I doubt anyone is referring to my input on this, but as usual, I won't let that stop me from rambling a bit about it anyway.Fleer wrote:Quite to the contrary. Slate FG-Stress is the absolute best comp in my book, together with FabFilter Pro C2.JerGoertz wrote:Anyone who's pissed off at Slate and wants to sell me their FG-Stress license cheap?
I'm not pissed at Slate, I just gave them a demerit. I have sort an unwritten ordering of companies in my mind and some are at the front and some are at the back. Getting a demerit moves you further to the back. Of course, slate was already towards the back of the line anyay:
1) Cheezy marketing (that's like five demerits right off the bat)
2) Unnecessary plugin bloat centered around marketing their plugins. The bloat is only one or two demerits, but the built in marketing engine for other plugins makes this at least five. IK's the same. Here comes the cluebat, I have no f**king interest in shopping while I'm using tools to make music! Save that shit for the email campaign, I have an email all setup just for music vendors, with a real name and everything. I'm not a dick about it so you don't be a dick about it as well.
3) Too much "magic" in stuff that is just average. This relates to (1), but if you can't talk technically about your product without resorting to "magic" language then I just assume that you're covering things up. It may not be true, but it doesn't matter, and I don't care, you still get the demerit.
4) Subscription plan. Any company with a subscription plan gets an automatic demerit, no exceptions.
Too many demerits and you earn "Least favored vendor" status which comes with a very specific limitation, namely, I will not give you any money until you are able to shed that status.
Since there's no harm in it, I don't mind name a "least favored vendor", yes, it was Cakewalk. Their early Windows software (which I paid real cash money for) was total shit and that got them almost to the bottom. They get less of a pass than other vendors because I bought their software based on how well their DOS software worked, quality betrayal is the fastpath to the bottom. The absolute shitty worthlessness of some early LE version of their DAW pushed them right to the edge and then the total shitpile of a plugin called "Studio Instruments" earned them the status. Yes, it was my fault that I purchased it, again, don't give a f**k, I paid for it, but Cakewalk gets the demerit for selling such a shitty piece of shit for the price they were asking, that shit should have been < $5. This all happened before 2010. I gave them the time of day earlier this year by downloading their free LA2 compressor. It's ok, I've used it, it probably won't make the transition to my new studio machines given their recent demise. But that's all you get if you have LFV status, I MIGHT download your free stuff IF you do a great job with it. In fairness, their support was awesome, but I'm not surprised that they went under, that writing has been on the wall for a long time.
Slate isn't close to LFV, it's hard to get there without me spending some money first, but, they are below the threshold to be moved to the new machines.
The thing with a vendor's status on my list is that it impacts my perceived value of their products. I didn't buy VTC@$49 because Slate was already well below the $15/plugin threshold for me. They are at roughly $8-$10/plugin. If other vendors had released the exact same product for the same price I might have purchased it.
Of course, there is a "most favored vendor" status and a few vendors, mostly small devs, have that status for me. I buy their products at small to no discounts and will choose them first to risk buying into new ideas.
Things that move you up the list:
1) Great customer service
2) Awesome freebies with little to no marketing strings attached. (Looking at you Sonokinetic) Of course you can have my real name, my email address, and of course you can send me email with your announcements and deals. But, your goodwill gets instantly killed if you want me to like your facebook page or subscribe to your youtube/twitter feeds.
3) Fantastic technology that you openly talk about (looking at you Uhe). I don't expect you to give away secrets, but you avoid making up "magic" to explain things.
4) No C/R that tracks installations in a practically limiting way. Generally, you have to be a big company for me to accept C/R, not always, but usually.
So anyway, I've ranted enough with my "opinions", but I don't hate Slate, they just aren't interesting enough to me to give them much money and bad customer service, which I feel was demonstrated, just pushes them down a bit further. Sorry, no FG-Stress plugins to sell.
