KVR Audio

TYSONIK · Post by **TYSONIK** » Sat May 04, 2013 5:18 pm

I'm considering getting into the VST/AU plugin business and I was wondering:

If you're a developer of virtual instruments/effects, what is the number one challenge in your business?

I'd love to know what your main issues are, for instance is getting more sales your top priority?

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Sun May 05, 2013 2:23 am

Hi TYSONIK, this forum is bit more geared towards those wishing to build things for themselves and typically more on the hardware side of things. I'm going to move this to a more appropriate forum for you but I will leave a shadow link here in this forum so you wont miss it. There's nothing wrong with posting it in this forum but I suspect you'll get better responses in the DSP forum where there are more developers.

Welcome to KvR and good luck

TYSONIK · Post by **TYSONIK** » Sun May 05, 2013 9:50 am

Thank you Hink, I looked for the best place to post this but didn't find it... and now I see that DSP Dev is the category listed above this one, doh!

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Sun May 05, 2013 4:06 pm

np....

DaveGamble · Post by **DaveGamble** » Mon May 06, 2013 11:36 am

That's not a very good question, too broad to answer meaningfully.

Different businesses have different aims, ideals, concepts, etc.

Wanna try a different more specific question?

Ivan_C · Post by **Ivan_C** » Mon May 06, 2013 11:43 am

There are a lot of challenges (marketing, piracy, development time, the saturation of the market etc.), but which is the number one ? I don't know

TYSONIK · Post by **TYSONIK** » Mon May 06, 2013 5:05 pm

I think the question is quite specific. Developers who consider themselves entrepreneurs should be able to answer it. But I'll rephrase the question:

If I could be a magic genie and solve your most important problem, what would it be?

I'd really appreciate it if any (semi)professional DSP developers would answer this question.

resynthesis · Post by **resynthesis** » Mon May 06, 2013 5:11 pm

TYSONIK wrote:I think the question is quite specific. Developers who consider themselves entrepreneurs should be able to answer it. But I'll rephrase the question:

If I could be a magic genie and solve your most important problem, what would it be?

I'd really appreciate it if any (semi)professional DSP developers would answer this question.

I'll bite

Like any business, before you even get to the problems of distribution, piracy, etc. you need a USP. How is your product going to be distinguished from the rest of the (enormous) VST market?

stratum · Post by **stratum** » Mon May 06, 2013 7:07 pm

#1 Marketing
#2 Marketing
#3 Marketing
#4 is yours, whatever you'd like it to be

(BTW, I'm not a professional vst developer, probably because of the first 3.)

To be more specific, I'm pretty sure I can build this http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/ca ... y-at-slash
But if slash doesn't come and promote it, who cares? I wouldn't even be able to demo it properly myself

mystran · Post by **mystran** » Tue May 07, 2013 12:56 am

TYSONIK wrote:I think the question is quite specific. Developers who consider themselves entrepreneurs should be able to answer it. But I'll rephrase the question:

If I could be a magic genie and solve your most important problem, what would it be?

I'd really appreciate it if any (semi)professional DSP developers would answer this question.

If you're a magic genie, please make it so that each day has at least 28 (preferably up to 32) hours, rather than the crappy 24. Alternatively, find a way to avoid sleeping without simultaneously losing productivity.

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Tue May 07, 2013 3:44 am

TYSONIK wrote: If I could be a magic genie and solve your most important problem, what would it be?

Provide an undefeatable copy protection system that doesn't punish the paying customers (like dongles do, which are also not undefeatable) and doesn't cost so much and/or become my full time job to continually develop/maintain/improve that it drives the prices up substantially. (Which again, is only punishing the honest customers for the actions of the thieves, potential or actual.)

JonHodgson · Post by **JonHodgson** » Tue May 07, 2013 9:26 am

TYSONIK wrote:If I could be a magic genie and solve your most important problem, what would it be?

You're a genie, so end piracy.

All the other problems are solvable with skill, knowledge and time, but it's both soul and wallet destroying when people take the benefit of that talent and hard work and don't give back.

A single plug in standard which finally got patch handling right and had proper compliance testing both for plugins and FOR THE HOST, and didn't keep changing would be nice too.

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Tue May 07, 2013 9:38 am

JonHodgson wrote: A single plug in standard which finally got patch handling right and had proper compliance testing both for plugins and FOR THE HOST, and didn't keep changing would be nice too.

It's called VST 2.4. "Last known good version."

JonHodgson · Post by **JonHodgson** » Tue May 07, 2013 9:53 am

AdmiralQuality wrote:
JonHodgson wrote: A single plug in standard which finally got patch handling right and had proper compliance testing both for plugins and FOR THE HOST, and didn't keep changing would be nice too.
It's called VST 2.4. "Last known good version."

I said good patch handling (it's silly that to do anything decent you have to roll your own) and proper host compliance testing... I don't know about you but I've lost chunks of my life because of hosts doing things in odd ways, which aren't necessarily contrary to the standard, but are rather odd and illogical and unnecessary.

But at least the standard itself is not a movng target, and thank you Steinberg for that!

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Tue May 07, 2013 9:59 am

JonHodgson wrote:
AdmiralQuality wrote:
JonHodgson wrote: A single plug in standard which finally got patch handling right and had proper compliance testing both for plugins and FOR THE HOST, and didn't keep changing would be nice too.
It's called VST 2.4. "Last known good version."
I said good patch handling (it's silly that to do anything decent you have to roll your own) and proper host compliance testing... I don't know about you but I've lost chunks of my life because of hosts doing things in odd ways, which aren't necessarily contrary to the standard, but are rather odd and illogical and unnecessary.

But at least the standard itself is not a movng target, and thank you Steinberg for that!

Disagree, VST 2.4's patch handling is perfect. 2 modes: 1. make everything float and leave all interpretation to code in the plug-in. 2. do the exact same thing but you can also arbitrarily have your own BLOB of whatever opaque data you want (chunk mode).

Lost chunks? We've all had "poison projects". This is why you should never use "Save" and always use "Save As...". Never overwrite good data with new data!

I've been doing this in every program I've ever used since 1991 and have never lost more than 30 minutes of work to a "poison project" or an accidental delete. (And anything that "auto-saves", immediately STOP that behavior in the preferences, or just save to new names faster than it can stomp your good copy!)

This is part of what disturbs me about the various Cloud computing tools. They auto-save to who-knows-where without your permission, constantly. It makes everything FAR too volatile!

Question for any VST / AU developers out there...