Does anyone else thinks that?

Defintive not!

For example the big soundbanks, with 150 Patches, where all patches also containing 8 variations, so 1200 sound variations in total, for 49.00€.
I think a more than fair price.
Based on the mass of top notch sounds, the additional variations and also included sample content.

You must consider the amount of work it takes to create an alchemy sound set!!

This is not a "tweak 10 minutes and end up with a professional preset" synth. Not even close. It takes a long time to tweak even relatively simple sounds and to assign meaningful controls with good ranges for the performance section.

Even though Camel Audio do pay a generous amount per preset it is still sometimes hard to justify the amount of time it takes to create good presets for Alchemy.. simply because it has so many variables and potential for tweaking. I also need to learn how to be quicker in my sound design but that comes with experience and I'm far from being a professional when it comes to this! Which reminds me.. Nico (Big Tone!) and the rest of you professionals, do you have any tips/tricks on how to become quicker? Would it be worth "investing" some time in creating a large batch of templates for various tasks and use these as starting points? I always start from the "clean" preset but have lately found that a bit annoying as I need to constantly do some simple things over and over again.

Anyhow, I'd say the sound banks border from ridiculously good value to very good value, depending on set. For instance the Biolabs set (Colin of Camel Audio) contains an almost infinite variation to it's sounds through the performance controllers meaning it is like getting a whole new synth.

Cheers!
bManic
Last edited by bmanic on Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:43 am; edited 1 time in total

FWIW: I think they're expensive, yes, but not "too" expensive. That would mean they wouldn't offer value for money, which they really do. I don't usually buy presets, but I own three of the expansions and am really happy with them. I especially appreciate the additional sampled content, which is something you don't get with most synth expansions.

A complete alchemy soundbank with 150 sounds/1200 variations is a big big big amount of work. Alone through that, the price is ok.

And please always mind - quality has a price.

If the Camel Audio soundbanks would sounding cheap or something ok than they would be over-priced, but they are really good, so the price looks maybe high, but is on a very good balance.

Maybe... I've never purchased one and probably never will. I found pretty early on that one could replace their lack luster samples with ones of your own, tweak a bit and viola, you've got a new sound. Never seemed to be a reason to pay someone else to do that. I've listend to the demos and none ever made me say, "Gotta get that."

Have you any example of such situation for other synth (in the same price category)?

I think spectrasonics and to an extent u-he has spoiled me with all the free patches with updates.....however I still don't think camel audio soundsets are too expensive.......especially when you consider they put them on sale and give you bonus points etc.....

rsp

No, Why? Just because someone can't afford the price doesn't mean the sets aren't worth it!

I have several Camel Audio soundsets. They are consistently among the most useful sounds I have bought. Granted I have never paid full price for a soundset, but that is only because I have managed to find good deals on the ones I wanted. There are several I would have paid full price if I had to, but fortunately I got good deals. There are several more I plan on buying in the future. I think they are worth the money.

Too expensive? Depends really... I own a few of them. I use them more for learning how to program different things. So in my mind they were worth every penny. However if I bought 10 of them @ 50 a pop and add in the price of the synth and controller I am still far below any hardware synth that would deliver the same amount of sounds and programmability. So "too expensive" is not a term I would use.

I still have a couple that I want to add to the stable but I keep forgetting to head over there and make the purchase. @OP: thanks for posting this thread. It's a good reminder for me to get those couple of sound sets.

I've had way too much fun with them to think that

I am an Alchemy user myself and I must admit that I have found myself to be a bit disapointed with some of the expansions that I have bought.
There are expansions that don't have almost any additional sample data, and yet they cost 49euros. Sorry but this is not a reasonable price in my experience.

EG: arp dimensions. total 10 synth samples in wav format and some drum samples. Price 49€.

With this kind of price tag I would have expected to see more .sfz files.
Expansions that don't have many samples are not worth this amount of money IMO. Half of the price would be much more reasonable.

Expansions that that use existing samples mostly should be more like 20€. It's about the same price as many other VSTi banks cost. Why it should be any different with Alchemy?
I am not buying that "It's more complicated" reasoning.

Simon Stockhausens banks are much better bang for the money IMO. They cost about the same but have lot more of recorded material.

I have been also a bit disapointed in Alchemy sound quality.
Many of the presets have this ugly "plastic" quality in them.
They sound OK when you play them in isolation, but in the full mix they don't sound so good.
Not all of the presets but some of them.
I love the sound of the new filters, so my guess is that the blame is not them, but rather because many sounds are using a single wav file for the entire keyrange.

If I compare Alchemy to Omnisphere preset wise. Alchemy sounds like a 90's rompler. I am not talking about features but the sound itself. You also pay so much more to get less patches and less sample data.

People must be swimming in money if they think these expansions have a good price/features ratio.
Some of them do, but unfortunately many of them do not.

With a 49€/expansion price tag I expected to get so much more.

I personally like their audio demos. I used to spend tons of time listening them when I was at work. And they were the reason why I bought them.

Now that I think about it I really wish there was a way to try them out before buying them.
I also wish Camel Audio could show the amount of samples per expansion in their webshop.

I think the pricing is reasonable.Would cost a fortune to buy them all though

I don't agree with this, Alchemy has become my no.1 VST synth, the sounds 'IMO' are mostly very good and some of the best I've heard coming from a VSTi. After buying Himalaya Vintage this went to show how excellent this really can be, vintage synth sounds that sound 100% authentic to my ears, I'm a very happy user, it calmed down my GAS too...

I think the soundbanks are a little expensive to buy for 'my pocket', so I only buy the ones that totally interest me and mostly(but not always)wait for the promotions too. I'm still to buy the Electronic Bass pack.

For what it's worth I prefer Alchemy to Trilian for synth bass atm...