ALL THESE PLUG-IN SALES...

[James Steele]

...on plugins and plugin bundles that are not Apple Silicon native and seem to have no language regarding intent to support Apple Silicon in the future.

My money is gonna stay right in my pocket on these "deals" from now on.

[stubbsonic]

One developer didn't show any system info with their software, so I asked about M1/AS compatibility, and they more or less asked "Why do you want to know?"

I said, well, when Rosetta2 goes bye-bye, will your software go bye-bye? Shouldn't have to explain that.

I wouldn't even mind if they said, "We're not sure if we'll move to AS." Then I'd be not sure if I'm buying.

[James Steele]

I wouldn't even mind if they said, "We're not sure if we'll move to AS." Then I'd be not sure if I'm buying.

Bingo. I have a feeling *some* developers are clearing out dead-end plug ins. Honestly, it's my goal at some point to get to an all-native setup. I may keep certain plugs that aren't native for "special occasions" but don't want to run them if I don't have to.

I've already made an "Native Only" plug-in set in DP's plug-ins prefs. Every time I add a new plug or plugs, I run PlugInfo and if they're not native, I remove them from the "Native Only" set.

[Phil O]

I have a feeling *some* developers are clearing out dead-end plug ins.

Or perhaps they are not dead-end. Maybe they are planning future native support and if they run the sales now (and get you invested in their product) you'll buy the upgrade when it comes out.

[James Steele]

I have a feeling *some* developers are clearing out dead-end plug ins.

Or perhaps they are not dead-end. Maybe they are planning future native support and if they run the sales now (and get you invested in their product) you'll buy the upgrade when it comes out.

Yep. Kinda what happened to me with the McDSP Retro bundle.

[Jim]

I'm a little late to this, but I've been getting bombarded with sales solicitations as well. I bought some cool synth VIs from AIR Tech, GForce, and AAS, and was pretty happy with them, and then, lightning flash, I learned about Cherry Audio. Their synth VIs are superior in many ways, and dirt cheap, relative to most of the others - even their "normal" prices. Their GUI's scale to any size, and that's something those other companies don't.

Cherry has done several of the same vintage recreations as Arturia, and priced them at about 20% of Arturia's prices. However, if you get the Arturia vintage bundle, that may be more of a competitive price situation.

What I don't know, but would like to know is if the Arturia stuff is more efficient on the CPU. Once I instantiate several Cherry VI's, by CPU meter in DP starts to spike, and I hear distortion and dropouts. That makes me think the Cherry VIs aren't very efficient. None of the VIs from the other brands I mention cause spiking, even when producing similar sounds.

Anyway, I suspect some of the sales are due to intense competition. It stands to reason that the market can only take so many compressors, EQ, etc. that do more or less the same thing, and so many options may be causing a race to the bottom.

What we may be seeing is survival of the fittest in action.

OTOH, I learned that there's a non-UAD Empirical Labs Distressor compressor plug-in (by another name - Arouser), and they've priced it like they're really proud of it - $200. It's still fairly new, so that may come down at some point, or go on sale, as many plug-ins do.

[Michael Canavan]

I'm somewhere in the middle on this. Almost everything I use is native now, I did buy one plug in that isn't native yet, but it's a one man operation, and I trust he will get it done some time. The plug in is a beast, and only $50.
https://www.alyjameslab.com/obxtreme.html

In terms of other plug ins, for sure, any company that isn't ported I'm not buying yet. It's I have to say disappointing that Audio Ease, PSP and VSL are still behind. NI just finished the main ports, Reaktor is native, only the DJ stuff is left. IK is almost 100% etc.

The biggest disappointments are Nomad Factory, and Air. Some great plug ins are looking deprecated.