KVR Audio

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 4:42 pm

Interesting read - thanks for sharing that. Good news for consumers I think

Let's hope Propellerhead follow the plot, and don't wait for somebody to take them to court first.

saturdaysaint · Post by **saturdaysaint** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 7:51 pm

The intention of these laws is nice, but ultimately the laws will bend to the economics of DLC and not the other way around. Apple isn't going to make a special Australian "App Trading" marketplace. Microsoft isn't going to let you transfer an old Windows license to a new PC. The game companies are going firmly in the other direction. Unless the US or China changes their laws, this will only hurt the consumers in the form of unavailable products and even crappier business models. Hope you're ready for subscription software!

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 7:56 pm

Well in the case of Propellerhead, as a European company, I would be shocked if they ignore the precedents set in European law.

That said, this ruling does blow a hole in their whole new distribution method, because the whole ethos of Re is that the extensions are fixed to your account with them, and not downloaded as an installation file that you could sell on. The ruling *seems* to make this whole practice tenuous in terms of consumer law - and thank goodness for that. Offering "ease of use" does not justify removing customer rights to what they have bought: that's a price that should never be paid.

As you say, it will be interesting to see how Apple respond, and perhaps Propellerhead will wait and see.

But at the very least, whether companies comply or not, this makes a very clear statement from a moral point of view about purchasing and ownership. It's very much a moral argument....

liquidsound · Post by **liquidsound** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 7:56 pm

Here is the whole thread
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 29#4978129

RE may now stand for: REsell

kmonkey · Post by **kmonkey** » Wed Jul 04, 2012 9:58 am

https://www.propellerheads.se/forum/sho ... p?t=163178

Now that's what i call serious issue

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Wed Jul 04, 2012 12:01 pm

kmonkey wrote:https://www.propellerheads.se/forum/sho ... p?t=163178

Now that's what i call serious issue

Well yes, especially for a company that bangs on about project compatibility. The worrying thing is that the issue raised in that thread is clearly a designed behaviour deliberately engineered by Propellerhead... my, how they have changed.

As one person put it in that thread: "Yeah, this is poor design, since it means that the file on disk is being changed without the user a) knowing it and b) approving it."

Hmmm.... now who's intellectual property is being violated then??

Richard_Synapse · Post by **Richard_Synapse** » Wed Jul 04, 2012 12:19 pm

saturdaysaint wrote:The intention of these laws is nice, but ultimately the laws will bend to the economics of DLC and not the other way around. Apple isn't going to make a special Australian "App Trading" marketplace. Microsoft isn't going to let you transfer an old Windows license to a new PC. The game companies are going firmly in the other direction. Unless the US or China changes their laws, this will only hurt the consumers in the form of unavailable products and even crappier business models. Hope you're ready for subscription software!

Exactly my thoughts, this is actually bad news for consumers. It forces companies to think about how to make things even worse than they currently are. Subscription, streaming, forced online models etc will be yet more attractive to them.

Richard

Gamma-UT · Post by **Gamma-UT** » Wed Jul 04, 2012 1:09 pm

headquest wrote:Well yes, especially for a company that bangs on about project compatibility. The worrying thing is that the issue raised in that thread is clearly a designed behaviour deliberately engineered by Propellerhead... my, how they have changed.

Really. Why? Why not simple c*ck-up? - e.g. program opens old file and creates a temp file, but programmer mixes up the file handles so it saves the temporary or undo data to the wrong file. V6 says 'wtf' when it tries to open the file with all the extra garbage in it. V6.5 doesn't care about the issue because it just sees some undo data that doesn't affect the core data. It's easily done and I can see how this might escape during the beta because the beta testers would have been focused on running projects purely under 6.5.

samsam · Post by **samsam** » Wed Jul 04, 2012 1:17 pm

kmonkey wrote:https://www.propellerheads.se/forum/sho ... p?t=163178

Now that's what i call serious issue

That is just mental.

Over on Ableton forum people were rightly moaning when the first time the new auto-update feature gets used, the new version hoses ReWire. Seems that Abes quickly pushed out a new version but even so, people were pissed.

But THIS fro PH? Ouch.

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Wed Jul 04, 2012 1:28 pm

samsam wrote:
kmonkey wrote:https://www.propellerheads.se/forum/sho ... p?t=163178

Now that's what i call serious issue
That is just mental.

Over on Ableton forum people were rightly moaning when the first time the new auto-update feature gets used, the new version hoses ReWire. Seems that Abes quickly pushed out a new version but even so, people were pissed.

But THIS fro PH? Ouch.

To clarify, Ableton fixed this in under 24 hours, and again the auto-update system is amazing. You don't even know you've been updated! None of these huge downloads and lengthy uninstall, reinstall processes like you get with some companies *cough*Propellerhead*cough*

kmonkey · Post by **kmonkey** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 6:14 pm

valhallasound wrote:
If developers are saying that the ports have been taking a lot of time and effort, and Propellerhead has been saying in their promo vids that the ports only take a few hours, I would tend to believe the developers.

This point isn't really about the cost of REs, or the whole crossgrade issue. To me, it is just important to point out that the idea that porting an existing plugin to RE will only take a few hours has been proven incorrect by the developers that have actually attempted it. Yet this "15 minutes/2 hours/4 hours" meme is still being touted as fact, just because Propellerhead claimed it to be true in their own marketing material.

Sean Costello

Regarding porting time there is actually pretty decent review of it. Apparently Chris Randall of AudioDamage said this about porting and when people asked why Reason RE version cost 25$ while VST is free:

To put the pricing in perspective, Rough Rider VST/AU, which we give away free in lieu of advertisement (we could easily charge for it) took us about 2 days to make. The Rack Extension took us, all told, a month. This is two highly educated, highly trained professional people that bill out at over $100/hr each for contract work, working full time for a month to make this. While I'd like nothing more than to offer it for free just like the VST, the simple fact of the matter is that we price something by what we expect to make from it over time versus our cost to make it.

That month we spent we could have made a new VST3/VST/AU product, which would have _DEFINITELY_ made us a hundred thousand dollars over the course of a couple years, including a huge dump of money on its first day of release due to our lack of demos. With the 30 day demo policy, plus the 45 day turn-around on payment from Props, plus their 30% cut, we're making US$19 per unit, some day a couple months from now.

Far from 15 minutes or two days..

Here is more of it https://www.propellerheads.se/forum/sho ... p?t=164120

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 6:23 pm

We can add to this that so far, developers seem not have as a matter of course included presets that use the Combinator and other Reason devices. Only their own internal presets (if any).

This seems a bit of a cop out - the whole benefit of Reason + Re is that modular routing, and presets need to show that off properly in order to be much use. But that would take a sound designer to come on board and make those special Reason Re presets of course....

,,,and I think most developers (Propellerhead included) perhaps see it as a way to make a fast buck, or at least "another revenue stream", without necessarily needing to put in the extra effort that Reason users are hoping for ...

ChiTown24 · Post by **ChiTown24** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 8:49 pm

kmonkey
that quote you posted was posted on page three of this thread. and it's relation to crossgrade pricing has also been discussed pretty in depth a couple times since then, with no one disagreeing that after the initial development time to port existing code to RE, the immediate benefits are significantly less development overheads over all once ported.

therefore the length of time it takes to port is moot. at this stage it's a red herring.

the rough rider case has no relevance to the crossgrading aspect of this thread at least.

SLiC · Post by **SLiC** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 8:54 pm

headquest wrote:
samsam wrote:
kmonkey wrote:https://www.propellerheads.se/forum/sho ... p?t=163178

Now that's what i call serious issue
That is just mental.

Over on Ableton forum people were rightly moaning when the first time the new auto-update feature gets used, the new version hoses ReWire. Seems that Abes quickly pushed out a new version but even so, people were pissed.

But THIS fro PH? Ouch.
To clarify, Ableton fixed this in under 24 hours, and again the auto-update system is amazing. You don't even know you've been updated! None of these huge downloads and lengthy uninstall, reinstall processes like you get with some companies *cough*Propellerhead*cough*

+1 on Ableton Auto update, Its one less thing to think about. I wish other would follow suit on this (Native Instruments. in fact all VSTs!)

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:01 pm

Ableton users complained hard on their forum (as is their custom, lol) about doing long downloads. Ableton listened, said "fair enough", and implemented a far better system.

With Propellerhead you still have to do the huge downloads each time they fix some of their bugs... and with a vocal core of users who praise them every time they even fart, I doubt they see a need to change that in favour of users.

Wow, Rack Extensions are expensive