Carl Ewing

Ah - yes - this is called moving the goalpost. The shareholder complaints (including lawsuits) and near 24/7 internet outrage porn over Adobe's subscription switch also made the claim that it was terrible business decision and nobody would want it. Regardless of their near monopoly status in their industry. Revenue proved the opposite. Completely. It was grand slam success across the board and eventually led to 100% subscription model BECAUSE customers opted by a factor of 4x for subscription over stand alone products. Let me repeat - they offered consumers both options - and consumers chose subscription by a factor of 4. Them's the facts. As of 2023, roughly 20% of the $40 trillion dollar credit card processing market is subscription processing. That keeps going up, and up, and up. It will eventually take over virtually everything involving distributor-to-consumer sales. This applies to companies with near monopolies (Microsoft, Adobe) or industries with multiple subscription models competeting against each other (eg. what will now happen with Plugin Alliance and Waves, etc.). Do you think this happening because subscription models are bad for businesses; a one way ticket to bankruptcy, and consumers hate it? Or do you think it's because it's enormously profitable and something consumers clearly want / use? One answer is correct and is proven year after year by revenue / profit models for (almost) every company that switches to it. Waves will likely do very well with this model despite the angry minority screaming away on the internet. And small developers will think this is opportunity to capitalize on angry consumers. This will fail, like it does in all industries where large competitors who can afford a robust subscription infrastructure wipe out smaller competitors. Happens every day.

Subscriptions are extremely profitable and significantly cut down on overhead / developer size / ecommerce headaches, and help with piracy (last one is debateable). That's why companies use them. This isn't to say these models are always successful. Some fail spectacularly. Time will tell if Waves does well with it. Complaints about subscription services likely make up half the internet at this point. Adobe went through hell with theirs, even prompting a Change.Org petition and an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to all the criticisms from designers and shareholders. Despite that, SEC filings showed that customers were choosing Creative Cloud over CS at a ratio of 4:1 prior to their move to pure subscription. In other words - the angry minority were completely overshadowed by the majority of customers. I assume it will be the same with Waves. If I were to judge by internet forums, virtually every software company (gaming, music, design, etc.) should be out of business because of consumer complaints. Yet, most of them...especially those running subscriptions....are doing extremely well. This Waves switch is likely no different - it's probably a welcome change for the vast majority of users, most of which likely never hang out on / post on forums. I think companies are starting to realize that internet forums are a total ****hole of outrage and have stopped listening to them when making critical business decisions.

Very nice. This has been on my list for a while, ideally to replace the UAD equivalent on a non UAD system. Free works!

Have had nothing but problems with the EVO 16. Bought it for a secondary studio in another country I work in. (Having an RME UFX in main studio back home). Some of the worst / buggiest software I've ever experienced in a hardware unit. Firmware upgrades have made it worse and worse over the last year as well. This thing has bugged out on volume settings multiple times and blasted 100% volume through the speakers - and then freezes requiring pulling the plug to reset. Out of all the bugs I've experienced this is one that should NEVER happen. Ever. In any audio hardware unit. Period. It's what I get for buying a rushed product with poor quality control. Seeing that they're dropping their prices further only guarantees Q&A will get much worse.

I own a lot of plugins in those bundles. Been using many of the ones that are natively available via UA Connect for months. (Working mobile and don't bring UA hardware in my mobile rig.) Adding any of the bundles to my cart while logged in gives me full price. I guess I'll just keep using them for free lol. Only ones I really care about anymore are the Lex 224 and LA-2A collection, as I find them superior to alternatives from other companies. Everything else has been replaced already. Too little too late imo - UA should have been competing natively years ago. They've long been surpassed by competitors.

I have this in my account. If I go to "My hardware" there's a text link that says ""Looking for your bundled software". Click that and it takes you to all the free stuff. There's A LOT of stuff, including the LANDR mastering promo (5 free masters, 2 months subscription). I think they maybe moved the page and now have a link from the hardware page. Here's the list in my account: 1. Fast Balancer 2. 70% off Fast bundle. 3. Amplify Studio 4. Abelton Live Lite 5. 3 months NI Komplete now subscription. 6. XLN Addictive Keys 7. XLN Addictive Drums 2 + Studio Rock ADPak 8. Softube Marshall Silver Jubilee 2555 9. Antares Auto-Tune Access 10. Relax LX480 Essential 11. Brainworks "hitmaker expansion" plugins. 12. Antares Auto-Tune Unlimited 3-month trial. 13.Red Plugin-In Suite 14. Focusrite x Splice 15. Focusrite Drum Tracks 16. Landr mastering / 2 months studio sub + 5 free masters. 17. NI Massive 18. iZotope Ozone elements. There's definitely new stuff in that list that was not there last time I looked.

It's a sales forum. Post sales, discuss products on sale, compare to other products and other sales. It's not rocket science. Aren't there literally 100 other forum categories on this site to discuss other things and bitch about the industry? WTF is this reply? lol. 99% of people don't care about the inner politics of forums, and come to a forum that says "deals" and expect to see "deals" (as many of them as possible) and discussion of the products that are "deals" which is exactly what I see on VI-Control. More sales posted, more developers represented, higher quality discussion across the board. I don't care what some forum member did in 2005 or April 8th 2011 that made this forum such and such and that forum such and such, and bullies and wtf are you on about? It's a deals forum. Post deals. Discuss products and deals. Vi-control is better at this. Clearly. Anyway, moving on.

The more I see comments here about instruments, the more I realize Vi-Control is a much better forum for deal discussion. Check the discussion of this sale on Vi-Control. Comparison videos, discussion of the Majestica Pro upgrade, specific discussion about the good / bad patches of this specific library (i.e. strong low strings, weak high winds, lack of reverb control, etc.), quality control of specific patches, alternative suggestions (from 8Dio or other manufacturers), Here it just seems like people who have little to no experience with products (or perhaps little experience with composing) sounding off about a sales / promotion grievance or trying to downplay what is clearly a very successful company in virtual instruments. Which helps absolutely NOBODY who might want / need this library... Here's what informative posts look like: It seems this forum is just endless IK Multimedia and Plugin Alliance spam, missing half the actual sales of instruments throughout the year, and most of the conversations devolve into complaints about marketing / promotional practices and little substance about actual products. Maybe time to unbookmark.

Not sure why people are concerned about text size, etc. on high res monitors. Modern OS's are fully capable of scaling - resolution was a concern maybe 5 years ago, since many apps / OSs struggled with scaling. I use 3 monitors. Main monitor is a Dell 38" Ultrawide. Its resolution is 3840 x 1600. Other two monitors are LG 27" 4Ks with resolution of 3840 x 2160. All look amazing. I could not even imagine working on 1920 x 1080 - even my mobile laptop rig is 3840 x 2400. Never had a single issue with text readability or UI scaling.

Beautiful library. The legatos are incredible. Glad I held out for 3 years on buying a new string library (aside from some OT Ark stuff). Got the loyalty price of $250, which - if you buy during intro - also includes the full Solo Strings suite when they're released. Well worth the wait - will be my default strings going forward. Played them all day yesterday and just loving them.

Debating a few of the Creative Packs. Anyone have a favorite or any experience with them. Was just looking at Umbra, but seems a little overpriced for a few world-style instruments / articulations.

Finally got my UA LA-2As back with UAD Connect. (No longer have the hardware). All my other LA2As were uninstalled. Nothing beats those emulations. They are exceptional.

Surprised by the love for this. I was very disappointed by this library - even for the price. But got it for $20 with that $10 voucher. Thought it might be a quick sketch tool for choir before finalizing ideas with more extensive libraries. But it's not even fun / inspiring to write with. Just bland and uninspiring. Compared to say, the Originals string libraries, this choir doesn't even remotely come close to the quality expected by this series. IMO of course.

I just wait until the next version comes out and the update schedule for previous version is complete. Not interested in beta testing new features while on deadlines, even if those features are appealing. Seems like madness to me.

Well - had about $4K set aside for BF, and bought basically nothing. Sales don't last long enough to make an informed decision. Too many vendors, too many products, weird things bundled together, weird / confusing crossgrades and product overlaps, really old and brand new things bundled together to inflate prices, and having to scour Youtube for (usually terrible) walkthroughs of expensive libraries. Very frustrated. The one purchase I'll probably regret not making is OT Ark bundle - but just can't justify the enormous drive space for what looks like a ton of overlapping content that would take weeks (months?) to sort through. One thing is clear right now - this market is oversaturated af and vendors really don't understand how difficult it is is parse through content. Sales seem to geared to impulse buys before consumers really understand what they are buying. Luckily, have a line on a used Gibson and an RME interface I've wanted for a while. Will buy those instead. I think others here have a smarter approach - spend time really getting to know what you need to buy, then wait for sales. Don't wait till November 25th to cram in a month of research to make a decision lol. Me dumb.