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Dan Dean Group Buy

i like dan dean stuff but 900 is unrealistic even for very accomplished samples brands.

So mostly is only a 50$ off offer on their strings advanced, which is not bad per se.

But its not a group buy, not at those conditions.
 
You mean they won't reach the 900 subscribers?

Yeah, could be. I'll listen to the audio demos of the strings this evening.

At first I thought it's going until 3rd of June but then I realized that people on the other side of the great water put month and day in a strange order :)

I'd be more interested in further woodwinds but these come in (for free) only after 300 people have subscribed.
 
Yeah, must admit I think it's loaded waaay to much at the optimistic end of things. There was some nice stuff but overall wasn't over-thrilled with the demos.... these libs are showing their age a little methinks.
 
my comment hasnt anything to do with qualities of the libraries.

I have the woodwinds and i like the tone a lot. Its much often in my template.

Simply who made up this group buy has never seen or partecipated to similar group buys out there.

Overing one hundred is already a great result, expecially if youre not selling naked photos.

There are a few developers that have a great consideration, sometimes affection, of their products and hardly accept the market rules. I've seen that so many times. Its understandable, most of them were out in the early times of the sample world, put lot of effort and passion in creating their products.

But market is market. Has rules, rules change every few months. Latecomers in the dev world know that much better and tend to be more aggressive and rightly profiled offer-wise.

Anyway, its just my take on it.

Luca
 
Much agreed, Luca.

If there were a (more reasonable) group buy on the Bluthner library, I would jump in. I've always been quite interested in that library.
 
I'm not sure what is driving this, and I may be proven wrong, but I think he made the time limit too short. There will always be folks waiting to see how many other folks are going to join - the more time allowed the better the chance of meeting the big goal.

That said, I think it is really clever to provide both discounts and free products. I think some other developer tried this formula, but I can't remember who.

Dan's libraries are first rate, but I think he took a real hit when GS tanked, and this could be a really good way for him to get his name back in front of folks. Just wish he'd provided a bit more time to do so.
 
Ed @ Thu Mar 03 said:
There's only so much you can do with scripting to compete these days.
Click to expand...
I was pretty curious about just what you could do with scripting and old samples, and a while back the DD Ensemble brass were put on sale for something like $200. Now, for an old Giga library, his standard price of $700 for the brass ensembles seems... very unrealistic these days given what the competition costs and offers. But I had long owned his solo brass, and always wanted the ensembles. $200 seemed like a perfect price, so I bought them, imported them into Kontakt4, and set up custom instruments using the AET filter so the modwheel controls dynamics. The result, it plays and has expression and fluidity like WIVI and sounds (at least to my ears) pretty nice.

Examples:
[mp3]https://joelsteudler.com/downloads/AET/AET_FH_Cutthroat.mp3[/mp3]
This is all sustains with AET and SIPS, using the close samples of the FH ensemble, a little of the far ensemble, and the solo horn.

[mp3]https://joelsteudler.com/downloads/AET/AET_BR_Full.mp3[/mp3]
This is about five minutes of me noodling with the full brass ensemble + solo instruments, again all sustains with AET. I also modified the solo trumpet to have 3x RR by shifting the whole chromatically sampled run up and down a half step.

Anyway, if Dan Dean got someone who knows what they're doing to really dig in and make great AET versions of his instruments using only the same old samples with no new recordings, I think he could sell a lot of libraries around... maybe $300-400 for the ensembles + solo brass. And it would likely sound great on the woodwinds too.
 
That's nice work JoelS, and the tone sounds good to me. However, IMHO it doesn't compare to real velocity layers and round robin - you've done a good job but the deficiencies are still fairly clear to hear. Grateful for the examples.
 
lux @ Sat Mar 05 said:
erh....what is AET?
Click to expand...
It's a feature in Kontakt4 that nobody uses. Or, to be more precise and informative I'll quote the NI website: "AET (Authentic Expression Technology) is able to capture specific spectral characteristics of samples and gradually apply them to another samples in real-time." So what I did is use it to apply the characteristics of lesser dynamic levels to the F and FF samples of the Dan Dean Brass, as regulated by the mod wheel. That gives it a smooth morph through the dynamics.

As far as I can tell, the reason the AET filter hasn't seen more use is that it is hard to get good results with. That's been my experience with it, anyway. For instance, if it is trying to start with a P note and apply the spectral characteristics of an FF note to it, it is going to sound really, really bad. But if you apply the lesser dynamic levels spectral characteristics to an F or FF note, it sounds pretty decent. It also seems to work best with instruments recorded dry, which the Dan Dean sets are. The end result can produce a sound that is much smoother than crossfading between dynamic levels.

Maybe someone that has more of a grasp of programming the AET filter properly could do a better job of it than I have, though I have seen so little discussion of it that maybe people aren't bothering with it.

I just really like the tone of the DD solo and ensemble brass, and think they could be a successful product again if priced right and revamped with better, modern programming. I do miss hearing real legato transitions between the notes, though it is not as apparent in a mix as it is exposed like the examples I posted.
 
AET (Authentic Expression Technology) is the "new" sample-morphing technique in Kontakt 4. From what I can tell, it's designed to use a complex filter to artificially match the spectral characteristics of adjacent samples. So, it's not a true morph, but it does its best to use drastic EQ changes to mimic the sample you're trying to morph it into. As always, it's smoother when there isn't a huge spectral change. Check out the video: https://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/ ... ntent=1001

~Stu
 
It's a feature in Kontakt4 that nobody uses
Click to expand...

If anyone cares, I made a melodica library using AET which is available for free download (so at least one person is using it :D) :

https://christoph-hart.com/volker

I was doing some "research" with the AET filter and I can confirm what JoelS said: if you take the ff-sample and morph it with lower velocity samples, the results can be convincing. However this works only if the lower velocity samples has fewer harmonics (or noise partials) than the ff-sample. A clarinet for example has a noticeable noise amount that gets louder (compared to the tone itself) when played softer. Because the AET-filter can't generate harmonics (or noise), the lower velocities would sound weird.

But nice demos of the french horn (although I would have prefered more dynamically playing for demonstrating the morphing effect)
 
Joel - how many original velocity layers were you using for your patch? I was under the impression that there was only 1 per instrument, and that sounds plausible based on what I heard. Of course that's exactly what Symphobia 2 has for it's legatos as well!

The AET filter is all very well, but it doesn't really serve much need yet imho. If the two samples are already quite close harmonically, then a basic crossfade will probably sound pretty good anyway. The lure of using morphing technology is that is can successfully cross between two more disparate sounds, and if AET can't do that then it's not very useful. Perhaps an AET 2.0 would be more successful?
 
noiseboyuk @ Sun Mar 06 said:
Joel - how many original velocity layers were you using for your patch? I was under the impression that there was only 1 per instrument...
Click to expand...
In that first FH example it's three instruments stacked, the close and ambient mics for the FH ensemble NV sustains and the solo horn NV sustain. Each has between 6-8 velocity levels that are being morphed through with the AET filter. Here's the thing, though: It's always morphing the FF or F sample, since it sounds lousy if you morph up from the lesser velocities to the more intense ones. So you're hearing the same attack on each note because it's set to always trigger the bright layer and morph down from there. Maybe there is a better way to set it up, but this way still yields a decently smooth trip through the dynamics. If I worked on it more, I'd at least make the notes 3xRR (by shifting a set up a half step, retuning, and shifting a set down a half step and retuning) so the attacks would be a little different. Oh, and just to note, the DD sets do come with other articulations. I've only fooled around with the NV sustains, though.

To my ears, AET sounds smoother than a crossfade. Crossfades always seem to have those zones where the layers are just not quite mixing right. I actually did use a crossfade in setting up the DD solo tuba, though. For some instruments it seems to work better than others.

I hope they continue to develop the AET tech. It seems promising, if a bit hard to use presently. Still even in this state I think it can add life to an old library like DD's.

@Chrisboy - That Volker is very cool. I'm glad someone else is at least poking around with the AET stuff. Here's some of the FHs again, using no reverb and more dynamics.
[mp3]https://joelsteudler.com/downloads/AET/AET_FH_SW.mp3[/mp3]
 
Thanks Joel - must admit I thought the DD stuff had only one layer? 8 velocity layers is amazingly high, such as shame you're unable to stretch the morphing that far. I definitely noticed the lack of RR in your first postings, so I'm sure it could benefit from the repetition trick.
 
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