When I started this thread, I hoped it would lead to lots of love
letters/hate letters about CD sample collections; Information that
Kurzweilers could use to help decide whether to buy or avoid a
particular sample CD-ROM.

Instead, it's restated the common musician's plight of "Gosh, some stuff
is SO expensive. <sigh> If only it was cheaper..."

OK, lets address *that* situation.

HOW CAN SAMPLED SOUNDS GET ANY CHEAPER?
Maybe the $100+ price barrier can be surmounted by selling cheaper
"singles" of sound as opposed to expensive "albums." In the professional
sound effects business, the big libraries allow you to buy/download JUST
the sound you want for very little money. I think this model would work
well for ALL sample CD-ROM producers.

The way this works is you visit a site and hear a demo of the sound.
Then you purchase the sound via a credit card and download it to your
computer. You must then either SCSI-copy it to your Kurzweil's HD or
burn the K-sound to a CD-R and load it into your K. An alternative
method is to download a multi-floppy zipped file and unzip it to a bunch
of floppies for loading into the K.

For several years, Sweetwater has been selling many individual sounds
from their "expensive" CD-ROM collections as separate downloads via
their SoundWare Sales Online site:
http://www.sweetwater.com/products/SWSales/STORE/home.tpl

You can get their excellent "New Orleans Piano" for $40 and their
"Yamaha C7 Stereo Grand Piano (16 Mb)" for $100. They also sell
bassoons, guitars, drums, etc. usually for between $18-$25.

That seems a pretty smart way to sell to both the thrifty Kurzweilers on
limited budgets and the "Yikes! I need ullian pipes for this deadline!"
types. You get only the sounds you NEED and it doesn't cost too much at
one time. If you buy a sound you absolutely hate, you've only blown
$17-$50 dollars, not hundreds.

However, Sweetwater's entire "Grand Piano" CD-ROM, which contains ten
different piano sound-sets, sells for "only" $329. This means that if
you "cherry pick" very many sounds, you could end up spending MORE for
all the pianos than if you bought the entire CD-ROM--that is, IF you had
the money and confidence to spend $329 at one time.

Sweetwater gets around this dis-incentive by agreeing to count your
individual purchases towards buying the full CD-ROM. This is a good
deal. It gets around the price barrier while giving buyers a taste of
Sweetwater's quality. Once you've seen what they offer, you're more
likely to buy more of their products. Sounds like "Win-Win" to me.

Sweetwater is a big operation and they have a sizable catalog of well
programmed sounds. I have no idea how profitable this service has been,
but it must be better than their old "buy a sound on a floppy or two"
service. Think about it; There's NO manufacturing, NO shipping, and NO
salesmen (or commissions) involved. It cuts overhead costs, so it must
be a winner.

This on-line singles sales method seems a good option for ALL the
third-party developers--and even Kurzweil itself. How many of us would
love to own a piece of the stellar Kurzweil Take-6 collection or just
their 28Mb Tyrolean Upright Bass, say, for $25?

I don't know how expensive it is to set up this kind of e-commerce
downloadable sales mechanism, but perhaps one of our KurzList members
can suggest a vendor or service. Maybe several third party sound
developers could gang together and cut a joint deal for the "Kurzweil
One-Stop Sound Shop" website?

What is there to lose for the developers? They've already invested the
studio time and programming hours to produce the sounds. This should be
more lucrative than selling expensive CD-ROMs. It would certainly be
easier and would surely increase sales outside of North America.

Are there any frugal "fence sitters" who'd be willing to buy Bolder
Sound's "ullian pipes" for a few dollars or Pyramid's "Dyno Rhodes" for
a song? Voice your support/doubts here at KurzList and let the
developers see if this is an option they should look into.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Tony Palermo - Los Angeles, USA
Palermo@...

Visit my Kurzweil K2000/K2500 Launch Pad [*** NEW URL ***]
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