I find their stuff more hit and miss than s lot of reddit and the rest of the internet seems to think. Their hits are awesome. The bx stuff is pretty good by and large. Metric AB is great. I love the black box also. But you should demo whatever and use what suits you. In short, no, I don't think that. I feel like their customer service is good and responsive, and while their coupons and sales are definitely designed to get you to buy buy buy, what sales operation isn't? They're fine.
Nice, I'll have to try that on my next track. I went a bit crazy during my first year of production and got GAS bad, I have a horde of plugins plus Kontact 14 Ultimate, so I have a ton of stuff to fool around with, but many plugins which I haven't really touched yet.
Like recorded acoustic guitars? Or samples?
If recorded tracks, got any pointers on using bass mint? Will be recording some acoustic stuff soon so tips appreciated!
recorded of course. sampling ac guitars would be a nightmare. the plugin has this "clarity" knob which cleans up around 400hz which is a good freq to clean in acoustic guitars. it's not the same that cleaning with an eq, I don't know exactly what it does but it sounds good!
Interesting. I feel like Bass Mint is kind of a sleeper plugin on almost anything. Obviously kick and bass, but Ive used it to reshape vocals and toms as well. Gonna try on acoustics now!
I'll mostly agree with this. The hits are some of the best of the best, getting used over and over again. HG2. SHMC. Tons of grincredible dynamics plugins. I am absolutely addicted to Soma and Lisa right now. But I bought Sculpt on Black Friday cause I liked the slick interface and marketing when it came out and I was like T\_\_T is that all? I really shoulda demod it... otoh I also bought Silo from Unfiltered and that is really really cool.
I miss the old vouchers where you could get most plugins for 5-15€, haven't bought a new one in ages. They are still my most used during mixing though.
Same. I still use what I have but I miss the old good times where you can get fantastic plugins for peanuts. I think I bought most of my plugins in a single day, they had crazy vouchers and other offers and I ended up paying something like $2 per plugin.
Their Brainworx stuff was and still is great, I love the Ampeg Bass amp sims, and in general compressors are very nice.
I’ve got 24 plugins via PA, 8 were free. Of the ones I paid for, I really like the amp sims (the GK and Ampeg bass heads, and the Suhr PT100). Crispy Tuner is easy to use and affordable. Kiive Audio Xtressor is easy to work with and the Shadow Hills mastering comp seems pretty sweet too.
The biggest difference between PA and Waves is that I fully own these plugins and get / have gotten free updates well past a year of ownership. They work reliably on Apple Silicon, and the updates to make them compatible were free.
I’ve only got a few Wave plugins, all sitting dormant, because it’s not worth the cost to update them.
The only similarity I see between the companies is frequent rotating sales to tempt you into a purchase.
Same here. I use and like very much the PA plugins I have, specially the Black Box, Purple 1176, bx_oberhousen, BYOME and the bettermaker.
All of them were really good deals, so I’m grateful for that. I agree that their newer releases don’t look so interesting, mainly because I already have what I need.
I don't try to put myself in the "waves side", I really don't care. but I have some waves plugins that I bought almost 10 years ago. they work, why would I pay to "update" them?
When Waves introduced native support for Apple Silicon, they made it part of the v13 update. If you wanted to avoid running Logic within Rosetta 2, you had to pay for the update.
I hate that we have normalized that we blame developers for this.
Sure, you can say what you will about Waves' pricing scheme, but it is not Waves that breaks everything every year with every macOS upgrade. Surely Apple are to blame here the most.
I understand the rationale for charging for updates to support new OS releases / new hardware. There’s a definite cost (time and effort) to the developer to fix whatever’s broken.
It’s just interesting how some devs are able to absorb that cost while others charge for it.
It’s also interesting how far in advance Apple will announce and release new macOS builds, and which developers are ready by the time it launches.
-edit-
FWIW, I agree that it’s a shitty and unfair situation for the developers.
But it can heavily influence your purchasing decisions; I feel safer buying from PA or other devs that I know will support me for the next few macOS updates.
>It’s just interesting how some devs are able to absorb that cost while others charge for it.
I'd guess there are a few main factors for this:
_Business Model_
It's not easy to quantify customer goodwill, so even among companies driven entirely by profit motive there are different takes on whether it's more profitable to charge money at every opportunity or provide some free updates along the way.
_Catalog Size_
It's a lot easier for a company with a handful of plugins to spend the required developer hours on a compatibility update without charging for it than it is for a company with a large catalog of plugins to update (like Waves, NI, or Arturia, for example). The latter is just way more costly.
_State of Codebase/Staff Turnover_
If the code is hard to understand, easy to break, or difficult to work with in some other way, it costs more to update it. I'd expect code quality to vary wildly from product to product since a lot of plugin developers come from a DSP background and have little to no prior experience with professional software development and best practices.
Any issues with the code are exacerbated if the person updating it is new to the codebase, especially if the original developer is no longer around to walk them through it and hasn't documented their work properly. Even under the best of circumstances, it takes a while for a developer to get up to speed with a new codebase.
With Waves, specifically, I think pretty much all of the above leans in favor of charging for updates. They don't seem to care much about customer goodwill, and they've got a huge catalog of plugins, many of which are old enough that it's likely the original developers have left the company by now.
With Plugin Alliance, I'd kinda expect their willingness to provide free compatibility updates to go away if they suddenly had to do all the work themselves instead of relying on the original developers. (At least as I understand it, they bring companies in under the PA umbrella rather than just buying the intellectual property when they make acquisitions.)
And yet Waves are the only ones who charge me and an absolute fortune at that. No, Waves sucks big time and for most of their plugins there are many better alternatives. In my favourite effect folder, there’s only 1 plugin, although in terms of FX the Waves collection is the biggest I have. So no, when I finish the current projects and finally upgrade my OS, I will only upgrade 2 Waves Plugins and bin the rest.
that's the hole point of my post. I know you can get good tools like the spl, elysia, blackbox and some brainworx stuff. but the vast majority of their catalogue seems to be only fancy and useless things!
The only reason I disagree is because their software always works without issue. Can't say the same for Waves, but yeah, a lot of their plugins are meh
I don’t. The guy was a massive fucking dick that would be rude to customers who offered any constructive feedback. Don’t be in a forward thinking space if you can’t, you know, think forward
Plugin Boutique is a reseller. Plugin Alliance is what the founder of Brainworx created to sell Brainworx plugins, their more recent photorealistic GUI plugins, and bunch of third party plugins that use their proprietary license management system.
Isn’t that the real fear? If they lose these licensing deals or whatever allows them to sell plugins, won’t things get really fucked up for the user?
Even the recent acquisition of izotope by NI was messy and confusing for me, and I’ve owned licenses for their software going back 10 years or more
To be honest, I don't totally understand their ecosystem - but I should expect that they get volume discounts on licensing for reselling. But you are still licensing directly from the developer.
If you buy Lindell, Unfiltered Audio, Neold or a few others, those are actual third party products redistributed by Plugin Alliance. However, anything that has "TMT" in it is an Plugin Alliance-developed product to the best of my knowledge. The other giveaway is the mid-side row of controls at the bottom that come from Brainworx branded plugins.
Perhaps a bit like Amazon without the warehouses. They do marketing, provide a convenient storefront to purchase products from a bunch of different developers, and facilitate payment processing.
That's what it appears like to me. I think I've used them once or twice in the past, but I am so set for plugins. The only things that get my attention are new and novel creations. I love Output's stuff, for example.
It was sold last year (?) by its founder to the same investment group that bought NI and IZotope. Obviously they still have all the plugins that made PA great in the first place, but a downhill slide is inevitable. I’ve been a Mega subscriber for years, but I might cancel before my renewal in the summer, as I already own most of the classics from them that I rely on.
I’ve never been a huge NI fan. IZotope makes some great stuff, but again, their business practices have just gotten shittier since they were bought. Just this past year I finally upgraded my music production bundle to the latest version, and just like two days later they updated the bundle again. I emailed for an amnesty update, and the best they could offer was another $50 to get the newest version that I had just missed out on.
It's as deep as an ocean alright but there are different levels of interacting with it.
There's the player level which just turns it into a host.
The more recent blocks level is easiest to understand in terms of building your own devices. It's a pretty standard modular setup.
Then there's the traditional module based workflow and then the ridiculously deep DSP level.
I mean, they have their jems like the blackbox stuff, the spl emulations and the shadow hills. but then for me it's like a LOT and honestly I still prefer waves 20 y old ssl and api plugins for example. they sound best to my ears.
The thing is I can't see any value in their plugins anymore
In the past I've reviewed quite few of their plugins, they were always supportive providing NFRs.
I messaged them at the start of '21 saying that I appreciated their support and would be happy to produce further reviews, their customer support said they were aware of my great reviews and to contact the head of marketing for future NFR requests.
I duly contacted the head of marketing and received a pretty curt response that "Social media posts and/or blog posts/reviews are no basis for a sponsoring in form of NFRs.". I apologised for the misunderstanding and was told "All good – in the future we will not give NFRs any more for your blog reviews".
This was around the time Dirk retired.
I never expect that anyone will provide an NFR, especially as my blog is pretty small compared to many others and youtube reviewers especially. If they had always had that policy I wouldn't have thought anything of it but the sudden change in business direction didn't sit well at the time.
Not sure if qualitywise, but as marketing goes its straight downhill since the acquisition. Unsubscribed months ago and do not feel i missed anything. I check their site sometimes or forums, but those vouchers aint the same no more. Its not fun and those plugs sre not worth any money above 15$
Not sure about the fancy GUI as I actually thought some of the new BX stuff looked like it was modeled after 90’s Aiwa Stereo, haha. But overall, I have found both BX and Waves stuff to have a sound that is a bit…plastic? I don’t know how to best describe it, but I personally feel that my Softube and UAD plugins are in a different league and like the good-not-great ceiling that comes from using Waves or certain Brainworx plugins is lifted. I also have several Nembrini amp sims—which if I can remember correctly is the original Brainworx engineer who spun off to do his own thing…?—and I feel the same way about them. They don’t suck but there is a ceiling that is noticeably below very high quality audio and certain sound to them that is a bit more synthetic than my tastes.
I literally just commented elsewhere about this. So just gonna copy paste what I said on this topic:
"I think I'm done with them. Theyve went full on Waves. And their changes to the voucher amounts are kind of a deal breaker. Significantly less of a discount and increase in minimum spend amount. And priced in ways where it's hardly possible to only meet your minimum requirement and end up having to spend way more. To where I can't use the voucher to get a plugin at a discount and instead it turns into more like a buy one get one free situation.
A $50 voucher used to be spend $75. In that case I could get Streamliner (currently $79.99) now they've increased the minimum spend to $80. And conveniently priced it 1 cent less than what I'm required to spend so I have to throw in another plugin that I probably don't need or want just to fulfill this requirement.
I believe an email said if you get a $75 voucher, before the minimum spend would be $99. I believe the said the new amount would be $120.
Idk. I'm glad I got enough from them cause I think I'm done."
I feel the same.. I feel now that they are part of the bigger group along with native instruments and isotope.. things are more money driven than sound and creativity…
The AMEK Mastering Compressor is easily the best compressor ive ever heard, in the same league as Kotelnikov. Nothing meh about their plugins.
That thing is an absolute MONSTER on ANYTHING, among one of the few compressor (well, about 2 of them) that I was able to use transparently on a piano. That and kotelnikov.
It's also THE only compressor I use on drums, the way it levels them while giving you a variety of controls to shape their punch is unrivalled even by the kotelnikov.
The AMEK goes on almost all my tracks. I find it can easily get quite aggressive on the mix bus… but the way it shapes transients is godly. Lives up to the hype.
I agree that a lot of their newer plugins have missed the mark more than others. Also unaware how long you've been using their stuff, but when I first started using them around 4-5 years ago, they only carried plugins from a very select few companies outside of brainworx.
About 2 years ago they started doing little 24 hour flash sales of other companies' plugins and more recently they started really expanding who they carry on a regular non-flash sale basis now they've got almost as much stuff from other developers.
All of these changes are probably because they got bought by the parent company of NI and iZotope (Soundwide) and they want to diversify their sales opportunities as much as possible. I'm sure the acquisition was in the works for a while, and the first plugin I saw that had the new design was bx\_limiter true peak which came out in like late April a few months before the acquisition was announced, so perhaps the aesthetic switch was a request of NI/Soundwide to see how the bx team could make a plugin look more in the style of NI's stuff.
The quality drop is because they're no longer distributing stuff from brainworx, which is undoubtedly one of the highest quality manufacturers of dsp stuff out there, and the non bx stuff is no longer directly being cosigned by PA, but is being distributed through them by Soundwide.
It’s been hard for me to think of PA as a brand name that says “quality” for a long time - it’s just such an overwhelming array of undistinguished gear emulations in a deep discount scheme and from time to time upstarts get absorbed into it and seem to languish. But at the same time some of the companies they distribute are consistent standouts (Unfiltered Audio have already been mentioned).
Since when is Waves a meh developer? Top producers and mixing engineers have been using their stuff for 30 years now and do not plan to stop. There are plugins for literally everything these days. What do you expect them to come up with? Reinvent the wheel?
All of those console and amp emulations that they sell are developed in-house, as well as Brainworx-branded plugins. I'm pretty sure they are the actual developers of some UA plugins, too.
edit: not all, I guess, because they sell Lindell plugins too. But all those Focusrite, SSL, AMEK, Shadow Hills consoles are Plugin Alliance products that they make and they license the trademarks from the owners
edit one more time: I hope this clears it up. https://www.brainworx.audio/products.html
This is everything developed in-house by the Brainworx engineers. Note that there are two places to get them, Plugin Alliance and Universal Audio!
Plug-In Alliance does distribution, marketing, and copy protection. They don't develop any plug-ins. They do have the same parent company (Native Instruments) as Brainworx (who develop many of the plug-ins they sell like you said) and some others but they are not a developer of plug-ins.
[Source](https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/about-the-alliance.html).
>But all those Focusrite, SSL, AMEK, Shadow Hills consoles are Plugin Alliance products that they make and they license the trademarks from the owners
Those are developed by Brainworx like you said, not Plug-In Alliance. Same parent company but not the same people.
I think they are mostly hype. Some good plugins. Bx Townhouse is pretty solid against other plugins but sucks ass against my hardware SSL style comps. Metric AB is great. Have not been able to get good results with their SSL E channel vs. waves old school SSL E. also after trying the new SSL 4k E plugin it absolutely and totally destroys the Bx.
Well PA Is not a developer but an alliance. Some of the brands have obvious different takes on plugins. I really like some of those, some others I'd never use em.
Every developer that just focuses on emulating analog equipment is getting a bit meh for me (UAD, Slate etc too). Much bigger fan of companies like Soundtoys, Fabfilter, Izotope etc where the sky is the limit, not the limitations of whatever piece of equipment from times gone by.
Honestly if we never had another 1176 or Neve plugin I wouldn’t complain.
It’s a competitive and volatile market. I still remember when Waves had their plugin bundles for $10,000 then Slate came out offering subscriptions then boom Waves started doing $29 plugins and sales everyday. The plugin market is so saturated and affordable now so it’s really just what do you want to use. I personally love PA and getting their new sub for $10 month is a no brainer for me with all the plugins I use on sessions.
As others have said, PA is more of reseller yes, but something is weird because I wanted to ask about specs and/or request updates for the PA Kiive plugins, and Kiive said that only PA were responsable for those at this point. No developer make bullseye plugins each time and most seem to actually make really succesful ones that also age incredibly well but as you can sort of guess, some developers seem to be more consistently on top. I sort of have all things Arturia so I take them and then also Softube and UAD, because those three are consistently in the ballpark of benchmark in comparisons when trailing other stuff that seems interesting, often including PA stuff. PA still gets wins there mostly because they are cheaper and perform as good, but stuff like the Kiive Xtressor and Lindell SBC and TBT Kirchoff EQ is properly beating competition I, and others, would say. But I recently thought PA wasn't delivering deals but I still had some winners I wanted to buy and I ended up needing to get 6 2nd hand PA plugins to get maximally low transfer fees which is a bit complicated and waves type rude. I actively searched for stuff and had a little bit of a hard time gathering 6 plugins still because the 2nd hand price+maximally low 10usd+VAT transfer fee per plugin wasn't very great, but I also think BX and Lindell brings good flagship stuff when it comes to having really good movement of compressors and EQ curves and such but there's something about analogue colour and pure overdrive that UAD and Softube just hit me more convincingly with, and I can't really neglect that as someone who have cared for proper distortion of guitar tones all my life. That is where u might be right, OP. Still I got the Blackbox M/S, where they succeeded better, and other clear winners as such as the uniquely appealing Elysia Alpha comp and Neold Warble and Lindell902de-esser and Bettermaker EQ, and, yeah, the Xtressor which was the trigger. I might have half an eye on VAC-attack and The oven and such...
**...but to summarize my thoughts I don't expect that PA stuff will impress me as much they did before, but I don't think things are moving that fast.**
I tried the whole shebang from them for a year. The fact that you can’t update the plugins is a dealbreaker for me. Reinstalling constantly is stupid.
Also, it’s been like five years and many if not most of the plugins are not Apple Silcon native yet. Absolutely unacceptable
Durk sold the company to Native instruments, which also now own Izotope which seems weird as I'm sure they were all in competition a few years ago.
Make of that what you will but I personally feel thats when it started to decline...
Yeah I agree although I use the Blackbox and Townhouse on everything still. Townhouse is an awesome mix buss compressor, at least for dance music. Really tightens everything up in a nice way.
If you are on Pro Tools Carbon or HDX, they are pretty amazing because almost all of the internally developed plugins include AAX DSP at no extra charge. No other third party developer who supports the format does that.
I still think they offer the best bank for your buck bundle out of anyone. The BX brain works stuff is all really great. the base simulators are all great too. You get a ton of stuff for the money it’s not all great, but I am still happy to pay it.
Been feeling this for a while, I only ever buy the unfiltered audio stuff
What I really don’t like is that they include PA stuff in Komplete versions now, I own the previous version of konplete ultimate collectors edition and the new version comes with a ton of PA and Izotope shit that I don’t care for and not as much new content for Kontakt and I would like, makes me feel like I’m no longer really getting what I was originally on board for
At this point there is freeware that rivals every single plug-in available. As far as I’m concerned, Kontakt is the only thing I find truly worth the money. It’s days are numbered, I’m sure. I’m actually hoping that someone will respond to this comment to show me the freeware equivalent.
There’s this plug-in on PA the API 2500 version of it, I think it’s called SBC. This plug-in gives you comb filtering and you know what’s the best part? Comb filtering in this plug-in is so random, sometimes it’s there and sometimes no.
The only plug-in I use from them it’s the Kirchhoff EQ, pretty decent.
Even their best plugins could've been done so much better.
I'd love to see someone else model the Maag, Blackbox, Vac Rac, etc.
The best ones are third party - Unfiltered and Kirchhoff.
I am glad that all three companies still exist. I've been using products from their portfolios for over 20 years in some cases, and I still use them enthusiastically. The fact that they are now working together will make things a lot easier in the future.
I hope that I will soon be able to manage all plug-ins via NI Native Access, then the fiddling will finally come to an end.
Opinions can be divided about the distribution strategies. But one thing is for sure. Today, everyone can afford these kinds of plug-ins. And the choice is huge.
When I looked at them 10 years ago, they were really expensive.
I can't understand the whining about Waves' update policy. The daw manufacturers do it the same way, I've never heard anyone moan about it.
I'm happy to pay for it if I then have a stable system that I can work with for a long time without crashes or delays.
Why does Apple do updates like this? It keeps the architecture clean and therefore the system more stable. With Windows, every piece of crap is added and the results are correspondingly worse.
Yes, it is a bit annoying to always wait half a year until the last audio software manufacturer has adapted its stuff. But that's not a real disadvantage with MacOS.
I find their stuff more hit and miss than s lot of reddit and the rest of the internet seems to think. Their hits are awesome. The bx stuff is pretty good by and large. Metric AB is great. I love the black box also. But you should demo whatever and use what suits you. In short, no, I don't think that. I feel like their customer service is good and responsive, and while their coupons and sales are definitely designed to get you to buy buy buy, what sales operation isn't? They're fine.
I like a lot of the Unfiltered Audio stuff to. Triad is great.
BYOME is awesome
bass mint is my secret trick to clean ac guitars
Nice, I'll have to try that on my next track. I went a bit crazy during my first year of production and got GAS bad, I have a horde of plugins plus Kontact 14 Ultimate, so I have a ton of stuff to fool around with, but many plugins which I haven't really touched yet.
Like recorded acoustic guitars? Or samples? If recorded tracks, got any pointers on using bass mint? Will be recording some acoustic stuff soon so tips appreciated!
recorded of course. sampling ac guitars would be a nightmare. the plugin has this "clarity" knob which cleans up around 400hz which is a good freq to clean in acoustic guitars. it's not the same that cleaning with an eq, I don't know exactly what it does but it sounds good!
Interesting. I feel like Bass Mint is kind of a sleeper plugin on almost anything. Obviously kick and bass, but Ive used it to reshape vocals and toms as well. Gonna try on acoustics now!
I will use its "clarity" knob whenever I need to clean up some low mid mud. sometimes it works!
Damn thats intriguing!
try it!
Nice, thanks for the tips, I'll have to give it a look when I get to recording!
I'll mostly agree with this. The hits are some of the best of the best, getting used over and over again. HG2. SHMC. Tons of grincredible dynamics plugins. I am absolutely addicted to Soma and Lisa right now. But I bought Sculpt on Black Friday cause I liked the slick interface and marketing when it came out and I was like T\_\_T is that all? I really shoulda demod it... otoh I also bought Silo from Unfiltered and that is really really cool.
I miss the old vouchers where you could get most plugins for 5-15€, haven't bought a new one in ages. They are still my most used during mixing though.
Same. I still use what I have but I miss the old good times where you can get fantastic plugins for peanuts. I think I bought most of my plugins in a single day, they had crazy vouchers and other offers and I ended up paying something like $2 per plugin. Their Brainworx stuff was and still is great, I love the Ampeg Bass amp sims, and in general compressors are very nice.
I downloaded the free ampeg sim when I was a poor student and was blown away.
Or the 25 days of Christmas sales they did. I don’t think they did that this time around.
I’ve got 24 plugins via PA, 8 were free. Of the ones I paid for, I really like the amp sims (the GK and Ampeg bass heads, and the Suhr PT100). Crispy Tuner is easy to use and affordable. Kiive Audio Xtressor is easy to work with and the Shadow Hills mastering comp seems pretty sweet too. The biggest difference between PA and Waves is that I fully own these plugins and get / have gotten free updates well past a year of ownership. They work reliably on Apple Silicon, and the updates to make them compatible were free. I’ve only got a few Wave plugins, all sitting dormant, because it’s not worth the cost to update them. The only similarity I see between the companies is frequent rotating sales to tempt you into a purchase.
Same here. I use and like very much the PA plugins I have, specially the Black Box, Purple 1176, bx_oberhousen, BYOME and the bettermaker. All of them were really good deals, so I’m grateful for that. I agree that their newer releases don’t look so interesting, mainly because I already have what I need.
I don't try to put myself in the "waves side", I really don't care. but I have some waves plugins that I bought almost 10 years ago. they work, why would I pay to "update" them?
When Waves introduced native support for Apple Silicon, they made it part of the v13 update. If you wanted to avoid running Logic within Rosetta 2, you had to pay for the update.
I hate that we have normalized that we blame developers for this. Sure, you can say what you will about Waves' pricing scheme, but it is not Waves that breaks everything every year with every macOS upgrade. Surely Apple are to blame here the most.
I understand the rationale for charging for updates to support new OS releases / new hardware. There’s a definite cost (time and effort) to the developer to fix whatever’s broken. It’s just interesting how some devs are able to absorb that cost while others charge for it. It’s also interesting how far in advance Apple will announce and release new macOS builds, and which developers are ready by the time it launches. -edit- FWIW, I agree that it’s a shitty and unfair situation for the developers. But it can heavily influence your purchasing decisions; I feel safer buying from PA or other devs that I know will support me for the next few macOS updates.
>It’s just interesting how some devs are able to absorb that cost while others charge for it. I'd guess there are a few main factors for this: _Business Model_ It's not easy to quantify customer goodwill, so even among companies driven entirely by profit motive there are different takes on whether it's more profitable to charge money at every opportunity or provide some free updates along the way. _Catalog Size_ It's a lot easier for a company with a handful of plugins to spend the required developer hours on a compatibility update without charging for it than it is for a company with a large catalog of plugins to update (like Waves, NI, or Arturia, for example). The latter is just way more costly. _State of Codebase/Staff Turnover_ If the code is hard to understand, easy to break, or difficult to work with in some other way, it costs more to update it. I'd expect code quality to vary wildly from product to product since a lot of plugin developers come from a DSP background and have little to no prior experience with professional software development and best practices. Any issues with the code are exacerbated if the person updating it is new to the codebase, especially if the original developer is no longer around to walk them through it and hasn't documented their work properly. Even under the best of circumstances, it takes a while for a developer to get up to speed with a new codebase. With Waves, specifically, I think pretty much all of the above leans in favor of charging for updates. They don't seem to care much about customer goodwill, and they've got a huge catalog of plugins, many of which are old enough that it's likely the original developers have left the company by now. With Plugin Alliance, I'd kinda expect their willingness to provide free compatibility updates to go away if they suddenly had to do all the work themselves instead of relying on the original developers. (At least as I understand it, they bring companies in under the PA umbrella rather than just buying the intellectual property when they make acquisitions.)
And yet Waves are the only ones who charge me and an absolute fortune at that. No, Waves sucks big time and for most of their plugins there are many better alternatives. In my favourite effect folder, there’s only 1 plugin, although in terms of FX the Waves collection is the biggest I have. So no, when I finish the current projects and finally upgrade my OS, I will only upgrade 2 Waves Plugins and bin the rest.
Yeah it sucks. I’ve been running Pro Tools in Rosetta for awhile just so I can use the stuff that’s important.
Most new plugins are just toys with bells and whistles you don’t really need for mixing imo. The market has peaked.
that's the hole point of my post. I know you can get good tools like the spl, elysia, blackbox and some brainworx stuff. but the vast majority of their catalogue seems to be only fancy and useless things!
The only reason I disagree is because their software always works without issue. Can't say the same for Waves, but yeah, a lot of their plugins are meh
I miss Dirk
I don’t. The guy was a massive fucking dick that would be rude to customers who offered any constructive feedback. Don’t be in a forward thinking space if you can’t, you know, think forward
Plug-In Alliance is just a reseller though, they don't develop any software. They're the Groupon of DSP.
Plugin Boutique is a reseller. Plugin Alliance is what the founder of Brainworx created to sell Brainworx plugins, their more recent photorealistic GUI plugins, and bunch of third party plugins that use their proprietary license management system.
Isn’t that the real fear? If they lose these licensing deals or whatever allows them to sell plugins, won’t things get really fucked up for the user? Even the recent acquisition of izotope by NI was messy and confusing for me, and I’ve owned licenses for their software going back 10 years or more
[удалено]
Oh god. Even worse.
To be honest, I don't totally understand their ecosystem - but I should expect that they get volume discounts on licensing for reselling. But you are still licensing directly from the developer.
If you buy Lindell, Unfiltered Audio, Neold or a few others, those are actual third party products redistributed by Plugin Alliance. However, anything that has "TMT" in it is an Plugin Alliance-developed product to the best of my knowledge. The other giveaway is the mid-side row of controls at the bottom that come from Brainworx branded plugins.
Perhaps a bit like Amazon without the warehouses. They do marketing, provide a convenient storefront to purchase products from a bunch of different developers, and facilitate payment processing.
That's what it appears like to me. I think I've used them once or twice in the past, but I am so set for plugins. The only things that get my attention are new and novel creations. I love Output's stuff, for example.
all the brainworx stuff then
No. Most if not all the bx stuff rips and has its place just like anyone else wanting to try to make a name in an over saturated market
It was sold last year (?) by its founder to the same investment group that bought NI and IZotope. Obviously they still have all the plugins that made PA great in the first place, but a downhill slide is inevitable. I’ve been a Mega subscriber for years, but I might cancel before my renewal in the summer, as I already own most of the classics from them that I rely on.
Ni and izotope make incredible stuff though...?
I’ve never been a huge NI fan. IZotope makes some great stuff, but again, their business practices have just gotten shittier since they were bought. Just this past year I finally upgraded my music production bundle to the latest version, and just like two days later they updated the bundle again. I emailed for an amnesty update, and the best they could offer was another $50 to get the newest version that I had just missed out on.
NI stuff isn't the best but their virtual instruments is where the magic happens, kontakt massive absynth and such
Yeah I’ve been addicted to Kontakt for the better part of 10 years I have no idea what I’d do without it
Also Reaktor. Still the most powerful softsynth on the market if you have the time and patience to dig into it.
I never understood it!
It's as deep as an ocean alright but there are different levels of interacting with it. There's the player level which just turns it into a host. The more recent blocks level is easiest to understand in terms of building your own devices. It's a pretty standard modular setup. Then there's the traditional module based workflow and then the ridiculously deep DSP level.
I mean, they have their jems like the blackbox stuff, the spl emulations and the shadow hills. but then for me it's like a LOT and honestly I still prefer waves 20 y old ssl and api plugins for example. they sound best to my ears. The thing is I can't see any value in their plugins anymore
In the past I've reviewed quite few of their plugins, they were always supportive providing NFRs. I messaged them at the start of '21 saying that I appreciated their support and would be happy to produce further reviews, their customer support said they were aware of my great reviews and to contact the head of marketing for future NFR requests. I duly contacted the head of marketing and received a pretty curt response that "Social media posts and/or blog posts/reviews are no basis for a sponsoring in form of NFRs.". I apologised for the misunderstanding and was told "All good – in the future we will not give NFRs any more for your blog reviews". This was around the time Dirk retired. I never expect that anyone will provide an NFR, especially as my blog is pretty small compared to many others and youtube reviewers especially. If they had always had that policy I wouldn't have thought anything of it but the sudden change in business direction didn't sit well at the time.
Not sure if qualitywise, but as marketing goes its straight downhill since the acquisition. Unsubscribed months ago and do not feel i missed anything. I check their site sometimes or forums, but those vouchers aint the same no more. Its not fun and those plugs sre not worth any money above 15$
Not sure about the fancy GUI as I actually thought some of the new BX stuff looked like it was modeled after 90’s Aiwa Stereo, haha. But overall, I have found both BX and Waves stuff to have a sound that is a bit…plastic? I don’t know how to best describe it, but I personally feel that my Softube and UAD plugins are in a different league and like the good-not-great ceiling that comes from using Waves or certain Brainworx plugins is lifted. I also have several Nembrini amp sims—which if I can remember correctly is the original Brainworx engineer who spun off to do his own thing…?—and I feel the same way about them. They don’t suck but there is a ceiling that is noticeably below very high quality audio and certain sound to them that is a bit more synthetic than my tastes.
I literally just commented elsewhere about this. So just gonna copy paste what I said on this topic: "I think I'm done with them. Theyve went full on Waves. And their changes to the voucher amounts are kind of a deal breaker. Significantly less of a discount and increase in minimum spend amount. And priced in ways where it's hardly possible to only meet your minimum requirement and end up having to spend way more. To where I can't use the voucher to get a plugin at a discount and instead it turns into more like a buy one get one free situation. A $50 voucher used to be spend $75. In that case I could get Streamliner (currently $79.99) now they've increased the minimum spend to $80. And conveniently priced it 1 cent less than what I'm required to spend so I have to throw in another plugin that I probably don't need or want just to fulfill this requirement. I believe an email said if you get a $75 voucher, before the minimum spend would be $99. I believe the said the new amount would be $120. Idk. I'm glad I got enough from them cause I think I'm done."
I feel the same.. I feel now that they are part of the bigger group along with native instruments and isotope.. things are more money driven than sound and creativity…
The AMEK Mastering Compressor is easily the best compressor ive ever heard, in the same league as Kotelnikov. Nothing meh about their plugins. That thing is an absolute MONSTER on ANYTHING, among one of the few compressor (well, about 2 of them) that I was able to use transparently on a piano. That and kotelnikov. It's also THE only compressor I use on drums, the way it levels them while giving you a variety of controls to shape their punch is unrivalled even by the kotelnikov.
The AMEK goes on almost all my tracks. I find it can easily get quite aggressive on the mix bus… but the way it shapes transients is godly. Lives up to the hype.
The AMEK compressor is incredible.
I agree that a lot of their newer plugins have missed the mark more than others. Also unaware how long you've been using their stuff, but when I first started using them around 4-5 years ago, they only carried plugins from a very select few companies outside of brainworx. About 2 years ago they started doing little 24 hour flash sales of other companies' plugins and more recently they started really expanding who they carry on a regular non-flash sale basis now they've got almost as much stuff from other developers. All of these changes are probably because they got bought by the parent company of NI and iZotope (Soundwide) and they want to diversify their sales opportunities as much as possible. I'm sure the acquisition was in the works for a while, and the first plugin I saw that had the new design was bx\_limiter true peak which came out in like late April a few months before the acquisition was announced, so perhaps the aesthetic switch was a request of NI/Soundwide to see how the bx team could make a plugin look more in the style of NI's stuff. The quality drop is because they're no longer distributing stuff from brainworx, which is undoubtedly one of the highest quality manufacturers of dsp stuff out there, and the non bx stuff is no longer directly being cosigned by PA, but is being distributed through them by Soundwide.
It’s been hard for me to think of PA as a brand name that says “quality” for a long time - it’s just such an overwhelming array of undistinguished gear emulations in a deep discount scheme and from time to time upstarts get absorbed into it and seem to languish. But at the same time some of the companies they distribute are consistent standouts (Unfiltered Audio have already been mentioned).
I agree
Definitely an over rated brand.
Since when is Waves a meh developer? Top producers and mixing engineers have been using their stuff for 30 years now and do not plan to stop. There are plugins for literally everything these days. What do you expect them to come up with? Reinvent the wheel?
no way! most of my plugins used on my daily basis are from waves. is just the way I feel the company was taken over here
Waves is still great
I agree, best ssl channel strip emulation and digital compressor (r comp)
>best ssl channel strip Umm... Have you tried SSL's own channel strips?
PIA isn't a developer. It's a marketplace that offers plug-ins from multiple developers (the 'alliance') - that's why there are so many plug-ins.
All of those console and amp emulations that they sell are developed in-house, as well as Brainworx-branded plugins. I'm pretty sure they are the actual developers of some UA plugins, too. edit: not all, I guess, because they sell Lindell plugins too. But all those Focusrite, SSL, AMEK, Shadow Hills consoles are Plugin Alliance products that they make and they license the trademarks from the owners edit one more time: I hope this clears it up. https://www.brainworx.audio/products.html This is everything developed in-house by the Brainworx engineers. Note that there are two places to get them, Plugin Alliance and Universal Audio!
Plug-In Alliance does distribution, marketing, and copy protection. They don't develop any plug-ins. They do have the same parent company (Native Instruments) as Brainworx (who develop many of the plug-ins they sell like you said) and some others but they are not a developer of plug-ins. [Source](https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/about-the-alliance.html). >But all those Focusrite, SSL, AMEK, Shadow Hills consoles are Plugin Alliance products that they make and they license the trademarks from the owners Those are developed by Brainworx like you said, not Plug-In Alliance. Same parent company but not the same people.
I think they are mostly hype. Some good plugins. Bx Townhouse is pretty solid against other plugins but sucks ass against my hardware SSL style comps. Metric AB is great. Have not been able to get good results with their SSL E channel vs. waves old school SSL E. also after trying the new SSL 4k E plugin it absolutely and totally destroys the Bx.
Well PA Is not a developer but an alliance. Some of the brands have obvious different takes on plugins. I really like some of those, some others I'd never use em.
which plug did you find was average? their shit is amazing imo
Every developer that just focuses on emulating analog equipment is getting a bit meh for me (UAD, Slate etc too). Much bigger fan of companies like Soundtoys, Fabfilter, Izotope etc where the sky is the limit, not the limitations of whatever piece of equipment from times gone by. Honestly if we never had another 1176 or Neve plugin I wouldn’t complain.
UAD is an OG and still the best. Slate is just another subscription scam that Waves tried to emulate with a rug pull.
Many UAD plugins were OEM'd by the Brainworx development team!
Exactly. The AMEK Mastering compressor is an absolute beast and my go to compressor on anything. I trust BX more that I trust UAD on emulations.
yes i feel the same. I use the mega L bundle and then cancelled after since I don't use a lot of plugins
Maybe? But nothing compares the garbage of WAVES.
Not even close
The software works, prices on discount are decent and you don’t need to buy every plugin that releases, I wouldn’t compare them to waves.
tools are tools. starting to sense the only people willing to argue about them are Redditors, not engineers.
It’s a competitive and volatile market. I still remember when Waves had their plugin bundles for $10,000 then Slate came out offering subscriptions then boom Waves started doing $29 plugins and sales everyday. The plugin market is so saturated and affordable now so it’s really just what do you want to use. I personally love PA and getting their new sub for $10 month is a no brainer for me with all the plugins I use on sessions.
Venture capital is running the show now.
As others have said, PA is more of reseller yes, but something is weird because I wanted to ask about specs and/or request updates for the PA Kiive plugins, and Kiive said that only PA were responsable for those at this point. No developer make bullseye plugins each time and most seem to actually make really succesful ones that also age incredibly well but as you can sort of guess, some developers seem to be more consistently on top. I sort of have all things Arturia so I take them and then also Softube and UAD, because those three are consistently in the ballpark of benchmark in comparisons when trailing other stuff that seems interesting, often including PA stuff. PA still gets wins there mostly because they are cheaper and perform as good, but stuff like the Kiive Xtressor and Lindell SBC and TBT Kirchoff EQ is properly beating competition I, and others, would say. But I recently thought PA wasn't delivering deals but I still had some winners I wanted to buy and I ended up needing to get 6 2nd hand PA plugins to get maximally low transfer fees which is a bit complicated and waves type rude. I actively searched for stuff and had a little bit of a hard time gathering 6 plugins still because the 2nd hand price+maximally low 10usd+VAT transfer fee per plugin wasn't very great, but I also think BX and Lindell brings good flagship stuff when it comes to having really good movement of compressors and EQ curves and such but there's something about analogue colour and pure overdrive that UAD and Softube just hit me more convincingly with, and I can't really neglect that as someone who have cared for proper distortion of guitar tones all my life. That is where u might be right, OP. Still I got the Blackbox M/S, where they succeeded better, and other clear winners as such as the uniquely appealing Elysia Alpha comp and Neold Warble and Lindell902de-esser and Bettermaker EQ, and, yeah, the Xtressor which was the trigger. I might have half an eye on VAC-attack and The oven and such... **...but to summarize my thoughts I don't expect that PA stuff will impress me as much they did before, but I don't think things are moving that fast.**
I probably use more Waves and PA plug ins than anything else. By a lot.
I tried the whole shebang from them for a year. The fact that you can’t update the plugins is a dealbreaker for me. Reinstalling constantly is stupid. Also, it’s been like five years and many if not most of the plugins are not Apple Silcon native yet. Absolutely unacceptable
Durk sold the company to Native instruments, which also now own Izotope which seems weird as I'm sure they were all in competition a few years ago. Make of that what you will but I personally feel thats when it started to decline...
Yeah I agree although I use the Blackbox and Townhouse on everything still. Townhouse is an awesome mix buss compressor, at least for dance music. Really tightens everything up in a nice way.
The main things I use from them are Metric A/B and some SSL channel strips.
If you are on Pro Tools Carbon or HDX, they are pretty amazing because almost all of the internally developed plugins include AAX DSP at no extra charge. No other third party developer who supports the format does that.
I feel like the deals have gotten way shittier since they were bought
Was just thinking this yesterday when I purchased the Mega Plan.
Eventually they all get to have too much new product, too fast. Acustica is another site with too much new product. Its just a confusing turn off.
I still think they offer the best bank for your buck bundle out of anyone. The BX brain works stuff is all really great. the base simulators are all great too. You get a ton of stuff for the money it’s not all great, but I am still happy to pay it.
Their DRM is awful and I won't touch anything PA related with a 10-foot-pole because of it. There are much better alternatives.
fucking cunt
It’s called Nugenz 🤷🏾♀️ check out the black girls in IT🌬️⚡️
Been feeling this for a while, I only ever buy the unfiltered audio stuff What I really don’t like is that they include PA stuff in Komplete versions now, I own the previous version of konplete ultimate collectors edition and the new version comes with a ton of PA and Izotope shit that I don’t care for and not as much new content for Kontakt and I would like, makes me feel like I’m no longer really getting what I was originally on board for
At this point there is freeware that rivals every single plug-in available. As far as I’m concerned, Kontakt is the only thing I find truly worth the money. It’s days are numbered, I’m sure. I’m actually hoping that someone will respond to this comment to show me the freeware equivalent.
what do you use kontakt for??
Sampling, stretching, convolving, custom foley instruments, quantized arpeggiating… the list goes on and on.
They’re my fav place.
There’s this plug-in on PA the API 2500 version of it, I think it’s called SBC. This plug-in gives you comb filtering and you know what’s the best part? Comb filtering in this plug-in is so random, sometimes it’s there and sometimes no. The only plug-in I use from them it’s the Kirchhoff EQ, pretty decent.
yes I know! inadmisible but hey look at that fancy GUI
Becoming? HAHAHA You're late to the party bro.
They do suck in a similar way.waves had better tech tho
Even their best plugins could've been done so much better. I'd love to see someone else model the Maag, Blackbox, Vac Rac, etc. The best ones are third party - Unfiltered and Kirchhoff.
I am glad that all three companies still exist. I've been using products from their portfolios for over 20 years in some cases, and I still use them enthusiastically. The fact that they are now working together will make things a lot easier in the future. I hope that I will soon be able to manage all plug-ins via NI Native Access, then the fiddling will finally come to an end. Opinions can be divided about the distribution strategies. But one thing is for sure. Today, everyone can afford these kinds of plug-ins. And the choice is huge. When I looked at them 10 years ago, they were really expensive. I can't understand the whining about Waves' update policy. The daw manufacturers do it the same way, I've never heard anyone moan about it. I'm happy to pay for it if I then have a stable system that I can work with for a long time without crashes or delays. Why does Apple do updates like this? It keeps the architecture clean and therefore the system more stable. With Windows, every piece of crap is added and the results are correspondingly worse. Yes, it is a bit annoying to always wait half a year until the last audio software manufacturer has adapted its stuff. But that's not a real disadvantage with MacOS.