Discussion of iZotope upgrade confusion

[mhschmieder]

Let's talk about the confusion over isotope's new upgrade policies.

As most will have noticed, the new way to upgrade is to buy stuff you already have, then wait for the supposedly automatic (I have a long wait and non-responsiveness regarding RX5 Advanced) upgrade upon release of the product you actually wanted to buy/upgrade (which in most cases is no longer offered as such on its own; only as part of a suite).

At this point, you may have, for example, two licenses to RX4 Advanced and one to RX5 Advanced, or two to Ozone 6 Advanced and (in November) one license to Ozone 7 Advanced.

Not to mention the other product suite members (e.g. Nectar 2, amongst others) if you already own them too.

The iLok 2 licenser takes more licenses than the meager 100 of the iLok 1 licenser, and one can always copy redundant or unused/outmoded licenses to another iLok and put it in a drawer for backup/emergency, but the odd thing is that one doesn't directly forfeit the older licenses.

Does this mean you could use the other license on another computer (e.g. a Windows computer from a collaborator or bandmate who is generally in a nearby physical location but not using the product at the same time as you; yet nevertheless probably would have to use YOUR iLok ID and password, which isn't cool). Or maybe you can just give that license to someone (or pay for a transfer)?

I didn't really expect to have redundant licenses and would be surprised if any can be reused or handed over to someone (I certainly wouldn't try to profit off of any of them).

SoundToys 5 has a weird thing going on too though, where you only forfeit three licenses of your choosing and keep the rest, which can be quite confusing as now the others will keep showing up on iLok and/or with updates available vs. ONLY having the easy-to-maintain enhanced V5 suite (the old suite only included the classic custom-look effects plug-ins vs. the newer stuff that is more specifically emulative of particular vintage hardware).

Come to think of it, Slate's Virtual Mix Rack produced tons of confusion with overlapping licenses, duplicative licenses, etc., which took a few updates to iron out before iLok was happy with which licenses it needed for the full suite to work correctly (I think it was the latest update with the new EQ and Tilt emulation that finally seemed to unravel all the hidden dependencies on "older" licenses).

At any rate, there was actual communication from those two vendors, but there's been complete silence (except for some indications that case-by-case evaluations will be made, from one of isotope's employees posting on GS) regarding what's up with all these multiple iZotope licenses and the strangeness about the available upgrade paths -- most particularly for the most loyal customers.

[mikehalloran]

I am in a similar boat. I have separate licenses for Ozone 3 and Ozone 6 Advanced. I can take an upgrade path to either 7 or 7A.

I am liking the update to Maximizer and may just go with 7 to get that. The new Vintage Tape tools in Advanced have little interest for me. I might change my mind upon demoing – if impressed, I'll go with 7A.

I just updated to RX 5A and am liking that. If they offered a price that let me do that upgrade and pre-order Oz7A at a great price, I would have pulled the trigger but that was not one of my options.

I already have Nectar 1 (now called Elements), Nectar 2 Producers Pack, Alloy 2, Trash 2 and a couple of legacy products. Even iDrum still works when I need a drum machine on my Mac (ok, I never use it but it does work).

I do like PSP's approach. When you buy more, there's a discount applied based on what you already own. This includes upgrades and sale items. Far easier than trying to navigate the Izotope Upgrade Jungle to see what makes sense.

[mhschmieder]

Haha, not to mention that PSP just released v2 of L'otary for free for all v1 owners.

If all vendors behaved like PSP in terms of customer loyalty, I would have more money for high-end mics.

[mhschmieder]

FYI the Ozone upgrade to the related suite was just about as confusing, and iZotope wrote an apology to me and said they'd pass my advice to their marketing department. I feel better now that they responded; I suspected they were under serious time crunch pressure related to AES and probably just didn't have time to fully think through the consequences of all the new tiers.

FWIW, the new version of Ozone is well worth the upgrade cost -- even for those of us at Advanced level (FAR more expensive). The new modules will come in handy, for sure. And otherwise, it looks and behaves similar to the previous version, but of course it also has the fourth generation mastering maximizer algorithm in it.