MusicMan

Yes, that was more general, not for XLN in particular. I was surprised that up until recently they didn't offer VST3 for RC-20, but luckily they came through with the goods.

I didn't personally interpret it that you were, but even if you had of been, I like people sharing completely honest and critical comments against any developer/plugins/instruments, etc where justified. People won't always agree which is normal, but out of that, it helps us think twice, or maybe test things a little more if we haven't dealt with particular companies before, or consider alternatives. Sometimes the product might be great, but their licensing, WUP, upgrade policies, etc. might suck as well and it's always best to know beforehand. I haven't tried Voxessor yet, but I do have Autoformer and even a spare license, so I really have no excuse for not testing that one further ?

Haha.. they sure have! If they stopped moving goalposts then maybe XLN and other devs might be able to spend resources on useful updates and bugfixes too ? Good point about PA and presets. I don't really know why they struggle there.. they're one of the few developers that just can't seem to get that part right and yet it's normally flawless for the majority of other plugins I have. I don't often think of using presets with their stuff, but out of curiosity some of mine I checked did have presets. My main reason for VST3 is just so if I want to open up a project years down the track and tweak a setting, it should still work. Sometimes in the conversion from VST2 to VST3 some developers change the plugin ID which means they won't open the new one. I kind of think the DAW should handle some intelligent remapping, but I don't think they do.. So I'd rather only create projects with VST3. I've been pretty lucky with updates.. apart from Kontakt once.. NI completely broke it.. I leave them to stew a little bit before I update any of their stuff now! ? I do hear some noise about Cubase with updates sometimes. I've been lucky there, but I also sometimes sit a few updates behind to see if any major bugs pop up. Sometimes I live on the edge with it too and I haven't' been burnt yet! Lol...

A lot of this comes from compatibility issues with the plugins/instruments to the DAW or OS. Apple users get hit frequently by that and so they need developers that are regularly updating things, otherwise they either can't upgrade their systems, or can't use their plugins. Windows users aren't entirely immune either, just less frequently an issue. I personally won't buy any non VST3 plugins now, as Steinberg is dropping support for VST2 (they already have for the Mac version). I've only made one recent exception and that was for RC-20. Crazy price and they had stated they intended to release VST3 which they've now done so I'm glad I got it ? Then there's plugins and instruments where scalability is an issue (I have a few that it's not ideal, but not enough to stop me using them, but this does seem to cause a lot of frustration) There are some that also have existing bugs, or lack some bread and butter features. Apart from them, if I like a plugin/instrument and it's not updated, I never really mind. As long as I can keep using it ?

I'd agree with that Brian. The "RRP" of them is crazy and I would never pay full price personally. That is the same with a lot of developers, even with PA like you mentioned. There's no way in hell I'd pay full price for them, but their sales prices make them OK. United Plugins have regular 50% off if anyone was in a mad rush, but intros and bundles (or freebies) are pretty irresistible.

FrontDAW was my first plugin from them and I really had low expectations as I didn't know anything about United Plugins. It sounded a little buzz wordy too, but I eventually got around to trying it and dropped it on a track as a mic pre for accoustic guitar and was quite blown away by it. I got Hyperspace in the recent bundle and I really need to start using that. I ended up with quite a few new reverbs all at once so apart from installing and opening briefly a few times, I havent used it much yet at all. That reminds me, some of their Fire series plugins surprised me too.. I need to try them more too ? Don't sleep on Royal Compressor. It's a good compressor and very easy to control the amount of colour.

I don't, but that actually looks very cool. I picked up the Softube Model 84 which I really like, so I'm covered with the Juno sounds, but it would be good having these as modules. Same with Synthvoice now I know them from the Arp 2600. I looked the other day and it was a little hard to work out what was what in the bundles from Cherry Audio! I think I've mostly got my head around it now... sort of ? I was also looking at Miniverse Module Collection and MS Vintage Bundle which both look tempting.

I think I'm leaning more towards Atlas 2, but XO looks pretty nice as well. Atlas seems like there's likely to be more regular updates and new features which is something I'm taking into consideration too. I'm giving Atlas a demo (only a basic one so far, it's still scanning all the samples!) but I might also still demo XO. RC-20 from XLN is one of my favourites in that space and I don't mind some of their pianos.

Some of their pricing is pretty hard to beat and quite a few of the plugins I have from United Plugins are REALLY good. Royal Compressor is a weapon on the drum buss, or anywhere that you want to add some flavour and I love. FrontDAW gets a lot of use and is so simple as a pre to dial in some mojo. I'll probably skip this particular one as I have Eventide, SoundToys, Melodyne and now VariAudio built into Cubase Pro 12, along with basic Antares. So for tuning and vocal effects I'm well covered. Agreed on the video, I thought the same thing. Although with so many companies, I wouldn't even consider buying them after watching some of the videos, only to try them out for myself and find that they just make crap demos! (same goes with presets for instruments)

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I suspect I would be as well.. that's why I hadn't tried a couple of these as they're not compatible with a number of OS / DAWs.. They haven't been updated in ages, so no VST3 and limited MacOS (which for me doesn't matter) If they were spending the time on updating them then I'd be keen give them a shot.

That's just greedy ? I haven't tested out the Behringer gear, but apparently some of their clones aren't half bad from what I've heard and I have considered picking up one or two. They get a bad rap sometimes, but I like that they started reproducing clones of stuff that the original manufacturers wouldn't.

The Cherry Audio stuff is very decent for the price. I love the Voltage Modular, so I haven't bought many of their standalone synths, but I did pick this one up and will likely grab a few of the others too. Sometimes I even just enjoy using them to see how what it was like to program some of these famous old synths ?

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The site being down all makes sense and these plugins are free so him using free hosting is understandable too. The installers one is a little unusual, as it's not so common to see the detections. I'd provide both if I was him. I never mind and often prefer to just copy/paste the VST3 directly onto the VST3 folder as I know exactly what I'm adding to my system. It really doesn't need to be much easier as it's often only a few seconds to do it unless there's a lot of changes the installer makes, like registry keys, or .in files, or unusual things. Thanks for sharing his reply ?

Did you get a CD Key? It says to contact them, so it's unable to be activated for me.

Well played ? Thanks!

That's entirely possible about the dependency check. Great idea emailing and it will be good to hear back ? Maybe they could look at other packaging applications too, given they know their products are getting flagged as malicious. It's one of those cases where I'm sure it's probably completely fine, but given the amount of plugins most of us have, is it worth taking any risks on something that does have warnings.

VirusTotal reports their plugins as malware. They do state on their website (or at least did!) that it's due to the application they use to package their installer. That's quite possibly true and nothing to worry about, but I'd rather them just make the actual .VST3 files etc available as an option too. The suspended website doesn't add to the confidence levels either.. It is a shame as I'd like to try a couple of their things.

That's so great hearing that! Glad it helped and have fun with them ?

I love SP2016 for an amazing and natural sounding reverb. It took a couple of sessions to really get it's sound, quite possibly because I'd been testing out their Blackhole reverb a lot at the time which can be crazy lush and over the top, but I reach for SP2016 a lot now. Even more than Vintage Verb lately, but they are quite different and hard to compare, so they both have a place. All 3 are great reverbs and so different that I wouldn't want to be without any of them now ?