Kronos Sample banks website

[lotty1]

I have copy samples to the kronos hard drive and when I load them they work but if I switch the kronos off and on the samples had to be reloaded.
I have created a preload file and save every where I can but every time I had to reload the samples.

I must be doing something wrong but I am unable to find answers in the manual.
Please help

[BasariStudios]

???

[jazlover]

Lotty, samples are volatile (like the sequencer). You have to save to disk. The Kronos should not erase the KSC written to disk.

[Ojustaboo]

but my point of view is that any professional sounddesigner with it's own company shouldn't use samples from others without having arranged the proper licenses for using their work (original sample material).

But how far do you take it?

It's pretty obvious what pianos have been sampled in say Kontakt.

If I go out and spend 8K on say a Yamaha Acoustic Piano, do I have the right to sample it and then sell (or give away) the samples?

Or if I go out and buy myself an electric guitar for £500 can I sample that and sell it (or give it away)

If I do have the right, how is that different from me spending 6K on a Yamaha Digital Piano and sampling that? Or 3K on a Kronos and sampling that?

If I don't' then I suspect a good 90% + of samples on the market today don't have the rights to use the Acoustic or digital instruments they sampled in the first place.

The whole things a minefield

[BasariStudios]

If I don't' then I suspect a good 90% + of samples on the market today don't have the rights to use the Acoustic or digital instruments they sampled in the first place.

Never ever anyone said anything better then this and please dont try to
rebuke it...we all know that ALL these companies DO NOT have the legal
rights to Sample all these Digital or Acoustic Intruments.
Dont go further away, ask your selfs about Korg's own ROM.
And it still falls down to Morals...THERE IS NOW LAW!

[QuiRobinez]

If I go out and spend 8K on say a Yamaha Acoustic Piano, do I have the right to sample it and then sell (or give away) the samples?

In my opinion yes. You are sampling an analog source and to capture that essence would require great knowledge of the sampling proces and quite some investment (time and money) to create a good sample set.

Or if I go out and buy myself an electric guitar for £500 can I sample that and sell it (or give it away)

Same story, yes.

If I do have the right, how is that different from me spending 6K on a Yamaha Digital Piano and sampling that? Or 3K on a Kronos and sampling that?

the difference is that you sample the sampled work of the company. This require no skill or investment (like a studio, great microphones, knowledge) and almost no time. The Digital piano is created by a company which payed for all this to make it possible to bring out a digital piano that resembles the acoustic version of it.

If I don't' then I suspect a good 90% + of samples on the market today don't have the rights to use the Acoustic or digital instruments they sampled in the first place.

Maybe you are right, personally i think that most commercial companies will get that license. But i don't have anything with justifications of what other people do. For me that doesn't make it right.

let me make clear that I don't judge other people that have different standards about this. Everyone should do what they think they would do. And i agree it's a grey area sometimes.

For instance when i create a new sound on the Motif (which also uses samples) and sample that, i wouldn't have much problem with that. Especially when it are sounds that are based on waves of Saw, Triangle or Sinus sounds. I would use those in that case because i consider this as fresh new material. But on the other hand if i would create a guitar sound on the motif i wouldn't use that because that guitar sound is a motif sound.
So for me it's also hard following my own guidelines because of this grey area.

That's why i said before when you do these kind of things you probably will know if it's acceptable or not. And for me this only applies to commercial companies. When people are in their own studio having fun with their gear they should do what ever they like in my opinion.

But a completely different theoretical question: i create soundsets, i spend over 100 hour to create 32 programs in reality and i shared those for free. Now a commercial company takes those free programs and for every program they select a different osc sample and then they release that as their new soundset.
This sounds completely different because they changed the oscs (you can do that within 4 seconds). But all the tweaks that cost me that much time and makes up the sound (like the AMS mixer setups, the envelopes and the creative ideas) are still there and make up a great new soundset.

What do you think about that when that happens?

If that happend to me i would never release a free soundset again, that's for sure because that would go against everything i believe in. Now how's that different comparing to using samples of others for a commercial companies gain (they didn't invest the time to create the sounds at the first place and they spent 32 * 4 seconds to create that new soundset that is unrecognisable)?

[Stevesan]

Unfortunately I am not a paid musician. But I am a paid marketing expert and unfortunately I've had to spend thousands of hours through the years working with copyright issues.

If Yamaha builds a piano, and I or anyone else buys it, Yamaha does not own that piano any more. Neither do they own the sounds it produce. It could easily be argued that in fact noone owns the sounds. What Yamaha DOES own though is their brand and the brand rights.

If I were to build a piano identical to Yamaha's, would that be illegal. The main answer is 'no'. In fact, unless I fake their brand on it, there's no way to prevent me from doing this unless I infringe on other immaterial rights like patents (which ofcourse might be the case). But trying to replicate the sound has never been, is not, nor will it ever be in any way illegal in any country which prides itself of any kind of justice worthy of the name.

When the sounds are produced by a digital unit (be it a synthesizer or something else), the source of the sound is digital information. Bits. Duplicating these bits would be software piracy, whereas trying to exactly duplicate the sound in manners by not copying it would not be.

Using someone elses samples as a sound source in sound design boils down to whether the result is still a traceable and reasonably accurate replica of the original sound where anyone can hear that, or if it's a completely new sound with its own creative height.

In most copyright and intellectual property law, the idea of creative height is present. If I take someones picture and duplicate it without permission, that would be illegal. If I use the picture to create art and the picture still - within my art - is easily recognizable, that would still be illegal.

However, if my art goes so far beyond the original work, twists it so much that noone - including the original photographer - reasonably in most cases would not recognize the original work, then it has a creative height and stands on its own. And thus has its own value and is protected as an original work.

The same goes with everything that derives from creative work. Including sound. Since this comes down to someones judgement, anyone using others samples must ask themselves: has my changing of the original samples transformed this into something completely different. If it has, then it is my definite opinion derived from lots and lots of cases through the years, that you are safe.

However, since this comes down to judgement, if it can be detected that you've used others samples, you open yourself to legal action. Because even if you might win such a case in the end, there might be a point scaring you and others from doing such things in the first place.

This said, I think that any company that would go after a community member sharing something on a forum like this without any personal gain thereof would arise the fury of the community and might in the end commit commercial suicide.

My 2c. Take it for what it is; my advice is: if you just do minor work on others samples - keep them to yourself. If you make something completely new out of it - if noone can hear where it comes from you would have nothing to fear.

There is one more thing to be said: if your creation still requires the original samples to be downloaded, that would be software piracy no doubt about it.

Legal matters are boring stuff. Hope ya didn't fall asleep!

[Ojustaboo]

If I go out and spend 8K on say a Yamaha Acoustic Piano, do I have the right to sample it and then sell (or give away) the samples?

In my opinion yes. You are sampling an analog source and to capture that essence would require great knowledge of the sampling proces and quite some investment (time and money) to create a good sample set.

Or if I go out and buy myself an electric guitar for £500 can I sample that and sell it (or give it away)

Same story, yes.

If I do have the right, how is that different from me spending 6K on a Yamaha Digital Piano and sampling that? Or 3K on a Kronos and sampling that?

the difference is that you sample the sampled work of the company. This require no skill or investment (like a studio, great microphones, knowledge) and almost no time. The Digital piano is created by a company which payed for all this to make it possible to bring out a digital piano that resembles the acoustic version of it.

Using that logic

if it requires skill, time, money, quality gear then it's fine to copy but if it's a very simple 2 click process then it's not?

So it's OK if your a first class painter to copy a piece of artwork using your studio and your time and skill, but it's not OK to photograph it?

Or if I look at a circuit board inside whatever and it's a very simple design that I can copy on a piece of bread board at home with a soldering iron in 20 mins that's wrong, but if I owned a factory with high end circuit designing software/hardware, as I'm using my skill and time and money, it's fine for me to copy more complex circuit boards such as custom boards in synths?

If a company spends a few million designing a new grand piano to get a certain sound, is it right that anyone with the time, money, studio and equipment can buy one of these pianos, take it to their studio and sample it and sell that pianos sound for profit? I personally cant see any difference to someone doing that to someone copying someone else's samples except for the time and skill involved in doing it.

I wonder how you would feel if your company had just invested a few million in designing a new grand piano only to have it appear in Kontakt under a fairly generic (but obvious) name?

And I suspect that people who take other companies samples and create their own new sounds feel as justified about selling/sharing those as people so that sample acoustic instruments without the manufactures consent.

Note: I'm not having a go at you or trying to catch you out/start an argument etc, I fully understand what you are saying, I'm just playing devils advocate as I believe it's an absolute minefield and few people will ever agree on what's right or what isn't.

My personal opinion is if it isn't obvious what the original sample was, and the original sample isn't included in it's original form, then I have no moral objection

I couldn't give a dam about the law as a
a) it's different in every country and impossible to enforce
b) Is open to vast interpretation
c) Is usually introduced by people that don't understand the thing they are introducing, bowing to big businesses rather than thinking things through properly.
d) Based on the above 3, most copyright laws are unrighteous/immoral the way they are enforced on private individuals and people end up getting taken to court etc for things that the original law was never intended to prevent/do.

[Ojustaboo]

When the sounds are produced by a digital unit (be it a synthesizer or something else), the source of the sound is digital information. Bits. Duplicating these bits would be software piracy, whereas trying to exactly duplicate the sound in manners by not copying it would not be.

Using someone elses samples as a sound source in sound design boils down to whether the result is still a traceable and reasonably accurate replica of the original sound where anyone can hear that, or if it's a completely new sound with its own creative height.
:

It's still open to vast interpretation though

What about if I don't copy the actual samples, but use a digital to analogue converter, then sample the analogue sound? Then I'm not duplicating the original bits at all, I'm creating my own from an analogue source?

What about if I buy the Choir set for $500 and make a load of long song tracks featuring two of the samples heavily. Then upload my songs to soundcloud and tell people they can sample as much of my songs as they like and are free to share the samples if they do so?

I do understand what your saying but lawyers earn thousands using much less likely loopholes to get their clients off

[BasariStudios]

More cans of worms opening:

In my opinion IT IS COMPLETELY MORAL AND LEGAL to take Quis Sounds,
resample it, distord the hell out of it, tweak it e tc and then share or sell.
Why? I got nothing out of his sound, the WHOLE work was mine except the
few second of wave files i took. Again, why? Are all the Sounds in the universe
copyrighted by God? If Qui created a Sound and i can totally change the same
with ours of work, why would it be immoral to sale or share?
His sound comes from somewhere too, be it a wave or a sample.
Did nature put copyrights on all the Sounds? No.

[.Jens]

Oh dear... This has gone FAR beyond any human logic now.

[Sparker]

@ Ojustaboo; QuiRobinez; Stevesan; Jerrythek: Thanks for those contributions. I think this is fascinating, not least because it goes beyond the issues of legal copyright.

Basri: Opinions don't make something legal or moral. I think the issue here is about acknowledging the value of the labour involved.

I'm going to have to go and lie down and have a think.

[billysynth1]

Are all the Sounds in the universe
copyrighted by God?

Can you prove God exists?

Billy

[BasariStudios]

Are all the Sounds in the universe
copyrighted by God?

Can you prove God exists?

Billy

Of course Billy...when you prove He doesn't exist...lets not get in there now...LOL...

[Ten2One]

This subject has gotten me so upset, it is just repulsive!

btw, does anyone know where the recent sample libraries went? I would like to do a lengthy, extended inspection of them personally <vbg> .

Ten2One