iZotope discontinues many plugins (iZotope and Exponential Audio)

[kPere]

I got the email to upgrade but probably will not. One reason is that when R4 broke (when I upgraded to Monterey) and it didn't look like they were going to ever fix it, I picked up Tai Chi Lite on sale. Kind of a similar verb. I will miss Phoenixverb, but then again I don't see why it can't stay working for a while. If it does stop working I'll replace it with something then, perhaps with reverbs I already have. I never even really got to use Excalibre since I bought it right before upgrading my OS to Monterey.

I paid 30 bucks total for R4 and Phoenixverb and don't really see spending way more than that to upgrade to basically the same thing in a new Izotope wrapper. I simply don't trust them that much at this point. They continued to sell EA products when they were not working under the current Mac OS (and only updated months later) and now announce they will drop support? Eh, there's other companies making great verbs out there. In the meantime I'll use the EA plugins until they stop working.

You can stay calm on those for a while without buying Neoverb. I did and pretty much regret it, since I found myself reaching for R4 and Phoenix all the time anyway.
Only 1 license per account on Neoverb isn't anything that pushes that purchase any further too.

Ill go same route, will be using R4 and Phoenix until they somehow will stop working (Im on windows though, so not worrying that much) - I'd love to have 2nd licences on both of them though..

[standalone]

Neoverb is very cheap at Plugin Boutique now. I guess Neoverb 2 could be around the corner.

[eerie_audio]

Neoverb is very cheap at Plugin Boutique now. I guess Neoverb 2 could be around the corner.

(Intel-only, M1 Apple Silicon NOT yet supported)

Or they don't have plans to upgrade it to be M1 compliant, like the recent discontinued?

[dayjob]

Neoverb is very cheap at Plugin Boutique now. I guess Neoverb 2 could be around the corner.

(Intel-only, M1 Apple Silicon NOT yet supported)

Or they don't have plans to upgrade it to be M1 compliant, like the recent discontinued?

is it not native yet? is this confirmed? their site says this (and i admit it's dubiously worded):

System requirements
Operating Systems

Mac: macOS High Sierra (10.13.6) - macOS Monterey (12.3.x) *

Windows: Windows 10 – Windows 11

* Supported on Intel Macs & Apple silicon Macs (Apple M1 chips) in Rosetta 2 and native.

and it's listed as Native on the apple silicon native database

https://asaudio.tech/developer/174

[fairlyclose]

I wish izotope would reactivate my Excalibur license. It was on a machine that I cannibalised and did not know to deactivate ilok licenses first so i needed permission from them to reauthorise. Had no troubles with anyone else - just Izotope.

[agharta]

Anyone tried registering an unused iZotope serial number since they discontinued them?
I'm not referring to the iLok EA Reverbs, just the iZotope branded ones.
There are still a lot available via official resellers and via forums such as here, so I assume they still can be registered?

[Igor Sena]

Anyone tried registering an unused iZotope serial number since they discontinued them?
I'm not referring to the iLok EA Reverbs, just the iZotope branded ones.
There are still a lot available via official resellers and via forums such as here, so I assume they still can be registered?
[/quote

Yes, they can still be registered, downloaded and activated. They mentioned it somewhere; can't remember where i saw it.

[art&sound]

Mobius Filter

[JonHolstein]

I stumbled across this thread.
I think we have to blame Apple for many of the issues we are facing today, in terms of upgrades of software. Not the Apple Silicon move, because that was valid, although the roll out was not smooth. I don't think developers understood they would have to adopt, and did not understand the benefits that would come out of that in terms of capabilities for laptops, and small systems like the mini. But also, apple would have needed to provide systems for developers to update for, much earlier than they did.
But beside Apple silicon, the way Apple keeps breaking compatibility means that developers has to spend time and money on just making their software compatible with pretty much every new Mac OS release, instead of focusing on other software, or making larger changes to that software, each year they have to modify the code, to get it working, and some times, it breaks, and they have to put in a lot of work to get it going again.

form that perspective, as long as Apple keeps doing that, the Waves WUP program seems the most reasonable apporach. Because perpetual licenses for Apple, will ge a gamble for the buyer. Subscriptions can kind of work, if the company keeps providing enough content and big enough upgrades each year, in addition to keep the software Mac compatible. there are few companies that put out enough content or feature upgrades each year. NI has the potential (if they miss their own taget, they can always license a couple of Kontakt libraries from 3rd parties). Arturia as well, with their V collection (although less interesting to upgrade recently, but the FX collection could compensate for that, as well as that way they would not have to offer pigment upgrades for free, and they could always get a few present banks thrown in for their softares each year). Perhaps Soundpaint if they can keep developing new content along with porting 8dio stuff. And Spitfire audio. And most DAW makers. And then various of loop and sample banks that have already been successful.
But for most software companies they don't have the output that people will sign on to their subscriptions in the long run. East west and other sample library companies may get people to sign on, to get access to all that content, that they have produced in the past, but they aren't keeping up with new content to get people to see the value of being a subscriber.

Rent to own defeats any argument that it is about bringing software to the masses. So is typically the monthly fee as well, they simply charge too much for it to be reasonable for people using it only occasionally to sign on to a subscription. If they only charged 1.99-2.99, then people would probably see that they could sign up to 10-30 subscriptions rather than purchasing softwares. But the companies value their content to a lot more than that per moth. whereas I think that is more realistic in terms of the masses of buyers. Also, with many jobs in the market paying less and less, it is not given that even people actually making money of their music work would be able to spend much more than that.
Just because a company can quote the value of each software and put them together to make it sound like the subscription offers as super deal, doesn't mean that a lot of potential customers sees it that way. People rather prioritize buying just a couple of software from one vendor to also be able to buy the ones they like from another, rather than buy a subscription that may or may not offer less interesting alternatives to the ones they were eying from another vendor.
If it is all down to securing a steady income, the software makers have to do calculation on what their lowest price could be. Forget anything about how much they could sell each and every software for. They have to focus on getting the price low enough to get enough people to sign on to a subscription. Single month for one price/month, and 12 months for a lower price probably go up to 24 for even lower price.
They will have to realize that they can't keep the same profit margins on their most active users, because that will mean they will never reach the critical mass they need to reach, to use subscription as a steady income for the company. This is true for TV streaming services as well. Most users aren't heavy users. So they will not be willing to pay large amounts per moth to several of streaming services.
And with software, they have the advantage of not having to have streaming servers up an running. They only need to be able to handle a small amount of users downloading at any given point.

Apple helps pushing the mindset of subscriptions. As it pushes consumers to regularly having to buy new versions of software for compatibility reason. And it is partly justified for companies to charge for keeping their software compatible. And with not everyone updating to the same version, and new Mac's only coming with the latest version of the OS, they have to keep each and every software up to date.

So apple is to blame to a large extent for this issue of yearly paid upgrade or bi yearly, that may translate to subscriptions looking like a reasonable alternative. But WUP is probably a better way to go.
But it is the companies that fail to see how low they would have to go for a monthly price to make sense, for the masses they would have to reach.
Wup also helps Waves keep prices down seemingly, some of their software seems underpriced compared to competition, especially at their year lowest prices... If people looked at it that way, as a way to spread the price across multiple of years, it makes a lot more sense... but for many of their older plugins, that have not had a meaningful visual update, it may seem like overpaying, but some of them are still good performers under the hood.


Also the idea that some software isn't driving sales, when it is several of years old, and thus deciding not to continue to develop that conecpt makes no sense.
I can kind of get it, for the EA stuff, while it might have been great for some people looking for that lexicon sound. They weren't the shiny new reverbs on the market, and more people are in to that, even if they are some that are very much in to the lexicon sound.
But Iris was an interesting concept that had not fully reached its potential, so it would have needed continued investment to reach there. Of course as long as it did not get there, it would not be driving sales.
Trash, I have no experience with, but from comments here, it sound like it was pretty unique, but it was getting old, and was no longer the new shiny thing, and it may not have hade some of the shiny features that other software roughly in the same category has. If it got a meaningful upgrade, I'm sure it would sell. Saturation plugin sells.
Software has to get face-lifts and they have to get the occasional new feature, to seem relevant. Still getting mentioned in some top of the year picks doesn't matter, if software either looks outdated compared to the competition, or if it lacks one of the new features that many newer plugins in the same category has gotten.
Software isn't hardware. Being good under the hood, is not enough. People don't want to buy old software, most of the time, even if the code has been updated to work on the latest systems. People arent looking under the hood to see that this is still great and they have actually updated parts of the code each year, so it still works. People are looking at the software, if it looks up to date, and if it has gotten the latest features.
And izotope manages quite well with other softwares to make the updates seem relevant, so at least every 2-3 years, it seems like time to update, if not yearly. Had they done the same with Iris and trash, and vocal synth, those would have probably sold a lot better. And people would be willing to pay for the updates, if they saw that they got anything meaningful.
Paying for compatibility on rather expensive software, is not an interesting prospect. WUP is quite good, as typically people don't update their OS or purchase a new computer on a yearly basis, so buying and upgrade plan every now and then, to get everything up to date to run on a new system or on an Mac OS update that is 2-3 versions behind anyhow and then possibly get a couple more updates available for later updating of the system OS can be worth it, but it would seem more pleasant if the UI updates were bigger, and if waves did continue to release new versions, that were to some extent obviously updated, something to look forward to, for when one finally WUPs ones catalogue.



I really don't like what izotope did here with sales, crossgrade and upgrade offers, to get people to buy software they themseleves kney they would discontinue. It is one thing is Iris 3 and Trash 3 with Apple silicon native, and future Mac OS versions were around the corner, so people would get upgrade/crossgrade offers on those.
I get that Apple creates a major issue for them. had it been MS that had moved to ARM cpus, they would have just had to get on the the Wndows on ARM architecture with updates, and their software would have most likely been able to run through several of Windows service updates, and possibly even full updates. But with Apple, they would have to continue to work with the software even if they got it Apple silicon native.
But then they should have phased the software out. They could have been honest about it even, sending out emails to users years back saying it was unlikely that they would continue to support those softwares, since they would most likely not port them to be Apple silicon native. And perhaps they would have gotten so many requests, and people willing to pay for upgrades, that they would have reconsidered, and started the work on the softwares years back, even if they by this point would have still prioritized ther software, so they might still hve been in rosetta mode.

[martinjuenke]

TL;DR: Apple is the culprit guilty of every evil development.
Without Apple we would live in audio paradise.

[martinjuenke]

Blue pill: Dream on!
Red Pill: What is Apple market share in audio industry?
No monopole? Therefore not really relevant for devs? Exactly!

[El°HYM]

Offer someone a piece of Cake and he will be happy.

Offer someone the whole Cake and take away a piece of it and he will drown in grief for the rest of his Life.

[simon.a.billington]

“The cake is a lie!!” LOL. ...it’s a reference for those who get it.

Neoverb will definitely go AARM (M1) compatible, if they have t already. It’s a. Ew piece of tech born out of the Exponential Audio acquisition. It’s code won’t be that hard to update.

As opposed to plugins like like Trash that was literally hashed together by them during their university era. That’ll cost a lot of time and energy to port over. Not that it necessarily spells the end for it. It might have to go through a ground up rebuild first, if they don’t reimagine it as a part of Neutron, if they resurrect it at all!!

[LFO8]

Offer someone a piece of Cake and he will be happy.

Offer someone the whole Cake and take away a piece of it and he will drown in grief for the rest of his Life.

Yes, we humans are 3x more sensitive to loss than we are to gain.

[noiseboyuk]

As opposed to plugins like like Trash that was literally hashed together by them during their university era. That’ll cost a lot of time and energy to port over. Not that it necessarily spells the end for it. It might have to go through a ground up rebuild first, if they don’t reimagine it as a part of Neutron, if they resurrect it at all!!

Actually they already have done exactly this, at least in part. There's a Trash mode in the Neutron 4 Exciter module - https://www.izotope.com/en/products/neu ... citer.html