The futility of Life by XLN Audio

However proud you think I am of this video's title, I'm prouder. Now I just need someone to release a buggy plugin called Fate so I can make a video called "The vicissitudes of Fate by (whoever)."
XLN Audio makes some cool stuff. I have XO, RC-20, and DS-10. XO is the only one I use regularly, but the others are solid. Their new Life plugin, on the other hand, made for a disappointing reveal.
I didn't even know that importing files offline in the VSTi wasn't possible when I started to hate it; the sheer amount of overlap with XO and the fact that it's basically a less useful version that inexplicably has a higher base price was more than enough to push me in that direction.
But man, adding an online-only component that hangs over the head of everyone who purchases it like a sword of Damocles? That's the kind of thing I feel morally responsible to come out swinging against.
Products that are a one-time fee and have a mandatory connection to a server used to be pretty common in gaming, and you know the common thread that runs between them? Those games don't exist anymore. Servers got turned off. They can't be used. I still use plugins I downloaded 10 years ago, though. Normalizing plugins that self-destruct after a certain amount of time is some BS.
I rushed this video out in a day, so the intro music got thrown together in one sitting and I didn't have the chance to look back at it and fix it up with fresh ears before I threw it in. Strings and stuff aren't my forte, and there are a few things I wish I could go back and polish up (that part where it stops and then starts up again ~definitely~ isn't working without connective tissue), but getting this video up feels like a race against time before too many unlucky consumers pick this up, not realizing what it is and how little effort it's actually saving them.
Incidentally, that's why I didn't edit the video to speed things up and keep a nice breezy pace. It's only fair to show exactly how little time Life is saving them.
Oh, and there's some sketchy-looking stuff in XLN's Terms of Service. Legalese is always scary-looking, though, so I didn't mention anything about that. Seems like you're giving them a lot of rights to the things you make, though. Might be worth a glance.
The first time I show Life off sounds better than the second time. The reason for that is that my project tempo is 120, but those patterns were playing at their default tempos. XO can also do this, obviously, but all of the XO audio is locked to 120 BPM, and the second Life audio demonstration is also locked to 120 BPM for a better comparison.
I didn't notice it until just now, but I think Life is doing some extra normalization stuff. And it has a noise-reducing feature you can use. Normalizing stuff is super easy in Reaper and would have been a couple extra clicks at most, so it doesn't change anything, but it would have made the comparison even closer (despite the fact that it's already mostly identical).
My hope is that Life eventually gets a 50% cut to its base price and an offline mode that lets you manually import samples without the trip to the cloud. Maybe then it'll be worth picking up on sale. Until then, the very existence of this thing makes me think less of the company.
Last thing: the audio you hear at the very beginning is technically from the Tascam DR-05 recorder that's on the pop filter in front of the light. So that's what ~that~ is. I wanted the sound of the recording starting and stopping. Probably not worth the effort since it's basically inaudible. I was also considering making a point that it'd be a better way to spend a hundred-something dollars, but that's a rabbit hole that'd require a much longer video that's barely on topic, and again, race against time.
#xlnaudio
#musicproduction
00:00 - 01:10: A gratuitous intro
01:10 - 02:53: Recording and uploading video/audio
02:53 - 04:33: Exporting the manually-uploaded audio in two different ways
04:33 - 05:57: Giving Life a chance and its online-only problem
05:57 - 08:30: Using the cut-up samples in XO to do the same thing Life does
08:30 - 08:51: Showing off Life one more time to reinforce how identical it sounds to XO
08:51 - 10:12: Big Fish Audio's Momentum is a great free alternative that I use all the time

[@BenCaesar]

Great points brought up here, XLN Life terms and conditions are also really fd up. You may saved me from spending a lot on an over hyped plugin. Still will try the demo and see tho

[@227]

Yeah, but honestly, ~all~ terms and conditions are messed up. Theirs read to me more like a company casting a wide net to avoid lawsuits, but I totally get the wariness. And yeah, maybe you'll end up loving it. I didn't, but the online-only part of things is a pretty big line in the sand for me that other people might not have.

[@BenCaesar]

@@227truuuu and tbf they rewrote those terms

[@melodies_are_alive]

You sold me with this - hook, line and sinker. Brilliant! 🤟

[@227]

I hope more people try Momentum; it's awesome and one of my go-to "not sure what to do in this song now" tools. Used it to chop up Aimée's vocals for the RE remix competition. Used it in an old song to pitch shift and reverse an old vocal of mine that never got used, turning it into something that sounds kind of creepy and ancient. Instant inspiration, usually.

[@vollofi]

Live Na, na, na, na-na Live is life! Na, na, na, na-na

[@227]

I've somehow never heard that song, so I was like, "what on earth is Vollofi talking about?" It's deeply exciting to be able to say that it's before my time since the window for things before my time is rapidly closing as the cold grip of time shepherds me into the cosmic jaguar's maw.

[@WhySoBroke]

Please include a loudness normalize feature so that all the sounds can be heard at equal volume

[@227]

Good input! Thanks-I didn't want to use a limiter since not everyone mixes into one, so I just sort of eyeballed the relative volume levels. I'll come up with something more consistent for future videos.

[@craigpurdie3528]

YES...I am all for that!!!

[@KINGJADEX]

What is this Reaper theme? I really like it.

[@227]

It's the rLive (beta 3) theme: forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=230905 (I didn't set up the extra stuff because I've never used Ableton Live. All I really wanted was the color scheme and thinner tracks.)

[@KINGJADEX]

@@227 Heck yeah! Thanks so much, man!

[@artokarsus]

XO can't generate good sounding random loops like Life. Can't manipulate the samples on its own. Ops. But no-cloud option would be SUPER NICE, I agree.

[@227]

I mean... the loops are basically identical in both? I'm curious what differences you're hearing. And it's the same with melodic samples without drummy transients, too, if you import those, though both XO and Life suck equally at arranging them in a way that sounds musical and non-random. Not sure what you mean about XO not being able to manipulate samples. It can edit individual samples in all sorts of ways, editing the volume, pitch, start point, end point, broad EQ (with a tilt filter), filter, envelope, panning, how much they respond to midi velocity, and whether they play normally or in reverse. I admittedly didn't play with the Edit section in Life while I had the demo, but from the looks of it, it actually has ~fewer~ options for manipulating samples than XO does. And if you mean being able to play the slices manually... XO maps everything to the keyboard for manual drum patterns, too.

[@artokarsus]

​@@227 I mean that Life generate samples settings automatically. You can look into Edit window while generating loops and see: it manipulate eq, adsr, fx and all that stuff. XO is only for manual editing. And Life generates loops that suits that exact samples+settings. XO simply wasn't made for this. In XO you can just randomise pre-existed patterns from other beats hoping that it will sound any interesting. In that way - Life makes some creative work instead of you. So it's really better in random loops If you NEED better random loops :) But CLOUDS frighten me.

[@227]

@@artokarsusOh, I see what you mean, then. Life's randomize button seems to be switching both its patterns and preset (including which patterns it draws from) with one click, which is a little faster, yeah. I'd be genuinely shocked if that wasn't how it worked under the hood. But switching to a different preset in XO definitely does change the EQ and all that stuff to suit each individual pattern-you can see a quick flash of the default settings when I go to choose a new preset at 7:54, and the settings are different after I choose a new preset. Anyway, I'm definitely with you on the cloud thing. Forcing people to use the cloud when you're already in a DAW is just weird. For me, that takes it from a "maybe on a super deep sale" to a "never in a million years unless it's patched to work offline."