Which developers are a safe bet for longevity.

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I’m still smarting from FXpansion pulling the the plug on some of my favourites. Now IL is pulling its VSTs.
Who can we trust to stick around for the long term?

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U-He
Win 10 with Ryzen 5950x, Bitwig 5, too many plugins, Novation Circuit Mono Station and now a lovely Waldorf Blofeld.

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U-he because they do things right, Valhalla too. iZotope because they probably have a large market share, Surge Synth Team because it's Open Source. Spectrasonics. Probably a good rule of thumb for this is, think of companies that develop only a few products, and that are popular. Check also update frequency and how big the updates are, that's probably going to be a good indicator.

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None.

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Last edited by Chapelle on Sat Oct 07, 2023 2:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Eventide. They are mature already and really stand out :|

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What Cinebient and Chapelle said.

Most Image Line stuff has been around for quite a while.
Plus most developers are pretty small, if not just one single person.
If he looses interest, or can't put time into maintaining his plugins anymore for whatever reason, the products are pretty much abandoned.

Larger companies like Steinberg are a safer bet, but even then you never know for sure.
In the end: enjoy your stuff, but nothing lasts forever.
Most old stuff (though of course still not all) runs pretty well on Windows though, so your biggest fear should be if OG Massive is still visible on your then 16K screens
The GAS is always greener on the other side!

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Steinberg
Arturia
NI
Bitwig (may become a TOP daw in 5y (iho)
U he
Waves
UVI
...and many more
( no transfer fee or a small fee - encourages circulating - hence longevity ;-) )
frequent free or ( pay little for ) updates - a good sign -

...hope there will be a Blofeld 2 - such a great little synth
also
I wish companies would in one way or another SAY what they're working on...
surely omnisphere 3 will come at some point.

...maybe we need another topic - whats new in 2021-2 FOR SURE ( :D ) - synth wise...
MPG X670E CARBON Ryzen 9 7900, 64Gb 6K DDR5 4x2tb Nvmes

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If there is one most safe (for me personally) its Apple. No one wants to hear it but it is like it is. Logic is a safe bet for me and it offer about all I ever need without third party stuff these days (beside some of the better sample libraries).
Well, maybe Apple should have bought N.I. for Logic v11 👹

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I originally wanted to mention NI too, but somehow have a bad feeling about it for some reason, that it might end up as a sample library provider at one point.
I don't think this is bound to happen and at the moment the signs are good that they are heading into a different direction, but i definetly don't see this as too unlikely either.
The GAS is always greener on the other side!

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It's an interesting question! I think there are three main aspects to consider:

Technical debt and dependencies
If a project has its roots in some experimental and/or amateurish code, this can create a chaotic "spaghetti" that makes change more difficult. Another issue for audio plugins is the use of frameworks; it easy to choose something that is not cross-platform, or a product that becomes unmaintained. An example is the continuing 32-bit Windows-only state of the Variety of Sound plugins, which were based on synthmaker with hot loops written in 32-bit assembly code. By comparison Waves continually update their custom framework which is uniform over all their plugins. In principle this means they can make compatibility updates in just a few places to fix their whole product range. (For some reason their update pricing structure does not reflect this.)

Bus factor
Many of KVR's favourite developers are very small companies. If anything were to happen to Sean Costello (Valhalla), Jeroen Breebaart (Toneboosters), Tony Frenzel (Klanghelm), Andy Simper (Cytomic) it is unlikely we will be seeing substantial further updates to their work. If on the other hand Chris from Airwindows were to retire to a monastry, we will still have public access to the source code of many plugins and it is reasonable to believe that the community will find ways to build them for newer systems.

A related problem occurs if work is contracted and a support relationship is not maintained. For example, I very much like the Stacker plugin that was marketed by Sample Magic but it has couple of small bugs and an absurdly slow load time. After some online talk of possible upgrades, it was announced that this product is no longer being sold and will no longer be updated. It seems that Sample Magic lacked the development ability (and possibly the source code?) to maintain this product after a contract expired. See also: AIR

Ethics and goodwill
The above two categories would suggest that the best bet is to go with a large company which builds frameworks and employs multiple developers. The trouble is that these companies tend to be a bit more sales/marketing oriented... There is always the risk that your expensive purchase will be dropped in favour of the next big thing. KORE, anyone?

Small developers can be flaky too, of course. I wouldn't rely on a certain vocal Italian developer (who claims to have departed KVR) to deliver announced improvements on a predictable timescale.


So, uh, U-He. Modern cross-platform framework, multiple developers, good community relations. :clap:
Last edited by imrae on Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Cinebient wrote: Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:17 am If there is one most safe (for me personally) its Apple. No one wants to hear it but it is like it is.
Owners of Firewire hardware may disagree

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imrae wrote: Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:38 am
Cinebient wrote: Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:17 am If there is one most safe (for me personally) its Apple. No one wants to hear it but it is like it is.
Owners of Firewire hardware may disagree
I said "for me personally". I am no Apple fan but I must say that the new M1 machine is the best thing I ever had for music and I bought Logic years ago and get still lots of free updates and finally some of these nice iOS apps coming to my Mac as well.
I never ever used firewire so i will not miss it. I even do not use any audio interface since I do not need it.
But we are at developers here for software and here I still say Apple is the best bet for a long future.

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Cinebient wrote: Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:44 am I never ever used firewire so i will not miss it. I even do not use any audio interface since I do not need it.
But we are at developers here for software and here I still say Apple is the best bet for a long future.
Right, those were other music creators they messed around in the past, clearly you are special and can count on better treatment :tu:

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imrae wrote: Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:47 am
Cinebient wrote: Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:44 am I never ever used firewire so i will not miss it. I even do not use any audio interface since I do not need it.
But we are at developers here for software and here I still say Apple is the best bet for a long future.
Right, those were other music creators they messed around in the past, clearly you are special and can count on better treatment :tu:
This is about the future, not the past :D

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