zampled euphonic strings

Need some fresh sounds? Want to show off your sound design skills? Here's the place!
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iamthor4
Posts: 269
Joined: 17 Nov 2020

22 Nov 2020

are they a scam rip off or legit company ?

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MrFigg
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22 Nov 2020

iamthor4 wrote:
22 Nov 2020
are they a scam rip off or legit company ?
You already asked that in another thread. Maybe give folk a chance to answer. They're a good and helpful bunch on here.
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esselfortium
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22 Nov 2020

It's a scam, same as Softphonics was. Euphonic Strings is an autosampler rip of something else, and their website (when it still existed) was full of stock photos instead of any actual pictures or real info about the sessions, performers, or engineers.

Besides the legitimacy issues, the samples are terribly processed and have phasing issues all over the place that make it sound like a bad flanger effect is on them. Would not recommend, even for cheap.
Sarah Mancuso
My music: Future Human

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MrFigg
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22 Nov 2020

esselfortium wrote:
22 Nov 2020
It's a scam, same as Softphonics was. Euphonic Strings is an autosampler rip of something else, and their website (when it still existed) was full of stock photos instead of any actual pictures or real info about the sessions, performers, or engineers.

Besides the legitimacy issues, the samples are terribly processed and have phasing issues all over the place that make it sound like a bad flanger effect is on them. Would not recommend, even for cheap.
Which begs the question...why do the Propellerheads still have it in their shop? I don’t mean that I’m expecting an answer from you...unless you know if course.
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iamthor4
Posts: 269
Joined: 17 Nov 2020

22 Nov 2020

MrFigg wrote:
22 Nov 2020
iamthor4 wrote:
22 Nov 2020
are they a scam rip off or legit company ?
You already asked that in another thread. Maybe give folk a chance to answer. They're a good and helpful bunch on here.
oh give me a break now figgs lol

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MrFigg
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22 Nov 2020

iamthor4 wrote:
22 Nov 2020
MrFigg wrote:
22 Nov 2020


You already asked that in another thread. Maybe give folk a chance to answer. They're a good and helpful bunch on here.
oh give me a break now figgs lol
Did you used to go under the name Sleep1979? :). You remind me of someone I once knew on the forum :)
Last edited by MrFigg on 22 Nov 2020, edited 1 time in total.
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iamthor4
Posts: 269
Joined: 17 Nov 2020

22 Nov 2020

esselfortium wrote:
22 Nov 2020
It's a scam, same as Softphonics was. Euphonic Strings is an autosampler rip of something else, and their website (when it still existed) was full of stock photos instead of any actual pictures or real info about the sessions, performers, or engineers.

Besides the legitimacy issues, the samples are terribly processed and have phasing issues all over the place that make it sound like a bad flanger effect is on them. Would not recommend, even for cheap.
ok
thank u

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JiggeryPokery
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23 Nov 2020

MrFigg wrote:
22 Nov 2020


Which begs the question...why do the Propellerheads still have it in their shop? I don’t mean that I’m expecting an answer from you...unless you know if course.
Everyone knows. You know! :puf_wink:

It's because 50% of £44 is 50% more than half of sod all and for each year for the past four years they've made a little bit less money than the previous one. So every penny is worth having, because they hope the chances of being caught in a real legal dispute are pretty slim.

It's the same reason anyone commits a crime: you assume you'll get away with it!

They hope* they are contractually safe reselling stolen samples via a clause in the dev contract stating they will remove a product if the copyright holder contacts them to get the product removed. So if you say "Euphonics stole those samples", but you're not the copyright holder, they can opt to do nothing. The reality, I suspect, is it's probably quite hard to work out where stuff came from, it was just that Softphonics was particularly sloppy in that he used very high profile samplesets from Native Fucking Instruments that a lot of Reason users already had in their other DAW, and this was exposed immediately once Reason could host those samples and suddenly people were comparing them side by side.

Since Zampled Euphonics been discussed on this forum a couple of times previously, and RS read the forum extensively, it's therefore still in the shop knowingly, with reasonable belief it might not be legitimate, and they're chancing it, especially since they can change the prices without explicit instructions from the product creator. IMO the Softphonics scandal demonstrates that no orchestral product would ever be made exclusively for Reason, unless it was using ripped and stolen or licensed samples. In the latter category, for example, we have, Orkester, or the Miroslav sets from Sonic Implants, or the ProjectSAM RE, all clearly above board. As I said in the previous thread on this matter, I don't know that Zampled isn't legit, but I have reasonable doubt in the product (that I also bought, fwiw).

Essentially, any other strings, or choirs you have via a Reason ReFill or Rack Extension are not legitmate unless the provenance is clearly demonstrated, and if that opinion is wrong, then the people involved can easily demonstrate otherwise. "We licensed these samples from X-Co", or "Check out these production photos!".

They don't.

Incidentally, after the Softphonics scandal it's inconceivable that RS didn't do a full audit of everything they have in the shop. There are one or two grey areas, synth samples etc, (personally I always stated where I sampled them from, including licensed stuff). Other than that, I expect the amount of illegimate samples still in the shop is probably very high.


______
* For example, company lawyers can put whatever shit they want in a contract: they can write "You owe us one kidney on demand" and you can sign it and "agree" to providing a kidney in the expectation that they don't actually ask for it. That contract doesn't necessarily mean you actually owe them kidney when they demand it, because typically it would an illegal and entirely unforecable clause, because it's fundamentally an "unreasonable" demand. Of course I don't know whether their copyright clauses in the contract is enough to get them out of trouble or not, that's something that would need to be tested in court by actual lawyers spinning things in the best way for their clients, but it's enough for now to say, it's not a slam-dunk get-of-out-of-jail-free clause, because there's reasonable doubt in any assertion that they make that they couldn't have known such samples were stolen, and in any event, ignorance is not a defence under the law.

And compounding their position here is that despite public protestations to the contrary, Reason Studios are the sellers of everything in the shop. Everything. I don't directly sell anything in the Reason Shop. So RS were (are?) profiting out of selling stolen samples.

My products are business-to-business, that is, I offer products to Reason Studios, and they sell them to you. One can try and make an argument I'm the seller, for sure, but IMO they are the sellers, whatever they say. Hypothetically, and I don't know if this has ever happened, this is purely an example, if one contacted RS support about a product and they were to reply "this nothing to do with us, we're not the sellers" that would be a false statement. If they said "we're not the product creator, you need to contact them to answer that question", that would be fine. Unfortunately, for tax purposes they're on-the-record as stating it's business-to-business: that's directly from their CFO. As noted above, RS have the right to set product prices too, so any price I set in the Reason Shop product page editor is an RRP that RS can change at will, at any time they like. That Euphonics Strings product is now on sale for £24.

So either RS have set the price themselves, so they must be the seller, or at best if one were to insist they're merely the distributor, then it means Zampled are still actively managing the page and thus are in a position to explain the exact provenance of their product.

And if that's not enough there's another easy test that any Reason product creator can do to prove they are not dircetly selling to the end user in the shop.

EU law requires the seller to sell to end users in the EU at the VAT rate of the buyer's country. How much VAT is taken out of your product receipts?

Oh yes, it's flat 25% Swedish rate! So while all their EU customers are being charged VAT at their local rate, Reason content creators aren't. Note that this benefits RS as they earn the difference on VAT where the local amount is lower than 25% but they still take the larger 25% from the creator. (Note: some countries have a higher rate than 25%, so RS pay more to the creator in those instances, so overall the difference isn't exactly massive, but there's a material net benefit for RS doing it this way, or else they wouldn't).

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MrFigg
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23 Nov 2020

Thanks JP. Makes sense.
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