I'd rather them just be honest and tell me that no sample library is perfect just by the nature of it being what it is. Or make an attempt to fix it. It's a big turn off.
Paul obviously refuses to accept that there might be anything wrong with these libraries,
Rope. Had much the same thing happening years ago when Hollywood Strings was first released and proved to be badly out of tune, particularly the violas. Seven or eight thread-pages it took me and one or two other members to try and convince Jay Asher, who was EW’s online representative at the time, Doug bless him, that the library had serious tuning problems, but he would have none of it. He just wouldn’t. Audio example after audio example I posted, but to no avail. Jay kept replying that it must be a user- or system-error, and that the library itself was most certainly not the root of these intonation issues. How could there possibly be anything wrong, was his main argument, with a library that was engineered by the legend Shawn Murphy and produced by that holiest of trinities Doug, Nick and Thomas J.? How indeed?
This went on for day after tiresome day, until finally, at long last, word came from higher up in the East West Towers, that they acknowledged there was indeed a problem. Which was then solved (not entirely, but more than good enough) in the next update.
But the thing is, and this is the bit that’s still relevant today: to get to that point, you have to fight page after page against forces that simply don’t wanna hear about it. Fellow members start to turn against you, all kinds of assumptions are made about the evil intentions you might have, you’re accused of personal attacks (the same despicable trick that P. Cardon tried earlier in this thread), forum administrators begin to get a bit nervous, developers' egos are hurt so they disappear (I had a couple of feisty run-ins with Mike Barry from Cinesamples as well), the atmosphere sours ... And why? Only because a developer didn’t do his job right, and sold us a stinker.
In the case of the Hollywood Strings, it ended well. Doug and Nick were, thankfully, magnanimous enough to admit having let a flawed product go out of the door and they addressed the issue. Unfortunately, I don’t see any such outcome for the Studio Series. The moment I read that these libraries
“had been lovingly nursed into existence with care and attention and a ton of work by a team of really talented people who work hard to make the products as good as they can”, I knew we were screwed.
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Here is an excerpt of a post I wrote on the subject some years ago. I think it still stands every bit as much today as it did then.
"A point that is discussed far too rarely and which is, in my opinion, a big part of the problem: the quality of sample libraries is often simply not good enough. I know of no other field of commercial endeavour where the buyer has to accept — with meek resignment — that a product, for which good money was payed, might either be unfinished, flawed, through-and-through buggy or in no way capable of the claims it was sold with.
And for some bizarre reason, we — the paying customers — are expected to accept all that. And we’re also expected to have the polite and considerate patience to wait and wait and wait for months, sometimes years, in the hope that corrective updates might materialize. (We even have to accept that these updates never materialize at all.)
Moreover, if we dare say something about this, and happen to have the audacity to use words which betray a fraction too much emotion, disappointment, frustration or irritation, we’re branded rude, ungrateful and boorish whiners.
Why is that? Why has this totally absurd, unjust — and, I suspect, in some cases borderline illegal — state of affairs become the accepted norm?
And why are ‘respect’ and ‘professionalism’ deemed prerequisites when users talk to, or about, developers, but why do these same paying users have to tolerate to be treated without a hint of respect and professionalism by developers who sell them substandard, flawed or unfinished product?
(...) If I buy just about anything other than music software and that carries the tag ‘professional’, I can rest assured that a professional product, fully answering to the definition with which it was sold, is indeed what I will have purchased. If however I buy a so-called ‘professional’ sample library, entire sections might be badly out of tune, articulations might be missing, instruments might suffer from being poorly recorded, samples might be edited sloppily, the programming might be all off, certain functions might work erraticaly or not work at all, the library might be frustratingly incomplete, the package might still be in alpha- or beta-shape and in dire need of urgent updates and revisions, …
And we’re supposed to find all this perfectly normal and acceptable? And remain gentlemanlike and courteous towards the developer at all times? And if we don’t, and we vent our dissatisfaction instead, we’re accused of childish ranting, inordinate negativity, or suspected of having some sinister agenda towards the developer? (...)"
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My respect for sample library developers is at an all time low at the moment. It really is. (As always, a few isolated emporiums excepted.) But what I find at least as depressing is the attitude of the majority of buyers. And it's particularly worrying that it seems to have become worse with the new generation of buyers. That docile, unthinking, spineless, uncritical, awe-struck willingness to accept whatever Mr. Big Shot Developer and Mr. Famous Engineer sells them, never questioning whether it is actually up to sample or not. Heck, most of them aren't even capable to hear the difference. And the hysterical indignation with which they condemn anyone who dares to be critical of a product of their revered developers ...
At the end of the day, you almost wanna say: well, it must be a fair world after all, these people — all these rabbits sitting round the Spitfire lantern in brainless sedation — get exactly what they deserve. The Studio Series is indeed the perfect product for them. What was I thinking, saying there is something wrong with it?
_
Please help me remember what it's like to smile again.
