why are most soft synths and effects so expensive?

[waveriderarts]

Each meter of distance from your monitor speaker to your ear contributes 3 ms of latency. A typical 80ies digital synth has 5+ ms latency, when played with its built in keyboard. I think 7ms were considered top notch back then. It's more when played over a MIDI daisy chain.

Very imformative post thank you. The number seems so small but in my experience latency is a problem for me.

It was in the '80 when I dropped MIDI for good, I was using those MIDI daisy chained slow synths back then, way too crappy timing. Especially when compared to a Tr-808,-909, analog sequencers and all analog synth setup I used for the following 5 years.

Such a setup needs lots of wires, but syncs beatifully and the groove is mad.

Personally I start to feel problems over 7ms, but will ocasionally record at 10-12ms for pads and stuff.

I am now at the stage that I won't buy many more plugins because I a am synthetiser guy who likes real-time, and would need another PC to use stuff like the Korg ms-20 vst or the EmuX sampler (witch I already own, but by itself can bring my PC to its knees). I have seen a couple of times a guy with a laptop who uses a Nord Modular G2, it compensates for the lack of synthesis power of his laptop. Works real nice. (btw incredible instrument with a nice software editor).

So I think I would be better served by a Micron/Electribes/cheap grooveboxes setup, that would be less expensive than a second PC with expensive host/plugs. But the second PC setup would be cheaper than some hi-end h/w synths like a virus, Nord Modular, Moog voyager etc...

Btw I re-discovered the PC in music after my all analog years with Buzz, witch has hundreds of software instruments and fx for free. Then the availability of good free vst plugins made me swith to vst. Then I bought a couple of hosts, then some good and affordable vsts (HG fortunes, MicroTonic, Dk+ drum sampler, a few others all among the cheapest). And if I ever buy expensive vst instruments, it is going to be the fault of the free ones....

Maybe some devs do not seem to see the value of their free offerings, if I ever investigate spectra it will be because I use the classsic plugin series, well some spend a lot of advertising money to get brand recognition in other industries, by giving free plugins you will build a name and that is worth a lot of $$$. But it may take some time, let people get to that stage of development, it takes time to sort everything out for a newbie. But in the end your name will be on many many desktop, some businesses do extraordinary stuff just for that.

[Lawnmower Of The Damned]

As far as I'm concerned, software is fantasticly cheap for the most part. There are some things that seem like they might not offer much for their price, but most of it is great.

I'm about halfway through the process of building my studio and the total cost once finished should be somewhere around $25,000. I've got tons of VST instruments and effects on there, but they are by far the cheapest part of the list.

I suppose that's a big part of the pricing problem. You've got students who are struggling to get by, then you've got guys like me who are wiling to spend over $3,000 on a single mic pre-amp.

Let's take a look at the cost of drums for a moment. Musician's Friend has a Pearl Masters MMX Custom Maple 4-Piece Shell Pack going for $2,279, a Pearl 8-Ply Maple Soprano Snare Drum for $289, and then some cymbals and various other hardware like kick-pedals and such for a combined price of roughly $3,870.

Now you have a complete kit, but it's not miced so you'll need about 8 studio quality mics. For decent mics we'll say (And this is seriously low-balling) $300 a piece. So we're up to $6,270 but we haven't got anything to plug the mics into. So we'll add a Mackie Onyx mixing board with 8 pre-amps, and we'll plug that into an 8 channel Apogee Rosetta 800. So you're all set to record now, at a grand total of $9,570.

Or you could buy Drumkits From Hell Superior or BFD for about $9,270 less and you won't even have to build an expansion to your house to fit all the drum stuff in!

You could argue that there are cheaper drums, mics, pre-amps and A/D converters out there, but if BFD and DKFHS were recorded at that quality then you'd be better of with them than a $300 drumkit from Walmart and a couple $10 RadioShack mics plugged into your Audigy.

My studio may be costing me a fortune at $25,000, but it would be more like $75,000 if it weren't for all the great inexpensive software out there. If the price of quality drums alone is close to $10,000 then how much would it be for a nice piano, a warehouse full of vintage synths and of course, an entire symphonic orchestra!

[Amberience]

Jesus f**king h. christ man.. even if I were a millionaire I'd never spend 3 grand on a mic preamp! Are you crazy???

[HanafiH]

I did some research into the actual production runs of the most famous and legendary synths. Sources include the Synth museum and the Dave Smith Ego museum.

SCI Prophet 5: 7,000 units
SCI Prophet 10: 1,000 units
SCI Pro 1: 10,000 units

Yamaha CS80: 2,000 units
Yamaha DX-7: 160,000 units (largest selling synth in history)

(Original Moog company)
Moog Minimoog: 12,000+ units
Moog Prodigy: 11,000 units
Moog Memory: 3,000+ units

Korg MS10: 10,000+ units

ARP 2600: 3,000 units
ARP Odyssey: 3,000 units

PPG Wave (2.2): 300 units
Wave 2.3: 700 units

Oxford Oscar: Last known sequential serial #: 472.

[chrishurley]

Synths and effects are so expensive because people can and will pay it. If no one bought $400 effects, they'd be less expensive.

[JonHodgson]

Yamaha DX-7: 160,000 units (largest selling synth in history)

Interesting, from Sound on Sound

"In a marketplace where a synth that sells a few tens of thousands of units is considered a success, one that reportedly sold 250,000 surely exceeds a manufacturer's wildest hopes. Such an instrument was the Korg M1, the widely-beloved Sample + Synthesis workstation that can rightly be called the most popular synth of all time. Released in 1988 at a UK retail price of £1499, it was manufactured until 1995 — and seven years is a very long time in music technology. Although Korg won't verify the quarter of a million figure I've just mentioned, they do tell me that 100,000 were manufactured during the first two years of the M1's life, serial number 100,000 having rolled off the production line in November 1990."

The number I gave earlier was from another source, and it seems perhaps exagerated.

[shamann]

I thought there were around 2000 Oscars made. Wasn't that one of those tidbits that flew around when Imposcar came out?

[HanafiH]

I thought there were around 2000 Oscars made. Wasn't that one of those tidbits that flew around when Imposcar came out?

Well for 'research' read twenty minutes spent on Google. The scale of the synth business when people have to pay for the product is nothing like the scale of the synth business when they don't.

That's why I've lost interest in whingeing about warez any more. The people who will pay are so very much more important than those who won't.

[JonHodgson]

I thought there were around 2000 Oscars made. Wasn't that one of those tidbits that flew around when Imposcar came out?

That's the number given by Paul Wiffen, who was one of the main guys involved. I'd be a little surprised if he was really out by a factor of 4.

[shamann]

I'd be a little surprised if he was really out by a factor of 4.

It would be really funny if he was.

[BONES]

250,000 people found something like £1500 to buy an M1, and if you look at the figures of DX7s and D50s, making a guestimate that some people would have two or more units, but also that some people would have something completely different, I don't think it's unfair to estimate that 10 years ago there were at least 500,000 people worldwide who had enough desire to make music to find the means to spend over £1000 pounds on it (and bear in mind that they probably had to buy other stuff, at similarly high prices).

The market for VSTis should, if anything, be considerably larger

Not necessarily. There are countless cover-bands and the like who are never gonna be interested in computer-based music because it just doesn't suit their requirements at all. So whilst it is reasonable to assume that there is a huge cross-over, there will always be a signifcant proportion only interested in one or the other. In fact I am often surprised at the kinds of music some people around here use electronics for and the vast majority of musical types I know have less than no interest in computer-based music but have some interest in hardware.

that's five BONES. Good adding you do down there.

Except that you discounted three of them yourself.

I have found you get what you pay for. I have plenty low range priced products and most of them are too buggy to use.

Whilst there may be some of that I would have to strongly disagree with the sentiment of this statement. There are some excellent, well-made and totally reliable free synths and effects. More than enough to make polished, professional music with ease.

With a higher price range product you get:
... new versions and new features for a much lower cost. And this for many years to come. Continuous improvements on product.

There are plenty of lower priced products that offer far more of this than higher-priced ones.

H/w synth manufacturers' total sales numbers have constantly dropped, from what I've seen of the figures...yet every year those h/w synths do more and more things for less and less money. Bones mentioned the Micron...very good value, and I'm amazed they can make any profit (maybe they don't) And look at Alesis - they very nearly went tits-up a handful of years ago - I strongly suspect they still don't make stellar profits. They've even gone back to having lots of knobs and controllers (which is what us the users demanded for many a year) and still sales drop. I fail to see how s/w is immune to the same conditions.

Surely the fate of hardware has been largely at the hands of software? So unless something comes along to threaten the status of software I see no parallel whatsoever.

Some of the figures mentioned - M1s in the 100s of 1000s and at a price that still needed alot of saving-up for most musicians. VSTi - 5000 if you're lucky. Seems to me, the cheaper and more freely available the synths are, the more they struggle.

But my M1 simplified my set-up enormously. It was the first workstation and as such offerred a totally new experience that made life easier for performers like me. OTOZH, expensive VSTi make my life considerably less simple on a couple of levels without offerring me any actual benfit to justify the expense.

So anyone can shout for cheaper and cheaper products, but it might just mean they end up with less choice of truly useable synths.

As I've said several times now, I don't find any of the not-cheap instruments anything even approaching usable.

The reason they do [charge high prices] - in my opinion - is because people don't know any better. They don't know that they could get very similar sounds from Minimogue as they could a real Moog or Arturia's Moog Modular.
People just don't investigate. They go out and buy whatever is the key word that month, and companies play on this.

Exactly! Almost. I don't know that companies "play" on it but they certainly benefit from it.

There are more unknown and unsuccessful "just doing it for the joy of doing it" musicians and composers, than there are Hans Zimmer wannabes. But companies are consistently appealing to the latter, rather than the majority. That's just the way I see it.

I actually see it the other way around. A lot of the current crop of really goo, but really expensive synths seem to me to be aimed far more at knob-twiddling nerds than people who just want to get on with the job of creating music. i.e. They are geared far more to the process than to the end result.

Filterscape is $129 right? That works out to £72GBP. Now most of the stuff it does I can do with my current plugins and automation. So no, I don't think paying £72 quid for a plugin that I essentially already have is a good idea.

I don't think you could easily manage to do what Filterscape is doing with your existing plugins.
But then, that might only be me.

That's taking a very literal approach and I don't see it as a valid argument. I'm sure there are a hundred ways to achieve any result.

Yamaha DX-7: 160,000 units (largest selling synth in history)

I'm almost positve that the Poly800 was once the all-time biggest selling synth until it was usurped by the M1. I have never seen sales figures but I recall reading articles in mag's at the time about each of those.

[FaX]

On the other hand if I buy hardware it will run on top of what I have with no latency...

And if you want a second instance, you have to buy another one. So you'll have 4 or 5 Access Virus's on your desk..

No they're Multi-timbral so 1 synth is usually enough .
You'd get at least 12 decent voices out of such a rack unit or a Motif ES Rack for example would give you closer too 24 instruments with zilch CPU overhead for a single rack.

[beej]

I'm almost positve that the Poly800 was once the all-time biggest selling synth until it was usurped by the M1. I have never seen sales figures but I recall reading articles in mag's at the time about each of those.

I've never heard that. All the sources I've had over the years quote the M1, DX7 and D50 as the best selling synths of all time, in that order.

The Poly800 as a budget synth sold well, but didn't reach the level of popularity as those three, all of which captured the imagination of users by offering things that were pretty new and groundbreaking for the time.

Even the Casio CZ-101 sold very well, but not to DX7 levels...

[Urs]

Filterscape is $129 right? That works out to £72GBP. Now most of the stuff it does I can do with my current plugins and automation. So no, I don't think paying £72 quid for a plugin that I essentially already have is a good idea.

I don't think you could easily manage to do what Filterscape is doing with your existing plugins.
But then, that might only be me.

That's taking a very literal approach and I don't see it as a valid argument. I'm sure there are a hundred ways to achieve any result.

Well, one could use a software that lets one draw a picture by setting the RGB values of each pixel one by one. But then, it's much easier to get to the desired result with a pencil, a camera and/or photoshop.

[eduardo_b]

So what are we willing to pay for?

One might also ask, does it matter what we can afford to pay? Should we expect developers to price according to our ability to pay?

The issue of money changes so many things. It's been said, with more than a little validity I think, that advice that costs money is more highly valued than advice given for free. Is the same true for plug-ins?

I wonder if free plug-ins aren't both valued for being free and simultaneously not valued because they cost nothing. Conversely, "expensive" instruments and effects are often criticized for being overpriced, but are also seen as having value because they cost more than a little. The question becomes, how much does the price seems fair and reasonable for what is received in exchange -- in relation to our ability to pay.

In the end, according to developers participating here, they can't really afford to price their products where many would like, while those who can't afford the prices want them reduced. Realistically, given the market size and dynamics, it seems an impasse has been reached in which a limited number of people are able and willing to pay for what developers offer at prices they believe will sustain their businesses even as they compete for market share within a rather small universe.

In other words, the current situation is probably where it should be given these realities, and there's nothing to really change this. This may be as good as it gets.