Why Open Sample Packs are important

Recently, I’ve been going through the hard drives on my desktop and laptop, updating plugins, cleaning out stuff I don’t use, and uninstalling products that are no longer supported. One thing I noticed that surprised me, however, is that a lot of sample content that I had licensed and paid for over the years has become inaccessible – support has stopped, companies have gone out of business, decisions had been made at the corporate level.

It wasn’t just hard drive clutter, either – it was sample data and sounds gone.

Projects were broken, money wasted. This doesn’t just happen to me, either – it can happen to any electronic musician, any beat maker, any producer. I realized that we are all participating in a market where years of creative work is becoming fragile, because the control over the material we licensed was never real. Going forward, I’m delivering and advocating for Open Sample Packs.

I encourage you to read this report about the closure of NI’s UK office, and what work was done there.

What about all of those Native Instruments Samples?

Native Instruments has recently been acquired by InMusic. Both companies have a history of discontinuing both VST instruments and sound libraries – even though, as a subscriber, you’ve paid for them. They don’t let you reinstall them from their Native Access app – you are just out of luck if you happen to have a hard disk issue and you were using them in a project.

And please, don’t get me started about Absynth. As part of NI Komplete, I purchased Absynth 3, Absynth 4, and Absynth 5 – then it was discontinued. Oh wait, no, it wasn’t; now you can buy the software you already paid for (and paid for the upgrades) for $149.

My dollars have been translated into unusable gigabytes on my hard drive. InMusic is no different, and in my experience, has led the way in canceling soundware products after I paid for them (see below).

InMusic acquired Sonivox early in its expansion, and it developed usable libraries that I purchased over time. Soon, however, InMusic’s leadership redirected those development efforts and abandoned all the soundware products from Sonivox I paid for. I still have the licenses on my iLok.

The real problem is that I have a valid license to use those products, but I have no way to access them. Sonivox used a proprietary sample storage format – a large, encrypted database of the sample data- instead of WAV or AIFF files that I could repurpose.

Closed sample Formats in VST samplers are Roadblocks

Encrypted, protected sample files have become a common way of working in sample pack development these days, as well as in VST plugins that deliver sample content. VST plugin sample players, like those from Native Instruments and many of my competitors, “trap” the samples that you have licensed in a prison without a key. A prison you paid for, but can never be released from.

How are these samples in a prison? They are encrypted, so you can only use them in a Native Instruments or InMusic VST sample player app or plugin.

This not only puts a producer, who has already spent money on the ability to use the sound, in the position of only being able to use them in one way – through the VST. It also subjects them to VST format changes, Operating System changes, VST updates, and outright product cancellation.

In essence, that model dictates how you use what you’ve licensed and what the workflow requirements are for access.

But – you’ve already paid

Think about it. When you pay $549 USD for Komplete Standard from NI, some of those samples you’ve purchased will disappear one day – because of a decision by InMusic management, who have a track record of doing this exact thing before. Along the way, you may be waiting for new versions to be compatible with your computer operating system, or they may change their subscription model, stop supporting libraries within your subscription (rental), or go out of business.

Where does that leave you, besides with a hole in your pocket? Remember, you’ve already paid.

The thing is, we have paid for access to these sounds, but the formats Native Instruments and InMusic provide them in let them deny access to those sounds in the future, essentially turning my valid license into a stranded asset.

Paid access without durable access is not real access.

I can’t even access that asset anymore, which is not only annoying, but structurally unfair. If I can’t practically access the samples I’ve licensed from a company, then I have given them money for something that isn’t creatively useful in any meaningful sense.

The SoundEngine Commitment

At SoundEngine, I look at things differently. I don’t provide VSTs for playing back our samples. There are two reasons for this.

First, I’d rather focus on delivering unique sampled sounds – recording, editing, developing presets, and making musical sample packs that give you creative horsepower – rather than deal with bug lists, computer programmers, and operating system updates.

Those activities all have a cost that has to be translated to the consumer – you end up paying for this business decision. I’m not interested in that.

I’m rejecting the broken model that extracts money from customers now and offers only risk later.

Second, I believe that if you purchase a license to use SoundEngine sample packs, you should be able to use them how and where you want. They should be open, inspectable files, not samples locked behind a gated wall with sealed, fragile dependencies on OS, DAW, VST, and business dependencies.

From SoundEngine, you pay for products that have a lifetime license to use the files we supply in whatever instrument you want, or whatever DAW you want. You want to create a beat using Logic Pro’s Drum Machine Designer? Fine. You want to move that drum kit over to an MPC? Fine. 

In short, I refuse to let you pay for sample packs you can’t access in the future. It’s a non-negotiable principle of SoundEngine.com, not just a nice feature. I will protect your access to the sounds you license from me over decades. Going forward, we’ll deliver Open Sample Packs.

Raw, creative horsepower

Essentially, SoundEngine lets you “pop the hood” and do what you want with our open sample packs, instead of driving a car with the hood welded shut. You could drive that car for a while, but you can’t change anything about it, and you can’t maintain it. Whatever the manufacturer decides, you are at their mercy.

I know producers are like engine mechanics. They want to tweak the raw samples, move them around to different machines, chop the transients, muffle them up. They want creative freedom to build something unique, not spend time trying to find a provided preset in  “Hypa”, “Lura”, or “Rusk” to do what they want.

I want to give you the raw building blocks to drag into your own projects, then resample, ship, process, and re-contextualize. I want to give you more creative control and flexibility.

drive to another garage

Workflows evolve. You may be using FL Studio today, but tomorrow, migrate to Bitwig, or move from an MPC to an Octatrack. Better yet, move from Logic Pro to hardware. Have you considered how you will move the sounds you are renting from a Native Instruments VST to hardware? Good luck with that. 

Freedom to Drive

SoundEngine sample packs work seamlessly in any DAW, any hardware sampler, and any groove box – because we give you Open Sample Packs – sample-level access in industry-standard file formats. You own your workflow and control how it evolves, and the samples you get from SoundEngine follow along. We don’t say “whoops, sorry, we’re at End of Life for those samples you purchased,” or “sorry, your Splice payment method has failed.”s

Why do you purchase sample packs, anyway? I’ve found that most customers buy from us for time savings, sonic characters and inspiration (there’s that creative horsepower again). SoundEngine serves all three of those goals while leaving you, the producer/songwriter/creator, in control.

how fast do you want to Go?

Proprietary VST sample-playing instruments are slower than using built-in DAW tools or hardware by nature. Each one has the gas pedal and steering wheel in a different place – when all you want to do is trigger that killer kick or synth stab in the sample pack. How do I load this, again? Where does it map? What is the MIDI trigger?

Keeping samples trapped in VST wrappers blocks your evolution as a music producer.

It slows you down.

Open Sample Packs give you sample-level access to drag and drop into your favorite player; it’s faster – much faster. Get in the car and drive as fast as you want, for as far as you want. Standard file formats and sample-level access protect your investment, rather than tying it to the lifespan of any single sample platform.

Any alternative set of samples in a sample pack that ties you to a VST that can be incompatible or not supported in the future is strategically dangerous for you, the songwriter, musician, or producer. Those things can disappear when you need them most.

what’s in your Creative fuel tank?

Your tunes and beats deserve full access to unique, curated, mix-ready sounds. That’s what we offer. You can use them in any hardware or software sampler. You can see them in your file browser; you can drag and drop them at will, wherever you want to play them. Quality engine oil that makes your motor run smoothly – that’s the SoundEngine Open Sample Pack promise.

This post has been part rant, part offering of perspective on how I see things going these days in the industry. With major sample pack providers consolidating and fewer and fewer people involved in decision-making related to these sounds, I think it’s worth thinking about.

The financial precariousness of Native Instruments sample packs isn’t over. They will be looked at in a business-oriented manner: which ones are used most, which ones cost the most to develop, which instruments are the hardest and costliest to maintain. Over time, some will disappear, as they have done before.

Next steps – Make a plan

My next post on this topic will present a roadmap for keeping access to what you want out of these libraries, whether they’re MPC, Native Instruments, Splice, or any other proprietary sample pack format. I’ll share a series of considerations and steps to keep you working if the worst happens. Thanks for reading, and check back soon – better yet, sign up for our mailing list, and I’ll let you know when I’ve posted my step-by-step guide to liberating your workflow.