Plugin Deflation

[ToMegaTherion]

My point was just that of course you're going to pay less for 1994 technology in 2024.
And it's still going to sound just as bad today. The difference is today we have a lot of better options.

Hell, the L2 and L3 were better options.

True, Waves have barely updated their old plugins except for the GUI and support for more modern systems. They're essentially still running 1990's DSP code at the core.

On the other hand, even those newer, better options are very cheap (or even free) these days. Only a few very powerful and respected brands can still sell their plugins for those kinds of prices. More and more developers are copying Waves and doing constant devaluation sales to the point where $29 for a plugin is pretty much the norm.

That’s just not really true. The better Waves and early Sony Oxford plugins were very well thought out. There are a ton of well-marketed plugins now that aren’t as good as the Waves Renaissance Compressor and EQ that came out in 90s. Even the lauded Fabfilter Pro Q is only about as good as the Ren EQ and Oxford EQ being a decramped eq. Sure you can the PSP, Weiss, and TDR eqs now for both ideal analog phase and amplitude and they sound better but I remember the days when the PSP EQs were heavy on the cpu and my laptop from 2016 or so went nuts with the Weiss EQ1 and DS1 when they came out.

Even limiter wise, most of this stuff is not really better than L2. Sure you can hit the multiband ones hotter but many of them are not over sampled, only have true peak clippers but not true peak volume modulation or the other way around, and the lookaheads are so long to have less distortion on paper that they pump and breath the present randomly based on the future. For every Xenon, Limiter 6, or Stealth Limiter that was a big improvement, there are 10 multiband ones that will remix your tracks, ones with such a long lookahead that they sound like an envelope on the master fader, or sound like a clipper when sped up not to sound like wiggling the master fader. Then the ones that limit with distortion like Oxford Limiter’s enhance slider and safe mode or Eventide Newfangled Elevate are another thing. Those two can be cleaner and more effective than L2 but when pushed get very colored and Elevate will remix your tracks where L2 will just clip all the drums off and add the high mid L2 push.

[DJErmac]

My point was just that of course you're going to pay less for 1994 technology in 2024.
And it's still going to sound just as bad today. The difference is today we have a lot of better options.

Hell, the L2 and L3 were better options.

True, Waves have barely updated their old plugins except for the GUI and support for more modern systems. They're essentially still running 1990's DSP code at the core.

On the other hand, even those newer, better options are very cheap (or even free) these days. Only a few very powerful and respected brands can still sell their plugins for those kinds of prices. More and more developers are copying Waves and doing constant devaluation sales to the point where $29 for a plugin is pretty much the norm.

That’s just not really true. The better Waves and early Sony Oxford plugins were very well thought out. There are a ton of well-marketed plugins now that aren’t as good as the Waves Renaissance Compressor and EQ that came out in 90s. Even the lauded Fabfilter Pro Q is only about as good as the Ren EQ and Oxford EQ being a decramped eq. Sure you can the PSP, Weiss, and TDR eqs now for both ideal analog phase and amplitude and they sound better but I remember the days when the PSP EQs were heavy on the cpu and my laptop from 2016 or so went nuts with the Weiss EQ1 and DS1 when they came out.

Even limiter wise, most of this stuff is not really better than L2. Sure you can hit the multiband ones hotter but many of them are not over sampled, only have true peak clippers but not volume modulation, and the looks heads are so long to have less distortion on paper that they pump and breath the present down randomly based on the future. For every Xenon, Limiter 6, or Stealth Limiter that was a big improvement, there are 10 multiband ones that will remix your tracks, ones with such a long lookahead that they sound like an envelope on the master fader, or sound like a clipper when sped up not to sound like wiggling the master fader. Then the ones that limit with distortion like Oxford Limiter’s enhance slider and safe mode or Eventide Newfangled Elevate are another thing. Those two can be cleaner and more effective than L2 but when pushed get very colored and Elevate will remix your tracks where L2 will just clip all the drums off and add the high mid L2 push.

What you’re saying is also true, but you can’t just break the trend using exceptions as examples.

Mammals are a thing, and there is this weirdo of a platypus, yeah...

Most old plugins tend to be sold cheaper and cheaper as time goes by because they seem less desirable, who would doubt it ? But indeed, some gems stay as praised as before, so why change the price ?

[WackyZoundz]

That’s just not really true. The better Waves (...) plugins were very well thought out.

Do the Waves plugins still handle controller data relative instead of absolute or did they change that after version 7? Because at least until 7 everything by Waves featuring filters was crap because of frequency offsets (thanks to faulty controller data). Example: Use a samplerate of 44.1 kHz and anything with filters (like the Q series). Set a filter to 1000 Hz. Change the host samplerate to 48 kHz (Doesn't matter if you reload the project or not). The result: The filter frequency shifted from 1000 to 1088 Hz. That is something I would expect from late 90s freeware, not from a (rather expensive) commercial product that came out long after the VST standard has been established, long after much higher samplerates became available for a small budget. Did they fix that in the meantime or is it still the old code?

[audiosabre]

Let me know when the Zynaptiq plugins suffer from this supposed deflation, then I might be able to afford a few…

[martinjuenke]

I wait for the deflation of Omnisphere.

[martinjuenke]

A defloration of Valhalla prices would be nice as well...

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

I wait for the deflation of Omnisphere.

Seems like it would be the perfect instrument for you. Surprised you don't own it.

[ToMegaTherion]

My point was just that of course you're going to pay less for 1994 technology in 2024.
And it's still going to sound just as bad today. The difference is today we have a lot of better options.

Hell, the L2 and L3 were better options.

True, Waves have barely updated their old plugins except for the GUI and support for more modern systems. They're essentially still running 1990's DSP code at the core.

On the other hand, even those newer, better options are very cheap (or even free) these days. Only a few very powerful and respected brands can still sell their plugins for those kinds of prices. More and more developers are copying Waves and doing constant devaluation sales to the point where $29 for a plugin is pretty much the norm.

That’s just not really true. The better Waves and early Sony Oxford plugins were very well thought out. There are a ton of well-marketed plugins now that aren’t as good as the Waves Renaissance Compressor and EQ that came out in 90s. Even the lauded Fabfilter Pro Q is only about as good as the Ren EQ and Oxford EQ being a decramped eq. Sure you can the PSP, Weiss, and TDR eqs now for both ideal analog phase and amplitude and they sound better but I remember the days when the PSP EQs were heavy on the cpu and my laptop from 2016 or so went nuts with the Weiss EQ1 and DS1 when they came out.

Even limiter wise, most of this stuff is not really better than L2. Sure you can hit the multiband ones hotter but many of them are not over sampled, only have true peak clippers but not volume modulation, and the looks heads are so long to have less distortion on paper that they pump and breath the present down randomly based on the future. For every Xenon, Limiter 6, or Stealth Limiter that was a big improvement, there are 10 multiband ones that will remix your tracks, ones with such a long lookahead that they sound like an envelope on the master fader, or sound like a clipper when sped up not to sound like wiggling the master fader. Then the ones that limit with distortion like Oxford Limiter’s enhance slider and safe mode or Eventide Newfangled Elevate are another thing. Those two can be cleaner and more effective than L2 but when pushed get very colored and Elevate will remix your tracks where L2 will just clip all the drums off and add the high mid L2 push.

What you’re saying is also true, but you can’t just break the trend using exceptions as examples.

Mammals are a thing, and there is this weirdo of a platypus, yeah...

Most old plugins tend to be sold cheaper and cheaper as time goes by because they seem less desirable, who would doubt it ? But indeed, some gems stay as praised as before, so why change the price ?

They have recouped the development cost so they can sell it dirt cheap and the sales bring in large amounts of sales when they aren’t constant. Waves probably isn’t selling that many 30 dollar plugs but when you can get platinum for 100 or renaissance maxx for 40 a couple days a year, they are selling a lot. Tools are generally more expensive than the analog modeled, entirely to mostly dysfunctional toy of the month too and Pros can write them off. The Waves tools are just old with the exception of the Clarity Pro line which are still expensive. TDR does this and is sold cheaper than Waves when on sale. So is Plugin Alliance but they are almost entirely toys except for some old brainworx plugins and the Pro Audio DSP DSM. Sound Radix and u-He rarely have sales too. Softube will fire sale the toys and amp sims sometimes but rarely the utilitarian Weiss plugins and then only the cut down ones for a taste of the real thing and get you to upgrade to the full DS1 or EQ1.

There’s also the marketing aspect where developers will allocate thousands of dollars for marketing derivative or outdated plugins to amateurs while pros outside of the dead popular music production business could not give a damn about what flavor of the month Neve or API distortion and sounding like any API or pre 88RS (not the V) gear with Neve’s name on it. Maybe one or two of the musicians I have worked with know what Neve or API is and that’s only because of plugin marketing from UAD and Waves. SSL only from the Glue being in Ableton and the consoles have about as much cache with them as Pro Tools and Avid converters. A friend was more impressed with a studio’s Lynx Aurora N than their SSL console once.

That’s just not really true. The better Waves (...) plugins were very well thought out.

Do the Waves plugins still handle controller data relative instead of absolute or did they change that after version 7? Because at least until 7 everything by Waves featuring filters was crap because of frequency offsets (thanks to faulty controller data). Example: Use a samplerate of 44.1 kHz and anything with filters (like the Q series). Set a filter to 1000 Hz. Change the host samplerate to 48 kHz (Doesn't matter if you reload the project or not). The result: The filter frequency shifted from 1000 to 1088 Hz. That is something I would expect from late 90s freeware, not from a (rather expensive) commercial product that came out long after the VST standard has been established, long after much higher samplerates became available for a small budget. Did they fix that in the meantime or is it still the old code?

No idea. Download the latest versions on Waves Central and find out. I stopped using Waves when they put a bug in the good old GUI of Renaissance EQ (the new guis are trash and a waste of screen real estate) and wanted me to buy the next WUP to fix the bugs they introduced the previous versions with the new GUIs nobody wanted. I switched to Sonnox Oxford EQ and Oxford Dynamics for my low cpu stuff.

Now if only Sonnox could implement scalable guis and have an FFT analyzer in the Oxford EQ. Their new GUI design language sucks compared to the old Sony Paul Frindle plugs outside of the Oxford Dynamic EQ being a Fabfilter clone. Voca looks like an Izotope plug but of course sounds better than Neutron.

[DJErmac]

Let me know when the Zynaptiq plugins suffer from this supposed deflation, then I might be able to afford a few…

I purchased them ALL during the latest months !! They were all priced $99 (including Unfilter) !!

Right now you can get Orange Vocoder for $99.

[martinjuenke]

I wait for the deflation of Omnisphere.

Seems like it would be the perfect instrument for you. Surprised you don't own it.

Is it worth it?

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

I wait for the deflation of Omnisphere.

Seems like it would be the perfect instrument for you. Surprised you don't own it.

Is it worth it?

Yes! No!...Depends

[martinjuenke]

I wait for the deflation of Omnisphere.

Seems like it would be the perfect instrument for you. Surprised you don't own it.

Is it worth it?

Yes! No!...Depends

I don't like presets anymore, therefore I assume: NO.

[jamcat]

Presets are for people who would rather spend their time making music.

[osiris]

And a CD player would run @$1000.00

[DJErmac]

Well, he summed it all up. Everything works this way.

And exceptions are exceptions.