Is the Virtual Instrument era over?

[BONES]

Is there any chance left for the solo dev to bring out a new synth?

Not much.

I dunno, Synapse is just two people and they do OK. Thorn and Viper are both solo efforts, although Thorn is now sold through PA. GR-8 and Invader 2 are a couple of excellent synths released last year by solo devs. Same for OB-Xtreme 2 just this month. I'd suggest it's a helluva lot easier for those guys than it is for us artists.

Every startup-to-mid-mature dev synth I've tried lacks features like no inline help, no adjustable display, no posh browser

Have a look at Vital, GR-8, HY-Poly or Proclethya.
[quote[btw I think Bones is right about synth bands using gear mostly for show [/quote]
You know that I'm always right about everything.

But if you do a new 3 osc subtractive synth with a bunch of knobs for the UI, don't even bother.

I'd have agreed with you until I tried GR-8. It's way too good to be free. Way too good.

Hardware synth worship is the False God of the Middle Class Poser Muso who can afford to spend £1,000s on machines that are no longer necessary.

I was watching a Peter Hook interview the other night and that's what he said - New Order were pretty much unique among electronic artist when they first started out because they were a working class band that could afford all the cool kit.

Lots of great electronic music has been made with nothing more than a sampler. Personally, most of my favorite sounding ones were a sampler and either a Virus or some simple analogs.

OTOH, I wouldn't have the first clue what instruments were used on any of my favourite electronic music. It doesn't seem relevant to me.

[Uncle E]

OTOH, I wouldn't have the first clue what instruments were used on any of my favourite electronic music. It doesn't seem relevant to me.

Well, if you ever get curious, I own Skinny Puppy's sampler.

[BONES]

Not a favourite of mine, really. A few good songs but a lot of dross. In fact, my favourie Skinny Puppy album is actually Numb's Death on the Installment Plan.

[jamcat]

I was watching a Peter Hook interview the other night and that's what he said - New Order were pretty much unique among electronic artist when they first started out because they were a working class band that could afford all the cool kit.

As Joy Division, the only synth they had was a Solina.
They must have bought all that later kit with Ian Curtis's life insurance.

[BONES]

He said it was something to do with money Factory had raised to buy the Hacienda. I saw them at the Hacienda in 1982. They were terrible.

[jamcat]

And they never got any better.

[zerocrossing]

Funny how Twitter, Reddit, Quora, etc, were all supposed to mean the end of forums. We need Meta because it’s impossible for us to have this conversation without seeing animated heads and torsos of each other.

Mark said legs are coming. We’ll probably get feet too, maybe by 2030.

[syntonica]

And they never got any better.

They were lab geeks, not marketing salesmen.

[jamcat]

Or musicians.

[BONES]

Peter Hook admits to being tone deaf and completely incapable of playing anyone else's songs. I found it mostly fascinating.

[rod_zero]

Funny how Twitter, Reddit, Quora, etc, were all supposed to mean the end of forums. We need Meta because it’s impossible for us to have this conversation without seeing animated heads and torsos of each other.

Most forums have declined, specially for games and fandoms.

[waiting man]

I agree...the same people always attempt to quash any interesting discussion on KVR.

I think you screwed it yourself by presenting 'the facts'.

Absolutely.
Plus vst market saturation is a ten-years old concept.
There's a lot of "buying three emulations of the same hardware fx or synth just because" so probably the argument gets lost in the storm.

[jules99]

What's become much more important in recent years is not just creating a VI that sounds good, but one that sounds unique. If you look at effects, combining different effects such as a reverb and a distortion or a delay with modulation effects has become much more common to create something unique. That seems to be tougher in the instrument section.

Lunacy Audio Cube tried something new in the sampling realm, but it's only slowly growing. Newfangled Audio Generate just like Plasmonic does seem to have a growing fan base, but it's not a hot new thing like Serum was, although both synths do a lot of things differently and sound like it.

The question might be, why these new virtual instruments are not as popular as Pigments, Omnisphere or Kontakt. The answer might be two-fold: more than a few producers seem to be much more conservative and driven by popular genre's sounds, so new instruments just don't have that much of an appeal to them. And, as many have said, economics drive many buyers' decisions now more than they might have three years ago.

[aMUSEd]

Yes No maybe

[tony10000]

This thread's era is over

I still don't understand why you all keep bashing this thread. It's a very interesting subject, and some acclaimed developers even gave their POV about it (that alone made this thread worth it, IMO). Markus even agreed to a point about the saturated market argument, and Urs shed some light about what has been happening in this market, and to where it might be heading.
This is far from an useless thread, as some keep insinuating. Well, at least for me.

im not bashing the thread, im bashing the notion that the era of plug ins is over.
as above, i agree things are changing in the market, but things do. and i also agree that the current economic climate will maybe mean we lose some companies/developers, but a couple of hair dressers near my house have too, but i think hairdressers in general will survive.

I think people kind of misunderstood my premise.

For example, I look at the 70s as the era of analog synths, as that is when most of the definitive models were designed and produced (MiniMoog, Prophet 5, Oberheim Poly, ARP, etc). The 80s was the era of of digital synths (DX7, D50, M1, Alpha Juno, CZ101, ESQ1, etc.) I think the 00-20s was the era of VSTis (with the last decade being the strongest): (Diva, Serum, Sylenth, Zebra, Predator, Rapid, Spire, Omnisphere, Falcon, Icarus, Massive, Hive, Electra, Synthmaster, Phase Plant, etc.)

Most of the synths that have come out in the 20s thusfar have been derivative or imitative of those early VIs without much innovation. And my list of FACTS are some of the reasons. That DOES NOT mean that VIs are going to disappear. The flagships will sail on (although there will be some casualties along the way). But I don't see many truly innovative synths with the same level of popularity of those mentioned on the horizon.