Nothing exciting from Superbooth?

[Seluvis]

I wouldn't necessarily come to that conclusion, more developers doesn't say much about the quality.

Hmmm. I didnt make any conclusions of my own, of course, I only pointed out there were obvious logical flaws in yours.

But you did when you said my assertion/opinion was at odds.
That is a conclusion of sorts.
Anyways back on topic please.

[whyterabbyt]

But you did when you said my assertion/opinion was at odds.
That is a conclusion of sorts.

False and false.

[osiris]

Someone was impressed enough to vid this

(Sound is awful but since I think it's recorded straight on to whatever is recording. I love this guy's attitude toward synth design)

[MattCable]

Development time and experience is a real thing, take uhe, synapse, tone2 ...between them they have over 60 years of combined knowledge, new start-ups have to contend with that. I am not saying there aren't outliers but breaking into plugin development from scratch is becoming increasingly more difficult. Most of the low hanging fruit has been picked.

I get what you are saying and I agree. You see it here all the time: most already have tons of amazing stuff, including free options, so they expect to "wowed" with the absolute highest quality. If they aren't, they are pissed.

How many can meet that high standard as a small operation? Is Cytomic a one-person developer? That seems like one example of the few doing really high level quality stuff originating from one great coder.

AI will help more people reach baseline, but they won't be selling any copies for $100-200 like they think. The more products that arrive that don't offer something new, the more people will tune out. Then, the issue is like you say, how will they compete with the bigger companies with 20 years of experience, 20 people on staff, and who are also using AI but for much more complicated programming?

I think people's expectations are higher, and the barrier to creating a top-level product is also much higher. Just look how much went into Re-pro and Zebra 3; like super advanced modeling and endless tweaking to get it where it ended up. In a struggling economy, the people actually selling products are going to have to compete with those top companies. It'll be hard to make flagships better than zebra/pigments/serum, hard to do modeling better than UAD/softube/gforce/and even arturia, hard to due fx better than fabfilter and others, and hard to do modular better than VCV Rack. Passion projects and new careers require money and free time.

In a sustained economic downturn, more and more developers will be focused instead on gigs that actually pay, and large companies will have something of a monopoly. What they put out will be a toss up: technological advances may assist them, but less market for your product and less competition also means quantity, quality or both, will go down.

[Seluvis]

Yep you've hit the nail on the head and make very good points.
I find myself in agreement.
Well put. Your economic point has great merit to.

[Tj Shredder]

I imagine the economics aren't worth it, nor the overall business strategy. A lot of audio software projects are one-man operations done as a side-business with no budget and little realistic expectation of breaking even on the time investment, much less actually making a profit. Distribution isn't needed in the same way as hardware, and for sales and marketing, email newsletters, social media, and YouTube are more than sufficient -- what is the added value of a trade show? Sure, networking with other audio professionals -- but is that worth the expense if a first plugin hasn't even broken even yet? Plus, if they want to capitalize on the attention a trade show gets, just release the product and internet marketing around the same time, it will be "lumped" together with the trade show coverage. Honestly, outside of networking (if it makes sense for the business), I don't see much value in a trade show for software. I'm sure I could come up with some for special cases, but generally, not so much.

If money would be the only reason to do what creators do, be it developing/inventing musical instruments or making music, what you write makes sense. But I really hope that isn’t the world I live in…
I would even suspect if that would be true, music wouldn’t exist…
Even if you prefer to demo software at home (I do as well btw.). To connect with other human beings, which share the same interests is way, way more important than a pure economic motivation.
There are a good number of software creators coming to Berlin already, and I bet none of them will say afterwards it wasn’t worth it. Even if you can’t measure the result in monetary values…
That this thread exists, proofs that the SuperBooth does create attention, even if you didn’t attend…

[db3]

Most interesting for me was the plastic wrapped Korg and the new unknown Arturia product(s) only shown privately (SuperFreak possibly).