Is the Market Finally Saturated?

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recursive one wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 10:58 amIt seems you just need some very limited set of sounds. Nothing wrong with that, I 've actually heard some of your music and it sounds good for the genre, I like some EBM/industrial, but you probably don't understand (and don't need to understand) what sounds/features people may need for other genres, e.g. psytrance, dubstep, DnB and such, which may require some quite sofisticated sound-design.
If you'd talked about cinematic or world music, I might have seen your point but the genres you name use a subset of the same kinds of sounds we do. EBM shares sounds with all those genres and several others. I've certainly never heard anything approaching sophisticated sound design in any of the genres you've named.
exmatproton wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 11:18 am+1. I am glad with all those minor variations one can find in different wavetables. It makes (at least my style of music) so much more dynamic. Not just "another pulse/saw/square/triangle" but actual content in the wave itself to play around with.
If that's true then you can't be very good at what you do because I get way more tonal variation than I need from any simple waveform, just using standard techniques like PWM and various forms of cross-modulation. If I am still doing this in 50 years, I doubt I'll have run out of new and interesting sounds.
wagtunes wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:23 pm 2017 - $8,701 spent
2018 - $6,757 spent
This year? $2,062 spent and $1300 of that was on Warp IV brass and woodwinds, which is proving to be worth every penny.
In short, there's just nothing coming out that excites me anymore. At least nothing that I can't replicate with the synths I already own.
And when did you start? Because I reckon I had all my bases covered 10 years ago. I mostly buy new synths because I get bored with the old ones. They serve as inspiration for whatever comes next. If 2017 was your first year, then it would take you a few to get hold of everything that was already out there.

I can't remember the last time I bought anything and thought "this will allow me to do things I couldn't do before", although listening to some of Massive's glitchy presets made me realise I could do the same kind of stuff in DUNE. Prior to that I'd have done it in any of a dozen or more of my SynthEdit creations, using things like the RARP (RandomARPeggiator) I invented and/or the GATE I put into them. It gave me ideas of different ways to use things I already had, as opposed to enabling me to do things I couldn't do previously.
wagtunes wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:44 pmActually, my life is wonderful. I have everything I could possibly want. My wife, my daughter, my church, my music, an album that's finally going to be professionally recorded by a band in 2020, a nice inheritance, great friends, and the best health I've been in in years.
So the world can go to hell in a hand basket, you've got every thing you want. I suppose you pray for those less well off than you and that salves your conscience (assuming you have one, of course)? Meanwhile, people of real moral standing can't be happy because others are doing it tough. Look at Bill and Melinda Gates - if you think you've got it all, imagine how much more they have, yet they will get rid of it all to help others. All of it in the end.
The only thing I don't have is peace at this forum from people who insist on stalking me and commenting on everything I post with nothing but contempt and hostility.
That's largely because you are impossible to have a rational discussion with. I put it down mostly to ego, you don't take criticism well at all and you love to push your own barrow at every opportunity.
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@Bones

Why I'm even bothering is beyond me but just to set the record straight, nowhere did I say the world can go to hell in a hand basket. I made an innocent comment in this thread about how I don't spend nearly as much money as I used to because there's nothing out there that excites ma and Karma_tba comes back with this remark.
The thread is about a saturated market not about how much you spent. Somehow you have a knack for always making it about you.
So please tell me exactly what it was I said that warranted this response? If relating my experience to my buying habits is "making this thread about me" then we're all pretty much guilty of that as everybody is relating their own personal experience.

If it's simply my forum "history" that provokes such attacks, well, I guess that's something I'm just going to have to live with. I can't change what was. I've been trying like the devil to stay out of trouble around here. If you check my post history, you'll notice that I hardly ever post in instruments anymore since nothing interests me. I confine myself mostly to Music Cafe. In fact, it's really the only thing even keeping me at this forum anymore.

To answer your question though, I started PC recording in 2014. Over the course of the last 5 years prior to 2019, I spent about $25,000. So yeah, I'd say I got just about everything. And the truth is, a lot of what I have is overlap.

So yeah, I'm pretty much done. The innovation just isn't there, IMO, to warrant buying anymore synths. I got MODO Drums because, IMO, it truly was unique. I can't do what I can do with it with any other drum product that I have.

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tony10000 wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:57 am It seems like everything is on sale more often than not. Sounds like demand for virtual instruments and effects is at an all time low.
When people have no money for recreation, they like to treat themselves by purchasing small gifts for themselves. So, if something is dirt cheap there is a good chance that the mostly poor customer will bite. If most of the people are poor, then the company must sell cheap in order to make any money at all. Otherwise, they go out of business.
Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

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Aloysius wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:13 am
tony10000 wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:57 am It seems like everything is on sale more often than not. Sounds like demand for virtual instruments and effects is at an all time low.
When people have no money for recreation, they like to treat themselves by purchasing small gifts for themselves. So, if something is dirt cheap there is a good chance that the mostly poor customer will bite. If most of the people are poor, then the company must sell cheap in order to make any money at all. Otherwise, they go out of business.
It's true, we must not forget we're not in the best world economy scenary right now.

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Sinisterbr wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:52 am
Aloysius wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:13 am
tony10000 wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:57 am It seems like everything is on sale more often than not. Sounds like demand for virtual instruments and effects is at an all time low.
When people have no money for recreation, they like to treat themselves by purchasing small gifts for themselves. So, if something is dirt cheap there is a good chance that the mostly poor customer will bite. If most of the people are poor, then the company must sell cheap in order to make any money at all. Otherwise, they go out of business.
It's true, we must not forget we're not in the best world economy scenary right now.
hehe.. its about to get a whole lot worse.
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Tariffs on plugins? Noooooooo. I can go without food but not me new plugins to tinker with and quickly forget.
Doing nothing is only fun when you have something you are supposed to do.

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wagtunes wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 12:59 am @Bones

To answer your question though, I started PC recording in 2014. Over the course of the last 5 years prior to 2019, I spent about $25,000. So yeah, I'd say I got just about everything. And the truth is, a lot of what I have is overlap.

So yeah, I'm pretty much done. The innovation just isn't there, IMO, to warrant buying anymore synths. I got MODO Drums because, IMO, it truly was unique. I can't do what I can do with it with any other drum product that I have.
Actually, $25K is not that much over a period of 5 years. You could spend that pretty quickly and easily if you were into hardware synths and especially modular systems.

I easily spent that much and probably more in the 80s when I had a MIDI studio (and that was in 1980s dollars). A DX7 was $2K. Many other hardware synths and modules were in the $500-$1500 range. I knew a famous film composer that spent at least $100K for his Synclavier II. He had 13 megabytes of memory at $4K per megabyte!

Now, you can get tons of enjoyment and functionality at a fraction of that price .

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I used to spend what would be the equivalent of $5k-$10k per year in my hardware days. It was brutally expensive just to get incrementally more capability year after year. When we moved to software, I probably spent less than $500 over 10 years on software. It didn't feel like I needed to spend any more than that to get everything I needed (and then some). Then, over the past 2-3 years, getting back into it properly after 7-8 years off, I've probably spent $2k on software and the same again on hardware. It's all very much cheaper than it used to be.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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BONES wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 12:48 am
recursive one wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 10:58 amIt seems you just need some very limited set of sounds. Nothing wrong with that, I 've actually heard some of your music and it sounds good for the genre, I like some EBM/industrial, but you probably don't understand (and don't need to understand) what sounds/features people may need for other genres, e.g. psytrance, dubstep, DnB and such, which may require some quite sofisticated sound-design.
If you'd talked about cinematic or world music, I might have seen your point but the genres you name use a subset of the same kinds of sounds we do. EBM shares sounds with all those genres and several others. I've certainly never heard anything approaching sophisticated sound design in any of the genres you've named.
I think you just don't know what these genres may actually sound like. I know you like arguing with people for the sake of it though, so I'm out.
You may think you can fly ... but you better not try

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jesus christ you guys have waaaaaaaay too much time on your hands

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

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Yes, it is definitely a saturated market for synths, acoustic drum emulation, eqs, verbs, compressors etc. No doubt there will be new variations of each released daily for all time, but very few be essential. This will keep driving prices down. At some point it must be very hard for developers to justify releasing something new if the financial recoupment is so low. MODO drums is a good example - amazingly clever, but sonicly there's very little to make it superior to other current big hitters, nor really in workflow. The tech might be revolutionary, but imo the results are not.

But there are areas that I feel there is still room for substantial improvement. Beats - I'm staggered that well over a decade after Stylus RMX nothing has bettered it, and goodness knows there's a lot of room for improvemnt in Stylus itself. I can well imagine a revolutionary new product being released in the next few years that can integrate grooves, electronic generation, samples, loops and one-shots seamlessly, in a musical way (very important, that part). I'd hope that would be the replacement from Spectrasonics, but the market is there for the taking if they drag their heels for eternity.

New kinds of effects and processing is also possible. Some of this is utliltarian such as iZotope RX, there's bags of potential for new tricks in noise reduction and general manipulation. I think a huge new - and slightly scary - market will be in vocal modelling, making voices sound like different singers and indeed people ("one click - Dave Grohl"). I see nothing in physics and computing that would mean this isn't inevitable at some stage. Look at Deep Fake for what is already possible visually, audio will catch up.

DAWs - there's a lot wrong with all of them imo. Either workflow, functionality or resource-use tends to suffer somewhere. Bags of room for improvement.

Hardware - masses of room for improvement in the area of control surfaces and that ever elusive Universal Synth Controller.

So I think there will be plenty for us to throw our money at in the coming years. But I do find it hard to see a case for synths, acoustic drums and basic effects.
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The one particular thing I keep seeing that makes me think that there's market saturation is how many different plugin devs are diving headlong into some kind of subscription scheme. Compare this to, for instance, the situation with Apple: cellphones have gone from revolutionary innovations to evolutionary commodities, everyone's happy with what they have and hanging onto them longer, so the company's pouring tons of effort into subscriptions to boost and stabilize its revenues from the drop in cellphone sales.

From a personal perspective, I'm certainly starting to feel a similar sort of exhaustion with plugins - I've been buying plugins, not necessarily a ton at a time, but steadily for years and years. When I was starting out, it was easy to look at something and see what it did that what I had on hand didn't offer. Now, I look at a plugin, go "do I already have something that can do this, and do it well?" and it's a rare day that I can't answer yes.

That is the trick in an industry like this - save for when something gets phased out by-and-large (like 32-bit-only plugins), not only is a new plugin competing with similar, newly released contemporaries, but every single plugin in that category that came before it. And with generally no breakage/replacement like with something physical like a phone, the competition from prior models doesn't ever go away with time. Unless a plugin comes out that does something totally new, it seems to me that each new plugin that's released is only going to further add to that saturation. And since I've reached personal saturation in nearly every category of plugin I can think of, it's hard to get excited about all those new variations on a theme...

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BONES wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 12:48 am
exmatproton wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 11:18 am+1. I am glad with all those minor variations one can find in different wavetables. It makes (at least my style of music) so much more dynamic. Not just "another pulse/saw/square/triangle" but actual content in the wave itself to play around with.
If that's true then you can't be very good at what you do because I get way more tonal variation than I need from any simple waveform, just using standard techniques like PWM and various forms of cross-modulation. If I am still doing this in 50 years, I doubt I'll have run out of new and interesting sounds.
"If that's true then you can't be very good at what you do..." <--- why these kind of personal attacks? I just don't get it...and it is uncalled for, really. Listen to some of my music and decide then if i am so bad you think i am. :dog:

I certainly still use the usual suspects (i.c.w. PWM, PM, FM, C.MOD, FX, Filters, etc...) and i still love to do that. However, with WT's there is so much more possible. I love to use WT's with (e.g.) 8 drum sounds and fade between those single cycle waveforms. It is just really fun.

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exmatproton wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 11:43 am
BONES wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 12:48 am
exmatproton wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 11:18 am+1. I am glad with all those minor variations one can find in different wavetables. It makes (at least my style of music) so much more dynamic. Not just "another pulse/saw/square/triangle" but actual content in the wave itself to play around with.
If that's true then you can't be very good at what you do because I get way more tonal variation than I need from any simple waveform, just using standard techniques like PWM and various forms of cross-modulation. If I am still doing this in 50 years, I doubt I'll have run out of new and interesting sounds.
"If that's true then you can't be very good at what you do..." <--- why these kind of personal attacks? I just don't get it...and it is uncalled for, really. Listen to some of my music and decide then if i am so bad you think i am. :dog:

I certainly still use the usual suspects (i.c.w. PWM, PM, FM, C.MOD, FX, Filters, etc...) and i still love to do that. However, with WT's there is so much more possible. I love to use WT's with (e.g.) 8 drum sounds and fade between those single cycle waveforms. It is just really fun.
The reason he does personal attacks is because that's what he does. It's what a lot of people on this forum do.

Welcome to the Internet.

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