MusicMan

8 hours ago, Promidi said:

Go to your IKM product page and download the files manually for the synths that exhibit this issue.

I use IKPM for the actual authorisations only,  For the synth installs, I always do these manually - never had ad issue doing it this way.

Yes, I know IKPM should just work, but it still has issues with installs.

That's what I'm doing these days. The Product Manager doesn't even check to see if the files were downloaded correctly.. surprised it doesn't even do simple checksums, like SHA256,MD5, etc..

I had low disk space at one stage when I was moving files around and the Product Manager said it downloaded to files and installed correctly. It did throw an error on one failed install, but everything showed as installed. Even though half the presets wouldn't work for those Syntronik synths. That's how I noticed it.

The weird thing with Syntronik 2 is that it says all the sounds are downloaded, but that's when only demo sounds are...

I stopped trusting it after that...

24 minutes ago, satyabrata satapathy said:

For focusrite users it was always 59 , the best deal is u get volume 5 for 399. I think volume 6 will come soon which will include model 84

Yeah I'd been thinking I'd hold off from buying any Softube until V6. Thought it might already be out by now, so might be soon.

25 minutes ago, telecode 101 said:

heartbeat is the most used thing in my Softube collection.

 

https://www.softube.com/manuals/heartbeat

I've never even really looked at it, or given it a demo. Will have to check that one out at some stage by the sounds ?

I get the feeling that a few of these companies are selling tonnes of plugins and they don't even need to really try with freebies at the moment..

Most of the free with purchase from Plugin Boutique or ADSR have been either underwhelming, or previously free, for a while now.

I already got it free when it was released, but I would agree, this is a nice plugin ?

I almost though it was as Unfiltered Audio by that title. It's a bit of a mash between them and United Plugins ?

3 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

I don't see "deep discounts" or "no brainers" as valuable, because it's promoting impulse buying. I don't care if a plugin is $4.99. If I have never used it, or only spent a few hours with it on demo then why would I buy it? It's like the current sale. The Soma, LISA and Amek 200 are on sale for $30. I have used all 3 EQs with the subscription - most recently the LISA. Already know I don't need any of them. I'm guessing 99% of people buying one of these this week doesn't have enough experience with them to make the purchase - even if it was $1.99.

The subscription is like a 12 month trial of 100 plugins with a $200 voucher at the end to grab exactly what you use. This is a no brainer to me. I've almost entirely stopped buying ANY plugins for 2 years from any company, because this subscription covers almost everything I need - in terms of mixing and mastering. It's saved me $1000s on useless purchases.

Some good points in there, although I'm VERY discerning with my purchases personally. I regularly pass up ridiculously good discounts on stuff, even if they're only $10 or whatever, purely because they're not the top contenders in each category, or add something very unique.

So for me, the deep discounts are very valuable, as I only really buy the cream of the crop, so those discounts allow me to get a heap more plugins for the same amount of money.

I do think PA ranks quite highly, but I still prefer plenty of other companies, as they're superior in some categories for sure. For example, while I do like the XL V2 limiter, as it's got some unique features and options, I don't rate their limiters in general.

The Amek 200 is good, but I've got no real interest in trying the others you mentioned. Not that they're bad, I'm sure they're at least decent, but I'm well covered. But in terms of having more time for trials, PA happily extends trials and even resets everyone's expired trials at times, so if we can't decide in that amount of time, then the plugin probably isn't worth it ?

8 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

Or just pay $150 for a yearly Mix & Master subscription, use 80+ plugins for year, get $200 in vouchers to buy whatever you want on Mega Sale in December, and ignore any and all PA posts till next summer 'cause you already have everything. No brainer to me.

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.

9 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

Not really.  As long as someone was interested in the Limited Time Bundle deal, then vouchers were still relevant if you wanted to get some stuff added to it.

 

Yesterday anyone with a $75 voucher could have picked up The Soundwide bundle and 3 of the $31 plugins for $68.  Or those with the $25 voucher could have gotten any one of the $31 plugins plus the $50 bundle for $56.  

 

If you hadn't already forked out the money for many of those plugins it seems pretty unlikely anyone would call this a dead deal.  I paid $50 for Amek console alone about 2 months ago and it took a $50 voucher to do it.  

 

I expect we will see one of two things happen once the intro bundle is over.  The min spend goes down, or the store will offer bigger ticket items from NI and Izotope and they keep the min spend but you suddenly have the opportunity to buy other manufacture's plugins at an unusual discount.

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 ?

22 minutes ago, cclarry said:

Monthly vouchers have been killed apparently

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 ?

5 hours ago, pseudopop said:

After participating in the last group by I think I'm in a strange situation where upgrading my Total Studio MAX is not going to the best value for money anymore.

So I guess I'm in...

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!

3 hours ago, JoeGBradford said:

I'm increasingly tempted - I have Syntronik 1 which I picked up through TS Max 2 and Syntronik 2 CS. What are the benefits of getting the Group Buy - other than the extra synths over Syntronik 1 - I'm concerned about all the extra disk space required! Wil I be able to uninstall the Syntronik 1 synths once I have all the Syntronik 2 ones? I'm a hobbyist who only has a small amount of time to spend making music so want to know that my money is well spent ?

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.

2 hours ago, cclarry said:

I might get this...as the only other Manley Massive Passive that I'm aware of is the UAD,
and since I can get it at the reduced $59 price, it might be worth it!  It falls 
a little over my buying guideline of "Must be at LEAST 50% off", so will probably
pull the Demo to see 

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.

15 hours ago, cclarry said:

16 to 25....we're not going to make it....pace is way too slow...with 816 to go....

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!

27 minutes ago, Jacques Boileau said:

... or friends of Larry! ?

 

(I took for granted Larry had posted this without checking)

it's generally a fairly safe assumption ?

6 hours ago, Paul Young said:

If we avoided most of your posts and this section in general many of us would be further away from poverty. ?

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 ?

28 minutes ago, cclarry said:

How dare they issue an update while I'm eating dinner! 

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

1 hour ago, marled said:

There are other (IMO better) delay plugins that are always free, like

• Valhalla Supermassive
• NastyDLAmkII (Variety of Sound)
• Leet Delay (Sonic Anomaly)
• DD Delay/DD MonoDelay (Dead Duck)
• DubStation 1.5 (Audio Damage)
• Tempo Delay (Voxengo)

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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46 minutes ago, kevin H said:

Ya, as lawajava said it’s a small charge but worth it if you have a lot of licenses.

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

38 minutes ago, kevin H said:

So what I’m hearing is live with the crackles and pops and just call it Lofi haha

I learned my lessons and moved everything to usb ilok dongle.  This way I can replace the dongle via zero downtime.

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

1 hour ago, Fleer said:

Yeah, first place I looked, thanks. Then asked to resend the confirmation email three times. We’ll see what tomorrow brings

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! 

43 minutes ago, Fleer said:

Rather impossible to open an account as I’m not receiving their confirmation email. 

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

15 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

Based on the image provided above that has "v2" written on it.  I'm curious how they are going to market this thing as it frankly looks nearly identical in both layout and features to V1.  

 

Sure V2 says True Peak on the limiter section which I'm going to guess has the same algos under the hood as True Peak Limiter (which I like - but frankly only when I control  some of the settings - so that is going to be interesting).  

But in terms of really taking it to another level, I'm a bit confused until we get more detail as I expected a little more of a visual overhaul at the least.

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