Is it bad to rely on 32-bit plugins?

[Q9000]

Ah good old Alchemy crap and their stupid company decision. What happens when a stupid company dies? The products are no longer supported.
This only means death to closed source crap, its that simple.

Bridges won't exist for to long either. 16bit programs don't run anymore on windows, etc. Etc.

Plus there are always new technologies, new DAWs, new ISAs(RISC-V), new instruction sets, new GPUs, etc.

Oh yes you don't own anything if you don't have the source code...

[mixyguy2]

Actually, depending on the copy protection, they could be if any have to call home on a regular basis.

"Call home?" Meaning one of those where you have to connect to their dorky installer online program/etc? I have no such plugins. Home free. And that's but one reason why I don't.

What happens when a stupid company dies? The products are no longer supported.
This only means death to closed source crap, its that simple.

? Because? Of the billion plugins I've ever owned, I can count on one hand how many times I needed any support. They are all alive and well, thanks.

Bridges won't exist for to long either. 16bit programs don't run anymore on windows, etc. Etc.

16-bit programs ran for a LONG time on Windows before finally getting phased out.

Plus there are always new technologies, new DAWs, new ISAs(RISC-V), new instruction sets, new GPUs, etc.

you don't own anything if you don't have the source code...

I do, actually.

But really this is such a non-factor 99% of the time. There are extremely, extremely few 32-bit plugins worth a flip that you can't get a 64-bit version of.

Side note, I've had many plugins which had a 32-bit and 64-bit version. I tried both. No difference whatsoever.

[Q9000]

No you don't own anything if you just have a license. You can't see what the software is doing -> you don't own it.
You can't decide what the next version will feature.
You can't modify it.
That's why these problems exist in the first place. Because everyone is locked into the system where it's hard to make money with OSS software.
And no owning a car is different to owning programs.

Also don't forget that VST2 hosts will die out due to Steinberg's nonsense policy to only support VST3 now.

And no, there are differences between 64bit and 32bit, 64bit uses SSE instead of old FPU which is way faster because the stupid stack doesn't have to be maintained. 64bit can also access more SSE registers which lead theoretically to faster code.

Of course these advantages will get eaten away by not optimizing code, using java JIT(Voltage modular is using java) etc.

[Q9000]

Oh and don't forget that 32bit can only address 2GB, that's not enough with lots of assets and loaded plugins. It will be to little for anything practical when we jump around with 256GB, but this happened before with 8 and 16bit addresses

[liquidsound]

I mean, its not like they are suddenly going to stop working one day, right?

Well, it also depends on how old you are and calculate who’s going to stop working first