The Sound Board

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Until July 30th — that's next monday — Spitfire offers six pairings of their libraries at a greatly reduced price: two libraries for the price of one.

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Purchased eDna, since I wanted it from day one - Analogonaut and Moviedrone presets have always seduced my hears

Did anyone else take advantage of this promotion? I let it pass me by, but I was tempted for a moment to pick up LCO.

I did Edna. Not entirely satisfied at the moment: a zillion patches, no way to favorite or sort or any of that, no way to easily find samples to replace in presets you want to tweak, and no way to build your own preset easily from two different types of sound sources. Lots of sounds for the money, though.

I find its easier and easier for me to pass up offers these days Jason, I'm feeling thoroughly bloated with kit. But that said I might have been tempted if some of the pairs were different. There was only ever one I really wanted. I suspect though that as the months and years roll by Spitfire will have ever more sales, they seem to be slowly moving from a strict no-sales policy save for pre-release (I remember they argued that was to show good faith for those who gambled), to having loads of sales. Not quite at East West level... yet.

bbunker - agreed on Edna. There's gorgeous stuff in there but I rarely use it, sad to say, largely for the reasons you mentioned.

Yes, I've come to terms with the fact that my ability is vastly inferior to what the libraries I own can deliver, so I might as well work on addressing the former before padding the latter.

I suppose those criticisms with eDNA are really to do with the limitations imposed by Kontakt? Hard to implement an Omnisphere-esque patch browser in Kontakt.

I'm not lately a "fan" of Spitfire marketing strategies, and i have and love their SSS libraries, SCS and many more, including eDNA, that i consider a great lib for creativity but, was Not eDNA the aclaimed "first wave" and later forgotten and totally abandoned? and was not the promess of SA to load external wavs and again ... "where i promise, now i passing?".

tack wrote:I suppose those criticisms with eDNA are really to do with the limitations imposed by Kontakt? Hard to implement an Omnisphere-esque patch browser in Kontakt.

Yes, I think that's the fundamental problem. There's a lot released for Kontakt that just shouldn't be, imo. I liked that Phobos was its own VST, you never know they might redo Edna in the fullness of time using a better, custom engine.

And J Rod - yes, I fear you're right. They did actually promise a tag browser too, which they sort of delivered but it turned out to just be a slightly clumsy integration with the Kontakt database. And then there's silly little things like patch names being 4,000 characters long, so whole rashes of them look identical when truncated in normal use. It's all a bit boxing gloves.

I looked into the SCS/LCO pair. I own SCS but the hint was that to "complete your pair" would substantially lower the price of the one you didn't have. At around $380 for LCO, I didn't bite.

SCS/LCO would have been my1st choice, really, but impossible to pay at the moment.
I'm sure Pairs will come back,at least if this sale is a success for SA, as I think they mostly test waters with different formulas. They seem to go the 8Dio/Cinesamples road...And I won't complain! No reason to rush on presales exclusive offer anymore with the "fear" it'll never be within my budget reach anymore.

Erik wrote:SCS/LCO would have been my1st choice, really, but impossible to pay at the moment.
I'm sure Pairs will come back,at least if this sale is a success for SA, as I think they mostly test waters with different formulas. They seem to go the 8Dio/Cinesamples road...And I won't complain! No reason to rush on presales exclusive offer anymore with the "fear" it'll never be within my budget reach anymore.

I wouldn't say Spitfire is anywhere near the 8Dio/Cinesamples road. Both of those companies have occasional true blowout sales, 40% off and such. Spitfire's sales have been very careful, measured, non-flexible and calculating. They're most definitely playing capitalist hardball, testing the waters to see if they can perhaps expand their customer base a bit without compromising their exclusive, boutique status... But I ADORE their orchestral stuff, have been slowly collecting Albions and wish I had the $$$ for SSO...

I thought about the least expensive/highest discount pair, Enigma + Felt Piano for 50% off, but I simply don't need them. Except for very high quality emulations of traditional bread-&-butter instruments, so much that is available now falls into the "but I already have Omnisphere" category for me.

Yes you're right Quasar. Was saying that because of the comparison with EW which seemed less relevent to me. I wonder how big 8Dio and Cinesamples are. Spitfire is 30 people now, as said somewhere : no more boutique for sure !

I looked at SSS with the percussion. But I've already got the first of the Murals and these days I'm more interested in solo instruments with some kind of orchestral backing. But I can use just about any orchestral backing like CSS for example and at £699.00 for that particular pair, I decided to pass. If the price of the pair had been the price of the percussion library at approx £349, I still would have passed.

I picked up LCOS (I already own SCS) after about two days deliberation between it and Olafur's toolkit.

It was £100 off, so seemed like a decent deal. The reason I took so long to make a decision was based purely on the fact that I rarely (never) get paying work to write music in that style. I had exactly the same issue with Tundra!

Looks like this is back til June 25 - https://www.spitfireaudio.com/pairs/ . Tundra + Evolutions is tempting, but still above my own impulse threshold.

(I was confused for a while there, in the cart you don't see any discount but each product is there at half price).

(EDIT - anyone else get the same feeling of overwhelming relief when you were agonising over a deal only to discover its a good 60% more expensive than your agony level, and you can safely disregard it?)