Some are expensive, some are free

[lion_cub]

I think the problem with low priced or free products is that while there is some great ones available, they are burried amongst tons of crap ones. If you don't have lots of cash then you wade through the crap until you find something good.

If you're a pro with a big budget however, then you hand over some big bucks to Waves etc. and you get something you know is quality.

The expensive brands like Waves, Sony and NI have built up a reputation for plugs that are consistantly high quality, so people with the money are prepared to trust them. Now maybe you can cheap or free alternatives if you look hard enough, but if you have a big budget then maybe you don't bother and just go for something that's widely used and proven.

But hey I wouldn't know, I'm skint so I can only guess what its like to have a big budget

I would have thought that the problem with low priced plugins is a perceptual one. That is, people usually equate low prices with low quality.

Although you do raise an interesting point. Can someone allocate time and other resources to search for the right product ? Instead, they may just be willing to go with the big brands.

[snareSpanker]

Some things are worth the money. If I had the cash to spare, I would drop it on BFD in a second.

BFD doesn't really have a free alternative, though..

[eduardo_b]

I think the problem with low priced or free products is that while there is some great ones available, they are burried amongst tons of crap ones. If you don't have lots of cash then you wade through the crap until you find something good.

I looked at your synth and have downloaded the demo, but I also noticed that it will cost me $85 to purchase. Now, this probably puts Soup in the range of a lot of commercial synths (although one can only afford so many of these), and definitely lower than many others, so how did you decide on pricing? Not trying to put you on the spot, but am curious as to what factors you might use (i.e., cost of development, needed revenue stream to quit day job, market analysis). Nice synth, by the way, and I might well buy it in a group buy.

Group buys are interesting. I've seen some that cut the cost of the VST in half or even by two-thirds, and there seemed to be a lot of people lining up to participate. Yet I saw somewhere that the Princeton reverb group buy -- which cut the cost by half from $200 to $100 -- didn't get much response. Maybe it was the price, or maybe it was something else. Is a group buy something you'd consider or have done, and if so, how did it work out.

[Lawnmower Of The Damned]

There are some decent-ish sound fonts out there. Not the same quality, but it is free, and with the right EQ and compression it's not far off in SOME cases. You know, hip-hop, or other styles where the drums will be heavily compressed or even distorted.

Just like everything else there are free alternatives to BFD. Also just like everything else, the paid stuff has probably recieved a lot more production time and better equipment in the process.

I'm not saying that the soundfont guys are wasting their time, but honestly, what are the odds that they can get highly experienced engineers, top notch microphones and preamps, ad/da converters, and expensive drumkits to sample all for free? I'm sure that the investment that went in to making BFD was very substantial, and was far more than any sane person would be willing to spend to provide freebies to the community.

When it comes to the UAD-1 card, there are some things that you can do with it that you really wouldn't want to do without it's extra processing power. For instance, some of it's plug-ins upsample all the way to 192Khz. You'd be crazy to do that without the extra horsepower that the card provides.

There are still many reasons to buy paid software. There are also many reasons to keep up to date on freebies. In the end you just need to mix and match and find the sollution that fits you best. If you're happy with your freebies and inexpensive software then why complain about the price of expensive software?

And if some guy with too much money for his own good prefers the sound of expensive instruments and effects then why is it any bother to you? You're happy with what you've got, the rich guy is happy with what he's got and some developer has gotten a paycheck so he can pay the rent and feed his family. How is this anything other than a win-win situation?

[Lunch Money]

Some things are worth the money. If I had the cash to spare, I would drop it on BFD in a second.

BFD doesn't really have a free alternative, though..

Exactly. And there's a reason for that.

[mandolarian]

Cool Sig, Lawnmower. One of those over-priced, commercial sigs for rich guys?

[fjell_strom]

I guess the fundamental question that needs to be addressed is: Is there a relationship between cost and effectiveness. And if there is a relationship, then how strong is it? I suspect there is a very weak relationship between cost and effectiveness.

End of story. In some cases that relationship is strong and in others it is weak. Each developer's interest in turning a profit is not uniform. Ta da!

[Alex@ProgressAudio]

I looked at your synth and have downloaded the demo... so how did you decide on pricing? Not trying to put you on the spot, but am curious as to what factors you might use (i.e., cost of development, needed revenue stream to quit day job, market analysis). Nice synth, by the way, and I might well buy it in a group buy.

Hi, thanks for trying out the synth, glad you liked it
As you might guess there's a lot of factors involved. One aspect is charging a price that I feel is justified by the amount of work it took to create (at least a year from the beginning of the project, though not always full time). But the main factor was the pricing of the products I would be competing with (the main ones being Cameleon and Cube). My product is priced to offer very good value for money compared to these, especially since its still very powerful (and in some ways more powerful then the others). So while there are cheaper synths out there, Soup is cheap for an additive synth with those features.

The reason I'm forced to undercut their prices instead of going head to head is that those products have been around for a long time and because people have heard of them there's an assumption they are the best. When I first released it I wanted to price it similarly to Cameleon (which costs around $200) but people's reaction was "why should I buy yours when I can get Cameleon for about the same?". Well my answer is because if you try them side by side you may well prefer Soup!

So there is an assumption that my product is inferior to the well known ones with a good reputation. I had to drop the price to give people an incentive to actually check my synth out in the first place.

I haven't held a group buy but its something I've been considering since they seem to be popular. Depends if there seems to be a demand. I guess everyone wants to feel like they're smart and have got themselves a bargain, so they're more keen to hand over their cash!

Alex.

[SleepyP]

I think the problem with low priced or free products is that while there is some great ones available, they are burried amongst tons of crap ones.

EXACTLY!! i'm probably not unique in my VST collecting experience here on KVR: i come online looking for a specific thing, like a new reverb. I end up with like 12 free reverbs i gotta install, test, and filter through until i find the one or two good ones that i'll actually use. after like 5 of 6 different verbs, i start getting really bored with the whole thing, and sometimes i just have to go do something else cuz it's annoying. that time & effort is not something everyone has freely available and to some people it may not be worth the investment simply to save some money by using free alternatives.

the other thing i wanted to comment briefly on is this: there's so much bullshit advertising in the audio software game, it's astonishing!

[james0tucson]

I would have thought that the problem with low priced plugins is a perceptual one. That is, people usually equate low prices with low quality.

Are things like convo reverbs using patented algorithms or copyrighted impulse data that's expensive to license?

[jmh]

Eduardo_b Let me start by saying what a good, thoughtful response These tend to surprise me nowadays on KVR.

1.

While this is true, KVR seems to represent the largest gathering of VST developers and users outside of the professional market, so it's a good place -- in that sense -- for discussions like this. I don't know what "most of the market" means, but if you're referring to pro market, I guess you'd be correct given that their budgets are vastly greater than the rest of us, and they will pay more for what is assumed to be assurance they are getting the best quality money can buy.

Yep, KVR is just that. What I meant though is that most of the market, the buyers that is, don't hang out here in KVR. Personally, I'm sort of glad that the "pros" for a large part don't - discussions like these would turn so quickly into "I pay a lot for these, so they're better, shut up if you can't afford 'em" that it'd make my head spin.

And yeah, that assurance pays a big role in this... once again, I dare mention the "Mac effect" as an example of it (leaving out personal preferences, business needs (like having interchangeability between studios with projects) etc out of it, as we don't need to turn this into Mac vs. PC thing)

2. Volume of sales automatically increasing with cheaper prices isn't a rule or a fact, it's an effect that's known to happen but without a 100% certainty that it will.

Again, true, but what I was referring to was really pricing at the outset -- making the decison for the price point for a given volume that will yield a possible revenue stream sufficient for profit to keep the business going and pay for more development.

Yep, I hear you. If it was me pricing a product so it would pay back for the initial investment, support and possible r&d for new stuff, it still wouldn't turn into $400 for a synth or $300 for a compressor... but that would just be me, knowing which part of the market to target to and so on.

3. Some companies have been talking about this pricing issue and have revealed that they gain more income by pricing the product higher and aiming for a different section of the market, instead of catering for hobbyists / prosumers / KVRers-who-want-everything-in-groupbuys-with-discounts.

There is a lot of evidence (Grey Goose vodka proved it very well) that premium pricing can increase sales to those who want the "best" (the assumption that highest priced equals best in market) and those who can't afford the best but buy it anyway because it changes their self-perception. In the VST world, I can see the division between the small number of companies that price for lower volume and higher margins and all the rest.

Indeed. We can only be thankful of all the developers who have realized so far that decent income can be made without aiming for the ProTools end of the market (I'm intentionally leaving out factors such as piracy out of it). We have some amazing products that equal or surpass the highly priced competitors and don't cost an arm and a leg. Plus some of us are in the position to compare things and give out good, valuable information and opinions. But that's the "KVR effect" - people not reading sites like this are still sadly influenced by other sources such as magazines whose review policies (and reviews in general!) might not give an objective view on things... and the "Mac effect" wreaks havoc among people 'not in the know', a lot of people not interested in following things more closely still believe everything said about ProTools, how it's necessary for professional results, how everybody uses it and how it's so much ahead of the competition.

4. The "Mac effect".

And this seems to come back to my original post. What does a $700 Waves convolver have that Voxengo's $159 convolver doesn't? I don't know enough to make that call, and in the end it may be that no one can reliably pick a recording done with one or the other.

That's the "Mac effect". 'If it costs more, it's gotta be better'. Add to that the lack of interest in finding out about the alternatives, couple it with the "Mac effect" - 'it's expensive, and it's by WAVES so it has to be the best' - and the result is... 'all pros use Macs, you need PT for good results and Waves plugins are the best'.

Comparsions bla bla

Now we come to my favorite subject of all. Whether it is special speaker cables or VSTs or whatever, without true A/B tests it is essentially impossible to detect differences that aren't clearly obvious to begin with. And even A/B tests may reveal nothing. The standards for what represents the best sounds don't exist beyond obviously poorly recorded and mixed music. The tools used to achieve what one wants more often than not probably represent the least important factor unless those tools are difficult to use for whatever reason.

Well... knowing how 'informed' a person making comparisons is an important piece of information. If a person claims that the cheap plugin A gives better results than expensive plugin B, I need to know that the person has the equipment to do such comparisons and knows how to pull off the comparison to begin with... getting back to my original point, I've seen so many people yell how their current, not that expensive software setup is so much better than any of the big software (+hardware in some cases) systems without even having any experience with the latter. Hence, people need experience with both ends before passing on opinions and judgments... that's all.

I remember reading a letter in a music recording magazine from someone who tried to achieve the purest recordings by eliminating all processing and using specific microphones, etc. And my reaction was that there are so many variables in making, recording, mixing and listening to music that there is no such thing as a purest methodology. So whatever VSTs are used may have little to do with how good the final mix is because the tool is only as good as the person using it.

Yep, I agree. But the thing we have to bear in mind if we start comparing things is that we stick to comparisons instead of just coming up with irrelevancies such as "it's all about how good the music itself is" or "the end user doesn't care what gear you use" - I'm just trying to point this out so that it will be disregarded further on in the discussion (believe me, every thread in here that starts about comparisons gets into that at some point, unless some effort is made in the beginning to make sure it won't stray into that direction).

(My personal view on the matter differs from what I just wrote... a lot of stuff, not just audio apps, is way overpriced, sometimes the high price is met with higher quality...

So there's a price point where value for money is about equal, and below that there are bargins and there is junk, and above that there is more quality, but not much more, and pricing that has nothing much to do with real quality. For VSTs, I think the price points are often too high for commercial stuff that's downloadable and requires little support. Complex VSTs might be a different story, but even there $100 to $130 seems reasonable -- not $200, $500 or more. Yes, no?

I personally haven't met that price point yet, I only value things on what they provide. I might shell out $500 for an amazing EQ or compressor, but it would have to be a really special one, sounding like nothing else on the market.

However, I tend to think that people are getting somewhat spoiled with all the group buys etc. and are starting to expect everything to be cheap. While everybody's entitled to their opinions, what they should bear in mind is the overall costs involved in the process, all the development time, r&d, additional costs from having the UI done by someone else, manuals, websites and whatnot. It really annoys me when someone introduces a labor of love that's been in development for 6 months, the guy has done a lot of work and the first comment is "it's too pricey at $100" and the first question is "when's the group buy? I wanna have it but won't at the current price".

Add to this the "SynthEdit effect" (I love coming up with these! ) - the market is saturated with products, a lot of people are whipping up less-than-stellar products and pricing them accordingly (sorry for the pun to SE devs) and one outcome of this is that companies, be them big ones or just single developers, have a harder time trying to get back their valuable time spent on coming up with a product.

Freebies also have an effect on the market, both in good and in bad. It should force commercial developers into bettering their products to "justify" the prices, but a side effect of this is that people expect more for less, without realizing the business side of things at all... so both the devs and the users should perhaps get a little bit more realistic so we all could meet half way and everybody would gain something.

(And before the SE people jump on this, I'm not trying to imply that SE creations are inferior by nature, I use more than a dozen great SE creations every time I work on music - and there's a lot of "hand coded" plugins, ranging from free to expensive that aren't as good in my opinion as some SE equivalents... so there!)

Phew... sorry for this megapost, just thought it was impossible without all the quoting and explaining every comment so that people noticing only certain bits or words won't be jumping all over me without reading everything in context (force of habit from too much KVR)

Regards,

JMH

[Alex@ProgressAudio]

I agree with your point about freebies or group buys (though not implying that I disagree with your other points!).

It sometimes seems if someone charges for their product, some people react like the guy is ripping them off by having the nerve to ask for money! I think people undervalue software, especially considering the huge effort and time required to develop a decent plug

[eduardo_b]

I haven't held a group buy but its something I've been considering since they seem to be popular. Depends if there seems to be a demand. I guess everyone wants to feel like they're smart and have got themselves a bargain, so they're more keen to hand over their cash!

Alex.

Please understand that I am _not_ saying you should discount your synth just because I ask about a group buy. I think I'm faced with the reality that many here are, which is wanting to have tools to try new things, but not being able to simply buy anything and everything. And there is really a lot of good plug-ins to be had -- too many choices in some ways. So, it becomes a matter of trying to figure out which ones will probably provide the most creative return over the long term. What group buys do, I think, is allow more people to buy more plug-ins than they otherwise would, which might mean that developers like you are more likely to get paid back your hard work by having 10 times as many people buy at $40 as would at $85. Well, that's my theory based on the fact that I have bought plug-ins during group buys that I would otherwise simply not buy at list price -- not because they aren't "worth" it, but because there isn't enough money to go around.

--eduardo

[SleepyP]

i just thought of a related question: what's the cheapest plugin you guys have seen that still costs some established figure? (this specification rules out freeware & donationware where there is no specific ammount requested)

[Alex@ProgressAudio]

Well, that's my theory based on the fact that I have bought plug-ins during group buys that I would otherwise simply not buy at list price -- not because they aren't "worth" it, but because there isn't enough money to go around.
--eduardo

Agreed, as I said it is something I've considered, I wanted to see if there was some interest in a group buy for Soup, and from your comments it seems that good well be the case. I have to spend some time looking into how to set this up, but may be worth giving this a go

Alex