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Big Soniccouture sale at NI

There are two issues here. If you get pissed off at a library because it leaves a bad impression on the first run-through, you are going to have to get used to a lot of buyer's remorse and stuff being left on the shelf.

To answer your question: yes I am going to spend time on something that left a bad impression because unless I had a rush of blood to the head and bought something that sounded bad in the demos I'm going to assume that the issue is that how I'm playing or programming the lines is more of an issue than the library until proven otherwise.
One only has so much time. This is only the concern of myself, an amateur, whose ignorance is now out in the open. My expectations after making(what is for me anyway) a major purchase, are evidently immature. Thank you for sharing your advice, I will take it to heart.

On the value element. I've got to say, this is nuts as far as I'm concerned. I don't think I've looked at a bundle deal like that and thought "well, this means each instrument is worth X and the bundle is only worth (n-z)X where z is the number of instruments I don't plan to use so now I'm losing money".
Logic tells me money spent on a library is wasted if I do not use it. Made sense to me anyway.

You gotta figure, these deep discount prices are going to attract non-professionals who still have an opinion. And the forum is the platform in which we discuss said opinions. I'm open to any and all discussion about why my opinion is wrong or misinformed because I really do not know much of anything yet.

Also, yes I probably am nuts. Why else would I spend $11,000 on zeros and ones just to press some keys and hear a noise that makes me giggle like a school girl?
 
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One last thing:
If you get pissed off at a library because it leaves a bad impression on the first run-through, you are going to have to get used to a lot of buyer's remorse and stuff being left on the shelf.
If I have to re-evaluate my expectations(I was informed that Soniccouture's products generally were great out-of-the-box) then I'm all for getting closer to the truth.

But 4 of the items in this bundle I already paid $320 for last year during the BF sale. That pisses me off.:mad:

I had overinflated expectations, it seems, due to this when I should have been evaluating whether or not the remaining 22 items were still worth the price. Thus far I am still pleased with my buying decision. But it doesn't change the fact that I spent $860 for something some people are now only spending $540 for.

Part of the sample library game, I suppose. You wanna play you gotta pay. That and the inability to demo them before purchase. I must be nuts because it just seems dumb to buy things like this, in retrospect.

What we do for music.
 
Yeah I figure if you don't have something specific you want a library for, you should wait. If you pay too much you can say 'yeah, but I wouldn't have had it for this project, so it's cool...'

If you're just buying ear candy to play around with, or something for a rainy day, or something you could see needing down the pike? Wait for the sales, or until that day you actually need it.

Unless you have the $$ to buy everything and not look back ;)

Also I think you have to figure on being disappointed by some things. May be the library, may be you... or you just don't click with it.

Okay now to go look back at this sale. I have to say I'm disappointed with about half the Soniccouture libraries I have. I'm not sure whether that's better or worse than average ;)
 
Konkrete seems utterly useless to me. I don't like broken wurli, but I have to say nobody has made a great wurli sample yet, afaik, so it's gotten some use. Canterbury Suitcase had up to 25ms of silence on the beginnings of many of the samples. I emailed them about it and never heard back. It was unplayable for me. Xtended piano was a letdown. Not very many velocity samples, and inconsistency in performance between notes makes it a lot less playable than it could be. The Attic seems so cool, but I haven't found that much use for the tones. Others might.

Winners: Array Mbira, Clav (best I've found), Novachord

Well, despite owning half these instruments, I'm not eligible for the upgrade... The only thing I really want is the Nykelharpe. Not sure I'll get that. Still annoyed by the unresolved issues with the Canterbury Suitcase. Although I should redownload and see if they have been fixed. but... I got keyscape and I'm in Rhodes heaven at the moment, so I'm not very motivated.
 
One last thing:

If I have to re-evaluate my expectations(I was informed that Soniccouture's products generally were great out-of-the-box) then I'm all for getting closer to the truth.

But 4 of the items in this bundle I already paid $320 for last year during the BF sale. That pisses me off.:mad:

I had overinflated expectations, it seems, due to this when I should have been evaluating whether or not the remaining 22 items were still worth the price. Thus far I am still pleased with my buying decision. But it doesn't change the fact that I spent $860 for something some people are now only spending $540 for.

Part of the sample library game, I suppose. You wanna play you gotta pay. That and the inability to demo them before purchase. I must be nuts because it just seems dumb to buy things like this, in retrospect.

What we do for music.
Would love to read your thoughts on the other libraries.
 
Would love to read your thoughts on the other libraries.
The "final four" as it were. Or perhaps I could include the four I purchased last year as well. Might be a while. I've already been discouraged here from sharing initial impressions, and there are alot of great video demos for those remaining 8.

I'm kinda intrigued about All Saints Choir atm due to the additional feedback from Ambi and others. Would like to try it without the Poly Legato, maybe individual tracks for each of the SATB sections and modulate the Sing control more frequently.

If you're just buying ear candy to play around with, or something for a rainy day, or something you could see needing down the pike? Wait for the sales, or until that day you actually need it.
Well I did buy 4 Soniccouture products during last year's BF sale at 50% off. And I did use two of the four already. I wasn't even aware of these insane NI deals until about 3 months later. But it's ok, I'm learning. I can afford it. Doesn't mean it still doesn't hurt.
 
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Bare with my development with these libraries (and this craft) but here is a bit of Rivendell with the All Saints Choir. I like the longs - was trying to get the legato to smoothen out - but it is tricky. Nice tone, but there are some (fairly common) issues with the legato. There is just a bit of articulation in each note ... even when wanting a good slur and overlapping notes etc. Seems like a little programming fix might help that. Or a better me LOL. Genesis still wins on legato for me, as in ... out of the box very smooth. But that TONE! worth the scripting work if they would.

Rivendell - mm 8-19 - close mics and Sydney Concert Hall - All Saints Choir on Century Strings on Orchestral Tools Symphony Celli and NI Symphony Basses. Why not right? Cinesamples - English Horn makes an appearance.

View attachment SC - All Saints Choir - Rivendale Demo 5 Sydney and Tweaks 33.mp3
 
SSD over USB 3.0 USB 3.1 is night and day over spinner with USB 2.0 👍
I was going to disagree with you at first, but I remember my frustration using slower connections. I always used 7200 RPM drives with my USB 2, and it can be done, but you really have to bounce each track or maybe 2 tracks at the most for orchestral music or your DAW starts struggling. You can't play live. You have to have a large buffer. For pop/rock? with only a few sample libraries? USB 2 can work if that is all you have. Otherwise you probably want something a little faster. But Orchestral and cinematic music, there are too many VI's for a DAW to handle the slow connection.
 
Playing with the organ. Sounds great. And the sound effects presets are really cool. I am very happy with this purchase so far and I haven't even tried the Thenody yet.
Interested in this one. Do you have other organs and if so, how does this one compare? I have Union Chapel, Tallin and Soundiron Lakeside plus the free OT and Leeds organs, so not sure I need this, but tempted!
 
As usual, there are many ways of looking at things.
I own the bundle from 2018 so would be paying ~£190 for 13 new instruments.
That's around £15 each if you want to look at it that way.
I'd happily pay £15 for almost all of them and even if I say there are 3 I wouldn't buy, that still leaves the average price below £20 each for the rest.
I don't need to use something very much to get £15 to £20 of value from it.
Then there are the ones that I will use a lot more which I will get more value from.
But for people who are more focussed on mainstream orchestral instruments, the full bundle at $500 is a lot to hand over for relatively niche instruments in some cases.
I'm not that into mainstream orchestral strings, brass and percussion:shocked:, but this is right up my street. Very tempting.
 
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As usual, there are many ways of looking at things.
I own the bundle from 2018 so would be paying ~£190 for 13 new instruments.
That's around £15 each if you want to look at it that way.
I'd happily pay £15 for almost all of them and even if I say there are 3 I wouldn't buy, that still leaves the average price below £20 each for the rest.
I don't need to use something very much to get £15 to £20 of value from it.
Then there are the ones that I will use a lot more which I will get more value from.
But for people who are more focussed on mainstream orchestral instruments, the full bundle at $500 is a lot to hand over for relatively niche instruments in some cases.
I'm not that into mainstream orchestral strings, brass and percussion :)shocked:), but this is right up my street.
Very tempting.

So are you getting it?
 
Well I did buy 4 Soniccouture products during last year's BF sale at 50% off. And I did use two of the four already. I wasn't even aware of these insane NI deals until about 3 months later. But it's ok, I'm learning. I can afford it. Doesn't mean it still doesn't hurt.
It's always good to look at deal history before making a purchase, and forums are a great resource for that. NI has insane bundle offers a few times a year and they're often the same major developers, Soniccouture, CineSamples, Strezov, SoundIron, ProjectSAM (I'm betting they'll do this one again this year as the last one was in 2019), etc. Of course no one can predict which bundle they'll come up with and what developer it will be so the only way you can strike the "best deal ever" is to wait with the hope it will be exactly the bundle you want, which may never happen.

If you've bought the libraries for 50% off previously, it's still the largest discount you were gonna get from Soniccouture. Knowing that should provide some relief.
 
I mentioned it in post #113 of this thread, but it still seems apt as a response: I have to accept that the total I have spent will be going to a good developer like Soniccouture. That in itself has provided the most relief.
 
Canterbury Suitcase had up to 25ms of silence on the beginnings of many of the samples. I emailed them about it and never heard back. It was unplayable for me.
Hi Woodslanding,

I would absolutely like to address this issue. Firstly I apologise if we missed your email and you received no reply. If you would like to contact us via the site again we can look into what happened there and address your issue.

Regarding the Canterbury - this is the first time I have heard it described as unplayable! A quick inspection of random sample zones in my version of Canterbury shows me start times of 0-2 ms. I will check with Dan, and see if something else is happening here to cause the confusion ( obviously room mics will have some inherent delay).

EDIT: I see from the post below that we did answer this enquiry, on this forum. Continuing to complain about the (non-existent) fault and saying we never answered you therefore seems a little unfair.

James
 
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