SSL and Harrison consoles

[funkmuscle]

Yes Ben just emailed me back and he said that the AVA plugins were actually not just made for Harrison consoles DAWs But was more to get the pro tools users and stuff like that. He said keep in mind that everything is only a few months old and they are pushing for us so he's asking us to just have patience and stay positive because he said they have no plans on dumping Linux.

[glowrak guy]

OK, so I'm getting full-on angry now. (don't worry, it will pass ). The latest news from SSL is that they want existing Harrison AVA users to 'upgrade' to iLok.

https://support.solidstatelogic.com/hc/ ... ugin-users

Fuck you SSL. Fuck right off, and when you're finished fucking off, fuck off some more.

In my best Archie Bunker voice, 'Stifle yourself, Edith!'

(Yeah, they'll spend a fortune on developing ilok, and fending off those who it has failed,
instead of tracking down and prosecuting software pirates.
May they eat their own laundry, and whatever it is that the dog sniffs...)

[glowrak guy]

Oh yes but I'd take DrumGizmo over anything..

Well, with a recomendation like that, and despite my aversion to potential failure,
I sacrificed a couple of hours to install and come to grips with using DrumGizmo lv2 in Reaper.
I figured out the basics by some lucky guesses, and it' nothing like using Hydrogen.
I was able to load various midi files from NI's Battery 4, DrumLab, and even some I've saved in Hydrogen,
and record some fun multi-instance beats.
The only dongle around, is that annoying pear-shaped one between my ears
Sleep deprivation? It's all your fault.
Cheers

[glowrak guy]

Maybe they hope this purchase will help enable using 'embedded linux' in future hardware consoles? I found a reddit topic that mentions a few console makers that use it under the hood. https://www.reddit.com/r/livesound/comm ... g_systems/

I can hear it now...'Good morning, Paul. Would you please accompany our security team to the coding dungeon?
Please bring your laptop. Won't need your phone, not much internet down there.'

[funkmuscle]

Funny as you said that though you're on to something. Almost every flat screen TV in fact I think all of them run on Linux.

The problem is us desktop users. Last time I was a distro watch I think we had over a hundred different versions of Linux so yes I can see the commercial company saying you know what man we want to test the waters here but where do we start?

Also when you hear that it's supports Linux, everybody on the outside world think it must be Ubuntu. It's my most hated distro.

When that first came out I tried it and I think it was the quickest destroy I ever put on and uninstalled. I just couldn't do anything and I felt like my freedom taken away from me.

So I went right back to my favorite of all times which is Arch. Always use that but I had a box that I would test all the other distros on and to me again it's my personal opinion nothing compares.

So if we can all settle for one distro for audio maybe we may get those commercial guys looking at us. I know some of the open source guys if they read this they get all upset but some of us are starting to do this seriously now and if any of the devs decide that I've had enough or even worse passes away and no one picks up where they left off as I said earlier or fork their plugins or whatever, that's a whole bunch of project sessions that may not work once the distro has updated and all the GTK and python and all the other different things that all the devs use to make plugins progress, eventually just like Calf, it won't work. Nothing against the other DAWs here that it runs on but the two real big professional DAWs we have happens to be a Reaper and Ardour That's either open source or reasonably priced.

A while back I was thinking what if something and I am praying and believing that nothing like this will happen but this is life but if something happened to tramp or Vladimir or any of the other developers, and nobody picked up where they left off, we're screwed so that's why I started to purchase commercial stuff. That's why I also or one of the reasons why I like hardware for my amplifiers.

But you know what even though SSL doesn't look our way, is there another big one out there API or something like that or Neve?

after these companies see what happened with Harrison how much success they had with our community here that may bring some of them in.
LSP had a very good idea on how the market their plugins to Windows.Unfa I had a video talking about it and they were figuring that if you got the money to buy a support Microsoft then you should be able to buy the plugins. But then they said if you're like a lot of us who needs to wait for stuff to go on sale before you can buy it and that's like when it's like 90% off, they can still build it from source.

Maybe all the devs that start porting to Windows and then eventually I've seen the majority of them just vanish because I think they bit off more than they could chew I could be wrong but when it's a one-man act and you're trying to support all the distros you're going to burn out especially if you got a full-time job but if all the devs can set it up where they support the other platforms but charge for it, that can help them but then again here I go hijacking my own thread.

The bottom line is that the commercial companies need to realize that Linux is a platform worth investing in and making plugins available for us.

They can even set it up in a way that of Vladimir and those guys are doing by saying if you can't afford it maybe just put a small donation and build it from source. I know I'm dreaming here because people don't get into business to help people they get in to get their asses rich and that messes with the bottom line.

[tavasti]

A while back I was thinking what if something and I am praying and believing that nothing like this will happen but this is life but if something happened to tramp or Vladimir or any of the other developers, and nobody picked up where they left off, we're screwed so that's why I started to purchase commercial stuff. That's why I also or one of the reasons why I like hardware for my amplifiers.

I think nothing if future proof. Opensource maintainer goes away, libraries change and that old goldie won't build anymore. And getting commercial isn't really much more helpfull, check viewtopic.php?t=25561 life with paid linux-native plugins. And hardware, hardware fades away, stops working. So make your music and render it to audio files, and they are available, but don't be too sure that you can go back and edit it again.

And even if softwares still work, things can change. I have old projects in Ardour and Mixbus. Projects open, but for example some zynaddsubfx tracks are silent. Plugin loads, but settings aren't loading. Need to select preset again, and guess what were changes I made to preset. And geonkick has changed so much that drums I made 3 years ago don't load. Sure I could start hacking with ardour file format which is xml and check if plugin settings were human readable, but haven't really been that strongly trusting my old selection, easier to make desicions again.

I slightly suspect, that using windows vst plugins (ones that don't need authorization/registration) might be the most future proof thing, as long as wine and yabridge are there.

[merlyn]

Did you know that Yamaha have their own Linux distribution? MontaVista Linux :

https://download.yamaha.com/sourcecodes/synth/

It's what a Yamaha Motif runs on. This makes absolutely no difference to us using desktop Linux unfortunately. Just because Yamaha have found that Linux is good for the internals of a synth does not mean that they are in any way sympathetic to supporting Linux users.

The other platforms are ideally suited to selling stuff to mostly clueless consumers. Paul Davis has said elsewhere that technically it's fairly trivial to build a Linux version of a plugin. In Juce, as far as I know, it's simply a tick box. It's not technical reasons that stop plugin manufacturers from producing Linux versions of plugins.

Back on topic I notice that there is an option at the very bottom of the SSL page to download DrumFlow as a .tar.bz. It may be possible to use the old style, Linux friendly text file licensing by getting a license key from Harrison. It would be $34 for DrumFlow, as you can forget SSL Drumstrip, as that is well iLoked up. I don't actually accept that iLok reduces piracy, as it can be cracked. It's a user's choice ultimately whether to pirate or not to pirate.

Another annoying thing about commercial plugins is the 'download manager'. There may be marketing justifications for why this is a good idea, but as you may have guessed, they're bullshit. A 'download manager' is simply a way to get buy buttons onto your machine.

[matyas]

Yeah, embedded Linux and desktop Linux are two different things as far as users are concerned. The new Ableton push runs Linux, and can load Live sets in standalone mode, which means that Ableton must have a build of Live that runs on Linux, but they're not releasing it to end users anytime soon.

FWIW, I have gotten iLok to work under Wine. It was a gigantic pain and I don't recommend it. I just happened to have some Flux plugins that I like very much and wanted to use, so it was worth it to me. But as with pretty much everything Wine, it involved lots of digging around with different dlls and lots of trial and error, and I think some Wine update broke something and I had to start over.

[glowrak guy]

Another annoying thing about commercial plugins is the 'download manager'. There may be marketing justifications for why this is a good idea, but as you may have guessed, they're bullshit. A 'download manager' is simply a way to get buy buttons onto your machine.

From my time at KVR, I saw users would buy huge collections from Native Instruments, and IK Multimedia, then rant and rave about the lack of an automated installation procedure.* Eventually, the companies were bullied into compliance, creating cumbersome imperfect manager tools that in many cases, actually could perform a massive installation and registration in one (long) session. For example, my Komplete purchase from NI came on a usb hard-drive, and all the items share the same authorization ID. If you are a lucky one, it is pretty cool to see things appear in the authorized panel one by one as Native Access manager grinds through the install drive, or the items you dragged out of it.

While as you mentioned, assuaging their cyber-bruises by getting purchase hooks and relentless add-campaigns in every gaping jaw that took their bait. * In my case, I only installed what I initially needed or wanted, done manually thru wine, and then go back and check out a product if someone credible raves about it's greatness.
I wouldn't mind finding a good Buy on a Motif of some sort, especially if it has such a cool OS under the hood
Cheers

[merlyn]

... From my time at KVR, I saw users would buy huge collections from Native Instruments, and IK Multimedia, then rant and rave about the lack of an automated installation procedure.* Eventually, the companies were bullied into compliance, creating cumbersome imperfect manager tools that in many cases, actually could perform a massive installation and registration in one (long) session. ...
Cheers

Really? That came from users? Specifically, in this case, to buy SSL plugins installing SSL's download manager is required. SSL also want users to subscribe, in line with the rest of the software industry. Subscription means a company can predict its income, good for shareholders, blah, blah ...

It means someone with a taste for plugins is going to end up with a download manager from every plugin producer. Another great idea from the people that brought us the BSOD. Do u-He have a download manager?

[d.healey]

Really? That came from users?

I implemented a download manager in my app/plugin because users found the manual process of downloading files and using a built in automated installer too complicated. Mine is a little different as it doesn't require a separate downloader/manager app, it's all built in to the instrument player. It's also optional, the manual download method can still be used, but it seems 99% of users are using it, including me because it's really convenient And of course it's free software.

[glowrak guy]

Do u-He have a download manager?

No they don't, and they don't have regular sale pricing, opting instead for adding value by many substantial free updates,
and industry leading quality. They are rumoured to have an excellent means of thwarting piracy, but that's internal code,
rather than an external app. I often suggest they license their system, but then the control-freak competition would
miss out on their shopping hooks. D-Healy provides an option, which big companies also could do, but until the
industry cracks down on piracy, at the high end of the price tiers, things will likely get worse before they get better.
IK's manager worked for me recently, with wine-staging 8.16, reaper 6.82, in AVLinux. Their free CS product versions
may include their Custom Shop tool be online.
Cheers

[omer666]

I don't know if it's related, but from now on all XT plugins are priced the same at 105,99€... which is quite ludicrous when you come to think of it.
A simple Micro Glide is a hundred bucks, same price as their brand new Console Compressor

[tavasti]

Are they still running discounts all the time?

[GMaq]

Paul Davis has said elsewhere that technically it's fairly trivial to build a Linux version of a plugin. In Juce, as far as I know, it's simply a tick box. It's not technical reasons that stop plugin manufacturers from producing Linux versions of plugins.

No.. it's things like libc6 compatibility that many cross-platform Plugin developers don't even know they need to watch for.. I've been emailing with both Auburn Sounds and Audio Damage this week because Plugins I purchased for Linux didn't run and both developers did not have warm and fuzzy things to say about libc6, it's a big problem in porting Plugins to Linux especially for those who want to use mature stable platforms.