KVR Audio

tkmattson · Post by **tkmattson** » Thu May 05, 2005 12:36 pm

http://www.hollowsun.com/vintage/

It says....

"The Hollow Sun free download service is suspended until further notice"

Anyone have any ideas as to what happened?

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Thu May 05, 2005 12:58 pm

That sucks. No idea.
Good thing I leached everything I could from there already. Maybe they have hosting bandwidth issues? Maybe some company is chasing them for legal issues? But I don't expect that. The guy who runs it very clearly said no thank you to my offer of MT-32 samples because of Roland being particularly precious about that, so he seems to be keen on not irritating companies.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:33 pm

I have a rather good contact to Steve of Hollowsun (FWIW, I converted (or better: adjusted) some of his commercial libraries to EXS and partially Kontakt format), and to me it seems one of the reasons would be he got a little upset about everybody and his mum leeching off his entire free sample collection, without ever saying thanks or whatever, and without ever even thinking about possibly purchasing one of his (really fair priced) CDs.

In fact, you can even read his statement regarding the issue here:
http://hollowsun.proboards41.com/index. ... 1114822528

deleted · Post by **deleted** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:46 pm

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Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:57 pm

Why would he shoot himself in the foot? Because he's not offering freebies anymore?
It's a rather simple math operation: Site maintaining costs higher than revenues of CD sales = No site anymore.

Whether his CDs are worth the price or not might be up to you, but you just won't find much samples like that anywhere else.
In addition, some of the previously free samples IMO are way better than what you'll find in some commercial libraries, especially when you take a bit of your time to tweak the patches in your sampler of choice.
Believe me, I've done that with almost all the patches, and if I had to chose one part of my sample collection that I wouldn't want to miss at all, it's got to be the (mostly free) Hollowsun portion of it. It's an incredible roundup of synth sounds from the last 2 decades that you won't get as quick anywhere else. And replicating all those sounds using VSTis only would be quite an adventurous task as well.

deleted · Post by **deleted** » Thu May 05, 2005 2:11 pm

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Jazz Franco · Post by **Jazz Franco** » Thu May 05, 2005 2:36 pm

That's really sad news. I'm actually surprised that Steve doesn't secure some sort of advertising deal with Akai or their UK distributor or even some software company whose sampler reads .akp format--I'm using his patches with Shortcircuit free, they're exceptionally made! Hollowsun was (and hopefully will be again) the best possible advertixement for Akai IMHO, so it is just obvious to take a chance with that.

neverwhere2012 · Post by **neverwhere2012** » Thu May 05, 2005 2:36 pm

well.. it sucks that the free stuff is down. did he ever say on the main page of the site or on the download pages "hey, this costs money to keep online, donations would be awesome"? i mean, plenty of dev's of free plugins do it, and while not everyone donates, i'm sure many do. i dunno. it just seems kind of silly that he's mad that he didn't get enough "thank you" emails from people. lord knows that if he hopped on any music forum and said "hey, how do you people like hollowsun?" he'd be overwhelmed with positive response.

his commercial stuff was definitely well priced, and if i had the money to spare i would've purchased something from him. i still may if he sticks around long enough. oh well, glad i backed all that up to CD.

deleted · Post by **deleted** » Thu May 05, 2005 2:54 pm

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Spe3D · Post by **Spe3D** » Thu May 05, 2005 4:31 pm

It is true – the percentage of downloads to even feedback is quite something, vast amounts of downloads with maybe three or four comments, worse if there is the guys who promote the other sites in your own, just when you are trying to get a footing into something new – I think he has made the right choice imo – as it brings home to his clients that hosting stuff does actually have to be paid for – just because its free does not mean it will be up for long in a take take environment. Free get removed and replaced with pay for stuff - that is what he is doing now - the right choice for his set up imo.

Best regards,

Spe3d

:O)

Wicker Man · Post by **Wicker Man** » Thu May 05, 2005 5:05 pm

The free download area was very comprehensive...maybe he was offering too much.

Still offer free files as a taster but not so many...and remind people more blatantly that there are more comprehensive files on the CDs. I hope it works out as HollowSun has a great reputation as a resource site.

TrekStar · Post by **TrekStar** » Thu May 05, 2005 5:12 pm

...."the free lunch is over"

....haha....ok...nothing lasts forever.....thank god i did eat already...

GruvSyco · Post by **GruvSyco** » Thu May 05, 2005 7:10 pm

TrekStar wrote:...."the free lunch is over"

....haha....ok...nothing lasts forever.....thank god i did eat already...

nice... it's no wonder he bailed with attitudes like that.

I for one am a little embarassed to need to be reminded of common courtesy by a thread on a forum.

I emailed Steve to thank him for the samples I did get from him.

Failed Muso · Post by **Failed Muso** » Thu May 05, 2005 7:52 pm

Jace-BeOS wrote:That sucks. No idea.
Good thing I leached everything I could from there already.

That's the very reason and piss poor attitude why Steve has withdrawn the service

Jonny X wrote:Steve got into a bit of an arse when people were not prepared to pay for his samples, so he has withdrwn his free service no doubt. That will kill the site sadly, but I'v argued this many times, people will only pay what they think something is worth. Steve assumes wrongly that his prices are fair and people will pay them. Its a sad matter, but he has to accept that people only liked his sevrice as it was free. (He expected everybody who downloaded free samples to buy CDs and it didnt happen...) Steve if you read this I'm not taking a shot at you, just think that the freebies should go back online, as you will be shooting yourself in the foot...

Yet again, the very reason why Steve has withdrawn HS Free. And how you conclude that he has shot himself in the foot, I don't know. The only loser here is the honest user of HS samples. Steve has reduced his workload, his expenses and no longer has to serve thousands of ungrateful fools.

Jonny X wrote:Yes. It is a shame.
But Hollow sun came from being a free site.
All of a sudden steve says 'Its not free please pay from now on' and most people didnt... I wouldnt expect that either. The site only got publicity from free samples, commercially few care. If there are no freebies few will visit the site, and less will buy the CDs and so on until Hollow Sun dies - which will be a shame because the samples are good.

The site was never about publicity. It was about sharing high quality samples, for free, and maybe a bit of self promotion too, a service we were all to happy to leech from and never give anything back, not even a thank you.

neveranywhere201 wrote:well.. it sucks that the free stuff is down. did he ever say on the main page of the site or on the download pages "hey, this costs money to keep online, donations would be awesome"? i mean, plenty of dev's of free plugins do it, and while not everyone donates, i'm sure many do. i dunno. it just seems kind of silly that he's mad that he didn't get enough "thank you" emails from people. lord knows that if he hopped on any music forum and said "hey, how do you people like hollowsun?" he'd be overwhelmed with positive response.

Hey, let's see you dedicate hundreds of hours and hundreds of $$$, providing an unrivalled service for FREE and get no thanks or recognition for it and keep doing it "just for the love of serving ingrates"

Jonny X wrote:I think AKAI used to sponser him or something, when they pulled out he panicked and everything has gone tits up. Steve can probably tell you what happened with AKAI, my memory is not great.
Oh, and the CD sales arent intended to cover his site costs - he wants to live off of them

You could not be more wrong !!!

Spe3D wrote:It is true – the percentage of downloads to even feedback is quite something, vast amounts of downloads with maybe three or four comments, worse if there is the guys who promote the other sites in your own, just when you are trying to get a footing into something new – I think he has made the right choice imo – as it brings home to his clients that hosting stuff does actually have to be paid for – just because its free does not mean it will be up for long in a take take environment. Free get removed and replaced with pay for stuff - that is what he is doing now - the right choice for his set up imo.

Hear Hear, well said that man

TrekStar wrote:....haha....ok...nothing lasts forever.....thank god i did eat already...

TWAT

Steve is a personal friend of mine and I, like Sascha have done work with and for him. And yes, I contributed to HS myself. It is a sad day now that the legendary HS service is no more, but you only have yourselves to blame. If the cap fits, wear it.

Now where will the talentless, thieving gobshites like Jonny X and TrekStar get their freebies from ? Ah well, back to Limewire/DC++/eMule etc for those leeches.

Rob
Akai Pro Users Forum Owner

SampleScience · Post by **SampleScience** » Thu May 05, 2005 8:01 pm

I don't understand what's the fuss about Hollow Sun I mean, pretty much all the samples that we're available on the Hollow Sun website was or is available on other free sites.

Why is the Hollow Sun download page down?