FabFilter Pro-R 2 -> Released Thursday November 2, 2023

[PieBerger]

So how good is this new upgrade? Any good examples?

I thought the plain saw wave examples in the demo sounded pretty good on their own, personally.

[Jac459]

So how good is this new upgrade? Any good examples?

I thought the plain saw wave examples in the demo sounded pretty good on their own, personally.

Ha ha, not only you my friend.

[DashOfLime]

I think the person precised "at least for me" showing that it is his view only in regard of the product. Are you upset of people having their own opinions?

Actually no I'm not. But the poster said there was hardly anything new, mostly spit and polish, which is bullshit. There is a LOT there for $50. Whether you want to pay that or not is a whole different story.

From a buyer standpoint I think it is natural to look if you buy a product "one-off" or a product with a full service overtime.
For example if you buy kilohearts, arturia or UVI, you are purchasing a product that will stay supported and relevant with new features overtime for free.
It has value.

Since when is Arturia free? I have a long spreadsheet of plugins I own that says otherwise. FabFilter is no different than Arturia.

When you buy fabfilter you buy a good quality product but that won't particularly evolve over time except for bug fix.

Same for Arturia. Same for almost all of them.

There is nothing wrong about that but you can't blame people to take that into account in their buying decision.

Dude I don't care what the other guy buys or doesn't buy and how that decision is reached. But the statement was nonsense. There as a lot of new stuff in that release for the upgrade price (not to mention if you wait for the holidays the upgrade will be cheaper).

[DashOfLime]

I just tried the demo and they cleverly redesigned(some parts) of the UI to make it all look shiny and new, when in fact, most buttons do the same as in Pro-R1 and there is actually not much new stuff that would justify a 50$+ upgrade price (at least for me).

Vastly improved UI.
Two new algorithms.
Dolby Atomos.
The IR import thing.
Thickness
Ducking
Auto Gate
Freeze
Decay Rate EQ

Yeah such a small list. Cant f**king believe the nerve charging $50.

This place kills me.

lol...


By the way: since you've not been a Pro-R V1 user anyway, where do your apparently strong feelings regarding this stem from?

Not sure who you're referring to but I've owned Pro-R for years. Not sure about the other guy.

[Robmobius]

Christ! I hate Dan Worrall's voice... He sounds like that moaning robot from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Plus, he always sounds completely bored.
...

You aren't the only one, he always sounds so condescending to me. Don't know if he actually is, since I have never met the guy, but yeah I can't watch his tutorials either.. But many if not most seem to love it.
rsp

Christ!!! I'm not alone! Good to hear there are at least a few of us oddballs about.

Well, having met the guy several times I can tell you he is one of the most down to earth genuinely friendly people I've ever met. So whatever condescending tones you hear when he talks, may be worth exploring, possibly while standing in front of a mirror and contemplating your own voice.

Christ!
Who cares if he's the nicest guy on the planet and is the nu Albert Einstein of music production? That's not the issue.

I just think he sounds as dull, lifeless, and monotone as a corpse (assuming one could speak of course).

I'm in the minority too obviously, but there is an oddball club! So we have at least three members now, so go us!

Christ!

[MrJubbly]

Fabfilter are one of those companies that have great customer loyalty offers - I think the 'race to the bottom' has become crazy in recent years, and it's not sustainable.

Personally, I found the upgrade to be very reasonable (as someone owning some of their plugins already) and for the quality and ease of use I get from it, it's an instant buy.

I agree. I believe owners of Fabfilter bundles all get a flat 65% discount off future upgrades of a plugin? I own the Total Bundle, so I know that's true of that, but I believe I've heard owners of the other bundles also get the same discount? Either way, I only had to pay £50.40, which I regard as a fair price for all the new features and improvements.

I generally have nothing but praise and appreciation for the vast majority of Fabfilters product line. The few remaining gripes I had (since I use them on a 4K UHD) were recently resolved earlier this year, when Fabfilter rolled out their full GUI scaling and preset menu improvements for all their current product line.

They even added the option to hide the new modulation system's 'source flow' (diffuse glow graphics ~ in Saturn 2/ Volcano 3 / Timeless 3) after I asked them to add the option, on their forum. Yes, that might seem like a minor 'nitpick' of an issue, but it was the one thing, which I often found to be a bit too flashy and distracting when using their newer updated plugins as compared to their predecessors. But now, we have full great-looking GUI scaling at 4K and a (imho) an 'optional' cleaner user experience, for those who prefer that. Every one's a winner, baby!

Fabfilter are just Fab! (...and worth every penny.)

[MirkoVanHauten]

Weird thought setting up a raytraced reverb for something abstract like an hiphop mix, being like "I think a room with 20.2 by 10.8 by 3.0m works fine. Rapper needs to be placed 6.9m from the left though with a 18.3deg rotation away from the center just behind a 1x1x2m wooden obsticle. That'll sound lit." I'll rather stick to Pro-R2's very comfortable controls of distance, space, brightness, width.

I've now spend a day working more with it and I really dig the IR analysis feature. Won't replicate the IR 1:1 but if you load it in Pro-R2, you don't want that either. It's about adjusting it, so of course there will be changes. And so far I've never came to the point where it sounded completely horrible or lost its original character. You can do that with extreme changes though, but why use that IR as input at all then?

[jamcat]

Weird thought setting up a raytraced reverb for something abstract like an hiphop mix, being like "I think a room with 20.2 by 10.8 by 3.0m works fine. Rapper needs to be placed 6.9m from the left though with a 18.3deg rotation away from the center just behind a 1x1x2m wooden obsticle. That'll sound lit."

I doubt a rap vocal would require any kind of reverb on it at all. They tend to be quite dry. But putting the drums in that room would probably sound pretty good.

[Funky40]

Update price is shlightly steep for 2023. agreed.

You know other Funky, that's an interesting way to put it. I think you might be on to something with the "steep for 2023" part.

Very true words and I absolutely agree with both of you. The market has changed and this is indeed expensive considering the market of today.

However, ...............

I would like to make clear that quoting me so, is taking the other part, the "But:" part out, and makes my opinion look different vs. what it really was within full context. ( its ok, i just like to point that out)

I just tryed the pro-R2. First tests, realtime-play.
I will get out a nice win from that update !
But frankly speaking, it was probably more me, not understanding all details, that diminished the usage of pro-R to me. So, me getting along even better ( vs. the EQ section), is probably the biggest update, haha.
Decay-EQ , thats all CC mappable btw.

[Jac459]

I think the person precised "at least for me" showing that it is his view only in regard of the product. Are you upset of people having their own opinions?

Actually no I'm not. But the poster said there was hardly anything new, mostly spit and polish, which is bullshit. There is a LOT there for $50. Whether you want to pay that or not is a whole different story.

From a buyer standpoint I think it is natural to look if you buy a product "one-off" or a product with a full service overtime.
For example if you buy kilohearts, arturia or UVI, you are purchasing a product that will stay supported and relevant with new features overtime for free.
It has value.

Since when is Arturia free? I have a long spreadsheet of plugins I own that says otherwise. FabFilter is no different than Arturia.

When you buy fabfilter you buy a good quality product but that won't particularly evolve over time except for bug fix.

Same for Arturia. Same for almost all of them.

There is nothing wrong about that but you can't blame people to take that into account in their buying decision.

Dude I don't care what the other guy buys or doesn't buy and how that decision is reached. But the statement was nonsense. There as a lot of new stuff in that release for the upgrade price (not to mention if you wait for the holidays the upgrade will be cheaper).

You took time to answer by quoting part by part my post but apparently you didn't took much time doing your homework.
Pigments, THE flagship of Arturia: all the new versions are free !!! And they brought to us over time little features like MPE, an additive oscillator, plenty of new audio effects, new filters, GUI rework...
All that for free....

As later you say "same for all of them" when I am saying that for Fabfilter they don't add new features for free, I guess you think that all new version of software are paid...
It is not the case.
I need to remind you that Phase Plant 2 was a free update and all the new ones since then, same for Falcon 3, free updates.... K331 Synthmaster, the version 3 is coming and it will be f....g awesome. And it is a free update.

Again, I don't blame Fabfilter, they can do whatever they want, but in term of value for money, it has to be taken into account...

[jens]

I just tried the demo and they cleverly redesigned(some parts) of the UI to make it all look shiny and new, when in fact, most buttons do the same as in Pro-R1 and there is actually not much new stuff that would justify a 50$+ upgrade price (at least for me).

Vastly improved UI.
Two new algorithms.
Dolby Atomos.
The IR import thing.
Thickness
Ducking
Auto Gate
Freeze
Decay Rate EQ

Yeah such a small list. Cant f**king believe the nerve charging $50.

This place kills me.

lol...


By the way: since you've not been a Pro-R V1 user anyway, where do your apparently strong feelings regarding this stem from?

Not sure who you're referring to but I've owned Pro-R for years. Not sure about the other guy.

Lol


You listed "Decay Rate EQ" as a new feature and I can't imagine anyone who's got any kind of familiarity with the thing to make a mistake like that...
that was one of - if not THE - biggest selling feature of V1...
( even I know that am I am not a user at all...)

I assume you had a look at the listed new features at their site where they say
"- improved Gorgeous Retina interface with large interactive reverb display featuring Decay Rate EQ and Post EQ curves"

but the improvement is not the addition of Decay Rate EQ and Post EQ curves...

[jens]

Since when is Arturia free? I have a long spreadsheet of plugins I own that says otherwise. FabFilter is no different than Arturia.

lol...

he obviously meant that the updates are free - unlike as is the case with FF

[sacer]

I think the person precised "at least for me" showing that it is his view only in regard of the product. Are you upset of people having their own opinions?

Actually no I'm not. But the poster said there was hardly anything new, mostly spit and polish, which is bullshit. There is a LOT there for $50. Whether you want to pay that or not is a whole different story.

From a buyer standpoint I think it is natural to look if you buy a product "one-off" or a product with a full service overtime.
For example if you buy kilohearts, arturia or UVI, you are purchasing a product that will stay supported and relevant with new features overtime for free.
It has value.

Since when is Arturia free? I have a long spreadsheet of plugins I own that says otherwise. FabFilter is no different than Arturia.

When you buy fabfilter you buy a good quality product but that won't particularly evolve over time except for bug fix.

Same for Arturia. Same for almost all of them.

There is nothing wrong about that but you can't blame people to take that into account in their buying decision.

Dude I don't care what the other guy buys or doesn't buy and how that decision is reached. But the statement was nonsense. There as a lot of new stuff in that release for the upgrade price (not to mention if you wait for the holidays the upgrade will be cheaper).

You took time to answer by quoting part by part my post but apparently you didn't took much time doing your homework.
Pigments, THE flagship of Arturia: all the new versions are free !!! And they brought to us over time little features like MPE, an additive oscillator, plenty of new audio effects, new filters, GUI rework...
All that for free....

As later you say "same for all of them" when I am saying that for Fabfilter they don't add new features for free, I guess you think that all new version of software are paid...
It is not the case.
I need to remind you that Phase Plant 2 was a free update and all the new ones since then, same for Falcon 3, free updates.... K331 Synthmaster, the version 3 is coming and it will be f....g awesome. And it is a free update.

Again, I don't blame Fabfilter, they can do whatever they want, but in term of value for money, it has to be taken into account...

They all sell expansions, ….

[bmanic]

My point was simply this: Easier said than done.

But my point was not that it is a bad thing that we do this - we help keeing the industry - and hence innovation - alive after all.

And for this very reason I like companies who have prices that kind of ignore the oversaturation of the market and act like there was only a handful of plugin vendors to support not so very much. (Yes, looking at you, Fabfilter).

Totally agree with you.. but I can't judge the ones that are disrupting this (and possibly destroying this innovation, bringing the lowest denominator to the fore front) because I too am guilty of enjoying the super low prices.

[Jac459]

....

They all sell expansions, ….

Yes absolutely, or most often presets if we take the example of UVI, Arturia and Kilohearts.

And I do buy them regularly because I don't pretend the developers should work for free, on the contrary.

That being said, if for example I compare the price of phase plant with avenger. I should considered the total cost of ownership over a period. Phase Plant may seems expansive at first in its full version but over time it is fabulous value as I will get new versions for free. With VPS Avenger the TCO will climb soon with Avenger 2.... (But to be fair they did some nice updates for free).