out of sales from Orchestral Tools and Spitfire (who are fairly large teams); I don't want to learn a different plugin. Probably a good thing though - I have enough orchestral libraries and if I can't make music that sounds good from those, the problem lies with my skill rather than lack of libraries.

[Kimi Andersson]

13 hours ago, Peter Woods said:

A college professor of mine once told me that if you care about a business  you thought about buying from but didn't, tell them why you didn't buy from them. As the years went on and I became a business strategist and, now, a business owner, I wanted to do just that. 

First, this piano library sounds very nice. I might have purchased it, if it were available as a KONTAKT library.  Unfortunately, I am through with purchasing  sample libraries housed in a small developer's homemade plugins. It's too much work to install,  learn and maintain another plugin that easily could have been made as a sample library usable for a popular sample format, like KONTAKT. Buying software from a small sample developer -- often a one or two person business, sometimes, a side business -- has proven to be too much effort for the end result. IMO, small sample developers should focus on making a great, well coded sample libraries -- doing that is challenging enough for a small operation. Instead, when devs go down the path of attempting to code their own sample player, they are competition with  well researched, designed, coded and tested apps, like KONTAKT that were developed by teams that include professionals with sampling, programming, testing, user interface design and usability expertise. Expecting a single small developer with one to three employees to have all of these skills PLUS handle customer support is rarely realistic. Plus, the reality is, for those who have invested in KONTAKT or another sampler, the idea of having to add a different plugin that requires a new learning curve and maintenance is a burden I don't want to really want to deal with. I literally own hundreds of sample libraries and hundreds of plugins, I don't want more plugins to learn and maintain for every new sample library. 

MNTRA was, for me, the straw that broke the camel's back. The sounds are really nice and when the plugin works, the user experience is poor -- but some of the ideas are really clever. It has all sorts of problems that many users have reported in various forums. For me, that includes a library that doesn't even play at all. The developer contacted me several days after my support ticket to tell me that he was super busy and would get back to me in a week, but never got back to me. I eventually gave up and moved on and would absolutely never purchase from that developer again -- unless he started making sample libraries in a format I used, like for KONTAKT. I'm very empathetic to small developers and have provided many with free business advice in past years, but when you make the leap to paid software, you have an ethical obligation to provide a good product and good support; but many small devs get in over their head. 

Now, I realize that it's inevitable that some people will read this and disagree with me. That's fine. Some of you don't have KONTAKT and aren't invested in another sampler ecosystem. Understood. The developer could have made this for another sampler format, like Decent, UVI or in the open source  SFZ format and then you would not have to install, learn and maintain a new plugin for each sample library. 

Hi!

Developer here, 

I wanted to thank you for the feedback. I'll port the library over to other mediums in due time. I completely understand your frustrations with having to manage multiple libraries and players just to get to the sounds you've purchased. For future projects, I'll make sure to include a version for commercial players as well as a VST and AU version for those who just want a standalone experience.

Cheers!

[PavlovsCat]

4 hours ago, Kimi Andersson said:

Hi!

Developer here, 

I wanted to thank you for the feedback. I'll port the library over to other mediums in due time. I completely understand your frustrations with having to manage multiple libraries and players just to get to the sounds you've purchased. For future projects, I'll make sure to include a version for commercial players as well as a VST and AU version for those who just want a standalone experience.

Cheers!

Thanks, that's great! I'll go out of my way to consider your libraries for purchase. Like I wrote, I really do like the sound of the demos. Also, I'm a former Fortune 500 marketing director and consultant (I founded a business years ago) and have consulted to more than two dozen sample and plugin developers, so there was definitely some experienced insights in my post.  I would strongly recommend you start with KONTAKT,  as it has the largest user base of consumers who spend on sample libraries by leaps and bounds.  I don't think the markets for other formats comes anywhere close. 

I wish you great success in your business.  Thanks for listening.