Plugin formats? This is the end...

[gpunk]

VST is fine here so far, Props have gone proprietary simply because they would look like assholes supporting VST now ten years too late.

All that will happen with these formats is the age old Apple rubbish, you know what i mean, every other new plugin thread here at KVR "Are you going to port to MAC"

Just means very little selection available for these silly closed formats.

A bunch of us have come across the very same thing with sampler formats recently, silly drum rompler companies making their formats closed so they can try to control the market and get "Their cut"
It is all complete and utter bulls**t and a backlash against this is coming very rapidly, open formats are the only way forward

[xh3rv]

VST is fine here so far, Props have gone proprietary simply because they would look like assholes supporting VST now ten years too late.

All that will happen with these formats is the age old Apple rubbish, you know what i mean, every other new plugin thread here at KVR "Are you going to port to MAC"

Just means very little selection available for these silly closed formats.

A bunch of us have come across the very same thing with sampler formats recently, silly drum rompler companies making their formats closed so they can try to control the market and get "Their cut"
It is all complete and utter bulls**t and a backlash against this is coming very rapidly, open formats are the only way forward

I'd reply on your company forums but no one reads them.

[festeringheap]

How does this do anything to attract new users?

Offering Reason Essentials @ 99 dollars?

It may not have Thor Kong and a few other devices, but after you include the 3 (or was it 4?) free RE in the next free update and buy a few RE units (FX s and a synth or two), and, Reason Essentials at 99 dollars is starting to look pretty darn good - compared to flagship Reason.

Maybe Propellerhead will have The Echo, Pulverizer, Alligator, and why not, even Kong, Malstrom etc... available as RE for Essential owners? (of course it would just be cheaper to upgrade to Reason )

[liquid wind]

$99 to get access to a closed system that you'll most likely be going through the PITA of rewiring(to save you the PITA of dealing with Reason's sequencer) just to buy plugins locked to that system most of which are available as VSTs anyway. Still not that enticing for people using other hosts as it is I think, but great for people who've stuck with Reason

[deastman]

I can understand why Propellerhead went with their own format. VST just wouldn't conform well with their rack metaphor, especially with the patch cables. Requiring developers to sell through their own store, and taking a large cut of the profits, on the other hand, is nothing but greed. Sure, they're making it easier for developers to sell product, but don't most of them already have established sales channels? I guess time will tell if that gamble pays off for them.

As for Sonar adding the ProChannel plugin format, I'm still angry that they switched things around: "Oh, you paid for the top-of-the-line Sonar Producer edition? No, that isn't top of the line anymore. Pay us more money, and we'll give Producer Expanded. Or pay even more money for the Production Suite and we'll really give you everything. For real this time! Unless we decide to make a Total Ultimate Production Suite and withhold features from the lower versions which used to be the full versions." So, no, I will not be purchasing ProChannel plugins.

[tony tony chopper]

But some of the formats you listed aren't designed to become standard/popular. Only VST & AudioUnit is. The rest are host-specific ones that exist because they give more power/control/features/a tighter link between the host & the plugin.
It's like a MIDI file vs a host's proprietary song file, you wouldn't expect all of a host's settings to be saveable in a generic file.
As for Reason's plugins it looks mainly because there's an app store craze out there, & everyone wanna grab his chance to control teh future.

[munchkin]

VST is fine here so far, Props have gone proprietary simply because they would look like assholes supporting VST now ten years too late.

All that will happen with these formats is the age old Apple rubbish, you know what i mean, every other new plugin thread here at KVR "Are you going to port to MAC"

Just means very little selection available for these silly closed formats.

A bunch of us have come across the very same thing with sampler formats recently, silly drum rompler companies making their formats closed so they can try to control the market and get "Their cut"
It is all complete and utter bulls**t and a backlash against this is coming very rapidly, open formats are the only way forward

Universalising formats does seem to be on the rise. Microsoft are porting W8 to ARM and designing it to work over a range of hardware. Google's Android is another example. Of course these platforms are still originally the design of one company but they're hoping to make them ubiquitous by encouraging as much collaboration as possible.

In the video plugin world the emphasis seems to be developing products to work with nearly every platform and NLE. OFX is sort of a universal plugin format but Sony for example adapted it to suit Vegas so it's not a complete standard as such. By default Photoshop files have become a sort of standard so there is uniformity in that area too.

Apple has a closed system but because it's become so huge it seems like it's somewhat universal. So if Cakewalk and the Props can convince developers and customers to sign up then they might prosper. At the very least it's another revenue stream for them. But the cost of developing and maintaining these proprietary systems could be higher than using VST which is already out there.

If VST is implemented properly in the host then I assume it's up to the plugin developer to sort out any problems with their plugin but with a proprietary format won't the responsibility fall on both the plugin developer and the host developer to get everything working correctly? Wouldn't this be more costly?

[liquidsound]

As I mentioned in another post if I buy a Re synth or effect for much less then I can still use it in my favorite DAW via Rewire and for much less money. Does this sound correct? This is not good for the developer of the VST.
A loophole?

[koushks]

As I mentioned in another post if I buy a Re synth or effect for much less then I can still use it in my favorite DAW via Rewire and for much less money. Does this sound correct? This is not good for the developer of the VST.
A loophole?

For that, the user would have to own Reason. Now, if someone buys Reason to exploit this "loophole" well enough to justify its cost, it's actually good for all RE developers, because that's an increase in their prospective customers.

[tony tony chopper]

But the cost of developing and maintaining these proprietary systems could be higher than using VST which is already out there.

not really, the lot of workarounds required by a host to make all kinds of plugins work, are a huge work. If a plugin crashes, it's the host that's mostly responsible to the user.
They won't have such problems, instead of finding workarounds they will have the easier job of testing themselves & rejecting what doesn't work. Imagine if a host could reject all of the VST's programmed by noobs..

[liquidsound]

As I mentioned in another post if I buy a Re synth or effect for much less then I can still use it in my favorite DAW via Rewire and for much less money. Does this sound correct? This is not good for the developer of the VST.
A loophole?

For that, the user would have to own Reason. Now, if someone buys Reason to exploit this "loophole" well enough to justify its cost, it's actually good for all RE developers, because that's an increase in their prospective customers.

Reason Essentials $129, no increase really, because what I could buy at a full price, FM8 $199, now I can use it for $30? NI just lost my $169.
Unless the Re format are limited compered to they full version counterpart.

[aciddose]

imagine if hosts and other software didn't assume it's users were morons and gave an error message reporting where the fault occurred before handling it gracefully.

then it could be left to the users to decide which plugins they should stop using.

oh, but i've forgotten that the host software is a billion times more intelligent than the average user needing to have their diapers changed.

[koushks]

NI just lost my $169.

It's never as straightforward as that.
The thing about such closed ecosystems, be it the Apple appstore, or in this case, the Propellerhead's device store, is that in the right circumstances, there could be a feed forward loop. And such a loop could benefit everybody in the ecosystem. Say, there are folks who get into the Reason game just to take advantage of the special price. I can bet they won't stop at buying just one RE. The more they buy, the more they (need to) use Reason, and the more they (need to) keep buying.

Realize that nobody is gonna sell REs at a loss. If NI does sell an RE FM8 at $30, that's because they are making a profit out of it. With more people on Reason, and on the look out for cheaper ways to get their plugins, I'm sure no plugin developer would complain.

The only ones who would complain are other DAW users who feel they are paying "more" now for their VSTs. But certainly not the developers of the RE devices.

[tony tony chopper]

imagine if hosts and other software didn't assume it's users were morons and gave an error message reporting where the fault occurred before handling it gracefully.

If you were a programmer you'd know it's impossible. More accurately, it's only doable in a bridge, as processes are the only properly separated & independent bits (at least in Windows).
(& yes, exception handling is mostly useless. If it was really working then no host would ever crash because of plugins)

[liquidsound]

NI just lost my $169.

It's never as straightforward as that.
The thing about such closed ecosystems, be it the Apple appstore, or in this case, the Propellerhead's device store, is that in the right circumstances, there could be a feed forward loop. And such a loop could benefit everybody in the ecosystem. Say, there are folks who get into the Reason game just to take advantage of the special price. I can bet they won't stop at buying just one RE. The more they buy, the more they (need to) use Reason, and the more they (need to) keep buying.

Realize that nobody is gonna sell REs at a loss. If NI does sell an RE FM8 at $30, that's because they are making a profit out of it. With more people on Reason, and on the look out for cheaper ways to get their plugins, I'm sure no plugin developer would complain.

The only ones who would complain are other DAW users who feel they are paying "more" now for their VSTs. But certainly not the developers of the RE devices.

At the end of the day you are probably right. Nothing is going to be perfect. Even Apple has to face Jailbrake of iYouNameIt.