Carl Ewing

Ya - have had many problems with them in the past. They had a massive "server crash" a few years back and lost all registrations. They split the site into two (old and new site), and it became a disaster for updated versions of the plugin (available on the new site) that required old versions in order to update (on the old site). They had non-existent customer support, so I ended up abandoning a couple plugins until they FINALLY responded like many months later. And they seemed annoyed that they had to help me. Click on "support" and you'll see them addressing the "server catastrophe" at the top, and promising a solution. That message has been up for YEARS. Will never buy from them again. Can't trust plugins in a project from a company that poorly managed. Boggles my mind how some companies can't get the bare minimum customer service together.

Nice. This means I'm 1 year closer to upgrading to Collectors Edition v14! And by then it'll probably be called "Native iZotope Collectors Total Bundle Music Production, Restoration and Instrument Suite with free license of BreakTweaker Expanded and Kontakt v7 Premium Subscription Edition 2022."

If a $1600 tree in the forest falls to $49, was it really ever worth $1600? Perhaps, when sales are over they should announced that prices have been jacked 30x. "We've increased our prices 3000% temporarily."

Have both, have used both extensively the past couple months. They have very different sounds and use cases. Vocal Bender is MUCH cleaner, and contrary to what you said, Little Alter Boy is MUCH dirtier...with a few features for more harsh sound design (i.e. the 3 modes + drive). However, Vocal Bender's modulation panel (+ waveform display) and note specific features make it far superior when doing pitch / formant automation. If I need to automate pitch- say C to F to G# - it takes 2 seconds in Vocal Bender because you can automate using notes (with root key), whereas Little Alter Boy you have to automate the pitch wheel, which can be a huge pain in the *****. For example - this entire feature set doesn't exist in Little Alter Boy, and is extremely useful (timestamped): https://youtu.be/v50kOeJBTdQ?t=296 I like the sound of Little Alter Boy better (has a much grittier low fi sound...even in default mode), but much prefer Vocal Bender for complex automation. I really wish these plugins could be combined together, because they both have very useful features, and sometimes I want the sound of Little Alter Boy with the features of Vocal Bender (like amp modulation), and vice versa.

$20 rolling bar stool with padded seat. No complaints. These high end fancy chairs look like they're made for slackers!

Considering the power of Amplitube 5, they are seriously missing an opportunity not releasing preset series targeting stuff like EDM or sound design or non bass / guitar instruments. A5 is an amazing sound design plugin - so much potential to show it off in other ways than Rock. I've used it on synths, vocals, sound scape shit, strings, speaker emulations for post. But rarely ever use presets, because they are quite limited in genre scope.

Haha. Ya, I'm trying to find the catch. I had $140 in plugins in my cart, saw the bundle and realized for $10 more they send me a voucher for $200 - which I can use to buy what's in my cart + $60 extra + access to everything else in the bundle for a year. What the? I guess it doesn't look as temping when the giant sale isn't on, because what's in my cart would normally be over $600.

Does anyone use the yearly bundles? It seems like a no-brainer to me. You sign up for a year, say for the Mix & Master bundle, they send you a huge voucher (like $200 worth), you buy a bunch of plugins on sale with the voucher, and you still have year of using all the other stuff you don't buy? Am I missing something here??