Izotope and Plugin Alliance is now officially part of/under Native Instruments.

[RABid]

Got an email from Izotope today.

 

You may have noticed our friends at Native Instruments showing up more and more across iZotope recently. Well, we have some exciting news: we’re making it official and bringing iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx together under Native Instruments.

So, what does this mean for you? It means that, over time, you’ll have a unified audio production ecosystem at your fingertips. From your first sample to your final master, you’ll be able to discover new tools, manage your plugins, and create with ease. 

 

Over the next few months, you’ll start to see more of Native Instruments across your new and improved web and product experiences. Plus, stay tuned for exciting new releases this fall.

[RABid]

It will be interesting to see what is included in Komplete next year. In the mean time, I just canceled my subscription to Plugin Alliance. I did a full year, chose my 6 free plugins, and got out. I already had a few PA plugins. This year my Komplete CE came with 7 PA plugins and 1 Izotope. I already owned the Izotope plug and 4 of the 7 PA plugins. So for me, sadly, the biggest thing about the alliance is that I will not be buying anything from PA or Izotope. I will be waiting to see what shows up in Komplete. I had already taken on this policy with Native Instrument expansions, learning not to buy anything because I would most likely end up getting it again when I upgrade Komplete. I will say that you do get just a bit of a discount on the purchase of Komplete if you already own some of the items it is including in the update, but it is a small discount.

[Anderton]

Wow. The world has certainly changed since I walked into a club in Cologne around the turn of the century, and Stephan Schmitt showed me Generator/Reaktor. 

 

Or several years later, when I visited their headquarters in Berlin and somehow talked them into giving me the first Maschine production prototype (which I still have).

 

Or writing the manual for Battery when I was in Florida without electricity or water for two weeks after a hurricane, and wrote on a laptop plugged into my VW...and hoped it wouldn't drain the battery before I was done.

 

Or for that matter, when iZotope contacted me and said they wanted to create a multiband distortion plugin because they liked my Quadrafuzz so much, and would I mind? Of course I didn't. It ended up becoming their Trash plugin.

 

Those were the heady days when companies were exploring and creating for the hell of it. Are those days behind us? Or do those days go away only for companies that grow past a certain size?

[analogika]

10 hours ago, Anderton said:

Or for that matter, when iZotope contacted me and said they wanted to create a multiband distortion plugin because they liked my Quadrafuzz so much, and would I mind? Of course I didn't. It ended up becoming their Trash plugin.

 

Now sadly discontinued. 

[Anderton]

I saw a fascinating article about how the Instant Pot led to the company's bankruptcy because it was a good product: you could buy it and use it for years. You didn't need to get a new one, and there was no planned obsolescence. There's a "ceiling" for how many people wanted an Instant Pot. Once you hit that ceiling, sales were going to drop off dramtically. And they did.

 

Perhaps this is the problem with software. If you have Komplete 13, do you really need Komplete 14? Once you have a DAW that can do pretty much anything, how many new features do you need to justify buying a new version or updating? And if updates only include bug fixes, then people complain that they shouldn't have to pay for fixes to bugs that shouldn't have been there in the first place...

 

Given an economic system that demands constant growth,firms that invested in MI companies during the pandemic may be in for a rough ride. I believe a lot of products hit their ceiling when people were stuck at home. I don't see anything raising the ceiling significantly for music software, unless there's a parallel scenario like Taylor Swift's popularity boosting sales of acoustic guitars among a previously neglected demographic.

[Anderton]

On 6/16/2023 at 9:52 AM, analogika said:

 

Now sadly discontinued. 

 

Indeed. Steinberg originally released the Quadrafuzz as a for-sale plugin (and they did an outstanding job on the emulation), but then decided to make it part of Cubase, and not available separately. MOTU also virtualized the Quadrafuzz, but again, it's proprietary becayse it's part of Digital Performer. So now if you want multiband distortion, you have fewer options. I'm using Helix these days.

[bill5]

On 6/16/2023 at 12:15 AM, Anderton said:

Wow. The world has certainly changed since I walked into a club in Cologne around the turn of the century, and Stephan Schmitt showed me Generator/Reaktor. 

 

Or several years later, when I visited their headquarters in Berlin and somehow talked them into giving me the first Maschine production prototype (which I still have).

 

Or writing the manual for Battery when I was in Florida without electricity or water for two weeks after a hurricane, and wrote on a laptop plugged into my VW...and hoped it wouldn't drain the battery before I was done.

 

Or for that matter, when iZotope contacted me and said they wanted to create a multiband distortion plugin because they liked my Quadrafuzz so much, and would I mind? Of course I didn't. It ended up becoming their Trash plugin.

 

Those were the heady days when companies were exploring and creating for the hell of it. Are those days behind us? Or do those days go away only for companies that grow past a certain size?

That's quite a colorful past you have in the biz!

 

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, bill5 said:

That's quite a colorful past you have in the biz!

 

I can honestly say you don't know the half of it! And yes, the first song in my "Unconstrained" album is based on a true story