Phoenix Verb $9.99 At AudioDeluxe

[Piotr]

2 hours ago, simon said:

maybe but there is also a surround version of phoenix but not nimbus ? 

I am not doing anything in surround so didn't check it but anyway Phoenix and Phoenix Surround are different products with different prices.

Maybe for surround Stratus is what Nimbus is for stereo (meaning extended version of Phoenix).

I guess naming could have something to do with history of reverb development at Exponential Audio but now just guessing .

Anyway I am curious how many guys here are doing something in surround ?  Probably there are some engineers doing kind of commercial cinematic stuff...

[Starship Krupa]

For me, the quest had always been for my single best go-to reverb that I could put on a send and it would sound the most like sending the track to a real or imagined 3-D space. I'd have that, and then a quiver of "character" reverbs like plate emulations, psychedelic space things, etc.

When Phoenix first went on sale at PB for a tenner, I downloaded the demo, threw it on my send bus in an existing mix just with the default medium room preset and my search of 5 years came to a very abrupt halt as my mix expanded into this holographic soundstage. Yeah, forget it, every other room reverb. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that you might be able to do something as good with TrueVerb or one of Melda's M*Verbs, but preset after preset in this thing was just stunning. No grain in the tails, and I don't know what kind of processing he's throwing in there to get that spatial effect, but man oh man.

In other words, get the dang thing, if you are in any way in the market for an algorithmic room/hall/chamber reverb. But you can test drive it first and see. Caveat: unlike most iZotope products, license allows for a single installation, not two. Also, the UI is not as pretty as its iZotope brethren.

[LAGinz]

Is the surround version of Phoenix included for the 10er?
 

[Brian Walton]

10 minutes ago, LAGinz said:

Is the surround version of Phoenix included for the 10er?
 

no, it is on sale for $150 (minus in cart discounts)

Edited April 16, 2020 by Brian Walton

[mibby]

No.

[Starise]

For me the decision was simple. I don't have Nimbus and I'm not the type that wants to play with presets for two hours. I need something I can dial in and make minor tweaks to it in a few minutes because I'm usually making music not previewing reverbs. I should have already familiarized myself with the plug. Nimbus on sale was 79.00 while Phoenix was only a tenner. It has most of the same DNA. No brainer for me. I must be nuts though because I just bought 2C audio's Breeze and Precedence with individual per track spacial positioning. I though it was going to be my last reverb...ever. Yeah, just like when I told my wife I had bought my last guitar. When will I ever learn? 

Neva say neva.:)

 

[SteveC]

Sweet...   I have an old Visa gift card with a remaining balance of $12.50 that I wasn't sure I'd ever actually use.   Score!

[fret_man]

Grrrr, iLok. Nevermind. 

[Brian Walton]

13 minutes ago, fret_man said:

Grrrr, iLok. Nevermind. 

ilok with only one  authorization.  

If this had normal izotope liscencing it would be a complete no-brainer.

I'm debating on buying it again, becuase if I don't I'll just end up avoiding using it on projects  with the single instance.  

[Starise]

You may move the authorization to another computer pretty quickly online or simply take the ilok to the other computer with the license on it.

I understand if you move back and forth between computers a lot it's a small hassle for sure. I seldom use computer 2.

[RSMcGuitar]

Another licence question from yours truly...

So if I only authorize my licence on iLok and not in my Izotope account, where does the record for my purchase exist if I have problems down the road?

[ensconced]

Well not that it answers your question, but I was wondering similar. At least you can download from Izotope, and as it's authed via iLok, there should be no problem there. So I stopped wondering because I could download it when needed, and the auth was taken care of (apart from machine failures and the risks of it being to my PC and not iLok dongle, but that's another story)

They do say on the Izotope site "At this time, Exponential Audio products are not yet integrated into Product Portal. The iLok activation code will not work within Product Portal." At this time  may be taken, with a little or a lot of liberty to mean at sometime in the future it will be integrated.

Sorry it took so long to not answer your question, if I could give you your time back I would. (also did you notice that PG released the new official update for FX2)

[TheSteven]

When you figure how to authorize to Izotope let me know.  All they give you is an iLok key, not an iZotope reg #.

[Starise]

 

Exponential Audio products are not connected with the Izotope portal.  ilok is probably a safer place for it than the portal IMHO.

If the software somehow gets corrupted or your computer goes down simply reload the software on a new computer and insert the ilok.

I started out with ilok cloud and have been with them for probably 8-10 years. If anything I feel it's a good place to store  plugin and library info.

Nothing is ever a sure thing. It's about as close as it gets IMO. You can bet they have redundant servers in different locations.

Edited April 17, 2020 by Starise

[ensconced]

Quote

At this time, Exponential Audio products are not yet integrated into Product Portal. The iLok activation code will not work within Product Portal.

https://support.izotope.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025730073-Exponential-Audio-Product-Activation

[Starship Krupa]

On 4/16/2020 at 2:26 PM, fret_man said:

Grrrr, iLok. Nevermind. 

What's the big deal about iLok licensing?

The PACE service is a teeny tiny thing running on my computer compared to Apple Mobile Device Helper, Apple iPod Service, Apple Updater, Google Crash Handler, Microsoft Photos, all this other crap I have running and can't turn off for fear it will break iTunes or Chrome.

I did have to go through the hassle of retrieving the iLok'd licenses I lost on a computer where I upgraded the motherboard and Windows (and therefore PACE/iLok) decided that it was a different computer. I contacted the companies involved and asked them to please deactivate the licenses and they all did without a fuss.

Next time I do major surgery on a computer, I deactivate the iLok (and Waves) licenses first.

Never owned one of their dongles, 'cause I don't hop from studio to studio to work.

[cclarry]

I have no qualms with iLok.  I've been a Pro Tools user since V7,
so the iLok is not a problem to me.  It's early days had a lot of issue,
but that is all in the past, and it has been quite solid for years now.
Intellectual Property requires protection, because there are a LOT
of "crooks" out there who ruin it for the rest of us, just like ANY criminal
does for society...so I completely understand the need for protection, 
especially on "High End" software.  

[Starship Krupa]

11 hours ago, cclarry said:

It's early days had a lot of issue,
but that is all in the past, and it has been quite solid for years now.

As we've witnessed with Our Favorite DAW, if you judge a piece of software/technology by how buggy it was during the early Obama administration, you're sure to miss out on some great stuff.

If I were to go by Sampletank 3, for instance, I'd never touch the thing again, because despite the freebie having one of the best sampled grands I'd heard, I could play it for about 3 minutes before it would crash the snot out of whatever host I was using, Cakewalk, Mixcraft. But I checked out Sampletank 4, and dang, even more freebie content and the thing is strong like bull, solid like rock.

And I'm sorry, SONAR lovers, but when I installed and tried the first build of CbB, I was kind of stunned by how crashy and fragile and dropout prone and just buggy it was compared to what I had been used to, which was Mixcraft. Usable, for sure, great features and it sounded like a million bucks, but I had to baby it. Couldn't leave it running. But the next build, what was it, a month and a half later, those boys had put their butt-kicking boots on. By the next one after that, I was convinced that they were deadly serious. And now, I think y'all know what an advocate I am.

I'm an "East German judge" of software, I used to work in the industry, I have a low threshold for excuses and defensiveness. I also think that it's great that we have so many DAW's to choose from, and even the highest end of them costs less than my 4-track cassette did 35 years ago. Ableton Live! and FL Studio have great workflows for electronic music, Reaper is a tweaker's delight and seems to work with everything when others don't, Cubase and Studio One seem to be ones with the more traditional workflow and at the forefront of introducing new features, Cakewalk is free and to me, like a Winchester Mystery House where I keep finding out cool things it can do, and it's now taking some inspiration again from what the industry leaders are up to.

[Brian Walton]

11 hours ago, cclarry said:

I have no qualms with iLok.  I've been a Pro Tools user since V7,
so the iLok is not a problem to me.  It's early days had a lot of issue,
but that is all in the past, and it has been quite solid for years now.
Intellectual Property requires protection, because there are a LOT
of "crooks" out there who ruin it for the rest of us, just like ANY criminal
does for society...so I completely understand the need for protection, 
especially on "High End" software.  

There are lots of ways to protect the IP. I don't follow the black market these days, but it seemed like every expensive program (ilok enabled included) would get cracked, so it was only a deterrant for the first few weeks on the market.  I've seen lots of different authorization methods, ilok is the only one that comes to mind that invovles a 3rd party (additional app, potential expensive dongle, seperate account) to use a product someone else developed.  

Related to this thread, the issue is ramped up when only one single seat is granted for a given product.  At least 2 seats means you can avoid downtime on your own without having to get in contact with multiple manufactures to get back up and running.  My experience is most of these companies are  not getting back to me in an hour or two.  I've gone days without an update from WAVES for example, that isn't pretty in the real world.  

12 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

What's the big deal about iLok licensing?

The PACE service is a teeny tiny thing running on my computer compared to Apple Mobile Device Helper, Apple iPod Service, Apple Updater, Google Crash Handler, Microsoft Photos, all this other crap I have running and can't turn off for fear it will break iTunes or Chrome.

I did have to go through the hassle of retrieving the iLok'd licenses I lost on a computer where I upgraded the motherboard and Windows (and therefore PACE/iLok) decided that it was a different computer. I contacted the companies involved and asked them to please deactivate the licenses and they all did without a fuss.

Next time I do major surgery on a computer, I deactivate the iLok (and Waves) licenses first.

Never owned one of their dongles, 'cause I don't hop from studio to studio to work.

The itunes compareson    is a fair one, as it also provides unnecesary bloat to the whole process.  On an android or windows machine a player just plays the file, no import process or cataloing or trying    to sell you something.    The fact that you deal with that bs means you have a fairly high tollerene for pain and invasiveness as a paying customer.    ilok likely won't bother you a bit.

ilok is a 3rd party that just charges the customer for using some other company's products.  If you are asking the manufacutre , not ilok to reset licences, you have to see the point that they could have done the same thing directly without ilok in the process.  I've done this with izotope for example, ran out of installs and told them I've been upgrading hardware and had a couple HD's swapped out as I don't want to wait until the thing dies.  Not a problem, they just gave me another authorization.

In your scenario or if a HD fails, or the dongle tied to it fails you are without pluigns until you get a response and resoltuion across the board.  The problem isn't as much about the protection of the software as it is another 3rd party getting in the way, costing the consumer extra money in the process, and generally not providing any real added value.

 

[Starship Krupa]

19 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

In your scenario or if a HD fails, or the dongle tied to it fails you are without pluigns until you get a response and resoltuion across the board.

True, and I am a frugal hobbyist who has never paid more than $50 for any software license. The reason I am in this conversation to begin with is that the Cakewalk license is a free subscription. If I were a professional user of Pro Tools and UAD plug-ins and owned an iLok dongle I might have different thoughts on downtime

I also have multiple systems in one location that in a pinch, I can deauthorize licenses from if need be.

Something that irks me is that I've seen PACE hawking that "Zero Downtime" service, which I assume is basically some scheme for storing backups of your licenses in a cloud. In this day, if they have the means to do that, they should have just implemented it for free. Otherwise it's basically saying "pay us extra for this service or be exposed to the inherent risks of using our licensing process."

Still, if iLok weren't an effective form of copy protection, these companies wouldn't use it. It's a lock, and I do agree with the truism that locks are there to deter honest people. You are correct in saying that  cracked software will always exist no matter what companies do in the way of copy protection. However, "sending your friend a copy of the iZotopeRX installer to try out that he somehow never gets around to registering" and "having XPand! 2 casually copied from the DAW class computer by every student who takes the class" (yes, it's a $15 plug-in, but 1,000 people take the class, so....) can be prevented because these are people whose moral event horizon stops before the act of searching out a torrent site, taking the risk of malware, etc.

Of course when companies whose revenue is mostly from selling licenses get paid for the highest percentage of copies of their software in use, they don't have to charge as much for their licenses. This results in a direct benefit to you and me in the form of less expensive licenses. So I pay for all the value I get from AIR's plug-ins not getting passed around like party coasters in the form of taking the risk of possible hassle.

Yes, there are other ways to license plug-ins, challenge and response, for instance, but they are also vulnerable to disk failure, they don't allow for the license owner easily moving from system to system (if I had an iLok dongle, I could buy a single license for a plug-in and use it on as many systems as I could sit down at, right?), etc.