Equavescent equalizer release

[bmanic]

I have opted not to overly engage in the discussion as my original post was aimed at users and has since been overtaken by developers who have time to comment and attack without having time to trial the Beta demo.

Sorry if that's a bit meta, but it's the truth. You pop up on the internet saying mad things about EQ, and people phone me.

Dave.

^^ This!! ^^

[bmanic]

The standard mode is very clear at the crossover and damp mode is very blurred at the crossover.

So what are we talking about here?
Nonlinearities? Modulation?

There are no nonlinearities in the EQ. Checked in VSTPlugin Analyzer. There's nothing I could find in the analyzer that makes it any more "special" than other EQs, except for the actual shape of the curves. The phase works just like any other continuously variable phase EQ (like the one from DDMF except this one lets you do the pre-ring only variant as well).

If I find the stamina to try and get the damn thing running again I'll post more pictures from the analyzer.

Cheers!
bManic

[Eddie TX]

This just isn't possible because your plugin crashes _CONSTANTLY_. It is virtually unusable. Like seriously unusable.

Why do you get so defensive? And why are you avoiding all the questions with aggressive "it's special!! listen to me!!" attitude. You have yet to write a single word on what the EQ is doing differently ...

WRT the instability, it is still a beta product. While it may have been premature to release it in its current form, I suspect an improved version will be made available soon. If I were you, I'd wait for that before spending more frustrating time with the one we've got.

And I don't think LBarratt is being overly defensive ... if I were in his position, I'd be reluctant to reveal technical details about the plugin to competitors. Some people seem to be angry that he hasn't done so, but really, why should he? It's not as if the competitors here have shown any degree of respect for his work. Quite the contrary. You can argue about technical verbiage if you want, but that doesn't make the plugin any less worthy for those of us who value sound quality above all else.

From the perspective of a typical end user, LBarratt gets respect for producing a unique-sounding plugin. It is very special in my book, regardless of how he did it, or what's going on under the hood -- it makes no difference to me whether it's all just curves or if it depends on real-time guidance from the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Good sound is good sound.

Cheers,
Eddie

[fese]

Sorry if that's a bit meta, but it's the truth. You pop up on the internet saying mad things about EQ, and people phone me.

Dave.

^^ This!! ^^

I picture DGamble sitting in his DaveCave, and suddenly the phone rings... "Quick, to the Davemobile, there's trouble in KVRland!". Yes, that is the life of Daveman in his constant struggle against DSP mumbo jumbo.
Love it!

[Nokenoku]

And I don't think LBarratt is being overly defensive ... if I were in his position, I'd be reluctant to reveal technical details about the plugin to competitors. Some people seem to be angry that he hasn't done so, but really, why should he?

I don't think anyone is angry here.

But it is very annoying, when someone presents a new product being all like "very special™", but can't really explain, what's so special about it.

It's especially annoying, if he adds missleading (or in other words: wrong) statements about well known techniques like FFT. He tries to convince potential customers, that his EQ is doing something special™ (other than curves) on a basis, which is simply bullshit.
So he is basically trying to sell his EQ as something it isn't.

So to me the whole thing looks like a big joke or something very fishy.

Excuse the harsh words, but his dodgy answers do not make it any better.
If he is actually serious about this product, he should start talking clear.
I am not here to "bash" anyone, who honestly tries to get an innovative, new plugin out ... but at the moment I rather have the impression, someone wants to rip me off.

But maybe he just doesn't know better. In that case, "talking clear" might be a good idea as well, since other devs here on KVR are usually surprisingly helpful.

[Eddie TX]

I am not here to "bash" anyone, who honestly tries to get an innovative, new plugin out ... but at the moment I rather have the impression, someone wants to rip me off.

Sorry, I still don't understand why people think it's a ripoff or joke when the demo is free to download so that you can judge for yourself whether the product works or not, regardless of what anyone (including the developer) says about it. Many people have done so, and there has been a lot of praise for what this plugin does. That is not indicative of a ripoff, in my view.

Cheers,
Eddie

[A_SN]

And I don't think LBarratt is being overly defensive ... if I were in his position, I'd be reluctant to reveal technical details about the plugin to competitors. Some people seem to be angry that he hasn't done so, but really, why should he?

I don't think anyone is angry here.

But it is very annoying, when someone presents a new product being all like "very special™", but can't really explain, what's so special about it.

It's especially annoying, if he adds missleading (or in other words: wrong) statements about well known techniques like FFT. He tries to convince potential customers, that his EQ is doing something special™ (other than curves) on a basis, which is simply bullshit.
So he is basically trying to sell his EQ as something it isn't.

So to me the whole thing looks like a big joke or something very fishy.

Excuse the harsh words, but his dodgy answers do not make it any better.
If he is actually serious about this product, he should start talking clear.
I am not here to "bash" anyone, who honestly tries to get an innovative, new plugin out ... but at the moment I rather have the impression, someone wants to rip me off.

But maybe he just doesn't know better. In that case, "talking clear" might be a good idea as well, since other devs here on KVR are usually surprisingly helpful.

Exactly what I was thinking and meant to say, down to the TM! And you live in Berlin too! Are we, like, related? Hang on I got the next one:

I am not here to "bash" anyone, who honestly tries to get an innovative, new plugin out ... but at the moment I rather have the impression, someone wants to rip me off.

Sorry, I still don't understand why people think it's a ripoff or joke when the demo is free to download so that you can judge for yourself whether the product works or not, regardless of what anyone (including the developer) says about it. Many people have done so, and there has been a lot of praise for what this plugin does. That is not indicative of a ripoff, in my view.

Cheers,
Eddie

The problem isn't the product but the talk around the product. If a car salesman tries to sell you a perfectly good car but claims that this perfectly good car has an engine unlike any other that does away with the 100+ year old principles of regular engines, but that clearly there's nothing special about that engine, won't you feel like he's kinda trying to rip you off too? Mostly if he's selling that car for... err... whatever a pretty fancy car goes for.

[Tapehead]

The problem isn't the product but the talk around the product. If a car salesman tries to sell you a perfectly good car but claims that this perfectly good car has an engine unlike any other that does away with the 100+ year old principles of regular engines, but that clearly there's nothing special about that engine, won't you feel like he's kinda trying to rip you off too? Mostly if he's selling that car for... err... whatever a pretty fancy car goes for.

That is exactly the kind of analogy I was thinking of and I'm not even from Berlin...

[A_SN]

The problem isn't the product but the talk around the product. If a car salesman tries to sell you a perfectly good car but claims that this perfectly good car has an engine unlike any other that does away with the 100+ year old principles of regular engines, but that clearly there's nothing special about that engine, won't you feel like he's kinda trying to rip you off too? Mostly if he's selling that car for... err... whatever a pretty fancy car goes for.

That is exactly the kind of analogy I was thinking of and I'm not even from Berlin...

The hivemind is spreading! Today Berlin, tomorrow the world!!

[Eddie TX]

The problem isn't the product but the talk around the product. If a car salesman tries to sell you a perfectly good car but claims that this perfectly good car has an engine unlike any other that does away with the 100+ year old principles of regular engines, but that clearly there's nothing special about that engine, won't you feel like he's kinda trying to rip you off too? Mostly if he's selling that car for... err... whatever a pretty fancy car goes for.

Hee hee! Well, no, I pretty much disregard what salesmen say, especially if it involves topics that are over my head. If the car does what I want it to do and is priced fairly, I buy it.

Cheers,
Eddie

[Nokenoku]

Sorry, I still don't understand why people think it's a ripoff or joke when the demo is free to download so that you can judge for yourself whether the product works or not, regardless of what anyone (including the developer) says about it. Many people have done so, and there has been a lot of praise for what this plugin does. That is not indicative of a ripoff, in my view.

It's wrong marketing.

Do you remember those $300 EQ-plugins from AbbeyRoadPlugins?
(TG Mastering Pack)

They had the same standard-behaviour and curves, you will find in 99% of all EQ-plugins out there.
They didn't introduce any kind of saturation, unusual phase relations, modulations ... or any other special features.
They did not even do something against the unnatural curve warping near nyquist.

They used (most likely) freely available standard-algorithms, put a nice GUI on it, and then were claiming, those plugins would have been modeled after the originals.
(Which is straight up a lie.)

And people were praising them like it'd be a revelation for EQ-plugins and they got some very positive reviews with "recommendation to buy".
And people were buying them ... not knowing, they could get the same for free (or most likely already had in their DAW software) (minus the cute GUIs).

They got good reviews and definetly some sells just because of false advertisement.
And that's something I'd call a "rip off".

Exactly what I was thinking and meant to say, down to the TM! And you live in Berlin too! Are we, like, related?

Not sure ... we might actually be the same person.

Like in "Fight Club".

[Halma]

...
The problem isn't the product but the talk around the product. If a car salesman tries to sell you a perfectly good car but claims that this perfectly good car has an engine unlike any other that does away with the 100+ year old principles of regular engines, but that clearly there's nothing special about that engine, won't you feel like he's kinda trying to rip you off too? Mostly if he's selling that car for... err... whatever a pretty fancy car goes for.

Tbh it took me some time to decide if I should take part in this discussion or not. But because I am not a developer and have quite some experience in all kind of marketing (direct/backoffice/customer etc) and dealing with all kind of products and satisfied and very very unsatisfied customers maybe some fresh air can be helpful.

1) If the product is not the problem isn´t that a actually a good thing?

2) Imagine two car salesman. Both are selling the same car. But one gets more money than the other. Who is the better salesman?

Most sales will be generated on a emotional level. If someone can´t build up a emotional connection to the customer people won´t buy his products. (Exception: impulse purchases like sales).

The customer simply does not care "about the talk around a product". Obviously developers do but neither salesman nor customer do. Nobody forces them to buy the product. Actually if the customer is satisfied in the end we have a win/win situation. Plain simple. Most stuff nowadays can be demoed for quite some time. If the customer cares about his needs and does not rely on all those marketing shit he will try before buy and will make a decision based on his experiences. After that he will take the price into account. Or he has already done that and demoed afterwards. In the end the customer will either see some value in this product or not. And then either buy it or not.

This is not Hogwarts. Selling stuff is not magic. Its psychology. It is not the fault of the developer if the customer does not do his homework.

And I am curious about the benefits of this "discussion" because the only thing I see from a Marketing POV: some professional devs acting highly unprofessional in one of the most famous, highly frequented and open forums on the www where potential customers could be biased in not buying their products because they might ask theirself:"If a developer behaves like this and in such a manner on such a trivial topic do I really wanna make a contract with him?"

And regarding to the Abbedy Road thingy: that´s called marketing. The statement "recommendation to buy" is still in use today and you can find it on mostly every product or in mags, the whole www is full of recommendations. I mean, why did the mags were praising this thingy? Blame the magazines if they don´t test stuff properly anymore. This is one of the reasons why I don´t care if a product is recommended or not. Because the only thing that counts for me is that I like the product and that it was not that expensive. But "not that expensive" is a pretty broad term. For some of us 20$ is a lot, others spend 400$ or more on a single plugin.

All of you have a nice evening!

Regards
Sebastian

[Nokenoku]

And regarding to the Abbedy Road thingy: that´s called marketing.

Or "fraud".

Only "unprofessional" dev I saw in this thread is LBarratt by the way. He can't explain his own product ... and it looks a bit like he does not even fully understand, what's going on inside of it.
The other two devs I noticed here are very open about their products and audio processing in general and share technical information to everyone, giving them the ability to make educated decisions.

It is not the fault of the developer if the customer does not do his homework.

Bullshit.
You can't expect everyone to know everything.
If someone is making wrong or very misleading claims about his product, it's not the fault of the customer, if he falls for it.

This might be "normal" in marketing, but it's still not right.
So I will always do "counter marketing", if I see something like that.
Because I have a personal interest in good devs succeeding instead of bad ones.

[A_SN]

Exactly what I was thinking and meant to say, down to the TM! And you live in Berlin too! Are we, like, related?

Not sure ... we might actually be the same person.

Like in "Fight Club".

You must be the one who gets the girl then. Good for you .

2) Imagine two car salesman. Both are selling the same car. But one gets more money than the other. Who is the better salesman?

Most sales will be generated on a emotional level. If someone can´t build up a emotional connection to the customer people won´t buy his products. (Exception: impulse purchases like sales).

In the context of what we're talking about then you're effectively arguing that dishonesty and anything underhanded that might make the sale is fair game. Also making false claims and establishing an emotional connection are very different things, that means you can claim your product is awesome, sounds shiny, airy, vintage-analogue-warm-crystal-clear and all that is alright, but saying that your convolution algorithm cannot be replicated using fast convolution (or whatever the exact formulation of that claim was) is an objectively verifiable lie.

The customer simply does not care "about the talk around a product". Obviously developers do but neither salesman nor customer do. Nobody forces them to buy the product. Actually if the customer is satisfied in the end we have a win/win situation. Plain simple. Most stuff nowadays can be demoed for quite some time. If the customer cares about his needs and does not rely on all those marketing shit he will try before buy and will make a decision based on his experiences. After that he will take the price into account. Or he has already done that and demoed afterwards. In the end the customer will either see some value in this product or not. And then either buy it or not.

If we're talking about what the developer claims about their products, then yes it does matter, otherwise no one would bother to try to convince you to do anything with words, they'd just say "here's my plugin, try it, or don't, whatever". Besides it seems that as far as EQ go claims made influence people's perception of how good it sounds, so if you pretend that your EQ has revolutionary new maths that puts everything else to rest and that people actually believe that, well, you can think it's a bad thing, or you can think "good for the developer", but I don't think that users gain from buying into an illusion.

This is not Hogwarts. Selling stuff is not magic. Its psychology. It is not the fault of the developer if the customer does not do his homework.

You do realise what you're arguing for, right? You're essentially arguing for no holds barred advertising, so if a company advertises a $100 yogurt that contains a new groundbreaking ingredient that'll make you burn all your body fat in one week according to what you're arguing we should just let people get scammed for not doing their homework/being gullible? I mean really, think about it, you're in favour of allowing false advertising?

And I am curious about the benefits of this "discussion" because the only thing I see from a Marketing POV: some professional devs acting highly unprofessional in one of the most famous, highly frequented and open forums on the www where potential customers could be biased in not buying their products because they might ask theirself:"If a developer behaves like this and in such a manner on such a trivial topic do I really wanna make a contract with him?"

If you try to sell a perpetual motion machine then physicists are going to come at you with crowbars like they've got nothing better to do. Same thing here. You can do whatever you want, but if you try to tell us that you've made an EQ that somehow does things that cannot be done with fast convolution, we're gonna call you out.

[Burillo]

i'm about to sound kinda harsh, but here goes.

2) Imagine two car salesman. Both are selling the same car. But one gets more money than the other. Who is the better salesman?

depends. if one that gets more money uses shady tactics, he's not a better salesman, he's a fraud. you can be as good or as bad a salesman you can be, but there are certain lines you're not supposed to cross while doing your salesman job. if you're misleading (or downright lying to) your customers - this is usually the time authorities get involved.

The customer simply does not care "about the talk around a product". Obviously developers do but neither salesman nor customer do.

i assume you only speak for yourself, because i'm not in your "not caring about the talk about the product" club. that may work if you're selling iApps to morons en masse, but it's not how things work in a community such as we have on KVR. we love to discuss our tools because that way we learn how they work, and, among other things, we learn if these tools really do what we believe them to do.

And I am curious about the benefits of this "discussion" because the only thing I see from a Marketing POV: some professional devs acting highly unprofessional in one of the most famous, highly frequented and open forums on the www where potential customers could be biased in not buying their products because they might ask theirself:"If a developer behaves like this and in such a manner on such a trivial topic do I really wanna make a contract with him?"

not really. what i'm seeing is two knowledgeable people questioning claims made by another developer who talks like he's straight out of "software sales for MBA's 101" class. granted, A_SN went a little overboard on the offensive tone, but the developer himself displays such a condescending attitude (your math is 150 years old, dude!) that anyone with a shred of knowledge about these things would be offended, so i don't blame A_SN for being a little oversensitive towards this subject.

so yes, this thread made me biased, you're right. but it didn't make me biased against Dave Gamble or A_SN, on the contrary - it made me respect them more. it, however, made me biased against the developer of Equavescent (tm). not the product, mind you, but the developer. this happens - i like Antares Harmony Engine as a product, but i hate Antares's guts as a company.

And regarding to the Abbedy Road thingy: that´s called marketing.

...which is exactly why i don't own any of them, and part of the reason why i avoid having to deal with Abbey Road Plugins as a company (the other part is the history of abandoned products).