Wow, Rack Extensions are expensive

[eXode]

All I wish is that we could re-sell the RE's, even if its just back to Props for 50% of what we paid. My production style and mixing skills are changing so rapidly that I am always trying out new things and realizing I don't need certain other things.

I think it's only fair to be able to re-sell what you once paid for just like we do with physical equipment.

I'm not saying this as an excuse for not having the ability to re-sell, but from an user perspective I think that those 30-days of trial should cover that. I mean I would personally REALLY find out whether I'm sticking with a plugin or want to sell it after 30-days of trial.

The problem is that many users also act like gatherers. Just download stuff sometimes without even properly testing it, including purchasing. I actually saw a user on phead forum asking for the possibility to "freeze" those 30-days of trial. Seriously.

I mean, if you can't gather if a plugin is for you after 30-days, I just don't know what's wrong.

Maybe from the props perspective (I'm just speculating here and I'm not saying that I support this reasoning) they might think that most people should be confident in what they have bought after 30-days of trial without selling afterwards.

Still, I know that people's work techniques change even after years, so that said, I do think that RE's should be transferable. I also think that devs should be allowed to offer a discount for ports.

[JimmiG]

E.g. there's an extremely limited (judging by the GUI) "analog bass synth" for €50. Not a lot of money, but you can buy the U-He Ace or any number of other, far more flexible synths for €70 - €100.

If its ABL you mean, the VST one costs a lot more than the RE one. (the VST can DO more, but in this case the comparative pricing seems okay.)
You could argue ABL costs too much compared to other 'more versatile' synths but its a 303, and what it does it does VERY well.

I guess that's the advantage of a completely free market like that of VST plugins. So many choices at different price points. Personally I would have preferred an improved Thor synth with more options and less aliasing.

I fully understand that the VST format isn't suited for Reason because of the way the virtual rack works. The best way would have been if the Props made the RE SDK available for anyone to use. That would quickly result in a huge library of free and commercial extensions, attracting a lot of new Reason users. It would also have made crossgrade discounts possible. That wouldn't have stopped the Propellerheads from signing exclusive deals with some of the top developers.

I mean, if you can't gather if a plugin is for you after 30-days, I just don't know what's wrong.

This has definitely happened to me. Maybe you just don't feel inspired at the time. Or maybe you're working on a song in which X Plugin just doesn't fit. Then 29 days later you start a new project and discover it's perfect for that song. I think the 30-day limit is unnecessary when other features are already crippled. E.g. Reaper isn't crippled in any way but people still seem to pay for it.

[eXode]

I fully understand that the VST format isn't suited for Reason because of the way the virtual rack works. The best way would have been if the Props made the RE SDK available for anyone to use. That would quickly result in a huge library of free and commercial extensions, attracting a lot of new Reason users. It would also have made crossgrade discounts possible. That wouldn't have stopped the Propellerheads from signing exclusive deals with some of the top developers.

I don't understand this choice either. You can make free RE's (officially) but you still have to have a registered company to apply for the SDK. I mean, they still have the right to reject a RE (from what I understand) if it's too far out or badly made etc.

[eXode]

Also. I don't feel that the RE's are overpriced at all. Some were gracious enough to offer us RE's at a premium. Softube stuff is friggin $100 USD less than their VST equivalent. Etch is half price more or less. Most of the other (that have an equivalent) are cheaper.

Some people slagged off synapse audio because their stuff looked simple. Simple perhaps but they SOUND great, all three of them (matter of preference of course).

ABL2 is missing it's sequencer, something I questioned initially but after trying it out I learned that it works VERY well with Reason's Matrix Pattern Sequencer. And it is cheaper than the VST equivalent. I think that people who want the 303 sound will pay for it as it does one thing but does that thing well.

Tbh, and we've discussed this quite a lot on the propellerhead forum, the problem is with some users that were expecting all RE's to cost 10-15 USD, 20 max (yeah, seriously). I think the issue has lied more with people not living in the real world than anything else. :|

I think a sentence I wrote in props general forum is worth repeating:

Developers do this for a living, not for charity.

[Urs]

I'm pretty sure that if a voucher system existed, we'd use it and we'd already have REs. I'm also pretty sure that this means a loss of hundreds of sales for us, if only every, say, 50th Uhbik use was going to get the discounted REs.

Thus, blaming the lack of vouchers on the RE developers or calling it a convenience is weird, quite frankly. I for one am very unhappy.

There is however a lot of positive aspects to RE. The technical implemention shifts much of the every day hassle in a developer's life over to Propellerhead. That's more than what one usually gets for a 30% commission.

[eXode]

I'm pretty sure that if a voucher system existed, we'd use it and we'd already have REs. I'm also pretty sure that this means a loss of hundreds of sales for us, if only every, say, 50th Uhbik use was going to get the discounted REs.

Thus, blaming the lack of vouchers on the RE developers or calling it a convenience is weird, quite frankly. I for one am very unhappy.

There is however a lot of positive aspects to RE. The technical implemention shifts much of the every day hassle in a developer's life over to Propellerhead. That's more than what one usually gets for a 30% commission.

I just want to clarify that if I came across as blaming the dev's with my post then I apologize, that was not my intention at all. I'm well aware that the issue with the lack of a voucher system has not been the developers fault.

[ChiTown24]

I'm pretty sure that if a voucher system existed, we'd use it and we'd already have REs. I'm also pretty sure that this means a loss of hundreds of sales for us, if only every, say, 50th Uhbik use was going to get the discounted REs.

Thus, blaming the lack of vouchers on the RE developers or calling it a convenience is weird, quite frankly. I for one am very unhappy.

There is however a lot of positive aspects to RE. The technical implemention shifts much of the every day hassle in a developer's life over to Propellerhead. That's more than what one usually gets for a 30% commission.

I just want to clarify that if I came across as blaming the dev's with my post then I apologize, that was not my intention at all. I'm well aware that the issue with the lack of a voucher system has not been the developers fault.

i think hes probably referring to me though hes wrong in interpreting my exchange with Sean as blaming devs for the lack of vouchers.

in a nutshell what i said was;;
{a} it is far from impossible for propheads to implement a voucher system and i acknowledge they are the primary source of this problem
{b} devs could try to work around it
{c} devs could, individually or collectively, refuse to support the format unless they were permitted to recognize their existing patrons who would be repurchasing their plugs in the RE format

basically props are being greedy, but the devs arent imo doing enough to challenge them or work around it. instead theyre going along with it and essentially doing the propheads dirty work for them by pushing the idea that discounting existing licensees is ''impossible''

just the way i see it
i could be wrong
ive been wrong before!

[JimmiG]

Tbh, and we've discussed this quite a lot on the propellerhead forum, the problem is with some users that were expecting all RE's to cost 10-15 USD, 20 max (yeah, seriously). I think the issue has lied more with people not living in the real world than anything else.

I think a sentence I wrote in props general forum is worth repeating:

Developers do this for a living, not for charity.

Not comparing specific products against their RE counterparts, but instead looking at the market in general, there's a big difference though.

In the world of VST's, you *can* find a great number of fantastic plug-ins for $20. There are even a number of excellent free or donationware ones (ie. "charity").

Also, expensive, $250+ synths or effect plugins can also give you excellent value for your money by providing your with everything you need. This may be cheaper than buying a $50 plug-in here, a $30 plug-in there etc. But I'm not seeing any of those in the RE shop.

[sauli]

My guess is that (bad) business logic in not allowing crossgrade discounts is that then developers would make their plugins more expensive and sell crossgrade RE's for one dollar which would lead to Props getting nothing.

Crossgrade system would be really easy to do technically - sell developers vouchers to their own plugins for the 30% Propellerheads cut which developers can sell for whatever price they wish. If one decides to sell to other than their existing customers it's their loss, not Propellerheads.

[eXode]

Keep in mind that it's a new format, I bet that many dev's are playing it safe until they know what the actual gain is. I'm not saying this a reason to go an buy RE's.

But if we take Synapse Audio for an example. Compare them in price and functionality to the BF MoogerFooger bundle (seriously, €528.00?). I admit that I haven't compared the two in sound, but Peff owns the real hardware and he said that he'd happily sell them for the Synapse Audio equivalents. And I can also vouch for their quality as such. Top notch stuff, the RM-1 for instance allows you to bypass the internal modulating wave with a sidechain input. The AF-4 is a zero-delay feedback modeled filter with 4x oversampling and I think that it sounds absolutely gorgeous in it's simplicity, to the point that I would have difficulties choosing between in and Etch (if I had to choose, that is).

Bud I digress. My intention is not to defend or sell certain RE's in anyway. Let's just say that I have a different scale for measuring something's worth. And regarding VST and charity, that's not what I meant with charity, my charity sentence was with regards to reason users expecting to see all RE's at 10-15 USD.

And with regards to that, we got a pretty nice Dual LFO and a very nice saturation knob for free (for now). :)

[TristezaOrange]

As most people have already said, the main problem here is the lack of crossgrades. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. I can use all of my cross-platform instruments if I ever decide to go Mac (fat chance of that happening ) without paying an extra cent. This is greediness on the part of the Props, plain and simple. And any devs that go along with it (as much as I like the products of some of them) are just allowing their customers to get ripped off. There, I said it.

[Urs]

in a nutshell what i said was;;
{a} it is far from impossible for propheads to implement a voucher system and i acknowledge they are the primary source of this problem
{b} devs could try to work around it
{c} devs could, individually or collectively, refuse to support the format unless they were permitted to recognize their existing patrons who would be repurchasing their plugs in the RE format

The actual reasoning is this: Props don't want developers to use RE to advertise for their VSTs, e.g. "Buy our VSTs now, get REs cheaper". This seems typical reasoning for a company that has no experience with 3rd party developers and thus tries to protect their assets with caution, even though they might lose out.

The {b} case means developers could make their products cheaper for people who already have the REs. There we have the same situation. Most plugin developers have no experience with companies that do the App Store ecosystem with a substantial cut. Thus we, being one of those devs, will not reward Propellerhead by making our products cheaper for their customers, even though we might lose out.

We did the {c} case. Because of the statement that "vouchers will not initially be available" we have postponed our efforts. We have meanwhile learned that "it will probably not happen ever". So our wait hasn't gained us anything (except stellar sales on another product we updated during that time, so we're actually quite happy).

I agree however that the {a} is absolutely possible, has been tried and tested in many ecosystems including the App Store and would be the most reasonable thing for Propellerhead to do.

The other issue is pricing. I'm pretty sure that Props want to keep a high price level because they want to make RE an attractive platform for certain plugin companies. We're not that precious about our stuff and we don't support certain other companies so we're aiming at reasonably low prices (if it drives "them" away, the better for us, no?)

[eXode]

Also, expensive, $250+ synths or effect plugins can also give you excellent value for your money by providing your with everything you need. This may be cheaper than buying a $50 plug-in here, a $30 plug-in there etc. But I'm not seeing any of those in the RE shop.

I'm pretty confident that they will come. Porting or developing a huge "do it all" synth is a whole other fish than developing an effect and I think most dev's want to test the waters first with the simpler stuff to see if it's worth their while.

Which I agree is not necessarily a wise move seeing as Reason was already well represented in the effects department. But time will tell I guess. Some developers have expressed interest in porting or even developing new synths for RE. Rob Papen is currently well on his way with Predator it seems. I'm kind of looking forward to testing that one out myself.

If someone would have been smart, that person would have hurried to get a Moog synth and a FM synth into the rack ASAP. My 2c of course. :)

[malström]

i watched the promo vid again and Magnus said 4 hrs, not 15 mins

Disclaimer: I haven't read this thread. I just saw this mentioned and I have to clarify, if it has not been corrected already. Bitspeek did *not* take 4 hours to port. I said I had a first version working in 4 hours. Ryan is a genius with the scissors (he is!), but this quote was taken a bit out of context. This was in 2011 when I sat with Propellerheads and tried a first port of the DSP-code only with an early SDK prototype that had way less restrictions. We didn't even make a GUI.

A more realistic number is two months of working time, but that is also because we were using alpha versions of the SDK. In a way we have been beta-testing the SDK while we were developing. I am quite positive that the next port will be much swifter.

[eXode]

I am quite positive that the next port will be much swifter.

So the next release from you will be a port? Interesting.... ;)