Umpf Retro Beats

[two shoes]

Edit: This post was too angry. I get upset by what I see as really unreasonable prices on a lot of Props recent content but that doesn't mean all the negative speculation about the company is true. I wish they'd think about what stuff looks like from their customers perspective more before they do it, but I shouldn't be so negative and impugn their motives unfairly.

[Aosta]

A lot of people are missing the point here. The problem is not that they made this thing, it's that they priced it at $100 and made it a separate RE from the original UMPF which was also $100.

The price is absurd in relation to what you actually get for your money, it's absurd in relation to other stuff on the market, it's absurd in relation to the cost of the host application, and most importantly it's a big middle finger to all of Propellerheads customers.

Propellerhead clearly have no interest in providing a great product at a fair price and developing a mutually beneficial long term relationship with a loyal customer base (like Cockos is doing with Reaper for example). Instead their intention is to clearly to capitalize on the relatively closed nature of their platform and ridiculous no-resale policy with REs by gouging the people who are emotionally or financially invested in Reason for every penny they possibly can while those people still exist.

I've been having a ton of fun with Reason since I rediscovered it earlier this year, but I am increasingly pessimistic about its future to the point that I'm beginning to wish I had never even tried it again. Propellerhead is not behaving like a company that expects to develop Reason for another twenty years and prosper doing so. Their actions are those of an organization who's leadership has seen the writing on the wall and is cynically trying to exploit what's left of their customer base by deliberately misrepresenting both their current development efforts and their future plans in order to squeeze them for every dollar they possibly can before the endgame where they sell out to private equity and dissolve all their IP into mobile because they think thats where the future revenue is.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong and they're just cluelessly bumbling about in a manner that just happens to look exactly like a company that already knows the game is up and is trying to cash in on their brand legacy for every penny they possibly can before their customers realize what's happening, but honestly that seems far fetched. Even if the rank and file at Propellerhead are unaware of their fate and sincere in their efforts to make a good product, the decisions being made by the leadership suggest this is not going to end well for Reason users

Or you could just not buy it and carry on making beats with the virtually unlimited ways available out there.

[guitfnky]

A lot of people are missing the point here. The problem is not that they made this thing, it's that they priced it at $100 and made it a separate RE from the original UMPF which was also $100.

The price is absurd in relation to what you actually get for your money, it's absurd in relation to other stuff on the market, it's absurd in relation to the cost of the host application, and most importantly it's a big middle finger to all of Propellerheads customers.

according to...a handful of forum users?

[WongoTheSane]

Instead their intention is to clearly to capitalize on the relatively closed nature of their platform and ridiculous no-resale policy with REs by gouging the people who are emotionally or financially invested in Reason for every penny they possibly can while those people still exist.

Wait... If they did that, wouldn't they be literally drowning in money? And taking looong holidays on vast yachts, instead of giving their direct line to customers, and being at the office all day long? Something doesn't fit here...

If they are selling at that price, and it manages to keep the ship afloat without gaining an obscene amount of dough, it's the right price, that is, the price that is aligned with the development costs (as opposed to the one that suits you, or that you deem fair). Their earnings have been posted several times already, and they don't look like the earnings of robbers and thieves who get insanely rich by stealing from honest, helpless customers.

[pushedbutton]

How dare you offer something I'm not interested in!
...Again.
Props are going in an exciting new direction that will hopefully generate them a wider user base and more revenue but this isn't how to extract cash from this particular patron or, it seems, the vast majority of the veteran user base.
I think there's a marketing company in Stockholm that must hold really convincing seminars for software developers on how to tailor their products to maximise revenue. Microtransactions just piss me off. Perhaps it's a generational thing.
I'm also not buying anything from EA/Dice at the moment because I can't be arsed with their business practices either.

[chimp_spanner]

Haha yooo everyone just chill. Nobody's holding a gun to anyone's head to buy it. Not your thing? Just pass. There are SIX Noise Engineering devices coming next week. Step Recorder just got a nice new update. Lots of things to sink your teeth into this month.

[koshal]

I own Umpf Club Drums but didn't get an email from Props re: crossgrade pricing for this variant...any one else in the same boat?

[QVprod]

Haha yooo everyone just chill. Nobody's holding a gun to anyone's head to buy it. Not your thing? Just pass. There are SIX Noise Engineering devices coming next week. Step Recorder just got a nice new update. Lots of things to sink your teeth into this month.

Gotta say, I expected the reaction here to this RE when I saw the announcement earlier. I personally see no value in neither Umph RE as Kong can do most of what it does for drums and I have no problem using separate outs for additional fx. Not to mentions the thousands if not millions of free samples online even of vintage drum machines. And seriously, how different is one 808 or Sp1200 sample going to sound from the next? However as much of a money grab this seems to be, there really is a market for it. You’d be surprised how many “simple” things people think are complicated. I see people on Facebook groups all the time post asking what synth they should buy for Pop music when they own Logic X... I’d understand that more if they were Reaper users. Saw someone the other day who thought they had to to install their copy of Reason 7 in order to upgrade to Reason 10. Those same kinds of people may possibly have trouble picking drum samples too so they might happily hop on a RE like this.

[rcbuse]

Layers was $99 when it was new. Layers Wave was $99 when it was new. The last sale had the Layers bundle @ $69.
Its won't be long that price point is hit with these two. Then they shall be mine!

[guitfnky]

I own Umpf Club Drums but didn't get an email from Props re: crossgrade pricing for this variant...any one else in the same boat?

did you opt out of any of their promotional emails at any point? I missed an offer a year or two ago because I’d opted out of their promo emails. their customer service response gave me instructions on how to opt back in, but by that point it was already too late.

[kuhliloach]

I would pay ten dollars for this. Maybe. But for five dollars almost definitely. Props puts the Dun in Redundancy.

[cognitive]

Haha yooo everyone just chill. Nobody's holding a gun to anyone's head to buy it. Not your thing? Just pass. There are SIX Noise Engineering devices coming next week. Step Recorder just got a nice new update. Lots of things to sink your teeth into this month.

NOOOOOO! Not six new Noise Engineering devices!

My wallet is crying already because it knows I will want them.

[Reasonable man]

Dont even want to demo it if im honest. Whereas i can appreciate 90's drum samples i spend most of my time deliberatley trying to avoid the sound of the 80's and 80's drum sounds and since it puzzels me why anyone would want to mimic that 80's vibe the price tag here is high class wankery.
That said i think Umpf club is a belter when it comes to sound and workflow .
Just on a side note as it's not to everyone's taste and i assume that this yoke will work the same and most umpf users already know.... It is possible to take your drums out seperate channels on these devices and still use the seperate insert effects (in umpf) as send effects which isn't possible in kong . The effects still come out the global stereo outs of Umpf (turn them up) so you can for eg process your kick and snare on seperate mix channels and bus them together with umpf's global stereo mix channell (wich contain the wet sigal of the inbuilt umpf effects) which allows you blend dry and wet to taste or automate them in and out to taste etc. Its surprisingly effective but unessary as Props should allow for these effects to be used on seperate mix channels .

[VariableX]

Gotta say, I expected the reaction here to this RE when I saw the announcement earlier. I personally see no value in neither Umph RE as Kong can do most of what it does for drums and I have no problem using separate outs for additional fx. Not to mentions the thousands if not millions of free samples online even of vintage drum machines. And seriously, how different is one 808 or Sp1200 sample going to sound from the next? However as much of a money grab this seems to be, there really is a market for it. You’d be surprised how many “simple” things people think are complicated. I see people on Facebook groups all the time post asking what synth they should buy for Pop music when they own Logic X... I’d understand that more if they were Reaper users. Saw someone the other day who thought they had to to install their copy of Reason 7 in order to upgrade to Reason 10. Those same kinds of people may possibly have trouble picking drum samples too so they might happily hop on a RE like this.

Feel like I should be insulted by this but i'll say it again ... instabuy!
I got the original UMPF with rewards, and a cross grade for this one so all up both for about $98 with the drum machine player for free! Propellerheads are looking after me!
Now where did i stick the free drum samples again....

[Wobbleburger]

A lot of people are missing the point here. The problem is not that they made this thing, it's that they priced it at $100 and made it a separate RE from the original UMPF which was also $100.

The price is absurd in relation to what you actually get for your money, it's absurd in relation to other stuff on the market, it's absurd in relation to the cost of the host application, and most importantly it's a big middle finger to all of Propellerheads customers.

Propellerhead clearly have no interest in providing a great product at a fair price and developing a mutually beneficial long term relationship with a loyal customer base (like Cockos is doing with Reaper for example). Instead their intention is to clearly to capitalize on the relatively closed nature of their platform and ridiculous no-resale policy with REs by gouging the people who are emotionally or financially invested in Reason for every penny they possibly can while those people still exist.

I've been having a ton of fun with Reason since I rediscovered it earlier this year, but I am increasingly pessimistic about its future to the point that I'm beginning to wish I had never even tried it again. Propellerhead is not behaving like a company that expects to develop Reason for another twenty years and prosper doing so. Their actions are those of an organization who's leadership has seen the writing on the wall and is cynically trying to exploit what's left of their customer base by deliberately misrepresenting both their current development efforts and their future plans in order to squeeze them for every dollar they possibly can before the endgame where they sell out to private equity and dissolve all their IP into mobile because they think thats where the future revenue is.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong and they're just cluelessly bumbling about in a manner that just happens to look exactly like a company that already knows the game is up and is trying to cash in on their brand legacy for every penny they possibly can before their customers realize what's happening, but honestly that seems far fetched. Even if the rank and file at Propellerhead are unaware of their fate and sincere in their efforts to make a good product, the decisions being made by the leadership suggest this is not going to end well for Reason users

Or you could just not buy it and carry on making beats with the virtually unlimited ways available out there.

This. This a thousand times.

[FlowerSoldier]

I like the original UMPF, but it was way overpriced like everything Propellerhead sells these days except Reason itself. This is a really bad look for Props, did they learn nothing from the reaction to Layers Waves edition? Changing the interface color and the sample set and removing the compressor (from a drum sample player? really??) and asking another $100 for it?

Not to continue things off topic, but you can't assume that all products are just thrown together and perhaps they don't come about the way you think.

In regards to Layer Wave Edition, this is from the interview with Peter Gorges a few months ago:

"In the last 3 years I had been looking for ways to put these samples into a virtual instrument for my own purposes, and when I saw LAYERS come out last year, I thought that was the perfect platform for them and so easy to do. I proposed it to Propellerhead and we did it almost guerilla-style – it was a fun project, and it’s successful too, which is particularly gratifying like everything you do for yourself and see other people benefit from it."

https://www.reasontalk.com/2018/06/an-i ... er-gorges/

And what WongoTheSane commented is right on point.

Dang Joey!
Great interview. I love learning about that kind of stuff!
I've beem using Reason since 1.0. It's pretty wild how far it's come.
I get all nostalgic just thinkin' about it.

>edit: typo

[QVprod]

Gotta say, I expected the reaction here to this RE when I saw the announcement earlier. I personally see no value in neither Umph RE as Kong can do most of what it does for drums and I have no problem using separate outs for additional fx. Not to mentions the thousands if not millions of free samples online even of vintage drum machines. And seriously, how different is one 808 or Sp1200 sample going to sound from the next? However as much of a money grab this seems to be, there really is a market for it. You’d be surprised how many “simple” things people think are complicated. I see people on Facebook groups all the time post asking what synth they should buy for Pop music when they own Logic X... I’d understand that more if they were Reaper users. Saw someone the other day who thought they had to to install their copy of Reason 7 in order to upgrade to Reason 10. Those same kinds of people may possibly have trouble picking drum samples too so they might happily hop on a RE like this.

Feel like I should be insulted by this but i'll say it again ... instabuy!
I got the original UMPF with rewards, and a cross grade for this one so all up both for about $98 with the drum machine player for free! Propellerheads are looking after me!
Now where did i stick the free drum samples again....

Wasn't meant to be an insult. Everybody's different. The kinds of people I referenced were an extreme example. I see buying this as not much different than buying sampled drum kits from anywhere else... which I don't do either, but it's a common thing nonetheless. Main thing is it's not a reason to start speculating Propellerhead's demise like some have begun doing (again) in this thread.

[supersplaron]

I own Umpf Club Drums but didn't get an email from Props re: crossgrade pricing for this variant...any one else in the same boat?

You are most probably not signed up for the newsletters. Get in touch with support and they will help you out!

[VariableX]

Wasn't meant to be an insult. Everybody's different. The kinds of people I referenced were an extreme example. I see buying this as not much different than buying sampled drum kits from anywhere else... which I don't do either, but it's a common thing nonetheless. Main thing is it's not a reason to start speculating Propellerhead's demise like some have begun doing (again) in this thread.

All good
I think people catastrophise Props demise because they love the software so much and have so much invested in it, it would really be their worst nightmare.

Everybody chill, this ain't no robbery!

[dioxide]

The pricing could be related to the fact that the company is Swedish. It's an expensive country to live in, so perhaps two very similar drum machines for 100 each looks reasonable. They should consider how it looks from other countries though.

Realistically these are sample packs that you're paying for. The two devices are very similar.

[Creativemind]

I'm just trialling this now. Hasn't wowed me as yet. Now if Quadelectra did all their drum Re's in 1 Re something similar to this (and allowed 10 if not more drums in it at once instead of 8), the Jackbox 707, 727, 808, 909, L1M and RZ-I and gave it loads of FX - Chorus, Reverb / Gated Reveb, Delay, Flaging, Phasing, DIstortion, Tape Saturation, Compression and EQ then I'd be in but that would stop sales of their original Re's.

[Yonatan]

If you can wait, then it will come at sales, or add to your subscription.
Look at Waves plugins, who would buy them at a full list price? They are almost always on some sale nowadays.
I do like, that they added "audio in" at this one. And I will try how inspiring it is to use with ones own recorded samples.

[seqoi]

I really like new device and i like FX and routing. Far better then initial Umpf.

I can understand hostility but you may realize that there are new users waiting to jump on board. To each their own.

I like it and feel sorry for people which expected something else. I hope PH will please you with something else.

[antic604]

Or you could just not buy it and carry on making beats with the virtually unlimited ways available out there.

Sounds like a solid advice, but only on the surface... A company like Props has limited resources, so spending the money on device like this, licensing of samples, creation of GUI, patches, sequences, marketing/video, etc. is taking away from development (coding) of sequencer improvements, high-res GUI, vst and RE performance, enhancements to the SDK for REs... Not only that, but doing devices like those and using behind-the-scenes "tricks" unavailable to 3rd party devs means they need to compete not only with VSTs and eachother, but also with Props. It's simply unfair and potentially harmful.

[MannequinRaces]

You guys are all hilarious. Don’t like it vote with your wallet. People voted with their wallet with Umpf and now there’s a new one. Get over yourselves and make some music.