KVR Audio

electro · Post by **electro** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 5:16 am

Why are some of these banks being priced nearly half the cost of the synth? C'mon, wise up.

bjporter · Post by **bjporter** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 5:22 am

electro wrote:Why are some of these banks being priced nearly half the cost of the synth? C'mon, wise up.

From what I understand, it takes a long long time to make great patches. Especially with more complex synths. You have to consider:
1) It's play on demand... so flipping through the presets they are tuned to be playable at the same point.
2) Keyboard / modulations controls programmed
3) Named intelligently
4) Organized well
5) Actual preset program must takes a while to make. Especially if you're trying to copy a certain sound.

Just for shits and giggles:
So let's say #1 is 5 minutes, #2 is 20 minutes, #3 and #4 are 5 minutes, #5 is 30 minutes. So 1 hour. Multiple that by 128 = 128 hours.

Let's say you work 50 hours a week, that's 2.5 weeksish.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 5:27 am

Some people actually use the presets to make a living, so i imagine they get their moneys worth.

valerian_777 · Post by **valerian_777** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 5:29 am

Thats why i would never buy soundbanks from Vengeance or Tone2. I can't justify the price if i can get something like Klanghelm's or Toneboosters Plugin (only to name two devs) for half of the price. Don't tell me creating a soundbank last longer. But everybody is free to put the price he think it deserve it.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 5:36 am

Im usually too cheap to buy soundbanks, so i just learned how to do my own sound design stuff. Besides I can't find a lot of the stuff i make in banks

and then If i did find a sound i liked I would probably chop it up, run it through a bunch of glitch, spectral manipulator & granular synthesis processors. I'm weird like that..

elxsound · Post by **elxsound** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 5:54 am

bjporter wrote:
electro wrote:Why are some of these banks being priced nearly half the cost of the synth? C'mon, wise up.
From what I understand, it takes a long long time to make great patches. Especially with more complex synths. You have to consider:
1) It's play on demand... so flipping through the presets they are tuned to be playable at the same point.
2) Keyboard / modulations controls programmed
3) Named intelligently
4) Organized well
5) Actual preset program must takes a while to make. Especially if you're trying to copy a certain sound.

Just for shits and giggles:
So let's say #1 is 5 minutes, #2 is 20 minutes, #3 and #4 are 5 minutes, #5 is 30 minutes. So 1 hour. Multiple that by 128 = 128 hours.

Let's say you work 50 hours a week, that's 2.5 weeksish.

Bread and butter sounds maybe, but a well intended sound designer can spend hours on a single sound, and that's long before preparing the product for commercial release, which will also include balancing volume levels across presets, typing in info (depending on they synth, since some allow for metadata to be added, others have a text info option or both), and of course all the things you've mentioned.

Then... there's also the time involved in naming the product (not as easy as you might think), developing marketing materials (graphics), documentation, creating demo tracks, or paying others to provide demo tracks, making videos demos and/or trailers.

Then don't forget the regular costs of hosting, back end services for product delivery (most electronic delivery services charge monthly fees regardless of how much of a product is sold).

People don't like to pay for things, but a lot goes into producing any commercial product (not just soundsets) as well what goes into maintaining and providing support.

This easiest option is to simply keep it moving if you don't feel something is worth your money.

DrGonzo · Post by **DrGonzo** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 5:57 am

Before Apple wreaked havoc on pricing and made everybody believe that all software should cost one dollar, the price for a soundbank was normally around 35-40 dollars. And before that it was even higher.

I have zero problems with paying good money for a good quality product, and I think reFX shows that pretty well by selling their Nexus expansions for 55 euros each. For teenagers who are fluffing around on clouds of endless time, minimal responsibilities and don't have a day job to go to - sure. But if you are working professionally and you don't want to spend one extra minute by effing around - a client wants a production made yesterday - a soundbank that solves your problems is worth 55 euros without question.

So yeah, I would say the price of a soundbank depends on where you're coming from. A soundbank for 55 euros (I'm just using Nexus as an example) is by todays standard a lot. But if it gives you the sounds you need it's not expensive at all.

/C

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 6:01 am

DrGonzo wrote: For teenagers who are fluffing around on clouds of endless time, minimal responsibilities and don't have a day job to go to - sure. But if you are working professionally and you don't want to spend one extra minute by effing around - a client wants a production made yesterday - a soundbank that solves your problems is worth 55 euros without question.

So yeah, I would say the price of a soundbank depends on where you're coming from. A soundbank for 55 euros (I'm just using Nexus as an example) is by todays standard a lot. But if it gives you the sounds you need it's not expensive at all.

/C

That's pretty much what I said above but I'm glad you made it more clear.

elxsound · Post by **elxsound** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 6:08 am

DrGonzo wrote:Before Apple wreaked havoc on pricing and made everybody believe that all software should cost one dollar, the price for a soundbank was normally around 35-40 dollars. And before that it was even higher.

I have zero problems with paying good money for a good quality product, and I think reFX shows that pretty well by selling their Nexus expansions for 55 euros each. For teenagers who are fluffing around on clouds of endless time, minimal responsibilities and don't have a day job to go to - sure. But if you are working professionally and you don't want to spend one extra minute by effing around - a client wants a production made yesterday - a soundbank that solves your problems is worth 55 euros without question.

So yeah, I would say the price of a soundbank depends on where you're coming from. A soundbank for 55 euros (I'm just using Nexus as an example) is by todays standard a lot. But if it gives you the sounds you need it's not expensive at all.

/C

That brings up another good point... Computer based music is still a niche market. A soundset for a particular plugin is an even smaller market. People who actually purchase soundsets is still an even smaller market. Price a product too cheaply and the sound designer will never recoup anything worth their effort.

There's such a larger market for Apple (mobile) apps, that they can charge so little and make enough to continue development (not always though). That'll never be the case for sound designers developing soundsets. Some synths have larger markets than others but again, but not everyone is a paying customer.

Kriminal · Post by **Kriminal** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 6:11 am

Make you own sounds, problem solved.

Lotuzia · Post by **Lotuzia** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 8:32 am

Elxsound

gave the right answers. To his pile of arguments I'll just add that vendors, like me, who are organised into a standard company scheme pay -HEAVY- taxes on top of all that ( ie more than 50% at least of the gross income after bank, VAT fees. -social taxes, healthcare taxes, taxes for future retirement, etc etc) as opposed to vendors who could do approx the same thing like offering soundbanks, but as individuals, but paying much less to no taxes at all, and therefore belonging to a kind of parralel economy.

Else none of our soundbanks afaik is equal to barely half the price of the synth theyre made for.( For Electro )

Else people are ready to play a lot for a simple Rhodes sound, or a Piano sound, but not for a bunch of synth presets. Though, when I heard some sampled instruments put on the market at quite high prices, I'm not at all convinced that the ammount of work involved to produce them is superior to the ammount of work dedidcated to make a *good* soundbank ( ie at least one month in my case, sometimes more )

Else, we have sold thousands of soundsets in the past years. And we have NEVER received a SINGLE rant form one user saying that our soundbanks were overpriced. Otoh we have received dozens of kudos for our work. Well, for me, this sums it up.

And now the last thing : Making you own presets is nice. Some musicians however dont have the time, or the will, or the skill to do it. Still, they are muscians and do music. So this is probably part of our faithfull userbase. But there's more : I've designed thousands of presets in my life, but I'm STILL curious about other people work, because I KNOW for certain that SD X will not make the same presets than SD Y. And this is probably another part of our userbase, people who are curious about what other human beeings can offer them, and want to benefit of that. Yes soundbanks can cost more than one pizza, they can cost even two pizzas. But for those who really care about their music, AND think they can benefit from the creativity and offerings from other people, or the professionals who just need sounds to achieve their works, its just worth it imho. Ymmv.

Biome_Digital · Post by **Biome_Digital** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 11:36 am

Not all preset packs cost half the synth.

loachm · Post by **loachm** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 12:08 pm

...well, enough enlightening posts on this topic for the OP to wise up. however, I totally agree if he just meant the amount of preset banks created by a lot of so called pros sold at the price range he's refering to. and even at cheaper prices it's still a waste of money. quite a lot of them sound like they've been made by teenagers who can't have the years of experience of a professional sound designer per se. there are plenty of synths that come with a very well designed factory soundbank right from the start, so that's often hard to justify buying additional sound banks.

and from an artistic point of view nothing makes more sense than this:

Kriminal wrote:Make you own sounds, problem solved.

electro · Post by **electro** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 12:59 pm

Smaller focused banks containing less presets, no more than 64 are better than bigger banks for bigger prices.

One of the better quality soundbanks well worth their asking price is Luftrum 9 and Luftrum 11 for DIVA. I hope he does another.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Fri Jul 18, 2014 1:06 pm

electro wrote:Why are some of these banks being priced nearly half the cost of the synth? C'mon, wise up.

+1

I got this "offer" yesterday:

Analog Theory for Korg MonoPoly is available now for purchase at a cost of $39. However, the first 50 customers can apply discount code givemeanalog and save $5 on their order! As always, I'll encourage speed because these codes will be gone very quickly...

What confidence from the vendor expecting to rake in $1700 in a flash ($34*50)

The Korg MonoPoly Rack extension costs $49, it's crazy that a soundset is costing nearly as much

Overpriced Soundbanks