Strymon Big Sky Plugin

[SonicDimension]

There are two categories of users of audio software-- pros and amateurs. The pros have a bigger budget, so they are willing to buy $199 plug-ins. Amateurs are generally not willing to pay this much. This is why most companies with expensive plug-ins also offer their products at huge discounts periodically. They make more money when they sell to both sets of customers at different prices.

For example, you can buy the Eventide Blackhole plug-in at $199 full-price, or for $29 when it goes on sale. Similarly, you can usually get Soundtoys Echoboy ($199 full-price) for $49 several times per year. Strymon is new to the software world, but I assume that they will offer discounts in order to generate more sales.

Honestly, I'm more excited about the possibility of a Timeline or Volante plug-in, or maybe a Strymon Everything Bundle with every algo they ever wrote. Pete Celi is a DSP wizard.

[VitaminD]

Damn...Sweetwater sells this. $34 bucks a month for a few months doesn't sound terrible to pay it off. No! You don't need this! Wait at least!

Batman helps you save money.

[ReverendLove]

There's a 7 day demo.

I rather save that for the day they might have a sale, and I'm really interested in buying it.

You both say that it's similar to some Eventide reverbs, which I would confirm as far as I can tell from the demos I've heard. Of course, like synth, they all sound different, so, no reverb will sound exactly the same, but, I guess it's remotely in the same sonic direction. Which is good, because, me likey.

Well, I have Eventide's H9s and Strymon's Big Sky, Timeline and Mobius. While both brands have excellent algorithms they have remarkably different textures. Strymon sounds more polite and cultivated while I would say Eventide is more roock'n'roll.
Plugins to compare with Strymon? nothing I am aware of but Xenoverb being a lookalike to bigsky. It also tends to be precise and elaborated as bigSky. It sounds really good but I cannot reproduce.my bigSky presets.
OTOH, none of them can reach to sound of my AC30's spring.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

OTOH, none of them can reach to sound of my AC30's spring.

Feel the same way about my vintage Princeton Reverb's spring. Some fake springs can sound decent, but I'll be damned if every one of them doesn't have at least one thing that's not right, and just don't sound good. IR's are generally the way to go with springs IMO and yield better results.

[jamcat]

$199 is like $49 in 2020 dollars.

[trusampler]

Took the demo for a spin for a few hours, it's good, but if you already own Valhalla it's a tough sell. I like the Strymon sound, Valhalla is just on another level imho , and Valhalla is alot more cpu friendly. Looking forward to more of their line up come out in the Vst format.

[Agreed]

Being able to get all four Valhalla verbs for the same price, I don't know if the problem is going to be that "pros can spend whatever they want" - pros still want a good return on investment, does this have a competitive enough sound to swing with the big boys?

[simmo75]

I like it, a lot! But cannot justify the price, despite being a 'pro" lol!

[c_voltage]

There are two categories of users of audio software-- pros and amateurs. The pros have a bigger budget, so they are willing to buy $199 plug-ins. Amateurs are generally not willing to pay this much.

Those who believe that "pro" handing money to left and right - the third category.
(Ok joke, but really quite superficial affirmation)

[Dirtgrain]

Ya, pros aren't paying top dollar in most cases.

[zerocrossing]

I sort of see it this way. I’ve wanted this pedal for a long time but using pedals are really awkward in my world. So until now, it’s no Big Sky for me. But now, I can buy a Big Sky that’s invisible until I pull up it’s 2d representation. So, I’m not thinking of it in terms of dollars, because I’d easily pay for the pedal if I could use a pedal. Someone compared it to buying Valhalla plugins, but they’re an algorithm each for $50, and this is 12 algorithms for $199, so $199 is actually quite a bargain. Plus, what else are you going to spend your money on? Food? To chew up and turn to POOP!?

[Agreed]

Valhalla are not $50 per algorithm. In fact:

Valhalla Vintageverb at $50 has the following algorithms: Concert Hall / Bright Hall / Plate / Room / Chamber / Random Space / Chorus Space / Ambience / Sanctuary / Dirty Hall / Dirty Plate / Smooth Plate / Smooth Room / Smooth Random / Nonlin / Chaotic Hall / Chaotic Chamber / Chaotic Neutral / Cathedral

Valhalla Plate at $50 has the following algorithms: Chrome / Steel / Brass / Cobalt / Adamantium / Titanium / Osmium / Aluminum / Copper / Unobtainium / Radium / Lithium

Valhalla Room at $50 has the following algorithms, with more adjustment parameters: Large Room / Medium Room / Bright Room / Large Chamber / Dark Room / Dark Chamber / Dark Space / Nostromo / Narcissus / Sulaco / LV-426 / Dense Room

Valhalla Shimmer at $50 has the following modes: Single / Dual / SingleReverse / DualReverse / Bypass - these apply to the following algorithms: Mono / BigStereo / MediumStereo / SmallStereo

Supermassive is free and has 16 algorithms, but nothing's stopping you from getting a Big Sky plugin and still getting Supermassive for free

There are other reverb plugins in the $200 (and up) price range. Altiverb, Adaptiverb, Fabfilter, Soundtoys, of course Lexicon sails way up from there (they got a $1300 reverb software package). But you gotta be swinging something heavy to fit in with those. I'm going to download and evaluate the Strymon plugin, as I do like their pedals and I've followed the company since it was Damage Control (used to have a mess of Damage Control pedals, once upon a time, people quite liked the Timeline and Glass Nexus back in their day, ridiculously huge though they were). Not convinced I'll buy it - I'd be more likely to just get the pedal for $200 since that's about what the V1s run used anyway (or talk myself into spending the extra $100 for the V2 if the upgrades seemed compelling when looking into it, which I have not done because I am quite happy with my current reverb pedals), then I could use it with my outboard processing loop or I could use it on a pedalboard.

But if you were only looking for ITB usage and arbitrary number of copies in a project, I'm not knocking their offering, it is what it is - does it sound like $200?

[WordClock]

I can't believe it! Big Sky for a fraction of it's hardware price. I was saving up to buy one and now it can integrate into my DAW's.... The BigSky is the ABSOLUTE best hardware effect one could ever convert to plugin format. YES!

[zerocrossing]

I like it, a lot! But cannot justify the price, despite being a 'pro" lol!

I know, right? I once had an employer who refused to buy me After Effects, even though we did a lot of motion graphics and we had to contract most of it out. It was like the Spanish Inquisition trying to explain what it did and why we could use it. Meanwhile, we were paying people giant sums for work that wasn’t all that great. We were doing things like Oracleworld with multimillion dollar budgets. Hell, we once built an actual working pool onto a stage in a convention center. So I made a little demo that explained what my hourly billing was and how long it took me to make with my own copy of After Effects, but we didn’t have that capability as a company. That did finally convince them.

Of course, the same company thought nothing of taking the 70+ company out to a bar a few times a month and picking up the tab.

I wouldn’t ask my current client to pay for this, though. The work we’re doing does not require anything that good and I already have other great reverbs. This would be for my own personal fun. I am thinking of asking for a good orchestral library, though as we really could use one. The Kontakt factory libraries kind of suck.

[SLiC]

It will be interesting to demo this next to say Xenoverb to see if it’s worth the extra money…I suspect nor and it’s also ilok. It’s obviously a legendary hardware pedal, but that doesn’t mean it will sound better than some of the ITB offerings we already had…we have more choice with plug ins than people have with hardware pedals.

Xenoverb is also on sale currently for 22 quid and has CLAP format in the new 1.4 https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... 0-XenoVerb