CSistine

It was still the same! TC8210 was $21.00 if I looked at their page in USD without login. After login and going on to payment it increased to more than $32 !!! But the price-tax thing has never been transparent at Plugin Boutique. Though I have never had a case like this with such an excessive price increase. Also, there is no explanation of the price change, only a hint that it has changed. IMHO this isn't acceptable at all! But EU opens a lot of doors for such cheats with their internet tax rules introduced some years ago!

I wanted to purchase a deal of TC Electronic at Plugin Boutique, but when I logged in the price in the cart raised by more than 50% !!!! Even if we have very high VAT taxes in Sweden, this exceeds the tax by far! Are they crazy or is this the usual hidden EU customs duty???

Although this is really a good deal, I think you should also consider the Oxford Drum Gate of Sonnox (currently only $29.00 at Plugin Boutique). That one is not only a specialized, great drum gate (with Kick/Snare/Toms recognition), but includes also a drum leveler comparable to MDrumLeveler and additionally it can be used as drum replacer (MIDI). IMO it's the best plugin of Sonnox!

There is still a lot of music software with real offline activation. Here is a list of the ones I know (I am sure there are much more providers): Acon Digital Auburn Sounds Audio Assault Audio Damage Audiority AudioThing Black Rooster Blue Cat Audio Boz Digital Labs CableGuys CFA-Sound Cockos (Reaper) Dymai Sound E-Phonic eaReckon FabFilter Fuse Audio Labs GForce GoranGrooves Harrison HoRNet JoeySturgis Klanghelm Klevgrand Kuassa Martinic MeldaProduction Plugin Boutique Robotic Bean SIR Audio Tools Togu Audio Line (TAL) TBProAudio Tokyo Dawn Labs Tone2 ToneBoosters United Plugins Wavesfactory Xhun Audio zplane And by the way all full Kontakt instruments can also be installed offline, although Kontakt itself has to be installed online.

More and more I hesitate to purchase iLok plugins. Not because I am an iLok opponent, no on the contrary I have been very happy with the iLok dongle offline activation. I could simply take the dongle to my everyday laptop, add an activation and then bring it back to my recording pc. But in the last years I am concerned that a couple of plugin providers dropped iLok and replaced it by a proprietary authorization system, sometimes even requiring online activation! I hate that! It's not the way I purchased those plugins and I wonder whether this is really legal. The good thing is that this caused me to concentrate my plugin hoarding to those with pure offline authorization, and honestly I own now enough of them so that I am free of the "no more activation" threat! Even my favorite DAW supports a user-friendly activation!

To be honest, since the re-activation time has been that short, Cakewalk by Bandlab cannot be used offline in a reasonable way anymore! This was the reason I dropped it and I regret that I had invested so much time for it. It would have been better to stay with Sonar Platinum! Today I mostly use another DAW and for the old projects I have Sonar Platinum that does its job quite well. For me BandLab was a real disappointment, but YMMV.

Thanks for your suggestion! But there are caveats in the details, first with iLok there is only one single activation available, second it is not possible to use iLok for all your plugin ownerships (I don't know why)! So that's why I don't get warm with this company at all, but YMMV!

I don't buy anything of this company again no matter how cheap it is, because I always have trouble with their activations if a machine is usually offline! There are not many companies that are that bad in that area! IMHO this is kind of a cheat, 'cos most of the time I cannot use their plugins (and thus I avoid to use them)! If your system is always online, then it maybe different!

Several of those well-known companies like IK have landed on my blacklist the last year, because of installation and authorization issues! This saves me a lot of many, I have rarely purchased anything this year!

I totally agree! I would more emphasize that most of them are surely no professionals!

Do you never mix? IMO for mixing EQ is the 2nd most important thing after the DAW, but YMMV!?

IMHO the big drawback is that the EQ does not have Q values. Usually I am very interested in plugins that have "good" authorization (offline), but the missing Q's is a real shortage for me!

Frankly, to me the new update does not sound interesting at all! And the last update mentioned above brought only trouble for me, because on my test laptop I could not see the whole plugin interface anymore (too large) and also the new flat view is not as eye-friendly IMHO! I want to have the same version on my computers. But thanks to the very good customer service I could reset the last update on my test laptop (another big disadvantage of many installation managers: you cannot downgrade yourself)! So I am glad to skip both of these updates without regret! There is really nothing I am missing!

Many years ago I paid 95 EUR for the previous version! So yes, this is a really good deal. IMHO it is mandatory to have a tool like this even for mixing and Insight is one of the better ones!

Frankly, nowadays I pass on "free" products that require a license! Too much trouble with it (I fought with free Overloud Rematrix stuff years ago, not worth the effort!).