AIR Music Tech announces Open Beta: Apple Silicon and Windows 11 support for classic plugins

[sbangs_air]

Will you be posting announcements for newer builds? I assume that at some point we'll see another round of releases, if nothing but to fix the installer issues.

Yes if you have signed up on the beta form we will notify you.

[Teksonik]

Plus, it has to be stated what a PR mess it is not to address the GUI concerns raised by at least a half dozen people in this thread. Even saying you can't comment at this time is better than openly ignoring the question.

The GUI issue has been raised by many people for years now and Air has never addressed it so I don't expect any different reaction now.

I've even offered to pay for such an upgrade in the past but it's far too late for that now.

They're still selling those old plugins and the only reason for this "update" is so they can sell them to more people.

I have no respect for Air and the people behind the brand these days. For them to say they "appreciate long-standing customers" is an insult to our intelligence.

Hybrid 3.png

[machinesworking]

Plus, it has to be stated what a PR mess it is not to address the GUI concerns raised by at least a half dozen people in this thread. Even saying you can't comment at this time is better than openly ignoring the question.

The GUI issue has been raised by many people for years now and Air has never addressed it so I don't expect any different reaction now.

I've even offered to pay for such an upgrade in the past but it's far too late for that now.

They're still selling those old plugins and the only reason for this "update" is so they can sell them to more people.

I have no respect for Air and the people behind the brand these days. For them to say they "appreciate long-standing customers" is an insult to our intelligence.


Hybrid 3.png

I don't blame the Air team. People talk a lot about the downside of consolidated conglomerates and how that can mess with development. That's what we're getting here for sure. Air are the ancillary company to Akai at this point, I don't think that can be denied, most of the new plugins for the MPC (and VST/AU) have come from Air.

It's not complicated, Akai has been able to maintain a reputation that makes the kinds of fire sales we've seen dozens of times from Air non existent. So we get Air crawling along like a company on it's last legs, and Akai releasing new products and free updates to older products at least a couple times a year. They both have the same money supply, InMusic, so InMusic determines the development budget for Air and what they develop. It's why you see new products from them that resemble the Air Instrument Collection products that work in MPC's. It's where the money is.

I'm glad to see the updates so we can at least use the older products, but I have to admit, I think I paid less than $150 for Loom, Loom II, Vacuum Pro, Hybrid 3, Transfuser, Air FX Collection, Xpand 2, and I bought them all separately over ten years ago.

Companies need revenue to churn out products, so what IMO we'll likely see is these plugins will become new Air/Akai MPC compatible products that are similar, that can run on MPCs. It's happened already with Vacuum Pro, Velvet, DB 33, Mini Grands and Structure. You have Fabric Collection, Tube Synth etc.

[Candyandcoke]

Transfuser is buggy as hell on Logic Pro

[Teksonik]

I don't blame the Air team.

There's no one else to blame. The GUI issue predates the takeovers if my history is correct. It's been going on for many years.

So look at it from my perspective. I'm a still on Windows 10 and all my DAWs will load VST 2 plugins so this "update" brings nothing but disappointment that the main issue people have been bringing up for years still isn't addressed. At this point it's painfully clear that it never will be.

But yeah these "updates" are obviously a corporate style move.

Anyway I called up some of the 36 Air plugins I own today and...meh. I can let them slip into history without leaving any holes whatsoever in my collection. They all just look and sound outdated. Hybrid 3 with a refresh might be relevant these days but I just have so many modern plugins that have consistent support and updates that I don't need to use antiques.

[machinesworking]

I don't blame the Air team.

There's no one else to blame. The GUI issue predates the takeovers if my history is correct. It's been going on for many years.

So look at it from my perspective. I'm a still on Windows 10 and all my DAWs will load VST 2 plugins so this "update" brings nothing but disappointment that the main issue people have been bringing up for years still isn't addressed. At this point it's painfully clear that it never will be.

But yeah these "updates" are obviously a corporate style move.

Anyway I called up some of the 36 Air plugins I own today and...meh. I can let them slip into history without leaving any holes whatsoever in my collection. They all just look and sound outdated. Hybrid 3 with a refresh might be relevant these days but I just have so many modern plugins that have consistent support and updates that I don't need to use antiques.

Yeah, it's Air hemorrhaging money, being bought out, and now just being Akai's b*tch.

That said, as people have mentioned, Loom II is unique, so is Transfuser and Hybrid 3. I do hope I'm wrong and Air release new versions with resizable modern GUI's and some new features. Not all of the new Air products are MPC compatible so that's sort of a good sign. In the sense that they aren't going to only code software for an underpowered Arm CPU in the MPC's.

[marksmusicaustralia]

Is there a place to post screenshots as I could not see anything on the Beta feedback form.
I would like to see a few fixes not only to the VST3 but also the AU plugins.
Lots of crashing going on with Strike and Transfuser AU's
Also is the GUI for Strike going to be cleaned up on the Mix page? See attached Screenshot.

[aMUSEd]

Unfortunately none of these seem to support VST migration so anything made with the VST2 will not open the VST3 in its place. I hope that is planned

[sbangs_air]

Beta 2 is now available resolving a number of reported issues https://www.airmusictech.com/beta-download/
Thanks very much for all your feedback so far.

[aMUSEd]

Is there a changelog?

[adl]

Release Notes:
Fixed a crash that could occur when duplicating a track containing one of the instruments
Fixed a crash that could occur when removing one of the instruments
Fixed a crash that could occur when connecting/disconnecting displays
Fixed a crash that could occur when changing the preset in the drop-down menu
General stability improvements

[aMUSEd]

OK so still no support for VST2 to VST3 migration?

[DarkS474]

On Transfuser 2 please fix the infamous Content Corrupt Error about the Transfuser Content V2.big and Transfuser Content.big files that all of a sudden stop working even though there is no real file corruption. It is a well known bug that has been reported thru the years on many forums and never got fixed so far.

[DrWashington]

Just want to re-emphasize how important GUI fixes are. Loom II still has a special place in my heart and fills a niche, but the GUI bugs made it unusable for me.

I would very, very grateful for a properly scaling GUI that shows all the information it should reliably. Please don't let this product die and please do keep developing it!

Additive is a hugely underutilized technology that could benefit greatly from being paired with AI to dynamically create macro mappings for different partials and such from resynthesized sounds, depending on what the AI "thinks" the sound must be or must be like.

The interface problem remains, but it's not nearly as exploited a technology as it could be. In the right hands, it could be the most powerful form of synthesis period, but there remain major hurdles to get to that point.

In the meantime, please don't let this cool, unique instrument die on the vine. If nothing else, it could be a hell of a research tool to try new things with additive synthesis with. It has major value in that alone.

[DrWashington]

I just was playing with the 2.1 beta and can report that some of the old graphical stretching problems don't appear to be an issue currently, but the "allow plugin window to be resized" right-click option in the plugin window border in Cubase 13.0.41 will cause the GUI to become unresponsive (but the plugin is still audibly responsive).

Please, please rework these GUIs for modern screen real-estate. Please. This plugin still sounds so cool and I'm continually surprised by how high the audio quality of this one in particular can be under the right settings.