a 64 bit Sampletank-2 would be really nice.

Read the thread. I (and others) have talked about what needs fixing at some length in the first two pages.

I've sent the suggestions here to the Product Manager of SampleTank, for what it is worth. I don't really have power over decisions like that but I do try to best convey what users are saying, thinking, and feeling in places like KVR. Again, for what it is worth - because I'm not able to promise anything but I assure you I've forwarded the information about issues and ideas mentioned here.

Back in 2008, IK announced a 'groundbreaking' new product called STUDIOPHONIK. Did more than announce it actually. Ads, complete with a GUI graphic, appeared in several cycles of Sweetwater's catalog, as well as other catalogs, IIRC.

Esoundz ran a nice groupbuy with a 'prelude' selection of ST2 compatible sounds that were done specifically for Studiophonik.

The product was to be one of the 'powered by Sampletank' instruments, alongside Sonik Synth, Miroslav Philharmonik, Samplemoog and Sampletron. And, of course, it was 'coming soon' on IK's site, where a placeholder can still be found at www.studiophonik.com.

Never happened. Nothing. Nada. Vapor.

According to Squids at Esoundz, from what I remember at the time, the project, though ambitious, collapsed under its own weight from the various expenditures for recording the detailed sample sets and developing the platform to support the complex routing required to bring the instrument to the next level.

I assume that at least some of what was learned is being incorporated into ST3, but the lesson here is that IK does have a history of over-promising on its releases, though Studiophonik is probably its most visible failure.

Kontakt, Halion, MOTU and others have since sailed past ST2 in development, and IK loyalists (like myself) have watched SOME of IK's catalog catch up to x64, while leaving signature products like CSR and ST2 inexplicably in x32 land.

I've said elsewhere that I've moved on. I love and use IK's current x64 gear extensively. But the rest has been replaced. Should ST3 miraculously be released during my lifetime (something I personally view as a 50/50 proposition at best), I will, in all likelihood, jump in. Especially if it will support the many gigs of ST2 sounds that I currently own and miss. But I will not waste any of my very limited creative studio time worrying about it.

Cheers
-B

Haha, just when I promised myself I was done posting in this thread, you just had to mention StudioPhonik, didn't you?

Yeah, I remember that debacle. eSoundz even held a kind of pre-sale group buy for it, where they ended up just giving out a bunch of random instruments that were supposed to have been included in the final product. That whole thing was fail-city to the max, for sure.

As I understand it, the three things that many people want to see in ST2 are:

-- Windows 7 working, without the need to "Run as Administrator"
-- 32-bit and 64-bit editions, for use in hosts without any bridges
-- bigger (resizeable?) GUI and text fonts, for us old gits and those with big monitors

I've got a feeling I've missed one more popular request, but I cannot recall it at the moment.

Right and now we have an official declaration by a company member that states that none of the above will happen to ST2. That's a customer retention failure if I ever saw one.

...Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

Studiophonik has served as a reminder to me ever since that if the product doesn't yet exist, OR if the product doesn't currently have a promised feature, EVEN IF THE DEV IS AN ESTABLISHED AND REPUTABLE ONE, don't expect it to ever exist or have that feature. If and when it does, then that's a bonus.

Cheers
-B

+1 to both of these posts. If they actually did release an update to 64 bit, fix the Win7 issue, and simply give an enlarged version of the GUI, IK could let ST3 stew as long as it needed to without losing PR points with nearly anyone. It surely would help with their ST2 based sales. Personally the price I paid for the ST stuff is great, I got a ghetto price which is great, and can almost understand the ghetto support, but ultimately it doesn't make the items i bought a safe investment and it isn't good for the long-term rep of IK.

StudioPhonik was going to be another IK Workstation like SonikSynth, SampleMoog, etc. but instead was re-conceived as a series of SampleTank libraries from Sonic Reality that have been available on eSoundz (the Sonic Reality retail site). Here is the link to the complete product:

http://www.esoundz.com/details.php?ProductID=4772

So the product DID, in fact, get released. It is just in a different form than originally planned.

We aren't divulging any more details on the upcoming SampleTank, but it is still in development.

can't imagine what ST3 might bring to the table to compete with the biggies like K5... tbh developing it is pointless at this point

Yep, I wholeheartedly agree. As a consumer I wouldn't even know there was a chance ST3 were coming if not for this forum. Saying no 64 bit ST 2.5 is really discouraging, I really do think the IK management is very very poor indeed regarding this issue. I still get updates and bug fixes for old applications that are several versions past what I purchased because those developers have real integrity and understand how to support their customers. You should never have to hear to work around some issue in one of the players to use the ST Free version, stuff like that is just unprofessional.

If you still sell it, then properly support it! I asked many times about a free version of ST 3 and that can't even be confirmed, so even if we do happily wait for it there is no guarantee it won't resolve the issues for most users without possibly needing to pay for an update. Given the cheap price many have paid for the 2.5 content, I don't know how many will be happy about paying a premium for a brand new version.

Anyhow this whole thing really tarnishes IK's image, had they properly supported ST2.5 with needful updates, it would have held onto its value better and not required all the group buys.

In an alternate universe I see IK having addressed the 3 primary issues we are mentioning, (64 bit, interface size and Win7 compatability) and integrated all of the various offshoots into ST, released it as ST3 and it competed favorably with Omnisphere (user content helped a lot!), undercutting its cost @ $299. This gave IK the ability to focus on V4 which really has got some amazing new stuff that we'll all love when released in 2013... because all of us were so stoked on ST3 and IK's other well-supported products, we also all started getting into their iOS stuff too, instead of feeling some contempt for it all.

Unfortunately I have to agree with thoz and bronxsound at this point. Kontakt used to be a very difficult beast to deal with, especially compared to Sampletank. ST was the point and shoot model of the sampler world. Kontakt was more like doing your algebra homework.

But Kontakt's interface with NI and 3rd party sound libraries is much improved over the years, to the point that it really is now a point and click affair to get the sound you want.

Sampletank has its charms to be sure, but the world has moved on. While it would be fun to have it (and SS2, Miro, Tron and Moog) back in my arsenal again, the truth is, I really don't miss it much. There are a million other options out there that are, frankly, pretty reasonable. In addition to the countless Kontakt instruments (and Motu and Halion), there are some pretty great Romplers to be had as well. UVI is certainly competitive, and I recently picked up a slightly used HalionSonic for about the price of one of the infinite ST group buy deals.

Finally, I'm hard pressed to even think of a major DAW (and some very minor ones) that DON'T have their own sampler built in, along with some serious effect processing power.

I still don't, for the life of me, get why the ST2 shell has not been ported as x64. How hard could this be? Seriously? I'm not an engineer, so I personally don't have much of a grasp on what's involved. But what I do know is that IK's other old gear has been ported without a problem. Heck, even the smallest devs have been able to effectively port their little legacy plugs. You'd think SOMEONE in the IK boardroom would recognize the profit potential to be able to re-brand/re-market the hundreds of gigs of ST format samples to x64 users.
NOT TO MENTION THE CUSTOMER GOOD WILL ANGLE, which, you'd think, given the dynamics of brand loyalty, would be the No. 1 motivating factor to possibly grab that demo segment to market their burgeoning iOS app lines.

But hey, I could be wrong. Even though I've been knocking around this giant pebble for more than half a century now, I'm still amazed by how much I still don't know.

Cheers
-B

Thanks hibidy! I appreciate that you noticed (nobody else ever seems to). I should update the math... haven't done so in about a year. In fact I think I'll do that right now!

Might it be consistent "MouseWheel support" on all platforms?