Bargain Center: discussion, gossip, etc.

[profaudio]

Get an extra $25 off Plugin Alliance with XMAS19-25off4ALL (ends December 27 - 11:59 PM California Time / PT) - BTW if you want to know about these coupons you should sign up to their newsletter.

I got Metric AB for $25! (currently on sale for $49)

Minimum Order $49 - Not valid for any Subscription Bundle!
Voucher can only be used 1x - copy & paste during checkout

Thanks! I unsubscribed when they started announcing a new GAME CHANGING subscription bundle every second day

No worries - I only just signed up myself (I was wondering why I wasn't getting these discount codes like everyone else). Will see how it goes, hopefully they've clamed down now lol...

[testman3thousand]

Pretty much all of the Tubeohm instruments 20€ until 31.12.

https://www.tubeohm.com/shop-software.html

Any recommendation on what to pick up for New and Synth Wave ?

[LoveEnigma18]

One of the best things about changing to a new system was the clean up I did, particularly about synths. I'm sticking to a few of them and I did not install a lot of them I own. I ended up installing basically about 15%-20% of them. And most importantly: I don't miss any of the ones I didn't reinstalled.

That's great. Not missing them is the most important take away here, and exactly what I have been feeling this month.

[Gamma-UT]

CodeUltraSounds going hard to test the spam threshold. If they'd maybe not gone for such big-ass, intrusive posts in the No Chat thread it would at least stand a chance of going under the radar.

But preset designers just can't help it, it seems.

[GoldieK]

Musician's Friend and Guitar Center both are currently offering another 50% off the already discounted prices that Waves and other sellers are running at this time. Many of the better plugins can be had for $15, $20 and $25 each. Have to guess this isn't a mistake since it is on both sites. How this will work for the Waves cash promo I have no clue, but some deals to be had.

[LoveEnigma18]

Musician's Friend and Guitar Center both are currently offering another 50% off the already discounted prices that Waves and other sellers are running at this time. Many of the better plugins can be had for $15, $20 and $25 each. Have to guess this isn't a mistake since it is on both sites. How this will work for the Waves cash promo I have no clue, but some deals to be had.

That's a great find. If I did not already have the plugins I wanted, I would have got them right away.

With coupon HALF: Gold for $42.50, SSL bundle for $50, OneKnob Series for $40, and more... insane, can't believe my eyes!

[LoveEnigma18]

https://www.waves.com/legal/year-end-sa ... #cash-back

Cash back codes can be used only once, and any unused remaining balance cannot be reclaimed. For example, if you use a $30 cash back code to purchase a plugin at $29.99, the code cannot be reused to save $0.01 on a future purchase.

[Vleker]

Musician's Friend and Guitar Center both are currently offering another 50% off the already discounted prices that Waves and other sellers are running at this time. Many of the better plugins can be had for $15, $20 and $25 each. Have to guess this isn't a mistake since it is on both sites. How this will work for the Waves cash promo I have no clue, but some deals to be had.

Can you buy these from EU?

[Digivolt]

Have to guess this isn't a mistake since it is on both sites.

I guess they didn't get the memo from Waves to double prices before allowing the 50% off

[masterhiggins]

https://www.waves.com/legal/year-end-sa ... #cash-back

Cash back codes can be used only once, and any unused remaining balance cannot be reclaimed. For example, if you use a $30 cash back code to purchase a plugin at $29.99, the code cannot be reused to save $0.01 on a future purchase.

Those heartless bastards!

[telecode]

The waves deal is tempting. But I am trying to resist. I keep seeing bad things about their WUP . I don't want to get hooked into their ecosystem.

[kidslow]

What is the consensus on Black Rooster Audio products? I heard that their licenses were NFRs, did they ever fix that?

TLDR: Don't plan on reselling, but install on as many systems as you like.

Have yet to form an opinion on the audio quality of the Black Roosters I picked up this month, as I just installed them. But in my research, they seem to be well regarded sonically. They have nice clean interfaces. Picked up the VLA-3A earlier this month and yesterday VPRE-73. I took a flyer on them at these prices, even if they are NFR. There are various googleable threads stating resale is not possible.

Black Rooster follows the monolithic download model. There is no individual download package per plugin. You get all their plugins if you get one. They aren't the only vendor to do this. I know why they do it. I do not personally believe it's efficient, and I think they turn off as many potential customers as they upsell their existing base by doing it. Does make it easy to demo their other plugins. Their installer, will allow you to choose which ones to install on the system, so there is that.

They use a light Waveshell type of launcher setup. Can't speak for the Windows side, but on a Mac, a single BlackRooster VST and/or AU goes into your plugins folder, and the "bundles" are installed into /Applications/Black Rooster Audio/ ... once installed, their rooster shell intermediates the individual plugin bundles to your DAW.

A single license key is generated on their customer website and used to unlock plugins only once when you first launch them in your DAW. Having installed 2 of their plugins separately I noticed a few things. The license key changed after I added VPRE-73. My supposition is that they are using some simple form of blockchain to encode licensing on a per plugin basis into a single key.

Black Rooster plugins will run just fine on a non networked system. Unlike some other vendors, they do not phone home. I observed no web activity. They do everything local to the system and the single key issued from their customer website appears to be capable of unlocking any variety of plugins you have licensed from their stable. Conceptually that's a nifty trick on their part. Also notably, after I installed VPRE-73, the previously installed VLA-3A did not require additional license activation, but VPRE-73 did on first use. So apparently in their world, once licensed, always licensed (at least on the same system), but that's true of a lot of these license key schemes. In other words, there is no license revocation if a plugin is installed and working. Who knows how this behaves after a major OS upgrade or system migration. Given they don't phone home, there appears to be no technical limit to the number of systems that their plugins can be restricted to. I found nothing in their ToS or FAQ that states any licensing restriction, so presumably there is no limit. That's an upside (at least compared to Waves).

I might be getting some of it wrong, and surely I am. But it appears that Black Rooster have concocted a system that is not particularly amenable to license transfers. If they are using a form of blockchain to encode eligibility into a single multi-plugin license key, there's no reason they couldn't generate a new license that removes a plugin which was transferred and update all parties licenses appropriately. I surmise a technical barrier along these lines, that they can't revoke the previous license that was issued granting access to the plugins that were transferred. Even though they can issue me a new key, nothing besides the concept of being honorable prevents me from continuing to use the old key that unlocked the plugin I just sold.

[dangayle]

One of the best things about changing to a new system was the clean up I did, particularly about synths. I'm sticking to a few of them and I did not install a lot of them I own. I ended up installing basically about 15%-20% of them. And most importantly: I don't miss any of the ones I didn't reinstalled.

That's great. Not missing them is the most important take away here, and exactly what I have been feeling this month.

What do you do when you need to open up old projects though? I tried clearing my stuff out, but then a guy asked me to render down stems from some of my older tracks and I had to spend money to re-acquire plugins I had sold off.

What that did teach me was this: bounce down your tracks, especially if you’re using an iffy plugin.

[LoveEnigma18]

One of the best things about changing to a new system was the clean up I did, particularly about synths. I'm sticking to a few of them and I did not install a lot of them I own. I ended up installing basically about 15%-20% of them. And most importantly: I don't miss any of the ones I didn't reinstalled.

That's great. Not missing them is the most important take away here, and exactly what I have been feeling this month.

What do you do when you need to open up old projects though? I tried clearing my stuff out, but then a guy asked me to render down stems from some of my older tracks and I had to spend money to re-acquire plugins I had sold off.

What that did teach me was this: bounce down your tracks, especially if you’re using an iffy plugin.

So far I haven't got into that situation, except for an NI Expansion where I had to buy it again. I am seeing a pattern in what I use and I tend to favour some things more over other. This year, it was mostly just buying stuff and playing around, just giving myself the liberty, as personal situation was not really very favorable music production wise.

Bouncing the tracks is indeed a great suggestion. I need to start doing that more often in general.

[profaudio]

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