Image Line Acquires UVI

[tony10000]

[...] So, put yourself in my position, what would you have done? [...]

The same or worse, on a bad day. Something better, perhaps, on a good one.

I don't envy you your job, that much I admit - but as a user, having experienced negative consequences of your decisions, I have nothing good to say about them.

That said, it's interesting to have confirmation that you were indeed behind those changes at IL. I had some intuitive suspicion of it from your writings, but expected a larger team to be responsible.

Better that he made those changes than the company lose money and go out of business due to rampant piracy.

If you don't like it, there are other solutions including open source software. Or you can write your own.

[jamcat]

So you’re saying that the plugins from Cakewalk no longer work?

[Image-Line]

I don't envy you your job, that much I admit - but as a user, having experienced negative consequences of your decisions, I have nothing good to say about them.

What negative consequences? Have you been prevented from installing FL Studio at any time on any computer of your choosing?

Its as simple as logging into your account on the FL Studio About Panel and entering the code we send to your email.

[tony10000]

So you’re saying that the plugins from Cakewalk no longer work?

Correct...the ones I have are 32-bit and were never even upgraded. And others were only designed to run in the original Sonar.

[tony10000]

{duplicate}

[N__K]

[...] So, put yourself in my position, what would you have done? [...]

The same or worse, on a bad day. Something better, perhaps, on a good one.

I don't envy you your job, that much I admit - but as a user, having experienced negative consequences of your decisions, I have nothing good to say about them.

That said, it's interesting to have confirmation that you were indeed behind those changes at IL. I had some intuitive suspicion of it from your writings, but expected a larger team to be responsible.

Better that he made those changes than the company lose money and go out of business due to rampant piracy.

Funny how IL did not go out of business in 20+ years before Scott greenlighted the implementation of DRM. Cracks and regkeys were everywhere, and yet, enough of us preferred to support the devs, enabling IL to make more of interesting products.

If you don't like it, there are other solutions including open source software. Or you can write your own.

Which programming languages and frameworks would you suggest for the latter?

Say, if I wanted to make an additive synth with 1024 partials, several layers of frequency-domain operations, animation for majority of parameters, resynthesis... basically, Harmor 2?

[tony10000]

Funny how IL did not go out of business in 20+ years before Scott greenlighted the implementation of DRM. Cracks and regkeys were everywhere, and yet, enough of us preferred to support the devs, enabling IL to make more of interesting products.

The Internet has changed a lot since then. YouTube was not filled with videos telling you how to obtain pirated software with links. And people were not openly selling pirated software on e-commerce sites. A developer has a right to protect their IP. If you don't like their methods, then don't buy it.

If you don't like it, there are other solutions including open source software. Or you can write your own.

Which programming languages and frameworks would you suggest for the latter?

Say, if I wanted to make an additive synth with 1024 partials, several layers of frequency-domain operations, animation for majority of parameters, resynthesis... basically, Harmor 2?
[/quote]

Probably JUCE framework and C/C++ for DSP code. That seems to be what everyone is using these days.

[jamcat]

So you’re saying that the plugins from Cakewalk no longer work?

Correct...the ones I have are 32-bit and were never even upgraded. And others were only designed to run in the original Sonar.

Which ones are those?

Plugins like Z3TA+ and Dimension Pro were 64-bit and in the case of Z3TA+, at least, VST3.

I think the freeware rgc plugins maybe were only 32-bit. But they never were going to be 64-bit.

And some of the Cakewalk plugins were even available for Mac.

[tony10000]

So you’re saying that the plugins from Cakewalk no longer work?

Correct...the ones I have are 32-bit and were never even upgraded. And others were only designed to run in the original Sonar.

Which ones are those?

Plugins like Z3TA+ and Dimension Pro were 64-bit and in the case of Z3TA+, at least, VST3.

I think the freeware rgc plugins maybe were only 32-bit. But they never were going to be 64-bit.

And some of the Cakewalk plugins were even available for Mac.

The original Z3TA. And the other ones were proprietary. Not available, upgradeable, or downloadable.

[N__K]

I don't envy you your job, that much I admit - but as a user, having experienced negative consequences of your decisions, I have nothing good to say about them.

What negative consequences? Have you been prevented from installing FL Studio at any time on any computer of your choosing?

Its as simple as logging into your account on the FL Studio About Panel and entering the code we send to your email.

Here's some of what I'd like:

• fix for the few remaining bugs in vectorial Harmor VSTi. There is a thread in public beta forums where I've documented what I've encountered.
• if ever IL gets the external plugins back into shop: fully offline, DRM-free, good old regkeys for them.
  I don't mind paying extra for new DRM-free CLAP versions, either - or whatever you need to justify the costs.
• bring back to Looptalk the two "FLP file format" threads, which were apparently deleted by you.
  I don't need the specs to crack your precious FL Studio, or circumvent demo plugin limitations via setting obscure bit flags, or anything like that.
  I need them to automate conversion of my own intellectual property - MIDI, automation, presets etc. - from my old .flp files into formats of other DAWs. In other words, for interoperability, as I mentioned in the thread which you so quickly made private on FL Studio forums.

As for FL Studio, I doubt it'll ever offer me anything that REAPER cannot. It is the plugins (Harmor, Sytrus, Maximus, Juice Pack etc.) that I value, much more than FL Studio itself. But again, if you put DRM into new external versions of them, I won't be updating.

And I don't even dare to dream of suggesting any improvements anymore. I suspect that with you making decisions, Harmor 2 won't ever be on the roadmap; and neither will stuff like fully user-customizable UIs for IL VST plugins; and the backend of FLEX will never become the new Absynth... and so on.

[Fleer]

On the topic of IL acquisitions: it would be interesting to see what a merger of UVI Falcon and Melda MSoundFactory could bring.

[jamcat]

So you’re saying that the plugins from Cakewalk no longer work?

Correct...the ones I have are 32-bit and were never even upgraded. And others were only designed to run in the original Sonar.

Which ones are those?

Plugins like Z3TA+ and Dimension Pro were 64-bit and in the case of Z3TA+, at least, VST3.

I think the freeware rgc plugins maybe were only 32-bit. But they never were going to be 64-bit.

And some of the Cakewalk plugins were even available for Mac.

The original Z3TA. And the other ones were proprietary. Not available, upgradeable, or downloadable.

So this doesn’t make sense. You apparently owned an old version of Cakewalk that didn’t include Z3TA+ 2. You not owning a 64-bit version has nothing to do with Cakewalk ending support of the plugins. If you would have purchased a newer version, you would still be using it today.

[seangm]

On the topic of IL acquisitions: it would be interesting to see what a merger of UVI Falcon and Melda MSoundFactory could bring.

Please no. I can't take the Melda "UI" or whatever that CF is that appears when you open the plugin. Falcon is at least useable in it's current form.

[BenfordLaw]

sounds good. thanks for chiming in. all sounds very reasonable and beneficial to user bases of all these products. good luck w/all the things.

Don't you know how to use capital letters at the start of a sentence? Are you incapable of writing the word "with" in full? What is "w/all" supposed to mean?
I have to laugh at Jamcat's criticisms, all completely baseless. Image Line's Lifetime Free Upgrade policy just shows how much other companies are screwing their customers over. Every year, there must be tens of millions of people who become interested in music software. Some people here seem to think that the human population is static, and that millions of babies aren't born every year.

[martinjuenke]

Why people went for the subscription model is simply greed. Plain and simple. Massive profits to be made if you manage to "lock-in" people into a system. Just look at Apple. That's their main business model.

There's no subscription for Logic Pro.
... and no paid for upgrades for 10 (?) years...