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Dirk Ulrich stepping down as CEO of Plugin Alliance


Yan Filiatrault

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6 hours ago, Zo said:

i ain't stressing .... just saying here that NI and PA didn't brougth anything really ground breaking since a while .... izotope is more dynamic imho ....

It has been less than a year.  I honeslty didn't expect any cross platform "integrations" yet as these are small development teams and actually doing any cross platform development work is going to take time.  

It took them what seemed like months just to get the revised store up and running.

As for ground breaking.  Sure PA didn't develop it, but the Kirchhoff EQ they bought, updated a little and released feels fairly ground breaking to me.  

And while Izotope does tend to be cutting edge, those products are also at the very top of the market.  RX Advanced alone is on sale for $800 USD.  You could by every single PA plugin (100 something) for that even without owning a single PA plugin to start with. 

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11 hours ago, Zo said:

PA didn't brougth anything really ground breaking since a while

Depending on what you consider "groundbreaking" and "a while," Unfiltered Audio have released SILO, LO-Fi-AF, Tails and Needlepoint all in the last year. Maybe these are not the first granular, lo-fi, ducking reverb and vinylizing FX on the market, but they are unusual enough in their categories to warrant getting them even if one already has FX in that class.

For the most part, when I think of Plugin Alliance, "groundbreaking" is not the first thing that comes to mind except for Unfiltered Audio.

brainworx, elysia, SPL, Lindell, Shadow Hills and their other brands seem more aimed at "faithful software recreations of sought after hardware" than they are breaking ground. Not exclusively, but that just seems to be more their thing.

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56 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Depending on what you consider "groundbreaking" and "a while," Unfiltered Audio have released SILO, LO-Fi-AF, Tails and Needlepoint all in the last year. Maybe these are not the first granular, lo-fi, ducking reverb and vinylizing FX on the market, but they are unusual enough in their categories to warrant getting them even if one already has FX in that class.

For the most part, when I think of Plugin Alliance, "groundbreaking" is not the first thing that comes to mind except for Unfiltered Audio.

brainworx, elysia, SPL, Lindell, Shadow Hills and their other brands seem more aimed at "faithful software recreations of sought after hardware" than they are breaking ground. Not exclusively, but that just seems to be more their thing.

True , what i'm saying is that when i analysis the strategic path i see more an attept to provide a lot with incitation to buy instead of providing real value , amek stuff is a perfect exemple , instead of updating the first one , relaseing a second one with just some values diff (exactly the same curves as even the old bx digital)

i do love the neold approach and some serious stuff here and there in the catalog , but dropping productat 299 to make you buy them at 29 , product that in pretty all cases better alterantive are present (thinking ssl , api , neve ect ..) isn't imho groundbreaking but the opposit ....

What i'm saying is that it's more a name dropping name than a real dev job imho .... i do think they lost track , while at start BX stuff were really something and solid tools added to any pro arsenal , and bx gital is still to this dayz a beast .... with features that even modern eq's still don't implements as defaults ...

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On 1/6/2023 at 11:17 PM, Yan Filiatrault said:

2023 News: I am stepping down as CEO for Plugin Alliance & Brainworx Audio

[...]

After selling my companies exactly 1 year ago

 

In other words - the golden handcuff term has just expired, and he's finally free! This was the plan all along, but he had to stay for a year to get the most out of it.

I think it does make sense to get out of the business now, if someone is paying you to do it. The market is pretty saturated, stock plugins are getting more competitive every year, and we have a new generation of professionals who have much less interest in models of analogue hardware.

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11 hours ago, Zo said:

instead of updating the first one , relaseing a second one with just some values diff

Ugh, yeah, I don't care for that sort of thing, like the differences between Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor and the Class A version, or bx_masterdesk and the "classic" version. Or BYOME and TRIAD. New features are great. But make them available via a switch and call it 2.0 rather than keeping the old version around as a separate product. Exponential Audio was guilty of this with Phoenix/Nimbus/Stratus, which were all the same basic engine with bells and whistles added. Also R2/R4/Symphony.

In all of those cases, I might even see keeping the old version around as a freebie (which they have done in the case of masterdesk and at times SHMC) or cheapo, with an upgrade path, but that ain't how they roll. Whatever, between MEGA sales and vouchers, I have everything I want from them for peanuts.

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54 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Ugh, yeah, I don't care for that sort of thing, like the differences between Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor and the Class A version, or bx_masterdesk and the "classic" version. Or BYOME and TRIAD. New features are great. But make them available via a switch and call it 2.0 rather than keeping the old version around as a separate product. Exponential Audio was guilty of this with Phoenix/Nimbus/Stratus, which were all the same basic engine with bells and whistles added. Also R2/R4/Symphony.

In all of those cases, I might even see keeping the old version around as a freebie (which they have done in the case of masterdesk and at times SHMC) or cheapo, with an upgrade path, but that ain't how they roll. Whatever, between MEGA sales and vouchers, I have everything I want from them for peanuts.

Shadowhills Green and "A" sound pretty different to me so that doesn't seem like only a feature change (adding the resizable interface, TMT, headroom, stereo, mix controls).

Now masterdesk there are 3 of them.  "Classic" was released after Masterdesk with a streamlined feature set for free (I'm cool with that try it you might like it approach).  The new one "true peak" I think should have simply been an upgrade to the original (which retailed for $299 and now dropped to $149).  They did offer a $20 price to get TruePeak so it isn't crazy for previous users, but still honestly think it should have been a nice included upgrade instead of an entierly new product as it seems pretty unlikley MasterDesk(the original) is going to see another actual update.  

 

Amek EQ 200 vis 250 Zo points out is the crazy one.  Since people tested it and it showed it was practically the same EQ going on with different visual knobs and a slight curve adjustment type of thing going on.  

 

I forgot about Unfiltered Audio in the discussion of "innovate" even though I own most of all of them.  They certainly think outside of the box and are not afraid to release something that a large percentage of the audio production population wouldn't actually use.  We need developers like them to break outside of the "same old EQ and Compressor" plugins we all have way too many of at this point.  

Edited by Brian Walton
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2 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

I forgot about Unfiltered Audio in the discussion of "innovate" even though I own most of all of them.  They certainly think outside of the box and are not afraid to release something that a large percentage of the audio production population wouldn't actually use.  We need developers like them to break outside of the "same old EQ and Compressor" plugins we all have way too many of at this point.

UfA is kind of the odd brand out in the PA universe. They really don't deserve to be included in PA's lowball sales, despite the fact that I've benefited hugely from them. They should be getting more revenue for those amazing FX.

And I think for the purposes of this discussion, people are referring to the brands that are developed by brainworx, like elysia, SPL and so on. Unfiltered Audio is a separate company based in Santa Barbara, CA that just happens to be distributed by PA.

I'm a fan of Glitchmachines and Freakshow Industries as well. They can really add some crazy ear candy to a track. Not useful for anything but electronica at this point, but if some big time pop producer dropped some Glitchmachines into a hit track, it might become part of the vocabulary, like the autotune glitch thing. Not that I would necessarily welcome such a thing.

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8 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Yes, I know.

AFAIK, though, the plug-ins that are branded as such at PA are developed by the brainworx team. Do I have that wrong?

You are correct:

image.png.110302ee0bd4c89b67f60d5718ce3ac5.png

 

image.png.59ceb72ebd29e420d77ebb1e287437bd.png

 

image.png.5b2ed684211111efe81f6a2f61d40444.png

 

 

And there are many others (just a few examples):

image.png.8f95d7e7b2679cf815267a131d06547d.png

 

image.png.6c25ae42991ca9e06cb8eb90e6b9a256.png

 

image.png.af1e955069a1dcae39359e11ab4be6c8.png

 

image.png.112619fd812d89548d8d930aab042643.png

Edited by Brian Walton
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