[Fixed in 4.4] Weird bug: latest "Spectral Suite" update not included in upgrade plan

[billcarroll]

This is unacceptable to me because of the principle. All updates are supposed to be included in the yearly subscription. This is like breaking a promise.

especially if it hasn't been developed by some new developer or a third-party one so causes even more delay in the standard upgrade plan ... I would say it's a double-breaking promise

I honestly don’t care who developed it. This is a poor decision by Bitwig.

I have emailed Bitwig support to let them know how I feel about this, and I suggest others do the same.

[ToneShop]

Can’t believe they did this.
Been there since version 1 ,preordered the very first version to support them as a new player in the DAW world.
Even got the badge for it .
This move is a kick in the balls.
I have a renewal waiting for V5 , but I’m strongly thinking of selling it.

You disappoint me Bitwig………

[lokio]

This is unacceptable. I will write them a sternly worded letter!

[trollology]

As a side note ignoring the business choice for a moment:
I understand the mastering tools are a different market, and Bitwig wanted to create quality devices that are actually competitive with similar products. So in a way this is a marketing move to lure in mastering engineers and I would not be surprised if we saw things in this domain like video sync for film scoring and such niche. The current modular system gives them a platform to hire other professionals for device types that the core Bitwig team doesn't have the experience with, moving in the direction of AI for example.

Is this shrinkflation? They need more money but didn't want to change the subscription's price, so they removed some resources from the mainline DAW development, meaning the regular updates will be slower from now on, and instead they will focus more and more on custom devices? Why not increase the subscription's price a bit, instead of splitting the DAW's community?

[seipster]

All EU customers are protected by laws that shall protect from:
"misleading practices, either through action (giving false information) or omission (leaving out important information)"
So if Bitwig have claimed:
"12 Months of Free Upgrades

Future-proof: All Bitwig Studio updates in the following 12 months are FREE. "

They might be in trouble.

[MrRodent]

This is unacceptable. I will write them a sternly worded letter!

I will curse them in an internet forum!

[aproject]

This is an unnecessary update for me because I already have many similar tools but I have a question, how to disable notifications about this update ???? It's nice that the update showed up, but the information on the website is enough, not every time I run bitwig. Of course, you can turn it off with a small dot in the right corner, but the next time you start it, the update window appears again.

[billcarroll]

This move definitely violates expectations of the customer base, if not violates laws in places.

[ozinga]

The problem is, from now on there is no way to know what will be included with the 12 month payment and what will be extra during those 12 months.

[musikarldererste]

imagine = you must buy a supscription just to use the addon
double money spend this is very expensive , wow im shocked right now

fl studio have addons , to but the upgrade costs nothing

so maybe i switched to fl studio or ableton

[MrRodent]

All EU customers are protected by laws that shall protect from:
"misleading practices, either through action (giving false information) or omission (leaving out important information)"
So if Bitwig have claimed:
"12 Months of Free Upgrades

Future-proof: All Bitwig Studio updates in the following 12 months are FREE. "

They might be in trouble.

I think that wording is the thing though. Add-on ≠ update.

[anoise]

WTF is this. Very disappointing. On top of that, every time I open Bitwig, that popup shows to update the packages, even though I don't have a license for this "addon". Guess what, no way! Vote with your wallet people.

[RichN]

Et tu, Bitwig?

[shaboogen]

So loyal customery got now downgraded to "Cubasis" like thing?
Disappointing is a nice word for how that feels...
When you look for similar plugins, there's Melda for instance which had "multiband" plugs which offer loudness bands, mid side, and a variety of other "band" interpretations...

I have MCompleteBundle. Melda does a lot of great things, but this type of spectral shaping is not an area they're playing in currently. Here's the list of spectral effects they have, this type of stuff isn't covered.

https://www.meldaproduction.com/guides/spectral

Steinberg guys are smart imo - they email surveys from time to time asking for users opinions new future suggestions etc.

This one is a surprising move.. upsetting a lot of Us...

Chill

Steinberg also killed off VST2 in Cubase 12 and put so much draconian shit into the VST standard that it prompted an entirely new open source standard to be built. Hate this move all you want, but let's not hold Steinberg up as a bastion of customer centricity simply because they ran a survey (also, Bitwig ran a survey like 2 months ago).

Initially, I was annoyed about this but I made my peace with it thinking that it was functionally exactly the same as paid RE's by Reason Studios, but the more I think about it the more confused I become.

Are these plugins going to be actively developed in future? Given that they're Bitwig specific, is any of that potential future development going to be gated behind future versions of the software making certain future features unusable if you don't upgrade? Does this affect the upgrade cadence that we can expect, reducing the overall value of a year's worth of upgrades?

I appreciate that everyone has to make a living, and I'm not even opposed to paying for extra stuff, but it's pretty poor form to shift a paradigm as significantly as this without some kind of communication going along with it to explain the reasoning behind the move.

Like I said in the other thread, Bitwig has earned my trust up to this point with the way they've run this piece of software (other people judge things their own way obviously), but this is a pretty out of left field move with literally zero explanation. These things should be handled better.

[Buckster]

I'm not sure if their policy will change but I'm pretty sure I won't be paying again for another annual subscription just leaves so many unknowns. Was clear before now I have no idea what future updates or not I may get - will be extremely interesting what happens when version 5 comes out.

I think it's time for me to look at other DAWs