jbuhler
Senior Member
Isn't the underlying "problem," the size of the company and the need to shift to a larger customer base? SF needs all the libraries to provide the income to keep the lights on, meet payroll, etc. Maintenance and support earn them nothing except goodwill that will keep us buying their libraries, but if they are not producing more libraries then support earns them... They could sell fewer libraries at higher prices, but that would likely decrease revenues rather substantially, since far fewer of us could afford them, and the firm would almost certainly need to be smaller and Paul and Christian would need to be more heavily involved (and probably give up aspirations to do anything but SF).Probably its simply that spitfire released too many libraries these days. I think it is better to release less but quality products which are total ironed out in design or at least a huge attempt towards this. I mean look at products from Wallbank. He didn´t released much but all he released was great stuff through the bank, or things from Jasper Blunk. Regarding the pure assessment of the studio series which piet did and I am very behind him as I think as well that the series could be much better in many points. And I tell you what: If Piet wouldn´t care for spitfire he wouldn´t do all that examples and comments. He has a high love for spitfire and it hurts him which I read out of his comments a lot, at least for me.
Personally, I think the concerns expressed about the situation are valid. The business end is putting pressures on the quality of the libraries (this has always been to some extent true). The market is putting a lot of pressure on the libraries to hit certain price points, and the larger market SF needs to reach to remain viable is much more sensitive to price points than the market they were aiming with when they started out. No doubt that change also affects the response of some.
I just don't think the situation is all that dire, and I see many advantages to the lower prices, far wider access, and just the general democratization of the process. Is there a danger of a race to the bottom? Yes. Should we continue to be honest about shortcomings in libraries? Definitely. Should we work to demonstrate how the libraries can be useful even with their shortcomings? I think so. Should we seek to assess libraries on the value they might bring at the cost of the library? Here again, I think this is useful information for those trying to make decisions about what to buy. Many are buying libraries with limited resources. And I think hyperbolically running down libraries confuses such buying decisions.
I'll add that SF's approach to marketing is also causing significant problems. HZ Strings, for instance, is a perfectly reasonable library if you think of it as "Dunkirk" Strings. But the marketing on the library isn't especially honest in that respect, and I understand completely why people felt they got a product that wasn't what was advertised (even if the demos make clear where the strengths of this library lie).
I think many of the issues of the Studio line likewise stem from SF marketing not fully acknowledging that these libraries are designed to be a comprehensive orchestra at a significantly lower price point than SSO, that is, as a kind of budget line of libraries rather than the luxury line. Then we could be discussing whether SF made reasonable choices for that audience. But here again, the marketing hasn't been particularly forthcoming about these aims (if these are indeed SF's aims—I've reverse engineered a kind of business plan that would make sense of the situation but it is all speculative). And I wonder how these libraries would have been received had SF been clear that they are aimed at the budget conscious composer or as a different entry point into the SF line than Albion One. Alternatively, they might have focused on the libraries as a way to add detail and more standard configurations to BHCT (though I'm not sure how well the Studio line would work for that, since I don't have BHCT).