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Yes, I use a lot of sample based refills, and will continue to buy some.
I love some of them so much that I hope to see an NN-XT VST to be able to use them in other DAWS.
I find NN-XT more flexible that IDT REs.

The only thing I stay away from purchasing these days are samples, so I don't purchase sample-laden anything.

I do however enjoy a nice piece of virtual audio equipment regardless if it's an RE or a VST.

Since this thread started Bitley has sold about five refills or so.

I would say the market has died completely.

So do you want me to Close down?

no... to closing... but if you do... the refills would be great as free

moneykube wrote: ↑

28 Oct 2017

no... to closing... but if you do... the refills would be great as free

This had me rolling on the floor laughing. (Bitley, please don't get offended by this! I mean, obviously don't take it seriously.)

I remember when Bitword had a blowout sale and then shut down and now their refills are lost to time, perhaps remembered fondly by their customers. I wasn't able to get in on any of them, but they sounded really great.

I hope it's worth your while to keep your site active, Bitley. I'm sure the advice that Propellerhead would give is to move to making IDT devices.

Personally, I buy Reason-related products only from Prop’s Store, hoping that I can download any time in the future. Only exception is Miroslav Orchestra refills.

Getting old makes me forget things easily... Simple integration of sound library and installation is something I need.

Bitley refills were very tempting though... Why not selling your products in Prop’s shop, Bitley?

People like me are willing to purchase them at 30~40% higher price.

=1. Same here. Way Beyond Fairlight would be an instabuy for me if it was in the Prop Shop

bitley™ wrote: ↑

28 Oct 2017

Since this thread started Bitley has sold about five refills or so.

I would say the market has died completely.

It's just that buying a new shiny synth/instrument is so much more fun compared to buying a refill. And all synths comes with a bunch of presets anyway.

As someone mentioned earlier, from a customer perspective it's nice to be able to buy it from the Propellerhead Shop. I understand if that's not always optimal for the developer. But it's nice to have everything available for download in one place, one account. I'd rather pay a little bit more to able to do that. In fact the few refills I have bought have all been from the PH Shop.

But maybe it doesn't matter what I think since I'm not particularly interested in refills anyway. I probably own about 70-90 REs and only 3 refills.

Dante wrote: ↑

28 Oct 2017

=1. Same here. Way Beyond Fairlight would be an instabuy for me if it was in the Prop Shop

Why?

Note: I buy all my refills direct, get a lot better deal, plus I know all the money is going to dev.

Catblack wrote: ↑

28 Oct 2017

moneykube wrote: ↑

28 Oct 2017

no... to closing... but if you do... the refills would be great as free

This had me rolling on the floor laughing. (Bitley, please don't get offended by this! I mean, obviously don't take it seriously.)

ya... it was my sick humor

bitley™ wrote: ↑

28 Oct 2017

Since this thread started Bitley has sold about five refills or so.

I would say the market has died completely.

So do you want me to Close down?

Sample based refill market is being replaced by IDT REs. Your next possible step has been hinted at a few times here.

Just an idea. I prefer sample based refills above mainly "preset" refills like for example Pantheon by Nucleus Soundlab, just because it seems almost random, the creation of these patches, in this case Thor. It's like that Radiohead song. Anyone can play guitar. Meaning anyone can program a soft synth and attach a price tag to your "hard" work. But then again I still support these refill producers just to keep them going forward.

Carly(Poohbear) wrote: ↑

28 Oct 2017

Dante wrote: ↑

28 Oct 2017

=1. Same here. Way Beyond Fairlight would be an instabuy for me if it was in the Prop Shop

Why?

Note: I buy all my refills direct, get a lot better deal, plus I know all the money is going to dev.

Getting old... Saving time & effort means more than a little more money to spend.
Also, convinience and safety in installation are more valuable than a little more money to spend.

Just an opinion.... ^^

@bitley: Since this thread started, Soundcells sold a whole lot more ReFills than only 5.
To me it is clear, that the ReFill market still is in the ‘big shadow of Rack Extensions‘, but it is not dead!
A lot of answers here are showing that Reason users are still interested. We will see …

The overworked Soundcells website will be back at the end of the coming week (i hope). Than registered users will receive regular e-mails again, and a (somehow :0) ) new ReFill will be released …
The following weeks & months will show if it is worth to invest energy into this (small) market.

I trust my customers :0)


Best regards to all,
Harald | Soundcells

Carly(Poohbear) wrote: ↑

28 Oct 2017

Dante wrote: ↑

28 Oct 2017

=1. Same here. Way Beyond Fairlight would be an instabuy for me if it was in the Prop Shop

Why?

Note: I buy all my refills direct, get a lot better deal, plus I know all the money is going to dev.

The main reason (quite apart from the convenience factor) is that in Australia, there is no option to pay via Credit Card - so forced to use PayPal, which I refuse to do since some negative dealings with them in the past. If a Credit Card option was available, its likely I would buy those Bitley refills.

Well you can order with credit card via Paypal without having to create a Paypal account.

As for the IDioTic IDT solution I would never look further at it. You have to think harder before demanding such a transition. WBF R2 has over 4000 patches and no patch would be compatible. Certainly not my combinator patches.

Perhaps you should think about what content the refill actually has? Those who say it’s just sample based simply are genuinely dumb.

bitley™ wrote: ↑

30 Oct 2017

As for the IDioTic IDT solution I would never look further at it. You have to think harder before demanding such a transition. WBF R2 has over 4000 patches and no patch would be compatible. Certainly not my combinator patches.

The combinator patches no. The NNXT based ones yes? Plenty of REs include combinator patches, so those could be rebuilt. Doesn't have to be only 1 RE. Could be a series. But I get it if you don't want to do the work involved since it's a massive project.

Speaking of massive, Finally someone finally took advantage of the vst support and the sonic possibilities it presents to the refill format!

https://www.reasontalk.com/2017/10/refi ... ve-reason/

bitley™ wrote: ↑

30 Oct 2017

Well you can order with credit card via Paypal without having to create a Paypal account.

As for the IDioTic IDT solution I would never look further at it. You have to think harder before demanding such a transition. WBF R2 has over 4000 patches and no patch would be compatible. Certainly not my combinator patches.

Perhaps you should think about what content the refill actually has? Those who say it’s just sample based simply are genuinely dumb.

NNXT is an open format, so your entire collection NNXT patches could be read by a custom sampler. An important first step.

All those combinator patches could then just have the NNXT replaced with the custom sampler (which you don't have to have made yourself since there are a shitload of samplers out there, and if necessary could be adapted to read NNXT), or even an IDT instrument (they can read NNXT though I'm not sure if it's 100% compatibility).

So we've got the NNXT out of the way.

Next question is why you would want to go through that trouble.

Simple.

The Prop shop is a marketplace, and if people are throwing their money at Rack Extensions then let them at it! You could essentially just have a rompler for your NNXT patches that could be divided up into content specific RE/IDTs. In each of them you provide the compatible patches.

There is no doubt a certain amount of work involved, but if you just start with one trial device you can gauge how worthwhile this is for you.

I prefer NN-XT over IDT REs. You can do a lot more with NN-XT, you can access to all the samples, external or in other refills, and you have access to all the tweaking NN-XT offers (at sample level, zone level , global level). With an IDT RE you have no access to the samples level, and you are limited to the parameters the IDT offers. NN-XT have also multiple outputs, and so on...

I have to say that since this thread was starting, i have no doubt anymore that ReFills are still an 'really existing' format.
Sales are really not that bad … :0)


Harald | Soundcells

Fun joke

Dear Patrick,

Please no sarcasm :0)
I have not said that the ReFill market seems to be a big one - it is what is was before: A niche business which now is even more niche than before … :0)
Talking about this month and ReFill sales only (and i will not name any numbers) i have to say that a 'modest life' is possible …

I do think Refills still have a place.

There remains a clamour for vintage sounds, i.e. analogue synths sampled for use in modern contexts and for those who don't have hardware. Look at UVI's stuff, and IK Multimedia's recent sample-based package.

The big advantage to refills is that thy run so efficient. They are infinitely more efficient that Arturia synths, for example. In fact, if the perfect refill for me is one that has:

• The raw samples from a massive number of analogue synths, with clean samples.
  Organised by different synth AND
  Organised by type of sound
  NNXT-based
  Round robin sampling
  Multi-sampling across the keyboard (no need for every note, but more than a single note for each sound)

The Factory Soundbank has a bit of this, with its NN19 Sample Patches -> Raw Synth Elements,
Analogue monsters also gets close, and does this for 9 synths, and is structured in a very useful way.
Way Beyond fairlight has a bit of this also, but it does have a treasure-trove type feel which personally makes it more difficult for me to ever feel like I've bottomed out what's in it! (I'm not complaining - it's a gold mine.)

And for drums, again the perfect refill does not exist (I don't think).
Kings of Kong gets very close, but it draws from the Hollow Sun samples, and much though I want to love these, the samples seem to be coloured and sometimes fried (esp. the 808 and 909 ones).

I think Refills are great because I like sound design that uses Reason's built-in capabilities or the odd RE (Parsec), so this is the perfect format for me.

By the way, your demo songs for the Parsec refill on your page is broken. Says it's an invalid Soundcloud URL.

dsaborg wrote: ↑

10 Jan 2018

I think Refills are great because I like sound design that uses Reason's built-in capabilities or the odd RE (Parsec), so this is the perfect format for me.

By the way, your demo songs for the Parsec refill on your page is broken. Says it's an invalid Soundcloud URL.

To prove that I just bought the SoundCells Parsec Refill, because I found the demo songs on SoundCloud haha.