Group buy: Where are my sounds?

[mlyon]

[remmet]

Okay - Please be gentle. I've had no past dealings with eSoundsz or any of the companies or people involved in this group buy. It just looked like a great opportunity to expand my sound palette. Plus, I had already demo'd CSR and thought it was one of the best reverbs I'd ever heard.

All that being said, I was a little surprised at how confusing the instructions were for downloading, registering, and authorizing the product(s). There seemed to be a lot of guesswork about where to find things and what steps needed to be taken when. And unlike most of you, I wasn't aware that the components of the group buy wouldn't be ready to download and use for a certain period of time. Maybe the information was there and I just missed it. My mind works best when things are spelled out clearly and precisely, but that's just me.

In any case, once everything is ready to go, and once I can figure out how to best utilize these new tools, I'm sure I'll be very happy.

Richard
www.richardemmet.com

[stephenpaulharper]

Email eSound tech support and they will email you back a confirmation about the Bonus bank and they will send the info by email when it is ready. Sounds nicely worked out. The tech support email and reply work as your receipt for asking for this item and that you are logged to get it.

Thank you sir, will do.

Cheers.

Steve

[buscemi]

[Squids]

eSoundz.com you can't sell a product and then not deliver.
Your latest (1st?) group buy is lacking. It's two days after the end of the group buy and the sounds are STILL not available to download from your website.

Hey, here is a neat idea. Why doesn't eSoundsz FedEx (overnight of course) me their entire sound catalog. I'll send you a check to pay for it when I get around to it.

Deal? Cool. Just let me know who to send my shipping address to.



- Granted

Please don't take for granted that we said this was custom made and that the time of arrival for all the stuff would be lesser than and cheaper than if it was shipped. Plus, so far you have delivered:

SampleTank engine (which normally sells for the same price as the whole GB)
FREE IK Effect (worth more than than the price of the GB)
Retro Grooves (a $99 product)

-and-
I said that we'd have the rest by the beginning of the coming week which is again much sooner than if it was shipped. PLUS, I even said that we COULD just upload it now but then it'd be missing a few extra instruments we added at the last minute.

On top of all of that, there is ANOTHER reason why we have to put them up bit by bit and that is because if everyone was downloading all of it at the same ime it would be too slow. At first I wanted to do a first come first server thing (npi) but realized that our system was modified in the last GB we did so we couldn't do it that way (but benefited in another area instead such as automatic upload to your user area). Therefore we changed it to putting up one product at a time and also telling people that they can just wait if they want until mid next week to download it all because it will all be there by then and less people downloading all at once as well.

I think most people are okay with that, especially those that have participated in our group buys before. For many people a few days is much much better than having to wait weeks for it to arrive around the world.

But, is it ideal to make people wait even an extra day for it? No, I'd have preferred not to. Honestly, I would have liked to have been done sooner and started the download process BEFORE the GB ended. We went overboard in how many new custom things we packed into this deal. I mainly did it though because of the IK promo timing. We had always planned to do a group buy on JUST the Rare instruments later in the year (as some people know because it was discussed as something that might happen... a desire of many who joined the Squids Tron GB).

So, I took a risk doing this one NOW even though we had to make it or finalize it WHILE we were doing the GB and it really took right up to the wire... especially since we did TWO extra libraries one of which was even thought of as an extra bonus DURING the GB because of some requests... plus some mini bonuses too. We added horns and female vocal riffs just for one person's requests.

If all of that doesn't give us a little slack well... we always do our best and balance out what it takes to give you guys something great and how we can deliver it when you and I both would LIKE it to be done. In this case there were a lot of variables. We don't hide behind these things either. I'll come right out tell you guys what we do right and we we could have done better. It probably WAS too ambitious to do 4 new products all at once. But, on the other hand, we DID pull it off! Just making these products as good as they are and so fast was a feat. So... the glass really is more full and I am proud of the SR team for pulling it together. You guys will have it all sooner than previous group buys. Plus it realy is an amazing deal! No one else is doing anything like it. We hope everyone will be happy with it.

[loose snare]

Squids,

AFAIC (and I'm guessing for most people here too) please don't feel pressured to get half finished/missing stuff versions of these vols out asap just because of this one lone complainer.

I'm sure everyone would prefer to wait a day or two longer so you can add as much as possible and also not be totally stressed out putting it all together in a mad rush.

Can't people just get on with, you know ...... making music ?!

(or at least play with their ST2/ free IK plug for a couple more days?)

JM2C

[unogeek]

I for one am very happy. I understand why we have to wait and I am happy with what I paid.

If all that amount of sounds were put up straight away with possible errors and omissions would the OP be commenting on slow downloads and missing sounds?

I refused to partake in the silly vote (go get a life!) I'm happy to make music with my tons of other sounds from Squid's previous GB's

Am really grateful for the long post Squids, but why should you justify it.

Cheers
Uno

[mellotronaut]

oh man granted,

should i really tell my experiences with some other software-companies here (last bad expl.: Cakewalk, who took the money, but didn't process an order and tell me, i should look into my account (where obviously isn't anything) instead of checking their bankaccount and process the order after almost two months). We have an effect yet and i love this reverb, we have the retro-grooves (not yet installed) and the ones, who didn't have ST2 yet, have the complete engine with lots of nice tweaking-possibilities ... .

m

[harmony gardens]

So let's all just take a chill pill and explore what we just got!! If we got it all at once, we would just rush through it to get a sence of what we all got. Let's think of this as a meal.

Savor your new IK plug, enjoy your new loops. Our chef is busy preparing the next course, sir. Would you care for a beverage, sir? Fine, if I can help you further, please feel free. Bon Appetite

[loose snare]

...... Let's think of this as a meal.....Savor your new IK plug, enjoy your new loops. Our chef is busy preparing the next course, sir. Would you care for a beverage, sir? Fine, if I can help you further, please feel free. Bon Appetite

Yeah and don't complain before the meal is served or the chef might put glitches/subliminal messages or other audio nasties in your sample pie

[beergeek]

calamari fanboys:

Yup...with good reason too. You'll be hard pressed to find bad customer experiences with esoundz. Besides, Squids makes a wicked marinara sauce

I'll cut you some slack and say that you didn't know about the delivery system. I'll even agree that it's not on the website in the order information and probably should have been.

What I won't cut you slack on is the method by which you register your complaint. Bet you thought that was funny crap huh. You were 1/2 right

So you buy something from a company and when you have a gripe about it you post some mean crap on their forum instead of calling or emailing support?

Didn't find too many sympathetic ears through that method did you?

Take a lesson from remmet.

remmet, I agree it's confusing how the free plugin worked but I'm glad you worked it out. If you have any more problems, this forum has a ton of helpful people and if we can't solve it, esoundz support can.

Also, I'm sorry that you didn't get the part about delivery in phases. I think Squids would probably agree that info should have been on the website and in the confirmation email. Live and learn and esoundz does learn from these things.

The last few GB's have been crazy...the downloadable GB is something they have only done on the last 3 GB's and each one has been a bit different. All of Squids GB's have custom stuff in them and Squids always adds stuff as incentives until the final product is just a ton of stuff.

This one started out as being Vintage Instruments and Rare Instruments Electronic and a free IK effect from IK. Then there were SampleMoog and SampleTron tastes added and Retro Grooves added and by request, Rare Intruments Acoustic and some Horns and Vox added just because a loyal customer asked for it.

In reality, some of the instruments in these collections are in there because customers suggested them. Squids went out and bought a marxophone because someone asked for it...sure, he knew it would be good for everyone but I think secretly he wanted to produce the most eclectic collection of sampled instruments ever.

In any case, as Squids pointed out, the ST2.5 engine, the free plug and the Retro Grooves are worth something like double what the GB cost.

At over 600mb, I was pretty shocked by the size of the Retro Grooves myself...I hadn't expected that many loops

Anyway, either of you could email support at esoundz dot com for any help you need. I've always gotten quick responses. Don't expect much over the weekend unless someone's trying to earn Squids points

Duuuuude...it's the beergeek mega post

[Alphadeus]

I wanna try writing a mega post! ... Here it goes....

Good things come to those who wait.



..... Doh.


I haven't really had a chance to mess with Sampletank yet due to a certain video game coming out on Tuesday I'm no where near discouraged about joining the group buy as I have T-Racks which will help me with my mastering. I also downloaded the cheapest pack I could find on the site (the "Bonus" disc) just to have some sounds to play with. I'm not too fond of them to be honest (I only played with them a few minutes, I'm sure I'll find something I like) but I know I'm gonna love the Vintage instruments because of the audio demos on the site.

I know this is the wrong thread to ask, but what's the cheapest way to get another IK plug-in? the best I could come up with is buying the Miroslav Orchestra for I think 175~. Since they extended the sale I'm interested in CSR. thank you.

[CS80]

The fact of the matter is simply that Squids never really sampled any of the instruments in the group-buy. He just set it up to see how much interest there would be, thinking maybe not so much, and he'd stall and fake it at the end and squeeze by. But after 400, he started to panic
and decided he better deliver. Heard he's out trying to sample everything in sight with his Ensoniq frantically trying to put a collection together at the last minute. A buddy said that he saw him at "Toys R Us" sampling a toy
xylophone.... Another buddy said he saw trying to trap a mole to make a
charanga...

It's going to be a rough weekend for Squids....

[Squids]

Thanks guys. We appreciate the support but we DID drop the ball on the something. I realized it in Granted's second post. It isn't that we needed to inform anyone that this was a work in progress being done during the group buy. That's irrelevant because the delivery plan would have been the same. These are large downloads and we have to skew their release otherwise hundreds of people would be downloading too many gigs at once. No, that's not it. But where we dropped the ball is that we didn't explain on the GB page itself and in an email to EVERYONE what to expect on delivery time. We're human we can make a mistake. I'm going to fix it today. The reason very few people are ticked about it here is because everyone on the forum was informed and knew what to expect. We had an internal communication snafu because I was about to tell Allen to email everyone and he said he already started it. Good on Allen that he's so fast he's already on it... but, what did he put in that email? Gooooooood question. I didn't get a chance to give him the details I wanted in there so it may have been missing some important things. I told him to stop and that we'll send out an official email to everyone. But, I had mixed feelings about sending yet ANOTHER email right after (kind of spammy) so I put it on the back-burner on a Friday and we didn't iron that out before we left for the day. We should have so that's where we dropped the ball. That and not posting something about it on the page itself. It's easy to forget about the page itself as a communication source when you have the forum... but it's our responsibility to keep our customers informed. So, I apologize for that and we'll clear it up today.

Meanwhile, these products are done and they could even go up right now. But, we still need to skew them a little bit I think. Maybe not. We can try putting them up at the same time but I just don't want it to be ridiculously slow for everyone. We just need to inform everyone in the GB (not just the forumites) of the delivery/upload schedule. It's not unreasonable at all to expect this from us!

I'll tell you what. I know most of you want the Rare Acoustic the most right? Maybe we'll post that one next instead. What do you think?

Also, because of this we're going to give the secret Banks Bank to everyone, not just to those that ask. This way the people who don't read the forum are in for a nice surprise... that could easily erase any bad feelings about not getting an email right away with this explanation. That's how Squids roll. When the waiter forgets your mashed potatoes and gives you a free desert you love them even more than if they got it right in the first place because it shows some class, care and consideration. That's how we want you guys to view us. We have ZERO problem admitting when we've made a mistake and are prepared to fix it and make up for it in a reasonable way.

[CS80]

I'll tell you what. I know most of you want the Rare Acoustic the most right? Maybe we'll post that one next instead. What do you think?

Sounds great to me Squids! I see you found a mole for the charanga!