Which library did you get and regret the most?

[spirit]

EW's Voices of Passion and Ministry of Rock are pretty lame. The legato in VOP is crap, with only the now-overused phrases being of any use, and all but the drum kits in MOR suck dirt.

+1
MOR is just awful, incredibly primitive and unfriendly. And as per the above, only the phrases in VOP are worth having, but they've all now been flogged to death and basically can't be used without sounding like a preset noob.

I recently upgraded to a new DAW and didn't even bother to re-install them.

[michael2]

Slightly off topic but I'm trying to re-arrange my files again. I've reinstalled SampleTank without the factory collection. All I have available now are the expansions I bought for it. Things I want to use. The interface is much cleaner. There are some really great sounds in there imho.

smart. maybe I will pick out a few that I like and ditch the rest. how did you do that? wonder if I have to reinstall or if I can just trash them.

[jancivil]

Lßyrical Distortion libraries are such poor quality that they are simply unusable due to bad mappings, notes with bad tunings, bad round robins, bad programming...They are far and away the worst commercial sample libraries I've ever used in nearly two decades of using sample libraries.

Harsh!

I bought one, which has all kinds of presets, and after three or four I gave up. useless for me. as noticed above, there were intonation issues, every damn thing. it wasn't a lot of money iirc but I may as well given it to someone that needed it.

the most disappointing thing out of a significant investment for me has been EWQL RA. it's just totally superficial. I've gotten some use out of it, but it's very frustrating... certain things in it make you wanna use it but you run into the wall with it.

a lot of it is 'phrases', as if instead of deeper articulations, and it's just not thought through. are there people cobbling together music out of a limited set of phrases out of context, I guess so, but it's just a superficial approach. the tunings lack documentation, so that's trial and error; and if you tried to research it many of the names are useless. I use it so seldom, really limited to adding a dash of color; there is no depth to anything in it.


their marketing drives their development far too much I guess.

[noiseboyuk]

Good lord - Broadway Lites "cheesy"? I'm the first to say that big band brass libraries are still the toughest challenge in terms of VIs and BBB is far, far from perfect, it's also far, far from cheesy - it does take practice though. Methinks the problem here isn't the library. Ditto Emotional Piano, which is sublime for its intended purpose - I can only presume the poster who wrote it off didn't read the stuff about its intended purpose. Which, let's face it, we've all been guilty of.

I think my rock-bottom waste of space was, I'm afraid to say, Wusikstation, but that's mostly because I already owned Omnisphere. I got it into my head that it might be good for the laptop. It was so disorganised and shambolic (with 1 good sound for every 30 bad ones), that it inspired me to give Omni itself a go on my modest laptop instead - and it works remarkably well.

I do know the Tonehammer phenomenon - I bought Liberis which is an outstandingly good library, but it is just sat there waiting for me to write something for it. One day I'll be glad, I know it.

[zircon]

Lßyrical Distortion libraries are such poor quality that they are simply unusable due to bad mappings, notes with bad tunings, bad round robins, bad programming...They are far and away the worst commercial sample libraries I've ever used in nearly two decades of using sample libraries.

Harsh!

I bought one, which has all kinds of presets, and after three or four I gave up. useless for me. as noticed above, there were intonation issues, every damn thing. it wasn't a lot of money iirc but I may as well given it to someone that needed it.

the most disappointing thing out of a significant investment for me has been EWQL RA. it's just totally superficial. I've gotten some use out of it, but it's very frustrating... certain things in it make you wanna use it but you run into the wall with it.

a lot of it is 'phrases', as if instead of deeper articulations, and it's just not thought through. are there people cobbling together music out of a limited set of phrases out of context, I guess so, but it's just a superficial approach. the tunings lack documentation, so that's trial and error; and if you tried to research it many of the names are useless. I use it so seldom, really limited to adding a dash of color; there is no depth to anything in it.


their marketing drives their development far too much I guess.

Heh, just goes to show how opinions can vary dramatically! For me, RA is one of the BEST purchases I've ever made. Though the sampling is indeed not very deep at all (which is partially what inspired the creation of Impact Soundworks), many of the instruments are just gorgeous. The Santoor alone is unbelievably beautiful and I've used it in countless tracks over the years.

[jancivil]

I agree. I've used that. & the baritone violin sounds fantastic. I wanted so bad to use it extensively a little while ago, but I hit a hard wall.

I have a background in Indian music and it just does not cut it, it's a special fx library, you have to know going in the severe limitations of it. it's just superficial. it's inconsistent, some of it is a little deeper, some of it's a joke. I haven't heard anything in it that didn't sound splendid but it's just too limited...

for the price... I feel conned. I was a willing mark so it's on me.

I see the same kind of objection here to MOR etc. There is a reason they have the ridiculous discounts they have been having. and the Play interface doesn't help matters.

[blueman]

Sampletank, Sonik Synth 2, Tron FX and several other impulse buys from "Squids" via his relentless marketing of group buys here a few years back. The "Infinite Player" was a nice idea and SOME of the drum kits are actually quite good but there's a ton of sh*t there unfortunately. It's low-fi, with little or no velocity samples (layers), poorly organized (website is horrid) and has seen little to no updates. Sonic Reality and IKM are BOTH guilty of re-distrubuting old products at seemingly cheap prices, until you add it all up and say...wtf did I spend over $1000 bucks on exactly?

SampleTron and SampleMoog are exceptions to the rule; both are awesome!

[michael2]

Sampletank, Sonik Synth 2, Tron FX and several other impulse buys from "Squids" via his relentless marketing of group buys here a few years back. The "Infinite Player" was a nice idea and SOME of the drum kits are actually quite good but there's a ton of sh*t there unfortunately. It's low-fi, with little or no velocity samples (layers), poorly organized (website is horrid) and has seen little to no updates. Sonic Reality and IKM are BOTH guilty of re-distrubuting old products at seemingly cheap prices, until you add it all up and say...wtf did I spend over $1000 bucks on exactly?

SampleTron and SampleMoog are exceptions to the rule; both are awesome!

I bought Sonik Synth in one of those sales a month or so ago. I haven't loaded the samples yet as I need to buy a new external HD. actually forgot I had it. I was looking for something yesterday and stumbled across it and after opening it was thinking "WTF is that?". Took me a minute to remember what it was.

[sauli]

FXTron I regret. Many samples are low quality, have noise, loop badly or sound like sampled from old vinyl. And this is supposed to be "sampler" (as in try pack) of a bigger product and should make me want to buy it. I've bought similar sfx try packs for 10% the price and better quality.

Lyrical Distortion guitars are pretty horrible to use indeed, but haven't noticed tuning issues with the one I have bought. Don't use the library anymore, since Shreddage does what I need much better and with excellent workflow. LD '72 Jazz Bass in the other hand I like a lot. Same kind of bad usability, but the bass lines I do are much simpler than guitar lines I'd like to do