Worst purchase

[Dirtgrain]

I love how Acustica Audio is so frequently hated.
Their stuff IME sounds good but is a huge CPU hog and feels shoddy.

At the time, I searched a bit and found corroborating assertions. Is it wrong?

[jamcat]

NI is in insolvency

Yep, looks like it. But is this the "Native Instruments" umbrella company (formerly 'Soundwide') that NI, PA, and iZotope are under, or just the actual Native Instruments brand?

https://www.musicradar.com/music-tech/n ... insolvency

[ampetrosillo]

Shattered Glass Audio. Code Red has still not been updated for VST3 or Apple Silicon. All my other plugins were updated 5 years ago. Support emails aren’t answered, and when you ask when an update is coming, the SGA guy cries that he’s being harassed.

It’s the most shameful, unprofessional operation since Crysonic.

The code red website says VST3 is supported. But yeah, no apple silicon...

You are correct. But either way, you can't use VST3 without Apple Silicon support, anyways. It's still for sale, so he'll gladly take your money for it. He just won't support it in anyway when it doesn't work.

Well. To be honest, no developer really is under the obligation to support additional platforms, as much as I'd like them to. I'd use Linux all day, every day, if there were better hardware and software support. (It is getting better, though. But 75% of my paid plugins don't run on Linux, sadly). Apple decided to switch to their own hardware architecture, and presumably, SGA develops for Windows first and foremost, and macOS is an afterthought.

[jamcat]

I don’t think so. SGA has been supporting iOS for every plugin in recent years, so it looks like the Apple ecosystem is a central focus. He has said updating Code Red is “on the roadmap” which was a major factor in my purchase. But there has been no movement on that road since, while new plugins have gotten 100% of the attention.

[skarvika]

Without a doubt reFX Nexus 2. Sunk a lot of money into it back in the day. I bought almost all the expansions they'd released up to that point; the video demos were very convincing but in actuality I didn't end up using more than at best a handful of sounds from them. My dongle also went missing and reFX told me to go f#$k myself and made me repurchase Nexus full price to get another one sent out to me. Nobody wants to buy it second hand, even at a sliver of what I paid. At this point I just keep it around in case I need a JV-1080 pan flute or pizzicato string or some kind of synth piano.

Some other pricier things I've regretted were
- Izotope Producer Suite: The only one I ever used much was Ozone. Everything else felt a little redundant, though I did use RX on some speech content. I'd have been satisfied only getting Ozone.

- Pulsar Audio anything: I'm actually a fan of them, their plugins are great and I've bought most of them but I really don't gel with them for whatever reason. I always seem to achieve the results I want quicker with other things. The 8200 EQ was the only one I used very much at any point but I've replaced it with Pro-Q.

- Safari Plugins Everything Bundle: Really good value, but I wouldn't find a practical use for half of them. Dirty Dog Reverb is really nice on drums, Camel Strip is nice on the master, Rhino Reverb is good for giving depth to synths, there's a couple distortions that are ok like Gorilla Drive and Cobra Fuzz but a lot of it feels limited or gimmicky. The UIs are fun but I think the pedal concept holds them back.

- Soundtoys: The only plugins I ended up really liking were Echoboy and Little Plate. Their upgrade prices are good but there's not much reason to upgrade when they take years to release anything new.

- Vochlea Dubler 2: No matter what I did, it would spray random midi all over the piano roll. The trouble wasn't worth it. Thankfully they have a generous return policy.

I also regret spending so much money on Plugin Alliance plugins I never ended up using. Thankfully NI bought them and ported their pricing model over so I haven't spent any more since!

[lunardigs]

The Harrison plugins - spent hundreds on them, really liked them, SSL bought them and then they did the rug-pull on all their Linux users ...
Oh! And they went iLok!
Disgusting. I will never buy SSL or any of their brands.

[Dave_p]

I have a few that sit on the shelf, but there's one I won't touch. I spent $25 dollars on a delay plug-in. The developer let the feedback go over 100% and didn't place any limit/clipping at the 120db mark (or whatever the breaking point is in the DAW). The lines explode. Next thing I know, the track is not outputting any audio whatsoever. It's a simple mistake to fix on the dev side, but I can't use something that isn't going to always be working for me.

[Dr.Gunjah]

For me it's Harmony Bloom by Mario Nieto which I bought early on. This plugin could be such a fun take on arps but it's useless to me because there is no legato mode. Was told by the dev it's a "highly requested feature" that's supposed to be coming soon, but it's still not in there 2 years later. Meanwhile, cosmetic stuff like color themes was implemented like if that was somehow more important than a basic feature that virtually every other arp/sequencer plugin has.

[vitocorleone123]

My worst purchases were every big kitchen sink type thing: Omnisphere, Arturia, Komplete, etc.

There’re all long gone and life is better for it. My wallet not as well off, though. But I learned my lesson eventually!

[fedexnman]

Camel Audio and Native Instruments. Granted I can still use the Camel stuff I've got it all backed up . But I just don't . Native Instruments is to be determined still , but the writing is on the wall now .

[oobesan]

After excluding worthless plugins that came in a bundle mixed with some good or great plugins, I have regrettably narrowed it down to one plugin for worst purchase. I hate to say this, but it’s Dawesome Myth. It’s not the worst plugin I own by a long shot. But, given high price, and the fact that I can’t seem to find a place for it any song, any mix, no matter what, it’s the worst purchase I’ve made.

[jancivil]

without a doubt, Acustica. I had bought a couple of tape machine emulations that were very highly regarded. Can't remember the man's name, a big Christian in Atlanta, lovely fellow. These were not expensive things, I didn't pay close attention during the buy and turns out it requires Acustica. I forget if it would run in the free version but I doubt it, because why did I pay for that.

Using it sent my computer through the roof, I'd have to have a buffer so high it's not recommended (Cubase 2048 samples) and the serial key authorization would quit working mysteriously. The Acustica guy wasn't any kind of businessman, was exceedingly slow in response, somewhat difficult to communicate with, and would point me to info on the website to remedy the situation, the whole thing very convoluted.

[El°HYM]

I am just hoping that PA wont land on this List.

[Sascha Franck]

Interestingly enough, my "worst" purchase is still a pretty decent thing, namely UVI's Prisma. Bought it because it's been on sale recently.

From the videos I thought it'd be an inspiring thing and the dual-engine-layering thing would be great to come up with some nice layered sounds, but it's just not as inspiring as I thought it would be, patch loading often results in some crackling (apparently there's the occasional samples that need some time to be fully loaded, no idea).
The individual layer presets aren't much to write home about, either. And they're lacking some stuff IMO. There's Marcato, Tremolo and Pizzicato strings but no plain Sustains - wtf (I know it's not meant to be an orchestral library, but Sustains are pretty much the most important thing you might want to use for layering).
It's also lacking a few things IMO, such as not being able to link the two layers regarding their synthesis options (envelopes, filters, FX, whatever), which I think could be very useful. And I also almost hate it that there's no independent settings for PB up/down.

However, it's still decent and I may end up using it some more once I've explored some more sounds and created some layers myself.

Guess I'm merely making kinda educated purchases - because pretty much anything else I find bad is either freeware or part of some bundles (Komplete Ultimate, Steinberg Absolute, IK's entire catalog, stuff bundled with Logic - they all have some abominations to be found inside, but the packages themselves are absolutely worth the price of admission, especially as I bought everything for peanuts).

[Vortifex]

My 'worst' purchase was Newfangled Recirculate delay. It actually sounds really good, but when you engage the saturation algorithms that give it its character the delay taps fade out too fast, and when you compensate by increasing the feedback they still fade out too fast but also just devolve into a really long grungy feedback tail that you probably don't want.