So it looks like Konkrete has been released. Yay! But I question what you've done here.

As a Konkrete 1 and 2 customer, am I looking now for a new host - a new way of working - with samples? No. I use Maschine. But you include Maschine presets. Yay! But you have 41 kits with 61 samples per, so how, exactly, does that translate over to the 16-slot-per-bank Maschine? Or does one load Kontakt into Maschine ..

Do the add-ons also have Maschine presets?
Are all of the samples used in Konkrete different than those in Konrete 1 and 2?

I'm finding this whole thing weirdly complicated. And at $120, I can't see buying this for the samples. Too bad, really, because I was looking forward to it.

Maybe the price is too high, or an introductory price may be in order, or a package of samples only should be made available. I don't question the time/effort involved in creating the library and the scripting for Kontakt, and wish you well. Maybe I'm just not a part of a niche audience you must be looking for.

I also think the name confuses, just as Apple dropping the numeric from iPad references.

KEv
Last edited by burkek on Tue Jan 29, 2013 12:08 pm; edited 1 time in total

Agreed on the price.

My email quotes me 89€ for the upgrade which is about £73 in UK, but the site price is £89. Add the VAT to that and it's up to £106. Way overpriced in my opinion even if the kits do load natively into Maschine

+1 almost a host's upgrade price and what you get for 'free', is the stuff, you already own a license for, only with a better interface and more effects and scripting now. moreover i don't have Maschine.
i must admit though, there is nothing, that sounds better than Konkrete, not even Tremor.

Not disputing the quality of the product, just the price, particularly if one lives in the UK.

(edit) Gripe removed, see below.
Last edited by ariston on Tue Jan 29, 2013 1:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hi Guys,

To take each issue in turn :

1. Maschine - the way this works is that Kontakt player loads in the background inside Maschine, so that you have the same kit with all the same fx and filters - you then have multiple banks of pads to step through. it was either this or reduce the kit size, which i'm not sure would have been a good plan.

2. GBP / Euro discrepancy - point noted. we've now revised the GBP price down to £79, and the offer price down to £129 for the full bundle. Anyone who has overpaid in GBP already can contact us for a refund of the difference.

3. Upgrade pricing / value for money : We ARE giving the K1 /K2 upgrades away for free to those that own the original products - perhaps there is some confusion on this point? No one who already owns a konkrete product is being asked to pay for it again - they are free.

I have to admit i'm slightly surprised by this reaction - we wanted to make the product affordable, so we didn't include all the new kits with the old ones in one big instrument, as this would have meant a higher single price.
If we HAD done this and then offered an upgrade discount to the value of the original price of the kits, it would have worked out just the same as our existing upgrade model, but somehow it feels that people wouldn't have complained if it was like this.

To be clear the K1 / K2 upgrades required a huge amount of work to program the old content into the new instrument. I can imagine it probably seems like it was just a question of loading the samples and saving, but just doing the K1 & K2 kits took weeks. And having the old kits in the new interface is incredible - there's just no comparison to the old interfaces, or using the samples as wavs. This is now a full on sample- drum-synth. This product has taken many, many more man hours than anything else we have built.

I really think that any other company would have still charged something for these.

As a company we fret and worry to make sure we are always being super-fair to our customers - working out these discounts has taken days.
But clearly we have misjudged it slightly on this occasion, otherwise people wouldn't be complaining. But I would like to say that I really believe Konkrete is excellent value for money, once you try it.

To that end I am happy to offer a time limited demo version to any of our customers who would like to try it.

James

James, thanks for replying so quickly. I hope you didn't take it the wrong way - I love your stuff and was really looking forward to this when you announced it a while ago.

You already clarified what should have been quite obvious: you created an instrument this time around. I can imagine it wasn't just a case of "loading the samples and saving", as you put it. That's exactly what I thought when I got the mail with the upgrade offer, though. It wasn't very clear as to what was on offer here (aside from a ton of new kits), and so it seemed kind of redundant as a special offer.

Anyway, I guess it was just a misunderstanding, at least from my point of view. Sorry for griping, I realize it must be awful to read something like that when you've put so much hard work into a product. After seeing the vid and listening to the audio clips, I have to say it really looks and sounds tempting. There's such a vivid quality to these sounds...

I'll edit my first post in this thread.

Thanks for the feedback, we're going to look at the web pages now and try to make it clearer what the instrument is and what you get etc.


James

I can't comment on the awesomeness of it yet, I'm sure it's amazing, but as a customer from within the EU you have to add VAT to the price. It still amazes me that you don't advertise it including VAT for € and £ since you are a European company. It's even illegal to NOT advertise the price including VAT.

For reference: http://www.nca.ie/nca/price-display

"Tax inclusive pricing
Shops must display the full and final price of goods for sale in euro, including Value Added Tax (VAT), and any other taxes or charges.

If the price in a shop doesn't include VAT, then the shop is misleading consumers and breaking the law."

Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

I still have a few questions, even after James' lengthy explanation. . .

I want to be sure I understand my upgrade option correctly. I own K1, but not K2, so my option is to buy the new Konkrete product at $120 (no discount), and then I get the K1 samples I already own, but in a new format that allows them to be incorporated into the new instrument. Is that right?

Secondly, and I suspect the answer to this is no, but I'll ask just in case, is there any possibility of mixing samples from different kits in that cool new sequencer? I can definitely see wanting the kick from one kit, and the snare from another, etc, and still be able to sequence them together at the same time.

Third, I've never used Kontakt Player before, but since I'm still running Kontakt 4, I guess I would need to install it. Does anyone know how big the install is, and whether I have to install a bunch of junk like marching bands and accordions and tubas along with it? Hopefully I can just install a bare-bones player without the unwanted content.

Were either the K1 or K2 samples used to create loops for Tremors? I loved the drum sounds in the first Tremor set especially, and wondered if those samples had ever been released?

Finally, I have to admit that the videos of Konkrete that I watched today were pretty impressive. Obviously the content is first-class, but the instrument seems pretty terrific too. I love all the modulation possibilities, and the way you can get the notes shifting back and forth in the sequencer channels. I don't think all the vids are on the soniccouture site, but I found about 3 of them on YouTube under soniccouture konkrete.

Sorry about the long post. . .

Dan

Hi Dan,

1. You have a choice :

You can just buy the new instrument, and get the K1 add-on for free, for €89 / $120, which is a discount of €39 / $59.
With all due respect, while you own the original Konkrete 1, you don't own the K1 add-on, which is a massive upgrade to the original kits.

or

You can buy the full bundle for €110 / $149, getting a discount of €57 / $89 - which is more than the cost of your KI1 add-on, and really great value!

2. No, you can't mix kits in the Beat Shifter, but you can run multiple kits in a multi, of course.

3. I think the K5 player has the option of just the bare bones install, but i'd have to check that tomorrow. Certainly you could delete the library content that comes with it right away if you didn't need it. i don't think they give much with it.

4. Some konkkrete sounds would have been used in Tremors, but not exclusively by any means. There will be a Tremors kits add-on pack for Konkrete later in the year, as well as an Abstrakt Breaks Add-on. they were supposed to be in the original release, but the sheer volume of work to create this has completely overwhelmed us.


5. All the videos are on the site, in the videos tab. I think maybe our site needs a redesign if people aren't finding them!

Hope this helps

James
Last edited by soniccouture on Tue Jan 29, 2013 2:52 pm; edited 2 times in total

we plan to address this issue very soon, possibly this week.

James

And I will probably buy it anyway. You've never let me down.

I can. It is. Really surprised to see some negative comments about this thing. You can pay close £70 for a bunch of Didgeridoo samples. Not only do you get a ton of completely original and instantly usable samples, but the instrument is an absolute joy to program. I don't know about everybody else but the words "Joy to program" and "drums" don't normally belong in the same sentence. BeatShifter is fab, and the amount of control you have to tweak the sound is just fantastic.

I do think, James and Dan, you sell yourself a bit short on the website. Things I'd not realised until after I'd bought the thing:

1. Every kit (including the old K1 and K2 kits) has a BeatShifter beat already set up. As an owner of Konkrete 1 and 2 getting this for free is awesome. I've used both packs heavily on my tracks (to the point I'd mostly stopped using them), and this really gives them a new lease of life.

2. Also included are some demo MIDI files and patches. Always like to see these:
Buchla Percussion
Codec Demo
Inside The Kick & The Snare
Konkrete jungle
Si Begg konkrete demo 2 - (Vox Block?)
Smash Kit Demo

Also a bit more detail on the samples - where they are from and how you made them, would be interesting.

Couple of queries for you:
1. Is there anyway to capture MIDI out of the BeatShifter? I know I can trigger from MIDI, sync and so on, but can I record, say 8 bars as a Midi part?
2. Awesome that you are dong more expansion packs for it - I'd be really interested to see what I could do with some more "conventional" percussion sounds - things like Timbales, Tablas and the like. Any thoughts on this?
3. I don't suppose you could make the MIDI for your 200e kit demo available could you?!

I'm sure this product will appeal to the glitch/trip-hop market, but frankly - the videos didn't impress, but only because that's not how I make music, and the kind of songs I write don't require a hi-hat or snare to (optionally) jump around every bar(ish), or require deep parameter shifting. I, personally, was expecting a follow-on to Konkrete 1 and 2, and instead get something quite different, and quite a bit more expensive.

I would urge those sitting on the fence to take up the offer for a trial demo for 1 week. It's a generous offer for those perplexed by this product shift.

I do think that more light need be shed on details, and in particular the add-ons.

And yet, this could well be someone's panacea.

KEv