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Most Disappointing Library Purchase?

- Spitfire BT Phobos

I love @christianhenson's demo. Especially with headphones, the detail is amazing. The drop at 3:29 gives me chills.



But yeah, it's super hard to use. It's basically this roulette wheel of awesome beats and sounds, and you get what you get. You can dial up a preset and tweak it, or blindly replace sound sources or convolution kernels and see if something nice pops out. Very often something nice does pop out, and inspire a line. But it's nearly impossible (for me) to imagine a sound and then find it.

I don't regret buying it, though. If you find it at a happy price, you'll discover some cool hard sounds in there.
 
I bought Audio Imperia's Fractal a while back and found it very disappointing for the price. I've bought Sampletraxx stuff for $30 and found it much more useful.

Aside from that, maybe LASS? Maybe I'm just used to Spitfire.
 
But yeah, it's super hard to use. It's basically this roulette wheel of awesome beats and sounds, and you get what you get. You can dial up a preset and tweak it, or blindly replace sound sources or convolution kernels and see if something nice pops out. Very often something nice does pop out, and inspire a line. But it's nearly impossible (for me) to imagine a sound and then find it.

I don't regret buying it, though. If you find it at a happy price, you'll discover some cool hard sounds in there.

So you use it rather as a starter instead of filling out things?
 
Care to expound on why? ( Just, you know, so I can feel better about my not buying it on sale :) )
Seems I didn't in this thread at least...
Well, Lacrimosa is alright. The legatos are so-so and not all vowels are available for all articulations. I had a bitch of a time sculpting a track based mostly on "mmm". For epic, shouty staccatos and choir:y pads, it's a totally valid library.
 
How many times have you regret buying something because it came with a free product? Someone on this site mentioned would it make sense if you wanted it without the free stuff?
 
How many times have you regret buying something because it came with a free product? Someone on this site mentioned would it make sense if you wanted it without the free stuff?
Every time IK Multimedia has done this with their stuff, I was stupid enough to bite on that offer. I did it with their Total Studio Max when I bought a guitar interface. Turns out their guitar interface kind of sucks --or at least my system doesn't like it-- and I never use Sampletank 2 or any of the other stuff that came with it. That doesn't mean it's all bad. I just haven't had much use for it. I then did it again with Sampletank 3 when they had a deal where if you bought a cheap midi keyboard you'd get a free full version of Sampletank 3. The hardware was trash --seemed to be built like a kid's toy (iRig Keys Mini). The software seems a little better than Sampletank 2, but still not on par with Kontakt or Omnisphere. I do like Amplitube, but that was a separate purchase from all of this other deal stuff.
At least I wasn't out too much money. The deals were kind of insane on some levels. But I just found that I already had better stuff. Not blaming them. Just my dumb impulses. I just should have kept my money.
 
Every time IK Multimedia has done this with their stuff, I was stupid enough to bite on that offer. I did it with their Total Studio Max when I bought a guitar interface. Turns out their guitar interface kind of sucks --or at least my system doesn't like it-- and I never use Sampletank 2 or any of the other stuff that came with it. That doesn't mean it's all bad. I just haven't had much use for it. I then did it again with Sampletank 3 when they had a deal where if you bought a cheap midi keyboard you'd get a free full version of Sampletank 3. The hardware was trash --seemed to be built like a kid's toy (iRig Keys Mini). The software seems a little better than Sampletank 2, but still not on par with Kontakt or Omnisphere. I do like Amplitube, but that was a separate purchase from all of this other deal stuff.
At least I wasn't out too much money. The deals were kind of insane on some levels. But I just found that I already had better stuff. Not blaming them. Just my dumb impulses. I just should have kept my money.

I can relate. I got an iRig keys and it uses a micro usb port. The jack is messed up. One lesson learned is never buy a controler with micro usb. Micro usb is the "armpitamy" of bad engineering. I have a lot of IK software but I forget it's there. I've started using ST3 to audition midi files. Their upgrade pricing seems to irritate plenty of people.
 
How many times have you regret buying something because it came with a free product? Someone on this site mentioned would it make sense if you wanted it without the free stuff?
I usually think of it as paying for the free product (if that was what I really wanted) and getting the other stuff free. Of course, sometimes I want the other products and the free one is just icing on the cake. (Or doesn't get installed)
 
I love @christianhenson's demo. Especially with headphones, the detail is amazing. The drop at 3:29 gives me chills.



But yeah, it's super hard to use. It's basically this roulette wheel of awesome beats and sounds, and you get what you get. You can dial up a preset and tweak it, or blindly replace sound sources or convolution kernels and see if something nice pops out. Very often something nice does pop out, and inspire a line. But it's nearly impossible (for me) to imagine a sound and then find it.

I don't regret buying it, though. If you find it at a happy price, you'll discover some cool hard sounds in there.


Cool sounds if you work at it. I would love if they would update it, maybe put a little more work into making it user-friendly...but I sort of feel they're gonna move on to bigger and better things.

It's always felt a little unpolished to me, sort of like a beta version or something, especially with that interface, patch browsing, etc.

Maybe a brighter color would've even been better to slick it up. And more tutorials! Or a master's degree in Phoboology!
 
I was thinking about getting them. I don't need an ostinado builder - I have Sonokinetic's. But the runs builder looked useful.

OSR's runs builder is quite useful. There's also CineStrings Runs. OT for this thread, perhaps, but they both have strengths and weaknesses. OSR is more versatile, however, due to its playable runs patch. Neither is on my list of disappointing purchases.
 
I can relate. I got an iRig keys and it uses a micro usb port. The jack is messed up. One lesson learned is never buy a controler with micro usb. Micro usb is the "armpitamy" of bad engineering. I have a lot of IK software but I forget it's there. I've started using ST3 to audition midi files. Their upgrade pricing seems to irritate plenty of people.
I had the same issue with the micro USB on that keyboard. I bought a nice high quality USB cable with a material covering (instead of plastic) from Radio Shack and it fixed the issue.

Scarlet Jerry
 
I had the same issue with the micro USB on that keyboard. I bought a nice high quality USB cable with a material covering (instead of plastic) from Radio Shack and it fixed the issue.

Scarlet Jerry

I'm still looking for that magic cable the works. Easy fix is never buy any controller using that port.
 
Well, I'm here revisiting this thread which I did not realize would become so large.

To revise my first post, I would say that specifically Output's Exhale has been my biggest disappointment, relative to my expectations. Every time I open Exhale I find myself eventually closing it in frustration and not getting anything good out of it. I have better luck with other vocal clips in a sampler. That also uses much less CPU.
 
It was an audacious collection at the time. Great detail, lots of microphones, lots of Gigabytes... At best I can play it for 10 minutes, before I feel miserable.

I revisited the EWQL Pianos Platinum over the past couple of days and arrived at the same feeling and conclusion as you. I tweaked the settings and mic balances for a couple of hours and nothing I did could change the misery of improvising on them. At this point I'll archive them to a 7200 RPM drive because they're wasting space on an SSD.
 
I revisited the EWQL Pianos Platinum over the past couple of days and arrived at the same feeling and conclusion as you. I tweaked the settings and mic balances for a couple of hours and nothing I did could change the misery of improvising on them.

Been there done that. They are unusable. Luckily for me, they are only part of my composer cloud and not a purchase.
 
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