Samplemodeling/SWAM WTH??

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https://www.samplemodeling.com/en/news.php

I can't get to the downloads page because I don't have an account at SWAMengine, and don't even know how to register...What a revoltin' development. The products are on sale at SWAM, but I don't know if current products are or will be supported.

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IIR, Lucato had bad blood with Garritan, resulting in other instruments pulled from distribution. I'm not inclined to go down this hole any more, even with Black Friday deals.

[mhschmieder]

Well, the separation is by now old news and was reported here a while ago. There's no date on the top of that news page so I don't know when this latest development occurred, re: conflict over distribution rights or whatever.

As someone who has spent most of his career working across cultural and linguistic barriers, I can safely say that most misunderstandings are unintentional and can be "fixed" if one establishes trust, which of course is hard in most environments even without other factors adding to the challenge.

We are customers though, not employees or in contract with said vendors, so we can only watch helplessly by the side and hope that ego and pride and other issues won't get in the way of an honest attempt to patch things up.

[David Polich]

I have a gut feeling Samplemodeling will be
going out of business within a year or two. This
kind of thing doesn’t bode well for them. Or
those of us who bought their products.

All my SM stuff still works and I’m happy to have it.
But I am looking elsewhere for future acoustic
VI’s. I dont have faith in SM anymore.

[Prime Mover]

OH CRAP! I was JUST getting into SM stuff, they've become my new holy grail, especially since they interface so beautifully with the Seaboard. I even drunk emailed them last night asking about Black Friday specials, because I was interested in picking up either the Cello or Saxes.

Sampled instruments just don't sound very good on the Seaboard... they don't reflect timbral changes with pitch shifts, which is a constant with the Seaboard. "The Violin" was the first solo violin VI I've ever thought played and sounded very good. Also, I've contacted them multiple times, and they're support has been superb.

The one thing I can think of is Roli (also London-based) has done a lot of large collaborations with them, and it would be a huge black eye for them. It wouldn't surprise me if Roli ends up buying them out if they have problems.

[Prime Mover]

OH! Audio Modeling are selling their plugins outright, now... and they have some Black Friday sales!

...There goes my bank account.

http://www.swamengine.com/products/

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OH! Audio Modeling are selling their plugins outright, now...

http://www.swamengine.com/products/

Yes, but do you think they will continue to do so? And what about continued support? AFAIK, they are not supporting products bought from SampleModeling. I'd approach with caution.

[kgdrum]

I don't have any of these products but this was posted @ VI-Control earlier.........

I hope this brings some clarity to the situation.

(look at the 5th post,which includes a video explaining how to register and manage your keys.)

https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... st-4153960

here's what Audio Modeling says:

Hello everybody,

The SWAM products have been always property of Stefano Lucato and Emanuele Parravicini (myself), now administrators of Audio Modeling, which has been founded last March, 17th.

We have simply changed our distribution strategy, so now we are not distributing through Samplemodeling anymore.
This change has been done fully respecting the law.

If you buy our products you will receive a new EULA.
As for the old products, your License Keys and activation data have been always safely stored on our servers, so you will not loosing anything and you are legally allowed to use them.

You can manage you SWAM License Keys, activation data and download through the new Customer Portal: https://my.audiomodeling.co



The new SWAM Double Bass is available for purchase, as well as all the other SWAM products.
The Solo Strings have been updated and you can take advantage of the new Solo Strings bundle plus the Black Friday deal!

Best,
Emanuele Parravicini
CTO
Audio Modeling
http://www.audiomodeling.com

**** P.S. Samplemodeling is stating a different explanation on their site so it will be interesting how this all plays out.

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And this:
https://forum.samplemodeling.com/viewto ... =6&t=39572

[Prime Mover]

Yeah, no idea who's in the right on the legal battle, we just don't know the details. However, the guys at Audio Modeling are stellar and are honoring all purchases of their SWAM products, no matter which vendor. I don't see anything either company would gain by screwing over customers. So no, I don't see a reason not to move forward. I sorta wish they'd be done with it and just become a subsidiary of Roli though. They have a Roli guy on their payroll and collaborate with them all the time, that would increase their distro by a huge margin. Roli is plugging them hard, wouldn't be surprised that they get "Roli'd up" into them at some point.

VERY tempted to get The Saxes while they're on sale. Hell, if I had more spending money, I'd buy them all.

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I'm trying to log in to AM on my old SM account and it's not working. I created a new account and haven't gotten any response.

[mhschmieder]

Dave, interesting observation as Samplemodeling have been doing occasional excellent updates but not actual new products; whereas Audiomodeling now has a new Double Bass using the SWAM engine (which I'm afraid to buy due to the conflicts and how that might affect authorizations later on).

If you go to the SWAM site, you'll see that they strongly promote their ties to ROLI and NuSofting -- the latter being excellent makers of mostly modeling based VI's, who seemed in trouble a few years ago but finally made it past the 64-bit conversion hump and came back fairly strong eventually.

So, it seems that SWAM are in a better business position as they could probably just offer themselves up for sale -- maybe even a three-way merger of those vendors, who have good working relations.

I initially thought Samplemodeling had the upper hand, then read their forum and more statements from them, and though I cannot possibly take sides or feel confident that one side is more in the right ethically than the other, it does seem that Samplemodeling likely has no natural allies.

FWIW, I no longer exclusively use their products for brass, except when using my Yamaha WX5 wind controller as the input (vs. notation-based rendering or keyboard based playing augmented by MIDI CC's and the like after initial conceptualization of parts).

What I am finding is that the Chris Hein big band oriented horns are quite excellent and flexible, sound more realistic, but of course require a LOT more work to get all of the necessary articulations as there is no built-in intelligence to analyze from note lengths, velocities, etc. You can set them up for reasonable real-time playing that involves articulation switching though.

All Best Service products are on sale for Black Friday, so it's a good time to look into those. Focus on the big band horns (which also have a lot of solo horn choices and a wide selection of instruments within the brass and woodwind families), not the orchestral winds and brass.

[mhschmieder]

I sent an email regarding a coupon for the new strings bundle. I won't otherwise buy Double Bass yet as I haven't been thrilled with the strings so far and simply buy stuff like that because I support the concept of modeling based libraries and know they all improve over time (usually for free) vs. being set in concrete like most sample libraries.

[mhschmieder]

Registering at the Audio Modeling customer portal was simple and painless -- only one step vs. three as before. You provide one of your library licenses when you register, and it has all of your information stored already, as long as you use the same email address as before.

Unlike what someone said at vi-control, you DO have to register ALL of your individual licenses again, one at a time, update your email cache, click on the link it gives to confirm, and then you're done and can expand your licenses at your account portal to get the download links for v2 of the strings libraries.

For me, this meant seven registrations, as I have the three existing individual strings and the four woodwind bundles (saxes, flutes, double reeds, and clarinets).

I was hoping there would then be an automatic discount for Double Bass, but even though the bundle and individual price are apparently just for Black Friday, I'm sure they'll honour loyal customers once they get caught up on email (they've doubtless been swamped).

It occurred to me that the ship has sailed, and that whatever bad blood may exist with the Samplemodeling folks is none of our business and will be settled in the courts if need be but will not affect the fact that the SWAM products will clearly now be fully distributed by Audio Modeling.

[mhschmieder]

BTW, another possibility for jazz and big band may now be Xsample, as they did a bunch of expansions this past year, which are currently on 25%-30% sale during this coming week.

I bought the four additional instruments today (the fifth, Orchestral Horn, came out a year ago so I already own it), and the expansions for Brass (which adds jazz Trumpet and Trombone) and Percussion (which adds some hard-to-find effects percussion), but not yet the other expansions (for mallets, woodwinds, keys, strings, and stringed instruments such as harp) as I want to see how good the other new stuff is first.

Xsample has long been one of the better recorded libraries, but they radically changed the interface last year and I haven't quite gotten as deep with it yet. I started with them years ago when their Steel Drum library was the only game in town (and quite good) -- it is now part of the full orchestral library.

You can also buy their stuff piecemeal, or in a smaller Kontakt Player Library edition.

As the payment site took my payment but rejected it at their end (PayPal knows it is paid and confirmed), I sent them an email, which hopefully they will respond to when next they return to the office, in their European time zone. I hope I didn't pay twice as a result!