why are most soft synths and effects so expensive?

[Shane Sanders]

Warez will give you the mickey!

[René]

I know that about answering questions with questions, but... are effects and instruments expensive?

I'm very inclined to immediately answer "No way". Please, you oldies-like-me, come join and put over the table how much money you have spent in music gear in:

1970 to 1980
1980 to 1990
1990 to 2000
2000 afterwards

And please declare the real numbers, not those numbers for your wife. I have several rack modules which were "expensive spare parts for my car" as well, but let's be straigth here

We can face the price of goods in every field from two points of view: production cost, and market positioning.

Let's attack the production costs side first. If prices were set by production costs alone, we could say that the main reason why prices aren't lower is that the community using virtual instruments and effects is incredibly small. We're pioneers in this field, and as such we have to pay for it. It's not that you'll set an online company, produce a superb instrument, and sell 500 copies the same day you open, no. That's what you'll sell in a couple of years, unless you got a click.

The costs then are what others have mentioned: you need to get the latest compilers, development tools like installers, image editors, audio editors, etc. You need also to buy your testing hosts, as the major vendors won't send you NFR versions unless you are 'somebody'. Some demos will work, but they are never kept up to date and your customers won't wait till they update the demo so you fix your bugs.

This is a bit of taboo, but I gotta say it: you also need to buy your competition products, to analyze those carefully and be really competitive. If you hear a dev who says she didn't analyze her competition, she's lieing.

Of course, you'll see a full crew of 'companies' developing products using warezed compilers, photoshops , cracked hosts and competition instruments, so they don't get exposed. But I won't cover about that for now.

Then you need to finnance yourself to get enough time to work in your product for quite a while. I would say that if I would have got $50 for each hour I spent on z3ta+, I would have a private jet. That won't happen.

Now, the market positioning thing. You will see some companies which position their products $10 higher than the competition, just to transfer the idea that the product is better. Some others will be very aggressive, trying to sell you stuff for very low prices, sometimes hilarious. It's an art to evaluate what's the case in each company.

But as a bottom line, I would say that the prices for instruments are subject to the universal rules of supply and demand. If many people buys an instrument, price will rise. It doesn't really matter if the development cost of it is incredibly low. If noone buys it, price will drop, or product will be abandoned, or both.

In any case, I sustain what I said first: we're all incredibly lucky to be able to get such a huge amount of gear for so low prices.

-René

[BONES]

How many left-of-center, eco-friendly musicians think about the working conditions and environmental consequences involved with $150 Chinese-made mics?

Bollocks! I've been to China heaps of times and I am pretty sure the workers in those factories are as happy as workers anywhere. The cost of living is tiny by comparison to the west and I'm sure they want for nothng and are happy. I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it if I were you. Sure there are copies but I'll buy a brand name that's made in China without hesitation. Even a clone that is sold legally is probably legal, like generic supermarket products.

i have a lot more synths now than i ever did when i had to buy expensive hardware, 15 years ago there was very little i wanted that would cost me £150 let alone with the power and flexibility synths offer now.

That's a very convenient way to justify your habit but it is only look at one part of the picture. The other part is how many good instruments are available for free and how much more you really get by paying infinitely more [literally] for a commercial softsynth.

I mean, if I want a simple quality distortion foot pedal, I still have to pay around €100 at least - some of the great models even going up to 300-400.
That's certainly not justified by the cost of the used hardware.

Not when you can get something like an X-Vamp for around 100 euros. Again you are using the part of the situation that suits you without looking at the whole picture.

Besides, it's Jorgen's business to choose his own lifestyle choices for his own particular circumstances. I don't think it's fair to hold him up against other developers

Why not? Should we all just accept whatever everyone decides they want to do? That's stupid. I'm all for supporting the guy who tries to do the right thing by everyone, guys just like Jorgen and Richard Hoffman who seem to have no problem creating great software and supporting a large customer base with comparatively little income. Those are the guys I want to give my money to, not the guy who deliberately prices his products to keep the number of users manageable.

$150 can buy any of several VSTi that is capable of making a whole track with. That's damn good value.

But you can also do it for $0 which makes $150 seem rather pricey. That, I believe, is the point.

Are any freeware dev's willing to put up download numbers?

I have no idea about actual downloads but our synth page averages around 150,000 hits a month.

However I can say that with average VSTi price climbing above the $150 mark, happening at the same time that a lot of VST users like myself are saturated in VST products and have all the bases covered....it's getting harder and harder to buy these $150 and up VSTs.

And you would think that any sane marketing model would dictate that product prices should fall in a satuarted market, wouldn't you? Yet we see precisely the opposite.

Comparable with hardware... hmm... I'm in the market for a small hardware modular synth, if you know where to buy a Doepfer or similar for VSTi-money, PM me

Well I'm just in the market for good instruments and I paid less for my Alesis Micron than you charge for GURU and it has drums, sequencing and a great synth engine. Then there's all the metal and plastic and LCD and triple-boxing and transport all over the world of a bulky, physical product. And do you really think that their development costs were any lower than yours or higher by a decent factor?

So when you or some of your friends uses cracks you / they are not better than a shoplifter; paying customers has to pay for what the thieves steal. So if you want cheaper products it start with your self and your friends; don’t make excuses for using cracks, start paying and convince your friends to do the same.

HERE ! HERE! There is never an excuse for stealing.

As hussle bussle as the scene appears here at kvr, most people are still unaware of and lack a way to be exposed to the VST world. At least that's what I thought.

As I said, we get 150,000 hits a month without doing anything special to promote it. In fact, haing free VSTi's is our promotion.

on one hand you have us who grew up on hardware who say "Wow, this is cheap!"

I did and I don't. If I could justify spending $300-$400 on a plug-in I would but the quality and range of available freebies and the existence of great hardware like the Micron make it impossible.

all I can do is ask them why should the developers put out anything if they're not compensated fairly for their time, costs and efforts?

Because there are plenty of developers who seem to be willing to put in similar effort and offer much better prices.

Observations on this hopelessly complex topic:
Warez can be/is a delivery route to new users, especially ones that flunk around with software till they feel comfortable with it.

At which point, unfortunately, the majority of people continue to use Warez

Yeah, I know a guy who had a No.1 hit single who has never paid for a single item of music software, yet he does everything on his PowerBook. Worst of all, he just doesn't see any problem with that or with collecting the dole and not telling them about any money he earns from music, etc, etc. And he is well respected in the dance scene here.

Serious sequencers are an attempt at a professional solution at thousands of dollars a pop.

That is just your perception but, as an example, I know for a fact that Richard Hoffman's goal with ORION was to make a virtual studio of professional studio quality and I believe wholeheartedly that he has done precisely that for just a few hundreds of dollars. He never envisioned doing it for hobbyists, despite his pricing. Th eunfortunate fact, however, is that no-on ewill take it seriously unless it does cost thousands, which is kind of what rankles me with this market.

Now whether quality freeware will lead to developers lowering their prices more and more remains to be scene. It could have the opposite effect, causing a severe rift between cheap VSTs and really, really expensive VSTs, with the middleground increasingly nonexistent. Guess we'll see?

Whaddya mean, we'll see? That is precisely the situation now. Find me a non-SE VSTi in the $40-$70 bracket that is less than a couple of years old. There are plenty of things from 3 or 4 years ago but no-one makes stuff for that market any more, although synths like FabFilter Twin could not have been sold for more than about $50-$60 3 or 4 years ago.

A very big part of my choice to return to hardware was the fact that machines I used twenty years ago are exactly the same today. Nothing, but nothing, in the native platform is stable. Going all software is like jumping on a conveyor belt that drives you forward towards another conveyor belt. The Yamaha TX81Z is an atrocious little fart box of a twenty year old bass synth, but I can program one completely intuitvely. That intimacy just does not ever happen with audiosofts unless you chose (as I have) to nail down a platform and go with it, come what may. No upgrades, no new toys.

What's stopping you? The last new synth I got hold of was probably JunoX2 which would be about what, 3 or 4 years ago now? Nobody forces you onto the treadmill and I've not had any problem being totally objective about what a new instrument has to offer over what I already own. Its completely and utterly up to you. In fact I have been using ORION for much longer than any hardware sequencer I ever owned. I think the average useful life of any of my hardware was around 3 years with the longest serving being my O1R/W which I used for maybe 5 years, about the same time as I have been using ORION, but I only used it as a sequencer for maybe half that time.

Why has all this wonderful stuff produced no significant genre of its own?

Because, by and large, it is only emulating what has already existed for many years. I don't see where it has presented any opportunity for this at all.

Please, you oldies-like-me, come join and put over the table how much money you have spent in music gear in:

1970 to 1980______ $ 0
1980 to 1990______ $25,000
1990 to 2000______ $30,000
2000 to - ________ $ 8,000 [including PC]
And only a hundred or so of the last figure was on software. So what? None of the products that the topic refers to are included there because, like the original poster, I cannot see the value in virtually any commercial plug-ins when there are so many good free ones and I can make my own on an application that cost me $20.
If I was a VSTi whore and bought any of the expensive VSTi that I like and a "professional" host that figure could easily double, without any significant improvement in ability or quality, which puts it in the same neighbourhood as the previous decades, even though this one is only half over. By 2010 this could easily be the most expensive decade of the lot. So if you think that the price of using software based instruments is trivial, you are sadly mistaken.



OT- For a long time now I have harboured a dream of one day creating a single reply tha twould take up an entire page. Hopefully this is that reply. here goes...

[BONES]

Bugger! Not even close!

[eduardo_b]

And please declare the real numbers, not those numbers for your wife.

As far as she knows, all the music software I use are demo versions.

[bduffy]

How many left-of-center, eco-friendly musicians think about the working conditions and environmental consequences involved with $150 Chinese-made mics?

Bollocks! I've been to China heaps of times and I am pretty sure the workers in those factories are as happy as workers anywhere. The cost of living is tiny by comparison to the west and I'm sure they want for nothng and are happy. I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it if I were you. Sure there are copies but I'll buy a brand name that's made in China without hesitation. Even a clone that is sold legally is probably legal, like generic supermarket products.

There are a lot of dreadful factories in China, with conditions that westerners wouldn't dream of working in for tiny pay (you know the drill). But(for example) Studio Projects' partner, 797 Audio, goes way back and seems to be on the up-and-up. I think it's the garment/retail industry that gets the real nasty, "free trade zone" hellholes; so I agree, nothing to worry about...until China takes over the world, My Comrades.

[FaX]

Why is it that when it was impossible to pirate musical gear and recording equipment (because it was all hardware) and it cost a significant fraction of the price of your house, people found the money to buy them in the hundreds of thousands, but now that they cost less than your TV, or in some cases less than a good meal or filling your car with petrol, they're suddenly too expensive for even a fraction of those people to afford?

I think you need to rephrase this in a major way.
Most hardware units do NOT sell in the hundreds of thousands and definately did not shift in uber spheric quantities you mention until the DX-7 and later on Korg M1.
Even then I doubt M1's sold in the 100's of thousands either..
I think you'd be suprised at the unit sales of a large number of hardware pieces (many where quite small).
All the custom Buchla / Moog modulars for example where made on an order only basis.
The production run of even the Prohet5 would be no where near that high either.
Your question is well posed none the less but not based on real world hardware sales figures I might add.

[Gargoyle]

Besides, it's Jorgen's business to choose his own lifestyle choices for his own particular circumstances. I don't think it's fair to hold him up against other developers

Why not? Should we all just accept whatever everyone decides they want to do? That's stupid. I'm all for supporting the guy who tries to do the right thing by everyone, guys just like Jorgen and Richard Hoffman who seem to have no problem creating great software and supporting a large customer base with comparatively little income. Those are the guys I want to give my money to, not the guy who deliberately prices his products to keep the number of users manageable.

To clarify: My point was that consumers (musicians) and suppliers (developers) each have their own criteria for what they seek. That may be software they can afford and is usable for their needs in the first case or software they can afford to make and will supply them with an income in the latter case. The rest as they say is determined by the market.

So, of course you CAN accept what a developer chooses to do. Your acceptance comes in the form of your decision to choose whether you buy or you don't. But, again this is an unusual market in the sense that we get to know the people involved rather more closely than most consumers do...

And incidentally, I'm all for supporting people like Jorgen and have done so. I call that doing the right thing too.

I'm not sure we disagree

[blaster78]

i have a lot more synths now than i ever did when i had to buy expensive hardware, 15 years ago there was very little i wanted that would cost me £150 let alone with the power and flexibility synths offer now.

That's a very convenient way to justify your habit but it is only look at one part of the picture. The other part is how many good instruments are available for free and how much more you really get by paying infinitely more [literally] for a commercial softsynth.

thats total bollocks....

i use freebies just as much as i use my more expensive purcheses. all have a place and thanks to the (very very cheap) price, i can now afford options.

not everyone writes there own synths (or has an interest in doing so) and not everyone writes music like you.

cheers,

steve.

[shamann]

Whaddya mean, we'll see? That is precisely the situation now. Find me a non-SE VSTi in the $40-$70 bracket that is less than a couple of years old.

Not a synthesizer, but Livelabs Liveslice fits squarely in that market. Personally, I also think it is the best software intrument to come out this year.

[blaster78]

Whaddya mean, we'll see? That is precisely the situation now. Find me a non-SE VSTi in the $40-$70 bracket that is less than a couple of years old.

i just bought yava2, metallurgy and glitch. all of which were that price range.

meanwhile i have a heap of shite that cost $1500 in 1986 making my studio a mess.

progress eh

steve.

[René]

So what? None of the products that the topic refers to are included there because, like the original poster, I cannot see the value in virtually any commercial plug-ins when there are so many good free ones and I can make my own on an application that cost me $20.

BONES, I'm pretty sure it works for you and for your music. But not everyone wants, or has the skills, to invest his spare time on those activities.

We could follow the same line of thinking with Linux and Windows, or OpenOffice and MSOffice: there're great free alternatives, but the mainstream won't go there. And it's not about the qualities involved: I have heard great music done with free stuff, but that's another whole thread.

Actually, I think that all that freeware out there reinforces the concept I wanted to transmit: We're so lucky of living today, that we can get great stuff by spending $0.

And if we want a supertopnotch thing, we'll perhaps spend $300. Ten years ago, the alternatives to get 'fresh' sounds were ten times more expensive.

-René

[blaster78]

BONES, I'm pretty sure it works for you and for your music. But not everyone wants, or has the skills, to invest his spare time on those activities.

And if we want a supertopnotch thing, we'll perhaps spend $300. Ten years ago, the alternatives to get 'fresh' sounds were ten times more expensive.

-René

so very true, not everyone has the skills or the time and those that don't (at least me) think that spending a few hundred dollars is not bad for the fun i have with the synth.

shit, i can blow a £100 on a night out and still catch the last train home at 11:35

i'll take teh "hyper expensive, massive ripoff" synth please (unless you ask me at 5:30 after work in which case we are going for a beer or 10)

cheers,

steve.

[Muff Wiggler]

Whaddya mean, we'll see? That is precisely the situation now. Find me a non-SE VSTi in the $40-$70 bracket that is less than a couple of years old.

there's quite a few too, and some of them are really, really good (as good or better than the most expensive ones). not SM or SE, handcoded. Tiny God Meridian is one. NuBi/Spinner/XOvr is one.

Microtonic is $19 outside of your range, but it's so very good I think we can make an exception on it.

There's eXT and ERA as well, both in your range. I don't think that is stretching the point, because they are both 'VSTi' dlls, and most would agree that a powerful sequencing environment counts as an 'instrument' in the right hands.

I could go on, but really there's lots. It's just perception. The expensive guys get remembered because they are expensive. The cheap ones get ignored and forgotten because they are cheap.

and in hand-coded vst's, i very often find that the quality is much higher than you find in the coded-by-teams big corporate plugins. usually by far actually. it's another thread, but having multiple people contributing to a development, plus a comittee of marketing people and managers etc. etc. making design decisions - it's a recipe for shitty software most time.

[Muff Wiggler]

who here loves audiodamage?

about 6 of us I think.

see what i mean?

how many threads have you seen where people are talking about N.I.B4? compared to how many where people are talking about NuBi? why? NuBi shits all over B4. go figure huh.