MusicMan

It's good to have as an option, as long people don't do it thinking they're getting the best deal. If you could partially spend the vouchers, then it might be closer to a no brainer, but given you need to spend all at once and all the plugins are never all on the deepest sale at the same time (intentionally by PA of course) then the subscription is the worst value option financially in the long term. It makes no sense for me, or anyone that already has a number of plugins from them, as I'll barely spend much with them in the next 12 months at all, but still get to keep using everything perpetually.

Yeah the intro bundle is great for newbies and I think that's Soundwise's target market for now. The bundle wasn't really of any interest for me as I already had the things I wanted from it, or didn't care enough about the others to spend the money on it. A couple I considered, but no doubt they will be free, or pennies within the next year or so. Same with these last two memorial Day offers. I already either own one or more, or don't really feel driven to get multiple plugins to meet the higher minimum spend. Again, for newbies, these offers are still OK. And if there's a particular plugin that I really had to have, then at $30.99 sure, it's ok for not waiting, but if the old vouchers were there, I may have picked up something opportunistically. So far I haven't really been tempted to even use my voucher or buy anything in their sales since their merger and I'm definitely not alone. Across a number of engineers I know and in most of the forums, the vouchers haven't been well received at all... But I pickup everything PA for $0 to $15 normally, sometimes $20. A few rare gems, I've extended to $25.. and have everything I really wanted. For me the vouchers are dead for now, but that has been a blessing. I've picked up a few things on sale that hadn't quite been enough for me to pull the trigger and they've been really good ?

They were kind of already dead really after the latest changes with them.. I'll sit everything PA out for a while until they get their act together again. If they lose enough sales/customers they'll reevaluate, or another smarter company will seize that space. There's nothing I really feel I need from them for now, so all good either way ?

It would be great to see IK improve their upgrade options and actually look at what products you already own when upgrading instead of just one. They do miss the mark there, which is a shame.

They're not particularly bad prices, but given all the great deals I've previously seen from PA, I'm really feeling no urge to pull the trigger on any of these.. I get for some people that might want all 3, with the loyalty voucher they're ok deals.. But PA has turned into a bit of a yawn fest for me lately.. They're more an IgnoreWare developer than anything else for right now, mainly interested in structuring sales only aimed and useful to newbies.. Fingers crossed for a mega sale that actually has deals again.. I miss the old days where PA deals were epic and didn't suck!

I totally get the disk space concern as well, but the way I look at it, is even if I just installed the new Syn2 synths now, or even just the best of them, I will still own all the others anyway from the group buy and can install them later, whenever suits. Hard drive capacities always increase, so in a few years or so, that extra space probably doesn't matter as much.

Yeah I'm intrigued by this one as well and will definitely give it a demo. There's also Acustica Audio Magenta as well which is based in the Manley Massive Passive EQs I believe. I do find some of the Pulsar plugs heavy on CPU, but if it's lighter than Magenta then it still could be a good option too.

IK has been pretty good with extensions before AND... It's much better publicity for them if it goes all the way, so there may still be hope. People talk about those sales for many months, or even years after the event for really great group buys, which generates more sales, but customers are not going to rave about it to the same extent unless they get all of them! ??

I already bought Syntronik Deluxe previously, but decided to jump in on the group buy to pick up the 11 new instruments and add some support ? For approximately $34 with jampoints, that's a pretty crazy price to get a whole heap, or maybe all of the Syntronik 2 synths!

it's generally a fairly safe assumption ?

I'm optimistic.. I like to think that he's made me spend more money on deals I didn't know about, but saved me money on the things I was going to buy anyway, so the poverty ratio is about the same, but I have more plugins and instruments ? With the time saving of not having to read my emails I'm hoping puts me just in front! I fear the figures may not reflect that.. but I'm going with it anyway ?

I always assumed you must have been fed through an intravenous drip so you didn't have to stop posting deals ?

Some great free plugins there. I love everything Valhalla pretty much and hadn't realised that NastyDLA Mk II was now 64 bit. Have just been testing that one now. Starting with the 201 tapes preset I've tweaked that to get a sound I quite like. Thanks for sharing ?

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Sounds a lot like WUP ?? I do get the peace of mind, but I can't help but think it's a case of legitimate paying customer's of software being penalized and charged further for software they already paid for which I don't like. I Googled to see what they annual charge was currently and stumbled across this old, but likely still current and somewhat humorous take explaining the costs and process even with Zero Downtime ? https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/tw594/your_ilok_zero_downtime_and_you_a_primer

That requires an annual cost for the cover though doesn't it?

I figured you likely would've, but doesn't hurt to check. Interestingly, I just signed up as well and mine ended up in spam!

You've probably covered it, but have you checked your spam folder?

Maybe they're adding TMT to the meters so there will be some variation between them too ?

I like it ? I picked it up the other day with that same voucher and it's not needed, but there's some things I really like. It's got very fine grained controls, so you can adjust the gain in very small increments which is great for mastering. The high shelf sounds really nice. It has a limiter built in, with soft clipping and saturation options including an algo from VintageWarmer and some analogue emulation controls. I'm sure it will be seeing quite a lot of use for me ?

I use a limiter frequently on bass instead of a compressor and some other melodic instruments. Sometimes even on cymbals. Drums I'll actually more often hit with a clipper and/or compressor instead, depending on the source material and sound I'm after. But I also use them at times on some of the busses, so drum buss, guitar buss, etc. I find limiting at that stage can help glue things together at the stereo buss stage a bit more. They can be handy as a quick check in production/early mixing stages on the stereo buss to see how levels might be changed by final limiting. They're really great for sound design too. So to completely smash a single element, or a dedicated FX buss for one instrument.

Very different use cases. This is zero latency for tracking, producing, instruments and busses, whereas I generally wouldn't use Pro-L for that. I normally use that more on the stereo buss. This might be more of an option for creative or vibe style limiting too. It's just another flavour ?

Yeah that's not a bad way to be. I like supporting some of the good devs like that too. What sort of things do you normally use the plugin for?

That's interesting feedback on it. Did they add more features, or is it just the way they rearranged things for the PA release?

It would be rude not to really... ?