FxEq by DSP-FX (32-bit) possible licensing for later Sonar versions?

[Eglarion]

Good time of day to everyone, I'm new to the forum but've been a faithful Cakewalk/Sonar user for more that 20 years now. Hope my question/proposal here is not off topic, I suppose it's the right subforum for this.

Trying to revive some of my oldest projects from 2003 I've discovered that I've used FxEq quite extensively back then, so I tried to find a workaround using the BitBridge functionality and it worked - for a measure; after some tweaking I manage to see it in the Sonar plugin list, but when I try to actually open it it returns an error message saying "This plugin is only licensed to be used in Cakewalk Sonar. An unrestricted version can be purchased from www.dspfx.com" (see the screenshot attached) - which is, of course, out of business and even their domain name is for sale now. 

My question is - since DSP-FX are out of business and (formally) we are all working in Cakewalk Sonar at the moment - could it be possible to implement its unrestricted version in some of the future updates?  While trying to make it work in a 64-bit Sonar I actually managed to open it in one of the older versions of Sonar I accidentaly happened to have on one of the old HDD's - and it's not only good for archeological purposes if you ask me, it's a pretty handy tool that was occuping its rightful place in my arsenal back then, along with many great plugins from the same bundle (see below), and I believe I could use them from time to time even in 2024, with all the great things like FabFilter Q3 and so on being around.

Besides, there's another bunch of FX* effects like FxDelay and others I've used in these projects, and the question, actually, relates to the whole bundle of these old 32-bit effects. Or, maybe, there is some way to tweak the BitBridge so that it won't check the version of the DAW or something?

Any help will be greatly appreciated; if this post violates some of the forum rules or must be moved to another subforum - my apologies, and have a good week.

Best regards,
Eglarion.

Edited October 28 by Eglarion

[Amberwolf]

The only way I know of to use plugins/etc tied to specific software / versions is to use them in those sw/v.

 

While I can't know for sure:  Since there's no DSPFX company anymore to negotiate a new contract with, I doubt that Bandlab can include them or rewrite CbB or Sonar to work with them.  

 

I have a number of projects that use various DSPFX, and *everything* I do uses the Sonitus plugins, and I'm sure there's other stuff I use that's locked to my old SONAR that I haven't even thought about, so any software that can't use them can't be used for my projects (few of which are ever totally "finished"; I go back to stuff when I think of new things or learn new ways that let me fix problems with them I couldn't solve before).  (I wouldn't have enough time and energy to redo all that stuff in all those projects, ever).   

 

So, if I lost my whole world and had to start new projects in a different software, I'd have to find new plugins to do all those things, and waste a lot of time learning a whole new methodology to work with them.  But...that's what I'd have to do. 

 

For ancient stuff that doesnt' have an owner anymore, it might be possible for someone (not me or anyone I know :lol: ) well-versed in whatever kind of coding is used for this type of stuff to  write a "bridge" that "sniffs" the data passed back and forth in working software/plugin combos, and then provide the non-working combos with the necessary data injected into the "stream".   

But I don't think that's a discussion that would be allowed here, at a guess.  

[Eglarion]

On 10/29/2024 at 3:18 AM, Amberwolf said:

For ancient stuff that doesnt' have an owner anymore, it might be possible for someone (not me or anyone I know :lol: ) well-versed in whatever kind of coding is used for this type of stuff to  write a "bridge" that "sniffs" the data passed back and forth in working software/plugin combos, and then provide the non-working combos with the necessary data injected into the "stream".   

But I don't think that's a discussion that would be allowed here, at a guess.  

Yyyeahh, that's exactly  the kind of thing I'd prefer to avoid doing (and even discussing on the grounds of this forum). Thank you for your reply, though!

[Starship Krupa]

At this point I'd say a brute force workaround is your best bet.

What would you do if you had old projects on tape, with EQ settings written down by hand, and the hardware EQ now no longer functions properly? Probably duplicate the EQ settings as much as you can on your newer piece of gear.

If the EQ settings are that critical to your old projects, either bounce the tracks with the EQ baked in or take some screen caps of the EQs' UI to transfer to a currently-supported EQ. My favorite is Soundly Shape It.

For projects that I want to be more able to handle future twiddling, I try to avoid DAW-locked FX.

You're fortunate in that you have an older version of the DAW to use to prepare the projects for your current DAW.

[Eglarion]

On 11/3/2024 at 6:28 AM, Starship Krupa said:

At this point I'd say a brute force workaround is your best bet.

What would you do if you had old projects on tape, with EQ settings written down by hand, and the hardware EQ now no longer functions properly? Probably duplicate the EQ settings as much as you can on your newer piece of gear.

If the EQ settings are that critical to your old projects, either bounce the tracks with the EQ baked in or take some screen caps of the EQs' UI to transfer to a currently-supported EQ. My favorite is Soundly Shape It.

For projects that I want to be more able to handle future twiddling, I try to avoid DAW-locked FX.

You're fortunate in that you have an older version of the DAW to use to prepare the projects for your current DAW.

Sure, did that already. But after looking at all the presets the abovementioned FxEq had I realized how radically different they were from what I grew up to use with the years - and sometimes they were right on spot for the recording "approach" I used back then.

Like, would you consciously put a +9 dB on 5k+ on a clean electric guitar these days? Probably not, but that's exactly what a "Fender D-box" preset in FxEq does with some other pretty radical tweaks. The catch is that back then I had no proper recording gear plugging the guitar cable in a mic input of some Behringer mixer, and that was it - so applying these radical Eq settings was actually needed, and I don't think that 20-year-old me without any experience in recording technology would have figured what should be done with this muffled guitar sound I get from my flawed recording technique unless I could just scroll through these presets quickly (reminder - circa 2003 outside, internets are expensive, slow and not always available, so learning the things about recording and mixing I learned later on in 2008-2010 would have probably been or impossible, or would take an unproportional amount of time).

Of course, I still can write down all the settings of all the presets, but it's a bit annoying in 2024, you know - plus it takes all the nostalgia thing out of it, too. 

That said, thank you so much for your reply, it's a great piece of advice anyway.

Best regards,
Eglarion.