Audiomodern Soundbox - MPE sampler with advanced mapping editor

[pelennor]

As I said in the video, this reminds me of the Minimal Audio - Current launch where the launch video creators were put in a compromised position by not being informed of the full situation before the embargo was lifted (in that case, being subscription only at launch). Dash first found out about it being "free with library purchase" literally during the live stream chat of his launch video (I was the one who told him), which is why he privated the video.

As someone who's spent a lot of time in the recent years in the free plugin community, it's also becoming more common for companies trying to capitalise off free plugin goodwill, like doing open betas for "free" plugins that become paid on release and the free version stops working, or limited quantity "free licences" , and so on. Unfortunately I accidentally deleted the version of the SoundBox product page that I saved when first preparing the video, but if you read it in it's entirety it was definitely self contradictory and misleading at the very least, and given there's been at least a couple of rounds of alterations since

I'd like to hope that someone at audiomodern has watched this and they are considering their options, but let's wait and see.

[pelennor]

Dash's honest review video is up .. and it is pretty damning -

[swilow11]

I like how he starts by saying what he's not going to discuss All in all, this looks dodgy as f**k. But it's hard to imagine that this was Audio Moderns intent- calling something free which isn't is just immediately revealed to be nonsense, so I'm thinking this was maybe more of a marketing error? Maybe I'm being generous. Big fan of Riffer and Freezr but will probably steer clear in the future.

And what's worse imo is that touted features like MPE don't seem to have been implemented in a way that actually works.

[morphex]

Dash is knowledgeable and has a good reputation. He's earned it. I hate to see another company taking a tailspin like this, especially when I enjoy using their plug-ins. In this era of cancel culture, it's important to show a little grace and offer a chance at redemption, much like during the initial release of Minimal Audio's Current. But I haven't seen any messaging from Audiomodern that's attempting to resolve this.

What a missed opportunity. Why release software that clearly isn't up to the standards advertised? I like the concept and I don't doubt that you could create your own instruments and have them sound really decent. But I can't get past the obvious ethical concerns.

That's important to me when I spend money on software. And if they don't make an effort to publicly apologize or hold themselves accountable in an honest way, I think they run the risk of permanently poisoning their brand over time. I really don't want that for them or their customers.

[Gamma-UT]

This is the thing. It's such a daft thing to do and relatively easy to fix. OK, they wanted a bit of the publicity that comes with "free" but that was inevitably going to lead to issues particularly if they didn't inform reviewers what the situation was actually going to be. But the Audiomodern owner just seems too prideful to admit a mistake even though doubling down is clearly doing more damage. Going off the rails at reviewers isn't a clever way to fix the situation.

[pelennor]

Leaving reviewers to clean up the mess they made isn't helping either. Audiomodern are scrubbing comments on their own videos, but reviewers have to deal with the whole "what? it's not free!" thing over and over again.

If a few of the large >100K subscriber channels were to get involved it might change some things. I can't imagine Venus Theory and Benn Jordan being too impressed with this, for example.

[kraster]

This is the thing. It's such a daft thing to do and relatively easy to fix. OK, they wanted a bit of the publicity that comes with "free" but that was inevitably going to lead to issues particularly if they didn't inform reviewers what the situation was actually going to be. But the Audiomodern owner just seems too prideful to admit a mistake even though doubling down is clearly doing more damage. Going off the rails at reviewers isn't a clever way to fix the situation.

I don't know if developers know this but that kind of stuff leaves a really bad taste in people's mouths.

People who buy these things will be well tuned into the various music communitoes who review these things so it's not wise to be having beefs with known Youtubers.

Dash Glitch is well respected, knows his stuff and always gives everything a fair shake.

The "woke" comment, aside from being utterly nonsensical, is just a really stupid way of dealing with things.

As I said above all the hype about it being a Kontakt killer is hyperbolic nonsense. Kontakt is a monster in comparison. This is a super basic sample player that doesn't do half as much as the samplers that come with most Daws.

[IvyBirds]

Wow what cluster fark. Definitely not the way to launch a new product

[martiu]

[Gribs]

Yeah, at first I thought it was cool that a free sampler was being released. I was all set to support the company and buy their sounds because of that. Good thing I didn’t buy anything before someone on YouTube educated me on the fine print. I don’t need another sampler, but based on the description it looks like a fine, lightweight, straightforward piece of kit.

[swilow11]

I would just suggest Tal Sampler if you want an easy to use sample player that can be either complex (but still nothing as convoluted as Kontakt can be) or basic. I mainly use it to load 1 shot samples or hits and add a bit of Crunch with the sample rate/bit reduction and deploy some of the stretching algorithms.

[Michael L]

Another alternative is Sonokinetic's Ibrido Zero:
https://www.sonokinetic.net/products/in ... rido-zero/
Its half price from time to time.

[Gamma-UT]

If you want a free sampler, TX16WX has a decent set of features in the baseline edition.

[Ou_Tis]

I would just suggest Tal Sampler if you want an easy to use sample player that can be either complex (but still nothing as convoluted as Kontakt can be) or basic. I mainly use it to load 1 shot samples or hits and add a bit of Crunch with the sample rate/bit reduction and deploy some of the stretching algorithms.

I was about to say that what distinguishes Soundbox is that it supports MPE... but so does Tal Sampler.

It's incredibly annoying that the Soundbox web page seems to only provide detailed information in the form of a video. I hate being forced to watch a video just to get a list of features.

Soundbox doesn't support Lift/Release velocity. Skimming through the video I found no detailed discussion of MPE. It looks like there *might* be an option to customize the curves for Slide and Aftertouch... or maybe not.

I had to read a review to find out that it doesn't have round robins. Also from that review: "The Modulation section is also where you can set up the MPE functionality for polyphonic aftertouch but this was unfortunately not working in the version we looked at. Audiomodern has stated this will be addressed in a coming download."

https://www.attackmagazine.com/reviews/ ... e_vignette

[Gribs]

I would just suggest Tal Sampler if you want an easy to use sample player that can be either complex (but still nothing as convoluted as Kontakt can be) or basic. I mainly use it to load 1 shot samples or hits and add a bit of Crunch with the sample rate/bit reduction and deploy some of the stretching algorithms.

Yep. I have owned a license since it was released.