Plugin Alliance new vouchers and new subscription system

[Sergio]

On 8/13/2022 at 10:47 AM, Yan Filiatrault said:

Better than keeping PA Forever 29 IMO

I need to evaluate every option carefully but, as my criteria for "goodness" are the plugins we can keep after cancelling the subscription, with F29 you keep 12 plugins after a year against only 10 in the MEGA bundle. So, until anything changes, I'll keep F29.

But I also intend to restrict my spend with PA plugins to $31 per month while at it. There are better values during sales but then you end up spending more. As I said I have LOTS of PA plugins already and have no reason to hurry. One per month, $31 per month, can choose anyone, coupons that never expire... that's good enough for me.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Sergio

[Yan Filiatrault]

2 hours ago, Sergio said:

I need to evaluate every option carefully but, as my criteria for "goodness" are the plugins we can keep after cancelling the subscription, with F29 you keep 12 plugins after a year against only 10 in the MEGA bundle. So, until anything changes, I'll keep F29.

But I also intend to restrict my spend with PA plugins to $31 per month while at it. There are better values during sales but then you end up spending more. As I said I have LOTS of PA plugins already and have no reason to hurry. One per month, $31 per month, can choose anyone, coupons that never expire... that's good enough for me.

Your choice. You could get 10 X 24$ plugins instead of 31$ X 12, and still have access to all their plugins.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Yan Filiatrault

[Sergio]

25 minutes ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

Your choice. You could get 10 X 24$ plugins instead of 31$ X 12, and still have access to all their plugins.

$24.99 is a temporary promo. The full value is the same of the F29 subscription.

Oh... and it's not 10 x 25$; it's 12 x 25$ because you need to pay the full year to keep the 10 plugins.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Sergio

[jackson white]

13 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I got rid of hundreds of mixing plug-ins

best pro mixing tip evah.  🙂

13 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Keepers: all my Meldaproduction stuff, the kHs freebie snap-ins, elysia and Lindell, some other PA odds and ends, some bx stuff, all T-Racks, all iZotope Exponential Audio reverbs. Still a (lot).

sounds like you went from street dope to methadone.  🙂 

...

imho, stock plugins are generally more than good enough, but see them being supplemented;

1) to add a missing "flavor"

2) for better "sonic quality" (i.e. better dsp, oversampling, "3d" sound, etc)

3) for creative, non-traditional fx

4) for the potentially creative benefit of having multiple choices for a specific task (i.e. eq) to spark a different approach to a mix

Edited August 15, 2022 by jackson white
space

[Yan Filiatrault]

2 hours ago, Sergio said:

$24.99 is a temporary promo. The full value is the same of the F29 subscription.

Oh... and it's not 10 x 25$; it's 12 x 25$ because you need to pay the full year to keep the 10 plugins.

I meant if you pay yearly, the cost ends up to 25$ each for the 10 plugins (249$). If you keep the forever 29, you will be paying 31$ a month for 12 plugins in a year (334$) without access to everything. I would never consider a subscription usually, but this time, with the amount you pay and the number of plugins you keep and other perks, it cost less that way.

[Sergio]

7 hours ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

I meant if you pay yearly, the cost ends up to 25$ each for the 10 plugins (249$). If you keep the forever 29, you will be paying 31$ a month for 12 plugins in a year (334$) without access to everything. I would never consider a subscription usually, but this time, with the amount you pay and the number of plugins you keep and other perks, it cost less that way.

Yan, you'll pay less but you'll get less too in the end. To get 12 plugins in a year at $25 each you'd have to spend $300 and so the difference would not be that much. And, again, the $249/yr is a temporary promo. If you pay the full price for that plan ($300) and if you do the same math you'll see that, in the end, you'd pay more than $31 per plugin.

Edith is saying that my math is flawed!!! You'd pay more than $31 per plugin per year if you opt for the top mega bundle and pay the same $29.99/month as the F29 plan but only get 10 plugins at the end of the year, instead of 12.

Edited August 16, 2022 by Sergio

[antler]

11 hours ago, Nick Blanc said:

In hindsight it is a bit silly, I don't have the skills to really know when it's best to use an opto compressor or a FET, but i have loads of them.

Opto has a relatively long attack time - use when you want a smooth sound, e.g. on vocals, or a bus to glue things together.

FET naturally is a bit crunchy, and you can set really fast attack times. Use when you want a slightly more aggressive/rough tone, e.g. on rock drums. I personally use them when applying PC on drums - use maximum ratio with really fast attack times to absolutely crush the signal. Adjust the wet/dry ratio so you get the transients of the source, and the body of the processed.

The above is just a guideline though - if they sound good somewhere, go with the flow!

[Yan Filiatrault]

41 minutes ago, Sergio said:

Yan, you'll pay less but you'll get less too in the end. To get 12 plugins in a year at $25 each you'd have to spend $300 and so the difference would not be that much. And, again, the $249/yr is a temporary promo. If you pay the full price for that plan ($300) and if you do the same math you'll see that, in the end, you'd pay more than $31 per plugin.

It's a temporary promo, but if you subscribe during the promo, you keep paying 249$ yearly as long as you keep subscribing. For those that paid 149$ yealy for the Mega plan at release will continue to pay 149$ and will still be upgrade to Mega A. 

I decided to go with the Master and mix bundle for 149$ that will be upgraded to Mega B (199$ promo price). So I'll get 6 permanent plugins a year at 25$ each, get access to everything all year long, have access to 12 HD Masters a year and access to their sampler and upcoming mastering daw. I consider this a great deal overall.

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, jackson white said:

sounds like you went from street dope to methadone.  🙂 

Well, to be clear, when I said "all" and mentioned those manufacturers, I didn't mean that I've Pokemon'd all FX from each of them. I have the 3 processor Lindell channel strip thingie and elysia master and mpressor. Expo Nimbus and R4. I have the Melda FreeFX, Essentials, and MixingFX bundles. I have 9 T-Racks I got as freebies. I also kept Trackspacer, because nothing does Trackspacer better than Trackspacer.

I'm still thinning out the collection. Yesterday I waved goodbye to Slice and Carve EQ's. They're great, but other FX in my collection are just as great and don't have the drab UI.

We all have our zone when it comes to collecting/hoarding/utilizing. My plug-in browser isn't a museum, but I do find attractive (elysia, TRacks) and elegantly high tech (Melda, Unfiltered) GUI's inspiring. If something looks cool, it makes me want to learn how to work it. On the other side, with the kHs freebie package, they're so stripped down that they are great to grab when I want the simplest possible thing. The limiter is great to use on a track where I'm auditioning presets that might suddenly blast. They're like little one-trick stompboxes.

When is enough "enough." At one end, there are people who probably don't even know or care that there are processors other than the ones that came with their DAW. At the other end is...Bapu. Who wouldn't love to have Ed's collection of audio software? No limits.

My issue with my DAWs' built-in FX is that they're usually tied to the one DAW in one way or other. The Sonitus FX, while sounding great and having good high tech (but tiny and pale), UI's, are DXi. Only Cakewalk can host them. Studio One's are DAW-locked, as are most of Mixcraft's. Same with Live. If I'm developing skills using a given set of plug-ins, I want those skills to carry over from DAW to DAW. The MFreeFX bundle is a good virtual "ones that came with the DAW" collection (and then some) for people who want to stay in the "only what I actually need" zone.

I'm still a magpie for sound design FX. I also kept most of my restoration/turd polisher FX. Whenever I jam with people, my iPhone is sitting on the table recording it. I also take outdoor videos and use in-camera audio.

[jackson white]

11 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

My issue with my DAWs' built-in FX is that they're usually tied to the one DAW in one way or other

Excellent point.  started out with UAD for cross platform projects but found it to be a bit pricey trying to keep up with everybodys faves (and dead SHARCs). Got on the PA bandwagon when the native versions started getting released and will keep an eye on UAD Spark to see if it has any merit. 

14 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

a magpie for sound design FX.

not much of a synth/keys user, but liking Arturia's Fragments for something different.   

[Starship Krupa]

2 minutes ago, jackson white said:

not much of a synth/keys user, but liking Arturia's Fragments for something different

Will check it out. I am going through a similar thinning of synths I never get around to using in favor of focusing on the ones I use most. The big 4 are xPand!2, Hybrid 3, Vacuum Pro, and A|A|S Player with a couple dozen soundpacks.

The sound design plugins I'm referring to are the Unfiltered Audio, Glitchmachines et al sound warp FX. The kHs freebie bundle went from handy to essential with the recent addition of a bunch of those. Their tapestop and reverser are fine examples of those FX. The pitch shifter is as good as any I've heard.

[antler]

53 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Yesterday I waved goodbye to Slice and Carve EQ's. They're great, but other FX in my collection are just as great and don't have the drab UI.

They have one trick the others don't - you can use them in Kilohearts' host plugins, e.g. PhasePlant

[Doug Steinschneider]

 

I've learned a lot about mixing because I was able to get mixing chain plugins inexpensively (or free) and experiment with them. Mixing is a science/art I find fascinating  but I prefer to play instruments with my limited time so I gravitate towards "black box" plugins that can quickly get me mostly there.  I confess that following the deals here and collecting what I can on the cheap has been a lot of fun and once in a while a plugin just works for me - Sunset Reverb, Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor are examples.

 

@Starship Krupa - I'm curious what you did to mod your RA-100? I use that amp for mixing.

[Starship Krupa]

45 minutes ago, Doug Steinschneider said:

I'm curious what you did to mod your RA-100? I use that amp for mixing.

I'll PM you the details.

[Eusebio Rufian-Zilbermann]

So, for those of us not subscribed to anything yet, it sounds like the loyalty vouchers probably exclude the VR plugins, and if we're interested in those then we're better off getting a few Forever 29 coupons (if we're not planning on Mega B)

[jackson white]

6 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

7 hours ago, jackson white said:

not much of a synth/keys user, but liking Arturia's Fragments for something different

Will check it out.

@Starship Krupa  in case I wasn't clear, using Fragments as FX and seeding it with "acoustic" sounds. Not sure that counts as "sound design" per se but takes things in a pretty interesting direction.

[Nick Blanc]

11 hours ago, antler said:

Opto has a relatively long attack time - use when you want a smooth sound, e.g. on vocals, or a bus to glue things together.

FET naturally is a bit crunchy, and you can set really fast attack times. Use when you want a slightly more aggressive/rough tone, e.g. on rock drums. I personally use them when applying PC on drums - use maximum ratio with really fast attack times to absolutely crush the signal. Adjust the wet/dry ratio so you get the transients of the source, and the body of the processed.

The above is just a guideline though - if they sound good somewhere, go with the flow!

Haha thanks but I was being a bit facetious. I have a basic understanding of what type of compression to use when and I do have my favorites. My general point was that I'm not a professional and I have accumulated more than any pro would dream of, without the exact skill to problem solve and grabbing the right compressor where I need it. I still like having the options, but I had to come to terms with my own limitations. So I swallowed a bit of ego and gained (well, didn't spent) money. 😜

[antler]

12 hours ago, Nick Blanc said:

Haha thanks but I was being a bit facetious

It's all good. I remember I used to have the buy-now-learn-later mentality; figured the advice might help others with the same mindset.