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What Samples have you regretted buying?

Any choir library that doesn't have the basic phonetics I have a bit of disdain for buying. I think there should be an international law that all choir libraries have to make Ah Eh Eeh Oh and Ooh sounds before they can record anything else.
 
mussnig said:
But the loading times are already a buzz killer to me. I have BBCSO Pro and I am pretty sure I would use it more if the player was performing better.
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Is this a known thing btw? I loaded a project the other day that was just using BBCSO strings along with other stuff and it took like three minutes before the basses started sounding. Thought maybe there was something wrong with my setup, but are the load times (from T5 SSD in my case) generally acknowledged to be this bad?
 
SupremeFist said:
Is this a known thing btw? I loaded a project the other day that was just using BBCSO strings along with other stuff and it took like three minutes before the basses started sounding. Thought maybe there was something wrong with my setup, but are the load times (from T5 SSD in my case) generally acknowledged to be this bad?
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I think it varies and there are some improvements that can be made by tempering with the settings for pre-load buffers etc. Also, it seems that it runs better on MAC than on PC.

But in general, yes. Load times are sometimes painfully slow. Kontakt stuff runs much smoother and quicker on my system. I think it's actually not really loading slower than Kontakt but it won't play a sound until the corresponding part is fully loaded - the Spitfire player really seems to need the pre-load buffers.

One advantage though is the fact that project file sizes remain much smaller with the Spitfire player since no complete Kontakt patches need to be saved with the project.
 
Pop Corn said:
This is the first time I've seen you say anything particularly negative about anything. I'm proud.

One of us! One of us!

Seriously though, I was a big fan of Spitfire but my interest started dwindling after a while. Around the release of BBCSO, I didn't understand the hype this time, but the marketing campaign was massive. It was everywhere at that time. Then the whole scoring competition extravaganza (excellent visibility for Spitfire, but perhaps the wrong kind of visibility.. ). After all that I lost all interest and any new product is just adding to the growing, seemingly abandonware-like content on their site. I'd much, much rather they quit the aggressive marketing, went back, made their core libraries as perfect as they can be, and invest in their player.

As you know, I was on the hunt for strings and brass libraries this BF. I considered Spitfire for all of 10 minutes. I went on their site, clicked "Strings", and there was 69 different options. Only strings. There's 200 libraries I can see on their site right now. Some tiny, some expansions, some really excellent creative stuff, but 200 libraries is crazy to me. I just see the vast majority of it as abandonware.

I look at the likes of Alex Wallbank (Cinematic Series) and the crazy stuff he could do with access to the rooms, gear, staff and clientele that Spitfire leverage. Maybe I'm wrong. But imagine having Alex Wallbank collaborating with Hans Zimmer, Abbey Road, AIR, BBC, etc etc.

All I know is that these company's marketing campaigns have become thinly veiled to me these days, and once you become even a little bit savvy to it, it's easy to see through the sophisticated branding, artsy trailers and minimalist aesthetic of their player. It all looks great, but there's a whole list of issues that go along with each library when you actually start using them.

There'll be nobody more happy than me if they release a genuinely game changing, new era of strings and sampling. SSS tone really is lovely, but that's no good if you're battling with it the whole time.

Thanks for sharing your experience Mark. It seems many people agree with you too.
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So well put... this is such a great summary of Spitfire. Generally, spitfire have fantastic samples that sound amazing... just poor editing and usability that trips them up. If they did as you said, went back and edited and made everything super polished (I mean, how much could that cost? A man year maybe? couple hundred k all in?) and then relaunched libraries as fully polished, that could tempt myself and many others back in. But continuously pumping out new, flawed libraries and not fixing them or their back catalog... no thanks.

Also - they own their own player and copyright protection now. Start allowing resale! Or at least demos!!!
 
mussnig said:
One of the reasons I haven't succumbed to AROOF and it's extensions yet is the player. I do have enough RAM (I guess) and I like the sound a lot. But the loading times are already a buzz killer to me. I have BBCSO Pro and I am pretty sure I would use it more if the player was performing better.

I still bought stuff like Fractured Strings. But there I don't mind the player so much because I most likely use at most a handful of instances.
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Oddly enough AROOF load times are really good. Much faster than bbc pro. And light years faster than Abbey Road 2.
 
Baronvonheadless said:
Oddly enough AROOF load times are really good. Much faster than bbc pro. And light years faster than Abbey Road 2.
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Less articulations to load, I suppose? I'm not sure. Not a tech guy.

With BBCSO, I find it's the first instrument that seems to take forever to load. If I keep one instance open then the others aren't so bad.
 
I wouldn't say I have any "regrets" to the extent they keep me up at night. But a few somewhat underwhelming purchases...

Ah man, I'm ancient enough to remember buying ProjectSAM Orchestral Brass Classic. ProjectSAM make some good stuff but that library wasn't among the best and I never got much use out of it.

I wouldn't say I regret buying Spitfire stuff but much of it has been ... a tad underwhelming. And obviously their marketing machine compounds the frustration because everything they release is supposedly the dawn of the future of sampling. I got Albion NEO and there's some beautiful textures and sounds in there, but the core articulations and band are... sort of OK but not all that useful. I don't make nearly as much music with it as I hoped I would, but it's not bad. Same thing goes for Albion ONE - I see why that library was popular as it opened up that orchestral sound to a lot of new people, but it's not really that useable other than blocking in the occasional idea or padding stuff out a bit. There's a lot of flagship SA stuff I don't own so I reserve judgement on some of their most famous and popular libraries - but one always gets the feeling it's not going to be quite as good as promised.

Equally frustrated with BBCSO Core. Sounds lovely (upper dynamics brass excluded...) and it's by no means bad but, you know, it just feels like a world class idea and set of resources given a deliberately average treatment. I get it's a sort of lower budget all-in-one orchestra so there wasn't the economic benefit to going large on dynamics and RRs, but there's so much there that is good it's a shame it ends up feeling a bit limited. Equally frustrating is that I feel the need to get Pro for the extra mics, instruments and flexibility but I know, ultimately, it's still not going to be THE all in one orchestral solution it claims to be. I'd pay double for a better version of it with more attention to detail, but I guess that's not economically viable.

8Dio has the same frustrations. I have a few of their libraries and I feel there's a lot of quality occasionally tarnished by some quite basic quality and programming issues. Again - it's not awful, it's just not quite the experience you hope for when you purchase. Don't think I've ever bought a knock-it-out-the-park library from them, but there's enough good stuff there that it keeps remaining tantalising but ultimately never fully delivers.
 
Corda1983 said:
8Dio has the same frustrations. I have a few of their libraries and I feel there's a lot of quality occasionally tarnished by some quite basic quality and programming issues. Again - it's not awful, it's just not quite the experience you hope for when you purchase. Don't think I've ever bought a knock-it-out-the-park library from them, but there's enough good stuff there that it keeps remaining tantalising but ultimately never fully delivers.
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This is a lot of the issues I had with 8Dio stuff, especially when first starting out. It's really unclear how limited a lot of libraries are, and I've gotten a lot which I ended up never using. On the topic of quality, Anthology has some weird panning issues, especially in the high strings, and I really don't like the mic mix page in 1990 Studio Grand.
Like you said, none of it is awful, but it never really delivers on what you hope to get out of them.
 
Hi,

53 pages of regrets I guess I am going to join the misery.

I play the bass, electric and acoustic guitars, my problem is my acoustic guitar I have is not perfect for recording but it does have a 1/4 jack but that picks up so much noise needs fixing and currently unrecordable so the other solution is to use a microphone but the space I have for recording is very bad for recording, it is very reflective and boxy sounding room not great for recording and I am not able to move or modify the room in anyway so the next best thing is sample libraries.

I have been looking for a long time for a good solid, simple acoustic strumming sample library, so sometime ago I purchased the advance acoustic guitar steel library by 8dio that was just a totally wrong decision and something I wish I never brought.

It’s not that the actual sound of the samples are bad it’s just it could not do what I wanted it to do. It was for a song for my album and the rhythm in the song was pretty complex I guess, it was in a triplet rhythm and it had lot of chord changes and knowing that I needed to program the rhythm using the interface they provided for steel string was just not going to work for me.

On top of that the advance guitar Steel library can’t do inversions of chords and my song had some basic inversions. Reading the manual it says they recorded a lot JAZZ chords, they do have a lot of chords and out of the chords they recorded they were still missing one of the chords I needed for my song which was a standard sus2, they didn’t think to record that chord but record nearly everything else, they even recorded a dominant 7 sus2 but a b7 when wanting a standard sus2 chord is not going to work.

So in the end I recorded my acoustic guitar using a microphone with the boxy room even so it sounds better than anything that library could ever do. It was money that I can't afford to lose really, though I guess for lead lines it is okay and I did use once, it was only for a lead line in another song but I regret that purchase a lot.

Out of the acoustic strumming guitar libraries I own I would say the best sounding is Kontakt's strumming acoustic 1 and 2. I have used them in some of my songs though they are limited to the actual loops they recorded and really if you want to make a full song out of those libraries it’s going to be pretty difficult to get something really unique and the user is going to have to mess around an awful lot to make that happen. Strum acoustic 1&2 can do sus2 chords but only strum acoustic 2 can do inversions using the bass function though only some patterns have that function. Maybe for small sections of a song that is not overly complicated Kontakts strumming acoustic 1 and 2 are pretty cool and work.

And that is probably the first two libraries I would recommend to someone looking for a strumming acoustic guitar pattern library.

I also brought Musiclab real guitar steel string 5 sometime ago and I thought THIS WAS the library that would change everything for me even after looking at some videos on YouTube. I said I am going to make the right purchase. However in the end I have yet to use it in a song, for some reason it just don't sound right to me and the interface is difficult to navigate. Musiclab guitar library does do sus2 chords and inversions and a lot of other stuff besides. it is not looped based like Kontakt's strum acoustic so the overall sound is nothing like Kontakt's strummed acoustic, maybe in a mix Musiclab could sound acceptable maybe good but I have not tried it in a mix so I don't know I just end up either using strum acoustic from Kontakt or record my acoustic guitar using the boxy sounding room.

These are purchases I do regret and still have not found that Acoustic guitar strum library that sounds good, that can do many chord types like sus2, sus4 chords that is simple to navigate and is simple to create a pattern and mix patterns and can do inversions with no problem.
 
lastburai said:
Hi,

53 pages of regrets I guess I am going to join the misery.

I play the bass, electric and acoustic guitars, my problem is my acoustic guitar I have is not perfect for recording but it does have a 1/4 jack but that picks up so much noise needs fixing and currently unrecordable so the other solution is to use a microphone but the space I have for recording is very bad for recording, it is very reflective and boxy sounding room not great for recording and I am not able to move or modify the room in anyway so the next best thing is sample libraries.

I have been looking for a long time for a good solid, simple acoustic strumming sample library, so sometime ago I purchased the advance acoustic guitar steel library by 8dio that was just a totally wrong decision and something I wish I never brought.

It’s not that the actual sound of the samples are bad it’s just it could not do what I wanted it to do. It was for a song for my album and the rhythm in the song was pretty complex I guess, it was in a triplet rhythm and it had lot of chord changes and knowing that I needed to program the rhythm using the interface they provided for steel string was just not going to work for me.

On top of that the advance guitar Steel library can’t do inversions of chords and my song had some basic inversions. Reading the manual it says they recorded a lot JAZZ chords, they do have a lot of chords and out of the chords they recorded they were still missing one of the chords I needed for my song which was a standard sus2, they didn’t think to record that chord but record nearly everything else, they even recorded a dominant 7 sus2 but a b7 when wanting a standard sus2 chord is not going to work.

So in the end I recorded my acoustic guitar using a microphone with the boxy room even so it sounds better than anything that library could ever do. It was money that I can't afford to lose really, though I guess for lead lines it is okay and I did use once, it was only for a lead line in another song but I regret that purchase a lot.

Out of the acoustic strumming guitar libraries I own I would say the best sounding is Kontakt's strumming acoustic 1 and 2. I have used them in some of my songs though they are limited to the actual loops they recorded and really if you want to make a full song out of those libraries it’s going to be pretty difficult to get something really unique and the user is going to have to mess around an awful lot to make that happen. Strum acoustic 1&2 can do sus2 chords but only strum acoustic 2 can do inversions using the bass function though only some patterns have that function. Maybe for small sections of a song that is not overly complicated Kontakts strumming acoustic 1 and 2 are pretty cool and work.

And that is probably the first two libraries I would recommend to someone looking for a strumming acoustic guitar pattern library.

I also brought Musiclab real guitar steel string 5 sometime ago and I thought THIS WAS the library that would change everything for me even after looking at some videos on YouTube. I said I am going to make the right purchase. However in the end I have yet to use it in a song, for some reason it just don't sound right to me and the interface is difficult to navigate. Musiclab guitar library does do sus2 chords and inversions and a lot of other stuff besides. it is not looped based like Kontakt's strum acoustic so the overall sound is nothing like Kontakt's strummed acoustic, maybe in a mix Musiclab could sound acceptable maybe good but I have not tried it in a mix so I don't know I just end up either using strum acoustic from Kontakt or record my acoustic guitar using the boxy sounding room.

These are purchases I do regret and still have not found that Acoustic guitar strum library that sounds good, that can do many chord types like sus2, sus4 chords that is simple to navigate and is simple to create a pattern and mix patterns and can do inversions with no problem.
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I don't know if this is what you're looking for but I recently purchased Session Guitarist Strummed Acoustic 2 and use it in combination with Scaler 2, blocking any notes generated that touch keyswitches using the free eaReckon midipolysher plugin. This enables me to produce unlimited chord types and inversions thereof. I admit I'm still experimenting with it but I'm very pleased with the results so far.
 
lastburai said:
I also brought Musiclab real guitar steel string 5 sometime ago and I thought THIS WAS the library that would change everything for me even after looking at some videos on YouTube. I said I am going to make the right purchase. However in the end I have yet to use it in a song, for some reason it just don't sound right to me and the interface is difficult to navigate. Musiclab guitar library does do sus2 chords and inversions and a lot of other stuff besides.
Click to expand...
This one frustrates me too. I think there's a great instrument in there somewhere but I too find the interface unfathomable and just don't have time to learn to use it properly.
 
andyhy said:
I don't know if this is what you're looking for but I recently purchased Session Guitarist Strummed Acoustic 2 and use it in combination with Scaler 2, blocking any notes generated that touch keyswitches using the free eaReckon midipolysher plugin. This enables me to produce unlimited chord types and inversions thereof. I admit I'm still experimenting with it but I'm very pleased with the results so far.
Click to expand...

Can I ask how are you able to get inversions of chords in Native Instruments Acoustic guitar strummer? As far as I know you can only get inversion of chords using NI acoustic guitar strummer 2 and then only using only the patterns that have a bass chord function.

I am not sure what scaler 2 is, it seems to help with chord creation not really sure, probably would not help me.

To be honest not looking to buy or currently don’t have money for a new strum library and to be real it probably won’t do what I want. Like I previously said NI acoustic strum 1&2 can do a lot, Acoustic strum 2 can do inversions but limited to the few patterns that support the bass feature, overall for me it takes a lot of time to get things I want it to do.

shropshirelad said:
This one frustrates me too. I think there's a great instrument in there somewhere but I too find the interface unfathomable and just don't have time to learn to use it properly.
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Yeah I agree with you on that the interface of music lab it just throws everything at the user, I just want some strummed chords for my track again I’ll reference NI strummed acoustic 1&2 it starts up you play a chord and that’s it, it works. Granted music lab does have the solo mode so it has that but really I am just looking for some strummed chords.

Also to do a SUS2 chord you have to add the root of the chord an octave above as the engine can’t distinguish between a SUS4 chord in 1st inversion and SUS2 chord in root position and that bugs me and I don’t like it. It is great it has a lot of chord options though.
 
Regret Aurora Choir by Aria Sound, and Edgy Guitar for Kontakt from PastToFutureReverbs.

Both unusable. No reply to a query sent to PastToFutureReverbs hasn’t helped.
 
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