Render to Sample plugins

[Brozilla]

This is more of a legal question than anything but I often sample instruments from VSTs (like most people here I guess.) Let's say, for example, I made a sf2/.iti of the Roland SC'8820 Standard Drum Kit, is it non- distributable/illegal? I did read parts of the EULA for EW Hollywood but it seemed to be illegal if I sold the sampled material as a pack or something similar. This was a few years back so maybe I should reread it just in gase.

My library has expanded but a lot of the instruments, for example, in the Korg M1 I probably won't use/touch them so thought maybe if people wanted things from there or something like EW Hollywood I could satisfy a few of those needs they can't find what they want from sf2s/whatever.

[LPChip]

When you have a device that has samples to play them, these come with a license to allow you to use the sounds as part of your own music. You can distribute your work without problems, but when you distribute the sounds themselves, you are basically go beyond what you are allowed to do, which is redistributing their work.

So legally speaking, you cannot redistribute those stand-alone sounds, free or as a paid download. If the vst is free, then you are still violating copyrights, although in that case they may not pursuit any copyright claims.

But its better to be on the safe side. Unless they ship a license file that explicitly states that you can do anything with it as you see fit, assume that you cannot.

[Saga Musix]

This is very much a grey area. What LPChip says is definitely and undeniably true if you take the raw waveforms (e.g. extracting the sample ROM). However, it's a bit less obvious when you record the output of the device, since the output is more than just raw samples - it includes all the specific instrument settings such as envelopes, reverb and chorus. If you take a handful of presets and record them, you are probably not going to get into trouble. But if you were going to sample a majority of the device's presets, including all their different expressions (e.g. through different velocity levels), you can get in trouble.

[Brozilla]

Thanks. Usually I have a bit more fun sampling than actual song writing. Thanks for the responses and it also seems to align, more or less, with what I remember of the EULA.

Edit: Might anyone have opinions on EWQL Symphonic Orchestra. Thinking of getting that but it's one of EW's older libraries and I want to get Kontact Komplete 11 since Kirk Hunter Studios seem to have really flexible libraries (which requires Kontakt.)