Current deep discounts on Lexicon. Current deep discounts on Waves software. Ongoing sales by a wide variety of software manufacturers.

Are Kracks killing the industry?

Are the software developers trying to fight piracy with lower (and lower) prices?

Anyone have thoughts about what's happening out there?

I mean, I love the lower (and lower) prices, but I hope this isn't pointing to major difficulties that software developers are having with kracks and piracy. That would totally suck.

I know that one of Lexicon's main software programmers left early this year...is this due to the challenging nature of that industry?
Last edited by johnnyvn on Fri Dec 07, 2012 8:22 pm; edited 1 time in total

I thought that was all normal around the 2 biggest holidays?

it's not like piracy was recent


The names you cited are more luxury ones, the market must be different for them.

Two things:

1. It's the holidays.
2. There is a lot of competition in the marketplace where great plugins can be had for low prices, which probably works to cannibalize the sales of more expensive plugins. The more expensive companies probably want to compete without depreciating the value of their plugins, so they opt for big sales.
Last edited by Funkybot's Evil Twin on Fri Dec 07, 2012 9:04 pm; edited 1 time in total

I don't think we're seeing the end of the plugin industry, but I do think that we're starting to see the end of outrageous prices, as the margin of quality is decreasing between free/cheap plugins and expensive/boutique plugins. I think Waves is a good example - five years ago, they were one of the most expensive developers around, but now competition (e.g., FabFilter) seem to have forced them to drop their prices in order to compete, which is good news for the hobbyists as well as pro studios.

if prices are coming down that could well mean that is because more people are buying them. This market has lot of room to grow the way I see it. Maybe you should be asking if we are starting to see the decline of hardware?

I think more and more people are buying them. Tons of people want to make their own movies, music, animation. Nearly everyone with a computer has probably tried a one form of music making at least.

Not with exciting new innovative plugins that push new technology to its limits, like Jam Origins Midi Guitar. Eliminates the need for a midi hex pickup system and processor for guitar to ACCURATELY send midi note data to synth plugins in real time with no latency. Also it works polyphonic and recognizes and forms chords from the chords you play on guitar, virtually unheard of until now, even to do with hardware. This is some cool stuff we got going for 2012/2013.

So no, you statement of opinion is leaning on the side of wrong. Stuff keeps getting better, and many companies are pushing the limits of quality and technology available, so there is more competition to lower prices. The freeware has gotten just as good, so even more commercial software companies focus on lowering prices to get your sale. Aside from a decent DAW, you can use all quality freeware plugins to produce something now a days, which is mostly how I roll.

no, Lexicon is just trying to fight Exponential Audio and ValhallaDSP

As mentioned.. the market is saturated.. there is much competition. It is a buyer's market today. Expect lower prices!

Further, freeware and magazineware combined can create a itb 'studio' that rivals some of the top of the line from 5-7 years ago. The quality has improved at the same time competition has improved.

The same issue occurs in photography software. 3 years ago Lightroom was around 300 dollars. Today you can find it for roughly one third of the original price. Why? There are so many lower priced competitors that they HAD to lower their price. Lightroom wasn't the defacto software at the time.. there were true competitors (that look verrrry similar and do essentially the same task).

Now, if only camera prices would drop in the same manner.

Anything you would pick over Lightroom that is available on the Mac?

Bullseye !

and having sleepless nights and nightmares

Lexicon is a subsidiary of Harman International Industries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harman_International_Industries

Over 10,000 employees, $3.772 billion in revenue in 2011.

Between Exponential Audio and Valhalla DSP, there are 2 total employees, with no overlap.

I think that Dinesh Paliwal, the CEO of Harman International, is probably sleeping just fine.



Sean Costello

Hmmmm.. I'm a pretty big fan of lightroom.. especially the latest one (4.2)

But most of these applications are available for both Mac or PC.. well, outside of Apple's Aperture.

You might want to look at DxO Optics Pro, Phase One Capture One, Corel Aftershot Pro (formerly Bibble Pro), or perhaps even Picturecode Photo Ninja as well as Adobe's Lightroom.


I'm using Lightroom 4 and Photoshop Elements 11 with a few Photog plugins. See, even in photoland we have plugins for our host software.