Brian Walton

The problem with your argument assumes that the published retail rates have any basis in reality and the cost or value of the product. PA releases a new product at $350 and this is the every day price. They also know no one is going to pay it and that the profitibility price is much closer to just give the thing away rates. We are not talking about physical goods or even goods that are expected to be sold at highly inflated retail rates. The stragegies of many of these companies it create as much percived value as the market will allow so that when it drops to the level someone can actually afford to buy it, they will sell quite a few copies and provide minimal support to the end user perhpas just enough that they will forget the prevoius terrbile experience and still by the next new things....ala WAVES. I would agree with your assessment if we were talking about physical goods, or even digital goods sold at a COGS + SG&A + some small markup = normal retail rate. But that isn't the plugin world. It is the wild west out there.

This is precisely my point. The purchase price of the plugin seems to have no guarantee on the future of the product or company staying in business, nor the quality of support while it is around.

I've fully aware of economics and marketing. The intention of sale prices doesn't have to do with my statement. If I pay $179 or $10 the plugin requires the same actual support. The break even on profitibility and ability to support has many factors. If done properly and on a basic plugin, the suport required for updates and compatilbiy can be minimal depending on what you are chosing to support. Speaking of these plugins mentioned here, there is little to believe they are super complex. Monitor tech usage is going to vary, many of these are not going to off-load to the GPU and host/daw compatiblity is usually tied to the standards of VST3 so the support is based on that spec not the DAW/Host itself, outside of rare instances where things like multi-outs and routing within the DAW is supported. I only remember about one update to the Exponential products since they went under the izotope umbrealla (perhpas there were more), which points to minimal updates required to keep them relevant outside of MACs breaking things. While a $20 may imply more people buying it and therefore needing more people to provide customer support, that also assumes problems with the product with installs, authorization and functionality, etc. Which also seems pretty problematic as it was the same plugin that used to cost $300. Little support needed if it was a solid product to begin with. I understnad that dollars get invested back into new products that then generate the initial influx of funds but that doesn't have anything to do with the risk you are implying. Any of these companies can go belly up regardless of how much they charge for the plugin. If it cost $179 few people will buy it = Drum Core 4 bankrupt, if they charge $20 it could also go belly up.

Very few plugins need major updates over the lifespan. They simply need a few bug fixes and compatiblity ( future format usage), and if was developed a while ago - it also needs resize abilities to stay relevant. This isn't a DAW that needs new features and massive updates to stay relevant. The number of people that pay the "normal sales for" price is the extreme minority in a $179 catergory. The vast majority pay $40 or less these days for any single plugin. Plain and simple except for a few special tools that are usually a package of things to command that price the new norm is what you are calling some sort of extreme discount. Even if a plugin sells for $179+ and it never gets any discounts, we run the exact same risk. Look at Drum Core 4 which got a major overhaul a few years ago for the v4 release and is now totally discontinued. The price the consumer pays has nothing to do with the support model, a lower price means it is more likley to have more people using and depending on the product for production. Izotope is saying they won't even support you if you are unable to install the product on future machines. This is poor customer service. I personally own all of those plugins that were listed (in most instaces , I actually have multiple copies of each), and I can think of one of them that did have install and authorization issues on a machine even during the supported life....so this news is relevant for the future even though we think "they should last for the forseeable future"

This is lame. Period. Exponential audio plugins they want us to buy $300 or $400 to keep up-to-date? They talked about keeping these products relevant for years. Neo is cool but it is a massive CPU hog by comparison. Trash I never thought was very useful and have but never used BeatTweaker. Iris is farily surprising as while it is old, it is still very processor intensive. I'm not concerned with updating for more features, but with both Windows and MAC making major changes that does have concerns for future compatiblity. We have already seen VST2 and 32bit be retired in what wasn't really that long of a term.

It took a few hundred bucks and a number of years. Tortoise shell is the best material out there, but basically illegal to aquire at this point. Used to be legal decades ago. What I've lanted on myself Blue Chip Model https://shop.bluechippick.net/tad80-1r/ I also like this one for feel but can be dark sounding....love the added thickness though https://shop.bluechippick.net/tad100-1r/ Vpick but adding a custom "ghost rim" edge https://v-picks.com/shop/ols/products/b-sharp The Blue Chip when I'm doing more clean work, V-Pick for some dirty electric and want more pronounced attack. Can't stand thin picks like the afformentioned .73 Tortex, it isn't just the feel, but the tonal qualities and dynamic range control.

Yikes, I think $31 was already a bit high. They haven't said how long the delay will be. They noticed bugs before the beta and seems delayed until they sort that out. I think we are already 7 days out and no ETA.

Yep, which I think is fairly terrible because now that they cancelled the ability to sign up for it, either you are paying crazy amounts of money to keep it going or you get a few vouchers that expire in a single year knowing they won't release that many jems you don't have or couldn't have gotten cheaper. I signed up really to get the EQ and may get another voucher or two as the gamble on something great that is to be released.

Anyone else a little annoyed the Kirchhoff EQ release is delayed?

Suposed to be a low freq saturator, so I'd put it in the mojo box catergory. This adds a few more bells and knobs but that is the gist of it.

I'm wondering where they are going to put the retail on this one. I'm not really interested in buying it but curious since it is modeling some pretty affordable gear in the scheme of things. You can get a real one for like $600 if you look around enough.

I also don't buy into the but it will replace the over verbs I have mentality. Yeah, are you going to sell the other software verbs and actually get a franction of what you paid back? I've got quite a few but if I sold them I'd probabably get like $40 total for what have a "retail price" of well over $1K. MTurboReverbLE, R4, Nimbus, Phoneix, IKM Sunset Sound, all the Lesser IK verbs, Abbey Roads (can't sell becuase I didn't WUP), EOS2, Arturia Plate, PSP Plate, XenoVerb, to name a few. If these were actual pedals zero problem using this replace mentality as those have actual monetary value on the used market.

What is the CPU hit though? Always a consideration for reverb, imo. Also I know it wouldn't be in the 90% replacement range across music production for me even though it has plenty of "types" of verbs.

I grabed this plus 31 other plugins for a total of $80 last year during the group buy and got an HD2 interface also in the same deal. https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/trspacedelay/ $30 doesn't sound like the greatest deal to me at the moment. ? My previous comment was really more about the fact that $30 on a $99 plugin in most cases these days is an every day sale kind of situation...the norm if you will. And anything limited edition I'd have to wonder what support is like in 10 years on it.

$30 for a limited edition plugin they don't think is good enough for sale year round sound like a marketing cash grab ploy to me.

Good deal on MDrummer if you are smart enough to figure out how to use it. Seems like a robust package but I haven't gotten a lot of use out of it yet as most other drum VSTs seem more intuitive.

Had a couple of the pedals in the past but got rid of them. Would love to get the Murf In a plugin if they ever drop it to the $20 or less level. ?

I'm curious about the CPU hit with this thing. I've used the Strymon Blue Sky (it is kind of clinical/hi-fi sounding). And it seems like they put emphasis the chips/processor used as being substantial. when you can get a Blue Sky pedal for $200, it seems pretty absurd to charge the same for the big brother in VST format that will be worthless in a few years where the pedal will keep its value. Good idea to put out a plugin version, but price point puts it in a place where only Strymon fanbois are going to dive in. Just look at MTurboReverb on sale and compare the features (and sound) as an example. Audiority's verb is on sale for $30 and goes lower than that every year. While I wouldn't say it is Strymon algorithm level, it is good and does have lots of the more "creative" verb styles in it.

Leaving this here in case PA decides to change their mind: Curious what changes we will see at release compared to the current demo for Kirchhoff. It seems ok on the CPU (but more hungry than MAutodynamicEQ or Toneboosters EQ4)

I've done the read up. The qeustion is what is the practical use what can it do that EQ4 can't. The fundemental dynamic EQ stuff is there across both, EQ4 has per band M/S as well as saturation controls (something DSEQ3 doesn't have, correct?). It has a clean well thought out interface. You get into something like MAutodynamicEQ and people wax poetic about the fact you can make it do anything but in practical use it can be quite difficult for the average person to set up the "advanced" features and thus provides little to no extra value to a normal person (I own it too). TBProaudio also has the geq12 which at $80 seems overpriced, IMO. DSEQ3 seems more like more of a limited use "fix it" type of tool than an essential everyday workhorse EQ to me. With that being said, what is it you are dealing with that DSEQ3 is needed above and beyond the capabilites of EQ4, etc?

I had the channel strip on my list of interests for a long time, on paper all the features are there with good flexibility, as I demo'd it, quickly came the the realization I'd never use it over something like the AMEK 9099. The problem with tbproaudio I think is actually the price, each plugin you have to ask yourself is it really worth that much more than you can get and alternative for? Is it even worth what the alternative is? The pricing doesn't seem to get discounted and until the euro fell to the USD value they felt a little high. EQ mentioned below is a good example, is it better than Toneboosters? Which costs half as much or less?

I do wish it had options to let you download only the Mic Pairs you want. But that many mic combinations with enough articulations for every note in high resolution does take up space. At least 6 sets of mics, I think most of not all are L/R so 12 mics or so worth. One man's bloat is another mans "this is the only grand piano I'll ever need" It is the best sounding Piano VST I've got that is for sure. Lower RES with only the mics I use would have been fine for me though. Also only came out of Beta recently. While it has been availabe to even LE owners for a while, they also considered it beta and in my experience it was beta with plenty of little bugs for sure. Not sure if it is rock solid yet or not.

This is the only time I've ever seen the web site work properly in the likley ~10+ years I've been using Computer Music Magazine. Time to download what you own for a change!

Note if you are buying this (i.e. you don't already have MSoundFactory LE or the full version) MSoundFactoryLE is currenlty on sale for the same price as this single instrument so buy that instead to get it plus everything else! https://www.meldaproduction.com/MSoundFactoryLE Also throwing out my referral code out there for any new user for another 20% off MELDA31209027 This one would be worth it, IMO given how good that piano sounds.

I generally like tbproaudio but must have overlooked this one as I don't remember seeing it. Looks good on paper and interface layout but no first hand experience. If you want to pin to desktop for a number of instances my first instinct would be download the demo and get a sense of the scaling options. Other plugins I've tried of theirs do have % scaling. Looks like a legit alternative without testing it.