MusicMan

Great post and songs can be to release for everyone, or just to enjoy making them ? People spend a lot on hobbies with no chance of any return on investment, so even looking at music and producing from that aspect and a great way to de-stress and unwind, it's pretty easy to justify. Besides, there's worse habits to have!

When you have a bunch of plugins like most of us do these days, sometimes it doesn't take much to make us not choose something, or use something else instead, so I totally get it. If you get around to it, duplicating a vocal track and then using Quadravox, or Octavox on one and then blending in, can be pretty cool. Presets are useful jumping off points, although some are pretty wild and out of control, but a good way to see what it can do.

This is almost still a compelling argument.. I havent ruled it out yet ?

I thought it was only the Quad, not the Octa version that had been free. I know that's the one I got free anyway and I've used it quite a few times. You can get some pretty creative results from it, so might be worth trying it every now and then.

That's exactly what I do as well for a lot of the IK stuff. The Product Manager has let me down a few too many times. Even if I use the Product Manager to install, I may still do a manual download off the site, then test extract and finally move to another disk to store them.

This would've been an instabuy, but it's one of the few they never really discounted and I ended up buying other alternatives instead which are pretty good, so now I'm not even sure I'll get it..

Are updates like this from PSP always paid, or is it just because it's a with Lexicon?

Maybe try unzipping all your installation files manually to see if it's possible that one of the files has been downloaded, but is corrupted. The Product Manager wasn't smart enough in th past to validate all files, by doing a simple checksum on them automatically first and it would simply download and then install an incomplete set... I doubt that's changed, but it is possible it's now checking I guess. I found this out the hard way and given IKs stingy download policy, anything that I download and want to keep from them, I do a test extraction before filing away.

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While I get their point about you obtaining it free, you still own 50% of the bundle and were going to spend money with them.. They also had a weird setup where you had to request a password to see your upgrade price to Expose2 of which the full version was regularly on sale. The upgrade price was probably only about $5 cheaper than new customers with none of their plugins would pay to get the full version and was never on sale. (I owned almost all of their plugins) There wasn't really much of a loyalty discount, so I didn't bother. I did explain that sentiment to them, but they didn't really care to do anything about it. So I didn't care to do anything about buying the upgrade ? Which turned out to be good, because I then got Expose2 free via another promo, so they will now never get a sale from it.. it seems a little short sighted and that they shoot themselves in the foot sometimes.. If they just said yes to you anyway, then they would've already made money that you potentially wouldn't have spent if it wasn't on sale. Each to their own I guess and how they choose to do business ?‍♂️

Bassroom is actually quite decent. It really shouldn't be as good as it is and should be easily replaceable with a standard EQ in theory, but it just is often faster and really tailored for fine tuning the lower frequencies and sounds great too. I'd recommend it. Mixroom I don't own, so I can't say there, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's good too.

I REALLY like the MK II version.. it was even sweeter that they gave it to owners of the original one for free, so I didn't have to pay any upgrade cost or anything. Another tick in my book for them. I still preferred the Waves CLA-3A than the BRA version which was a shame, but I ended up buying the Overloud Comp LA which includes the 3A and is way better than the Waves version, so between the two companies, I shouldn't need to use the Waves ones at all ?

I would've thought at least a few that aren't known to mankind as well ?

That glitch sale was epic.. I own a bunch of Nembrini plugins after that! I still just cherry picked the ones I really wanted, but insane pricing for them ?

I replaced the Waves CLA-2A with BRA's VLA-2A and never looked back. They have had that note on their website saying they're upgrading to VST3 for quite a long time, so hopefully it's not far off now...

I should really give this a demo at some stage..

Installed ? These seemed to go up a bit in price from memory, although that may have been intro pricing, but the sale prices never seemed to get that low again generally. Pretty good price for both together. Nice plugins and a good innovative developer.

This was one of the few plugins that I broke my rule of only buying VST3 plugins these days, but I did contact them and they were planning on making them VST3, so it was worth the punt they would deliver at that price and I pulled the trigger. I actually really like this plugin, so I'm glad that I did. Even at $30 or $40 I'd say it's a good buy, so whether it gets to $19 again (in most cases if a plugin hits a sale price, it will again, sooner or later) or it gets anywhere near there, I'd recommend picking it up anyway. It is VST3 now too ?

So many favourites in this bundle ?

Completely agreed. I bought 3 or 4 in fairly quick succession back then and their sales have been a bit of a yawn fest since then and not quite inspiring enough to pull the trigger on anything.

It's actually surprisingly quick to bash Waves.. they provide all the materials so readily ? The number one reason for calling them out is so that new starters don't fall into their trap. Waves is a powerful advertising machine and if it wasn't for forums and Facebook groups etc it would be easy to think they're the best choice when there's so many better companies out there these days. Better to call them out, hold them accountable and try to break the cycle of victims getting suckered into a lifetime of WUP extortion.

I always laugh hearing people say that WUP is fair and needed so they can develop updates and even Dirk at PA saying well of course they're charging for new versions as they "Can't be expected to work for free"(even though technically they've already been paid initially).. and yet there are so many examples like this with free updates for life and new versions, no WUP, no paying for a new version and they still make great plugins. I'm not necessarily opposed to companies charging for updates, especially if they're major updates and not just minor things they could've added to the original versions, but I love seeing and supporting all the great developers that give major updates for free and no WUP crap..

There's a reason why I never used Studio Rack in any actual projects I intended to keep as I always had a gut feel they would sweep the rug out from our feet and make it require WUP, or take it away.. After their recent fiasco, free isn't worth the hassle from Waves on something like that. It's easier to replace a couple of Waves plugins in a project than a whole advanced signal chain that won't open when they paywall it or make it subscription only. My gut says no.. so does my brain.. basically everything says no to Waves for now ?

I tried the limiter a few times now and it's not too bad really. Not a bad freebie and I am looking forward to watching the replay of the sessions too.

Thanks Brian! That's really helpful ? Looking forward to checking some of these out and having another proper go at it!