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Spitfire - LABS Download our latest FREE Library Strings 2 Now!

I think the GUI is excellent! I too miss hints especially that every plugin may use those sliders slightly differently, but this reduction is a step in exactly right direction. For me it is obvious that hints will come soon.

Virtual Instrument plugin industry always seemed to me few long years behind modern UIs and finally it starts to change, thanks Spitfire!
 
I had to go edit Spitfire.properties and take out the '\' and then it worked.

Also no way to respond to velocity which kills use with midi files...
 
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Absence of hints will be an issue right until UI loses its unfamiliarity to a user. This is just the way human brain operates.

Well, we have two instruments with few variants each and I already have trouble remembering what does what when. If we were to stop here then sure - I would get used to it at some point, but number of instruments will keep increasing. We are early adopters here, it is to be expected that we are getting "unfinished" product :) Lets not act as if it was a UI carved in stone that will not get improved.

pretty much every active developer i know revamps their products UIs up to modern standards

I work for mobile and web industry and I would say these are at the forefront these days and I can definitely tell that there is a gap between VI industry and those - I am certain all of us would agree.

Sure, I went too far saying that VI industry is years behind in its entirety. FabFilter is an example of a company that does it modern way for long years now and with great success. But general, even if some companies started investing in UIs more it still felt like we live in "good old days" where more=better, where UIs mimic layouts and physical limitations of real life objects, where whitespace doesn't matter at all.

And Spitfire is very much guilty of it too, take a BT PHOBOS for an example - a fairly recent product of Spitfire. That is quite literarily a UI taken straight from year 2005 where all Flash websites with tiny pixel fonts and dense UX controls were still hot and still winning awards while sucking at UX so bad that it is in retrospective incomprehensible how we could ever do it so wrong.
 
Sorry if I overlooked __ but is Spitfire Audio Library Manager still required now or is everything over to new Audio App ?
Spitfire Audio Library Manager has been replaced. And no, you didn't overlook anything. As usual, Spitfire provided no helpful info during this installation process.

The two apps have similar names, so when I was asked if I needed to download the Spitfire app, I said "no," at first, thinking it was referring to Spitfire Audio Library Manager. But when the installation didn't work, it occurred to me that the name was slightly different, indicating a separate app. (You'd think they could have clarified this, during the process.) So, I started over, intending to download the app, but since I had previously answered that I already had the app, the web site remembered my selection—and didn't offer me the download link.

I literally had to go to another computer and start over, once again, just to be able to download the app. Then I sent the app to the intended computer via file sharing.

Spitfire has the absolute worst customer experience (among the "major" developers). And when I wrote them to ask that they improve this process for future customers, they simply replied, "We replaced the app months ago" (or something like that). So, in other words, I should have been a mind reader and should have realized that Spitfire Audio Library Manager had been replaced, and they were of course under NO obligation to merely mention that the app required to download the LABS instruments is different from Spitfire Audio Library Manager. If I didn't just "know" that already, that's my fault. They are so arrogant and dismissive.

P.S. The LABS piano sounds great, but the strings sound terrible.
 
Spitfire Audio Library Manager has been replaced. And no, you didn't overlook anything. As usual, Spitfire provided no helpful info during this installation process.

The two apps have similar names, so when I was asked if I needed to download the Spitfire app, I said "no," at first, thinking it was referring to Spitfire Audio Library Manager. But when the installation didn't work, it occurred to me that the name was slightly different, indicating a separate app. (You'd think they could have clarified this, during the process.) So, I started over, intending to download the app, but since I had previously answered that I already had the app, the web site remembered my selection—and didn't offer me the download link.

I literally had to go to another computer and start over, once again, just to be able to download the app. Then I sent the app to the intended computer via file sharing.

Spitfire has the absolute worst customer experience (among the "major" developers). And when I wrote them to ask that they improve this process for future customers, they simply replied, "We replaced the app months ago" (or something like that). So, in other words, I should have been a mind reader and should have realized that Spitfire Audio Library Manager had been replaced, and they were of course under NO obligation to merely mention that the app required to download the LABS instruments is different from Spitfire Audio Library Manager. If I didn't just "know" that already, that's my fault. They are so arrogant and dismissive.

P.S. The LABS piano sounds great, but the strings sound terrible.
Not to be dismissive, but I always get great customer service from Spitfire. I will say the way it was worded was a little obtuse on this release. Have you ever done a clean install of Cubase? Holy convoluted!
 
Spitfire Audio Library Manager has been replaced. And no, you didn't overlook anything. As usual, Spitfire provided no helpful info during this installation process.

The two apps have similar names, so when I was asked if I needed to download the Spitfire app, I said "no," at first, thinking it was referring to Spitfire Audio Library Manager. But when the installation didn't work, it occurred to me that the name was slightly different, indicating a separate app. (You'd think they could have clarified this, during the process.) So, I started over, intending to download the app, but since I had previously answered that I already had the app, the web site remembered my selection—and didn't offer me the download link.

I literally had to go to another computer and start over, once again, just to be able to download the app. Then I sent the app to the intended computer via file sharing.

Spitfire has the absolute worst customer experience (among the "major" developers). And when I wrote them to ask that they improve this process for future customers, they simply replied, "We replaced the app months ago" (or something like that). So, in other words, I should have been a mind reader and should have realized that Spitfire Audio Library Manager had been replaced, and they were of course under NO obligation to merely mention that the app required to download the LABS instruments is different from Spitfire Audio Library Manager. If I didn't just "know" that already, that's my fault. They are so arrogant and dismissive.

P.S. The LABS piano sounds great, but the strings sound terrible.
Hi there, we're aware that some customers may not have realised they did not have the App and mistaken it for the Library Manager. We're looking into a potential improvement for this.
In regards to supplying information, both of these pages are featured at spitfireaudio.com/labs, which we believe have most, if not all of the information you need:

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/info/faq/labs/
https://www.spitfireaudio.com/labs/getting-started/

I would highly encourage contacting us if you have any issues such as this in the future. For this particular issue we could have quickly sent over a link for the App, rather than you needing to go onto another PC. We have a chat popup at spitfireaudio.com/support where you can get live support too.

Thanks!
 
The new App is not great... It's a shame to be honest, I've been slowly drifting away over the past few years and now I think I'm done. I just feel tired after a day working in IT then to come home and have to troubleshoot more stuff that have until now always worked for me pretty much hassle-free (obviously there are some odd exceptions I've dealt with myself).

I respect Spitfire employees and I love the sound of the libraries I own (and some I don't) but I just don't feel like it's worth it anymore when I'm still getting so few problems from other developers that are doing (pretty much) the same things.
 
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I like the aesthetics of the new instruments, the UI is good looking. Since it's resizable I don't mind the extra white space. A little decoder ring for what the symbols mean is all it really lacked for me, I'm sure they'll get that sorted out.

The reverb is quite splendid!

I did have to hunt for it awhile in the VST list, I thought it would show up under S for Spitfire instead of L for Labs.
 
I think the plan is to use Labs as a way to warm people to the new Spitfire player. I suspect that eventually Kontakt will be phased out. No problem with that, however it does mean currently a lot of missing features.

I also think piracy aside the main attraction for Spitfire is the ability to fully lock down and potential to go "under the hood". Lets hope it does not turn into another Play...

And the wasted GUI space is aesthetically nice, but the lack of text denoting functions replaced by icons that are not necessarily obvious and tabbed Keyswitching particularly on heavy duty titles like HZ Strings is daft.

I mean instead of this:

smc0223_gui_techniques.png

We could have this:

smc0223_gui_techniques2.PNG
 
I did have to hunt for it awhile in the VST list, I thought it would show up under S for Spitfire instead of L for Labs.

Agree with this! I only found it later by chance, had originally assumed it hadn't installed properly in my DAW.

Regarding the non-Kontakt interface, does this mean in future Spitfire libraries will not be NKS compatible, for getting previews with Komplete Kontrol? Having recently purchased Tundra, LCO & Bernard Hermann am finding that an incredibly useful feature. Would be a shame to lose it.
 
Agree with this! I only found it later by chance, had originally assumed it hadn't installed properly in my DAW.

Regarding the non-Kontakt interface, does this mean in future Spitfire libraries will not be NKS compatible, for getting previews with Komplete Kontrol? Having recently purchased Tundra, LCO & Bernard Hermann am finding that an incredibly useful feature. Would be a shame to lose it.
These are my thoughts exactly. NKS-compatibility was a huge argument for me to spend the money on these libraries. I think I'll mail them. Better they now some of their customers would mourn the loss of this compatibility.
 
These are my thoughts exactly. NKS-compatibility was a huge argument for me to spend the money on these libraries. I think I'll mail them. Better they now some of their customers would mourn the loss of this compatibility.

It's certainly possible to have NKS previews in non-Kontakt libraries/instruments, am just not sure what their intention is. Can anyone advise - does HZ Strings have NKS previews?
(Am less sure about the light guide features, think I have only seen that for Kontakt libraries?)

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Have just checked the manual for HZ Strings (nice that it actually has a manual, unlike many of the Spitfire products), and it has its own previews via the new interface. Not NKS but stand alone, which is good in a way because it means people don't have to have Komplete Kontrol to get the previews, but I assume it won't be able to provide previews directly from scrolling in the KK screen, which is where the big benefit is for those of us who don't have our keyboard directly in front of the computer.
 
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I’m not so concerned about previews myself but more about losing the control aspect. NKS is a standard and hopefully Spitfire will update their player to adopt this. I have a Komplete Kontrol KB and really like the NKS integration.
 
Not to be dismissive, but I always get great customer service from Spitfire. I will say the way it was worded was a little obtuse on this release. Have you ever done a clean install of Cubase? Holy convoluted!

What gives you the impression that I use Cubase? It appears you misunderstood my post, as this experience has absolutely nothing to do with my DAW (Digital Performer). This was about downloading and installing the Spitfire LABS instruments.
 
What gives you the impression that I use Cubase? It appears you misunderstood my post, as this experience has absolutely nothing to do with my DAW (Digital Performer). This was about downloading and installing the Spitfire LABS instruments.
No, I understand what you were talking about. I was just saying that there are a lot more confusing software installs out there, as I recently moved to Cubase, and their literature and videos all say a different thing about installing the program. No harm meant.
 
No, I understand what you were talking about. I was just saying that there are a lot more confusing software installs out there, as I recently moved to Cubase, and their literature and videos all say a different thing about installing the program. No harm meant.

Oh. You were citing Cubase as an example. Now I understand. No problem. :2thumbs:
 
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