Spitfire LABS is out (free and subscription)

[SHall1000]

How much is the subscription? They don’t tell you without a sign in.

Read the first post of the thread.

Oops!

[Vortifex]

How much is the subscription? They don’t tell you without a sign in.

Read the first post of the thread.

That's the sale price. Once the three months are over it's £12.99 a month or £99 annually.

I hate subscriptions and will never pay for one (for music software) but am not too bothered about this as long as the free libraries remain free and accessible.

[SHall1000]

I abandoned Labs because of too many technical issues. Enough to put me off even without the subscription.

[funky lime]

It has crashed on me twice now while trying to download some free sounds.

When I try to add an instance to a track, it brings me to a login screen and takes about 30 seconds of phoning home and initializing stuff before I can even do anything at all with the plugin UI.

If I try to use the plugin offline, it won't even load. It just gives me a login screen with an error message. This plugin requires you to be online to use it, and every single instance you load has to log in and phone home before it can do anything at all.

This might actually be the worst plugin I've ever tried. It's a shitty web shop application first and foremost, and it also has sample playback capability seemingly as an afterthought. Somehow, even the glitchy old version of LABS was way better. I've long been on the fence about grabbing some expensive Spitfire stuff, but with this plugin screams "stay the f**k away!" Deleted the whole mess before I even played a single note.

[adl]

It has crashed on me twice now while trying to download some free sounds.

When I try to add an instance to a track, it brings me to a login screen and takes about 30 seconds of phoning home and initializing stuff before I can even do anything at all with the plugin UI.

If I try to use the plugin offline, it won't even load. It just gives me a login screen with an error message. This plugin requires you to be online to use it, and every single instance you load has to log in and phone home before it can do anything at all.

This might actually be the worst plugin I've ever tried. It's a shitty web shop application first and foremost, and it also has sample playback capability seemingly as an afterthought. Somehow, even the glitchy old version of LABS was way better. I've long been on the fence about grabbing some expensive Spitfire stuff, but with this plugin screams "stay the f**k away!" Deleted the whole mess before I even played a single note.

Wow man, thanks for being such a trooper! Glad i didn´t do anything (besides installing an auto-update for the Spitfire Installer. Now no packs are shown in the "installed" tab, but at least the plugin is still working (with all free packs i downloaded month ago) in Ableton 12.

[Michael L]

I wrote Spitfire support weeks ago and asked if the new plugin specifically fixed the technical issues the old plugin had that Spitfire acknowledged on its website.
Support person only said, It works for me.
Well there you go.

[adl]

Wow, the "sale" is already over.
Now it's 12,99€/ month or 99€/year.

[bagpipe200]

Not sure if it was just Reaper, but Spitfire Labs (the free version) was pretty much unusable on my Windows 10 machine running Reaper. Constantly caused Reaper to crash. It's a shame because I really liked some of the sounds I got from it.

[seangm]

It has crashed on me twice now while trying to download some free sounds.

When I try to add an instance to a track, it brings me to a login screen and takes about 30 seconds of phoning home and initializing stuff before I can even do anything at all with the plugin UI.

If I try to use the plugin offline, it won't even load. It just gives me a login screen with an error message. This plugin requires you to be online to use it, and every single instance you load has to log in and phone home before it can do anything at all.

This might actually be the worst plugin I've ever tried. It's a shitty web shop application first and foremost, and it also has sample playback capability seemingly as an afterthought. Somehow, even the glitchy old version of LABS was way better. I've long been on the fence about grabbing some expensive Spitfire stuff, but with this plugin screams "stay the f**k away!" Deleted the whole mess before I even played a single note.

Yeah I had a similar experience, wasted some time trying to get it to work and then gave up. Seems very buggy.

[emasters]

Have all the prior Labs downloads here. Not inspiring to contemplate a switch to the new player and with the subscription model. Too many folks have tried the new player and deleted it - for various reasons. Not a very promising start. Think I'll keep away, at least for now. With speed at which Spitfire corrects it's product defects, perhaps in another couple of years it will be sorted out and worth a closer look.

[SMSomething]

I've really enjoyed using Labs over the years. I own several of the Originals and the first paid tier of BBC. I've financially supported Spitfire through several purchases in appreciation of the free offerings of Labs. I particularly like much of what Christian Henson had his hands in. I was saddened to see him move on (or moved on) and now even more so for the impact it's having on Labs.

I won't update Labs now and refuse to wade into the subscription model cesspool. This whole mess seems like a very bad stumble on Spitifire's part.

However, it bodes well for Christian and Crow Hill, and I'm all in for that. I love String Murmurations, Small String Gestures, Galaxies and am getting some regular use out of the Vaults, including the Demon Drums (got that one when it was free). If this Labs subscription and 'always online mother ship' fiasco helps out The Crow Hill Company and Vaults, in the end, then I'll be left smiling and happy.

I have no ill will for Spitfire, but it seems to be becoming something I don't recognize.

[adl]

Just wanted to share my experience with switching from the old labs to the new (not subscribing, just use the free stuff):
It's actually been super easy, I just installed the new labs version, assigned the old path of the downloaded packs in the settings of the new labs vst and it workes flawless. It even openes old projects without any problems. I uninstalled the old labs version without any problems for the new one or without loosing any of the old packs. So far I'm quite impressed how smoother the transition went (especially with the backwards compatibility to when the old version was used in a project).

[softska]

Am really surprised they made it completely un-launchable without internet access... This seems insane to me to not have an offline mode to open up the plugin at bare minimum to playback

[holmer]

Am really surprised they made it completely un-launchable without internet access...

The free ones also?

[mixyguy2]

Whoever their webmaster is should be fired. Wow it sucks. Then again so does/did the Labs installation process, and most of the Labs freebies I tried didn't do much for me anyway. Now they're doing the subscription BS and mixing the freebies with some "paid Labs" too? Spitfire has done some really good stuff IMO, but farewell LABS.