OK...there's one more day left on the EastWest Quantum Leap RA 50% discount and I'm dying for some nice Ethnic instruments!

1) is there a listing of what ethnic instruments that will be included in Ethnotronics?

2) How would BITR compare Ethnotronics to Quantum Leap RA? I understand that RA is one of few Ethnic libraries that has a nice lot of articulations for each instrument.

3) What is the price range you intend to sell Ethnotronics?

4) Since you haven't made it "primetime" yet, do you have some sample MP3's to help give us an idea of what it sounds like?

Anyway...I hate to drop these questions on you at this time, but $500 for RA on discount is very tempting and time is running out, but if BITR is going to have a killer Ethnic product then I'm willing to pass RA up...unless of course, if Ethnotronics won't be out for another month or 2.

Cheers

1). There was in the original thread. Quite comprehensive. Probably twice as many as RA I think.

2). It's only 1.5 GB so don't expect anything near the amount of articulations you get with RA.

3). I think they mentioned 139 euros. Can't remember if that was boxed or download version though.

4). There was 1 short mp3 on that original thread, but as that has disappeared.... and it didn't sound as good as RA.

Problem is I was expecting Ethnotronics in September/October last year, and it's still not here

I've been waiting for Ethnotronics since last year too. And am still waiting, having looked at RA. One reason I'm hanging on is I am totally against Dongles and Challenge/Response so treat customer friendly piracy protection as a major selling point. I am a developer myself and completely against piracy, BUT want to be sure if I buy something it will work in the future after I have upgraded my PC.

thanks for your input fellas. would be nice to hear BITR folks chime in as well!

armadillo - I did a search on the whole forum and yeah, I missed it before as I thought it would be mentioned in this Forum, but the thread is in another forum. As you said...No MP3, though.

cracker - I'm OK with a C/R type of system, but dongles are totally out of the question for me. I can understand how the companies feel a need for them, but having a USB dongle is just going too far as there are other proven ways to implement Copy Protection as well. I don't want to be bound to some little piece of hardware that could crap out anytime; I've had 2 USB flash drives that crapped out on me, so twice bitten...thrice shy

IMHO, Ra is way too expensive, even in this half-price GB deal. I've been waiting -- patiently and impatiently -- for Ethnotronics, because (a) it's Wusikstation-based, (b) it's a sensible price (I think it was as low as $90 at the intro for owners of other BITR products) and (c) because there would be lots of presets using the WS functionality, giving us some hybrid and inventive voices as well as plain ethnic sounds (if there weren't we could make 'em easily enough ourselves, even porting them into EVE for greater flexibility).

Even though I'm allegedly a 'spammer' for regularly asking WTF happened to the release, I'm pretty certain to buy it. All I can advise is be patient, because the opposite hasn't worked...

/funxi

oops. Doppelganger.

you're right funky, even at $500 esp for hobbyists like me...QLRA IS STILL very dear and that's why even today I'm still "on the fence" about it, but my problem is I'm a sucker for Ethnic instruments, that's why I'm like "damn, why isn't there more info about Ethnotronics right now!!!???" - that would make life alot easier for me esp. since the 50% GroupBuy for QLRA ends today. CRAP!!!

BITR - puuuleeeze say something!!

The consolation is that lots of why the hell did I do that? copies of RA will be popping up at about the same price in Market Place around the fourth quarter

I can wait. Surely Ethnotronics will appear before then?

/funxi

Why is $500 for RA expensive? Compare it to something like eg. BFD which only contains drums and doesn't require 50 different players just to record it. Remember, loads of the instruments are like 300 MB, some with up to 15 articulations.
By all means wait for Ethnotronics but don't expect the same realism as you get with RA.

Funkychicken: don't look in the market place for RA; the licence is non transferable I'm afraid.

Why do all the really rich people I know drive fairly ordinary, often shitty cars?

It's too expensive because of the horses for courses line of logic. I'm only making 'pop' music, which starts out at 16 bits, 44.1kHZ (okay, sometimes 24 bits), but is ever-increasingly consumed in the form of crapola MP3s, or listened to on dinky headphones. I've long thought of hi-fi (beyond a certain point) as an affectation. Why pretend? Steven Spielberg is not on the phone.

So roll on Ethno...oh, and btw, the answer is no, I wouldn't buy RA at any price over about $150, and even then I'm not sure if I need all that gigabyteage clogging up my hard drive for the occasional use. Neither All India Radio nor Al Jazeera have buzzed me lately, either. YMMV, of course.

/funxi

well...Armadillo has a point actually. 72 instruments/ensembles (not including all the articulations) divided by $500 = ~$7.00/each. SO he's right...it's really not bad considering it's peanuts compared to buying the actual instruments! There hasn't been an update on the GB counter since June 15th...and then they were running at 736 sales, so that DOES say something....

On top of that...over at the SoundsOnline forum, looks like the creators of RA are coming out with a new Sample Player to replace the Kompakt player...something called QControl and it looks like it's supposed to be out soon. By the looks of it, it should make using the product easier since they felt Kompakt doesn't take advantage of the sample libraries (+ I'm sure they're sick of dealing with NI )

This is why I love this Forum - really helps to talk about this kind of stuff to help folks put things into perspective better. It's not like I can't afford QLRA, but I'd hate to purchase it and never use it because of whatever reason - that's my biggest fear

Funkychicken: fair enough, horses for courses. I'm pretty serious about music, and as a matter of fact I've been collaborating with several world music performers on my last couple of tracks. Samples doesn't even come near but RA is the closest.
RA is obviously high end stuff, more for the TV composer crowd, than the "noodling" hobbyist crowd.

Holymoly: yeah, one of my friends bought it and haven't really used it since, so you better be sure.

See, we weren't arguing at all.

If I wanted truly fantastic-sounding and authentic world music instruments or percussion, I'd do as you do and tap some of the local players: we have tremendous ones here, as it happens. And I trust myself on oud, sitar, pipa or anything else with frets.

But for a guy who's a mere home studio composer, Ethno or the like sounds just right...I say or the like because a wee surprise is imminent, about which I shall say no more

/funxi
isn't it great half-leaking things? Makes me feel like I work for the New York Times

i'm feel like I'm on a roller coaster ride today

Armadillo - I am by no means a "pro" and most of the stuff I'm doing these days is poppy/dancey/techno type of stuff, but again...I have a love for the ethnic stuff and have a desire to experiment using ethnic instruments (I often think that I why the hell I'm writing the stuff I'm writing - being an 80's metal head!), yes...I still love Ozzy & Judas Priest .

OK, right this minute (until ya'll post again )...I'm planning to back off on the QLRA purchase. I don't have a real NEED for it (only desire!) as I'm not buying it to help make me money in music - purely hobby and for the love of music. Hopefully Ethnotronics will hit the right notes when it comes out or maybe I just need to go on a quest to find some decent SoundFonts until Spectrasonics Eric comes out with a badass Ethnic library; he's working on something now, but damn him he's being tight-lipped. I have and LOVE Stylus RMX + all 5 expansions....no regrets on that purchase!

Funkychick: Let's hear some Oud playing then.
Forget all these libraries then and get the real thing in and record them. I have to look long and hard to find any. I think I've had eg. 4 violin players wanting to collab and then not doing it anyway. Plus a shit load of other players. Samples are certainly more convinient.

Where do you live btw?