ArtsAcoustic site and ArtsAcoustic Reverb demo`s online now

[nick at artsacoustic]

How do we know if these will run on Longhorn or VST 3.0 or whether the companies minting them will be around to update them?

we diddn`t build up ArtsAcoustic with that purpose. believe it or not.

What are you saying - that you have no intention of supporting the next version of windows due within 2 years?

no. _exactly_ the opposite is the case.
we diddn`t build up ArtsAcoustic for kickin`it off.
our intension is of course to support upcoming technologies, operating systems and platforms.
as you might have noticed i stated that an au version will come up, too.

I have several VST reverbs including a couple of convolution verbs and they were all cheaper than yours.

as for the algorithmic reverbs available for native vst, i doubt that they reach our flexibility in balance to our quality.
convolution reverbs are out of comparsion, as they might sound good, but lacking of the possibility of adjustment as one might want to have, on top of the fact, that they cannot offer true stereo with a single stereo ir. as for multi channel convoluter, i have up to now not seen any multichannel ir`s that
were recorded in relation to each other, offering true stereo behaviour. adjusting your whole production to the reverb is inacceptable for us.
completely out of comparsion.

You might consider establishing your company's reputation for quality, longevity and support before going for top dollar on your plugins. This approach has been pursued by quite a few successful vendors.

i strongly doubt we`re "top dollaring" our product.
about your statement on reputation of our company and support of our products, this is exactly what we are doing. i can proove that by the time.
you can`t proove that we`re not.
if you made bad experiances, it`s your right to be careful. but don`t blame us with a such completely unprooven statement.
yes, we want to be paid for our work.
and no, we are not throwing away our products, just because we are new on this buiseness.
you have the possibility to proove and test our plugin to the bone _before_ you actually consider to purchase it. according to your post one can assume that you are forced to buy the "cat in the bag" way overpriced.
this is not the case.
we are not charging 300-400 euro for our plugin, like the upcoming companies do.
our price is in a reasonable range for the quality our reverb offers.
if _you_ don`t wheight it that way, again, you have the freedom of choice. but it`s not correct to blame us for not forfilling your taste.
other users seem to actually wheight our plugin different as you do.
but please understand that i cannot let stand, that you put us in comparsion with companies that rip off their customers.
i have no problem if you do so _if_ you actually got ripped off by us.
up to now, this is not the case.
please accept this.

[nick at artsacoustic]

i don`t really understand you guys:
if we did as you say, you`d have to buy a new computer and a new soundcard at least, just to open the plugin 2 or 3 times.
summarize the price of that.
and then go for a high class hardware product, as the cost in the same range.
how could that be a market?
sorry folks, just not our opinion, sorry.

Hey Nicky, in some of your previous posts you kind of implied that what was holding you back from making something as nice sounding as high end lexicons etc. was what you believed to be their too intensive for generic cpu dsp usage, right? I found that to be a sort of bold statement that needs backing up; if you think you can do it, prove it.

sorry, where did i say that ???
show me that post.
just to get that staight:
i never said that.
and, indeed, this would have been a bold statement )
i answered something like that of course we could make a better reverb which leads to higher cpu usage.
i never said we could/or even would like to do a lexicon reverb. lexicon is and stays lexicon.
tc is and stays tc.
ArtsAcoustic is and stays ArtsAcoustic.
not that we don`t like lexicon or tc, but we want to do our own thing with our own sound character.
so, in fact, i nerver said that.

[Peter Pan]

This is what you wrote: "if a reverb is coming out that sounds as good as lexicon or tc i am sure that there is no practical use, if you don`t want to bounce/freeze.
also you have to keep in mind, that, if this lexi-tc reverb uses the amount of cpu that we strongly believe it does, you`d have to buy a second computer/soundcard to make it actually work the way you want. adding theese prices you will be able to buy a big lexicon or tc harware unit, so this fails for us."

So you didn't 'say' you could make something like tc/lexicon (quality-wise), you 'implied' it (pointing out you would need much dsp/cpu power to make it work), which is something else.

It's nice to see that you want to have your own sound character, that's a good thing

[nick at artsacoustic]

This is what you wrote: "if a reverb is coming out that sounds as good as lexicon or tc i am sure that there is no practical use, if you don`t want to bounce/freeze.
also you have to keep in mind, that, if this lexi-tc reverb uses the amount of cpu that we strongly believe it does, you`d have to buy a second computer/soundcard to make it actually work the way you want. adding theese prices you will be able to buy a big lexicon or tc harware unit, so this fails for us."

So you didn't 'say' you could make something like tc/lexicon (quality-wise), you 'implied' it (pointing out you would need much dsp/cpu power to make it work), which is something else.

It's nice to see that you want to have your own sound character, that's a good thing

no, i diddn`t say that. i diddn`t even imply it.
what i meant, was, due the nature of the aspects of cpu`s vs. dsp chips that are buildt for lexicon exactly after thier needs (wich is what i stated in a previous or later on post)it is not necessarily the case that a hig end reverb like lexicon, coded on their dsps takes as less power when it has to be coded in c++ on a generic cpu, where the requirements are never equal to a custom designed dsp.
this IOO would probably lead to way higher cpu usage.
thatfor we think it`s not much of sense, and that might be _one_ of those reasons, why lexicon (or some other dev) don`t do this.
it leads to the fact that most of the advantages of the vst world (such as multiple usage of this reverb,etc) are gone.
if one still wants to use the advantages of vst, he`d have to buy a new computer and a new soundcard at least. which is very pricey, and most of the users who could afford this, simply would buy the hardware instead (resell amount, etc).
if they can afford _this_, they mostly wouldn`t care much about the up-price to high end hardware.
result of this is, that this might be the reason nobody did it up to now, as the chance that they would sell it in a needed ammount is not too big.
you have to consider that the biggest ammount of money, that the user would spend, goes _not_ to the developer of that reverb then, but to the soundcard and the computer dsitributor.

[alex at artsacoustic.com]

Hello forum participants.

First thanks for all input we have got from everybody sofar. We appreciate every single criticism, suggestions or any feedback.

To clearify some topics i would like to give you the following informations:

1. Company
ArtsAcoustic is a new company on the market. But the people behind ArtsAcoustic are long time market players. The team consits of 3 programmers, 2 sound engineers, 3 musicans and a business man.

2. Technology
The development of our first product started somewhen in late 2003. From the beginning we decided to support both major platforms on the market: MAC OSX and Windows XP. Therefor we already have gone through several technology changes and a huge amount of different host applications.
The ArtsAcoustic Reverb is not meant to compete directly with the so famous hardware reverbs. This is on the one hand because the technology and hardware possibilities are different and on the other hand it is simply a fact of patent bound business restrictions.

3. Product
The ArtsAcoustic Reverb going to be available soon from within our website. It will cost EUR 189,00 for EU customers and USD 189,00 for all other countries. After considering several business cases we decided this pricing. We could have made our product cheaper but this would have meant significant cutings in the customer support (troubleshooting, future updates, ...). We believe that the current pricing is compareable to our competition and we are sure that you will appreciate our support services.

4. Future
Right now we cannot tell much about future updates or future products. But we are very confident that the today's and upcoming hosts in future will still support the current VST technology.

[egbert]

Hi Alex,

Thankyou - that was a clear and well expressed post addressing most of the comments thus far.

I'm still an advocate of lower prices and higher sales volume - look at the superb Jamstix debuting at 89/99 dollars US and obviously that product is the result of a lot of development and the rate at which it is evolving is phenomenal.

WIth reverbs, the quality standard is still hardware. My expectation is that software reverbs will continue to evolve and with so many new ones appearing the best will keep raising the bar - rendering earlier products obsolete. I already have several older VST verbs that have not been updated ( they were superseded mostly) and which I now never use. This makes VST reverb FX very disposable in my view and this affects my perception of their value in hard currency.

We are on the threshhold of a big increase in available CPU with dual core processors so coders will have more resources to work with.

Anyway - it is your business so ultimately you make the call on pricing.

Good luck with your venture.

Eg

[jasonsantiago]

customers love the simple fairy tale of going for higher volume and cheap price thinking oh if you sell twice as many at half the price you'll be fine. At half the price though depending on the margin you'll need to get 3-4 times as much. Say the reverb cost $60 to produce per copy. Now they get $129 per copy in profit, but at $99 they only get $39. I'm not actually predicitng any real profits here, just an example. It's hard to run a business in plugins selling for less than $100.

[egbert]

customers love the simple fairy tale of going for higher volume and cheap price thinking oh if you sell twice as many at half the price you'll be fine. At half the price though depending on the margin you'll need to get 3-4 times as much. Say the reverb cost $60 to produce per copy. Now they get $129 per copy in profit, but at $99 they only get $39. I'm not actually predicitng any real profits here, just an example. It's hard to run a business in plugins selling for less than $100.

LOL Can you be serious?

Think about it - the reverb doesn't cost ANYTHING per copy to produce. It is just bits not molecules.

It has fixed development costs - which are the same if they sell 1 or 1 million. If they sell 4 times as many they make four times the income but have greater support costs. They also have more customers for future sales. They also get more word of mouth/buzz in the online forums transmitted from their customer base.

[munchkin]

Say the reverb cost $60 to produce per copy.

I've got some copies of John Cage's 4'33". They cost me $3000 but I'll do you a deal for $1500. That just about covers my production costs.

[dlt123]

Alex, I just PM'd you.
DennisT

[AndrewSimon]

LOL Can you be serious?

Think about it - the reverb doesn't cost ANYTHING per copy to produce. It is just bits not molecules.

Running a business is not free.
Rent, Payroll, Servers, advertising and that does not include the development of the product where you pay top dollars (or Euros) for programmers, up front, for a whole year, without making any profit.

So what if you can duplicate it "for free" , there is still a huge over head and initial investment.
These products also have a relatively short life span and the market size is not that great.

Don't get me wrong I want a discount too but "trying to convince" the developer "this way" is not right and counter productive.

[egbert]

LOL Can you be serious?

Think about it - the reverb doesn't cost ANYTHING per copy to produce. It is just bits not molecules.

Running a business is not free.
Rent, Payroll, Servers, advertising and that does not include the development of the product where you pay top dollars (or Euros) for programmers, up front, for a whole year, without making any profit.

So what if you can duplicate it "for free" , there is still a huge over head and initial investment.

Did you actually read this thread or my post? A novel idea I know but I commend it to you.

I responded not to the developer but to another poster who suggested a price in dollars per copy to produce software distributed online. That is clearly a ridiculous notion and the bits Vs atoms analysis is well known.

[jasonsantiago]

"I responded not to the developer but to another poster who suggested a price in dollars per copy to produce software distributed online"

I know I made a generalization, welcome to speech
all software has ongoing costs for updates, customer relation, support, website upkeep, etc.
furthermore any good company will make sure that they are calculating enough profit per sale to also invest in r&d for the next product.

software companies DO make per unit profit estimations, just like any other business.

To actually calculate profit per sale unfortunately you do have to make estimations as to how much the software costs to produce. These costs, like any product, will change over time. But to make any unit profit estimation you need to guess cost of the product. I know the generalization is very upsetting to you, but it is a reality of business.

So no someone downloading a new copy does not cost nothing. Sometimes for a software company they may lose money, especially selling at $90. How? The customer has problems or issues with the software, taking up 2 hours of customer support time. These people might be paid $20 an hour, and at 2 hours have a $40 cost. The $30 profit is now lost. You can't run a business of $99 software and stay alive. Cheap software like that is for hobbyist plugin developers who have another job but also sell software for fun in their own free time.

[Left Headphone]

It's hard to run a business in plugins selling for less than $100.

Well, how does Voxengo do it. If this is true, he should of went out of business along time ago...

[jasonsantiago]

Does it support him full time with no other jobs?