KVR Audio

ATS · Post by **ATS** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 7:14 am

so in order to upgrade to the whole new package we got to pay an upgrade for each piece? Well I'm out.

vespesian · Post by **vespesian** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 9:26 am

scintillator wrote:Angus_FX, IMHO it's a mistake to discuss pricing policy in such detail on kvr. Make a FAQ with a few answers, make a few posts to further explain your position - that's it. Don't let yourself to be dragged in into this - there're people for whom it'll always be expensive. They want the best for fifty bucks. How are you to explain to them that Strobe2 has very advanced technology under the hood, which is very rare for synths, that development time and effort costs money, that running a business in the UK is expensive, etc. They'll still want it for fifty bucks. So IMHO stick to discussing features, improvements, Cypher2, etc. Discussing prices is a waste of time and yes, a mistake.

I agree - but it's also kinda refreshing.

(btw - people are forgetting what a steal the original SSquad was - 3+ synths for slightly more than the price of 1 - 6 years ago.)

GHOST19 · Post by **GHOST19** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 12:49 pm

+1 in the too expensive camp.

_leras · Post by **_leras** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 12:06 am

Angus_FX wrote: Think it's a bit unreasonable to speculate on products that haven't even been announced yet. Do you think we'd charge Strobe2 owners full price for Cypher2, bearing in mind how much they have in common?

To be honest, not really. Many have been long term ss owners, so perfectly reasonable to speculate as to an update.

You've not said anything about reduced prices cypher/amber so there is nothing for people to go by.

edited: rant on upgrading price removed, apologies I had an incorrect price point...

xx JPRacer xx · Post by **xx JPRacer xx** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 1:27 am

I'm a big fan of the JUCE framework (clean vector and re-sizable). Angus, from now on can you tell if all future FXpansion products will use it?

Angus_FX · Post by **Angus_FX** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 7:13 am

£80? Where'd you get that from? Upgrade is £52 / EUR 72 / $79 inc. taxes for people who already own SS1.

We tend to do .x updates with maintenance & small tweaks (two of them for SSv1), but we're somewhat wary of adding features at point-releases - aside from anything else, it tends to invalidate previous work on manuals, tutorials etc. - something we're more thorough about than many. We think features should be designed together as a whole, and as such there isn't necessarily any need to add functionality features (as distinct from maintenance and compatibility) mid-way through something's life.

Occasionally there'll be something obvious we've overlooked that can be added on a right click menu or in a prefs panel somewhere, but it's very much the exception.

I'm a big fan of the JUCE framework (clean vector and re-sizable). Angus, from now on can you tell if all future FXpansion products will use it?

This isn't JUCE, it's our home grown vector framework. I think it's highly likely that all of our future products will use it, certainly the next couple will. Feels like the only sane way to go for big plug-ins with complex UI. Something simpler like DCAM Dynamics or Single Mault might not need it.

lnikj · Post by **lnikj** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 7:33 am

Angus_FX wrote: We tend to do .x updates with maintenance & small tweaks (two of them for SSv1), but we're somewhat wary of adding features at point-releases - aside from anything else, it tends to invalidate previous work on manuals, tutorials etc. - something we're more thorough about than many. We think features should be designed together as a whole, and as such there isn't necessarily any need to add functionality features (as distinct from maintenance and compatibility) mid-way through something's life.

Coming from any less reputable company I would dismiss that as flannel of the highest order

SJ_Digriz · Post by **SJ_Digriz** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 8:26 pm

We discussed performance earlier in the thread. Here is a top of the line CPU from 5 years ago .. i7-980x at stock speeds. 50 instances doing 3 note chorded arps at 256 samples (4ms).

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 8:34 pm

On my 2013 MacBook Air i7, I found that with 4x oversampling/32 voices or 8x oversampling/16 voices, Strobe 2 uses almost half as much CPU as Strobe 1. Strobe 2 and Strobe 1 perform pretty much the same for me at 2x oversampling.

_leras · Post by **_leras** » Sat Sep 19, 2015 11:12 pm

Angus_FX wrote:£80? Where'd you get that from? Upgrade is £52 / EUR 72 / $79 inc. taxes for people who already own SS1.

Apologies. Clearly had an incorrect price. Have edited previous post. £52 is much more reasonable!

chilly7 · Post by **chilly7** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 3:48 pm

In my case i was hoping the upgrade for each synth will be like 40 $ or less. But i would not complain because this synth mast be great and better high price but high end product then low price and average product. But of cause better will be high end product and low price.

musikmachine · Post by **musikmachine** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 9:38 pm

I spent some quality time with Strobe2 a couple of nights ago and it's a different beast to Strobe 1, i know some are saying it's just a re-skin or whatever but it sounds a lot better to me( relative i know), has a more 3d analog quality to it and that's just adjusting the same parameters as Strobe.

Reaaally nice filters, can get some phat resonant basses and the new fx are very nice, i think they're quality enough to use in the track whereas i normally would use 3rd party fx.

I still use Synth Squad, my goto has always been Cypher but i think Strobe2 has just taken that mantle.

Angus_FX · Post by **Angus_FX** » Thu Oct 15, 2015 10:40 am

@ musikmachine partly it's that Strobe2 runs at 2x oversampled by default (for the same or less cpu% than Strobe1 at 1x, on modern Intel chips). There are small improvements to the accuracy of the oscillator, filter & envelopes, but it's going from 1x to 2x that makes the biggest difference.

If you don't mind Strobe1's CPU load at 2x - with v2 you can go to 4x for the same amount (30% of one core @ 32 voices, 44.1K, i5-2500). It's designed to be playable in realtime all the way up to 8x on the recent generations of chips ("Sandy Bridge" aka i5/i7-2xxx and newer).

musikmachine · Post by **musikmachine** » Thu Oct 15, 2015 5:04 pm

I always run at 2x in Strobe that's why i was so surprised. I guess the new controls and drive gain will factor into it. I'll try at 4x, some pads were chewing up my cpu at 2x though but for bass and leads it should be fine. Is it optimised for AMD chips though?

Angus_FX · Post by **Angus_FX** » Thu Oct 15, 2015 5:28 pm

It's not currently optimised for AMD although there may be at least something we can do about that. What chip are you running there?

All good things come to those who wait.. the Synth Squad 2 thread