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Dicky Deegan's Uilleann Pipes by Xtant Audio

I bought it for less than 9 euros and to be honest, my first impression was that even that price was too much for this absolute joke because I would rather use anything else than this. The slide- function made me literally laugh on it's completely bonkers behaviour, the whole package sounds like it's 20 years old scripting and on the top of all, the stereo mic sound is completely dead-sounding and reminds me of someone's bedroom. I don't even want to know how the people who made those ok-ish demos could ever pull them off with this library.

What also is completely weird for me is the sampling in general: the RAM consumption is 3 MB per mic. THREE. Not three hundred, not even thirty, but three, while the whole package takes a whopping 1.2 GB of my hard drive space. What the hell is going on?

The only thing even close to being usable is the bellows and bag- patch, and everything else is absolute and complete garbage. Luckily I have Ilya Efimov's ones as well (which is absolutely super) so I don't have to rely on this.
 
Lol, thanks for this insight Henhu.
I was wondering, if i should get it.
I also already own Ilya Efimov's.
 
Henu said:
I bought it for less than 9 euros and to be honest, my first impression was that even that price was too much for this absolute joke because I would rather use anything else than this. The slide- function made me literally laugh on it's completely bonkers behaviour, the whole package sounds like it's 20 years old scripting and on the top of all, the stereo mic sound is completely dead-sounding and reminds me of someone's bedroom. I don't even want to know how the people who made those ok-ish demos could ever pull them off with this library.

What also is completely weird for me is the sampling in general: the RAM consumption is 3 MB per mic. THREE. Not three hundred, not even thirty, but three, while the whole package takes a whopping 1.2 GB of my hard drive space. What the hell is going on?

The only thing even close to being usable is the bellows and bag- patch, and everything else is absolute and complete garbage. Luckily I have Ilya Efimov's ones as well (which is absolutely super) so I don't have to rely on this.
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Well I'm sorry to read this, send me your email address and I'll give you a refund.

The mic mixer is not traditional, the left/centre/right does not control the stereo field as such. This is explained in a little more detail in the user guide. The way the pipes are played is the musician has the bellows on one side, the bag on the other side, the chanter in the middle, and the rest of the pipes going across his lap. The three mics were positioned to pick up these three points of view of the instrument/musician.

All of the mics are in a close position and were recorded in a small studio. This was to create a really dry sound which is needed to allow the modelling elements of the library (the legato, glide, vibrato, trills, etc) to work with minimal phasing and other weird effects created with wet samples. This is a similar approach as used by other sample/modelled hybrid instruments. This also accounts for the low RAM usage and small sample size (I think lower RAM usage is generally a good thing).

Although you can use the instrument to build a performance piece by piece in a DAW and draw in controller markings by hand, etc. the instrument was designed to be performed live. Most of the demos you hear were played/recorded in real time (including the slides). This gives more life to the instrument which I find is often lacking when a performance is programmed.
 
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Although not mentioned, now i regret my lol seriously.
I didn't mean any disrespect, and I will have a closer look to the library now.
Thanks for the explanation @d.healey .
 
d.healey said:
Well I'm sorry to read this, send me your email address and I'll give you a refund.
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Thanks, but due to your personal chiming in I'm willing to give this one another shot. I'm sorry if I sounded too harsh- sometimes we tend to forget that there are living people behind the design of a product we buy.

But to be honest, even though I'd express myself more constructively, I'd still feel my criticism shouldn't be accounted only as "stupid rant of a dissatisfied customer who got it too cheap anyway": I feel there is a lot of room for improvement on the scripting side of this and that's just something I unfortunately cannot be silent about.

I'm sure that if you guys ever do a v2.0 of this it will be miles ahead of the initial product and I am willing to buy that for a full price just to support the hard work. So if that ever happens, let me know and I'm happily waving my dollars in the first row! :)
 
The first thing I did last week after buying was to spend some time on Youtube watching some players in order to get a better understanding of how the real instrument is played. It seems to be acknowledged that the UP's are very difficult to play and I've spent a few happy hours similarly 'wrangling' with DDUP. I'm not there yet! I really like the sound though, particularly the untamed patches' which to my ears are more authentic than the Kontakt FL instrument. I don't have the Efimov but will look out for those too. I still feel that my $10 was well spent, especially for the little learning journey that it's sent me on.
 
Thanks for patiently responding to peoples' feedback @d.healey.

I had been eyeing this - because frankly I have f**king loved the sound of bagpipes in general since I was a kid - but on the fence about it because I've been nose deep in jazz arrangements for most of COVID so won't have much use for a while.

But I'm going to bite the bullet and get it anyway since I appreciated your response.
 
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Bought it and used it immediately on a project. It did the job.
I only lack a kind of unison mode that simulates a pipe section of a bagad.

@d.healey : I didn't know you were behind this, I'm glad I funded a bit a fellow user here.
 
I think they sound pretty killer, especially at the $10 they're being offered at right now. Just a little bit of processing will make them sound convincing enough in a mix with bodhran, viola, tin whistle, those types of instruments. I'm happy with my purchase :)
 
I have had these pipes for some time now, having paid a touch more than £8! No problems for me, you have good control over the drones, slides and trills and can make them sound very realistic.
 
I just bought it, and once I add a reverb, the library sounds very good. But the drones are not playing. All the patches have silent drones. And the preset "Bellows n Bag" doesn't play at all.
 
Robo Rivard said:
I just bought it, and once I add a reverb, the library sounds very good. But the drones are not playing. All the patches have silent drones. And the preset "Bellows n Bag" doesn't play at all.
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The drones are velocity switched, low velocity = on
 
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