When can we stop making 32-bit plugins?

[ghettosynth]

Is it me or does it seem the users who are most concerned with killing off 32 bit are the early adapters who need to justify their purchases. Reminds me of the switch to CD's....and now there is a resurgence of vinyl not to mention the hardware vs. software debate. Way I see it use whatever floats your boat.

It's just you. Look again at the results. 70% of the respondents are not using 32 bit at all. That's way too high to just represent early adopters. 64 bit plugins have been out for a long time and at this point they are not "new" technology. My main production workstation went to Windows 10 only recently, as in within the past two weeks. The machine itself is a solid five years old at this point, that's not within the window of early adoption.

No, the converse is true, those of us primarily using 64 bit today aren't, at this point, early adopters, rather, those of you clinging to 32 bit are techno-Luddites. I think that going purely 64 bit now is well within the bounds of conservative technology adoption. 64 bit plugins and hosts are a mature technology at this point.

[SeeingInMidi]

no one is gonna be stuck with mid 2000s technology 20 years from now

In a world where people still seek out old akai hardware and people who were born a decade after the advent of CD's somehow wax nostalgic about vinyl records
I'm not sure how true that is

In terms of the 32/64 bit argument, I don't think people will feel nostalgic about the "32-bit sound" because there isn't such thing really. Old samplers and vinyl have a personality that people can actually hear and feel nostalgic about.

Oh boy, I sure am missing my old Akai S612 and those mini disks. It sounded so good, lol. You know, the older the better, right?

My school had an old broken Akai MPC60, I thought about buying it and restoring it. But I don't feel like going through all that trouble haha.

[melomood]

no one is gonna be stuck with mid 2000s technology 20 years from now

In a world where people still seek out old akai hardware and people who were born a decade after the advent of CD's somehow wax nostalgic about vinyl records
I'm not sure how true that is

In terms of the 32/64 bit argument, I don't think people will feel nostalgic about the "32-bit sound" because there isn't such thing really. Old samplers and vinyl have a personality that people can actually hear and feel nostalgic about.

They could very well feel nostalgia for that bit of VST history
The 'personality' of old samplers can be reproduced in software
The 'personality' I remember most about vinyl was the surface noise,defects that made favorite songs skip on first play,warping, and having to hang my turntable from the ceiling so I could play records and walk across the room at the same time
The personality you speak of seems to live mainly in the eyes and ears of the beholder

Never say never

[pdxindy]

no one is gonna be stuck with mid 2000s technology 20 years from now

In a world where people still seek out old akai hardware and people who were born a decade after the advent of CD's somehow wax nostalgic about vinyl records
I'm not sure how true that is

In terms of the 32/64 bit argument, I don't think people will feel nostalgic about the "32-bit sound" because there isn't such thing really. Old samplers and vinyl have a personality that people can actually hear and feel nostalgic about.

They could very well feel nostalgia for that bit of VST history
The 'personality' of old samplers can be reproduced in software
The 'personality' I remember most about vinyl was the surface noise,defects that made favorite songs skip on first play,warping, and having to hang my turntable from the ceiling so I could play records and walk across the room at the same time
The personality you speak of seems to live mainly in the eyes and ears of the beholder

Never say never

you are right that one cannot say it is impossible... but vinyl is an entirely different means of reproducing sound. Old samplers also invited different workflows and its limitations brought sonic differences.

One could not even tell in use whether a plugin is 32 or 64 bit. There is no sonic or workflow difference. I also think it is highly unlikely there will be some 32 bit plugin renaissance.

[melomood]

No renaissance,but never underestimate people's ability to find value in something because it harkens back to a time & place more than whether it has any real use in their present day or really makes that much of a difference
It is not impossible to create situations where you can reproduce the limitations & workflow of an old sampler
without actually buying one and using it.
As far as vinyl,if by 'different' you mean 'antiquated',then yes.

[aciddose]

Sort of like how we're all rushing out to buy rotary phones to lug around while asking "do you happen to know where there is a telephone socket?" in every Starbucks.

[melomood]

https://www.google.com/search?q=Old+fas ... e&ie=UTF-8

[melomood]

Here's hoping somebody comes up with an analogy that actually works

[ATS]

seems most have moved on...

[foosnark]

I have insufficient motivation to move on from 32 bits. No big sample libraries, nothing that I'm missing out on. I know the 64-bit version of Maschine is somewhat more CPU efficient than 32, but in practice I don't run into problems.

When I upgrade my computer I might switch to 64 bits. The list of plugins I use has shrunk a lot over the last year, and having to reinstall stuff anyway would make it a good time to do that. But until then -- and it may still be years away -- I would simply not buy anything that was released only in 64 bits.

[Mutant]

Supporting 32bit for ancient OS's just drains valuable dev time.

REAPER devs must be a miracle makers then, because for them it is not as impossible task as it apparently is for Steinberg drones...
They just coded the compatibility once and it simply works.
It is not like they spend 2x the time, coding new REAPER features separately for 32bit and 64bit operating systems.

[S0lo]

Supporting 32bit for ancient OS's just drains valuable dev time.

REAPER devs must be a miracle makers then, because for them it is not as impossible task as it apparently is for Steinberg drones...
They just coded the compatibility once and it simply works.
It is not like they spend 2x the time, coding new REAPER features separately for 32bit and 64bit operating systems.

In many cases, it's just a compiler setting that you have to change, and the same code would immediately work both 32bit and 64bit.

[A_SN]

Here's hoping somebody comes up with an analogy that actually works

The 32-bit to 64-bit transition is an almost unique type in technological transitions in that it doesn't make a real difference to the user, you can't know what's 32-bit or 64-bit by looking at it or listening to it, it's a minor technical detail. Which is why it has no special charm, unlike say rotary phones, gramophones, daguerreotypes, optical telegraphs, long wave radio, cassettes, NTSC broadcasting, dial-up and so forth. It's just a somewhat routine computer technology transition that has to be done better sooner than later, which is apparently the point that the people who refuse to transition don't want to understand. We've had many of those before like 16-bit to 32-bit, 68k to PowerPC and then to Intel (for Macs), Mac OS Classic to Mac OS X, DOS to Windows to Windows NT, this one is hardly different, and like all the others it has to be done. To this day you can still say "ClarisWorks 3.0 works fine on my 1989 Mac, why should I move on?" which is fine (if a bit strange), just don't expect updates.

So that's it, if you want some perspective, hanging on to 32-bit in 2017 is like hanging on to a late 1980s computer in the late 1990s, sure you can claim it works and does what you need, but anyone who claimed that 20 years ago has long since moved on.

In many cases, it's just a compiler setting that you have to change, and the same code would immediately work both 32bit and 64bit.

The caveats are upstream, you need to make something that will work well in 32-bit, that means you have to think twice about using certain approaches (like how I wanted to use 64-bit fixed point arithmetic in Spiral which is slow in 32-bit because you have to divide each operation into 4 operations, pretty much. I forgot what I eventually went with though) and be careful with the lack of available addressing space, and designing things to fit those obsolete constraints is getting more and more challenging yet unnecessary.

Not to mention an important point, although it's not a huge deal with plugins as they usually don't have so many dependencies, but you need two of everything, that means the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of every library you use.

[wagtunes]

Forget about expecting updates. At some point in time you're literally never buying anything new. Everything made, from a certain point onward, will not work on your machine. Which means you're going to have to be content with the things you have up to that point.

[AnX]

Supporting 32bit for ancient OS's just drains valuable dev time.

REAPER devs must be a miracle makers then, because for them it is not as impossible task as it apparently is for Steinberg drones...
They just coded the compatibility once and it simply works.
It is not like they spend 2x the time, coding new REAPER features separately for 32bit and 64bit operating systems.

Im taking about plugins. Thats what that is what the thread is about.

As for reaper, it was already 32bit, for old 32bit OS's, so no new code needed.

When a dev makes a new plugin, catering for Winxp dinosaurs takes time...