# Northern Sounds



## misterbee (Dec 15, 2006)

Doesn't their censorship suck?

R.


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## Aaron Sapp (Dec 15, 2006)

By definition, that place isn't even a forum anymore. The whole NS/VI "rivalry" is silly since there really is no comparison. What was once a cool place to yak with other dudes (of worth) is no longer. Most of the cool musicians/composers from there have migrated here. Why? They have little to no time to frequent forums, let alone one that censors every post that doesn't conform to their sugar-coated library-worshipping ideology.


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## Hannes_F (Dec 15, 2006)

Hmm ... has there been a current incident lately?

I frequently read the GPO section there and value this part as the product support forum of that company and their libraries. I never regarded it to be something different and so it is perfectly OK for me. As there are quite some interesting people that focus more on composition than on sound and/or valueing classical masterpieces I enjoy most of the conversation there.

I think the target group of this forum is different - more the hard-working front row music delivery type of sample users. I would like to develop both abilities so for me either is fine.

Maybe some people here will hate me for not hating NS but I can stand that. :-P  


Hannes


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## Hans Adamson (Dec 15, 2006)

Hannes_F @ Fri Dec 15 said:


> Hmm ... has there been a current incident lately?
> 
> I frequently read the GPO section there and value this part as the product support forum of that company and their libraries. I never regarded it to be something different and so it is perfectly OK for me. As there are quite some interesting people that focus more on composition than on sound and/or valueing classical masterpieces I enjoy most of the conversation there.
> 
> ...



Hannes,

You can express your opinion about VI Control and NS freely here. Frederick has done a commendable job in providing a neutral forum where all opinions are allowed. You are enjoying that freedom as well. No one is going to ban you for liking GPO.


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## Pando (Dec 15, 2006)

Hannes_F @ Fri Dec 15 said:


> Hmm ... has there been a current incident lately?



Someone there asked what's Bruce Richardson up to lately. That post is no longer there. :???: :roll: (Bruce must have really p*ssed them off :D )

Personally, I enjoy reading and interacting in both forums. People don't seem to post really over-the-top-bad stuff as much anymore (with praises galore), and the talk has gone a bit more serious with real issues being discussed every day now.

Their censorship business with links and keywords is pretty silly though. I wish they'd treat their members as adults...


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## synthetic (Dec 15, 2006)

Of course many of the cool people from NS are now in VI Pro where us peons can't interact. Or at least that's what we assume. :(


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## Hannes_F (Dec 16, 2006)

Hans Adamson @ Sat Dec 16 said:


> Hannes,
> 
> You can express your opinion about VI Control and NS freely here. Frederick has done a commendable job in providing a neutral forum where all opinions are allowed. You are enjoying that freedom as well. No one is going to ban you for liking GPO.



Hans,

I really value this freedom of speech here and was one of the first that donated for this forum when this topic has been brought up.

Speaking of GPO - there are things that I like and others that I struggle with, but it is just what I have and I try to max it out until I earn myself the next step. Nevertheless I am really thankful for it because without their tutorials I would have been lost at the beginning. 

That said I would not come to the idea to post a question like "what is the best library" at NS. 

BTW this question is also fruitless here - not because of censorship but because mileage varies and it all depends on budget, purpose, style, knowledge and preference. So those that are fully in business seem to have them all anyway, and the others will always reccomend what they just have. So the question itself seems to be downright silly - here as well as at NS. But this is another topic.

Hannes


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## Nickie Fønshauge (Dec 16, 2006)

Pando @ 16th December 2006 said:


> Someone there asked what's Bruce Richardson up to lately. That post is no longer there. :???: :roll: (Bruce must have really p*ssed them off :D )


If you did a search on his name on NS, you would get at least 11 pages with threads, that mention his name, incl. one with his name in the subject line. This doesn't indicate to me, that he pissed them off.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Dec 16, 2006)

synthetic @ 15/12/2006 said:


> Of course many of the cool people from NS are now in VI Pro where us peons can't interact. Or at least that's what we assume. :(



VI Pro is just a custom libary, not a separate private forum where all the cool people hang out. Mind you...


Now just watch this little flashlight while I put on my sunglasses...


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## Craig Sharmat (Dec 16, 2006)

Be assured that practically no other discussions go on in the Vi-pro area outside of the library itself. it would get way too confusing to be having discussions outside of the library, litter the area.


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## Franz (Dec 16, 2006)

Oh boy, where to start.
I was banned because I mentioned that some of the demos of GPO sounded like accordion music. Mozart on accordion was not really all that bad.

I sent sounds for review to Bruce Richardson. It took 2 years for him to post. 

Northern was initially a sample reseller dedicated to Giga Sampler. 

You have to pay $ 400/month as a sample developer so you may mention your products in posts. I do not believe that this will really bring out unbiased opinions or constructive criticism. 

As a developer I simply have no time to test other companies samples. I can only go by what I like and I really need feedback from users no matter if they scream at me or love my stuff. I have a 100% return policy for my sounds above 250mB. In the last 9 years I had 1 return. To shut out honest and real posts about certain products makes it no longer a forum but a sales tool.

I started this year on VI Control and you guys have helped me getting into Kontakt which I now love, thanks!


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## misterbee (Dec 16, 2006)

Pando @ Sat Dec 16 said:


> Hannes_F @ Fri Dec 15 said:
> 
> 
> > Hmm ... has there been a current incident lately?
> ...



This was the post that made me post. It wasn't really about Bruce any more though... it had turned to the topic of censorship. I said that I'd post more regularly on NS if it wasn't for the censorship... topic removed.

They seem to be having some troubles there with a drop in posts, but they're not willing to listen to what their users want. I'd say it'll see the death of them.

R.


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## synthetic (Dec 16, 2006)

Wow, that's interesting about VI Pro. I had imagined this secret board with a whos-who of composers and orchestrators, dead and alive, sharing their secrets. John Williams responding to a post by Mark Isham and tearing him a new one.  But if it's just about the library, then I don't feel quite as left out. 

As far as the other place, I only check in for the occasional free library download like TJ's Pan Flute. We could all share our stories about how we got banned, but who cares.


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## Ed (Dec 16, 2006)

OMG - Northern Sounds now looks very weird.

EDIT: ah its a new front page... :neutral:


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## Hans Adamson (Dec 16, 2006)

synthetic @ Sat Dec 16 said:


> Wow, that's interesting about VI Pro. I had imagined this secret board with a whos-who of composers and orchestrators, dead and alive, sharing their secrets. John Williams responding to a post by Mark Isham and tearing him a new one.


No, that's VIPRO PROF you were thinking about.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Dec 16, 2006)

Anyhow, everything's cool here, as long as you don't mention the companies ~~~~~~~~~, ~~~~ ~~~~, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. These links won't work either: http://www.~~~~~~~~~~~~.com, http://www.~~~~~~~~~.net, http://www.~~~~~~~~.com


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## Hans Adamson (Dec 16, 2006)

Ned,

You ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~. I should ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~, so ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~!!!!!
OK?!?!


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## Craig Sharmat (Dec 16, 2006)

Hannes_F @ Sat Dec 16 said:


> Hans Adamson @ Sat Dec 16 said:
> 
> 
> > Hannes,
> ...



consider the following, if you start a thread called Vi-Control on NS, how long do you think it will last? Maybe it is a product of being american, but i have a problem with people who decide to censor responses and members when they are just being truthful. That does not mean there is not useful info there depending on product, but I would have no desire to contribute any energies to that braintrust. I was quite ok when they deleted all my posts.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Dec 17, 2006)

Craig Sharmat @ 16/12/2006 said:


> Maybe it is a product of being american, but i have a problem with people who decide to censor responses and members when they are just being truthful.



I think it's fair to say that no one, from any country, likes to be censored or ever _really_ gets used to it.


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## Hannes_F (Dec 17, 2006)

Craig Sharmat @ Sun Dec 17 said:


> consider the following, if you start a thread called Vi-Control on NS, how long do you think it will last? Maybe it is a product of being american, but i have a problem with people who decide to censor responses and members when they are just being truthful. That does not mean there is not useful info there depending on product, but I would have no desire to contribute any energies to that braintrust. I was quite ok when they deleted all my posts.



Craig,

I think you are a cool person and a great musician. And I would be upset and sad if anybody deleted my posts, and not at all OK.

That said there is no such thing in the world like THE truth. Everything can be more or less truthful but one has always take into the account the individual point of view.

In another phase of my life I had a quite successful online shop for technical goods (nothing music related). I attached two open support forums to it and spent one to two hours a day answering technical questions. I allowed both customers and non-customers to participate. With other words even non-customers could ask for details about a product before buying it or even if they had buyed it elsewhere. The benefit of the users was that a great community grew there with lots of information that was not available elsewhere. My benefit was that many of the non-customers turned into customers because of my service.

But after a while I got more and more posts where certain non-customers would post links to other shops or even to ebay. Their version of truth was that they should do so because this saved five bucks to other customers for the same product while having my support anyway. So they felt they were doing right, and they insisted on what they felt was their right. My version of truth was that they were not sensible to what was appropriate since I was not able to keep my support level with even lower prices and they were destroying my business. You would not expect anybody to unroll a Ford ad poster in a Chrysler showroom, would you?

So this escalated. First I edited some posts and removed these links. Users protested being censored, repost frequently and if I was out of town or in holidays they flooded the forum with links to other shops. 

So I had to make up forum rules where I definetely declared that this was a dedicated support forum for customer support of my company and any links to other shops were not allowed. Several people felt restricted in their freedom and protested, and soon the community was not discussing technical issues any more but my forum rules. Guess what, the forum run through three more stages of escalation then: Introduction of banned words like 'ebay', banning of certain users. The third step would have been to restrict the forums to registered customers only but I decided to close them and only do what other companies do - support on a personal mail basis.

So if you want so I am one of these ~~~holes that censored other people not allowing free speech and maximum buyer's benefit. My point of view is that these guys ruined something that had been a great place for users before by stretching their freedom and insistence on what they thought was their 'right'. I wholeheartedly wanted to my best for the customers but not at the price of not surviving.

I do not know whether this case has similarity to NS since I am quite new there and here and not all the relevant posts are readable any more. But there certainly is more than just one point of view - and any of these may have _some _truth in it.


Hannes


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## Hans Adamson (Dec 17, 2006)

Hannes_F @ Sun Dec 17 said:


> Craig Sharmat @ Sun Dec 17 said:
> 
> 
> > consider the following, if you start a thread called Vi-Control on NS, how long do you think it will last? Maybe it is a product of being american, but i have a problem with people who decide to censor responses and members when they are just being truthful. That does not mean there is not useful info there depending on product, but I would have no desire to contribute any energies to that braintrust. I was quite ok when they deleted all my posts.
> ...


Hannes,

The difference from what you are describing above is that NS gives the appearance of being a neutral chat forum about sampling. A lot of people that come there believe that is what they see. Not a proprietary forum run by a single developer who pays the bills, that will have anyone saying negative things about his products banned.


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## misterbee (Dec 17, 2006)

Hannes_F @ Sun Dec 17 said:


> Craig,
> 
> I think you are a cool person and a great musician. And I would be upset and sad if anybody deleted my posts, and not at all OK.



That's an interesting story, and clearly, you did what was best for you. But Northern Sounds is a different kettle of fish. While they might have advertisers who help to keep it going, they don't claim to be selling a product. 

Furthermore, whatever the advertisers are paying is probably too much if it gives them the right to prevent discussion about competitors products. While its fairly busy over there, I don't think an excessive advertising revenue is justified by server and maintenance costs. So, someone is screwing someone over. Is it the owner screwing the advertisers? Is it the advertisers screwing the owner? Is it the owner and the advertisers screwing the users? Whichever way you look at it, the users are getting the bum deal.

I'm a member of several independent forums, some of which are incredibly busy and some are just medium busy. They survive on the cost of banner advertising alone. If they can do it, Northern Sounds could do it. What's more, if the advertisers products are as good value as they make out they are, they wouldn't need to avoid the competition.


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## José Herring (Dec 17, 2006)

Hannes,

I understand why you would do what you did, but in the case of NSS and especially of Craig that was not the case at all.

Firstly, NSS was not a forum where 1 or any product was being sold by the owner of the forum. It is and was a market place for many products. 

What happened is that the forum became dominated by one persons products after East West pulled out of NSS. Since then any person speaking out against that one person's product will get banned if he does so often and loudly enough.

What has resulted is a biased unfair forum geared towards the sale of a few at the expense of the many with Mark Simon (Papa Chalk) in some way having a financial stake in it all through advertising and group buys.

It's no small amount of money and I for one understand where they're coming from believe it or not. What's frustrating about NSS is that you can be banned without breaking forum rules.

In Craig's case as silly as it sounds there was an orchestrated plot to get rid of himò G   L«d G   L«e G   L«f G   L«g G   L«h G   L«i G   L«j G   L«k G   L«l G   L«m G   L«n G   L«o G   L«p G   L«q G   L«r G   L«s G   L«t G   L«u G   L«v G   L«w G   L«x G   L«y G   L«z G   L«{ H   L«| H   L«} H   L«~ H   L« H   L«€ H   L« H   L«‚ H   L«ƒ H   L«„ H   L«… H   L«† H   L«‡ H   L«ˆ H   L«‰ H   L«Š H   L«‹ H   L«Œ H   L« H   L«Ž H   L« H   L« H   L«‘ H   L«’ H   L«“ H   L«” H   L«• H   L«– H   L«— H   L«˜ H   L«™ H   L«š H   L«› H   L«œ H   L« H   L«ž H   L«Ÿ H   L«  H   L«¡ H   L«¢ H   L«£ H   L«¤ H   L«¥ H   L«¦ H   L«§ H   L«¨ H   L«© I   L«ª I   L«« I   L«¬ I   L«­ I   L«® I   L«¯ I   L«° I   L«± I   L«² I   L«³ I   L«´ I   L«µ I   L«¶ I   L«· I   L«¸ I   L«¹ I   L«º I   L«» I   L«¼ I   L«½ I   L«¾ I   L«¿ I   L«À I   L«Á I   L«Â I   L«Ã I   L«Ä I   L«Å I   L«Æ I   L«Ç I   L«È I   L«É I   L«Ê I   L«Ë I   L«Ì I   L«Í I   L«Î I   L«Ï I   L«Ð I   L«Ñ I   L«Ò I   L«Ó              ò I   L«Õ I   L«Ö I   L«× I   L«Ø I   L«Ù I   L«Ú I   L«Û I   L«Ü I   L«Ý I   L«Þ I   L«ß I   L«à I   L«á I   L«â I   L«ã I   L«ä I   L«å I   L«æ I   L«ç I   L«è I   L«é I   L«ê I   L«ë I   L«ì I   L«í I   L«î I   L«ï I   L«ð I   L«ñ J   L«ò J   L«ó J   L«ô J   L«õ J   L«ö J   L«÷ J   L«ø J   L«ù J   L«ú J   L«û J   L«ü J   L«ý J   L«þ J   L«ÿ J   L¬  J   L¬ J   L¬ J   L¬ J   L¬ J   L¬ J   L¬ J   L¬ J   L¬ J   L¬	 J   L¬
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## Hans Adamson (Dec 17, 2006)

Hannes,

I just want to add that I believe many people at vi-control only have sadness for what NS have turned into, and that's what you see reflected in Aaron's comment: "What was once a cool place to yak with other dudes (of worth) is no longer." It could be signed by a generation of sample discussers. Nick Phoenix once said about NS, that it was a magical place when it was happening. And it sure was. But it is not happening anymore. 

Life goes on. Vi-control is that place now. 

There is no hate. You are the only one that uses language like "ass-holes" etc. No one here would care that much.


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## Leandro Gardini (Dec 17, 2006)

Hum, I´m the last one...I haven´t been banned so far :neutral: , and also haven´t posted there for several months...now that I say that I´m not sure if I´l last for some more time...is it a reason to be banned :roll: ???


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## misterbee (Dec 17, 2006)

I wasn't banned... I asked for them to close my account because they deleted a post of mine.

It was a post that had no hate, disrespect or even mentioned the competition. It was intended to be a helpful nudge to them that might turn around their fortunes.

R.


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## Hardy Heern (Dec 17, 2006)

misterbee @ Sat Dec 16 said:


> Doesn't their censorship suck?
> 
> R.



Don't worry MrBee, you are correct, their censorship _does _suck and it's hardly a place for free expression! :razz: 

_I removed the main body of my post as, on reflection, I decided not to become embroiled in this. I wasn't sure that I was being any more reasonable than the perpetrators of censorship at NS who delete posts which they consider to be damaging to their goals. They know who they are....they must know in their heart that what they do just isn't right :smile: .....Makes mental note*...."Stick to the technology! :smile: "......*_*

THIS IS WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO DONATE TO THIS FORUM IN ORDER TO KEEP IT NEUTRAL AND AS 'FREE SPIRITED' AS IS POSSIBLE. IMHO.

Frank*


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## Chrislight (Dec 17, 2006)

Hardy Heern @ Sun Dec 17 said:


> THIS IS WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO *DONATE *TO THIS FORUM IN ORDER TO KEEP IT NEUTRAL AND AS 'FREE SPIRITED' AS IS POSSIBLE. IMHO.
> 
> Frank



Frederick made the decision early on when he began allowing banner advertising that he would keep charges at a minimum (a year's charge here wouldn't even get you a month on NS) so that there would be no developer pressure trying to influence how the forum was run and what members could or could not say. 

Others suggested having donations and that seems to work much better as members who contribute also feel like it's really their forum too and they are helping to keep it "neutral and free spirited".


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## Marsdy (Dec 18, 2006)

There's only one thing nore pointless than NS and that's talking about it here.


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## Alex W (Dec 18, 2006)

NS is gay


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## Alex W (Dec 18, 2006)

500 posts... here I come...


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## Marsdy (Dec 19, 2006)

Alex W @ Mon 18 Dec said:


> NS is gay



Funny you should say that. My final post on NS before my second ban made the point that GPO is a Girlie Man's library.

Not that there's anything wrong with being gay.... some of my best friends blah blah blah...

That's this thread well and truly squished. 

:razz: :razz: :razz: :razz: :razz:


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