Big Companies That Get It Right

[BONES]

Image line costumer here

What, you go to parties in a giant strawberry costume or something? Weird, man, very weird.

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.

Seriously? When did that happen? What's he doing now? FL Studio is Gol, pure and simple. The way it looks, the way it works, everything is down to him. It would be like Urs leaving u-he or Rich leaving Synapse Audio.
Don't get me wrong, we never got on and he eventually got me sacked as a beta tester because I used to take him to task on certain things but, for better or worse, that product is him.

[JunSev]

Image line costumer here

What, you go to parties in a giant strawberry costume or something? Weird, man, very weird.

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.

Seriously? When did that happen? What's he doing now? FL Studio is Gol, pure and simple. The way it looks, the way it works, everything is down to him. It would be like Urs leaving u-he or Rich leaving Synapse Audio.
Don't get me wrong, we never got on and he eventually got me sacked as a beta tester because I used to take him to task on certain things but, for better or worse, that product is him.

Yeah a little grammatical typing error there.

Go to the Image Line forum and you will get the evidence. And FL studio is developing very well without him, so is not like he is the all man operation (with all respect to him); the others are doing a very good job.

[elxsound]

It can definitely be frustrating, knowing that being an early adopter for software can be considered being a luxury purchase, because not too much longer and it'll be 50% off.

I definitely do respect those developers that don't result to having new sales every week, but at the same time it is a tough market, and for most, sales only come at the time of a new release, or during a sale.

In terms of "predatory sales" I do think Waves can be added here because of their WUP which usually makes users face a choice of upgrading to a bundle vs. paying WUP individually vs. having multiples shells for various products.

With PA... I can definitely see from looking at the resale market on KVR that quite a few have simply bought whatever was on sale, so yeah, there's obviously a certain user base that struggles with impulse control when faced with a good price and this must be who they're targeting with these deals... and I'm not judging. In the past many of us, including me, have bought deals from the now defunct Audiomidi(.)com and their no-brainer deals. I ended up with more than a few things I never used (but live and learn).

Now we have audioplugindeals, vstbuzz and I'm sure I'm missing others. I stop short of calling them a bad thing, because I'm sure they are helping out quite a few smaller developers and content producers turn a profit when in need, plus supplying people just starting out with affordable content.

With all of that said, none of these actual "big" companies would exist if they didn't aggressively market, produce new content, and offer sales to continually stay relevant. Its not easy to stay successful and as loathsome as some of the larger companies are, they are employing quite a few people in an industry where most people have to freelance to make a living.

[HSum]

...

You never own software, only get granted the use of it. Bones is exactly right there.

ZDT for ilok is additional voluntary coverage in the rare case you need immediately access to your licenses when losing the dongle or breaking it. As I recently discovered the hard way, no company has to provide a way to download your licenses nor do they have to replace them in case of complete data loss on your side, hardware failure like change in machine id or getting hacked. After having to deal for weeks with support (email and phone) to get my licenses back or to deactivate machines and whatsoever, I very appreciate such a ZDT until some minor problem like a broken dongle is fixed. Time is valuable in daily studio biz...

[JunSev]

...

You never own software, only get granted the use of it. Bones is exactly right there.

ZDT for ilok is additional voluntary coverage in the rare case you need immediately access to your licenses when losing the dongle or breaking it. As I recently discovered the hard way, no company has to provide a way to download your licenses nor do they have to replace them in case of complete data loss on your side, hardware failure like change in machine id or getting hacked. After having to deal for weeks with support (email and phone) to get my licenses back or to deactivate machines and whatsoever, I very appreciate such a ZDT until some minor problem like a broken dongle is fixed. Time is valuable in daily studio biz...

I think that you are trolling, and you don't get what I just said. so the only thing you quote is "...".

And no he is not right about any of that, he is exaggerating the agreement; I already specified everything in the previous page, if you cant process that and the only thing you get from what I said is "...", It is unnecessary to explain again.

Edit: and of course no company has obligation to provide the products always and the license, but no all companies does what service ZDT does: get the annual fee for "protection" in all sort of unfortunate situations, pay for those services.

[mrsugmad]

Has anyone mentioned Rob Papen?
They keep adding VSTs for free if you have their current explorer package. They do not force you to pay up until a major upgrade. (explorer 4 to explorer 5 etc.)

All their VST's are top notch.
If I were on a desert island, I would be very happy with RP Explorer and all of Spectrasonics products.

[ictools]

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”....

Which makes absolutely no sense, because U-HE is known for their virtual synthesizers. So maybe this should have been posted there?

Or it would be safe to assume it includes both in the audio world? And most BIG companies tend to dabble in both hardware and software these days.

But, again none of these companies are considered "BIG" in the larger picture of the audio world. Brand popularity doesn't account for much in this case.

[Butwug]

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”....

Which makes absolutely no sense, because U-HE is known for their virtual synthesizers. So maybe this should have been posted there?

Or it would be safe to assume it includes both in the audio world? And most BIG companies tend to dabble in both hardware and software these days.

But, again none of these companies are considered "BIG" in the larger picture of the audio world. Brand popularity doesn't account for much in this case.

Yeah mate, it wouldnt make sense so thats why I didnt say that previously. It was an example.

Satin is probably the best tape fx out there....besides Reelbus .

Since none are “big” besides a select few, like Apple, and...???? Either title should be changed or we shouldnt be arsed with the specifics of what is “big” and if Uhe/etc is big or not, because in grand scope of things, a 15 employee company isnt that much different than 100. But we know what OP means.....

Sort of my point in first place. I guess we agree, in a weird way lol.

[rageix]

So far on my journey:

* U-He positive. Solid products at a fair price done right. No annoying dongle or authentication scheme, all the products look baller and run on high DPI screens and are just good.
* DMG Audio positive. Good products. Responsive to bug reports.

Shit list:
* Waves. Support is a joke. They could give a f**k less if you have issues. Standard past you bullshit not take you seriously kind of support.

[ictools]

It's obvious that this thread has diminished entirely.

The title of the thread is, "Big Companies That Get It Right", let's try to stick to that, shall we?

Your personal conflicts and vendettas are meaningless to the rest of the population that have no issues, especially on this topic.

[ictools]

Can you imagine the hundreds if not thousands a day of operator errors that get filtered through their customer service? I'm surprised they still have time left in the day to actually tackle real issues and bugs.

It must be a tough job working with people who don't even put in the effort to resolve the issues themselves, that are usually well documented on their website or user manuals.

It must get exhausting hearing the same complaints like a viral video, instead of watching a video that walks them through the process.

I guess we live in a world where want to be engineers need their hands held to solve issues. But, under those circumstances, I believe big companies are doing the best they can.

Reading and understanding a company's policies before purchasing anything is most important, it may save you from frustrations later. Try and control those impulse purchases, because rules and fees may apply and differ. Expecting a BIG company to bend over backwards for you, just isn't good business practices for everyone.

[RobinWood]

JunSev at its best again. No surprise of you reaction.

NI and Steinberg support gave me anger some times. It's not that they were not helpful, but the time and tries until I received answers was way too long.

Imageline and Presonus probably the only big companies were the devs themself answer to support questions. And pretty quick too.

No problems with waves so far besides a hardware issue on my side and therefore the change of the machine id. Wasn't able to deactivate the old machine by myself, so they helped out.

No problems with UAD. Never needed support, but asked for hardware recommendations and they wrote me a quick comparison of their interfaces and cards with their specialities. They got it right imo too.

IK multimedia f****d me up a couple times.

Else I honestly don't know which else to consider big.

[woodsdenis]

Waves are very good, UHE for the very few times you need to get in touch, Synapse as well.

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

hmm, but tbh, don't know if U-he qualifies as a 'big company', when comparing to NI, Waves, etc.

Looking online I found the following:

Number of employees:

• Avid: 1458 (google search)

• IK: 626 (estimated from owler.com)

• NI: 500 (google search for number of employees)

• Wave: 260 (google search vs. 272 shown on owler)

• Ableton: 205 (estimated from owler vs about 200 from wikipedia)

• Izotope: 140 (estimated from owler.com)

• U-he: 13 (per the "meet the team" page of their website)

• Soundtoys: 7-8 (google search vs. owler.com)

Audio software, both DAWs and especially plugins, are a niche product. Companies don't really become "big" companies, but some do employ more than others.

This is not accurate (speaking only for us, of course) and neither are any of the other figures being estimated in this thread. Please note that when considering any other conjecture or in context of any experience/opinion expressed in this thread. We're also privately held so don't bother asking for the exact numbers

[Urs]

Thankfully in Europe one does not need to ask for numbers. Europe has corporate transparency laws which are implemented slightly differently for each country. Italy for instance is pretty good at corporate transparency. For €2.50 you can download the latest figures from, say, "IK Multimedia Production SRL" here:

https://www.registroimprese.it/home

Similar registers exist in all European countries, and even for associated countries like Norway, easily found here:

https://e-justice.europa.eu/content_bus ... e&member=1

^^ Germany has less thorough and less up-to-date entries than Italy, but at least it's free