Should I / you sample hoard from available freebies?

[TechHaus]

Back in the day (early 00's) I would keep the sample packs from magazine cover cd's...in fact, many of them are still in my sample library now.

Now I just ignore the stuff I can download from BEAT magazine.

Cymatics sends me an email every day telling me there is a new free pack to download.

Am I making a mistake not grabbing these?

Do you download all the available freebies you come across?

(I'm on Linux so I don't have tons of kontakt or huge libraries cluttering my drives, so I do have space...I am just trying to get my heard around if I am making a mistake passing these by)

[Benedict]

I learned ages ago not to d'load, let alone hoard, every doohickie and apparent goodie that floats past.

In 1990, these things felt a bit hard to come by (but they weren't). Now, there is an ever-expanding trash continent of useless and therefore distracting/demeaning/damaging stuff (usually colored RetroBlaze pinkple) that takes us out of ourselves with false promises.

I will try the odd tool. Most are dumped within an hour when it becomes clear that they offer less than what I have already curated as useful for what I really do (never what I apparently could do if I had that silly thing).

Think of Kraftwerk, who effectively had nothing. They couldn't slope down der Weg des Lebens to pick up an 808 clone or Boog. They had to work what they had. Which included sticks wired to alfoil pads wired to Osc wired to something else... Out of this, they made something unique and ever so vital. It was vital because they did the work, they made it - literally.

So my answer to you is that you probably have 1,000 more drum sounds than you actually need. Adding 5,000 more will not change anything in a positive way. You only have two feet so more than two pairs of shoes becomes a debilitating fetish when you can't leave the house for trying to choose.



BTW I mostly make all my own sounds from scratch for every piece. Occasionally, I want exactly Drum Box X, but that is uncommon and usually easily solved with Kong or a synth patch. As for compressors etc, I have two main ones I actually use, there are others I have but just don't need them. Further, those compressors are simple (M-Class Comp & AdHd Leveling Tool); I see no practical need for a behemoth of options, either in lists of one-trick BST, or some kind of Pro-Squish Pro thing. Besides, if I really need, I have the khs Compressor which has those three speed flavors - they do sound different in solo but rarely make it to a mix. Easier just to find the feel that works then use AdHd.