Dear sweet baby jebus...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
And from the “careful what you wish for” category, Reverence is a smash hit, I guess. Yesterday was (by far) the biggest sales day ever for Audio Damage, and Reverence has sold more in one day than some of our other plugins have sold, period. It is a happy time.
On the flip side, I’m totally swamped with NFR requests and “I bought the wrong version” and such like that. It’s really quite amazing how many people want free shit from a company that barely makes ends meet.
As an aside, our original t-shirt company _finally_ got back to me with a quote for the high quality shirts, and it is quite a bit lower than the first company, so it looks like we’re going to be able to get the shirts we wanted in the first place, and still have ’em for $20 like the last batch. All’s well that ends well. I’m a little too busy to deal with that just now; I’ll get it rolling next week.
In any case, back to the flip-flop factory. While I’m busy, hey, look, Jack White’s house is for sale, if you’re really looking for that White Stripes vibe. Nice place, I’ll say that much. I don’t even mind the red. (Thanks to fmasseti.)
74 comments
Congrats on the success. I had a feeling this one would go over well.
Are the NFR requests for review copies? Or just freeloaders wanting free shit?
Now I feel a little guilty for getting free shit (but not that guilty, of course. I won't refuse free shit, ever. It is free after all).
Usually, the NFR requests are from DJs ("I've had 6 top-10 dance tracks in the Czech Republic!" Well, then you can afford $39.00 for a plugin, right?) or the swarm of people that Apple has hired as "Genius" types to teach the hoi poloi how to use Logic at Apple stores. There are literally hundreds of those.
I have no problem giving copies for review, of course, although I do tend to favor the European magazines, who are on the whole kinder to what we do. But as far as the Apple thing goes, I think that company could spring for a couple licenses if it was truly necessary, seeing how fucking miserable they've made us over the last few year, and how much money we've spent on Apple products so we can sell AUs. Every time I see a mail that has an @apple.com after it, I almost know what's in it without having to look.
As to you, Steve, I make you work for the freebies!
-CR
congrats on a great product and the heavy sales. i hope it goes well for ya.
The only person who actually deserves (uh, needs) a freebie is our good friend, Diamond Dave. Word has it, he's been nominated for the 2006 Nobel Prize for Master Engineering.
BTW — Reverence is THE shit. Its taken forever to find the right reverb sound in Logic. I also got my Auratone MixCubes™ yesterday. Double thanks, CR!
Many thanks, everyone, for your support and kind words (and dollars, of course). We do truly appreciate all of it.
Chris is right, Steve: you don't get freebies, you get a small amount of compensation for your work.
Maybe now that Reverence is out the door I'll be able to find time to unpack my MixCubes.
--Adam
The good news is that you're only talking about one day of sales. Give it a month (and a well-timed magazine review or two) and you might well be looking at a new best-seller.
I know that in theory testing is work, but really, in most cases I'd be doing it any way, this way I just do it a month or so before anyone else.
Damned freeloading DJs! Being stingy with the comp copies of your products is a sound business practice, IMHO. Worked for Eventide.
Hey, I wrote about you on my blog http://www.digitallofi.com/words/2006/08/22/im-dreaming-about-this-crap-literally/! Can I get a NFR?
Really, I had a dream about AI last night. You probably think it's as peculiar as I do!
(That's a joke about the NFR, by the way. But do check out my post.)
It was a bit of a slow download today, i assume this must mean business is still brisk, hooray. I wasnt going to buy reverence until I was working on my next mixing project, but was forced to order as a near violent reaction to the thread on Reverance on KvR. Holy shit what a collection of not-getting-it-motherfuckers they got going on over there....
Juicy verb Adam and Chris, I had the best break in a while this afternoon running ever drumbreak i could find through it! Can't wait to really use it.
w00t! been using reverence all yesterday and today on a mix in logic - LOVING IT!!
nobody should ask for an NFR on a $39 plug-in. ever. IMO. YMMV.
As somebody who regular gets NFRs and "industry accomodations" from various places, I gotta say it's just not worth *my* time or *yours* to deal with an NFR on a sub $100 product. Just buy it already, duh.
I have to agree with the sentiment that if you're in this biz, you can afford a $39 plug-in, and if you can't afford it, you probably shouldn't be in the biz. I mean, forego you daily trip to Starbucks for a week or so and you can scoop up our new product with the savings. Personally the gimme-freebies messages we get that irk me the most are the ones that say (in essence) "I'm signed to a major label and I'm wildly successful, so you should give me your stuff for free." Okay, dude, if you're that successful, you can definitely afford to buy our stuff.
puffer: quoting your blog: "I’ve never seen Chris Randall and have no idea what he looks like, but in my mind apparently he is an unassuming early middle-aged gentleman. And their work-space is a cool loft with great lighting." If you're really curious, you can see what Chris looks like here:
http://sistermachinegun.com/visual.jsp
and you can see one of our workspaces here:
http://www.analogindustries.com/blog/entry.jsp?msgid=1131696544032
Sorry for the cognitive dissonance these images may create when they collide with your mind's eye. :-)
--Adam
Does this meet your definition of "unassuming early middle-age gentleman"?
http://www.dominationtour.com/content/1089572866126/smg209.jpg
I may be early middle-age (38) and it's open to question as to whether I'm a gentleman, but "unassuming" is a word not often applied when describing me.
-CR
where are the pics from the "Not my god" video?
Congrats on the success of the Rev! It's a great addition to any plugin setup.
Could not agree more about the ridiculousness of asking for an NFR of a $39 product. Though.... If any of these folks are legit and install the plugs on a store demo machine, it could work to your advantage. But there is no way of telling what people are really doing of course.
A demo of your products would be nice though... Maybe something that quit after 5 or 10 minues or had static bursts....
Congrats on the new plug guys. I will pony up as soon as I recover from my recent trip across the Atlantic, throwing money out the window the whole way.
Rhetorical question: would the availability of demo versions be worth a 25% increase in our prices? Producing demo versions would increase our R&D time by about 15-20%, plus leave us more vulnerable to piracy. We'd have to compensate somehow...
--Adam
Adam,
Sound samples are enough. No need for a demo for a $39 product.
Obviously you've proved right what I was trying to say the last 5 years: Everybody wants to buy a plugin as long as the price is correct.
And no, demos are not needed, the sound samples are enough as Downpressor wrote. I'd say no to NFRs as well. :-D
Reverence is so fucking great, thanks, guys.
I don't agree.
If I were able to try some of the other products, I might buy them that much quicker. Demos make things that much more tangible.
I think $50 would be the tipping point, so 25% or slightly under would be fine (in my opinion) for most users.
I might have bought Phase Two or Big Seq weeks ago if I could've tried them. I know once I do, I'll be hooked.
As always, DTM Magazine in Japan has a link for this
http://www.dtmm.co.jp/archives/02.php
Teledubgnosis: yes, you would be hooked. :-D
Dammit Peppe.
Pushers!! All of yous!!
If I make it through the end of the week without buying Reverence it will be a miracle. Broke as I am.
This brings us back to the $39 price point debate. There really is so little deliberation when you make something so good so inexpensive.
Still. I just like being able to try things. Maybe I want to hear what 2 Reverences in a chain sound like...
What about some sort of web based way of loading in your own sample to a mock up of the plug? Now I'm just asking too much.
Audio demos rarely get me. It just sounds to me like "here's what our sounds sound like when we run it though the presets". When it may not be a real representation of how an end user might use the plug.
Well, let me put it this way: Ronin has a usable demo. Reverence does not. Reverence has sold more in 48 hours than Ronin has in over a year, despite the fact that Ronin is a far more capable and versatile plugin.
Since that's not the best comparision, what with Ronin being (generally) a delay, and Reverence being a reverb, let's try this: Dubstation has no demo, and it has sold over 7 times as many units, even though it has only been out half as long as Ronin, and is, ironically, more or less the same inside, being a prepatched and much dumbed-down version of Ronin.
The point being that there's no point to demos. We stand behind our products 100%, and if you don't like one, or can't use it, all you have to do is write and say so, and your credit card will be like it was never charged (or Paypal, if that's your thing.) Name me another software company that does that. Better yet, you can still keep and use the plugin after we've given you your money back, for fuck's sake. (That is, assuming you're a person of no moral character whatsoever that gets your rocks off stealing from people that are a long ways from rich.)
Just for fun, go buy a download product from, say, iTunes, then try to return it because you don't like it. See how that works out for you.
In short, the fact that demos and freeware are so common in audio software (and only audio software, really) has cheapened the market to where people expect unrealistic things of a company. We don't play that game. We make a good product, and stand behind it 100%, and that's really the end of the story.
-CR
Congrats on the success :)
Chris what is your biggest market ? vst windows or mac vst/au ?
At the moment i came across your products i actually bought all the AU stuff that was available, i was interested in ronin but only vst.
good job on reverence.
i should add that since that period you've updated a few in being available for AU.
Congrads on making EM's download of the month for September as well
Its nice to see you guys get cred in that smut filled mag
CR: ya know also that maybe simple products are popular cuz most buyers dont really do that much with plugs anyways?
I used to be more concerned about demos until I started dealing with AD. To be honest, most things I've bought in the past I had pretty much made up my mind that I was going to get it before trying the demo any way.
I guess there are a few things I tried that sucked and kept me from getting them, but I would far prefer if all developers had a money-back guarantee over a demo any day.
I think the people who want demos the most are rarely the people who actually want to buy the plugins, more just the curious passers-by who want to see what it does. I've probably tried every VST demo out there (or close to it) but usually more to feed the download need rather than for any serious evaluation.
"What about some sort of web based way of loading in your own sample to a mock up of the plug? Now I'm just asking too much."
Um, yeah, you're asking too much. You're asking us to implement a rather sophisticated web-based mechanism which would enable people to use our software for free. Yeah, we'll get right on that.
--Adam
I think a demo would definitely be worthwhile. Sure $40 is a no-brainer but the low price also inspires a bit of skepticism. It just makes me think "eh, nice interface but how good can it be?" After making a few $40 or $50 impulse buys of plugins that turn out to be rarely useful, one starts to get more cautious.
I don't think the demo has anything to do with Ronin sales. I think people are attracted to simple plugins that do one thing well and the interface of Ronin just looks much more cluttered and less appealing than some of your other plugins.
The only way a demo would mean less sales is if people are buying the plugin now and not really digging it. If would think it might be better to have fewer customers who are truly satisfied with their purchase than a bunch of people who made an impulse purchase they regret. If you believe in your product you should be confident that a demo will only bring in more customers.
Re: "I would think it might be better to have fewer customers who are truly satisfied with their purchase than a bunch of people who made an impulse purchase they regret."
That's exactly why there is a money-back return policy. Which to my mind is way better, not only does it weed out those who aren't interested in buying the product (which is 95% of most demo downloaders) but it is the kind of policy that works in favour of the customer (a very rare thing these days, especially with software).
Seriously, I've bought stuff even with a demo that two days later thought "why did I buy this piece of crap?"
If we had a bunch of people who made impulse purchases they regretted, we'd issue a lot of refunds also. We issue extremely few refunds (usually to people running whack-ass out-of-date systems which we don't have the resources to debug), so we conclude that our customers are happy with their purchases.
I never disputed that demos would bring in more customers. I merely pointed out that producing demos costs us in many ways, and our prices would have to go up correspondingly. That's simple business reasoning, not a lack of confidence in our products. If I didn't have confidence in our products I wouldn't have the balls to put 'em up for sale, now, would I?
--Adam
actually the mp3 give a very good impression , it's as good as a demo.
"Chris what is your biggest market ? vst windows or mac vst/au ?
At the moment i came across your products i actually bought all the AU stuff that was available, i was interested in ronin but only vst.
good job on reverence."
I think last time we ran the stats, our customers were about 67% Mac users, and we didn't have a way to break down Mac VST vs. AU because it's the same installer for both so we don't know which people actually use.
We're slogging our way through AU updates of the older stuff. It's not very fun work (compared to, say, building a new reverb) but we understand the desire for AU versions. The next thing we're working on is a VST 2.4/UB/AU update of Deverb, and after that we'll probably turn our attention to Ronin. The older products are difficult to bring up to date because they were written before I developed the framework which enables us to produce VST and AU versions that share a large amount of common code. That means that things like Deverb and Ronin have to be re-written largely from scratch, and doing that involves hidden gotchas like making sure that existing presets in the hands of our customers will continue to work with the new version.
Apple did not do the world any favors when they invented AU.
--Adam
So now that Reverance is out, what's next? (said with big shit-eating grin, and tongue firmly in cheek).
In all seriousness, thanks for yet another fantastically useful plug you two. AD is one of the few developers I've found doing truly useful plugs that aren't ridiculously bloated with features that only see use 5% of the time.
Peter has a pretty glowing review of Reverence up on createdigital.
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/08/23/review-reverence-digital-plate-reverb/#more-1585
And bless his soul, he even put up audio clips, which I much appreciate. I hate reviews on the web where someone goes on about the sound of something but doesn't present us with the goods.
"That's exactly why there is a money-back return policy. Which to my mind is way better,"
But I think that the price point comes into play again here. If I try the plugin out for a day and hate it I might ask for a refund but if I like it at first and then six months later realize that I never really use the thing I'm not going to bother asking for my $40 back. But judging by all of the emails you get asking for freebies I guess I'm probably alone in this :)
Maybe I'm also alone in thinking that mp3 samples are completely useless. Just so you know where I'm coming from, the only audio damage plugin I own is the 907a which I bought on sight but find that I never use. Now I'm very interested in Reverence, Phase Two, Dubstation and the Rat Shack Reverb but without a demo I don't feel like taking the $160 plunge. All sorts of questions spring to mind like is the ratshack reverb a one-trick pony? Is the phase two any better than the built-in Ableton Live phaser? Mp3 demos don't really answer these questions for me so I end up buying nothing when I might actually decide to buy 1 or 2 plugins after a real demo.
Damn, I just noticed that the 907a has been updated to include a wet/dry mix so maybe I should pay the $10 and upgrade.
Don't forget that they have a free plug-in you can download and use, FuzzPlus. Use that to evaluate the general quality of their stuff (killer), then decide if $40 is worth it for a world-class reverb processor.
I hear ya, and there's no way I'm going to argue how you spend your money. But to answer (IMHO):
a) ratshack is a one-trick pony, but it's fun at doing it. The new version is more useful (i.e. a little less one-trick) than the first version.
b) Phasetwo is at least fairly different from the phaser in Live. Better is always a subjective matter, but it definitely isn't like the one in Live. Different controls, and Phasetwo has a throatier sound (hard to describe in meaningful language, sorry)
c) If more functionality matters to you, the upgrade is worth it to 914, since you get more bands, bandwidth control, wet dry and extra gain. I still use 907A, but use 914 more now.
Buy Dubstation.
Now.
Best $39 I've spent in a loooooooooooonnnngggg time.
Endless fun. Especially if you have MIDI controller knobs.
There seem to be 3 of us here who would like to see demos available.
The other 5 or 6 say it's not necessary. I am guessing that they all already own all the plugs. I may be wrong.
Not everyone's brains and wallets work the same. For me, I prefer to lay hands on a product before taking the plunge. The money back guarantee is a manufacturer's gamble that relies on consumer's apathy.
And more times than not it pays off. I bought the 914. It's cool, but I have not really found a place for it in the mix. But I'm not asking for my money back. Partially because I know I'll find a niche for it eventually, and partially because I'm happy to support AD. But had there been a demo, I would not have purchased it just yet.
Wait. That works against my pro demo argument.....
I downloaded a killer fuzz plugin somewhere that got in trouble for looking too much like a boss pedal. Was that an audiodamage thing? At any rate I don't doubt the quality of the plugins for one second but I think the sound of something like a reverb or a phaser is more a matter of taste than an issue of objective quality.
Teledubgnosis: I'm with you 100%. I don't think it really works out to be an anti demo argument unless you're really cynical about it :) That's what I was getting at before with the comment about believing in the products. I honestly think if I could try out some demos I would probably own and happily use 3 or 4 AD plugins rather than owning one that I feel ho-hum about.
No offense intended, but would you like a backrub with that?
None of that holds water. Did you take the computer you wrote that on home and use it for month to see if you liked it? How about the chair you were sitting on when you wrote it. Did your landlord let you live in the apartment for a month so you could know if you liked it? Does your auto insurance company let you have a wreck first, so you can see how they treat you?
The only difference between audio software makers and pretty much any other business is that audio software makers got in a stupid cycle where this became not the exception but the norm. Sorry, but I don't cotton to that line of bullshit. My favorite plugin of all time is D-Pole, which I bought in a box at Guitar Center. No demo. No hand holding. No audio clips. I looked at it, read the back, saw that it did what I wanted, and bought it. That's the way almost any retail transaction on the planet earth takes place, but for some reason, audio software developers are held to some other standard. Go figure. Not only do we have to deal with the demo nonsense, but we have to be comfortable with the fact that roughly 75% of the people that are using our products stole them.
Well, as it happens, I can do something about the first half of that equation.
-CR
Hey, I've got an idea: we'll be like the big-name plug-in vendors. We'll use PACE, the most secure and yet the most invasive, obnoxious, and bug-ridden copy protection available. We'll have to pay a fat wad of cash for the authoring system, plus a fee for each copy we sell, so we'll have to jack all of our prices by adding at least $100 to each. Our support load will go through the ceiling dealing with PACE issues, so we'll have to hire someone just to handle that. Add another $25 to each plug-in's price to cover his/her pay. Our stuff will get cracked anyway, but we'll be able to offer 30-day demos with relatively little overhead.
How would that be?
--Adam
Can you throw in an iLok option? That'd be super.
Haha, wow ok. If you don't want to make demos available that's totally fine. You asked for opinions and I gave mine, no offense intended.
In this day and age we can return just about any physical product that's available for purchase, leaving services such as insurance out of the discussion. I wouldn't buy a new guitar without playing it and as a matter of fact I did try out a ton of different chairs in various stores before I bought the one I'm sitting on.
I didn't know anything about the crack angle though. I had assumed that most cracks were made by circumventing the copy protection on legitimate copies rather than disabling the beep or the timeout on a demo.
Anyway, since it seems demos are out of the question how about a wider range of mp3 samples? I'm sure users would be willing to submit some.
I have to say that the whole "can we please have a demo of this $39 product?" is really ridiculous. I could understand if we were talking about Native Instruments or Arturia not having a demo, because that's a significant outlay of cash, or a DAW because that's a matter of whether you like its workflow. But these prices are so low you can afford to suck it up. Look at the page, decide if it's something that looks interesting to you, and either buy it or don't. This is literally just two guys and time they waste justifying their business decisions to people who probably won't buy their products is time taken away from developing new plug-ins.
Aaaaah, I'm an idiot. I just re-read the original post and I missed the "rhetorical question" bit. I thought you guys were actually considering the demo thing. Scratch everything I said.
What I love most about these debates is that Chris and Adam actually have balls. Agree with them or not, at least they're "keepin' it real" (as we say in my 'hood (read: tract-housing subdivision)). Really though, most developers (or the customer-support tentacles thereof) would pretend that they care what you think about their policy, even if they secretly just want to bitch-slap you.
To toss in my $.02, I'm totally fine with the policy regarding demos. I will say this though: When comparing the sales of Ronin w/ Reverence and Dubstation, the GUI has got to have a lot to do with it. IMHO Reverence and Dubstation (along with Phase Two) are easily the best UIs AD have done, and people really respond to that. And why not? A tool that looks cool is more fun to use, and a tool that is more fun to use gets more use, thus making it more valuable to the user.
Ronin's still my favorite, though (even if it's not the prettiest of the bunch). :P
Anyon,
why do you think Apple Logic decided to use only AUs?
Well.
We can all keep posting "congratulations!!" posts praising the new product that only some of us have bought. Or we can tell you what would help seal the deal for those of us who have not bought the whole line of AD products.
You can keep selling to the same highly opinionated, extremely vocal, users who already own all your products if you like. Or you can take some constructive criticism from users who do not own 100% of your product line.
Or you could turn off the damn computer and go out and play with your kids....
I'd love a backrub right about now Chris. Thanks.
Fact is. I tried the computer before I bought it. Looked at the house I live in twice before moving in. And bought DPole (Yes, one of my all time favorite plugs as well. Wish there was a UB version. Never happen. I know.) after using the freaking CRACK for a month and deciding that this was a product I wanted to support.
Not everyone is so honest.
Jesus, you are a testy bunch in here. If you don't want opinions. Don't ask for them.
I didn't ask for opinions about the demos. Neither did Adam. We never have. We just stopped offering them. Nowhere in any of my posts, ever, on either here, OSXa, KvR, or Gearslutz have I ever solicited any opinions about the demo thing.
The reason we're testy about it is that every time we release, we have to answer the same question, and usually to the same 10 people. It can get tedious.
And if there's one thing that should be obvious is that I don't have kids. Can't stand the little creatures.
-CR
"Can't stand the little creatures."
Use more BBQ sauce next time, or a wedge of lemon if you have to re-heat em.
I don't own or use many plugins at all. However, I can almost guarantee use of either Phase Two or Dubstation on a track, somewhere. Both of these were bought on spec, without demos or whatever.
If an excellent product is $39, I'm definitely more likely to hit the 'buy' button than if it was $50. It just sounds like a lot more, even though it isn't. It's all basic psychology.
AD have the market sewn up by offering something made with love and attention for a decent price (how often does that happen?), also by having a first-rate support system (anytime I've emailed Chris, I've had a very quick and useful reply, yesterday was a good example of this).
I also like the AD account system - even if I lost all trace of my registration codes or whatever, I could still find them safely in my account. Customer satisfaction.
I'd rather keep the current philosophy than a compromise.
I don't expect anyone to buy our entire product line, and I'm not gonna waste my time trying to explain why someone should. (I'm a terrible salesman, really.) I'm absolutely elated when people do buy our entire product line, but we tend to make idiosyncratic, specific-purpose products and I don't expect them all to appeal to everyone. Chris and I build stuff that appeals to us personally, rather than building stuff because we think it will appeal to everyone. There is a personal story, a personal desire, a personal musical impulse behind every plug-in we sell. We're just lucky that lots of other people seem to share our personal tastes.
Chris is right: we didn't solicit opinions about the availability of demos. I asked a very specific question about whether the availability of demos would be worth a price increase.
The short version of the demo story is this: we can't create demos without a price hike, and we feel that our price points are more important than demos. Yes, it is fairly common for other companies to offer demos of their products. You will notice that those products have both a higher price than ours, and have much more invasive forms of copy-protection than ours. That is not a coincidence. You will also notice that most of those companies do not offer money-back guarantees. We never set out to be just like other companies, in case that isn't blatantly obvious by now. Some people like our style, some don't.
Taking constructive criticism and continuing to sell to our existing customer base are not mutually exclusive. We are open to constructive criticism, but "open to" is not synonymous with "accepting and acting upon all". Nobody has yet persuaded me that it is worth our expense to create demo versions. On the other hand, statistics gleaned from Reverence sales alone provide plenty of evidence that we are very much capable of attracting new customers without offering demo versions.
Yes, we are a testy bunch (or pair, anyway). That's what happens when you talk to the actual people in a company, rather than talking to a support rep in Calcutta who's reading off a script that was generated from a marketing firm's PR concept. You encounter real people, real opnions, real elation, real gratitude, real testiness. Yesterday, for example, I was testy because I had just spent two days of work to placate one person on KVR. (Actually the work will placate anyone who has the misfortune to be using a Pentium 4 for doing music.) If you think Chris is testy with the public, well, there are good reasons that of the two of us, he's the one with the higher public profile. Today I'm feeling pretty chipper because I think I've laid that problem to rest (assuming that Steve has happy news for me) and I think I'll be able to move along to our next project.
I don't have kids either, and never will. I'm too selfish and preoccupied with my own stuff to be a good parent. The 14-year-old who lives next door is pretty cool, but she's busy with her first days of high school so I haven't been able to go over to play with her PS2 lately.
--Adam
uvacom: you have a valid point regarding the comparison of Ronin and Dubstation, and that's partly why the next rev of Ronin will have a different-looking UI. Chris and I tend to compare and contrast them because the difference in their sales figures is dramatic.
UI design is really tricky. The Dubstation/Phase Two look works really well for simpler stuff but doesn't scale up well to more complex plug-ins. Chris did a version of Discord 2 in that style and it just looked weird (and not in a good-weird way).
--Adam
Fair enough guys.
You make a good point and thanks for your diplomatic responses.
As for solicited feedback, I was referring to this:
"Rhetorical question: would the availability of demo versions be worth a 25% increase in our prices? Producing demo versions would increase our R&D time by about 15-20%, plus leave us more vulnerable to piracy. We'd have to compensate somehow...
--Adam"
One could argue that by prefeacing the questions with "Retorical" that you really were not asking for a response.
Sorry to have bullied you guys into blogging more than you should be right now. I am sure you are unbeievably busy.
FYI I bought Reverence last night partially out of guilt for wasting your time on this topic, and partially because it looks beautiful and I know it will be great in the AD tradition. (Not because of the audio demos) I do plan on purchasing your entire product line as funds become available.
I attempted to write a witty comment about Chris and Adam having a kid together. But I'm not sufficiently caffeinated this AM. Consider yourselves spared.
I'd still like to see demos. And I would pay a 20% markup to have them. And there is a great big hole in the UB VST/AU market for a good analog filter emulator that I hope you guys will fill soon.
Keep up the good work.
Fair enough point about the "rhetorical", which I think is defined as "for the sake of discussion", so yeah, I was asking for it, I suppose. Believe me, if I didn't feel like blogging that much, I wouldn't have done it. That's why my own blog is so sparse.
Thanks very much for your purchase of Reverence. I hope you like it, and if you don't, return it. That's what the policy is there for.
Is there really a hole in the market for filters? I actually had the impression that that particular niche was pretty saturated (no pun intended), but maybe there are just lots of filters and no good ones? We have talked about filter plug-ins, of course; we'd like to do a successor to Filterpod. Chris tells me that the hardware filter box of choice is the... uh... I forget its name. Two-space rack unit, black, kind of expensive (IMHO). Something like that might serve as inspiration for an AD plug-in. It has the simple-but-effective kind of design that we strive for.
--Adam
I am sure that I will like Reverence and am more than happy to support AD.
I bought a new MacBook Pro a month or so ago, and in assembling the system for music, I could not find a filter plug that I liked.
I tried Volcano (cool, but too many knobs, and did not get the sounds I was after quick enough) and Frohmage (too finicky and put my cpu at 125% with one instance) but did not find what I wanted.
I have a moogerfooger lowpass and waldorf 4 pole for hardware that I love, and Dpole on my G5 which I am happy with, but nothing good in UB. I'd corresponded with Chris about porting filterpod, but I ended up using a combination of fuzzplus and Live's Autofilter in the end. Not the best but it worked.
I personally would like to see a dead simple filter emulator in UB.
And I would happily pay $39 for it. Demo or no demo ;-)
Well, here is my opinion:
I purchased Reverence without a demo, because it had a series of simple examples (a vocal loop with different settings, a few notes with different settings) where I could hear different setting of the reverb effect. It made it easy to make the decision to purchase.
I am also very interested in Deverb, however the Deverb sound demo is too complicated. It is an actual peice of music, that distracts my ear from being able to evaluate the reverb sound. I could purchase it, and then get the money back garantee if I don't like it, but realisticly I wouldn't have the self-control to delete it even if I got the refend... So sans a better sound clip, or a demo version, or someone else posting a review with samples (which I couldn't find), I won't be purchasing it.
Yeah, see, those nice filters like Moog and Waldorf will ruin your ears for software filters. I have the same problem; that's why I have an analog modular with seven different types of filters (and duplicates of my favorites).
--Adam
"there are just lots of filters and no good ones" -I don't know if that's exactly how I'd put it, but I've yet to find a good one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, or have more features than are really necessary. Filterscape and Volcano are probably the best I've heard, but they both push the limit for what I would consider bloated. I think you should certainly consider the idea.
Regarding the hardware filter box of choice, is that the Schippmann Ebbe und Flut thing?
It's probably the Mutronics Mutator - a nice box...
Yeah, Adam is referring to the Mutator.
We've talked about this now and again. There is definitely a giant D-Pole shaped hole in the market, especially for modern computers. Since it's unlikely that will ever get released again, and the many stupid Synthedit versions don't do it justice at all, it's something I've been considering for quite a while. I just haven't had the nerver to try and talk Adam in to it, because he's a filter snob.
-CR
I use Volcano and I am absolutely satisfied with the sound, but the interface for it just doesn't do it. I don't know if it's got too many features or if it's just a poor layout, but something about it doesn't suit my workflow as well as Fabfilter's other (excellent) products do.
So I'd definitely go for a filter plugin more on the scale of dubstation - something that does one thing, does it well, and looks gorgeous doing it.
Wasn't there talk of doing a filter version of Pulse Modulator? I grabbed that issue of CM and I love that plugin, so that's something I'd like to see. I basically paid $15 for Pulse Modulator (since that's how much the magazine cost and that's the *only* reason I bought a copy), $19 for the filter version doesn't seem unreasonable (especially if it had just a few more features like an envelope follower and SVF w/ simultaneous outputs for each type).
See, this is what happens. I tell Chris that something is hard to do in software. He accepts that for awhile, but then he comes back and pesters me about it until I roll up my sleeves, pull out the textbooks and the papers and the journal references and beat my head against walls and floors for weeks or months until I produce code that works to my and his satisfaction. Then he says "see, I knew you could it" and I say "yeah, but it _was_ hard" and then he puts a beautiful UI on it and we make a plug-in out of it. That's how it went with the delay technology in Ronin and Dubstation, the pitch-shifting technology in Discord, the phase-shift filters in Phase Two, the reverb in Reverence, etc. I can tell what he's gonna be pestering me about next.
--Adam
Well, I just noticed that Tone2 has dropped the price on Filterbank to $49, so that may be worth checking out. One would hope that with all those filter types there might be a few that sound good.
Out of curiousity, do you guys typically develop only one product at a time? Or do you sort of stagger your development cycle? In other words, while working on a product like Reverance, would you ever take a day or two off to work on the next thing? Or the one after that?
We're strictly one product at a time. The one exception is 907A, which we released in the middle of the Phase Two dev cycle. There were a couple of reasons for this. Mainly, Phase Two development was taking so long that we wanted a fresh release to keep us in everyone's mind.
-CR
For what it's worth, a little bird told me the Waldorf plugins (Attack, PPG Wave, and...D-Pole) are being updated and will be re-released "soon," complete with universal binary AUs...
I'm celebrating already
c.
That would be a beautiful thing.
I love all the Waldorf stuff.
Filterbank looks good, but PC only.
I still very much want Audio Damage to do a filter.
It would be great if it was bundled with Pulse Modulator.
Hell, I'll pay in advance....
Question for Chris & Adam:
I own Discord 2 and love it, there are certainly some more AD plugins on my shoping list for the near future. Q is: if I switch to Mac (not soon but can happen) - is there a crossgrade price for all owned plugins?
thanks
k
No crossgrade prices here. Just drop us a note if you switch and we'll fix you up with new installers.
(True story: I switched from Mac to PC as my main music platform because it was cheaper to switch from OS 9 to XP than it was to switch from OS 9 to OS X, and that included buying a PC.)
--Adam
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