Big Companies That Get It Right

[AnX]

Nothing bad to say about Imageline.

not a customer then

[MirkoVanHauten]

And I am suggesting it’s not as big as you think.

I believe and hope they are on their right track to growing at a maintainable rate. I do like and use their products, but they are still a smaller fish, but it wouldn’t seem so when viewing forums dedicated to plugins and the magazines, but these are all niche locations for discussing and reading about these things.

I am suggesting it skews the perspective.

Most pursuits are niche. I couldn't tell you who won the tennis, the soccer, the rugby, the horse race, the art competition, chef of the year etc but people who are into that know about those things.

U-HE are a BIG name.

Am in facebook groups for music production, some with 10k members, some with 100k. You can talk about waves, UAD or NI there and they're known. You can say something about u-he and get usually asked who they are and what they do. From my experience uhe is a big name but only for synth plugins and only in Europe. And I have to say I'm happy it is just like that. Having a rather small team with focus on quality and customers is something positive.

Btw been a customer of imageline for more than a decade and can't say anything bad about them either.

[JunSev]

Image line costumer here too, nothing bad to say about them, there have been reported issues about some bugs and features request they take in considerations sometimes and stuffs and optimization overall.

I think that one of the reasons people still have a bad perspective about IL is because one of the previous developers (gol) and he is not there anymore.

My experience with Scott, reflex and shyniless has been good. They will not do everything you want but if there is some bug report or some optimization in different subject, they will at least try to do some workaround to help.

[ictools]

U-HE are a BIG name.

You may be confusing a big brand NAME in a small part of the audio industry with a big company spread throughout the entire industry. Companies like Presonus have a far further reach with all their different products lines, then say U-HE, who specializes in virtual instruments and effects. Thus, the revenue stream is much smaller and their employee count is much lower. Making them a small COMPANY.

[ictools]

Image line costumer here too, nothing bad to say about them, there have been reported issues about some bugs and features request they take in considerations sometimes and stuffs and optimization overall.

I think that one of the reasons people still have a bad perspective about IL is because one of the previous developers (gol) and he is not there anymore.

My experience with Scott, reflex and shyniless has been good. They will not do everything you want but if there is some bug report or some optimization in different subject, they will at least try to do some workaround to help.

I don't think that their popularity amongst younger Europeans actually translates to a larger revenue stream. They are also run by a handful of employees, so I wouldn't consider them a BIG company to begin with.

[JunSev]

Image line costumer here too, nothing bad to say about them, there have been reported issues about some bugs and features request they take in considerations sometimes and stuffs and optimization overall.

I think that one of the reasons people still have a bad perspective about IL is because one of the previous developers (gol) and he is not there anymore.

My experience with Scott, reflex and shyniless has been good. They will not do everything you want but if there is some bug report or some optimization in different subject, they will at least try to do some workaround to help.

I don't think that their popularity amongst younger Europeans actually translates to a larger revenue stream. They are also run by a handful of employees, so I wouldn't consider them a BIG company to begin with.

Yes I know, I didn't say they are big, was just specifying my experience with them.

[Razzia]

I never had a single issue with Waves and PA. They always answered within 24 hours, even on weekends. The same goes for XLN. The only company giving me headache with support was Steinberg, because that took forever.

I think the gripes about waves and PA have more to do with their predatory pricing schemes. "Buy now while this eq plugin is $30 instead of $300"

Not to mention WUP and PA's license transfer policy which enforces that the $20 transfer fee come directly from the buyer

I like waves, and I've even come to appreciate PA (i never pay their ridiculous full price though) but they both deserve their reputations to a certain extent.

[Butwug]

U-HE are a BIG name.

You may be confusing a big brand NAME in a small part of the audio industry with a big company spread throughout the entire industry. Companies like Presonus have a far further reach with all their different products lines, then say U-HE, who specializes in virtual instruments and effects. Thus, the revenue stream is much smaller and their employee count is much lower. Making them a small COMPANY.

This thread is so open ended now it’s confusing.

In the OP you have a post talking about companies that specialize in VST’s like Slate and Izotope.

Then theres this guy talking about companies that make lesser known software, like presonus, but make hardware as well, and probably make a ton of revenue off hardware. Uhe might specialize in a small niche like instruments and effects, but this thread is also in Effects, and not in hardware. But OP didnt specify only vst’s companies, although that’s what I assumed (could be wrong.)

At this point we can even add internet providers into the equation because thats how you download software

There needs to be more info on what “big” means. Employees? Sales? Influence? Number of vst’s?

[ictools]

I never had a single issue with Waves and PA. They always answered within 24 hours, even on weekends. The same goes for XLN. The only company giving me headache with support was Steinberg, because that took forever.

I think the gripes about waves and PA have more to do with their predatory pricing schemes. "Buy now while this eq plugin is $30 instead of $300"

Not to mention WUP and PA's license transfer policy which enforces that the $20 transfer fee come directly from the buyer

I like waves, and I've even come to appreciate PA (i never pay their ridiculous full price though) but they both deserve their reputations to a certain extent.

What happens when there's too many companies vying for the same position in the market?

Supply and demand, which helps dictate prices and marketing strategies. Pretty much every company jumps on the 50% off Black Friday Sale, or "predatory pricing scheme", as you like to call it.

Some companies are just better at marketing and sales. The company that amasses the most paying customers, wins, in the business world and BIG company list.

[ictools]

This thread is so open ended now it’s confusing.

In the OP you have a post talking about companies that specialize in VST’s like Slate and Izotope.

Then theres this guy talking about companies that make lesser known software, like presonus, but make hardware as well, and probably make a ton of revenue off hardware. Uhe might specialize in a small niche like instruments and effects, but this thread is also in Effects, and not in hardware. But OP didnt specify only vst’s companies, although that’s what I assumed (could be wrong.)

At this point we can even add internet providers into the equation because thats how you download software

There needs to be more info on what “big” means. Employees? Sales? Influence? Number of vst’s?

I think it's pretty obvious that he's talking about the audio industry in general, because the title isn't specific. So common sense would dictate the open ended question, "Big Companies That Get It Right".

There's two important types of audio companies, those who start off as hardware developers and then adds software to their portfolio and vis versa. I much prefer a hardware company first, as those are the fundamentals to which all the software emulations are based off. While starting off as a software developer that later adds hardware, seems more of a stretch to me and harder to pull off successfully.

[Razzia]

Pretty much every company jumps on the 50% off Black Friday Sale, or "predatory pricing scheme", as you like to call it.

Lol

Do you ever stop before hitting the send button and think, boy if someone recognizes that I'm making a straw man argument, my smugness is going to make me look like a real tool?


The bread and butter of waves and PA is analog modeled effect plugins, and both companies generally set their baseline prices around $250-300 and up. Then they have a sale almost every week wherein these 300 dollar plugins are discounted to 30 dollars. Its a business model based on FOMO

But you knew what i was referring to.

[ictools]

Pretty much every company jumps on the 50% off Black Friday Sale, or "predatory pricing scheme", as you like to call it.

Lol

Do you ever stop before hitting the send button and think, boy if someone recognizes that I'm making a straw man argument, my smugness is going to make me look like a real tool?


The bread and butter of waves and PA is analog modeled effect plugins, and both companies generally set their baseline prices around $250-300 and up. Then they have a sale almost every week wherein these 300 dollar plugins are discounted to 30 dollars. Its a business model based on FOMO

But you knew what i was referring to.

I'm not sure if you were even born when Waves started, but those prices have always been like that.

[BONES]

I never had a single issue with Waves and PA.

Waves can go screw 'emselves. Their products have never worked in Orion at all and they showed less than no interest in getting them to work. If I compare that to Modal, who bent over backwards trying to help me get Skulpt working properly with Orion, it's just not good enough. Even though I am on Cubase now I will never consider any Waves products.

the product is yours only as long as the company is there; and if you don't have the plan, you're screwed. Yeah how right is that...

Read the EULA of any software you buy. You never own the software, they just grant you a license to use it. And what's this about fees? You don't have to pay to use iLok.

I think i'd like u-he more, if it wasn't for the do-gooder, "we are more ethical than others" attitude, and the almost religious worship of Urs around here and elsewhere.

I get what you're saying but I don't think you should let other people affect your own opinion like that. Over the last few months I have come to understand fully that Urs's reputation is well deserved.

NI is a great company for me, because they have great products, i like the way they act, how they do sales, and i only had good experience with their support. Really, i can hardly say anything bad about them.

I'd say NI are about middle of the road. Their products are far too sensitive to locations/paths and they don't really seem to care much. e.g. A couple of recent Win10 Insider Preview installs changed the drive letter for the microSD card where I keep all my NI content and even though I changed it back as soon as I noticed, I had to reinstall a lot of NI stuff because just changing the drive letters was enough to screw the whole thing up forever. And when I wanted to move the location of my NI content folder, I ended up having to re-download and reinstall around 50GB of content, which took a whole day and night, because the mechanism for pointing their individual products to the content basically doesn't work. That's really not good enough when so many of their products rely on the content.

See, that already would disqualify them for me, for the "companies that get it right" thing: No sales.

What? Whilst I pretty much only ever buy anything when it's on sale, I think a policy of "this is the price, buy it or don't" is much fairer to a company's user base and I have respect for any company with that policy. Doesn't it annoy you when you pay full price for something and then someone else picks it up for half what you paid for it?

Think about it, if companies do a lot of sales, then they would have to inflate their prices the rest of the time to maintain their revenue, so if you pay full price you are actually subsidising those who wait for the sales. That's not treating your user base fairly at all. In the case of u-he, would it be fair if they put all their prices up 10% so they could afford to have 20% off sales a few times a year?

[JunSev]

Read the EULA of any software you buy. You never own the software, they just grant you a license to use it. And what's this about fees? You don't have to pay to use iLok.

You're wrong and misinterpreting things. There are softwares you pay and is actually yours, but not in the sense you can do whatever you want with it, you have to respect the agreement. At least I don't know from what company you get your stuffs that you are in such a bad way dependent (and it looks like you support that); but many companies say in their own page "download your product" ones you do the purchase. What might be true is that you can't violate the agreement and you have to respect it right from the very beginning.

This is an exaggeration of many people saying "the software is not yours", the software is not mine and i can't do whatever I want with it but is my product, I paid for it and I respect the agreement, the developer and the company.

About the other stuffs investigate what is the ZDT thing they are suggesting if not that: "for more protection in case of system fail or any accident, pay a yearly fee and you are covered". Pure example, if no close to extortion.

Get your facts right, you also were implying other time that wavetable synthesis is useless without knowing what you're talking about.

With all respect, no offense Bones.

[Butwug]

This thread is so open ended now it’s confusing.

In the OP you have a post talking about companies that specialize in VST’s like Slate and Izotope.

Then theres this guy talking about companies that make lesser known software, like presonus, but make hardware as well, and probably make a ton of revenue off hardware. Uhe might specialize in a small niche like instruments and effects, but this thread is also in Effects, and not in hardware. But OP didnt specify only vst’s companies, although that’s what I assumed (could be wrong.)

At this point we can even add internet providers into the equation because thats how you download software

There needs to be more info on what “big” means. Employees? Sales? Influence? Number of vst’s?

I think it's pretty obvious that he's talking about the audio industry in general, because the title isn't specific. So common sense would dictate the open ended question, "Big Companies That Get It Right".

There's two important types of audio companies, those who start off as hardware developers and then adds software to their portfolio and vis versa. I much prefer a hardware company first, as those are the fundamentals to which all the software emulations are based off. While starting off as a software developer that later adds hardware, seems more of a stretch to me and harder to pull off successfully.

Wouldnt go that far, saying “it’s obvious.” I can say “he posted in the effects section, so it’s obvious he’s only talking about effects”....

Not much was said by OP as far the specifics, and by going what he has posted, it can be inferred he isnt talking about the whole industry. But all is game. Shit, how did this turn into a semantics thread.

But anyways, if it’s by employees/revenue/influence, there seems to be only one “big company” and thats Apple. Everyone else is a grain of salt. But that isnt an accurate picture.

As far as hardware vs software companies. Cant really think of a vst made by a hardware first company that holds a candle to stuff like Zebra, Serum, etc... Lots of top tier vst developers dont even do hardware.

Edit* Bones. That join date....