Hi Stuart,

Your product description here says the price of StudioUnits is "Free / $99". Often that combination is used for software that comes bundled with e.g. hardware, but is also seperately for sale. Or for software that has a free limited version (but still very usable) aside a payed version without these limitations.

In the Plug-In Ranks (congrats with the high rank btw, it has caught some attention) your product is listed under both Free and Commercial. So that makes me wonder: what is it? Free or not?

Now according to your website (if I read it correctly) it seems that the plugin and it's modules/plugins is what you pay for, and you can get the library (translated: patches/presets) for free. No surprise btw.

Sure you can run it in demo mode, but as I understand it that randomly adds white noise. Quite normal behaviour for demos, but that is not what qualifies as a "free" version.

So in my book this piece of software simply qualifies as "commercial". There's no real "free" version, since the white noise in demo mode spoils the party, and renders it unusable for production work.

Wouldn't it be better to be honoust to potential customers, and simply register the product as "commercial"? 99% of all commercial software has a demo version free to try out, so the label "commercial" should not scare off customers.

Am I right or wrong? What's your view?

Kind regards,
Bert

Hi Bert,

In answer to your question, there is a free part and a paid-for part to the current Studio Units collection:

FREE - the 11 pre-configured effects (without any added noise of any kind): Analog Equalizer, Delay Equalizer, Low-pass Filter, Low-pass Follower, Mastering Equalizer, Mastering Limiter, Multiband Compressor, Tape Compressor, Transient Controller, Tube Follower and Tube Vocoder.

$99 (+VAT) - the modular effect builder allowing you to combine SU plugins with other VST plugins using virtual patch cables for audio, midi and parameter automation. Prior to purchasing a licence this has some white noise added to its audio output from time to time.

I hope this has clarified things for you and look forward to any further suggestions you may have.

Thanks,
Stu

It surely did. It wasn't all clear to me that in unregistered mode you can use the provided 11 presets without added noise.

Thanks!

As of today - 12th September 2011, the newly released Studio Units version 1.1.2 is now completely FREE (with absolutely no restrictions on functionality).

Why was the decision made to make it free?

Thanks,

We decided that due to the complicated nature of modular synth/effect building, this type of product is unlikely to be commercially successful, even with significant improvements. We therefore chose to make it free and to concentrate our efforts on creating plugins that could be commercially viable.

This does not mean that we are not planning to develop the Studio Units platform further. In fact, development of Studio Units version 2 is currently under way, which will include a greater variety of modules and patches.

Thanks! Looking forward to seeing your next creation

Hi, thankyou for this free sonic environment. The connections process is similar
to patchage and jp1, linux audio connection gui apps, so it appears to be sensible, and a boon to people who understand the functions of the individual components, or will dig in
and learn as they go.

Have you considered working with JUCE,

http://www.rawmaterialsoftware.com/juce.php

so your apps easily can be created for mac, linux, and windows, ios and android, from the beginning? This might be an opportune time, to make such a change in developement. I
believe William K from Wusikstation forum here, is now using this, he could give you
opinions from a coders point of view.

reaktor from NI is a complex product, and seems to have a large following. Perhaps
you can create custom presets. like the reaktor ensembles, at an attractive price point, to help fund development?
Hope things will progress nicely for you! How about a nice limiter app for ios/android that blocks the occasional blaring youtube, or deaf uncle who hollers on the phone, and sweetens the sound at lower volumes a bit?
Cheers

Hi, thanks for your suggestions.

Studio Units was built using Juce from day one. Unfortunately, due to some of the non-standard things that SU does when rearranging plugin windows, there is still some work to do to port it to other platforms. We would have liked to complete this work for the initial release of SU, 18 months ago, but haven't been able to spend enough time on it. There is currently no road-map to get SU running on other platforms and this work will not be completed any time soon, if at all.

We are planning some new (Juce) plugins that will not be restricted to the PC only and I do like your iOS/Android idea. Thanks.