Wed Dec 11, 2019 4:49 am
Oh well, I was waiting for HW5 release, so that St. Martini would be released soon after that. But I expected it to happen sometimes in September or so. We were ready by that time, although we have used the two (three) months in between to make some subtle improvements.
Now, at the busy period before Christmas, and with all these HW upgrades going on, I am not sure whether I should release it now, or wait until after Christmass, for January or so. Please, advice.
For sure, St. Martini is ready for Hauptwerk 5. There will be no release in Hauptwerk 4 (if that helps to make your planning).
It has been a huge investment (I paid for St. Martini alone about the same as for all the other sample sets together - well, almost), and I need to ensure, that this investments comes back. With the fraudulent sellers of pirated sample sets active in Germany, Holland, Russia and probably also in Italy and USA, I do my best to protect my investment by sticking to HW5. I am sorry for that, but it is not my fault. You all know that I would be most happy to release St. Martini and all the other sample sets without encryption. (And, there will be one flavor of St. Martini released in plain wave format). I would even understand, if - in the situation of poverty - there would be two or three friends buying one copy together and copying it among themselves. But what I do not understand, is the sellers (I know by name at least three of them in Germany, Holland and Italy, and I know about one - or is it a group? - in Russia) who are not ashamed to offer my sample sets for about half a price as if they were resellers, while they simply never pay any reseller fees to me. They sell copies of my sample sets to their customers, but all those are pirated copies. How do I know? Because those betrayed end users sometimes write to me for a technical support! And when I ask them where do they have their sample set from, it is easy that those names are revealed.
That, exactly that, and I am sure they know who am I talking about, leads me to the decision to use the encryption on Hauptwerk samples. Those people are stealing my bread and I am not able to tollerate that. In the end, they contribute to the high price of the sample sets, since I cannot sell myself so many copies, if they take a part of the market for their smuggling.