Perpetual Upgrades - My Head's Exploding!!!

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hehe I was going to comment on ttoz then I saw that he already posted :P

I think NI is asking a bit much for the products but they've also created a name for themselves. They're a bit like the 'name brand' of music software.. slap their name and logo on a product and instantly charge 20% or more than its actual value.. :help:

however I guess im in the minority here when I say that I have enough VST/VSTi this and DX/DXi crap to last me a long, long time. (though I've stated this a couple times here at kvr.. I think im still in shock :lol:)

late last year I hit a point in my musical life (:hihi:) where I really dont feel I need anything else to create the various forms of music I wish to create..

that is to say.. my G.A.S. has been quenched :lol: for the most part.. I'd rather just use what I have and actually get down to the get down of making music. :help:

I think the only thing software-side I really would like to see are some feature upgrades to my host (orion)... about it for me.. outside of any potential (free) bug fixes :hihi:

:o

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Lunch Money wrote:Sometimes, though, don't you have to buy an upgrade to maintain continuity? For example, you can no longer pay an upgrade price to go from Cubase SX1 to SX3.

Greg
If you check Arbiter,s website you will see that the upgrade from sx 1 or 2 up to sx 3 is the same price ,£99

Just to clear up any confusion.


Cheers

Funk :wink:
The above "words" are the ramblings of a depraved megalomaniac.Any similarity to normal communication is a hallucination on the part of the reader.Replying to this post will result in your family and posessions becoming the property of funkynuts.

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Could be my bad. I definitely remember there being a big hoopla over when they announced an upgrade "cut-off date" but it may have been for VST 5.x

Greg
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I hate to praise Microsoft but they have an option for business whereby you pay an annual fee instead of buying the software licence. For this you get all of the upgrades automatically even the ones you don't want like SP2. The advantage of this system is that you can budget for a fixed annual upgrade cost.
But... Microsoft have just released a beta of a software product designed to get rid of spyware and malware and similar to Adaware/Spybot. You can download it for free but they've stated their intention to release it as a commercial product. That's rich, they're going to charge for a piece of software to protect users against the inadequacy of their own browser. That's like a car manufacturer charging for the fourth wheel because the car didn't run too well on three (unless it's a reliant).
"It is better to say nothing and be thought an idiot, than open your mouth and prove it"

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I hardly buy any new VSTi’s because I can not even keep up with upgrades. Already I am choosing which software I will continue to pay tribute on and which will fall to the side. And you never know when that old software will stop working. A change in the OS can kill it instantly.

Robert
All I need to be happy is one more VSTi.

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Hehe, I agree with the original post. Soft-synths seemed brilliant and first (and I still ove them), but man is there a price that comes along with it...

Let me throw this in too: With hardware synths, you knew you had a synth that would last 10+ years (unless there was an electrical storm!). On the other hand, who here REALLY believes that they'll be running NI Pro53 in 10 years? I tend to REALLY doubt it.

By that time, there will be some crazy new set of synths, and Pro53 may not even work on the computers of the future. (who knows)

What really bothers me even worse is the state of my songs that I save in my DAW: Can I open a song a wrote 1 year ago in the latest version of SONAR? Answer: No. It's not Sonar's fault actually, it's that most of my plugins have changed versions (Battery, Reaktor for example). And that means that I have to go through some serious work to get them loaded and sounding the same in Sonar.

I guess I should really make sure all my tracks are dumped to WAV files individually if I really want to be able to open the songs next year... ;)


...And there's another problem... Will I be able to be SURE that NI will be around in 5 years to help me activate my product when I install a new OS? Ok, well maybe NI is a bad example... :) But what about any other company that uses product-activation? It won't work forever.


Sigh.


-Ido

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idobs wrote:...And there's another problem... Will I be able to be SURE that NI will be around in 5 years to help me activate my product when I install a new OS? Ok, well maybe NI is a bad example... :)
NI's stated that if they go under,they'll post permanent unlock codes for their stuff(it's in the authorization FAQs on the NI site).Some other companies aren't so thoughtful-can you say Bitheadz,anybody?
ew
A spectral heretic...

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All you can do is upgrade the stuff you use and keep using the old stuff as and when necessary. Otherwise you'll end up in so much debt. :(

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leeturne wrote:I hate to praise Microsoft but they have an option for business whereby you pay an annual fee instead of buying the software licence. For this you get all of the upgrades automatically even the ones you don't want like SP2.).
And it was not very well received either. Do a google search.

Was it a coincidence that as soon as microsoft strong armed businesses to pay an annual fee for the upgrades that they all but stopped and there has been next to nil new programs since? I say not.

It is one way to stop the updates though. :x

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Gee, I can't believe people worry about electrical storms. Saving your equipment from power surges is a piece of cake - just unplug your equipment when a storm gets too close.

However, for other surges, you can't really do much about those, but you can get one of those uninterruptable power supplies that have a very good surge protection circuit built in, or you can buy surge protection boards, I think you can get a decent one for around the $50-60 mark. I wouldn't trust that cheap junk that you can get for $10, they'll stop little spikes but they won't stop those nasty line surges and they usually crap out too soon anyway.

Here in Australia, you can get those Clipsal surge units built in to protect your entire house from line surges. Line surges are very nasty - they can take out your entire household in a split second. BAMMMM!!!!!! Phew, what's that smell???!!!

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idobs wrote:What really bothers me even worse is the state of my songs that I save in my DAW: Can I open a song a wrote 1 year ago in the latest version of SONAR? Answer: No.
But that's been the case since the beginnings of the recording industry. I mean we all thought that the instant-recall of software would change that, but that only holds when you totally stop upgrading all your software and freeze your computer in its current state.
idobs wrote:And that means that I have to go through some serious work to get them loaded and sounding the same in Sonar.
Yep. Same here. My dilemma is even worse. I did a lot of material in Logic 4 on OS 9. I'm now in Logic 7 on OS 10.3 The plugin settings themselves will not even transfer from VST to AU. So all those old songs that use plugins that have made the transition to AU, still need to be rebuilt. And those old plugins that haven't made it, and never will? I'll have to find functional alternatives, and program similar settings, and then proceed rebuilding the song.

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:!: Warning: Philosophical bent ahead, proceed with caution :!:

It occured to me that the Computer Audio industry is much like many others - they have to keep moving or they die. No negativity meant in my analogy, but like sharks, they must keep swimming to stay alive.

Reminds me of the same game going on with computer hardware industry - the market is pretty much saturated - i.e. all those who are of the mindset to buy a computer already have one (at least one). So the only way to sell more is to convince everyone that what they currently have is outdated and under-rated, by coming out with something "better".

Trouble is that the computer industry is fast approaching the "wall" of physics concerning size and speed. What then? I predict processors will get bigger or more diversified throughout the motherboard to compensate. Or maybe they'll turn attention to the other components bottlenecking the processor and "improve" them (i.e. faster hard drives, wider busses, faster bus speeds).

Point is "they" will always have something to change/improve to keep "us" upgrading. And "we" will always succumb to our inherent need for novelty, coupled with the foraging drive hard-wired into our brains, and continue consuming.

Of course the positive side of all this is computers today are faster, cheaper, and generally more reliable then those built 5-10 years ago. And the PC audio world has literally blossomed since I entered it 10 years ago. So I guess it's a good thing overall for both parties.

Irony is that the average computer user being persuaded to upgrade their system, for whatever reason, really doesn't come close to utilizing the power they have now.

On the same vien, I'd say that most people running audio apps could freeze their setup as it stands today and it would take them the better part of their lives to fully utilize the tools they have now. They'd have everything they need (save maybe talent) to produce professional music 'til they kick it for real.......and that may be the only escape from upgrades......unless god's sellin some kinda package :lol:

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Computer audio is similar to digital photography with all the benefits and pitfalls. I'm not going to get into the benefits as most people are aware of them.

The pitfalls:

We can still remix etc. from multitrack tapes recorded decades ago (Beatles Anthology series etc.), will be be able to say the same of computer based recordings.
Almost any analog medium right back to wax cylinders can still be played. The proprietary nature of a lot a software will probably preclude this.

We can't remaster poor digital. If you took that once in a lifetime photograph in digital four years ago it would be with a 1 to 3 megapixel camera. Want to make an A3 print, forget it. The same with certain digital recordings. You can't enhance what's not there.

In digital audio and photography we delete what we don't need. Not sure about the song, delete it. Don't like the photograph, delete it. In photography this is going to lead to a dearth of social photography which is now so important to history. A lot of social documentary photographs were not taken by professional photographers but the negatives still exist. When Gary Winongrand (an import documentary and artistic photographer) died thousands of unprinted negatives were found. We still discover long lost tapes of important musical artists than can be rebuilt and completed. With classical music we have the notation.


I'll now go hide in the foxhole.
"It is better to say nothing and be thought an idiot, than open your mouth and prove it"

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leeturne wrote:
We can't remaster poor digital. If you took that once in a lifetime photograph in digital four years ago it would be with a 1 to 3 megapixel camera.
Oh, I imagine some brainbox is going to come up with some chaos based design to rectify this one day. Mind you, we'll all need better computers to do it at home, no doubt!.

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Well, if you use hardware instead of software to write songs you end up with the same problems. You sell your hardware and replace it with newer models. Then you open old projects and have to assin new sounds to many channels.

Just like programming, DOCUMENT! It is much easier if you name tracks appropriately and save text information about each channel.

Robert
All I need to be happy is one more VSTi.

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