​8Dio Steinway Grand Piano for KONTAKT (Reg $249), Hybrid Rhythms (Reg $148) & Ambient Guitar (Reg $20) ALL FREE!!! ?

[Fleer]

Yeah, they used to give you serials including your account name for full Kontakt libraries. 

[Yan Filiatrault]

I bought a ton of 8Dio libraries in the past, but after all the 8Dio drama in the VI-Control forum, I didn’t buy another one.

[Brian Walton]

I'm getting the whole your account doesn't exist deal even though I have quite a few emails from them over the years about orders, etc.

 

and while I see this on the website - any emails that look like activation stuff from a long time ago are not invalid.  Put me down for another - they have issues responses.

[Patrick Wichrowski]

2 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

, and I think I'm going to pull the trigger on IK's B-3X. We're only at the end of the first week of November and the deals are killer.  

Pull the trigger on IK B-3X

 

[PavlovsCat]

13 hours ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

I bought a ton of 8Dio libraries in the past, but after all the 8Dio drama in the VI-Control forum, I didn’t buy another one.

I wrote about that in the attached link.

My day job is relevant to understand this. I'm a former Fortune 500 digital marketing exec, who's had a major book deal, an online publication with wide accolades (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton, Inc Magazine, etc.) where I wrote on marketing and business ethics. I have done a good deal of consulting and I've done a minor amount of consulting to around 3 dozen sample and plugin devs over the years. I largely stopped doing that a few years ago and now focus on leading the company I founded. I can tell you where this whole business started. 8Dio pulled its sponsorship of Vi-Control, protesting the site for censoring discussion about the Henson tweet which was pretty significant to the LGBTQ community.  Mike Greene, the owner of VI Control and a sample developer himself, and 8Dio's CEO had a dispute over Greene's censorship and Greene has been angry at 8Dio ever since. Mike's even emailed me, defaming 8Dio's CEO and throwing false praise at me, trying to persuade me that he's right and not share the facts I personally know or anything in their defense. I responded cc'ing 8Dio's CEO, so now I'm also on Mike's enemies list and he's disparaging me on his forum. Consider the timeline,

- 8Dio pulled their sponsorship of VI-Control in Sept 2022, and several weeks later,  Sarah's attack thread popped up. Sarah has since stated that she was upset that 8Dio didn't buy her fan project for their retired library for what she claims was $12,000 USD.

- Ever since that thread, whenever someone starts an 8Dio sales thread, Greene chimes in with angry, off-the-rails rants about 8Dio's deep discounting of their libraries starting a "race to the bottom" in F-bomb dropping tirades, asserting -- with no sense of irony-- that 8Dio are egotistical bullies who can't handle criticism and are litigious using Mario's story from 13 years ago -- before 8Dio existed as the foundation of that assertion. 

- The foundation of Greene's attack that 8Dio can't handle criticism and threatens to sue critics. I can tell you that I've written some savage critiques of 8Dio libraries  (search on this forum) and their CEO has seen them and never once asked me to edit or delete them. We're friends. In her shoes, I probably would have asked me to edit those. Dead serious. She didn't. So my personal experience is that Tawnia, 8Dio's CEO, is the antithesis of Greene's depiction of her (spoiler: she's actually a very kind and sweet person not remotely like Greene's caricature of her and in their PMs and emails, which I've seen, I would describe Greene's behavior as taunting, and at times, clearly in the realm of bullying; he's not the amiable person he presents himself to be in his public forum posts).  

THE MARIO/EVIL DRAGON STORY
13 yrs ago a dev I advised called me in to give Mario some advice. Mario / Evil Dragon was starting out as a KONTAKT scripter and working for a dev I'll refer to as K that did a knock off of ToneHammer's (the company Troels co-founded prior to 8Dio) choir library. K cut and pasted a bunch of ToneHammer's intellectual property (FAQs, legal, disclaimers, etc.) word for word and in the midst of that, Mario did a post comparing K's library to ToneHammer, acting like an unbiased person who had no involvement in making that library stating that he found K's library superior to the ToneHammer library. It was shilling and completely unethical, no question about it and Mario was worried that he could get in trouble for what he did. There was also talk back then that Mario was involved in piracy. I don't know if it was true or not, but it was something people in the industry were saying, that they weren't certain about Mario's ethics. Troels saw what Mario did and told him it was unethical and told him that he could be sued and that he was destroying his reputation in the field for engaging in these practices. Mario was absolutely worried and my advice was that he should apologize to Troels, that he should have never engaged in shilling and needs to hold himself to higher standards, however, the likelihood he could face any legal problems is minuscule due to costs and logistics. Mario lived in Croatia and ToneHammer was based in the US and the legal costs of suing Mario would very likely exceed Mario's net worth. Unfortunately, what Mario did was not to follow my advice and apologize, but instead to blow everything off and 13 years later, recast himself as the victim attacked by a successful business person. If you look at Troels apology in the attack thread, it's sincere. Troels had empathy for Mario. Troels stated the facts correctly about the events from 13 years ago -- the developer who brought me in even sent me his notes, screenshots and correspondence from back then and told me that both Troels and I got the story right (and FTR, I didn't go over that story with Troels prior to him posting; Troels and I hadn't spoken in 13 years at that point). I pointed all of this out in the VI-Control thread and Mario and I had a friendly discussion in the thread about it, but Mike Greene quickly deleting all of those posts and sent me a PM telling me not to get involved. Clearly, my sharing the facts got in the way of Mike's attack narrative. Another ethics problem is that Mario never disclosed that he (and Sarah) work for 8Dio's competitor, Impact Soundworks. IS, and particularly its owner, Andrew Aversa, is pretty aggressive in going against his competitor. Even more, Aversa posted in the thread and didn't disclose that employs Sarah and Mario, which is equally ethically problematic.  The entire thread is an ethics case study -- and not one focused on good ethical practices. 

THE SARAH MANCUSO STORY
Sarah pitched 8Dio to buy her KONTAKT scripts for her fan project for a retired library. They didn't see that the library was commercially viable. They did unretire the library for several months at Sarah's insistence, and it only sold $400 USD gross. Troels gave Sarah $300 of it and sent the library back into retirement. Sarah was insulted and pissed off. Troels offered Sarah could work on upcoming 8Dio libraries, Sarah declined and now works for 8Dio competitor Impact Soundworks with Mario. She didn't disclose that fact in the thread.  In my last PM with Sarah -- which have all been very friendly -- she told me that she no longer considers Mike Greene to be a friend. 

CORY PELAZARRI 
Note that everyone in that thread kept leveraging Cory Pelazarri. Not one of them knew the story of him and Tawnia (8Dio's CEO) having a dispute. Cory never did any review videos for 8Dio. 8Dio actually didn't provide him with the NFR's he wanted. He did a text review years ago in WordPress using a sock puppet account with his same IP address and company name, where the sock puppet account never purchased any 8Dio libraries, but reviewed three libraries, given each one star and trashing the company. If you go to Cory's channel, he states that his friend Peter D was the person who helped inspire him to get back on YouTube. I'm Peter D. I consider myself a friend of Cory and a friend of Tawnia. 

SARAH AND MARIO DISPARAGED 8DIO'S CEO AND CALLED HER AN EVIL BITCH; NEITHER EVER MET HER OR HAD ANY CORRESPONDENCE; THEY BASED THEIR OPINION ON WHAT MIKE GREENE SAID ABOUT HER
When Sarah referred to Tawnia as a phony evil bitch in the attack thread, that completely came form MIke Greene. Sarah never met, had a single correspondence or any interaction with Tawnia, her sole opinion was based on what MIke Greene told her. It's the same for Mario. I know this first hand from Sarah and Mario. 

ETHICS
Ethical forum owners don't use their forums to attack developers -- and if you go to the last or second to last page of the attack thread, Greene harasses and bullies one of the only people making a case that what was going on in the thread was wrong whose post wasn't deleted. Mike deleted my posts and hundreds of other posts of people making similar points or with information about the stories being told, like me.  Ethical people don't hide that they work for a competitor when attacking a company. Mario and Sarah work for Impact Soundworks, an 8Dio competitor that has some not so great history.  But Impact Soundworks' owner is a friend of Mike Greene. Greene, by his own admission, admitted to deleting hundreds of posts in the attack thread. He claimed not one of them was pro-8Dio. That was a lie. Mine defended 8Dio by sharing the story I knew from 13 years ago. Greene deleted my posts and Mario's posts responding to me. He also deleted probably two dozen posts I saw where people were not in agreement with the attack on a developer. In all, Greene or anyone else in the thread never provided any support for their allegations. I actually do have documentation from when Mario came to me 13 years ago that the developer involved sent to me. He told me that what I posted and what Troels posted was accurate. And he's a friend of Mario's. FTR, I get along great with Mario and my conversations with Sarah about this matter were all friendly. 
 

Edited November 8, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

1 hour ago, Patrick Wichrowski said:

Pull the trigger on IK B-3X

 

But I play terribly and have no hope of substantial improvement (due to tendinitis);  my only real audience are my kids. So I do debate every expense on music lately and think I already have way more than enough libraries and plugins. 

[Yan Filiatrault]

26 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

I wrote about that in the attached link.

My day job is relevant to understand this. I'm a former Fortune 500 digital marketing exec, who's had a major book deal, an online publication with wide accolades (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton, Inc, etc.) where I wrote on marketing and business ethics. I have done a good deal of consulting, but did a minor amount of consulting to around 3 dozen sample and plugin devs over the years. I largely stopped doing this a few years ago and focus on leading the company I founded. I can tell you where the whole business started. 8Dio pulled its sponsorship of Vi-Control, protesting the site for censoring discussion about the Henson tweet which was pretty significant to the LGBTQ community.  Mike Greene and 8Dio's CEO had a dispute and Greene has been angry at 8Dio ever since (Mike Greene is also a sample developer who competes with 8Dio). He's even emailed me trying to persuade me to hate them. I responded cc'ing 8Dio's CEO, so now Greene hates me too. and he's not the amiable guy he pretends to be on VI-Control, He is obsessed with this vendetta and he started disparaging me on his site after the email. I've tried to work things out, but Greene is now writing nasty things about me on VI-Control. Consider the timeline,

- 8Dio pulled their sponsorship of VI-Control in Sept 2022, several weeks later,  Sarah's attack thread popped up. Sarah has since stated that she was just really upset that 8Dio didn't buy her fan project for their retired library for what she claims was $12,000 USD.

- Ever since that thread, whenever someone starts an 8Dio sales thread, Greene chimes in to angry, off the rails rants about 8Dio's deep discounting of their libraries starting a "race to the bottom" throws F-bombs at them.  

- The foundation of Greene's attack was that 8Dio can't handle criticism and threatened to sue critics. I can tell you that I've written some savage critiques of 8Dio libraries and their CEO has seen them and never asked me to edit or delete them. We're friends. In her shoes, I probably would have asked me to edit those. Dead serious. 

THE MARIO STORY
But 13 yrs ago a dev I advised called me in to give Mario some advice. Mario / Evil Dragon was starting out as a KONTAKT scripter and working for a dev that did a knock off of ToneHammer's choir library. The  dev had cut and pasted a bunch of ToneHammers intellectual property (FAQs, legal, disclaimers, etc.) word for word and in the midst of that Mario acted as if he had nothing to do with the library and posted a comparison / review on KVR where he praised the library he worked on as superior to ToneHammer's library without disclosing he worked on it; it was shilling. Troels (co-founder of ToneHammer and later, 8Dio) saw what he did and told him it was unethical and he could be sued. Mario went to the developer friend of mine worried he was in trouble. The dev called me. I told Mario to apologize, that technically he could be sued, but as he lived in Croatia and ToneHammer was based in the US, that was very unlikely. Anyhow, 13 years later, Mario is spinning that as being bullied, and that just isn't honest. I pointed this out in the VI-Control thread and Mario and I had a friendly discussion about it, but Mike Greene ended up deleting it all so that he could continue pushing a narrative that 8Dio are bad people. Mario works for 8Dio competitor Impact Soundworks. He didn't disclose that fact in the thread. 

THE SARAH MANCUSO STORY
Sarah pitched 8Dio to buy her KONTAKT scripts for her fan project for a retired library. They didn't see that the library was commercially viable. They did unretire the library for several months at Sarah's insistence, and it only sold $400 USD gross. Troels gave Sarah $300 of it and sent the library back into retirement. Sarah was insulted and pissed off. Troels offered Sarah could work on upcoming 8Dio libraries, Sarah declined and now works for 8Dio competitor Impact Soundworks with Mario. She didn't disclose that fact in the thread.  In my last PM with Sarah -- which have all been very friendly -- she told me that she no longer considers Mike Greene to be a friend. 

CORY PELAZARRI 
Note that everyone in that thread kept leveraging Cory Pelazarri. Not one of them knew the story of him and Tawnia (8Dio's CEO) having a dispute. Cory never did any review videos for 8Dio. 8Dio actually didn't provide him with the NFR's he wanted. He did a text review years ago in WordPress using a sock puppet account with his same IP address and company name, where the sock puppet account never purchased any 8Dio libraries, but reviewed three libraries, given each one star and trashing the company. If you go to Cory's channel, he states that his friend Peter D was the person who helped inspire him to get back on YouTube. I'm Peter D. I consider myself a friend of Cory and a friend of Tawnia. 

SARAH AND MARIO DISPARAGED 8DIO'S CEO AND CALLED HER AN EVIL BITCH; NEITHER EVER MET HER OR HAD ANY CORRESPONDENCE; THEY BASED THEIR OPINION ON WHAT MIKE GREENE SAID ABOUT HER
When Sarah referred to Tawnia as a phony evil bitch in the attack thread, that completely came form MIke Greene. Sarah never met, had a single correspondence or any interaction with Tawnia, her sole opinion was based on what MIke Greene told her. It's the same for Mario. I know this first hand from Sarah and Mario. 

ETHICS
Ethical forum owners don't use their forums to attack developers -- and if you go to the last or second to last page of the attack thread, Greene harasses and bullies one of the only people making a case that what was going on in the thread was wrong whose post wasn't deleted. Mike deleted my posts and hundreds of other posts of people making similar points or with information about the stories being told, like me.  Ethical people don't hide that they work for a competitor when attacking a company. Mario and Sarah work for Impact Soundworks, an 8Dio competitor that has some not so great history.  But Impact Soundworks' owner is a friend of Mike Greene. Greene, by his own admission, admitted to deleting hundreds of posts in the attack thread. He claimed not one of them was pro-8Dio. That was a lie. Mine defended 8Dio by sharing the story I knew from 13 years ago. Greene deleted my posts and Mario's posts responding to me. He also deleted probably two dozen posts I saw where people were not in agreement with the attack on a developer. In all, Greene or anyone else in the thread never provided any support for their allegations. I actually do have documentation from when Mario came to me 13 years ago that the developer involved sent to me. He told me that what I posted and what Troels posted was accurate. And he's a friend of Mario's. FTR, I get along great with Mario and my conversations with Sarah about this matter were all friendly. 
 

t

Thanks for the informations. Pretty dizzying. I didn't buy anymore mainly because I already own a ton of their libraries and don't need any more at the moment. I have to say that 8Dio customer service has been stellar to me on many occasions. 

[PavlovsCat]

10 minutes ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

Thanks for the informations. Pretty dizzying. I didn't buy anymore mainly because I already own a ton of their libraries and don't need any more at the moment. I have to say that 8Dio customer service has been stellar to me on many occasions. 

Now back to shorter posts!

[telecode 101]

49 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

I wrote about that in the attached link.

t

Great stuff. I never knew this. Hey, let me know if I can PM you for some advice. I been looking at trying to do something in music software sales.

I am so confused. I know that Maro dude from various forums. I thought he worked for NI. I guess not so.

 

 

Edited November 7, 2023 by telecode 101

[Patrick Wichrowski]

17 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

But I play terribly and have no hope of substantial improvement (due to tendinitis);  my only real audience are my kids. So I do debate every expense on music lately and think I already have way more than enough libraries and plugins. 

Yesterday just playing 3 chords. It sounds really close to a real Hammond. My seek for the Hammond organ sound in VSTi is over . 
 

 

[PavlovsCat]

11 hours ago, telecode 101 said:

Great stuff. I never knew this. Hey, let me know if I can PM you for some advice. I been looking at trying to do something in music software sales.

I am so confused. I know that Maro dude from various forums. I thought he worked for NI. I guess not so.

 

 

Yes, Mario presently does work for NI, but he has historically done work as a contractor for Impact Soundworks, where he's worked with Sarah. He's worked with a lot of developers over the years. FTR, Mario and I have always gotten along great and never had any issues -- he's a super nice guy. But this story, which happened a long time ago, wasn't being told accurately. While I understand that Mario feels justified that Troels was in the wrong, the developer, who is a mutual friend has notes and screenshots,  and he and I both recall things well and Mario is leaving out that he was unethically shilling by praising the library he worked as better than Troels' library without disclosing that he worked for the developer. Troels and I presented the story accurately.

Anyhow, Greene was merely leveraging Mario (and Sarah) for his own vendetta.  It seems clear, from our PMs, that Sarah has since realized this fact and no longer feels good about Greene. What developer wants to hire a coder who attacks a developer publicly for not paying her 5 to 6 figures for their uncommissioned fan project they pitched and then goes back 13 years to find three people who had grievances with that company-- and one of those predates the formation of 8Dio. The simple fact is that Greene took advantage of a developer's disappointment that her fan project didn't get picked up to launch his own war on a developer who hurt his ego by criticizing his ethics and pulled their sponsorship of VI-Control. Mike has since regularly gone on rants in every VI-Control thread where anyone posts an 8Dio sale, raving that 8Dio is discounting too heavily, and is ruining the industry by bringing down prices too low-- then he injects Cory's name, claiming he's Cory's good friend (spoiler: Mike has never even reached out to Cory or had any communications with him; he only uses his name to attempt to justify his attacks).  If I shared Mike's email to me (which really I shouldn't because I need his consent) he refers to me as a friend and showers praise on my ethics and "heart of gold." When I responded that he needs to publicly apologize to Tawnia, Troels and me, he started bullying me and calling me nasty names. 

8Dio isn't even the only developer Mike's gone after on VI-Control, they're just a developer where I happen to have links to the stories being told (through Mario and Cory, both people I like a lot).  But as a marketing exec who has written about business ethics and received Ivy League praise for my writing on business ethics, this is a clear cut example of bad ethics and using a forum to get an angry mob really just disgusts me. That stuff doesn't go on here, thank goodness.  

Again, I don't see Mario or Sarah as bad people. I think what they were doing was not ethical, but they were mainly being egged on by the forum owner. Mario feels wronged when he was caught shilling and that Troels was too hard on him. Troels gave a sincere apology -- but Mario never took my advice from 13 years ago and apologized to Troels as he should have.  If you look back after Troels apology, Greene eggs on an angry mob to insult and disparage Troels. It's pure bullying and it's indefensible. In our PMs, Mario won't accept any kind of apology, he feels justified in being cruel to Troels because he thinks Troels was mean to him after he caught Mario shilling for a competitor who was stealing his intellectual property. The Sarah stuff is transparently just someone disappointed her offer wasn't accepted. The Cory stuff is a lot more complex and if you noticed, Cory didn't want to be exploited by Greene and the bunch. But no one interested in facts and with decent ethics could conduct anything like that attack thread. It's just not what fair-minded, ethically centered individuals do, it was just Greene leveraging a pissed-off KONTAKT scripter working for a competitor to air her grievances as leverage for Greene's attack. I was sickened to see it, but nearly a year after Greene is still attacking 8Dio in every thread where they're mentioned. However, since I pointed that out, he's deleting and editing his off the rails rant posts. Anyhow, terrible ethics. The man has an agenda, and that agenda is getting revenge on a former forum sponsor and competitor who heavily criticized him in private conversations for making bad and unfair decisions with his forum. To say that Greene doesn't handle criticism well and is extremely petty and ego driven is putting things mildly.  

Edited November 8, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[telecode 101]

46 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

written about business ethics and received Ivy League praise for my writing on business ethics,

Thanks for sharing. I have been around  a while in various forms. From what I have experienced, I am not convinced ethics in business exists in the real world. I have been through so many re-orgs, re-structures, its usually all just throw the baby out with the bathwater and start all over again from scratch. That's just how the big guys like to roll.

A life lesson for the new young folks starting out in careers, when you see that, that usually means new opportunities are being created and a good way to get into a big corp.  ?

 

 

Edited November 7, 2023 by telecode 101

[kitekrazy]

I gave thumbs down for mentioning Vi-Control, the sample drama capital of the world.   There's already a 3 page drama on a new 8dio release.

It's free stuff. Don't bitch, don't get any of it.  Leave Vi-Control it of it when 8dio is mentioned here. 

 The best part is you don't have to deal with Native Asshat downloading these libraries.   They will work with Kontakt 6 just fine.

[telecode 101]

16 minutes ago, Fwrend said:

Here's the link for all of there current free products which include the OP's instruments.

https://8dio.com/collections/free-instruments

First time user? Use THIS referral link. 

I think this stuff has been free for long time.

 

FWIW.. I think 8dio make good stuff. Totally usable and sounds good.

[Doug Rintoul]

10 minutes ago, telecode 101 said:

I think this stuff has been free for long time.

 

FWIW.. I think 8dio make good stuff. Totally usable and sounds good.

I didn't have the Polyphon so it was worth to me for the link to the free stuff to be posted. 

I also agree that 8dio makes gud stough as someone named @Fleer might say.

[Yan Filiatrault]

21 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

I gave thumbs down for mentioning Vi-Control, the sample drama capital of the world.   There's already a 3 page drama on a new 8dio release.

It's free stuff. Don't bitch, don't get any of it.  Leave Vi-Control it of it when 8dio is mentioned here. 

 The best part is you don't have to deal with Native Asshat downloading these libraries.   They will work with Kontakt 6 just fine.

Well, for me, the extra informations I’m getting is useful from the outside of that forum, as the informations I got there lead me on an opinion about the company that may have been influenced negatively and not accurately. So totally relevant for me.

[Fleer]

21 minutes ago, Doug Rintoul said:

I didn't have the Polyphon so it was worth to me for the link to the free stuff to be posted. 

I also agree that 8dio makes gud stough as someone named @Fleer might say.

Gewd

Gewd

Gotta know yer stouph

[Doug Rintoul]

12 minutes ago, Fleer said:

Gewd

Gewd

Gotta know yer stouph

I stand corrected.

[Fleer]

8 minutes ago, Doug Rintoul said:

I stand corrected.

Dictionary according to @Bapu

[PavlovsCat]

On 11/7/2023 at 5:03 PM, telecode 101 said:

Thanks for sharing. I have been around  a while in various forms. From what I have experienced, I am not convinced ethics in business exists in the real world. I have been through so many re-orgs, re-structures, its usually all just throw the baby out with the bathwater and start all over again from scratch. That's just how the big guys like to roll.

A life lesson for the new young folks starting out in careers, when you see that, that usually means new opportunities are being created and a good way to get into a big corp.  ?

 

 

Good ethics in business world are pretty  rare.

Even in the sample developer world,  some of these devs can be really cut throat and eager to engage in whatever they think gives them a strategic advantage. The attack on 8Dio truly is really just a developer with very poor ethics using his forum to try to destroy a competitor-- and 8Dio isn't his only target,  FTR.  And the owner of Impact Soundworks,  also an 8Dio competitor,  has teamed up with Mike. Note that Mario and Sarah are both Impact Soundworks contractors and Andrew Aversa himself joined in the attack,  never once identifying themselves as competitors.  That is incredibly ethically problematic by itself. 

Feel free to send me a PM. 

Edited November 11, 2023 by PavlovsCat