Just got a notice about dash having to remove the daVector4 because of copyright problems. I always wondered about that, considering Refx's problems with the fabled 'nexxus'. Anyway, if you've got Reaktor, better get this while you can. Seems the closest we'll get to a wavestation for a while!

Yeah-it's probably because of the VSTi Wavestation Korg showed at Musik Messe.Now THAT'S going to be worth checking out when it comes out.
The Vector 4AD is one of the better Reaktor ensembles out there.If you own Reaktor(or if you're waiting for Sessions),you should have this ensemble.
ew

This is probably my favorite Reaktor instrument.

Robert

Yep, one of the best emulations, actually way beyond the original feature wise.

I always wondered how Dash got away with using the WS samples, same thing for the JD clone, daJayDee ? It is also one of those synths from the 90's that deserved a better fate which I'm happy it have in my Reaktor toolkit.

Even if I had to use my own multisamples these two synths would still rock.

That's been one of the purchases I've been delaying, so thanks for the heads up! I just put in my purchase for it right now to make sure I can still get it! I used to own a Wavestation, so I kinda wanted to replace it for $10.

Where's the info about them pulling it though?

Devon

x_bruce wrote:

Yep, one of the best emulations, actually way beyond the original feature wise.

I miss the fx routings-with R4 and the "wireless" routings,you might be able to do it.
I'm playing with tying wave sequence start point to velocity,etc. like on the original.
The Wavestation ROM waves were available as a Reaktor .map file in the files section of the SynC Modular users group at Yahoo.If I remember,they were posted by ik of DirtBag fame
ew

More on the Dash clone front-they're discontinuing the Roland clones due to copyright issues.
If you want any of the Roland clones,order now;
http://www.dashsynthesis.com/?platform=Deleted
ew

Just some extra info, all Korg and Roland clones will be released again soon. But with new names and new wave material. This way we won't do any copyright isues anymore. The problem were exactly that, we used names we couldn't and wave material that is copyrighted.

But they can't copyright how a synth works, unless you do a copy of it using schemes or something like that. Wich we didn't.

So stay tunned, new synths are comming up. We got some help from a big sample company, so the synths will actually sound better. Also, daVector may be name VectorLive and will have totally new, fresh, non-copyrighted samples. And they will sound similar to the Wavestation ones. Not exactly, but similar. I will also have to create new presets, since you can't use the ROM/RAM ones that comes with the Wavestation. Due to copyright isues too. But that's not a big deal, most people want to hability to do new sounds, and not the darn old ones.

Actually, I bet Roland or Korg could not actually copyright some type of samples, but is better not to fight with the BIG guys.

BTW: Our server is currently down now, I contacted support, hope to get it back ASAP. And all the files from Roland and Korg should be removed latter today, sorry.

Regards, WilliamK

I noticed that last time I ordered that the Jupiter 8 clone was gone but some other Rolands were still there. I started to get the Jupiter 8 just because I always wanted the real thing. The JP-9100 was my second favorite and I hate to see it go. I'm glad I got on when I did and wipped out my Dash wish list. Now I'm just waiting to see what they do with Reaktor 4.

Robert

Will the original daVector4D work in sessions. If yes, I will be sorry to see it go. If not, can't wait for the new one

prog

DAMN, am I happy I downloaded daVector4D today at work. I was going to wait until I got home, but decided to do it right away. So happy for this board to give me the heads up!

Devon

William, I take it that Roland were objecting to the use of their copyrighted names, not samples. They couldn't object to DaAlpha2k could they, that has non copyrightable alpha juno samples
doesn't it


good luck


sealed

daAlfa2k VST doesn't use anything copyrighted, so they can't say anything. But others used Juno, Jupiter and other names that are copyrighted. Actually, I think that reFX will also get into trouble. Since Roland told me that Juno is a registered name under Roland Corporation. So no one can make a musical product that has Juno on the name.

Anyway, the site is back online. Burstnet, our hoster, had some problems with the main router. Actually, a stupid problem. A lame guy tried to upgrade the flash memory of the router, and it corrupted the thing. But now is fixed, sight...

Regards, WilliamK

Thanks William

Here is what the propellerheads say about rebirth

"It's a well-known fact that the sounds of the TB-303, the TR-808 and the TR-909 - once combined - form the backbone in every techno musician's arsenal of sonic weaponry. "

So, it must be the title of the product, not the description they are objecting to. This could be a big issue for me in the near future

Sealed

Roland in particular has people looking for anything that Roland doesn't like or has an interest in. I've been down this road with them before over midi files.

Their lawyer contacted a midi file site I was involved in and was trying to bully us into removing specific music titles - including classical works, stating Roland had a copyright on these midi file titles since they marketed the files as part of the Sound Canvas line. I pointed out that our sequences were not copies of Roland midi files, which would be illegal. When asked to have a independent source have a look at the files for similarities or whether they had any midi signatures (I used to do this on midi and patch content in order for the latter to be removed from "Big Al's one million patches I didn't write" collections). Roland wouldn't budge.

It was so blatently absurd that my entertainment lawyer laughed when I took the letter they sent for him to read. Then he told me they'd win unless we could outspend them and counter-sue to get the money back for legal fees and (I love this) distress and other damages once they lost.

Not having deep pockets I called the minion from their American law offices and lied about having copyrights to some of the sequences in question and they flinched. My partner in the site continued using these files and after lambasting the lawyer (always a fun activity) I never heard from him again.

So I was amazed that Roland wasn't threatening William a long time ago.

x_bruce wrote:

Not having deep pockets I called the minion from their American law offices and lied about having copyrights to some of the sequences in question and they flinched. My partner in the site continued using these files and after lambasting the lawyer (always a fun activity) I never heard from him again. .

Wow, well done Bruce, you have my admiration. Roland may have done much, but they don't own bloody everything!

patchworkcat,

only a person with nothing worth taking and having no means to pay a judgement in the worst case scenerio should do something like that.

it has made me Roland-phobic. I hate that company so badly it isn't funny.

x_bruce wrote:

patchworkcat, only a person with nothing worth taking and having no means to pay a judgement in the worst case scenerio should do something like that. it has made me Roland-phobic. I hate that company so badly it isn't funny.

And they made a fuss about a Buzz dll. I mean it's free, it's good stuff but really!
Yeah Bruce that' the only good thing about being broke, nobody's going to sue you.

Roland is extremely paranoid and sue happy. You can't even sample their keyboards and use it in a sound bank for multimedia, but Yamaha, and Korg don't care. (IE you cannot write a song, sample down their individual samples, and then use a tracker to trigger those recorded individual samples) I think that's stupid after you already paid their exhorbitant prices for their product in the first place to not be able to use it in a 'musical' way. Dumb.

Devon

Devon

I assume you mean you can't use samples from their sample keyboards,lnot their old analogues, lots of people have done that.

cheers

Definitely Preset Patches are a problem (as the actual sound design/programming is copyrighted) but I didn't think the same applied for patches you programmed yourself?

I guess Spectrum would be able to clarify?

Yes, like the Roland JV-1080 and the like. I think it's stupid that I can write a song and record the final results and that's fine, but I can't record the individual samples, and get the computer to trigger it for me within my own song in a production. The old analog boards are not an issue that I'm aware of with all the TR808/909 samples out there.

Devon

Really though, we then end users don't have anything to worry about really, I have many soundfonts from roland gear- for example the 1080 piano. I can see Roland making a stink about someone making a virtual 1080 plug using the samples and preset names though. Im sure that in the future, yo uwill see products like that from Roland, so they are protecting their future...(not that I think that this is necessarily right, I can just see where they are coming from)

ew wrote:

More on the Dash clone front-they're discontinuing the Roland clones due to copyright issues. If you want any of the Roland clones,order now; http://www.dashsynthesis.com/?platform=Deleted ew

I went for the D50 clone, but the PayPal system somehow fucked up. This is the third time PayPal has failed on me. I fucking hate it when online payment screws up and I will never again buy stuff in online shops that use PayPal.

William, is there any way around this crap?

Hello, sorry for the problems bud. Some other people also had problems with PayPal, damn... but is still the best system I ever tried, nothing is perfect. I will send you the copy and you can latter mail me the money, or considerer it a bonus for the problems you had.

Regards, WilliamK

Will

I am just about to pre-order Reaktor Sessions. Will all your Reaktor ensembles work in Reaktor Sessions?

Also, is there any sort of discount if I ordered 4 or 5 of your ensembles in one order? Like a bundle offer or something. Most companies have something like this but I don't see anything on your site.

x_bruce wrote:

Then he told me they'd win unless we could outspend them and counter-sue to get the money back for legal fees and (I love this) distress and other damages once they lost.

Not being a lawyer, I've often not understood this. Suppose a big corporation is suing someone. How does their deep pockets guarantee success? For example Bruce, in your case it sounds like the bottom-line is very simple. Could you not use a very small legal team and show up at court, answer the questions, state your case and go home? What does money allow them to do, that would make you lose a case? I can see money being a factor in complicated cases, but wouldn't yours have been simple?

As for copyright samples - Are their samples (say from a JV-1010) that recognizable after effects and mixing, that they could legally prove it was their sound? Furthermore, how would Roland ever possibly know if you are using a JV-1010 or if you sampled it and are using the samples on your daw?

sluggo

Sluggo, my sister is a lawyer in one of the top three biggest firms in our state, and we've talked about things like this in the past. Basically what happens is that the side with all the money will just file countless briefs/motions to the court, thus delaying any real action, and costing the other party excesive amounts of money in legal fee's. So technically, if you are not rich, it becomes very difficult to battle a company with deep pockets outside of class action suits.

Can you hire some teenager to go to court and act as legal counsel while they file all those useless motions? That wouldn't cost too much. heck, get an immigrant kid! (no offense to immigrants btw, just a joke).

Alex wrote:

I am just about to pre-order Reaktor Sessions. Will all your Reaktor ensembles work in Reaktor Sessions?

NI Says it will, so I count on theyre word. But I can't promisse anything.

Alex wrote:

Also, is there any sort of discount if I ordered 4 or 5 of your ensembles in one order? Like a bundle offer or something. Most companies have something like this but I don't see anything on your site.

The prices are allready too low, so we can't give much more discounts. Also, those prices are actually going up on the next days - can't say when yet. So rush on.

Regards, WilliamK

sluggo wrote:

Can you hire some teenager to go to court and act as legal counsel while they file all those useless motions? That wouldn't cost too much. heck, get an immigrant kid! (no offense to immigrants btw, just a joke).

Not much of one. Anyway can you imagine what a highly paid lawyer would do to you if you turned up with unqualified counsel, for even an hour?
The problem is real.
Basic rule of Roland- If you are broke, do what you like and then do what they ask you. If you have money don't do what you like or face being broke. If you are as rich as Roland, buy the fucker and do what you like.

WilliamK wrote:

Hello, sorry for the problems bud. Some other people also had problems with PayPal, damn... but is still the best system I ever tried, nothing is perfect. I will send you the copy and you can latter mail me the money, or considerer it a bonus for the problems you had. Regards, WilliamK

Thanks, William. Wrt to payment, pls see the private email I sent to you.

WilliamK wrote:

The prices are allready too low, so we can't give much more discounts. Also, those prices are actually going up on the next days - can't say when yet. So rush on. Regards, WilliamK

No offense WilliamK but spending $50 on 5 Reaktor ensembles seems like an awful lot to me. I was having a "fuck-it" moment where I didn't really care but I think I'll leave it now.

I can't believe after talking about all that LowPricePolicy crap you are talking about increasing your prices. That's just contradicting and isn't gonna help your business IMO.

Telling your customers that prices are gonna go up soon but can't say when "so rush on" is just another WilliamK scam where you are trying to make people rush out and buy your stuff. This isn't the answer I wanted. You should just have kept quiet about this. It hasn't gained my respect at all. You have just lost a customer.

In fact, I am now very suspicious about the whole Roland thing. You say that the daVector4 ensemble will be removed from your site and will no longer be available. However, several days on and it is still there available to buy. Infact several people have come here and said they have 'panic bought' it now knowing about it being discontinued. I think you are a scam artist. I expect no-one had bought it for a while so to boost sales you come out with some cock and bull.

Alex wrote:

I can't believe after talking about all that LowPricePolicy crap you are talking about increasing your prices. That's just contradicting and isn't gonna help your business IMO.

That's entirely unfair. Dash prices are only high compared with freeware. Even if they go up a bit, well they are cheap. If you don't like it, don't buy- yes?
As for the rest of your post, stop trying to make it sound like you don't hate Dash

If Reaktor ensembles are pretty much the same as synths, then $10 each IS pretty cheap. And as for the time limit on the ensembles that will be taken down, the lawyers who sent the cease and desist probably have specified a date by which they must be removed. Why pull them down before that? Lord knows the lawyers would recommend that their clients not bother...

Mind you, I don't have Reaktor so I don't know what goes into making and ensemble. I have Dynamo and all it really does for me is force me to put a CD in the drive every once in a while... It makes me feel like inserting a CD into the good folks at NI every once in a while...

patchworkcat wrote:

That's entirely unfair. Dash prices are only high compared with freeware

By the way, I was talking about the Reaktor ensembles, just to make that clear.

Of course they are a high price compared to freeware...that's obvious even to a child. Some money is more than no money

patchworkcat wrote:

As for the rest of your post, stop trying to make it sound like you don't hate Dash

WTF are you talking about. I don't hate dash. I just hate it when companies try and trick people into rushing out and buying there products be it through future price increases or 'end of lining'. That personally puts me off altogether.

Oh, and then when companies rave on about LowPricePolicies and then tell me to rush on and buy their stuff before their prices go up.

pough wrote:

I have Dynamo and all it really does for me is force me to put a CD in the drive every once in a while... It makes me feel like inserting a CD into the good folks at NI every once in a while...

Yeah...that is damn annoying.

Have you put in a pre-order for Reaktor Sessions yet?

No. I'm still not convinced that I need it. I got Dynamo for cheap, so if I really get frustrated I will just uninstall it and maybe send the CD to NI so they can insert it wherever it fucking pleases them the most.

Regarding law:
when I said deep pockets I was referring to the various hour billing crap the average large company will use. They have people on retainer that aren't billing them per hour, they're essentially wage slaves at very high wages. But it is not uncommon for a large company to call the dogs out on a small company they want to have their way with. My response was boneheaded and out of frustration. They easily could have gotten an injunction and shut the site down. So no matter how legally sound we are talking tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands in legal fees where no one wins except the scumbags.

Regarding Dash:
William, it does seem contradictory to discuss low prices for synths and ensembles and then raise your prices on the Reaktor (and other?) line(s). It also means I don't place an order for four or five ensembles I'd intended to purchase next month.
Alex has a point about disingenious marketing. I think your ensembles are fantastic value and paid more in the past so it's not that I object to your regular pricing.

In any case, lets hope cooler heads prevail.

A few words, first, daVector is NOT for days on the site, after I sent the email telling I was going to remove. So please Alex, understand, this is not a scam. Roland did actually contacted us, I can send you all the emails if you want.

Also, I'm not going to raise prices from 10U$ to 100U$!!! If you don't like payment much for Reaktor files, just don't. But a lot of people apreciate all the work and efforts we put on those files.

DashSynthesis.com is still under the LowPricePolicy, even if I do a 100% raise it will still be under low-prices.

Regards, WilliamK

WilliamK wrote:

If you don't like payment much for Reaktor files, just don't. But a lot of people apreciate all the work and efforts we put on those files.

I didn't say I didn't like paying for Reaktor files. I was about to buy 5 ensembles when I posted asking about any bundle offers and then you come back telling me I must "rush" to buy because you are gonna increase the price. This IMO is "hard-sell". Just as someone shows interest you try and reel them in faster and everyone else reading the forum at the same time. It just doesn't rub off with all of us and you have lost my custom and others through these sorts of statements. People just don't like to be pressured like that and I for one like to know where I stand.

WilliamK wrote:

DashSynthesis.com is still under the LowPricePolicy, even if I do a 100% raise it will still be under low-prices.

So you think you can double the price of your files and still think people will believe all that LowPrice hype. Even if you were originally serious about the whole LowPricePolicy business you have now made a mockery out of the whole thing.

Having said this I am still not sure that you did not just say these things about price increases and Roland to make people "rush on"

Alex, if you don't trust me, there is nothing I can do. All I did was tell you that prices are going to be up, so giving a bundle-discount would be insane. That's all.

About Roland, we got the email from this office:
Lawrence Y. Iser, Esq.
GREENBERG GLUSKER
1900 Avenue of the Stars, 21st Floor
Los Angeles, California 90067
Telephone: 310.201.7411
www.ggfirm.com

But I can't put a copy here, since on the email it says:

**************************
* Confidentiality Notice *
**************************

This message is intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) and is intended to be privileged and confidential within the attorney client privilege. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender and delete all copies of this email message along with all attachments. Thank you.

Wk

That's the same law firm I dealt with back in '97.

Bastards... (where's a 'fuck you' middle finger emoticon when you need it?)

x_bruce wrote:

Bastards... (where's a 'fuck you' middle finger emoticon when you need it?)

Maybe Roland owns the copyright on it and won't let it be used anywhere else... ?

EDIT: Am I allowed to use the word Roland in my posts?

WilliamK

I will give you the benefit of the doubt

I really do want to buy some ensembles from you but I think that you throwing a spanner in the works about price increases is not really fair to us Dynamo ---> Reaktor Sessions upgraders. We are not even going to own Reaktor Sessions and have the capability to use your synths until May 9th. That's why I got a bit annoyed. I want some ensembles but I do not want to feel pressured into buying them before I even own the engine to run them in.

Hope this explains a little where I am coming from.

Well you got off a good one pough. I actually laughed out loud. Style points for the man.

Seeing that law office name legitimizes what William is saying as far as I'm concerned regarding the R company getting the dogs out for Dash.

I'll say something nice about a hardware synth company, actually two:
Waldorf - stellar customer service and products that genuinely have sonic signatures and make no bones about it. They are proud of what they make and deservedly so.
Novation - I don't care if people don't like the Supernova 2 or Nova 2 engines that use effects to create wonderful timbres, the synths are great sounding all the way down to the K-Station. The build quality is excellent and the design so simple it literally confused me for a day or so.

Of all the hardware I used to own I miss the Nova II and microWave XT most with the K5000s close behind. For that matter Kawai was stellar in it's customer service too along with literal service.

These are exemplary companies as far as I'm concerned. Though it has some troubles Native Instruments is the closest thing to the commercial hardware companies. And in my experience rgc:audio, VirSyn, and Big Tick have exceptional track histories in the independent market.

Alex wrote:

WilliamK I will give you the benefit of the doubt I really do want to buy some ensembles from you but I think that you throwing a spanner in the works about price increases is not really fair to us Dynamo ---> Reaktor Sessions upgraders. We are not even going to own Reaktor Sessions and have the capability to use your synths until May 9th. That's why I got a bit annoyed. I want some ensembles but I do not want to feel pressured into buying them before I even own the engine to run them in. Hope this explains a little where I am coming from.

Anyway....due to the pressure I just ordered two of your Reaktor ensembles. ...can't use them til May 9th though when I get Reaktor Sessions.

Actually. Can I use your ensembles in the Reaktor 3 demo? Just to give them a spin until my NI order comes?