Brian Walton

Limited time. (I got it with the new VoxDucker united plugins offer for $15 for an option on the lower end of the price spectrum, but I'm exepcting you can get it as low as $3 with this: https://www.audiodeluxe.com/products/studio-tools/soundiron-snow-drums )

I've got over 90 and that includes most of the heavy hitter stuff outside of new releases in the past few months (though I do have the new EQ just released due to forever 29). It seems they just have a few tiers and don't truly account for the value of what an individual has. I checked another one with a 399 deal and the out of pocket cost event at the highest discounts difference would have been $600 easy in prior purchases. So unless Bapu says his price to upgrade is $50, I'm guessing they capped the all bundle at $300 (plus the loyalty discounts).

Hopefully they still have the annual free pack selection this year.

Same, but my commentary is along the lines of his quote - when the world already had that opportunity to own them all in one order

Dirk must have short term memory loss, this used to be a thing two years ago and had an outrageous price associated with it. (I am curious to see what they come up with as someone who owns way more of their plugins that I should have purchased). Highly unlikey it will be low enough for me to bite though.

Tonex is good but it is also only as good as those capturing amps. We need more people diving in and capturing. Even so the tech is limited to a really nice static grab so it won't satisfy everyone that needs to dial it in, without adding other things to the path to process it. It is way lighter on the CPU than AT5 though and that adds to the appeal.

I'm not sure Affinity couldn't end up with the same issue potentially. At one point they had the rather genius move to add easy access to 3 stock image providers. Well we only have 2 in Affinity today becuase one got greedy and decided to charge for the API which Affinity had no intention of doing and suddently it disapeared in an "update"

I bought it today. But I don't really agree about the low entry point before until now. It was that price for ~7 years, this isn't a fly by night product. They heavily discounted it beyond that including 50% off and siad the sales numbers blew away expectation. I'm not saying the pricing is terrible, it is a good deal for new users. Old users are likely spending what they already paid for the suite again, and these updates frankly are not mind blowing. As much as I don't care for Adobe, the gap is getting larger not smaller in terms of feature sets. The Studio Link switching is a big advantage but most other areas just don't have the same tech. If we see another 6+ years of updates before 3.0 I'll be surprised. There are other competitors for photo and designer, but Affinity is my preference. They talked about something big coming. Which turned out to be Publisher on IPad. How many professionals are going to have that as the core of the workflow? I'm betting a super small percentage compared to the DAM that's been teased for years now.

Even if something is free - VSTs that don't perform properly can literally freeze and shut down a DAW. I appreciate knowing complaints about these types of issues to avoid them in my workflow as those issues actually "cost" the user and is suddently no longer a "free gift" as it were. Appreciate developers that offer free things, but sometimes you run into free that just isn't worth it. Paid products fit into the same boat.

How about some specifics? I had a bit of trouble with Tape Piano 2 on one machine but it was resolved. I own but don't really use most of them other than I like Vybz and use that. Only one I really actually care about. They don't use terrible protection schemes and that helps put them on the "good in my book list" until I run into meaningful problems.

Eats your CPU? Seriously though, I like it but find I can rarely use it on a project do to the overhead with my older machines. And with the AI function to adapt to a track it isn't exactly the first thing I think of for a bus verb, though you can keep updating the reading as you add tracks.

If they are really closing shop and not selling through someone else. Honestly not sure why a company like this doesn't just release the IR packs for free download. There is no suppot needed for such things. I don't remember the liscencing system for software (like the IR loader itself) but of course if they have protection on the softare removing it before releasing it as "freeware" is a burden on the developer.

Thanks, yeah I already grabbed a seat but haven't installed it as the short bit of videos I watched on it seemed to imply it didn't do anything without copying that profile it makes to one of the other apps I don't have.

Does this actually do anything useful if you don't have Ozone or Neutron versions that support the "integration?"

I don't like the interface, no so much visual problems but too many times there is no audio output or some other quirk that makes me remove it. I only have player but have some libraries for it. I actually avoid using it in any project instead of learning how to resolve the issues that arise.

Yes, but I also think it is poor from to blame someone else for not knowing who your customers are. I'm curious where you got the "most users" bought it somewhere else stat, I've never seen that and most post discouraged the practice as it could be more difficult to get the included freebies, etc. Of course the Ipad versions are different and frankly wouldn't count them as included in the discussion anyway. What you seem to miss here is the "upgrade" price they are offering doesn't feel like a discount from what pricing used to be. $50 was the standard app price and would go on sale for $35 every few months and even hit rock bottom of $25 for a long stretch during the pandemic. It wsa only a few months ago they hiked up to $55 and now it is $70 at this new launch. Charging $41 an app doesn't exaclty feel like loyalty/upgrade pricing. The new MSRP is totally different than anything they have ever sold before.

I've tried all three and while free and somewhat powerful. They are a chore to use, slowness and interfaces not designed by elite designers. I only recommend them to Canon shooters since they don't have a Capture One Express version for free. And also explain that paid alternatives will make the process less painful.

Yep, and some of the wider lenses like the 28mm 2.8 are fairly weak optically compared to the rest of the lineup. The 20mm 2.0 is great but quite rare to find. The APS-C is great for use with longer focal lengths to get that extra reach in wildlife photography though as anything past 200mm and a good Fstop in full frame world starts getting really expensive really quickly. So a 70-210 f4 beercan minolta for $100 looks pretty good for 300mm+ equivalant lens

Nice, I have an A58, A68, as well as newer Sony mirroless cameras (in addition to other brands), but I'm quite familar with the Minolta mount and the lenses that go with that camera. Have a ton of them. the Macro 100mm 2.8 being my favorite. Which I even got an LA-EA4 to adapt it to my newer Sony E-Mount cameras.

Ahh..I don't remember "locker" as a term that I've ever seen used with what used to be called the Custom Shop in IKM world. I have the latest version installed, and since boogie 2 is the only thing I don't own in there here are screen shots if I was to purchase ala cart where I also don't see the term "locker" used anywhere.

If you shoot Sony, Nikon or Fuji there is a free version of Capture One Express you can use. Of course it lacks layers and some of the very high end adjustment tools of the pro version. That said I'd take it over LR6.

Affinity does all 3 of those things (with various compentencies). Better Dark Room tools would be Capture One. That said, I think that dark room development for most pros is a combo of both RAW development and processing with at Pixel editor. Even though C1 is more powerful than LR, just about every pro I know (including myself) still uses a pixel editor for some manipulation functions even if it isn't what most would look at for "photoshop" work.

Affinity v1 offers something different than all those when working with photos. Paint shop Pro 2022 would be the closest in feature set. But if you are not a photographer that does "Photoshop" type of edits the features and workflow might not be of value to you. I have all those apps to but never use the others, everyone has different needs and most of those listed including affinity take a lot of dedicated time to make them of any real value.

Try looking for Studio Link. That is what they call the feature. You open an image or document and click on the designer or photo icon and are instantly switched to that other app (a few of the features are missing with this workflow vs opening the single app but not that many. The switch is crazy fast. If you have ever done that integrated switch between adobe illustrator and Photoshop the load time is going to blow your mind.

You lost me when you tried to compare Affinity to one of the worst "treat customers like garbage offenders" in the software development world. Affinity got the customer base they did becuase of great pricing, unlimited authorization for computers you own (off-line authorization is removed as an option in this new release), good tools, etc. I tested the new version for 10 minutes and already found things they removed.