Jump to content

Does this make you mad?

Max Arwood

By Max Arwood
in Deals

 Share

Recommended Posts

Bapu

Bapu

Posted
Posted (edited)
15 minutes ago, Barrie said:

Depends where you bought in 🙂

 

I bought in where it was most expensive to sit on the shelf and not get used. But it felt good at the time.

Edited by Bapu
  • Like 5
  • Confused 1
  • Sad 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
MusicMan

MusicMan

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, cclarry said:

It doesn't make me mad...it makes me WISER!  When you realize that you DO NOT have to be the first
kid on the block to have it, you save yourself a LOT OF MONEY!

That's exactly what I do. There is almost always a sale! There are a few exceptions and I have skipped a few intro prices, only to see the standard price increase and they haven't dipped back that low ever again.

But the money saved by waiting in general easily makes up for these couple of plugins.

So many RRP are a joke these days, so I largely ignore them.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
MusicMan

MusicMan

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Max Arwood said:

Been buying for years. Some I paid tooo much for some I did not. 

How many did you get for $15-$18. Non pedal effects. 

It depends on the company, but for Plugin Alliance, almost all in that range, or less 🙂

$25 was generally the top if I just wanted something sooner, but that was rare.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Max Arwood

Max Arwood

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Yes they all have marketing plans. I have plugins I got from from the $29.99  company. I bought in around the 1990s  and updated to P for $x,xxx.xx but I have used them for 20-30 years.  I’m glad they have stuck with the $29.99 marketing plan. You know it probably won’t be $19.99 or $9.99 any time soon.  I wish The other company would choose a bottom number and lock it in.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Carl Ewing

Carl Ewing

Posted
Posted

Why would I be mad at cheap plugins? Lol. You can always go buy way more expensive plugins (that do the same thing) from other companies. 

Shit, if you're really mad, you can buy many PA plugins at the UAD store for 10x the price any time you want. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Pollux

Pollux

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, PhonoBrainer said:

I would only get mad if I added up all the total money I've spent. At myself.

I added the money I spent on cheap (and not so cheap) plugins in a bit over a year and I almost had a heart attack. Especially that I barely use most of them... 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Starship Krupa

Starship Krupa

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, Pollux said:

I added the money I spent on cheap (and not so cheap) plugins in a bit over a year and I almost had a heart attack

Yeah, it adds up for sure. I have a philosophical opinion to share, though. Something I remind myself of when I mentally total up what I've spent on plug-ins to go with the FREEWARE DAW I use (which comes with its own set of mixing plug-ins) 😄. I was the guy who started the Freeware FX and Instrument topics, and know that there's plenty of really great free stuff out there that I don't need to wait for a "deal" on. (Although I haven't found a freeware reverb that can touch the paid ones I have).

I'm not trying to encourage anyone to buy shiny trinkets that they don't need, no way nohow. But we shouldn't trip too hard on spending money over time. The thing is, if the pastime brings you happiness....most interests and luxuries come with costs that freakin' add up.

Golfer: buy clubs, shoes, gloves. Recurring costs: tees, balls, and green fees. Play at your local muni course twice a month, even at senior (60+) or off hours rates, that comes to $100 a month. Times 12, $1200 a year. Fancy courses or places where you're not a resident? $1500-2000?

Woodworker: buy table saw, miter saw, chisels, planes, router, router table, etc. I can attest to this hobby also resulting in trinkets one is initially excited about but seldom if ever uses because who can keep track of all those gadgets and you finally get good enough where they're superfluous. Then you have to buy decent wood and fasteners if you want to make anything. I work mostly with birch plywood, which goes for roughly $75-100 a sheet, depending on thickness and quality. If you work in hardwood, fuggedaboudit. Recurring costs: sandpaper, finishing supplies (decent finishes are spendy), bits, blades.

Like to maintain fitness? Access to a good gym, and at home have various dumbbells, exercise mats, etc. How many gym memberships and exercise goodies go un(der)used?

Like to watch TV? How much did your set cost? How long did you have the last one before you decided it was too small or too low resolution? Even if you're frugal like me and have no cable package, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ add up to about $40 a month, and how much for the broadband internet service to deliver them? A cable package with 200 channels? You can only watch one thing at a time, so most people probably only regularly watch fewer than 10 of them.

Go to the movies twice a month on bargain night, get a large popcorn and a drink, and you've spent $500 on that per year.

Concert tickets? Don't get me started.

Enjoy having a bite in a restaurant with friends? Just grabbing a burger? The other day I went out to Five Guys with a friend/former bandmate and got one sandwich, a small drink (they're refillable, so frugal boy orders the small cup), and large fries for the two of us. $18. Go to a nice restaurant and order two glasses of wine once a month to enhance your romantic relationship? Yikes! Go out to a bar with your mates and have 2 beers? Premium beers? Add it up.

Sports fan? How much do tickets for games cost where you live? SF Giants baseball tickets go for around $20 for upper box. 49ers tickets? $50 for the way high seats. IndyCar? $30 for race day in Long Beach. Formula 1? In Austin, $550 for a race day pass 😲.

Like to sew? Good sewing machine. Needles, thread, fabric, patterns, buttons, trim.

Like to cook? Good chef's knife, any number of other gadgets, fancy spices, fancy olive oil, fresh organically grown locally farmed ingredients.

Guitar strings, picks, cables, tubes, drumsticks, drum heads, moongels, cool tuning gadgets. Musicians' iPhone apps. How many did I buy last year?

All of these things are luxuries. I get 60 channels of TV over the air. I can eat and exercise at home (jumping rope is said to be one of the most effective aerobic exercises), make wooden objects out of pallets using a handsaw.

We all like getting shiny toys to augment our interests. It's a dopamine rush. It probably goes back to tribal hunter-gatherer times where the one with the most tools survived.

Getting a new gadget inspires us to try it out, and often enough I come up with a new idea or two. Every time I get a new plug-in, I spend at least an hour test driving it, and spending an hour in the play zone is actually good for coming up with new song ideas. I have half a dozen songs in folders named things like "Objeq Delay Testing." Or seeing how it performs on older, unfinished material. It tricks me into the play zone, which is the best place to be for creating.

Maybe it's kinda silly to buy a new W.A. Production or Waves multi-widget when you're a good enough mix engineer get the same results (or better) with the freeware Dead Duck (or Meldaproduction, ob. mention) FX collection, but if you do anyway, and it made you happy for an hour or two, how much would you have spent on a burger and a movie? It's fun to chase down these deals and see how much we can get for relatively little. Does Larry get paid for it? Yeah, in enjoyment and the respect of people who benefit from his efforts. Do I feel cool when I manage be the first to share a deal? Heck yeah I do.

tl/dr:

Thanks to getting cheapie and freebie deals, I have some of the best audio production software in the industry. I have peace of mind that the tools I'm using will not hold me back, I only have to build skill in using them. Elysia mpressor and alpha master (total outlay $35). kHs Slice and Carve EQ's (both free). MAutoDynamicEQ ($20). Exponential Nimbus and R4 reverbs ($10 each). T-Racks VC-670 (free). Objeq, Sigmund, and Sandman Pro delays (total outlay $14). T-Racks Quad Compressor (free). Those are desert island processors, and let's see, total outlay....$89.

That's less than or equal to two rounds of golf, or a sheet and a half of cheap birch plywood, or a new set of heads for my Slingerlands, or 10 pairs of Vic Firths, or one decent used Zildjian, or 4 good cables, or a year's worth of sanitation supplies for my hot tub, or 7 months of Netflix, or one really nice restaurant meal for two, or four "wagon wheel" pizzas.

  • Like 4
  • Great Idea 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...