Alchemy Player released! - Comes w/ free Alchemy Sound banks

[elxicano]

Here's the message from Camel Audio:

Hi,

I just posted on our forum, but I am cross-posting here since we're hoping that our new plugin Alchemy Player will appeal to those of you who haven't got Alchemy.

Alchemy Player is for people who don't want to create their own sounds or don't yet have the cash for Alchemy, but who want access to our library of soundbanks from people like BigTone and Biolabs. It costs $59 / €49 / £39 and we're bundling it free with our soundbanks - so when you first purchase a soundbank from us, you get a total of 300 sounds (each with 8 variations) for $59. Alchemy Player gives users access to the simple interface of Alchemy only - so its great for refining sounds with the perform section or morphing between variations with the remix pad, but you can't create your own sounds or load presets aside from the commercial banks from us.

Check out Alchemy Player

This is good news for the Alchemy community since it will allow us to focus more resources on creating the very best Alchemy soundbanks, and thus work with more great sound designers. Also, we hope that some of the people who buy Alchemy Player will choose to upgrade to the full version (you get 3 weeks of full functionality by choosing to try full version from File menu), thus further expanding the Alchemy userbase and allowing us focus more effort on making it even better. Even those of you who have Alchemy but don't use presets benefit from our soundbank line - feedback from sound designers often leads to us adding new features and there is also the more obvious side of providing us with funds to blow you all away with Alchemy 2. Don't worry we are commited as ever to making Alchemy as powerful a synth as possible, and soundbank line helps rather than hinders that

We're also pleased to announce two new soundbanks - Cinematic and Dance&Trance. Cinematic is perfect for people scoring for film, TV and such like, or who write ambient music - sound designers include KvR regulars such as Martin Walker, Artvera, Luftrum, bManic, Cyforce, Ugo, & Himalaya.

Listen to Cinematic Demos

Dance&Trance is one primarily for dance music producers (you'd never have guessed from the name :hihi: ) - its got what I think you'll agree are some rather nice basses, synths and arps - sound designers include Bryan Lee, Adam Van Baker, Junkie XL, bManic, Ugo, Himalaya, Ole Jeppesen & BigTone.

Listen to Dance&Trance Demos

Alchemy owners can log in to their accounts to get a 50% discount on their choice of soundbank:

Alchemy Owners - Log in to get 50% Off a Soundbank


Cheers
Ben

[dum]

the 'player' idea is a very good one.
Isn't it Native Instruments who started that ?


Also, even though I don't really go for soundbanks etc, I think selling such content frequently at the right price is THE way to generate revenue from your userbase, rather than selling code prematurely and too frequently putting out paid upgrades which invariably involve holding features back intentionally to bundle with the next paid upgrade
[/mini rant]

[elxicano]

the 'player' idea is a very good one.
Isn't it Native Instruments who started that ?


Also, even though I don't really go for soundbanks etc, I think selling such content frequently at the right price is THE way to generate revenue from your userbase, rather than selling code prematurely and too frequently putting out paid upgrades which invariably involve holding features back intentionally to bundle with the next paid upgrade
[/mini rant]

I couldn't agree more with the "mini rant."

I believe that NI did start the whole player idea, as a way of generating revenue through soundpacks.

I've seen other synths that were simply "player" synths such as the now free Ohmforce Symtohm Performer Edition: http://www.ohmforce.com/ViewProduct.do?p=SymptohmPE which lacked the tweakers guts of Symtohm Melohman, but did have all the presets. What they didn't do, was, release additional pay-for soundbanks. I actually wish they would... Ohmforce IMHO is a cool company with great products, that just hasn't come out with anything new in a while (although I have to admit their products are rock solid as is).

[LoopStationZebra]

^Indeed.

Another case where Ableton can look to a winner like Camel Audio and get an idea or two. *hint*Max runtime*hint*

fwiw, The Alchemy presets are among the best I've ever heard and there's several I've used without altering one bit.

[mholloway]

Weird....I mean no disrespect as this is purely a matter of personal taste, but the Alchemy presets are, to my ears, some of the cheesiest, chintziest and generally most-unusable I have ever come across. Which is weird because the synth itself is simply one of the most powerful and flexible ever, hands down. The idea of an alchemy player makes me sick, as it bypasses literally everything that is good about this synth and focuses solely on what are, to my mind, its worst aspects -- the cheese-ball presets.

I'm not even "against" presets. I like, use and tweak them regularly...from other synths. The "player" ideas are, I'm sure, good business. But from a creative standpoint they kind of smell like......death.

-M

[LoopStationZebra]

Well. Eh. There's a lot of crap cheezzzeball disco patches, to be sure. But there's some pure gold in terms of soundscape patches.

[dum]

I like the player ideas because they are priced sensibly, and they are actually pretty tweakable. I've got the free kore player on my netbook, and the freebie soundbanks to go with it from Native Instruments. There's 8 tweakable parameters for modulating including mutes, 8 assignable snapshots and a XY remix pad to morph between the snapshots. The 'preset' is just a starting point really for a mini-patch..

For my uses, I just look at these players as limited synths or sample sets, and they're usually 50 bucks so I'd say that's pretty sensible. I haven't bought any though, but I think they're a good idea. Native Instruments sell quite a bit of content, I think it's pretty decent of them to provide a free 'player' as opposed to making you buy the full version of battery or kontakt or whatever synth - if all you want to do is use the soundbank as-is.

You could also look at them as extended demos for assessing the aural qualities of the full instrument, without timeouts etc.


But I agree about the Alchemy presets being kind of cheezeball, but to be honest I think that about 80% of the presets I come across.

[dazzer]

The Alchemy player doesn't play the normal presets anyway, it only plays the ones in the paid-for soundbanks, which are not cheesy at all, IMO.

Players are cool. I got Steven Slate Drums (Kontakt Player) and Urban Arsenal 2 (Kore Player), both got wicked sounds.

The death of creativity? How overly-dramatic and wrong can a person be?

[mholloway]

The death of creativity? How overly-dramatic and wrong can a person be?

It's just a point of view. The cost of four of those soundbanks is the cost of the synth itself. I feel the creative potential of that synth is huge, whereas a player of four sample banks, well, less-so. But I guess I should just shut my mouth and be happy we have the synth at all (seriously!)

-M

[elxicano]

The death of creativity? How overly-dramatic and wrong can a person be?

It's just a point of view. The cost of four of those soundbanks is the cost of the synth itself. I feel the creative potential of that synth is huge, whereas a player of four sample banks, well, less-so. But I guess I should just shut my mouth and be happy we have the synth at all (seriously!)

-M

Don't forget that there's a lot of people that are strictly preset users and you have to admit... Alchemy is a tweakers wet dream, which I can only imagine could be intimidating for some.

I personally think of the player version as an introductory version, which I can only imagine that Camel Audio is hoping will lead to more sales of the full version. I can't see anything wrong with that.

I do have to agree that seeing it as the death of creativity is wrong (yes you said it's your point of view, but I don't just disagree with you, I really do think you're wrong). Creativity comes in so many different ways for so many different people. There's an "artist" gaining attention for his work of cutting up subway (the train, not the fast food chain) advertisements and creating alternate images which some consider art. People consider that as creativity (as well as vandalism) although he didn't create the initial images. The point being, the important part is what you create and not what you create with. Perhaps you find presets stifling for you (myself included too) but for others they're pure inspiration (regardless of how cheesy you find them).

[ZenPunkHippy]

Thanks for posting here about the new Alchemy Player elxicano

It's great to see positive feedback from Alchemy users. We (Camel Audio) have been working hard for over a year now making sure Alchemy is as bug free as possible, implementing many of the features requested by our users and expanding the Factory preset and sample library, all of which has been free to registered users. None of this would be possible without your continued support

Now that we're confident Alchemy is rock solid you are going to see a lot more add-on banks released over the next year. We like to think of each Alchemy preset as an individual instrument that is expressive and playable, so the Alchemy Player is really the logical extension of this concept. For musicians who aren't inclined towards creating their own sounds - and there are a lot of people in this category, strange as it may seem to the hardcore synth geeks out there - Alchemy Player lets them access 150 unique sounds in each add-on bank without needing to invest in the full version of Alchemy, or learn the advanced interface.

It's not always possible to please everyone with the sounds we release, and a lot of what we like is down to personal taste. I find plenty of musical inspiration in the Alchemy preset libraries, even if just one preset triggers a new idea for a track, but there are also presets that don't work for my sound that other people really love.

We are always interested in hearing new sounds from our users so if you want to share your own presets with other users, log in to your support account and use the link on the User Library page to upload a zip file containing your presets (and any samples not included with the Factory library, being careful to observe copyright of course!!). We're happy to make those presets available to other users. If the presets meet the standards set out in the sound designer guidelines, and we receive good feedback from our users, we will certainly consider including the presets in the Factory library. In the long term, this will help us provide a better library of presets for the type of music Alchemy users are interested in creating

If you have any questions, please let us know.

Peace,
Andy.

[dazzer]

It's just a point of view.

Absolutely