I don't see the big deal with stuff you paid a lot for having its price slashed further down the road. Either it was good value at the time or it wasn't. You can't be ripped off retrospectively. 

OT
Well thanks to the fact that I had to take my dog to the vet for a check up and lab work  there is no chance that I can get in on the pre sale price….
 
I want to get the new Sampletank …hopefully I can catch a sale ….
 
not OT
anyway , I was one of the guys who happened to pick up a few of the 29 dollar Sampletank instruments 
I grabbed the M Philharmonic , SampleTron , Sonic Synth ,  Sampletank and I wished I would of gotten the SampleMoog  (ran out of funds ) 
 
you know , I don't want to get caught in anyones cross hairs around here , the thing is , I'm very happy that IK made those instruments available to me at a price that I could afford at the time 
they sound very good , they work great on both my Mac and PC , and I would not of been able to have afford them under any other circumstance.
 
 
 
Kenny

I too picked up all the IK synths for a 'song'! They all quit working in X2. Not a show stopper, but I'll be happy to get them back up.
T

I bought Miroslav philharmonic for 59 bucks in a group buy and get the other 4 free. Upgrade to 99 to st3 is a no brainer for me. Komplete9  is awesome but they don't have everything covered.  Can't wait to have it download on Thursday.

K9U is amazing... Thanks for reminding me I should really be using it! There might be enough in there to kill time until Sampletank 3. :P

I'm not upgrading to sampletank 3 simply because the audio demos I have heard on IK ST3 website sound.......
 
horrible to me.
 
The Choir sound sample sounds hideous.
 
The act of importing ALL ST 2.0/2.5 sampletank libraries into ST3 and setting that all up sounds tedious just to get them to play in a 64bit environment and engine.
 
I am going to wait for the GAS buyers and wait and see what people have to say about the ST3 once it is out.

Glyn Barnes

BassDaddy
There will be a moment of silence Thursday at Native Instruments I would think.

I don't think NI will be loosing much sleep. IK seem to have made a decision to go after a different market and not compete directly with Kontakt or Reaktor. The only head to head competion is between Guitar Rig and Amplitube.

The silence would only be for the end of the era. When I went 64 bit I went looking in other places. The main one was NI. If anything NI is competing against T-Racks with the new effects of the last few years. I do wish NI would take the effects like Reflektor and Traktors 12 out of Guitar Rig though.

sharke

BassDaddy
I do wish NI would take the effects like Reflektor and Traktors 12 out of Guitar Rig though.

That used to annoy me too but I've gotten used to it and in fact appreciate the benefits of it now. There are some fantastic tools inside of Guitar Rig for modulating effects with envelopes and LFO's and I use them all the time.

That is true.  Additionally, making a track template for Reflektor is almost as quick as inserting a normal VST.

1.  I have ST2.5 and I still use it and like a lot of what it has to offer.  I'm sure there is much better available, but I've been able to get these instruments to work well with my other stuff - sure there are some sounds that are crap, but a lot of good stuff for me.
2.  I still have SonikSynth2 and I still use it (in the ST interface) - as #1 above
3.  I paid full price for these a long time ago
4.  I got a LOT of use and enjoyment of what these libraries brought me
5.  I don't understand why it isn't working for others in Sonar X3 - works fine here in the 64bit version without any weirdness.
6.  I'd like t get ST3, but I can't justify the money for as little as I get to play with my toys.  I think the $99 upgrade price is very attractive, though I'm not entirely sure if it really sounds a lot better since it has all the old sounds in it and some amount of new sounds - net really clear as to what is new vs old on the marketing site and the "numbers" of sounds advertised doesn't seem to be a whole lot more than the old ST2.5 XL set, so it seems like an awful lot of reused material.
7.  Those who feel "ripped off" because they paid for older technology when it was new surely must be used to this feeling.  If I could get all the money back that I've spent on old technology that didn't live up to today's standards, I'd be a wealthy man.  In the 90s, you could get a 386sx system with MB of RAM and MB of disk space and easily pay triple what you get an i5 with GBs of RAM and 100s of GB of hard drive space - forget all the other subtleties of RAM access speed, SSD drives, bus speeds, power usage, etc.  You just can't feel bad about spending the money or you have to wait until it's old and $29.  There's a reason it's only $29.
 
Just a few (well, 7) thoughts.

Somehow the conversation on the IKM Sampletank forums turned to drunken instruments... or instrumenting while drunking... or dreaming about drunk instruments... Anyway I couldn't let that go by. And of course I thought of you guys.
ST2.5 - http://www.mediafire.com/download/vmo1sfo38c366gy/Dream_a_Liitle_Drunk_of_Me.zip
Samples - http://www.mediafire.com/download/e1nke4tbqjbeq13/Dream_a_Little_Drunk_samples.zip
 
Note tihs is Drunkware. It is Public Domain, but if you use it extensively or make money from it, please raise a glass for me (note the glass does not have to contain anything alcoholic).

Got my dl links from sweetwater this morning.
Tom

The Sweetwater thing is a giant *@%! up. It isn't the final version.

mike_mccue
Could it be...  the Eat Crow™ special edition?
 
;-)

Last reckoning IK haven't released it yet...
 
All the retailers have the $149 price now...

IK still has the $99.99 price...

I talked to my SW Rep this week and he said they expect to fill boxed set orders Aug1, as promised, but have yet to hear anything from IK about when they will arrive.
 
I listened to the limited ST3 audio demos last evening and am debating whether I really need/want this or not. Some of the pianos and basses sound very good but others not so good. Perhaps setup as a multi they might be useful to me but I have so many other capable tools. I have this gut feeling that I am just wasting drive space and $100...

mike_mccue
 
IK says Sweetwater "jumped the gun" by making the download links available on the actual date that has been advertised as the date.
 

WE all should know better than that by now!  : )
 
Brian