It's not a "feeling". It's what happens when you buy anything related to making music. Unless you are a studio, booking hourly time; it's nearly impossible to quantify what a return on an investment even should be. If you buy music gear, software, etc; you should consider that money basically gone. For all effective purposes.

It's even worse if you buy anything brand new. You will always take a hit. If you buy used gear with the intent of re-selling it, you can do ok. Usually you will get to use whatever, for something close to free until you sell it. Most people do not even do that. Thanks to eBay, etc. even the days of crazy "barn find" way underpriced things are mostly gone. Anyone can look up the current fair value of anything with a model and serial number on it. Exceptional deals on stuff are effectively gone under most normal circumstances.

If you ever go to a casino, one of the best things to do is to bring only the amount of money you wouldn't even care about losing. Music purchases are basically the same thing, and mostly they always have been.

 

nice points artic. what is your stance on sample packs? and of course i'm referring to actual useable and nice sample packs.

 

Not at all, just making a list to see how much the total would be TBH, nothing serious.
More on topic I personnaly have zero regrets about buying the Microtonic and that's an oldie !

 

Sometimes, plugins are just like getting a more comfortable piece of furniture. You can't really quantify the return on investment of getting a better chair, nor can you expect the chair to retain its value after your mom's sat on it.

I've never regretted buying a plugin. I'll only (but happily) spend money on developers that don't employ absurd DRM schemes or BS marketing and who have actual support lines staffed by humans.

If you make a fair bit more than min-wage with the plugins you use, you should buy them, imo.

If you don't make money, but it's your only / main hobby, you should every now and then spend money on the developers that deserve it.

 

thanks for sharing your thoughts artic.
i've recently cleaned up my external ssd and deleted A LOT of trash. i've bought world/ethnic sample packs before. i've tried to experiment with as many styles as possible, but as you said, all one need is the Drum Machines pack (i know the one you're referring to), maybe a vengeance pack if you're doing club music, but that's mostly it. some vocal packs maybe? one or two that are extremely specific to the style you focus on?
but yeah, luckily i stopped a long time ago collecting plugins, now i've finally trashed sample packs too, sometimes it was hard, the thought "uuffff what if one day i need it?" but reality is different lol.
as for the thread, i really like what @Lad Impala said:

there are two ways to see it: as a hobby, and then it's the same as spending money on books, games, fancy clothes or whatever. but as a job, eh, i've made very little (but then again i've never actually sat down and produced seriously, mostly for me), like artic said: do you *really* need all that stuff? idk, but nice points in this thread thanks all

 

One thing we must consider, though, which might be very important, is inspiration.
sometimes a new sample pack, a new plugin, whatever, can be the spark to something great. although let's not lie, i said "sometimes".
i think this is why a lot of people (one of the reasons) try to get their hands on everything they can...
getting it from other sources is one thing, but buying it can even motivate you more.

 

Yes sir. I feel your pain. Although for me the epiphany occurred a couple of decades ago. The end result was simply a lesson learned. When the legit-ware & licences thereof faded away they were replaced by their cracked counterparts as well as for new stuff coming down the pike. The economy will never change despite the falsified hot-air that x-number of politicians will spew forth every election cycle. The endless issues encountered simply by requiring a production machine to be connected to the internet is more than I will put up with. It's a great peace of mind knowing a machine can be moved anywhere, or be rebuilt or modified in any fashion you wish and NOT have to play silly re-authorization games with 50-100 plugins and DAW platforms. Take comfort in the fact as long as there are witches supplying the means, you can take back your sanity pretty much anytime you want.

 

in the beginning there was FOSS, (Free and open Software) if you read up on it, it was originally felt that we should be able to modify the source code to improve it for our own use cases. what a world we would have if everybody could pitch in to fix bugs and add new features..

 

After hearing them... "talking" about me, you wouldn't be able to hear nor mix anything again!

Trust me, better preserve your delicate, precious ears....

...
(Truth 1: naaah, in fact I'm still in excellent terms with one of them... Truth 2: I have nothing to say (except stupid jokes) against any woman nor any existing person, I'm more against the "legit" (LOL) institution / principle itself... Truth 3: I'm a feminist)

 

hell its a bargain....not used to from apple...wtf

Ableton $749 USD

Pro Tools $599 USD

Cubase $579 USD

FL Studio $499 USD

Bitwig $399 USD

Studio one $399 USD

 

Samplescience has a lot of interesting sample packs. and frequent sales. I just got 2tb of lofi boards of canada etc package over the weekend for 8$ and he has a lot of other sample packs free or whatever you feel there worth, like a couple bucks..

also makes some interesting sampled instruments as vst or Kontakt libraries.

if you join his mailing list, you'll get discounted offers and doesn't spam you to death like some i've signed up for.

https://www.samplescience.info/

also archive.org has alot of old recordings both music and spoken voice as well as old industrial training films and educational films that are a great source of ideas for sampling and mangling...and they are all free.

 

He stole that idea from me...

 

I actually invented the Internet back in 1974, but I got stoned with Al Gore and he stole the idea from me. Still hurts to think about it.
I could have been the Captain of the Internet, that really looks good on a resume....

 

if buying is not owning, pirating is not stealing