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Organic Elements is a pack that celebrates the living and breathing world of sound around us and shines a light on the possibilities of what those sound can become when combined modern electronic processing techniques. Hundreds of real life foley recordings have been used in the creation of this pack and many acoustic instruments have been processed and edited to create new and interesting layers of sound. In this pack, you will find a wide selection of living grooves, real sound recordings, long evolving textures, and organic percussions which will sit right at home in minimal techno, deep house, progressive, techno productions, and more. The infectious beats have all been stripped down and provided with top loops, percussion, and noise only variations for flexibility for music producers.
The so-called “Bonus NI Massive presets” appear to be a recycled/rip-off’s from other authors/producers. For example, the preset labeled in the pack as “OE_Massive_10.nmsv” has NI metadata indicating this preset belongs to the “Hallways of the Nephilim” bank from the author Metafex. The presets files named “OE_Massive_02.nmsv”, “OE_Massive_08.nmsv”, and “OE_Massive_12.nmsv” have NI metadata indicating they come from a bank called “Retaliations” from Biolabs. I really don’t like spending 30 pounds to find grossly labeled presets that call into question the legitimacy of the royalty free license. Maybe someone from Sonic Academy can confirm whether these are presets have been stolen or not, and whether any of the other content in the pack is stolen.
Hey @robertspectral
First thing first, Sonic Academy is just acting as a reseller here, if in doubt about the legitimacy of this sample pack any inquiry should be addressed to the sample pack manufacturer & owner, in this case Black Octopus. You can express your concern to them via their support email support@blackoctopus-sound.com
That said, I don’t think that we fall into license & infringement rights here, I think it’s important to make the difference between “Samples” & “Presets” in this case. It’s obvious to me that soft-synths presets such as NI Massive ones can be used to create commercial sound packs and they can also be modified and repack in new presets banks for commercial usage. In many case, even if the presets are renamed, NI metadata will often remain accessible in those presets.
Have you looked at the presets in this pack? Do you have a tool to examine the metadata? Are you telling me that the preset file named “OE_Massive_05.nmsv” contained in this pack is properly licensed? The metadata indicates this preset is from “DataBank One” by Nucleus SoundLab, sold online at this location, https://nucleus-soundlab.com/downloads/databank-bundle/. The metadata contains a detailed description of the preset, which reads:
"This pad uses bitcrushing to achieve a nice, crunchy hi-end. The bitcrusher is modulated by 1Env, which also modulates the filter. You can tweak Knob2 to experiment with this effect.
Knob3 fades in a sequenced effect created by modulating FM Depth with 6Step."
I do not own the Nucleus SoundLab product so I cannot compare the preset, but if the comments/description of the preset belong to original preset sold by Nucleus SoundLab, then this is a copyright violation, pure and simple. And it’s definitely not “obvious” to me that modifying presets in any way permits them to be repacked in new commercial products. The license terms are usually pretty explicit about such things.
@robertspectral
Again should you have any inquiry about the legitimacy of this pack, please get in touch with Black Octopus support using the email provided before.
Hey Guys - Toby Emerson - owner of Black Octopus here. I have reached out the artist of the pack for an explanation of this. We have a very strict policy of not using material from other packs:
We have this clause in our contract:
_"The Licensor warrants that all Content provided to the Retailer is original and does not infringe on any intellectual property rights or copyrights or uses any unauthorized material and that Licensor has rights to sell and distribute all Content provided to the Retailer. The Licensor assumes responsibility in the event of copyright or intellectual property violation or use of unauthorized Content. "
And as well this given to artists when they first start working with us:
"Copyrighted And Unauthorized Material
!!VERY IMPORTANT!!
Please do not use ANY material from other sample packs or unauthorized sources.
. All it takes is one person to
recognize the sample and inform the original source to cause a problem. All material
should be original and safe to sell as a royalty free sample. If you need samples
please use the producer pack that is provided or create your own (portable recorders
and mics are cheap these days and are a great way to get a ton of original sounds).
***Avoid using samples from BFD, EZ Drummer and Romplers etc as these use recorded
copyright samples.
Synth presets should be produced from an Init patch every time."
However on occasion sometimes things slip by us, as we work with approximately 50 artists & labels. We take things like this very seriously as I have a lot of pride in our work being original, and royalty so if we find out other sounds have been taken I personally get very upset.
Looking forward to hearing from the artist on this matter.
Thanks
Hey again guys, I have heard from the producer of the pack and he did indeed edit these presets from existing presets, he said they were heavily edited & completely different from the original (although the meta data from the original presets were left in). However he now understands that he needs create 100% original presets from scratch to be released on our label. It is amazing how many producers these days don’t realize they cannot edit existing material from other packs even though clearly stated in our contract, even then famous KSHMR packs from Splice contain sounds directly ripped from Kontakt libraries (without any editing at all - just direct rips!) I think there is a bit more confusion between “sounds” & “presets” in this particular topic among many producers, as I have seen many presets (from multiple other labels having meta data from other preset packs. We also have a quality control system in place to try and catch any of these these issues before they are released, but unfortunately this one has slipped by us.
I believe this is more of an issue with actual sound recordings than presets, however to be on the safe side we still inform our artists to create their own init patches to edit from.
We have now pulled all of the “Bonus” presets from the pack, and will be happy to offer up another free pack from our label for the mix up.
This is in no way Sonic Academy’s fault as mentioned they are just a reseller of our product, but I will be happy to answer any more questons.
1 Like
@blackoctopus
Hi Toby,
Thanks a lot for chiming in with such a clear explanation about your original content policy and for reporting here that you already took action, this is much appreciated and it should clarify things for S.A customers.
@robertspectral you got this right of course, but as explained in Toby’s second post, what’s actually happening among the samples/presets industry & market place these days is definitely confusing.