Minimal Audio Current…subscription

[Minimal Audio]

Lol and current is NFR and minimal audio doesnt care it seems cause they just ignore this topic. The whole vst is a spit in the face of the customer. You dont even get the full package when bought but wait oh wait.... it is new so people need to have it.

Serum, vital (even for free lol) etc any day over such a disastrous pricing model and bad customer handling.

Yeah im refreshing this topic and drama. Cause minimal audio never responds to nfr so far. And im warning new customers.

[edited this after some research]

We'll add license transfers to the website -- we're adding payment free free trials right now to the website as well as part of this update and totally revamping how our activation system works. -- I see now that other companies have automated ways of doing license transfer which obviously, we haven't built. We're generally pretty lax if you've ever written into support, I doubt our team has refused to transfer an activation to a different email, in fact we do it quite often. Until we get it fixed though I'll review this and add to our FAQ that you can write in to request a license transfer

[edited again after more review]

To be clear -- we technically now do not support license re-selling as part of our application licenses. But if you need to transfer licenses to another email or move your activations around, we are very accommodating. I am not in the position right now to state that we'll change our software licensing terms.

Can I ask, when you re-sell licenses, is there a website that typically occurs on?

[vertibration]

Lol and current is NFR and minimal audio doesnt care it seems cause they just ignore this topic. The whole vst is a spit in the face of the customer. You dont even get the full package when bought but wait oh wait.... it is new so people need to have it.

Serum, vital (even for free lol) etc any day over such a disastrous pricing model and bad customer handling.

Yeah im refreshing this topic and drama. Cause minimal audio never responds to nfr so far. And im warning new customers.

Everything is a spit in the face to customers right? If a company did everything right, you would still find a reason to complain no?

[Jac459]

Lol and current is NFR and minimal audio doesnt care it seems cause they just ignore this topic. The whole vst is a spit in the face of the customer. You dont even get the full package when bought but wait oh wait.... it is new so people need to have it.

Serum, vital (even for free lol) etc any day over such a disastrous pricing model and bad customer handling.

Yeah im refreshing this topic and drama. Cause minimal audio never responds to nfr so far. And im warning new customers.

Vital yes, but not Serum, Xfer has the same NFR policy and that's make it a non-premium company in my personal book.

Xfer offered for free OTT to the community but their handling of serum is not great in my view. No NFR, no free upgrade. This is one of the plug ins I regret buying even if the product was certainly awesome 10 years ago and is still pretty good.

To me companies like kilohearts, Arturia or UVI (and to some extent KV331) must be treated differently. They offered crazy value to the customers with their pricing model and continuous upgrade.
I know there is pigments fans and serum fans. Objectively both products are solid, usable, stable and good sounding but one has a far far better support and customer orientation.

My impression is that minimal audio is now trying to go in the direction of arturia and kilohearts. If they offer a very good support and no NFR, it will be good for me. Not even arturia and kilohearts offers all their sound banks for free, they have to make profit and it is perfectly fine.

[Igelhaft]

[edited this after some research]

We'll add license transfers to the website -- we're adding payment free free trials right now to the website as well as part of this update and totally revamping how our activation system works. -- I see now that other companies have automated ways of doing license transfer which obviously, we haven't built. We're generally pretty lax if you've ever written into support, I doubt our team has refused to transfer an activation to a different email, in fact we do it quite often. Until we get it fixed though I'll review this and add to our FAQ that you can write in to request a license transfer

That's fantastic to hear. I love me a good license transfer, especially when a company has automated processes for it.

One consideration when it comes to license transfers that you may not think of off-hand is that you may want a no-transfer period after a license is first purchased (stop booing, yall!). Particularly if you have an automated system then you need to watch out for abuse from credit card fraud, charge-backs, etc. If somebody can purchase and immediately transfer it's much more likely that either you get ripped off or second-hand buyers do.

Aside from that it's all typical stuff like invalidating the original license and issuing a new one, generally working through email in case the second-hand buyer doesn't have an account with you yet, etc.

I really do appreciate your willingness to not only listen to criticisms but act on them. That's a rarer talent than it should be.

[Minimal Audio]

Basically, if there are any complaints with the website or how the company operates, tell me and I'll work to get them resolved. We've been focused on building our product catalogue and have obviously been ignoring other aspects of the business. This week we've redone our activation system to support trials, hybrid license options, and credit back reward systems. We're going to make this work and get through this tough launch, and then it will be smooth sailing. -- I'm happy to take any further feedback on issues you've had when being a customer with Minimal Audio.

[Jac459]

Basically, if there are any complaints with the website or how the company operates, tell me and I'll work to get them resolved. We've been focused on building our product catalogue and have obviously been ignoring other aspects of the business. This week we've redone our activation system to support trials, hybrid license options, and credit back reward systems. We're going to make this work and get through this tough launch, and then it will be smooth sailing. -- I'm happy to take any further feedback on issues you've had when being a customer with Minimal Audio.

It is very pleasant to see a new company trying to be in the forefront and preparing very innovative and well done products.
Congrats!

On my side, no remarkon the website, on the contrary, I find it nice and easy to navigate.

One bug is the preset selector at the top don’t appearing at the beginning except if I resize the windows. (Macos and bitwig).

Finally, a big question, do you have already an idea on how you will manage upgrades?

[Minimal Audio]

Finally, a big question, do you have already an idea on how you will manage upgrades?

We don't have a long term roadmap for anything like that, definitely there will be multiple effects added over the next year which will be added for all users regardless of license type. We didn't charge any update pricing going from Rift 1 -> 2, and generally do not want to.

[Jac459]

Finally, a big question, do you have already an idea on how you will manage upgrades?

We don't have a long term roadmap for anything like that, definitely there will be multiple effects added over the next year which will be added for all users regardless of license type. We didn't charge any update pricing going from Rift 1 -> 2, and generally do not want to.

That sounds very fair on your side. Thanks for the answer.

All in one it really seems you are giving yourself all the chance to have a top contender to be in the top 5 synth vst on the market.

I wish you all the best!

[gondii]

I think one of the biggest benefits for me is that it offers great sound and features with fairly low CPU usage. High CPU is the biggest reason I usually don't reach for Pigments and Falcon can also be quite heavy. If Current is released with a 30% off intro price, I'll get it right away.

[Jac459]

I think one of the biggest benefits for me is that it offers great sound and features with fairly low CPU usage. High CPU is the biggest reason I usually don't reach for Pigments and Falcon can also be quite heavy. If Current is released with a 30% off intro price, I'll get it right away.

I am also looking for an intro price

[Caine123]

Lol and current is NFR and minimal audio doesnt care it seems cause they just ignore this topic. The whole vst is a spit in the face of the customer. You dont even get the full package when bought but wait oh wait.... it is new so people need to have it.

Serum, vital (even for free lol) etc any day over such a disastrous pricing model and bad customer handling.

Yeah im refreshing this topic and drama. Cause minimal audio never responds to nfr so far. And im warning new customers.

[edited this after some research]

We'll add license transfers to the website -- we're adding payment free free trials right now to the website as well as part of this update and totally revamping how our activation system works. -- I see now that other companies have automated ways of doing license transfer which obviously, we haven't built. We're generally pretty lax if you've ever written into support, I doubt our team has refused to transfer an activation to a different email, in fact we do it quite often. Until we get it fixed though I'll review this and add to our FAQ that you can write in to request a license transfer

[edited again after more review]

To be clear -- we technically now do not support license re-selling as part of our application licenses. But if you need to transfer licenses to another email or move your activations around, we are very accommodating. I am not in the position right now to state that we'll change our software licensing terms.

Can I ask, when you re-sell licenses, is there a website that typically occurs on?

thx, so im also of course replying, before your reply i had sensed minimal audio tries do not go into details or discuss these things further.

first i still dont trust companies who try to push cloud/subscriptions. it is a step by step you dont own nothing but are always dependent on the services/servers of the company. also online activations like NI who refuse to let you activate legally purchased software from the past.
yes i bought Rift and wanted to buy more...

second thanks for replying and getting into details. i appeciate if minimal audio really tries/moves to better support/customer friendliness. being able to transfer your licenses is a big step, i also think overall a transfer fee is ok as well.

third what happend when a company gets out of business etc? i hope there will be offline activations possible. i try to tend to sort out plugins which are online only.

finally, i will stil check your newsletter and hope the backlash was well to form minimal audio to a customer friendlier company. RIFT is great and the other plugins seems very well creative and Current seems great too but im waiting.

i appreciate the reply and getting back to critical posts , this deserves respect

[Minimal Audio]

I am not sure I have an adequate answer for the question of license transfer at the moment, if we saw abuse or it happening rampantly it would be an issue for us especially so early in the company, it just has not really been the focus. We need to try it and see how that is working, we don't really know much about it.

For the cloud side, we have heard you loud and clear, and please trust that Current has a very robust offline mode, it is not a plugin which always needs to be online. In fact there is a button inside Current called "local" which disables all searches to the the cloud for content, and the entire experience of online is preserved. You only ever need to go online to browse new content.

In some sort of world ending disaster doomsday scenario, perpetual licenses never require web after unlock.

[epiphaneia]

We've been focused on building our product catalogue and have obviously been ignoring other aspects of the business.

In my opinion, you´re hitting the nail on the head with this one sentence.

I reckon you´ve lost quite a few sales for Rift etc because of your "no demo" policy, and that´s -imho- because your policies don´t take into account that hobbyists with limited time and money are a bigger part of the target market than pro studios with technical assistants and for whom buying plugins is tax deductible.

If you come from the Output Arcade world of things... well, very different demographic from the market for Current. TV composers who need to churn out 10 minutes of music per day and sound "ok" by combining 3-5 loops likely don´t care a lot about subscriptions and whether that costs 10, 30 or 50$ per month. Selling a synth suddenly means you´ll face customers who think that $189 is a "much better" price than $199. Ok, this is slightly exaggerated but you get my drift - most people here have a regular non-music day job.There will always be someone who wants things to be cheaper though, so I wouldn´t worry too much about that for now.

Regardless of the price though: You´re late to the party and there´s a ton of excellent synth plugins out there. Yours has "5 powerful synth engines and a wealth of modulation options" according to your website. Like a lot of other excellent synths. Most of your potential users may already own Serum, Phaseplant, Falcon, Avenger, Rapid,... , and already spent dozens of hours on getting the best out of them.

Explain to them why it´s worth spending money and time on Current and what it does better than other synths, I wouldn´t take for granted that people who own a pile of powerful synths will buy one more just because it is there and it is good. The content stream is not it.

Last but not least, consider luring customers on the fence with a one-off (make that clear!) intro discount of 25%, and then do *not* discount Current again for at least 12 months, otherwise the folks who bought at the intro discount will feel cheated. (edit: or how about "buy the synth, get 25% discount on our individual effects plugins"?)

[Examigan]

About NFR policies:
I have only traded or sold maybe one or two plugins at most since I started buying software. I don't care too much if a company let's me resell a product because if I like how it sounds and how it works (and I demoed it first) then why would I sell it?

In the Buy & Sell forum I have seen so many plugins up for sale (sometimes long lists of them) it makes me wonder why they bought them in first place. Maybe it is because of financial hardship, or they're just bored with a certain synth or compressor?

[epiphaneia]

About NFR policies:
I have only traded or sold maybe one or two plugins at most since I started buying software. I don't care too much if a company let's me resell a product because if I like how it sounds and how it works (and I demoed it first) then why would I sell it?

In the Buy & Sell forum I have seen so many plugins up for sale (sometimes long lists of them) it makes me wonder why they bought them in first place. Maybe it is because of financial hardship, or they're just bored with a certain synth or compressor?

Besides your reasoning, several others come to mind:

- plugins that have no demo but can be resold, for example, Falcon. I bought it because its features look great on paper, I thought I´d be able to wrap my head around it - but I found using it to be more of a chore than a source of inspiration.

- redundancy, for example, the TAL Jupiter 8 was nice, but I got a similarly decent Jupiter 8 in the Arturia Collection, therefore I had no more need for the TAL.

- plugins that are superseded by others, for example, I had that one great low pass filter plugin that most multimode filters failed to achieve, but then came along a multimode filter plugin that had a similarly great sounding lpf among many others. I would then sell the old limited lpf plugin.

- lack of flexibility (or fit for the desired application) only apparent after longer term use or in certain use scenarios that you didn´t think of testing before buying.

- change in musical direction or taste, for example, you really really don´t need a virtual minimoog anymore for your 90s hypersaw trance revival, and neither do you need Mellotron samples.

- quality upgrade: Someone who, up to now, used cheap synths, may have saved up and bought a more expensive "brand" synth. Not everyone can afford to say "that one was only $29, no need to sell it for a mere $10".

- change to hardware: Always, always popular, "I sell most of my plugins because I want to go DAWless" (and yes, quite a few of them will start buying plugins again a few months afterwards)

- technical (in)compatibility: Always a pleasure, especially for Mac users who upgraded to the latest OS without checking all their plugins´ compatibility first.