I suppose I'll be in the minority here on Kurzlist...

I paid several hundred dollars for the Kurzweil orchestral and piano ROM's,
and overall I'm not impressed with the sound quality. If it weren't for the
fact that I don't have to load them every time I turn on the synth, I
wouldn't have bought them after listening to them.

Perhaps if I were a professional musician I might be willing to spend
several hundred dollars on each disk, but as electronic music is a hobby, I
just can't justify spending that much on sounds. Do I wish I had better
acoustic instrument sounds? Absolutely. I'd gladly shell out $50 to $100,
but anything above that is out of my price range. So for example I'd love to
have the Miroslav disks, but they are way beyond what I'm willing to pay.

I'd rather have fewer high quality sounds than a bunch of variations (with
or without VAST programming). I'll add the programming myself if I want to
tweak or modify the sounds.

My plea to sound engineers: spend your money making really high quality
samples, and then recoup your investment quickly by making them available in
the most popular formats, or by translating them into as many formats as
possible with as little special programming as possible. Offer the samples
to a wider audience for a lower price. If you really want to provide VAST
programming, and some people want to pay extra for it, then offer it as an
option.

Even though I have invested alot in Kurzweil equipment, I think that the
marketplace is undergoing a rapid shift from dedicated hardware samplers to
soundfonts and software samplers. Eventually I'll be able to buy excellent
acoustical instrument samples with keymaps for less than $100.

John
http://mp3.com/fumph

-----Original Message-----
From: marsiglio.clif.c
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 11:14 AM
To: Ray Callahan
Cc: palermo@...; KL
Subject: Re: [KL] A future for sample CD-ROMs for Kurzweils



I don't know. I have to regretfully disagree with these sentiments. The
sad fact is that if you buy something for $40, you are more likely to not
value it and more likely to pirate it than if you spend $200 on a disc.
I know guys that will pirate the hell outta shareware style software...its
only $19 to register...they aren't loosing that much money if I give it to
a friend...but would think twice about giving a friend a copy of M$ SQL
Server because if you spent $2000 on software, then yer friend better
spend it as well.

Most of the companies I knew that were offering cheapo discs are outta
biz. There were a few really good discs involved with this. Frankly, the
majority of the people that buy from WalMart aren't too concerned about
quality...they just want the cheapest thing they can get at the moment and
never stop to think that they have replaced that WalMart Airconditioner 3
years in a row and could have had central cooling installed by now.

Musicians don't think this way. We want quality. Why did we spend the
money we did on our Kurzweils? An Akai would work in most instances.
Heck, even one of those little Roland Romplers would do most of us fine.
So why did we buy real expensive Kurzweils? because we want quality. Why
should the sound designers be short changed because they have to do quite
a bit more work on the Kurz Discs than they would on the others?

Finally, Sonik has been offering a $30 disc for about a year now with a
good deal of our sounds on it. A good friend of ours at SoUnDEnGiNe
offered to print it up and deal with all the orders simply as an
experiment to see if folks WOULD buy these. We've sold less than 40 of
these discs in a year. This disc has more programming than most
non-native discs, heck even more than some Kurz native discs where they
simply keymapped everything and threw the samples into Program 199.
Obviously, there isn't as much programming as things such as the Take-6
disc (argh! were those programmers nutty or what! how many variations
can one come up with on a sound).

Lets see...Outta the $30, we cover shipping worldwide (I've always found
it skanky to see a price for something online only to find that shipping
was almost as much as the product). We have to cover the printing and the
disc duplicating...that and the fact Scott produced 200 discs in
anticipation for this...of which we've sold less than a quarter of those.
We look at getting back about half that each sale.

So, if this were our day jobs, do ya think we could make a living off of
these? Probably not. Could we if we sold them at $200? Probably not,
but we'd be able to play for our web resources :-)

Again, folks are looking for quality. We don't think quality when yer
looking at a BMW the price of a used Yugo. It just wouldn't sell. Some
people would buy and be pacified, but the economy would not be there.

blah blah blah

clif

On Sat, 2 Jun 2001, Ray Callahan wrote:

> In response to Tony's comments, I bought Symphony of Voices about a
> year ago and found it to be of very high quality, but Tony is right
> about prices. $500 is way too much for the 4 CD-ROM set. I would
> NEVER do that again. I just can not justify spending over $100 per
> CD-ROM, no matter how good it is. I believe that if producers of
> CD-ROMs would bring down their prices to in the $40 to $50 range, they
> would sell so many that they would make much more money. Why is
> Wal-Mart so successful? Because they sell a ton of stuff at prices
> lower than the competition---and they are making lots of money. Plus
> sample sounds take up a lot of memory and you must have some kind of
> outboard recorder if you plan to use them in music. Add in the time to
> load large memory sounds and they are pretty much useless in live
> performance which means that you must record them earlier then play
> along with them, which is OK, or not use many of the sounds. Just my
> comments.
>
> Ray Callahan
> San Antonio
>
>
> --- Tony Palermo <Palermo@...> wrote:
> > Peter Schouten has written recently about the uncertainty of being a
> > third-party Kurzweil soundware developer. He fears that
> > Spectrasonics'
> > decision to stop releasing new sample CDs in Kurzweil format signals
> > the
> > demise of the Kurzweil platform as a sample market. I disagree.
> >
> > The Kurzweil market isn't dead. It just needs some bolstering. And WE
> > can do that.
> >
> > According to ex-Kurzweil support guru, Larry "Synthbro" Hopkins,
> > there
> > are 30,000 Kurzweil K-series instruments out there, world-wide.
> > That's a
> > huge potential market--and the key word here is "potential."
> >
> > As Kurzweil users, we need to support the *quality* soundware
> > developers--especially small ones like Mike Martin's Key Solutions,
> > Dennis Burns's Bolder Sounds and Peter Schouten's Pyramid Sounds.
> > These
> > guys have smartly chosen to provide the sounds Kurzweil and
> > Sweetwater
> > left out of their ROMblocks and CD-ROMs. It just so happens that
> > these
> > three small-timers produce the very sounds the I like most. I want to
> > see them continue to offer these great sounds and I want them to
> > thrive.
> > What are samplers without sounds? It's in OUR interest to look out
> > for
> > THEIR interests.
> >
> > Support means buying their products and recommending them to other
> > Kurzweilers. The purpose of this e-mail list is to spread information
> > around. Let's do that by addressing the CD-ROM buying experience for
> > Kurzweilers.
> >
> > THE GREAT FEAR
> > The problem with buying sample CD-ROMs is the risk of blowing good
> > money
> > on sounds that you haven't heard. Prices vary from $129-$399 for
> > Kurzweil format CD-ROMs and that price barrier stops many potential
> > customers from taking ANY chances. All you need is to be burned once
> > by
> > a shoddy sound collection or poorly programmed "Kurzweil" disc and
> > you'll be put off future purchases. We need to be confident that the
> > sounds will be good and the programs useful.
> >
> > HOW DOES IT SOUND?
> > Of course, one man's "good" sound can often be another's idea of
> > "lame."
> > Soundware developers can reduce sound quality fears with MP3 demos
> > such
> > as the excellent ones for Pyramid's "Real Rhodes" and other
> > collections.
> > These audio demos let the buyer decide if the sounds are to their
> > liking.
> >
> > Whether you're shopping or not, take a few minutes and check out
> > these
> > MP3 demos:
> > http://www.pyramid-sound.com/mp3_demos.htm
> > http://www.boldersounds.com/mp3.asp
> > http://members.aol.com/keysolutns/
> >
> > SOUNDS GOOD, BUT HOW DOES IT PLAY?
> > The other questionable area is how well are the K-programs
> > implemented,
> > either with useful keymaps and envelopes, or with smart VAST
> > programming. That'll take reviews, testimonials, and "I got burned by
> > xxx" postings, here on KurzList.
> >
> > Here are some sound reviews worth looking at:
> > http://sonikmatter.com/reviews/
> > http://k2users.org/k_revu.htm
> >
> > CAN I GET A WITNESS?
> > For the testimonials and "I got burned by xxx" info, I request that
> > KurzList members post about both our good, AND bad sample
> > collections.
> > Also, please voice your opinions about other collections, such as
> > Shane
> > Etter's SoundSubscriptions and Brian Cowell's many free and for-sale
> > sounds.
> >
> > http://members.aol.com/SoundSubs/SOUNDSUBS2.html
> > http://www.soundengine.com/html/samp/k2000.html
> >
> > If enough members rave about "this" collection or trash "that" one,
> > we
> > can increase buyer knowledge and confidence--and THIS will translate
> > into sales. More sales would spur more collections--and THAT would
> > benefit everybody.
> >
> > Let's show Peter and every other Kurzweil developer that there's
> > still
> > life in this market. Post today!
> >
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> > Tony Palermo - Los Angeles, USA
> > Palermo@...
> >
> > Visit my Kurzweil K2000/K2500 Launch Pad [*** NEW URL ***]
> > http://www.k2users.org/k_main.htm
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
>
>
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marsiglio.clif.c _ . _ . _ . _ . _ . _ sonik: technology + music + kurzweil
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