Frankly impossible to take FXpansion seriously at this point.

[perpetual3]

Imho the best Fx pansion products mostly relied on external coders
Synthsquad dsp engine = Andrew Simper (cytomic )
Guru ( remember ?) = Devine M achine , + steve duda
These were pretty solid products and almost bug free >
When the new wave of fx pansions plugins came , the overal user experience left a lot to be desired , buggy etc ...the acquisation by roli made things even worse
This used to be one of my favourite companies , not so any more

I loved Guru.

[jens]

I am so glad I never purchased anything from them. In fact they are one of the very few dongle-less companies I do not own anything from. Something always didn't feel quite right to me. Perhaps it's because they always were kind of erratic. Since back in the day I had purchased Sonar 2 XL, I owned a DR-008 license and did not at all like that they discontinued it. So yeah, they always kind of did that.
Fishy company all along.

[martinjuenke]

Imho the best Fx pansion products mostly relied on external coders
Synthsquad dsp engine = Andrew Simper (cytomic )
Guru ( remember ?) = Devine M achine , + steve duda
These were pretty solid products and almost bug free >
When the new wave of fx pansions plugins came , the overal user experience left a lot to be desired , buggy etc ...the acquisation by roli made things even worse
This used to be one of my favourite companies , not so any more

I loved Guru.

I loved my guru as well, he enlightened me, but now he‘s dead. What a pity!

I will always remember this tragedy...

[jens]

Oh, almost forgot: thinking about it I now seem to faintly remember that they had announced a successor to DR-008 which (iIrc) was supposed to be named DR-9 and which never saw the light of day.

Instead they at some point came up with BFD (which is a completely different thing).

[Teksonik]

I was actually about to pull the pin on the BFD upgrade but after reading this I think I will let it slide...besides, I have plenty of drum plugs already that can pretty much do what I need (just a bit of GAS I guess)

Yes you get the feeling that the full BFD might not have a long support lifetime. It might well but that's not the feeling one gets when looking at the FXpansion story of late.

I too have plenty of other drum plugins which is why Eco rarely gets a play so I'll pass on the upgrade as well. In fact I've placed FXpansion with the ever growing number of developers on my "do not buy" list.

[martinjuenke]

I was actually about to pull the pin on the BFD upgrade but after reading this I think I will let it slide...besides, I have plenty of drum plugs already that can pretty much do what I need (just a bit of GAS I guess)

Yes you get the feeling that the full BFD might not have a long support lifetime. It might well but that's not the feeling one gets when looking at the FXpansion story of late.

I too have plenty of other drum plugins which is why Eco rarely gets a play so I'll pass on the upgrade as well. In fact I've placed FXpansion with the ever growing number of developers on my "do not buy" list.

It would be really helpful to have such a „Do not buy“ thread. But it should have a reasonable description of the reasons without emotions and without fanboi contradictions. But I assume that will not work here on KVR... What a pity. Something like that would save us a lot of money...

[Distorted Horizon]

It would be really helpful to have such a „Do not buy“ thread.

Helpful maybe and IMO it'd be a good opportunity for plugin makers to have a look "what's wrong with my actions" etc but I'm quite sure that wouldn't be the way some people might choose..


Maybe rather some "I won't buy from this company because" -thread would be a bit better since it doesn't tell anyone what to do

Go ahead, someone make it. I have some stuff in my mind already

[Vertion]

Go ahead, someone make it. I have some stuff in my mind already

Ive got plenty of information on who not to buy from and who to. I've got more synths than the Institute.

[plexuss]

All software becomes unusable, for the most part. If you are using it for business you have to look at it from an accounting point of view to work out if its worth it. It's more subjective if you are using it for personal use - in which case you just have to make a judgement on if you got your money's worth. But eventually all software will become unusable unless its updated. There are no guarantees that all software will always be updated - its not economically feasible. This is one reason software is depreciated far faster than hardware in accounting (usually)

I have a lot of $$ invested in FXP including some recently discontinued products. Oh well, that's the way it goes with software. There are risks for sure. You have to take them into account. Or, go buy hardware.

Sorry, you are very very wrong, [snip...]

I wouldn't say I am "very very wrong". Well let's look at it this way, how long was it that the vast majority of music software systems were 32 bit only. How many people now run 32 bit only systems? I know its anecdotal, but I think the answer is: everyone back then, not very many now. And that was only what, within a 10-15 year span.

Sure, if you want to lock your system in at some point assuming all goes well and there are no major hardware or software issues, it could last decades or centuries. But I am talking about typical realistic use. Not some edge case or hypothetical. In the case of the typical usage patterns, you are very very wrong.

[plexuss]

I sent this to them. I suggest you do something similar. The only way these companies will listen is if their bottom line is under attack. Here is the link to their support form: https://support.roli.com/support/tickets/new

Hello. I own Tremor, BFD3, Geist2, Strobe2 and Cypher2. And a RISE 49. I want to express my extreme disappointment in your recent silent discontinuation of software products including Tremor. I paid good money for your products and part of that money comes with the trust that you would be developing your products and keeping them alive for me to use as tools. What you did with Tremor and the other products by discontinuing them like that was completely unethical. My trust in FX/Roli has diminished because of this.

If you discontinue BFD or Geist I will be supremely angry. I will take an active role in fighting against your company and disuading others from purchasing your products. I have many $1000's invested in libraries for these products.

Please reconsider the discontinuation of Tremor - it was only out for a short time. At the very least please sell the rights to these products to someone else who will care for them, and the associated customer.

I know you have "business decisions" to make. So I will help you, If you make another “business decision” that affects me negatively as a customer, I will help you make another “business decision” to bring those products back by, as much as I can, negatively impacting your business with negative word-of-mouth commentary to prospective customers.

What you did was rude, untrustworthy, irresponsible, inconsiderate and down right one of the worst things a software company can do to a customer.

I wont stand for it.

Plexus Productions, Canada.

[jancivil]

 
I never understood this; are you required to upgrade your OS with Apple?

No. Except now, in the case where you buy a new computer as I did, there is no going backwards.

I had a MacPro, early 2009 model. I stayed with OSX.6.8 for years. I was using Cubase 5, late 2011 on a 2011 OS through 2014. Finally there were libraries for Kontakt I wanted so updating Kontakt 4 to this version meant moving up to 10.8.5. I stayed with this system this until the computer essentially died in 2015 while most users were well ahead of this.

I have the new MacBook Pro. BFD3 was last updated in March. It works but the Host Automation is buggy. It does cause me problems in mixing; thing is it used to work.

I have had extensive contact with support on this, they replicated my issues and showed me things about it I hadn't found. It's still quite broken. So there is support from ROLI; whether or not this translates to a team working on these bugs remains to be seen.

I may be this "edge case" but I don't really care what other people do, I am myself pragmatic. If they do nothing I can live like this for a few years. My system may outlive me.
I could freak out.

But I agree with all of the original post in this thread.

The optimistic view would be, maybe ROLI will build drum controllers and BFD3 development follows. I'm not an optimist (nor am I a pessimist). I take a will see attitude on this. The authentic FXpansion itself is pretty much dead IME, ROLI is an unknown quantity at this point in terms of replacing FXpansion. I don't see a lot of interest coming from them.

[jens]

Oh, almost forgot: thinking about it I now seem to faintly remember that they had announced a successor to DR-008 which (iIrc) was supposed to be named DR-9 and which never saw the light of day.

Instead they at some point came up with BFD (which is a completely different thing).

Found this:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/GURU-what-hap ... 50382.aspx

[ZeePok]

(...)
The thing that bugs me most with FXpansion is the typical product cycle. A plugin is released. It has bugs. At some point they release a "public beta", with some things fixed, some not. This beta sits there for months, maybe even years. Maybe later another beta is released. At some point, the whole product kind of just fades into obscurity, with some beta being the latest released version, and then a new "version +1" is released, with a price tag and new bugs. (Case in point: the latest version of the original BFD is a public beta from 2009.)
(...)

Nailed it!

(...)
What chilled me to the bone was Angus stating that Strobe 2 will get a mid life update soon. So that means I can expect that also to be out the window in 1-2 years time.

Sorry, but just 'moving on' costs ways too much money and worst of all time invested learning it all

Yes, it has been in beta for about a year now.

edit: make that more than 2 years!

[JunSev]

All software becomes unusable, for the most part. If you are using it for business you have to look at it from an accounting point of view to work out if its worth it. It's more subjective if you are using it for personal use - in which case you just have to make a judgement on if you got your money's worth. But eventually all software will become unusable unless its updated. There are no guarantees that all software will always be updated - its not economically feasible. This is one reason software is depreciated far faster than hardware in accounting (usually)

I have a lot of $$ invested in FXP including some recently discontinued products. Oh well, that's the way it goes with software. There are risks for sure. You have to take them into account. Or, go buy hardware.

Sorry, you are very very wrong, [snip...]

I wouldn't say I am "very very wrong". Well let's look at it this way, how long was it that the vast majority of music software systems were 32 bit only. How many people now run 32 bit only systems? I know its anecdotal, but I think the answer is: everyone back then, not very many now. And that was only what, within a 10-15 year span.

Sure, if you want to lock your system in at some point assuming all goes well and there are no major hardware or software issues, it could last decades or centuries. But I am talking about typical realistic use. Not some edge case or hypothetical. In the case of the typical usage patterns, you are very very wrong.

No plexuss, really you are wrong here, you're trying to find and analogy for a very weak argument in favor of hardware, softwares based applications has flaws, hardwares based systems has flaws too, but you simply can't deny the superiority and convenience of softwares over hardware.

About the 32 bit thing, yeah I don't have installed a single 32 bit app at least from what I know, maybe some windows files and all that, but I know you have to know you are wrong because after the 64 bit jump the technological field realize that it doesn't make like too much sense to just pass to other sort of thing like more bits (not at least for a very long time), even if happens (that for sure can happen) they will get to the same conclusion, is becoming unnecessary.

Perhaps windows or apple could die in some decades and a new operative system will be the trend, or there will be new version of windows or apple, who knows what could happen, the virtual machines will continue there; certainly realistically and typically, you are very wrong, I will continue using my vsts in 50 years, don't leave your hardware take dust and hope will continue working in that period of time...

[Aloysius]

I was interested in their drums at one time but the download versions were lower quality than the snail-mail delivery versions.