Ableton Forum

I lurk the VI-Control forum every now and then when I need to research possible sample library purchases, and based on the lukewarm reception there, I think I'll pass on the entire NI Symphonic Series. NI have perfected the presentation of their products, so it's easy to get pulled in. Maybe I'll get the solo woods, though; I think there should be more love for the woodwind section.

I'm really curious of the price for Cinesamples' upcoming solo strings library; I'm prepared for a jaw drop, but just in case it's within my reach, I haven't bought the Embertone Intimate Strings bundle (on which I'll get a discount, because I own the Friedlander Violin lib). Orchestral Tools just released a "1st seat" string library, which is in the same territory, but the inevitable VI thread tells me that the Cinesamples or Embertone solo libraries will suit my needs better.

I started using Splice Sounds differently. Previously I was mostly browsing and squirreling away loops and samples with no specific purpose at the time for later use. Now I’ll be working on a track and think a muted guitar riff or somebody saying “get it girl” might work and I search for that in Splice Sounds, download some options, and drag them into Live directly from the Splice menu bar add-on. Awesome.

Crap. I just inserted purpose into a thread about no purpose.

The big flaw with Splice Sounds is still how it stores the samples you download which is Splice/Packs/Pack Producer/Pack Name/Sample Category/File. Makes sense in a “Let iTunes organize your library” type way but imagine using their handy in browser drum kit building function and then downloading 8 samples from 8 different packs. Good luck finding those samples to build your kit in your DAW.

Best you can do is immediately use their menu bar add-on which displays all the samples you downloaded in chronological order, but finding them a week later or in the middle of a bunch of recent downloads…

Some posts back I posted that it would be nice with plugins like Kick and Big Kick if there would be a similar plugin for other perc type instruments. Sample Magic (worst name ever, sounds like a “As seen on TV” product) did just that with Stacker. 3 sample players and a synth engine. Of course there are kicks but also snares, hats, and other perc types. You can also drop in your own samples. It also has delay and convolution reverb per track slot along with envelopes ,hi and low pass filters, and on/off key tracking option. Another useful feature is Scatter which lets you set a delay for each sound slot by moving blocks so you can visually see the comparable delays.

https://www.samplemagic.com/details/606/stacker

beats me wrote:Some posts back I posted that it would be nice with plugins like Kick and Big Kick if there would be a similar plugin for other perc type instruments. Sample Magic (worst name ever, sounds like a “As seen on TV” product) did just that with Stacker. 3 sample players and a synth engine. Of course there are kicks but also snares, hats, and other perc types. You can also drop in your own samples. It also has delay and convolution reverb per track slot along with envelopes ,hi and low pass filters, and on/off key tracking option. Another useful feature is Scatter which lets you set a delay for each sound slot by moving blocks so you can visually see the comparable delays.

https://www.samplemagic.com/details/606/stacker

that looks kinda cool.

+1 on lame name.

*bookmark*

Since NI still hasn’t announced Komplete 11 I bet they are still working on how to make “Now by subscription only!” sound appealing. Fuck.

beats me wrote:Since NI still hasn’t announced Komplete 11 I bet they are still working on how to make “Now by subscription only!” sound appealing.

this

I was thinking that too. With the way they've been discounting it every year, seemed like they would be ready for that sort of model.

Maybe if you have a limited amount of NI software a subscription might sound like a great idea, but if like me you have KU10 (with many upgrades to get there) renting everything after that doesn’t sound appealing AT ALL. I don’t know if that decision would make me buy more libraries up front or make me mark all NI email as spam in personal protest. There’s a lot of competition out there and there is already a ton of NI stuff I own that I don’t use.

NI and Waves needs a Steve Jobs type to go in and go “We are making 5 products. Period. Discontinue the rest.”

Apple needs that too these days

Agreed.

And if NI was run like Apple today they would release several versions of the same vintage compressor but only put the threshold adjustment on the most expensive version.

Is Audio Finder still the best option for tagging and organizing samples? I increased my Splice account from 100 to 300 samples a month and if I don’t use a sample in a track as soon as I download it it’s lost in a mess of folders never to be found again except by random chance.

beats me wrote:Is Audio Finder still the best option for tagging and organizing samples? I increased my Splice account from 100 to 300 samples a month and if I don’t use a sample in a track as soon as I download it it’s lost in a mess of folders never to be found again except by random chance.

it's a good program, I'm a crap organizer myself and I kind of wish it wasn't so wide open, you really have to be up on indexing your sample library for it to be useful, so I mainly use it for preview and VST/Au management features.

beats me wrote:Maybe if you have a limited amount of NI software a subscription might sound like a great idea, but if like me you have KU10 (with many upgrades to get there) renting everything after that doesn’t sound appealing AT ALL. I don’t know if that decision would make me buy more libraries up front or make me mark all NI email as spam in personal protest. There’s a lot of competition out there and there is already a ton of NI stuff I own that I don’t use.

NI and Waves needs a Steve Jobs type to go in and go “We are making 5 products. Period. Discontinue the rest.”

If they do that I'm just going to buy upgrades to Kontakt only. I like what I have of theirs, but all I use on a regular basis from them is Kontakt and Maschine, that's it. I upgrade Komplete every other year so the subscription would have to be dirt cheap to make sense for me.

Machinesworking wrote:

beats me wrote:Is Audio Finder still the best option for tagging and organizing samples? I increased my Splice account from 100 to 300 samples a month and if I don’t use a sample in a track as soon as I download it it’s lost in a mess of folders never to be found again except by random chance.

it's a good program, I'm a crap organizer myself and I kind of wish it wasn't so wide open, you really have to be up on indexing your sample library for it to be useful, so I mainly use it for preview and VST/Au management features.

I mainly need it for Splice. If I download 10 snare samples they could potentially end up in 10 different folders if they are from 10 different libraries. Splice really needs to make their own library viewer app with tagging. Samples are already tagged in the database on their site so it really shouldn’t be that difficult. They also have a menu bar app you can pull samples from (only listed in the order you downloaded them in) so this kind of programming shouldn’t be completely alien to them.

I watched some tutorials on Audio Finder and was kind of disappointed how much manual labor is still involved. I could go through my library thus far which would be time consuming and it doesn’t seem like it would simplify my above issue of 10 snare samples in 10 different folders. I would still have to locate each to tag in Audio Finder as far as I know.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fi-s ... oid-tablet#/

Intriguing