XLN Life

[Kalamata Kid]

Looks like they raised the price.
Earlier they raised the sale price of Portal from $68 to $74.

[charlesalbert]

Funny thing.

I contacted for a bug XLN directly three hours ago and they replied me in 10 minutes.

So I asked about best service SN and they didn't reply me anymore ahaha.

[remix68]

Had fun with it for 10 days, exported a lot of loops but for $109, or even $79, it's too much. And I have no problem spending money on plug-ins.

$50 would be a buy.

[SLiC]

Had fun with it for 10 days, exported a lot of loops but for $109, or even $79, it's too much. And I have no problem spending money on plug-ins.

$50 would be a buy.

Other XLN products have been sold cheaply in sales- you have to start with a high price so you can then offer 50% off in sales! Sofa companies have been doing this for decades! Not sure it will ever go as low as $50, but I think it will frequently be $80 in sales...probably about right if they add a bit more to it, it is a little limited at launch but could be great with not much effort (although I remember thinking that about XO Drum- just longer sequences and 16 slots needed.. and it never happened!)

[charlesalbert]

Just an update if someone else is in the same situation.

Best service replied me that they ran out of licenses and had to reorder it from XLN.

That's the reason for the delivery delay.

[m-ac]

Looks like it may be selling ok then even with the issues. Let's hope they still took note of user feedback and make some changes, we know they're not exactly the best at updating their products.

[SLiC]

Just an update if someone else is in the same situation.

Best service replied me that they ran out of licenses and had to reorder it from XLN.

That's the reason for the delivery delay.

They are being delivered now.

[SLiC]

The phone upload stuff works very well indeed, just sampled 15 seconds of my handpan random hits and there was some really usable stuff (it is very high in the instant gratification scores!)

It definitely works well, but just like XO drum I am left feeling it could have been so much more with just a few simple additions or extensions like more patterns other than AB and AAAB, seems so simple to add but never happened in XO Drum so not so sure.

Given that a lot of this seems to be based on XO Drum, I wonder why they went for just 4 slots not the 8 you get in XO- The 8 sample (slice) limit seems a bit arbitrary as well, a few more would be nice for more variation. I also wonder if they could add the 'Accentuator' from XO as well, once of the cooler (would be great on this rhythmic stuff) features and they have the code!

I give it 75% as is, but doesn't seem like it would be a lot of work to get it to 90%+...

[mxbf]

i bought it and i am glad i did. used the JRR shop discount for 90$. expensive, but i've used it on nearly every track i've made the last two weeks. compared to a lot of stuff i paid the same price for and haven't used on many tracks yet. so... i think the "its overpriced" thing is overstated.

also, I realized you can use the "DAW RECORDER" plugin it comes with and you can take any and all audio into the chopper automatically - no phone, ever. i have a dedicated track i am running external mixer and sampling into now, and my microphone, that i put the daw recorder on. i am very happy it has that.

[m-ac]

i bought it and i am glad i did. used the JRR shop discount for 90$. expensive, but i've used it on nearly every track i've made the last two weeks. compared to a lot of stuff i paid the same price for and haven't used on many tracks yet. so... i think the "its overpriced" thing is overstated.

also, I realized you can use the "DAW RECORDER" plugin it comes with and you can take any and all audio into the chopper automatically - no phone, ever. i have a dedicated track i am running external mixer and sampling into now, and my microphone, that i put the daw recorder on. i am very happy it has that.

It sounds like you have a lot of user content in Life so how are you finding the browser? Isn't it annoying / confusing to use with a long list of samples and no organisation or categorisation options?

[mxbf]

i bought it and i am glad i did. used the JRR shop discount for 90$. expensive, but i've used it on nearly every track i've made the last two weeks. compared to a lot of stuff i paid the same price for and haven't used on many tracks yet. so... i think the "its overpriced" thing is overstated.

also, I realized you can use the "DAW RECORDER" plugin it comes with and you can take any and all audio into the chopper automatically - no phone, ever. i have a dedicated track i am running external mixer and sampling into now, and my microphone, that i put the daw recorder on. i am very happy it has that.

It sounds like you have a lot of user content in Life so how are you finding the browser? Isn't it annoying / confusing to use with a long list of samples and no organisation or categorisation options?

I'm not really re-using samples or keeping great track of them. When I generate loops in Bitwig I will usually bounce them down using the DAW by doing "bounce to new track". It then creates a loop called "Life 001" or "life 002". So Bitwig will catalog samples in a location automatically in the sample browswer, i can search for these bounced outputs to re-use. I have tons of loops like "XO Beat" and "Loopmix Beat" and "Life beat" from bouncing things like that, and can be reused on new tracks in different ways.

As for actually generating loops, I usually would be inclined to just re-record a new sample on a track by track basis, not really re-using anything. The naming convention is pretty much useless and I can't really be arsed to go to great trouble naming stuff. It's so fast to get something cool going that the time is better spent just making something new imo.

[m-ac]

I'm not really re-using samples or keeping great track of them. When I generate loops in Bitwig I will usually bounce them down using the DAW by doing "bounce to new track". It then creates a loop called "Life 001" or "life 002". So Bitwig will catalog samples in a location automatically in the sample browswer, i can search for these bounced outputs to re-use. I have tons of loops like "XO Beat" and "Loopmix Beat" and "Life beat" from bouncing things like that, and can be reused on new tracks in different ways.

As for actually generating loops, I usually would be inclined to just re-record a new sample on a track by track basis, not really re-using anything. The naming convention is pretty much useless and I can't really be arsed to go to great trouble naming stuff. It's so fast to get something cool going that the time is better spent just making something new imo.

Sounds like it fits your workflow

[SLiC]

One thing you can say about Life is that it is currently very simple (especially if you have used XO, it’s a 10 minute learning curve and you have mastered it), drop interesting sounds in and you well get cool loops out…it is fast and you can just export a bunch of loop variations very quickly to play about with and further edit in your DAW of choice.

[m-ac]

Has anyone had issues with exported stems not sounding the same as the sequence when played in the app?

[billinder33]

I've been using Life to create drum fills with really excellent results. Essentially by exporting a grove I've already built into a 2 track file, then importing that groove into Life and using the randomizer to export 'mudpies' that I can then use as fills. Life really excels at this use case. It's so much easier and you get more 'happy accidents' than manually programming fills, using canned MIDI fills, or using arps on drum machines.

Where I had significantly worse results was in using it to chop a melody. The slice editing is great, but the playback gates the slices during playback and I don't see any way to stop that from happening. So in a case where you'd want the slices to play all the way through, I didn't see any way to make that happen. Perhaps I'm missing it, so if someone knows, please drop the knowledge!

Regardless, I've always found creating interesting fills to be kind of a monotonous task, and thanks to Life now it's not. So I bought it just for that use case.

A final concern, and this one is more about XLN's product lifecycle approach than Life specifically... XO was a very nice plugin at the time of release - the sample organizer/finder is truly incredible, but the drum machine section leaves a lot to be desired. XO could have evolved into a holy grail drum machine plugin had XLN implemented a roadmap for continuous improvement. Unfortunately, they never invested in expanding the original concept after its initial release. So given the prior history with XO, I'm guessing the same will happen with Life, which is a real shame. To use a football analogy, I feel like both plugins are on the 10 yard line, and I really wish XLN would do what it takes to get them into the end zone.