iZotope discontinues many plugins (iZotope and Exponential Audio)

[Compyfox]

Please don't shoot the messenger, I'm just as annoyed as you are.


While being on Discord, somebody asked me if I know why "Trash 2" suddenly vanished from both the iZotope page, and pretty much every 3rd party outlet. So I got curious, checked these stores and all my accounts where I bought iZotope tools from. Nothing was "removed", thankfully. Then I checked all emails - nothing. After that, I've reached out to iZotope on social media directly... only to be getting the following information:

We're just stopping the selling of older products in our roster. We know it's bittersweet when things are entering retirement but nothing is dropped. You can still use them as long as you have a supported system as outlined on that page.

After being forwarded a related blog post (which I'll post in a second), I asked about Exponential Audio as well, since pretty much everyone did a mass-sale on their tools as well. iZotope didn't hesitate to post me another blog post.

Here are both of them:

Support Notice for Iris 2, Breaktweaker, and Trash 2
Support Notice for R2, R4, R2 Surround, PhoenixVerb, PhoenixVerb Surround, NIMBUS, and Excalibur




Obviously highly miffed from this "non-announcement", after iZotope still selling full Production Bundles and also having had insane sales deals up until a couple of days ago, I wrote the person on Social Media that this was definitely not a good move. Some of us dropped a lot of money into these tools, and yet there is no follow-up. The focus as of now, seems to be only on Nectar, Neutron and Ozone, in fact... now I hesitate to drop any funds on RX.

To which I got the following as a response (non edited):

We aren't just saying goodbye, we have the article.

The prodiucts aren't going to be sold, they're still going to work and run and be around.

And we're still going to support them for another year per our EULA.

I think the sales teams just had to pull the purchase links before the emails could go out to customers.

We're sorry if it felt suddent that was not the intention.

You have nothing to worry about. As long as you keep the software on a supported system it will run forever.

If you upgrade to a new OS or computer then it's at your own risk. that's not unique to us but any company.

We're keeping Stratus and Symphony and just patched both recently.

Those were the last 2 and most recent products EA made before we acrquired them.

It doesn't make sense from a logistics standpoint to keep older products that are 10 years old with very old code and unresolvable bugs around.

It makes more sense to retire them peacefully, and go on to create new and better things.

Your money wasn't wasted, you're using them and enjoying them and will continue to use and enjoy them as you see fit.

The TL;DR here is:

• the upper mentioned products have been declared "discontinued" and are not sold anymore
• it is unsure if you can still activate licenses you just bought, or haven't activated up until this point (I need to test this myself -- some stuff I bought is not listed in my IZotope account, funny enough)
• as of 27th October 2022, iZotope will no longer invest time into software testing (OS and host compatibility) and bugfixes -- right after MacOS 13 dropped (24th October, to which they announced: "we're still testing, please wait"), and right after the Windows 11 22H2 update as well (25th October)
• as of 27th October 2023, iZotope will drop support for the upper mentioned products
• there is no mention of any possible follow-up / revival of certain plugins

Whelp...

..."so long, and thanks for all the fish", iZotope.

(there goes most of my iZotope/Exponential Audio tools... amazing)


First, the Soundwide craze, where there is still no further information as to what it is planned (only Plugin Alliance does the "one-stop-shop" thing). Then Plugin Alliance suddenly having mass sales that never seem to stop (which is also highly suspicious). Then just before Komplete 14 dropped, Native Instruments replaces certain factory sounds (mostly Kontakt) and discontinues Abysnth. Now iZotope drops Iris 2, Breaktweaker, Thrash 2, and almost all of Exponential Audio. What's next... Brainworx dropping all early Brainworx plugins (things like bx_control/bx_digital - which only saw maintenance updates)?


Not liking this...

[plexuss]

I bought, and retain, iZotope 8 Adv, RX6 Adv, Creative bundle and many EA reverbs.

Do I care?

No. I gave up on iZotope years ago. Great stuff when I was starting out but grew beyond their capabilities... for me.

But, par for the course. Software is a temporary transitory thing. Like they say, if you really care, dont upgrade your system.

Onward with better tools and better companies to do business with... you have to learn to walk way from losses on software purchases - its the nature of the beast. IMHO YMMV

[Greenstorm33]

I'll be using Trash 2 for as long as it continues to work. Fingers crossed.

[muki]

yes..
actually kind of old news (1 or 2 years ago)
nobody cared because it was "only" in re m1 macs...
but well...

imho esp sad because of iris, which imho is quite a unique one

[metamorphosis]

I still love Izotope Alloy 2, Nectar 2 (to a lesser extent) and yes, ozone (if only because it's what I started with, mastering-wise).

[JockMcRonan]

outta here

[Compyfox]

I just realized, that iZotope also dropped "DDLY - Dynamic Delay". When, don't know.

My user account is not complete, filing a ticket is an absolute pain. And from all the licenses I own, I fall "back" to just RX and Stutter Edit 2. Stutter Edit 2 hasn't been updated in quite a while as well.


And the most curious thing... according to the representative on Facebook, "It doesn't make sense from a logistics standpoint to keep older products that are 10 years old with very old code and unresolvable bugs around." --- yeah I'll call doubt on that...

Exponential Audio R4 and Excalibur were last updated in June 2022. In fact, nearly all Exponential Audio plugins were updated around that time. Iris 2 was last updated in May 2021. MacOS 12 Montenery (M1 / Rosetta 2) was released October 2021, and Mac OS11 Big Sur already had M1 support (October 2020).

Well okay then...

[simmo75]

I guess this means the bundles will get a lot cheaper then, right…

[MattLeschuck]

Trash 2 will be a hard one to let go of. Fortunately Symphony replaced R4 for me so im good there. Ozone and RX are really the only other plugins from them I find very useful. And they seem to be at the front of of their product line.

[machinesworking]

Honestly the only irreplaceable plug in they make to me is Tonal Balance Control. RX is great as well. They make good stuff no doubt, but I compare the feature creep and constant upgrades to products from DMG or Fabfilter etc. and I'm all set really without being bombarded with upgrades etc.

iZotope a long time ago fell into the NI world of deprecating older products, so I stopped being excited by their new ones. Been counters control their output, it is what it is.

[el davo]

the only irreplaceable plug in they make to me is Tonal Balance Control.

I liked that plugin too, but did not purchase in the end. Maybe it is their particular take on it that works so well for you, but Match EQ functionality and spectrum analysers can get you similar information.

E.g the EQ from Toneboosters has a nice "compare tonal balance to reference" function. You get match eq functionality, but not control over the settings in other instances from one interface as in Tonal Balance.

Voxengo Span (free) or MetricAB (detailed interactive comparison in frequency bands) will also help you towards the same goal but AFAIK lack the specific "band" visualisation.

[steff3]

Nothing too surprising from iZotope (or the plug-in syndicate or how they are called -> NI: B4, SpektralDelay, Absynth, etc.) regarding product policy (Iris 1, the delay, etc. - most of the were already abandonware)

The old code is hardly the fault of the customers, nor of the product itself - just management and financial interests.

I mostly stop buy / updating stuff from them a while ago …. With their cash cows (Ozone, RX) one might get further updates, but the product policy (pricing) tells a lot IMHO.

Clear pattern.

[plexuss]

On the other hand... software is very difficult and expensive to support especially if there has been a lot of org changes over time in the company. people come and go and its easy to get so far behind that its not finacially feasible to get code back into production... or even possible. It costs money to keep code working and supported. It's not necessarily "bad management" for software to become abandoned. Conisder how far back computer software existed and how much of it is supported and in use today. Not much of it. Just because we pay doesn't mean it means forever. It's software. It's not real.

[chagzuki]

I largely moved away from EA reverbs a while ago, and I've spent some time with Neoverb and consider it to be decent. A couple of days ago I was playing around with R4 again and was reminded of how good it is, good enough that I'd still probably choose it over the competition if it were being maintained. And Neoverb isn't a replacement, it has some novel features but lacks some basic ones.

[machinesworking]

the only irreplaceable plug in they make to me is Tonal Balance Control.

I liked that plugin too, but did not purchase in the end. Maybe it is their particular take on it that works so well for you, but Match EQ functionality and spectrum analysers can get you similar information.

E.g the EQ from Toneboosters has a nice "compare tonal balance to reference" function. You get match eq functionality, but not control over the settings in other instances from one interface as in Tonal Balance.

Voxengo Span (free) or MetricAB (detailed interactive comparison in frequency bands) will also help you towards the same goal but AFAIK lack the specific "band" visualisation.

so I own their production Suite, and like I mentioned the stand outs for me are RX and Tonal Balance Control. There really isn’t anything directly comparable to TBC, it’s unique in that it gives reference band ranges for various frequencies and genres of music determined by iZotope examining hundreds of well produced songs in the genre etc.
KVR is great for dragging companies through the mud for bad policies and I do it as well, but I have to admit I rarely do it to a company I don’t like the products of. iZotope make a lot of good sounding products, it’s just like NI and IK they have weird or slash and burn policies about older products etc.
For instance I don’t hate Ozone, it’s pretty great actually, but I bought DMG Limitless, and EQilibrium, multiple PSP vintage compressors etc. I’ve got comparable or better plug ins for most of their stuff, Tonal Balance Control and RX aside.