Compressor with an alternative compression algorithm

[Agreed]

I think bmanic is being straightforward and honest. Which is a good thing, companies also should be straightforward and honest.

[cryophonik]

It’s funny, when I first starting writing my initial reply, it ended up sounding exactly like bmanic’s posts. I deleted it and rewrote to simplify it, but I’ll just say that I agree with every single point in his two posts.

Your whole marketing and pricing strategy seems to ignore one glaringly obvious fatal flaw: Nobody needs another compressor. Show of hands, how many people here have dozens of compressors, of which 75% of them never even get used in a song? (that’s a rhetorical question btw). Now, I’m neither a marketing guy nor developer so I’m not going to try to tell how to sell your products, but I will say that your current approach isn’t even close to telling me why I need another compressor, especially one with a premium price tag. Maybe your team needs a (better) marketing guy?

[Ploki]

The “deliberately distort data” part is pretty silly.

Unisum isnt deliberately distorted in plugindoctor and sells like hotcakes

[SKyzZz]

That's what the demo is for, to see if it suits you or not. As far as I understand, this does not suit you. And it's just wonderful because you save your money and time. We do not specify in the user agreement that our plugin must be supported by this software. We deliberately distort the data. Therefore, thank you very much for the negative feedback, do not use our compressors and be happy.

If you only ask for feedback so you can politely tell people to f**k off when they take their time to do so, just don't ask for feedback.

Well, I understood from your review that we should not do this at all. In general, a couple more such reviews and we'll just stop doing it. I think the world won't get any worse without our software. I don't want to offend anyone here.

[SKyzZz]

It’s funny, when I first starting writing my initial reply, it ended up sounding exactly like bmanic’s posts. I deleted it and rewrote to simplify it, but I’ll just say that I agree with every single point in his two posts.

Your whole marketing and pricing strategy seems to ignore one glaringly obvious fatal flaw: Nobody needs another compressor. Show of hands, how many people here have dozens of compressors, of which 75% of them never even get used in a song? (that’s a rhetorical question btw). Now, I’m neither a marketing guy nor developer so I’m not going to try to tell how to sell your products, but I will say that your current approach isn’t even close to telling me why I need another compressor, especially one with a premium price tag. Maybe your team needs a (better) marketing guy?

So we just don't have it. There are only three of us and we are just developers.

[cprompt]

So we just don't have it. There are only three of us and we are just developers.

You're getting a pretty rough ride here at the moment, but there's plenty to be learned from what people are saying. Look, if it's just you three guys who really want to sell a great product, be successful and have passion and enthusiasm, then fantastic, I wish you all the luck in the world. We need thinkers and people who just want to give it a go, that's how new stuff comes about.

So some of the things I think you can take away from this:

Your price is unrealistic, especially for a new company with your first product
Be prepared for negative feedback and criticism
Be open and honest with who you are. I dislike buying from a new company when I know nothing about them
Make it easier for people to get demos
Make it work in Reaper - don't blame Reaper if you can't get your product working in it, everybody else can
Put audio examples on your website
When people say they don't like it, there may be a good reason why they don't like it

There was a list earlier of some great small devs who are doing really well - see what they are doing and how they are doing it. For example, Klanghelm makes free versions of his products in place of demos, and they are super useful and even though I own all his plugins, I find myself enjoying the free stuff aswell. Plus, his plugins are not expensive at all, they sound great, they work everywhere, don't have difficult copy protection and he is highly respected in the industry. What is he doing you're not?

Good for you for trying something new and good luck.

[gondii]

FWIW the demo installed fine here (Bitwig, Win10). No crashes, light on the CPU from what I can tell. I also like the look and feel of the UI. Now I am not really a compressor connoisseur and have neither the set up nor the skill for mastering, so I am having a hard time to really tell this algorithm apart from "regular" compressors. So from my side, I just don't really see the added value to the many compressors I already have in my arsenal.

I appreciate the difficulty of starting up a new company in an overly saturated market with many high quality, competitively priced alternatives. I would imagine that aiming directly at the high-end market as a new developer is going to be quite difficult, personally I would check out TDR's business model for inspiration. I mostly value consistency - in plugin quality, communication and pricing. I do not like it, when manufacturers have extremely inflated MSRP and then have an 80% sale 300 days a year. Sure, it works for Plugin Alliance or Waves, but mainly because they have cultivated a large customer base over years and have very aggressive marketing. I see other developers try this strategy as well, but In my mind, it suggests little confidence in the quality of the plugin itself - a turn off for me personally.

And in the end, selling 10 licenses at $49 is still a higher revenue than selling 2 at $199.

I also agree with some other posters here, especially if you are aiming at the premium market, the presentation needs to be on point. Better writing and descriptions, website, manuals, videos, sound demos, etc. could/should be improved.

In the end, I think building a company takes time, so I would continue to work on this and on adding more plugins to the roaster, while continuing to reach out and build a customer base. Just my two cents.

[Ploki]

Well, I understood from your review that we should not do this at all. In general, a couple more such reviews and we'll just stop doing it. I think the world won't get any worse without our software. I don't want to offend anyone here.

I don't consider v0.8 releases final, and you specifically asked for feedback in your original post.
I demoed it and tried to outline what parts i found unintuitive as a person who does a lot of mixing and uses compressor often.
I downloaded the demo which crashes, sent you crash reports and downloaded the demo again, because you advertised about tackling compression from another fresher angle, which made me curious about it.

My feedback about it wasn't -negative-, because i didn't simply say "oh this sucks", I specifically outlined with parts were counterintuitive and confusing and also provided arguments why i think they are, so you could improve on them and make the plugin easier to use for people who are used to how software compressors work.
Not to take a piss at you, but to give you a perspective from a potential customer and beta-tester for a few companies.

I can understand that you're frustrated that it isn't going as well as you hoped it would and the response isn't what you expected it to be, but that's part of doing something and giving it to public.

[cryophonik]

Have you ever seen the movie “A Christmas Story”? There’s a classic scene in there where Ralphie is dreaming of the A++++++ and all the praise and accolades he’ll be receiving when the teacher reads his theme about the Red Rider BB gun, but then he’s disappointed when he gets a C-. That’s what this thread feels like to me - like you were expecting champagne corks to be flying, rather than straight and honest criticism. So, my message is, don’t be discouraged. You’re getting a lot of great feedback here, so use that to encourage you to plan a better path forward!

[cryophonik]

Here's the link to the page offering 80% off, by the way. https://iballroad.audio/promo

Also, you've got it listed for $59 on KVR: https://www.kvraudio.com/developer/iballroad-audio

Now its $59 on the iBallRoad website: https://iballroad.audio/buy

I sent you promo code to PM

Thanks, but after installing both mac versions (mac trial and mac trial old), and AU and VST3, none of the 4 plugin files work. Neither of the VST3 plugins show up in Reaper or Ableton, and both of the AU plugins crash both DAWs. For now this is a hard pass from me. Good luck!

macOS 10.14.6
Reaper 6.47
Live 11.0.12

Screenshot 2022-03-13 at 16.57.08.png

Screenshot 2022-03-13 at 16.57.08.png

Reaper is not declared in support due to problems with channels...

That GUI looks great to me. When I open your product page, I want to see that staring me in the face giving me a positive impression before I’ve even heard it or seen the price tag. Clicking to see a wall of text doesn’t draw me in.

[xalama qo]

I would hate to see new devs becoming completely discouraged by honest direct feedback. This is a really tough market and it takes time to break in and build a good reputation and confidence from potential customers.
I'd recommend releasing some freeware, maybe just one of the compressor modes. Use the freeware to fix various platform bugs and compatibilities. And to tweak the sound based on user feedback.
When the freeware is making waves and building your reputation, then you can aim for paid products.

I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's what many have done before. If you have something truly groundbreaking people will hear it... especially guys like bmanic, and the reputation and respect will follow.
Lots of devs have a rocky start, but some stick it out despite the tough crowd and end up being very impressive... like Analog Obsession for example.
Wishing you all the best. Less words, more audio

[itanever]

As user imrae already said asking $100+ for a compressor can be done, but it's gonna be a tough one to sell. Plugin market is such a crowded space and there's little to no correlation between prices and quality. Lots of top tier stuff can be bought for relatively little. Selling any plugin is probably hard these days, but if you're gonna ask for a premium price you're gonna come under a lot more scrutiny. Your game has to be on point. This means good a product as well as good customer service, quick bug fixes etc. But also thick skin. There are going to be naysayers no matter what and the easiest way to make your threads drama ridden is by fanning the flames of drama yourself, e.g by ignoring legitimate concerns, being snarky etc. It can probably tough at times to keep emotions at bay, after all it's a tough crowd out here, but it can be done. Or you can find someone who can.

My advice to you is to take a step back, inhale and start over, because right now it doesn't seem to be going too well. Good luck!

[sguyader]

I haven't tried the demo and won't. I just do not need yet another compressor, unless the developer can really point me to what it has special and makes it desirable, in precise and clear terms. Like bmanic, I searched about the company and what I found wasn't very positive: a "plugin company" that started in 2013, and which 9 years later only has produced one single plugin, and not a single audio example since 9 months ago (on Youtube, with the older version of the plugin, and the audio demo is not even very convincing). The communication needs to be clearer on your algorithms, as on the facebook page you talk about giving a "certain character" through compression, yet here on kvr you said your algorithms are more transparent than the competition...

[Ikaz7]

The issue with asking for $100+ is that everyone already owns quite a bunch of compressors these days. You can get a superb product like FirComp or TDR Kotelnikov for free, not to mention their commercial pendants and other great compressors in the below $100 territory. That doesn't mean that your product isn't worth the asking price, it just means that the current market is oversaturated with other, more inexpsensive (yet great sounding) alternatives opposed to 5 years ago. Rising costs of living (have you looked at energy costs lately?) are not helping to give users an incentive to invest another $100+ in a compressor they barely can justify to buy with 20 other great sounding free and commercial compressors already on their harddrive. So it's a bit difficult to enter the market in the current days with a new product and no previous reputation asking for such prices. It's much easier to gain attention with a great product at a reasonable price or even a freebie as an introduction to the market. That's how Tokyo Dawn Labs created their stellar reputation as a new kid on the market (of course, the sound and features have to be there too, the product overall has to be convincing). That's how Klanghelm became on of the most popular developers.

[DJErmac]

OK, I've just tried it. No matter what settings I try, everything sounds distorted as hell. I've tried reducing the entry gain, no luck, nothing seems to work. It just sounds distorted as sh*t everytime. Don't know if I'm doing something wrong... Not usable in any way for the moment for me. :/