Ueberschall 60" AGoGo Retro sounds and loops

Full disclosure: I am much more of a recording musician and analog guy than a mdid or soft-synth wizard, so it's somewhat possible that my frustrations with this collection are partially my fault, but this thing was a major drag from the day I ordered it. It purports to be a collection of authentic retro music arrangements, loops and samples with full timestretching and pitchshifting capabilities. OK, if you say so.

First of all, the byzantine registration process required multiple e-mails to get sorted out. I will admit that I have a low threshold for frustration in these matters, but I've managed to register and use East West's various libraries, M-tron, Addictive Drums, several versions of PT LE, Waves and Abbey Road plug ins, etc. without the level of annoyance that getting this library up and running entailed. Turns out they shipped it without the latest version of their ELASTIK player and it took about 6 ems to figure out that that was why the player wouldn't load the samples and loops correctly. International, different time- zone ems, so you have to wait until the next day to get a reply. 5 days it took me to actually get this thing going.

Once it was finally installed I found the collection to be almost useless for anything but making demos of the collection. The samples are simply too specific to be used unless one very specifically needs a trumpet playing the only melodic figure in the set, or grouped vocalists going "bah bah bah" in exactly the melody in the sample. I couldn't find any way to break the samples down t their elements so I could write my own melodies with them let alone play the sounds organically with a midi controller. You can change the key and stretch the time, but it still only does what it does. It's not like the East West Fab 4 library where you can use the samples to write your own things. The drum loops sound good and are groovy enough but so what? There are tons of drum loops out there and it's easy enough to write a cool drum part with any of the libraries I already own. In short, I feel ripped off and a bit foolish. I feel like this was designed by clever software guys rather than musicians and now I just want to get it off my hard drive, forget I wasted so much time and move on with my life: read a poem, eat a vegetable, talk to my family.