Why Do Plugin Designers Not Put Audio Samples On Their Sites?

[10bd01]

I'm so frustrated and nonplussed at this point on this issue that I needed to write KVR and ask, thinking that someone here will likely point out something I'm missing that restores my faith in the human endeavor.

To me it is inconceivable - especially in this day and age - that a company whose entire purpose is to design audio plugins would not include even one sound sample of their software on their site. I ran across this twice in as many days recently and am just besides myself with how absurd it is. I ran into this the other day with Stillwell audio and just now with ReLab.

My first inclination is to sign these companies off because they must be either 1) afraid of just how bad their plugs sound and so cowardly avoid giving any sonic representation of it on their site 2) are lazy and/or unintelligent -or- 3) feel like they should push their customers into downloading and installing a demo of a software they may not even want on their machine in the first place in an effort to coerce them into purchasing it (?). None of these three speaks well for the companies, so I feel like either I must be missing something, or I'm not and these people are just that stupid and should be avoided like the plague.

So I'm hoping someone here on KVR can either prove me wrong and illuminate the thought process behind this or just verify what I already feel - that these people must have some mental problem to not include any audio whatsoever when the sole purpose of their existence is to produce audio plugins.

On the Stillwell audio site they take the time to put circuit schematics up, but sound samples? No - no sound samples on their audio software site...in 2017. How is this even possible? Are they insane?

Speaking as a consumer - I do not want to download demos of software I may not even approve the sound of, and I don't subscribe to the demo-worshipping mantras that sometimes flood the threads. If I hear it and like what I hear, then I can try it, and then if I like it I can buy it.

I understand I can just avoid these companies and not demo OR purchase, which is what I'm currently doing, but my curiosity is still there wondering what such people could possibly be thinking to do something so absurd, nonsensical, and just basically nuts.

So, is there an actual reason for this that I'm missing? Or is it just plain as idiotic as it looks?

[PurpleSunray]

so I feel like either I must be missing something

Yeah, different ppl like different music
I would probably upload some sound samples, but I can understand of someone does not do it.
Have an example in mind.
Some years back we were looking for a good synth to make leads on Psytrance.
We sumbeled accross a synth that seemed to be especially made for that, with sound samples.
My brother listened to the sound samples and rejected the synth because: "nah this sounds like goa-trance. I'm not after acid sounds, want shreddring metalic FM leads". Now.. the point is, that synth can do shreddring metalic FM leads as well, it just not demod, because the author of the plugin did like to make a goa rather than nightpsy sound sample.
(at the end it was good we rejected that synth, because it caused us to buy a Virus TI instead )

Also the developer of the plugin might be a developer, but no sound designer?
Had kind of the same experience with a sample pack.
The samples on it were actually ok, but the demo song composed from it by developer was horrible. He should definitly stick on selling sample packs and stop arrnging songs. I would never ever buy that pack after listening to the sample song.

[10bd01]

Thanks PurpleSunray,

I can see that point - I feel like I sometimes may have the same experience on the VSL site. I listen to their samples and to me most of them just sound terrible - but I have seen some youtube examples that were truly impressive of the same instruments, leading me to believe that the individual that does most of their on-site midi programming isn't really doing a fantastic job of it. I'm still intending on buying into VSL in the future because I believe a good midi programmer can actually make something really fantastic from it, but imo it would be even better if they had an extremely adept midi-programmer making their demos.

That being said, I still don't understand why a company like ReLab can't even put a single reverb tail on their site when they claim they are shooting for the most authentic sounding Lexicon plug.

As a consumer I don't want to download and install a plugin I may not even like the sound of just to need to then uninstall it - it's a complete waste of time and some companies can't even write proper uninstallers.

Great example, though, thanks for taking the time to chime in.

[PurpleSunray]

I think it is just underrated by most devs.
The usuall plugin dev is a coder, with interest on music, no musican that also can write code.
If you find lot of tech. drawings and papers but no single audio sample, it comes exactly from this focus.
The dev spend 99.99% of his time on technical stuff and wants to show / explain what he did.
Creating presets and designing sounds is not that much focus, that is what the users are supposed to do.

It's one of the reasons I'm always careful with plugins from small / single dev companies.
The synth engine itself might sound great, but there is just no single preset that sounds good out of the box. So you need sound-research it all own you own.
On bigger companies there are usually teams. Devs that focus on code and designers that focus on creating nice sounding presets and samples. Think it's simply underrated by a lot of plugin devs. They think if the synth sounds good, it's all fine. No it is not. If all of your presets sounds shity, that synth will not survive for very long on my HDD.

[10bd01]

Thanks PurpleSunray,

Thanks for the perspective, I agree that preset design is often underrated. I recently was flipping through FabFilters Twin 2 and was blow away at how goofy almost all of the presets sounded...I was like "can anybody actually use these things?". I feel like the synth has a good sound, but the presets I couldn't care less about.

I guess as the years pass it's just becoming more and more obvious that in any field there are people who are actually passionate about what they do and want to do every aspect of it the best that is humanly possible, and all the others who are lukewarm and half-lazy about what they're doing and are not willing to go the full distance and make the "complete experience" of what they're creating. Some companies have shitty interfaces that you can't resize (again...it's 2017 and companies are still designing windows you can't resize - I could resize windows in Windows 3.1, wtf), others have bad presets, others add sound artifacts, others don't want to put audio on their audio plugin site, others have terrible customer support, and others are just inscrutable, and then you have companies like Waves who come off as used car salesmen and have vampiric marketing practices. And of course they will ALL have excuses for all of this.

So there it is...the world...in all of it's sloppy glory. I guess it's time to just reexamine what type of professionalism I want to associate myself with and move forward with that and nothing else. It will make the decisions much easier.

So if you're out there and your company doesn't have the time or brains to post audio samples of your audio plugin you can count this customer out. It's a no-brainer to include at least a taste of what you're offering - if you can't you apparently have no brain and I won't be interested in sharing time-space with you.

[DaveHoskins]

I feel the same about operational plugin demos, if I can't play with it, why the f**k would I buy it?...

[PurpleSunray]

Thanks for the perspective, I agree that preset design is often underrated. I recently was flipping through FabFilters Twin 2 and was blow away at how goofy almost all of the presets sounded...I was like "can anybody actually use these things?". I feel like the synth has a good sound, but the presets I couldn't care less about.

Ahahah, yeah FabFilter is a really good example.
I own the FabFilter bundle - got it because friends and some artists I like were using it and got plenty of good reviews. And I really like their plugins. They sound great and I like the user-interface.
But the presets are utter shit. They could even remove factory presets completly and won't miss it.
If you start trying their prests on i.e. Volcano or Timeless you think something on your system has just been broken down. wtf? are my speakers broken? What the hell did I do????? oh.. nothing, it's just that Volcano preset that sounds disgusting. Those plugins sounds great, but you MUST do you own presets. If you just switch between factory presets it all sounds like shit

[Dozius]

I feel the same about operational plugin demos, if I can't play with it, why the f**k would I buy it?...

Same here. It's all about the hands on.

Audio demos provide almost no useful information for me. It's like the pictures of food at a fast food restaurant. Highly targeted examples that usually have a vague resemblance to reality.

[Vertion]

My generalized conclusion in this area: Quality products only need to be described. Inferior products need to be hyped.

[10bd01]

My generalized conclusion in this area: Quality products only need to be described. Inferior products need to be hyped.

Vertion, I see this from a completely different perspective - to me it's a courtesy and a communication and an expression of your own appreciation of the value of your project. If someone makes the best sounding reverb in the world why don't they want EVERYONE to hear it? That's the question.

It's really so absurd to me it's beyond imagining. There are probably some convenience stores that have more sound samples on their site then some of these plugin developers. Their business is audio, period. If you run an audio business and you have no audio on your website, sorry, but you have problems.

[zerocrossing]

Here’s what I’ve learned. I wrote and illustrated a children’s book. A friend, who’s a published author told me he loved it, but to submit it without the illustrations. Why? Often a book will be rejected if the person just doesn’t like the style of illustration, or think it’s not a popular style. He always offers the illustrations after interest is shown in the story. To me that sounds ridiculous. How could an adult in the art world not think, “Oh, I like the text, but the illustrations aren’t what I like. Maybe they could do another style or agree to have a different illustrator do it.” Nope. Adult humans usually are way too lacking in imagination for that kind of thinking.

But I see this in my graphic design work as well. I’ve learned, “can you do a few rough comps?” Means, “Can you do fully rendered finished designs for me to choose from?” I’ve met few clients or even art directors that can extrapolate from a rough comp to a possible finished design, even if they’ve worked with you before and know you’re capable of completing a finished product.

So, I imagine a lot of people hear synth demos and, if they don’t like the music or sound types, they’ll not even bother downloading a demo. Inversely, I bet a lot of people buy mediocre instruments because they like the demo tracks. I personally think I’m pretty good at hearing quality and character regardless of the demo songs. Take Tone2, for instance. I hate their demo tracks, and presets, but I can hear that the sound quality is excellent, so I’ll always download a demo to give it a go. I wonder how many people have listened to their tracks and just moved on. I bet a lot. Look at Spectrasonics. If you listen to what people do for demos of Omnisphere, you’d think it was only good for new age and cinema soundtrack work. You’d be totally wrong. If you don’t have audio demo tracks, it does force the potential customer to rely on the demo version, which you want to try anyway to make sure it runs on your machine.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Here’s what I’ve learned. I wrote and illustrated a children’s book. A friend, who’s a published author told me he loved it, but to submit it without the illustrations. Why? Often a book will be rejected if the person just doesn’t like the style of illustration, or think it’s not a popular style. He always offers the illustrations after interest is shown in the story. To me that sounds ridiculous. How could an adult in the art world not think, “Oh, I like the text, but the illustrations aren’t what I like. Maybe they could do another style or agree to have a different illustrator do it.” Nope. Adult humans usually are way too lacking in imagination for that kind of thinking.

But I see this in my graphic design work as well. I’ve learned, “can you do a few rough comps?” Means, “Can you do fully rendered finished designs for me to choose from?” I’ve met few clients or even art directors that can extrapolate from a rough comp to a possible finished design, even if they’ve worked with you before and know you’re capable of completing a finished product.

So, I imagine a lot of people hear synth demos and, if they don’t like the music or sound types, they’ll not even bother downloading a demo. Inversely, I bet a lot of people buy mediocre instruments because they like the demo tracks. I personally think I’m pretty good at hearing quality and character regardless of the demo songs. Take Tone2, for instance. I hate their demo tracks, and presets, but I can hear that the sound quality is excellent, so I’ll always download a demo to give it a go. I wonder how many people have listened to their tracks and just moved on. I bet a lot. Look at Spectrasonics. If you listen to what people do for demos of Omnisphere, you’d think it was only good for new age and cinema soundtrack work. You’d be totally wrong. If you don’t have audio demo tracks, it does force the potential customer to rely on the demo version, which you want to try anyway to make sure it runs on your machine.

+1

[Vertion]

Looking over these perspectives, I might say that the only unifying factor is the Good in it. You are all correct as I see it. However, I can say that I see the spirit of those who produce I can CLEARLY hear in your products. Think of it as your own choices affect the outcome.. generally speaking what you send out is what you can expect back. I'll actually write this thought out later and I'll write a very honest review of any other dev who wants me to assess them (their user experience)... (i'm quite good at vibing things)... I write these out later, gtg.

We might do a very clear and upfront youtube review series (for those interested of course). That could actually fix alot of these issues... I know where to go with it.

[10bd01]

So, I imagine a lot of people hear synth demos and, if they don’t like the music or sound types, they’ll not even bother downloading a demo. Inversely, I bet a lot of people buy mediocre instruments because they like the demo tracks. I personally think I’m pretty good at hearing quality and character regardless of the demo songs. Take Tone2, for instance. I hate their demo tracks, and presets, but I can hear that the sound quality is excellent, so I’ll always download a demo to give it a go. I wonder how many people have listened to their tracks and just moved on. I bet a lot. Look at Spectrasonics. If you listen to what people do for demos of Omnisphere, you’d think it was only good for new age and cinema soundtrack work. You’d be totally wrong. If you don’t have audio demo tracks, it does force the potential customer to rely on the demo version, which you want to try anyway to make sure it runs on your machine.

I'm not entirely sure if bad presets lose as many people as you think. If you're a customer that is looking for software that has good presets and you hear bad ones you will go somewhere else - as it should be - and if you are a customer looking for good sound quality you are already focused on the quality of the sound and not the presets, so you will judge it on those merits anyway, and if any questions remain you can download a demo. I'm not buying it - I myself think the VSL samples are a complete disaster but see through it as well, same with FabFilter. I don't think I'm "special" in that regard, I think basically anyone would see it in those terms unless they're specifically looking for presets.

I'm not necessarily saying they lose a lot of sales from not having samples, either. Regardless, both of these are imperfect - why don't they just have good samples? No matter how one states it, the simple fact remains that these audio developers have zero audio on their sites: it's going to be a TOUGH sell to me - you have to outbalance that absurdly plain and simple fact - which is pretty ridiculous - with some pretty fancy footwork.

In regards to the samples, it doesn't need to be a full mix - but not even a single reverb tail...really?!? I can understand not having a full mix of Caribbean to show off your delay, but not even a single sound...a snare hit, a vocal line, a measure of rhythm guitar...?!?! But a diagram of a circuit?! The sound IS the story, it's not the illustration.

[Jafo]

The sound IS the story, it's not the illustration.

Couldn't agree more.

"Here's a totally new innovative never-before-heard-of type of synthesis/equalizer/delay/blowjob dispenser/pizza delivery system/whatevers. It's totally revolutionary! Oh, you want to hear/see what it can do before you buy it? Too bad. But we promise it'll completely change your life!"

OK, that doesn't happen much and I exaggerate for the sake of humor, but hey, it's Friday night in the Armpit of the Mitten, it's cold, it's rainy, I've got a migraine and the flu... I need a little levity.