KVR Audio

The Telenator · Post by **The Telenator** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 1:59 am

Feeling truly sorry I don't have time now to read through all pages here -- so many wise and funny comments just on this page alone.

I agree with a lot of the observations made, the pricing is WAY out of line, way ridiculous at too many plugin makers. The freeware today puts many commercial makers totally to shame. This crap with dongles and difficult registration nonsense only penalises the honest people, thus:

I BOYCOTT all makers who demand a dongle or make registration difficult. No compromises here and I haven't looked back. I'm doing actually better without them these days after staying away from those fools.

Further, I do not do business with commercial makers who have a history of lousy customer support. I do not repeat business with makers who pull any crap with me either.

I don't care if the whole commercial side goes under. I see very few of them making anything those who enjoy offering freeware can't do themselves. I believe the truly exceptional and innovative will last and even thrive anyway.

Like the poster above said -- and I've begun to really believe this: "50/50 we don't make it another 300 years... and 10 to 1 odds we don't make it 100 more with our arrogance intact."

Read it and weep I guess. Whatever happens to certain nasty plugin makers, whatever happens to us, I'm sure we'll all truly deserve it.

lotus2035 · Post by **lotus2035** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:12 am

Mutant wrote:I think by natural programming he meant the instinct which many men and some women love to go against in our times...

What I meant was that humans are the only creatures on earth who are not in harmony with their surroundings. I should have said it that way first maybe. In any case my view of humanity and midnight's view are like (mid)night and day.

I'm leaving it at that. It really is a discussion for HPC and I try to stay out of there these days.

tapper mike · Post by **tapper mike** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:26 am

The Telenator wrote: The freeware today puts many commercial makers totally to shame.

I cannot disagree with that statement anymore then I already do. After buying a few well valued payware plugins I'll never go back to freeware plugins. If you desperately want to believe for yourself well...you are desperate.

Although I will agree with you on dongles. Never had one never will. A good C/R and an easy to understand non invasive piracy protection method works rather well for my company as well as others. (I'm not in the audio or plugin software field)

If anything is driving prices down it's the economy and an over-saturated market.
How many producers, musicians, engineers do you think are out there who buy this stuff? How much do they actually need? How much of whats offered applies to a particular individual? Perfect example. I'm a rompler guy. Give me a reasonable rompler sounds at a reasonable price and I might bite or I might not.

Why not? I don't have to chase every plug in ever made to feel complete. I've figured out how to make the most of what I have. Unlike others who think that getting the next big thing will make them better as a musician, producer et all.

tooneba · Post by **tooneba** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 4:53 am

C/R is the first thing I would avoid. When the company goes bankrupt you can't retrieve your projects as it was. That's the critical issue we should forsee. Dongle is nowadays almost useless too. It just harasses the legit users and never eliminate crack, except for Codemeter. Codemeter isn't crackable.

SODDI · Post by **SODDI** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 8:20 am

No decline at all - you just saw the price point crack.

If Blunderbuss Audio sells 200 units @ $100, compared to 75 @ $200, then it is financially worthwhile to sell them at the lower price.

The Telenator · Post by **The Telenator** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 9:25 am

I wrote:

"The freeware today puts many commercial makers totally to shame."

tapper mike wrote:

"I cannot disagree with that statement anymore then I already do. After buying a few well valued payware plugins I'll never go back to freeware plugins. If you desperately want to believe for yourself well...you are desperate."

You're just full of false assumptions. I really don't understand why your post trails off into a personal rant. You first of all seem to assume I don't use commercial plugins. Incorrect -- I'm still at about 35% commercial, but that number probably won't be increasing any time soon. I've been in professional recording a long, long time. From your tone and attitude, I'm willing to bet I've been at it longer than you've been alive. I've tested and used hundreds of plugins. I've owned or used much of the hardware a lot of these are based on. I can safely say, as I do, that today's freeware puts many commercial makers totally to shame. And that's before I even get to the ridiculous arrogance, lousy customer support, and bloated overpricing that accompanies some of the commercial offerings.

You bought "a few well valued payware plugins" and now you are an expert.

I don't know where you are getting this "desperate" thing from in your post. I'm not desperate in any way, except perhaps to get off these KVR forums sometimes after reading a handful of offensive posts and responses. You don't like my opinion, that's not my problem. Maybe you just can't handle opinions that don't agree with yours. If you were secure about your position on commercial plugins, anyone would think you wouldn't need to respond with personal attack. That sort of response is more suggestive of insecurity or perhaps immaturity. My comments are based on loads of experience and knowledge, which is reflected in the confidence of my post here.

See the thread about this year's D.C. 2012 winner, ThrillseekerXTC, where it is compared favourably against a very similar commercial plugin. Proof right there of what I'm talking about.

You know, with attitudes like yours and the nuisance that some of these commercial plugin makers have become, I'm glad the freeware makers are growing rapidly in number, and they are improving rapidly in quality and variety of releases. I love every minute of it. I will kindly not name the commercial outfits that are the biggest offenders. Let them get whacked good in the pants by all the freeware competition. Some of them have it coming.

Harry_HH · Post by **Harry_HH** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 9:59 am

The Telenator wrote: I BOYCOTT all makers who demand a dongle or make registration difficult. No compromises here and I haven't looked back. I'm doing actually better without them these days after staying away from those fools.

Further, I do not do business with commercial makers who have a history of lousy customer support. I do not repeat business with makers who pull any crap with me either.

Very noble priciples. Unfortunately, for the serious music makers, these rules exluded some of the best plugins developers. I myself have cursed the bad customer care, also in these pages, several times, but the quality of the products and the quality of the customer care doesn't seem to have any positive correlation in this busines. Let's take example Waves, Native Instruments, Ableton - all most important, developers with great traditions, high quality products I couldn't live without - and some of the worst cases in the customer care. Big companies (i.e. big in this industry) seem to have also big problems, which reflects in the way they treat individual clients, i.e. they limit the time and "optimitze" the time which they spent with the CRM and individual problems.
I really hope that the developers - both bigger and those wonderful smaller niche companies which often really drive the markets technology, can stay in the busines, make every year better products, and what's important, be rawarded of the good customer care. (And that the next economic boom won't blow up the prices, again...which inevitabel will happen). Harry

Richard_Synapse · Post by **Richard_Synapse** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 10:27 am

The Telenator wrote:I agree with a lot of the observations made, the pricing is WAY out of line, way ridiculous at too many plugin makers. The freeware today puts many commercial makers totally to shame.

Freeware is not free, it's a gift to the community. The development time for good freeware plugins is typically going to be somewhere between several weeks and months, even a year is possible. If your favorite book author spends a year on writing a kickass novel, will you expect that for free? I don't think so...

Furthermore there can be other costs involved in making plugins, not just development time. It's easily possible to invest thousands into other aspects like GUI Design, Soundsets, Customer support, a well written manual, etc.

Of course some stuff may be overpriced, but more often than not, what you pay is a fair price. Now in the holiday season, typically a lot less than that

Richard

The Telenator · Post by **The Telenator** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 1:23 pm

About the price -- what you pay for is what the market will bear and has nothing to do with 'fair'. That's really all there is to it. Capitalism does not require anything to be "fair." Some makers charge as much as they believe they can absolutely get away with. Other, more reasonable makers figure all their cost into it, perhaps add a small R&D percentage onto it for further plugin development, then add a reasonable profit percentage and send it to market.

I am very puzzled with this thread. Assuming that at least some of you are professional studio people or at the very least professional musicians, I am seeing very little understanding of how real businesses and markets operate. In music or anywhere else, even a restaurant or yard maintenance services perhaps, have any of you owned and operated a real business before? If you had, and I'm completely aware that price structure varies depending on the business, you would understand better the odd discrepancy in pricing among these commercial plugin makers.

And as regards freeware makers, none of us have any control whatsoever over how they operate or the reasons why. This area is their own personal choice in a free society. Of the freeware plugins I have, I would have gladly paid for them. They are that good.

I'll leave off with one well-known example: Synth1. I consider Synth1 to be a better synth than about 75% (probably more, really) of the commercial synths out there now. I own DUNE. It's a very nice synth, no question, but I really don't think it can hold a candle to Synth1. One more: SynthMaster. I'll add this since it is being hyped so much right now. Yes, it can sound like anything, do anything and that's great, but it is so complicated in its GUI, so busy, that it saps all my creativity and spirit. Only those of us who border on 'synth geek' can use it without serious study. The average musician can't do anything with it. In general, instruments are made for musicians, not technicians. So, regarding this synth I would have to rate Synth1 higher than SynthMaster. I think I'd put it below Oatmeal, another somewhat complicated synth, as well.

trimph1 · Post by **trimph1** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 1:43 pm

I see the hierarchy thing is out and about .... I see it this way...if the thing works on my system without too many hassles then it is fine by me. For me, the idea is just that.

Here I am running about 50/50...

Lotuzia · Post by **Lotuzia** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:28 pm

Urs wrote: ....

....
Thus, less budget for the big boys with their dongles...

False.

I could name some companies that have only one, and whose products use dongle protection. And big companies, with more than 20 employees, that dont use dongles. Result : No "big boys with dongles" relatioship at all there

I have no idea to impose on dongles to other people btw, be them developers, or users : Afai'm concerned, if I need a dongled instrument, well I use dongles. Its that simple. If it uses serials I use it too. If it uses c/r, the same.

Then, I wonder if companies with 4/5/more employees are still "indies" btw. Or to be more precise, because one is probably always the indie of someone else unless reaching number one place, if 99% of other developers should not be seen as .... the real indies compared to this kind of structures. Ymmv.

LtZ

philnsicab · Post by **philnsicab** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:28 pm

For me the problem is that too much developpers are making similar plugins: drum samplers, piano sample banks, 303 like or bass synths, simple synths, replicas of the mooooogs or of old synths, replicas of hardware...
Every year there are new products, and nothing is really new, just better quality or "better" sound, or bigger banks.

So nobody needs all those plugins because it's like having 10 times the same things. And we are always trying to figure out which one is the best (and often it's hard to tell). And of course we don't want to pay for something we can have for free.

The main problem for me is that plugins developpers don't work together, and only trust their creativity (I mean thats the interfaces are all very different, and principes behind the synths often very similar.

We should have a free bundle available, with something like "the best free bass synth, the best free piano, the best free...", just like open office for music. Instead of that we have to pick, and we never know if we are making the best choice.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:31 pm

Lotuzia wrote:False.

I was talking about Big Boys with their dongles. Not everyone offering dongles is a Big Boy in my books.

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:38 pm

It's worth noting that there were 12 years olds selling taped copies of Spectrum games at my school in 1983.

Piracy isn't a new phenomenon, it's just virtual now rather than physical.

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:47 pm

I think it's not cracks nor any kind of technical decline. It's the opposite imho - the brands named here (Waves and Lexicon) are companies which can no longer keep up. It's the name they are selling, but with more and more smaller companies providing often way better products for way lower prices, they just need to adapt.

Are we seeing the decline of the plug-in industry?