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Changes in marketing strategies from sample developers.


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Posted
Like everyone else sample developers have a lot of lost revenue from piracy. In an attempt to combat this problem we are being flooded with sample "players" such as Atmosphere and the Plugsound batch. The problem is what happens to your samples when the player is no longer supported. If a company goes out of business, does not support the latest operating system, or just chooses to avoid Audio Units or other future virtual instrument specs then you have lost everything. I think about this every time I consider ordering one of these players. Then there is the issue of becoming familiar with your sampler, the ability to edit loop points, velocity crossover, or even save your own patches. I don’t blame them for fighting, but I’m afraid I’ll be hurt more than the person stealing the samples. In the long run, will it make a difference. Is there anything out that has not been cracked? Reason, Acid, Reaktor and every other music program I know has been cracked. Last week I picked up SonicStation. It came with a folder of samples, plus separate folders with patches for Kontakt, Halion and the Emagic sampler. This seems to go in a entirely different direction. Instead of wrapping the samples in a player they are basically saying “choose your player and we will support it”. I know GigaStudio is a planned update. Unlike that Pro Samples format from Best Service, multiple formates does not mean you end up with 200 meg of each type totalling to 1 Gig total. The samples are all in AIF format and sampler specific patches point to those common AIF files. This is great for me because I have never had a translator work well, including the one from Chicken Systems. It is great being able to buy one sample set and play it in my various software samplers with little hassle. So now we have two opposing movements. Isolationism and open format. A lot of companies are choosing isolationism with their preparatory sample players with the samples wrapped tightly inside, but I am really pulling for the open format movement. As soft samplers become better and cheaper it is commonplace for a musician to own multiple formats. I’m very happy with the combination of GigaStudio and Kontakt. I really hope more companies move in this direction. In fact, I may even take another look at that Best Service series. There may not be many AIF files, but at least I can use them in all my soft synths and a lot of new hardware workstations. Robert

This post edited for speling.

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Posted
IMO, it is sad how many plug-in and driver formats we all have to put up with. It's quite ridiculous when you think about it. All digital audio should be delivered as Broadcast WAV files, but I'd tolerate AIF, even if it is only commonly used on a few but major platform exclusively for Mac. SDII files are impossible to open on a Windows PC (someone correct me if that's changed) and just about every stand-alone DAW and Windows app works with WAV files natively.
Posted
Wave files are becoming more and more the standard. Even in Pro Tools 6. Due to bit depth and sample rate limits, the .aif files are losing favor. Maybe we are heading in a standardized direction. I hope so.

Jotown:)

 

"It's all good: Except when it's Great"

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