I'm not going to get drawn into creating more little demos to counter what Piet is saying here, as I did before. I'll simply observe that its actually pretty easy to make any sample library sound bad. You find an element that you can expose, say thats quickly moving the modwheel between certain values, and then you just ride that to make it sound as bad as possible. This is clear in the screenshot posted what is going on.
I own quite a few of the other devs libraries for my own interest - theres great stuff in all of them. However I could easily make some examples of them sounding awful. Why would I do that though? It would be incredibly unfair and unrepresentative, and I have a lot of respect for any dev who goes through the incredible amount of hard work to get a product of such complexity across the finish line.
Its a fact that Christian and I are massively involved in the creation of our products. Its a fact that they come out - thanks to a large team of very talented programmers and QA who are all also musicians - with way fewer bugs than they used to when we were a handful of people. We're always aiming of course for zero, but its complex software, and anyone involved in this knows how hard it is to catch everything. We still put out tons of updates and constantly work to improve our products.
Its a shame that so many devs have left VIC. I loved this place before I was a dev, I still enjoy coming here and following whats going on, but its so hard reading stuff presented as fact that is either unfair or simply untrue. I actually spent a week editing and refining stuff for the Ambient Guitars release only a few weeks ago. And yes - I'm not doing this *most* of the time, as I have a ton of other responsibilities, but I still get my hands dirty in all kinds of ways. I love making samples as much as I love making music. I'm not sitting in the clubhouse on the 19th hole drinking gin and tonic.
A key point - I'm still a totally passionate end user of our products, as is Christian. Thats how we started, and thats how it still is. We have really talented people working with us who have undoubtedly helped us up our game across the board.
There is a cognitive dissonance though when you on the one hand get fantastic feedback from triple A list record producers and composers, through to students and keen hobbyists who purely write for pleasure - and then you read that your products are 'absolute utter crap' - believe me I could take the King James cello and make it sound crap. Doesn't mean that the lucky cellist who currently plays it can't make it sound utterly divine!
I'm also absolutely passionate about music education and opportunity for people of all ages to discover music, performing and composing, and so I spend some of my time on that side at the moment.
Not really sure what I hope to achieve by posting this message, probably nothing. I have no desire to muzzle anyone. People have different tastes, and will like the sound of different things, I have absolutely no issue with that. I struggle with misrepresentation and confident announcements of 'fact' that bear no relation to reality.
One thing is for sure. When someone uses one of our products, they are using something that has been lovingly nursed into existence with care and attention and a ton of work by a team of really talented people who work hard to make the products as good as they can. We often bin stuff that isn't up to our standards. We also have a fantastic and dedicated support team that you can communicate with who are a key part of us refining and making our products better, so please do talk with them. It really helps us, which helps you.
I joined VI-C in October 2005. Thats nearly 14 years ago! nuts. Still can't quite manage to tear myself away - and why should I have to? Theres a lot to love about a community of passionate music makers who are also massive geeks like me. I just need to learn the skill of selective reading
Peace out
P