8dio (Criticism re: business practices)

[monkey man]

I won't be buying anything from them.

Came so close recently 'cause of all the specials for things I don't have yet like orch and string libs, but held off somehow.

https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... op.116094/

Now that I've read that thread, I'm glad I didn't cave in.

[James Steele]

I won't be buying anything from them.

Came so close recently 'cause of all the specials for things I don't have yet like orch and string libs, but held off somehow.

https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... op.116094/

Now that I've read that thread, I'm glad I didn't cave in.

Yeah... this probably doesn't belong in this topic necessarily. There's a lot to to it. If you'd like to make a new topci in the OT forum called "Alleged 8dio Business Practices" perhaps that would be better.

[James Steele]

I've gone ahead ad split this into a new topic regarding 8dio's alleged business practices and moved it to the Off Topic forum where it belongs.

Honestly, I labored thought the topic at the other site and would rather not get into a food fight over it here, but if we must than this is the topic in which to do it. Not the "Deals" topic. I can see both sides of the argument to be honest. Someone took a developer's samples and without any guarantee of promise of compensation, put in a LOT of working making an updated and much improved library... then after-the-fact asked for compensation and the developer declined?

May that was crappy about 8dio... but thats kind of like working on spec and putting all that work in, in advance, without ANY agreement in place about compensation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not really a good idea if compensation is important to you. Have an agreement in place before you do hours and hours of work.

Perhaps, again, there's more to it... but I'd rather not have that spill over in to the Plug In Deals topic. People are free to as much as they want in the OT Forum here.

[cuttime]

Frankly, I'm kind of sorry that I am a member of VI Control. There is a slings, arrows, torches and pitchforks mentality over there that is just all too common on the Internet. I have no comment about 8dio directly.

[James Steele]

Frankly, I'm kind of sorry that I am a member of VI Control. There is a slings, arrows, torches and pitchforks mentality over there that is just all too common on the Internet. I have no comment about 8dio directly.

Yeah... I didn't want to wade into the discussion over there. You soon realize that depending on their backgrounds, many people carry their own personal baggage into those discussions. Whatever bad experiences *they* may have pushes some of them to take sides in those things. I don't personally know either of the parties involved, and I decided to stay out of it. The thing that struck me most was that it's just not wise to front load so much time and effort into a project if you have not secured any kind of promise in advance to be compensated, which seems to be what happened. If you keep working on something under those conditions, then that's your decision.

I guess the good thing is the person who felt they were done wrong has been hired by another developer to do work at a level of compensation they feel is adequate. Me personally, I haven't seen anything that has convinced me not to buy their libraries if I feel it. I never knew anything about 8dio prior to this, but from what I have gathered, it seems like they are perhaps phasing out the 8dio operation and changing over to Soundpaint?

Either way... I'm not gonna wade into the muck, either. But that's just my personal decision. Anyone who wishes to is welcome to do so here. My only warning will be that if it starts becoming a broader discussion and we start touching on politics, I will shut in down in seconds. MOTUnation has had a strict "no politics - no religion" policy, and it's been what has kept this place so agreeable, even when the rest of the world seemed at each other's throats.

[stubbsonic]

Thanks for giving a little summary here. That's helpful.

So far, I've been thrilled with the libraries I've gotten so far, and the deals have been mind-blowing.

As an aside, considering the deals we've seen, I've been eyeing the library that has euphoniums in it. Those are quite rare, and the sounds I heard mean that it was done properly!!

Euphoniums are very tricky instruments. I play trombone, and am familiar with how brass instruments work generally. I've played maybe a dozen euphoniums, and probably almost as many baritone horns. They're the same basic instrument in terms of notes & fingerings, with euph being conical (thus mellow like a french horn), and baritones being more cylindrical, so a little brighter like a trombone. Euphoniums are difficult to play because the notes are less stable. Brass players call this "centering" or "slotting" as the horn reinforces the lip buzz at pitches related to the harmonic series.

Years ago, I booked a studio and brought a school euphonium to record samples. It was difficult!! Now look forward to samples played by a ringer (plied w snacks and drinks), and edited by a great team.

[James Steele]

Thanks for giving a little summary here. That's helpful.

Well I could very well have oversimplified and left out some things, so I can't represent my summary takes into account all of it. The most important thing to me was that what I read, and I read it, didn't rise to the level of justifying a boycott for me personally. Other people may feel differently... and that's okay.

[monkey man]

It wasn't just one person and went much further than not paying that one person.

I'm frankly disgusted by what I've read, so yeah, they won't be getting a penny from me.

[James Steele]

It wasn't just one person and went much further than not paying that one person.

I'm frankly disgusted by what I've read, so yeah, they won't be getting a penny from me.

As is your right not to spend money with them. I didn't have time to get into the weeds and carefully read every last word. Other people piled on relating their stories about how that developer didn't pay much compared to other ones or whatever. There's a free market... then don't do work for that developer.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the person who started that post was complaining that they did all this work to take samples from that developers library and do new scripting in Kontakt, etc. to make and old library that wasn't being sold anymore (maybe I'm wrong about this) much better than it had been. I think as someone quoted them, it was described by that person as a labor of love and they even said do not contact the original developer for support as it wasn't really their responsibility.

Then, after all this front loaded work, this person contacted said developer wanting to work out an arrangement with them to be paid. There was still a lot of work that could be done. The developer says thanks but no thanks. I don't know the reasons, but perhaps they didn't think they'd sell enough to be profitable or perhaps they were focused on something else. So that person takes to a forum and trashes them publicly. Well okay then.

If people feel the need to earn dirty laundry online, they're free to do so. And they're even free to do so right here. I simply moved the topic over to the appropriate forum for that discussion. Some people will see this as a holy fight... the downtrodden proletariat being crushed by the evil, greedy, bourgeois pig developer. I walked away with the distinct impression that if you don't get an implicit agreement to be paid for work before you do that work (that no one asked you to begin in the first place, or am I wrong about that), and you do the work anyway, that's kinda on you.

But to say that I'm not interested really in spending precious minutes of my life trying to sort though the public mudslinging like I'm Judge Judy, is an understatement. The aggrieved party from what I read has gone on to have a lucrative arrangement with another developer who even jumped into the conversation to say they had hired them, etc.

That's all I'll say... anybody who wants to jump into this topic and waste precious moments of their life trying to agree as to who the good guys and bad guys are in an issue that is a lot of hearsay and they aren't directly involved in is free to do so.

"Knock yourselves out." — Doris

[monkey man]

Sarah's said it twice now, but here's her latest on that matter. She didn't just "take it upon herself". Ignoring all the other stuff from other devs, this alone paints an ugly picture:

I first reached out to you in March, when Adachi was a private project known only to myself and a few others. It was still in its infancy then, but I kept working on it at your encouragement.

image.png (27.25 KiB) Viewed 1725 times

This conversation happened in May, a few months after our Skype video call in March in which you had told me you were very interested in doing something with Adachi and that it would of course be paid work. So, while you were absolutely within your rights to turn down the project proposal I ultimately sent, I do have to take issue with some of what you're claiming here, which seems intentionally slanted to make yourself sound generous and make me sound unreasonable.

I'm also not sure where you're getting that claimed $20k figure from.

Sarah works for Impact Soundworks. Despite this, we made the 8DIO discontinued product available to users of Sarah’s Adachi product upon request so that she could market her Adachi directly to users.

More weird claims here. This is something you were already offering, it was the availability of the discontinued Adagio libraries that enabled this project to exist in the first place. And I'm "marketing"... a free script that relies on people buying your products in order to use it? Surely you realize that this sounds more than a bit silly.

Again, my gripes with how this went down are small potatoes compared with the experiences that others in this thread have expressed, but I do want to avoid having misinformation out there.

Note that she said, "Again, my gripes with how this went down are small potatoes compared with the experiences that others in this thread have expressed..."

[James Steele]

Right. All who want to can enjoy the drama. I’ll pass.

[monkey man]

... as is your right Brother James; not interested in the drama myself.

However, when a bunch of stand-up non-randoms all allege the same sort of behaviour, I sit up and take notice, especially when I've been considering plunking down a bunch of moolah for string and brass libraries from the company concerned.

[James Steele]

Have laws been broken?

Do what you need to do.

[monkey man]

I will of course, as is my right brother.

[James Steele]

Yes, we’ve established that.