Sampletank 3

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As a user of the original Total Workstation Bundle (Sampletank, Sonik Synth, Philharmonik), I would love it if you could share any and all info you have regarding Sampletank 3. I have been waiting forever for this update.

I would love to see the following features:
  1. Visual waveform display
  2. Drag and drop to import samples
  3. Acceptance of common formats (.wav, etc.) without having to convert

I'm sure there's more, but this is all I can think of off the top of my head right now.

Also, I'm very interested in at least a ballpark release date, if you can provide it. I am getting ready to add some software to my setup, but I need to to do it relatively soon. I would like to know if I can/should wait for Sampletank 3 or not.

THANKS!!!
 
Thank you. We are currently working diligently on SampleTank 3, especially on the finely-crafted sounds it will have. Some of the upcoming sounds have been implemented in SampleTank iOS and we've posted some pictures from a while ago on our Facebook page too (and we have some more of those ready to post soon too).

I will be sending your requests over to the project manager for SampleTank 3 after I am done with this reply. Thanks! Note that SampleTank 3 will load previous libraries which makes the current Total Workstation 2 Group Buy a great deal (currently there is already a free Xpansion Tank with purchase, and hopefully one more on the way with more participation) too. Hope all of this clears up some questions and we look forward to the open communication here on FP.
 
could you shed some light on how ik multimedia is setup... i.e. how many programmers (number)? do the same individuals that work on the ios stuff work on the other stuff? with the ios stuff taking off... why invest time and money into sampletank 3? there have been tons of "Group Buys" for sampletank and sampletank powered libraries... how will the update/upgrade for sampletank 3 be for individuals that paid $299 per product and did not participate in the "Group Buys"? will the support of sampletank 3 be better than sampletank 1/2/2.5? i think the scrolling in sampletank is pretty weak... since day on... individuals have been asking to correct it... why has it never been updated... the same question for the font size of sampletank? how could "that" never be updated? especially... after request after request...
Thanks for the many questions - as far as inside company details, those are going to be covered officially on our About Us page on our site (more than 70 worldwide, etc) and we do have resources that work on both iOS and our other products especially since we use code and sounds from our groundbreaking desktop products in our iOS/Mobile line. There's good information about our mobile (and other) strategy in this interview with our CEO. We find that both mobile and our pro lines are certainly worth our time - we're still updating the whole line on both mobile and desktop platforms. As far as support not being up to snuff for you, please do send ticket numbers of any issues that were not fixed to your satisfaction. The feature request type of items are definitely listened to and considered for SampleTank 3 (like the GUI items you mention, which unfortunately aren't a trivial change as one might imagine).

---------- Post added at 09:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:03 AM ----------

Oh, I forgot to include a little more insight into who we are - it isn't exactly a blueprint of people working at their desks or headcount, but here's our "Company Photos" album that has a lot of pics of our people. Most of us are musicians, we're definitely all unique and human (pretty sure on that last part, though some may find it questionable - even toward me, but that's legit and I accept it :) ) https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150839571815147.740413.337617160146&type=3
 
I think you are taking things a bit out of context as to what I'm saying and I'm not saying that there weren't requests made that were valid. Yes, there were requests but these are not long-standing bugs with the program that preclude its functionality. We've made MANY changes over the years to fix any problems that have come up. These are GUI preferences that we're taking into account into SampleTank 3. That's all I'm saying, I wanted to make the distinction between support (giving technical support and fixing bugs) vs feature requests and preferences while noting we're definitely taking the GUI into consideration with SampleTank 3 into a more modern DAW environment.
 
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So any kind of ballpark at all on a release date? 6 weeks? 6 months? 6 years? what???

oh yeah and reading stillfunkin's post I do have another feature request: I really love in browsers when I can use the up/down arrows on my computer keyboard to scroll through presets. I think that is what stillfunkin was talking about, but he wasn't specific so I'm not positive.


And yeah, I also agree with stillfunkin that these group buys are frustrating for an existing customer. I paid like $400 for ST,SS,and Phil a couple of years ago, and now new customers are getting that plus SMoog and STron for wayyyyyy less money. And what is my reward for being such a loyal, longstanding customer who gave you a lot more of my money? A measly $50 discount for a crossgrade. Yay. So new customers get 5 plugins for $200 (or $40 each), and us loyal customers get 2 new plugins for $150 (or $75 each)... doesn't seem like we are appreciated much does it?
 
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no disrespect... i do not think i am taking anything out of context... but i do think you are treading lightly with your responses...

i remember... 10 years ago... Squid... himself stated those fixes were in the works...

Squid use to have your job when sampletank came out... the internet hype man...
I'm not hyping anything and answering 100% honestly. The only definitive answers about fixes should be via Tech Support. Squids would be Sonic Reality even back then as far as I recall so probably relaying what he was told but not official (yet completely well intentioned).

Treading lightly, that is confusing to me as I also only have the best of intentions. I apologize if my honesty and not spitting out hyped answers that are exactly what people expect to hear is considered treading lightly. I just don't want to promise things not likely to come to 2.5 but note what is likely for 3. That is all.

Please do continue to give suggestions about the product as the product manager mentioned that feedback from this very forum was helpful (though I can't guarantee they will actually convince the devs to code everything but it all gets noted for the future).

---------- Post added at 12:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:56 AM ----------

So any kind of ballpark at all on a release date? 6 weeks? 6 months? 6 years? what???

oh yeah and reading stillfunkin's post I do have another feature request: I really love in browsers when I can use the up/down arrows on my computer keyboard to scroll through presets. I think that is what stillfunkin was talking about, but he wasn't specific so I'm not positive.


And yeah, I also agree with stillfunkin that these group buys are frustrating for an existing customer. I paid like $400 for ST,SS,and Phil a couple of years ago, and now new customers are getting that plus SMoog and STron for wayyyyyy less money. And what is my reward for being such a loyal, longstanding customer who gave you a lot more of my money? A measly $50 discount for a crossgrade. Yay. So new customers get 5 plugins for $200 (or $40 each), and us loyal customers get 2 new plugins for $150 (or $75 each)... doesn't seem like we are appreciated much does it?

I don't have a good ballpark yet but definitely not 6 weeks or 6 years.

For existing users who have had products for two years we definitely feel the price paid seems fair for two years with the products using them in projects (many use them to make some $$ too so that would repay the cost we hope) and the resulting music made would not have been possible.

On top of that, though, because artistic satisfaction and/or income is less tangible in value sometimes, we implemented JamPoints for customer loyalty. If you have more ideas for existing customer incentives please do suggest them, that's part of the idea behind this forum.

That reminds me we should probably do a giveaway here exclusively to inaugurate the forum if ok with the powers that be and also to help reward active participation and loyal customers here.
 
Well my suggestion would just be to at least put new and existing customers on a level playing field in terms of per-plugin-cost. So like I said, if new customers are able to get 5 plugins for $40 each, existing Total Workstation customers should be able to get the 2 plugins they don't already have (tron and moog) for the same $40 each... meaning the crossgrade for that particular product path would cost $80.

And btw I hear what you're saying about "fair"... and "fair" is fine, I do think the prices are "fair", but "fair" is not what I'm talking about: I'm talking about showing appreciation for your longstanding, loyal customers. While the crossgrade program sort of does this, as you can see by my example, depending on which products you already own you may actually be paying MORE (almost double) per-product than new customers.

Basically, the current crossgrade pricing makes sense if I own, say, T-Racks and am crossgrading to Total Workstation 2... but if I own Total Workstation and want to "crossgrade" (in this case, upgrade) up to Total Workstation 2... it makes no sense at all.
 
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IK always supports its loyal customers with FREE updates, FREEBIES on Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Google+ AND Jam points for discounts on IK products. That all takes time and company resources. Not to mention our sales and Group Buys we run regularly because we have such a large and varied product selection. SampleTank 3 is being worked on, quality takes time. Movies take YEARS to write, cast, shoot, edit and all that good stuff before you ever even see a trailer.
 
could you shed some light on how ik multimedia is setup... i.e. how many programmers (number)? do the same individuals that work on the ios stuff work on the other stuff? with the ios stuff taking off... why invest time and money into sampletank 3? there have been tons of "Group Buys" for sampletank and sampletank powered libraries... how will the update/upgrade for sampletank 3 be for individuals that paid $299 per product and did not participate in the "Group Buys"? will the support of sampletank 3 be better than sampletank 1/2/2.5? i think the scrolling in sampletank is pretty weak... since day on... individuals have been asking to correct it... why has it never been updated... the same question for the font size of sampletank? how could "that" never be updated? especially... after request after request...

Are you a Kontakt or Halion user? I recently moved from Yamaha Motif to Sampletank (used a demo of Sample Tank back in 2004 and everything but the interface has come a long way since then). Only reason I am asking is because I'd like to know what the improvements are between versions without the requirement to fork out more cash.
 
Faster loading. When you have various libraries initializing Sampletank takes longer than rebooting your system. I have total workstation and a large amount of converted librarys in stw.

Stereo imager effect please.

For either 2.6 or 3 doesn't matter.

Ppl may disagree...but I think its a better idea if you guys work on the SampleTank 3 engine and just stick to that. I mean there is also Philharmonik , SampleTron, SampleMoog, Sonic Synth. They all use the same engine dressed up differently in the gui, but nothing is really different in the architecture. Sonik Synth for example...It loads the samples and patches, but there's no real generation of synthesis going on...no analog, fm, additive, granular, formant etc. Sampletank can do all that Sonik Synth can do already. Its the same story with all the others. Instead of releasing another separate vst instrument for them all just stick to the libraries and dress them up within SampleTank instead so you guys can focus on having one massive all in one product.

For the total workstation I load all of the libraries into SampleTank 2 and leave the other plugins hanging. Its just more intuitive to have all your libraries at your disposal in one instance.
 
Agree, and if you want to keep the exclusivity or Philharmonik, Sonik Synth etc etc have them as extensions. I just loaded up all the sounds in Sampletank.
 
IK always supports its loyal customers with FREE updates, FREEBIES on Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Google+ AND Jam points for discounts on IK products. That all takes time and company resources. Not to mention our sales and Group Buys we run regularly because we have such a large and varied product selection. SampleTank 3 is being worked on, quality takes time. Movies take YEARS to write, cast, shoot, edit and all that good stuff before you ever even see a trailer.

I wasn't trying to say that IK didn't support its customers, cuz I know they do (although, to be honest, I've been an IK user for years and this is the first time I've ever heard of something called "jam points")... I was just trying to say that there is a particular segment of loyal customers who I think are getting shafted... longtime owners of the original Total Workstation Bundle.
 
IK always supports its loyal customers with FREE updates, FREEBIES on Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Google+...

The week after I bought the T-Racks Deluxe crossgrade, I won a copy of Miroslav in a giveaway, which was part of the IK celebration for reaching 15,000 fb fans. And, heads up fellow producers, they mentioned that when they reach 20k they're gonna be doing a big set of giveaways and deals to celebrate.
 
Sampletank

Stillfunkin' is right.

Sampletank has been plagued with bad design choices for quite some time now (YEARS!). GUI updates are not hard...sorry...I don't buy that. The ability to scale the GUI should have been added years ago in anticipation of higher screen resolutions...bad design.

The scroll function is terrible...plain and simple...bad design.

The GUI looks dated. While this may not be important to some, it does make a difference to people who use these instruments as a source of revenue. Compete with your competition IK...otherwise just bow out and move on to what you really want to do (iStuff!)

Sampletank 3 could be the second coming of virtual instruments, but the support, development cycle, dismissive attitude from many of the staff in many cases has simply turned me (and LOTS of other folks I know) off. I won't be returning for your business...hopefully few will until IK seriously overhauls their processes for developing competitive, functional, good looking software. And yes...I have tickets, and feature requests submitted at IK officially, no response...ever.

Kontakt is better. Omnisphere is better. Mach 5 is better. Hell even Yellowtools is better...

Keep up or open source your material and get out of the game.
 
We saw your post on KVR too, and undesrtand your frustration. We are offering SampleTank 3 when it is ready. We understand if you use the other options available to you. SampleTank is still in demand so that's why we're going to SampleTank 3 and making the appropriate changes.

As for "iSTuff" that's something we've rebutted a million times and will have to again here by simply saying we do make a lot of iOS tools and accessories and yes it has been successful for us. However, it actually drives (and funds) other development and in that respect we will point out that even though AmpliTube iOS is our absolute most popular iOS app we actually updated the desktop version of AmpliTube FAR more than we updated the iOS version over the last year. So that data actually indicates we neglected our most popular "iSTuff" for the desktop version as well as some great T-RackS 3 models that are about to be released too.

Again, we understand your frustration and we'll get SampleTank 3 out as soon as possible and hope that it meets your neefds and other users' needs of course. That's all we can do at this point is move forward and that's what we're trying to do.

Oh and about open source? That's just not going to happen. If people think it is still relevant enough to crave the source, they can do their best to reverse engineer our code - we won't just give it away. Plus, we now give VERY robust versions of SampleTank and AmpliTube for free (https://www.ikmultimedia.com/sampletankfree and https://www.ikmultimedia.com/amplitubefree) and hope to continue that trend toward supporting musicians on a budget with those and well-priced products.
 
You mention free Amplitude 3, and Sampletank, and I also have Fender LE, any chance those are considered as owning a qualifying IK product for the crossgrade? Thanks.
 
I've bee using the free version of sample tank for a little bit, I like it, but i've been having problems importing samples...

sometimes it'll work, but allot of the times it'll jus sit there with the progress window doing nothing..

furthermore, a way to manipulate the imported sample would be cool too, setting up end and start points on the sample etc...

also it woudl definitely be helpful to be able to resize the main window...

better sounding sounds are always welcome, matter fact a must.... jus eliminate your competition completely by making the sounds as good or better than the leading keyboard workstations (motif, fantom, etc..)... i'm talking about the presets right out of the box before any mixing by the user... i mean if the workstation keyboards can do it then I'm pretty sure the software developers should be able to do it too...

there should also be more options for the synth sounds... more options to actually do somethign to the synth... right now theres pretty much the regular ADSR knobs which really doesnt do much...



If yall can do all that then I wouldnt even mind paying a little extra for the product... we all want to be able to make proffesional sounding stuff, if yall can give us a tool that fits on our laptops thus elliminating the need to lug around a huge keyboard or even an extra laptop sized sound module, then I'm pretty sure we'd be willing to pay a little more for that, nothing crazy expensive though, lol

thanks
 
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Have you used any of the FX to help mold your sounds into your mix? That is by far one of SampleTanks biggest strengths. Each sound isn't HUGE and hard to fit your song. They are made to be molded into whatever you want. Personally my secret FX in SampleTank is "Tone Control" really makes everything sound HUGE.
 
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