KVR Audio

sbangs_air · Post by **sbangs_air** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:03 pm

If you would like to see some of the new features check out or series of videos showing them off here http://www.airmusictech.com/product/loom-ii

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:17 pm

Cool

Quick question I couldn't find in the "what's new": I seem to remember you mentioning a while ago that Loom 2 may have the ability to load longer audio samples. Is that the case?

Cheers,

Tom

paradisebunny · Post by **paradisebunny** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:21 pm

uh cool! gonna check it out later tonight. is there a timeframe of how long the upgrade offer is available?

sbangs_air · Post by **sbangs_air** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:24 pm

ThomasHelzle wrote:Cool

Quick question I couldn't find in the "what's new": I seem to remember you mentioning a while ago that Loom 2 may have the ability to load longer audio samples. Is that the case?

Cheers,

Tom

Yes that is supported 15 day trial is now up on the website

OreoSplitter · Post by **OreoSplitter** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:25 pm

They must have jumped on the propellerhead bandwagon of doing very little and asking a lot.

sbangs_air · Post by **sbangs_air** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:26 pm

paradisebunny wrote:uh cool! gonna check it out later tonight. is there a timeframe of how long the upgrade offer is available?

We aim to offer this until atleast November, thanks for your interest.

sbangs_air · Post by **sbangs_air** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:28 pm

OreoSplitter wrote:They must have jumped on the propellerhead bandwagon of doing very little and asking a lot.

I would encourage you to try the demo as you will see the update is far from trivial.
Its a shame some competitors have jumped on the bashing wagon

fluffy_little_something · Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:48 pm

sbangs_air wrote:Hi Guys,

Sorry to hear your not entirely happy with the upgrade, as a developer unfortunately to keep funding development you do need a revenue stream. This means that major increases in features need to be supported.

We have a long history of free updates/upgrades for products and will continue to maintain and support Loom 1 (Now called Loom Classic). This will include the DPI improvement when the engine is fully ported.

Some posters at KVR seem to think companies should offer a 24/7 hotline, $9.99 products, no copy protection etc personal setup. This as a business just isn't feasible although we try to be fair about this.
When we do charge for items we keep the cost as low as possible for users.

Our products are aimed at the larger market and we are aiming to make music more accessible for all. AIR worldwide have nearly over 2 million users of our products now. From time to time we offer promotions to enable more users to benefit.

The silent majority are pretty happy with their instruments although there is always room for improvement.
Having a new source of revenue will help us achieve our goals faster for the benefit of all users.

To clarify some of the points there are some very new and unique things in this upgrade which are not present in any other products on the market. There is also a fair bit of new exclusive artist content included. The library is expanded to 750 presets and we will be adding free expansions in the coming weeks.

The features in this are the vast majority of all the requests for the original.

New for LOOM II:

Loom II has been expanded to 8 voices by popular request!

Spectral Noise section allowing a secondary oscillator to replace or enrich the additive spectrum (created with the Sine Oscillator) with a noise spectrum. This is truly revolutionary in the additive world. Your creativity is the only limit to what is possible!

4 new modules

5-Sines – An easy-to-use module enabling you to produce a range of organ or sine style sounds.
Discrete Adder – Similar to Loom 1’s popular adder, but adding a discrete spectrum ideal for creating percussion-based synth instruments.
Hype – adding Hi and Low Hype with dedicated easy-to-use controls for instant results.
Double Wave – for our more advanced users: Use dual waves to create complex synth patterns. We have also added a dedicated control for this in the Morph pad.

2 additional Subharmonic Optional Partials bellow the normal spectrum.

Enhanced Morph Pad options.

500 all-new patches covering a wide range of sounds designed by acclaimed sound designers Richard Devine and Mark Ovenden.

All original 350 patches re-mastered taking advantage of the new features.

New Wave Parameter options

20+ other performance enhancements.

Nobody forced Air to follow that path of cheapness. With those omnipresent promotions and sales, Air stuff is not really worth much anymore. Air doesn't have the reputation of a serious developer in my view.
The only reason why I don't sell my Hybrid (which hasn't been improved in ages) is that the iLok transfer fee is much higher than what Hybrid is worth now.

akeia · Post by **akeia** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:12 pm

sbangs_air wrote:Some posters at KVR seem to think companies should offer a 24/7 hotline, $9.99 products, no copy protection etc personal setup.

There are quite a few companies that have solid business with premium priced software by delivering outstanding software.

If a company is not able to deliver software that users are willing to pay big bucks then they go out of business or lower their prices. At this point the users expect that price level and get triggered by high update prices. To pay three times the original price for the update smells funny.

Bitching about "cheap" users will not make these users happy. IMHO. Better products would be one way to go. Cheaper updates another.

wagtunes · Post by **wagtunes** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:15 pm

What I want to know is with all the changes that were made, why wasn't the GUI enlarged? This, to me, would have seemed to be the biggest needed change. As I don't own Loom 1, I might have actually paid full price for Loom II had the GUI been resized.

So can somebody please answer why this wasn't done?

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:35 pm

sbangs_air wrote:Some posters at KVR seem to think companies should offer a 24/7 hotline, $9.99 products, no copy protection etc personal setup. This as a business just isn't feasible although we try to be fair about this.
When we do charge for items we keep the cost as low as possible for users.

I certainly don't think that you need to offer $9.99 products (you painted yourself in that hole with that stream of sales and offers!). But I think that for $50, I would have expected much larger polyphony improvement from just 2 additional voices - that is indeed laughable, sorry but it is. Make it 32, for example. Today's CPUs can certainly take it! Marking it "by popular request" is also laughable. 2 additional voices are simply NOT ENOUGH. You can do better and it certainly doesn't take you two years to add 2 additional voices of polyphony. I am 100% certain in that.

And then yes, you guys desperately need better (tag-based with filtering) patch browser. What's in there is unfortunately not really good enough for a VSTi nearing year 2020. Even doing this by means of NI's NKS would have been much, much better...

So yes... color me disappointed. I would have gladly paid $50 for an update with more polyphony, better patch browsing, and a resizeable GUI, with drag&dropping of modules around. And typing time values into envelopes (they are IMPOSSIBLE to edit accurately as they are now, we cannot even hold Shift for finetuning the values! Wake up!)

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:49 pm

sbangs_air wrote:Loom II has been expanded to 8 voices by popular request!

I'm pretty sure no one asked for 8 voice polyphony....16 or 32 yes but not 8.

wagtunes wrote:So can somebody please answer why this wasn't done?

For the same reason there is no Atari ST version....no need to support ancient technologies like 17" monitors.....

Anyway I own Loom but have never really jelled with it despite several attempts to get comfortable with it's workflow. It's capable of some really impressive sounds if you can master it's architecture. Nothing wrong with the GUI on a modern system but it wouldn't hurt to have some additional sizes or a fully resizable GUI. But that would make the workflow bigger not better. Spurred on by this thread I'll schedule some more time to spend with Loom to see if I can finally get comfortable with it's workflow.

I love Air plugins and use XPand!2, Transfuser, and/or Hybrid on a daily basis.

Loom has just never found it's niche in my arsenal and I'm not sure Loom II will do anything to change that. I have no problem with a $50 upgrade to a plugin but the upgrade has to pass the personal cost/benefit analysis. At this point I don't think I'll be upgrading....

fluffy_little_something · Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:58 pm

Teksonik wrote:
wagtunes wrote:So can somebody please answer why this wasn't done?
For the same reason there is no Atari ST version....no need to support ancient technologies like 17" monitors.....

From what I have observed over the years, the same user interfaces unfortunately get harder to read, the bigger the monitors get.
I think there should always be two GUI versions: a desktop version and a notebook version, each with a typical resolution.

But maybe Wag simply needs new glasses. Since I got glasses, I can read almost any user interface, even though some are still not really comfortable to use.

el-bo (formerly ebow) · Thu Oct 12, 2017 3:03 pm

Teksonik wrote:no need to support ancient technologies like 17" monitors.....

Actually, these gui issues are much more pertinent to current technologies. With higher resolutions finding their way onto computer screens, used in situations where it is impossible to use the necessary, commensurate screen-size increase, gui scaling is a huge issue.

wagtunes · Post by **wagtunes** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 3:07 pm

fluffy_little_something wrote:
Teksonik wrote:
wagtunes wrote:So can somebody please answer why this wasn't done?
For the same reason there is no Atari ST version....no need to support ancient technologies like 17" monitors.....
From what I have observed over the years, the same user interfaces unfortunately get harder to read, the bigger the monitors get.
I think there should always be two GUI versions: a desktop version and a notebook version, each with a typical resolution.

But maybe Wag simply needs new glasses. Since I got glasses, I can read almost any user interface, even though some are still not really comfortable to use.

I can read just about any user interface. I just don't feel the need to have to put "effort" into reading any user interface. So yeah, if I had to work with Korg Wavestation, as an example, I could. I choose not to when there are GUIs that I don't have to put any effort in at all to use.

That's something Teksonik doesn't seem to want to understand or even acknowledge is a problem. And his hypocrisy shows with his own comment of how a resizable GUI would be nice.

Of course hypocrisy is the middle name of some of the people in this place so none of this surprises me.

Loom II has landed!