I wonder what RE developers think of the VST arrival in R9.5

[CharlyCharlzz]

In my personal opinion and since I am not a developer and not restricted by any NDA's from SDK's or Beta's I can always give my take on that to them .
(also I don't think speaking of a feature in a commercial aspect break any nda's anyway)

I think it is a Great thing for Users so by pure logical thinkings it will make new users come and this will shine on the Format , this may push these new users to buy RE's at some point .
On the other end some developers are not going to take time to learn to make RE's anymore and the RE shop will see less new names .
this make me conclude that Brands of RE's that have success now will have more clients in the future but also that there is a chance that Big Vst Brands don't take the Jump .

we will see , but I wonder what the Developers think , one thing is for sure and that is that reason will have a huge massive boost in sales !
other daws will have to work a lot to deal upgrades for a bit , a Reason upgrade is pretty cheap and the full version is at a Good Price .
Maybe it's wise to buy a full version now for the one's who have not or are on essential because maybe the price of full will go up a bit , who knows ...

[avasopht]

There is still value in creating RE's. For a start you get a first class rack citizen, secondly you can take advantage of the 3D and 2D GUI tools that does a lot of heavy lifting, and thirdly you can go ape on CV and Audio i/o on an instrument, which you can't do with VSTs.

So if the SDK limitations don't slow you down then RE's has a lot going for it. The shop, the management of licenses and installations and the piracy protection.

[CharlyCharlzz]

that is very true , some will take the easy road and do only vst's when maybe the one's trying to make something more performance will maybe try to do a RE .

[pongasoft]

I am very surprised that Propellerhead decided to "cave in" and implement VST support in Reason. It's very obvious that one of the main objective of RE was to build a shop model (like Apple, etc...) where they control everything and get a (significant) cut along the way. By allowing VST plugins, they essentially allow to bypass this entire path.

From a pure developer perspective, I do not know how to implement a VST plugin and I am sure it will be harder to implement some features that way. But the possibility of being more "free" is tremendous. Developing an RE comes with a lot of constraints and rely entirely on the SDK and the pace at which Propellerhead add features to it (which has been historically very slow). The workflow associated to developing a RE (development, test, release, support, shop page, etc...) can be excruciatingly painful and slow. For example, at this time, if your RE is over 200mb in size, good luck... Being able to develop a VST plugin allow you to bypass the development and store workflows and remove a lot of constraints, so in the end you don't have to depend on anybody else (summer vacation, etc...) and can be more in charge of your own destiny (including pricing, open source, etc...).

I think Propellerhead will have to up their game significantly if they want to keep RE development attractive to developers in the future. And this means improving the workflows with more automation, having more resources to handle issues and questions (a turn around of more than a week to approve a new shop page is not attractive...) and improve the SDK at a faster pace.

Now I need to look into VST development

Yan

[avasopht]

From a pure developer perspective, I do not know how to implement a VST plugin and I am sure it will be harder to implement some features that way. But the possibility of being more "free" is tremendous. Developing an RE comes with a lot of constraints and rely entirely on the SDK and the pace at which Propellerhead add features to it (which has been historically very slow). The workflow associated to developing a RE (development, test, release, support, shop page, etc...) can be excruciatingly painful and slow. For example, at this time, if your RE is over 200mb in size, good luck... Being able to develop a VST plugin allow you to bypass the development and store workflows and remove a lot of constraints, so in the end you don't have to depend on anybody else (summer vacation, etc...) and can be more in charge of your own destiny (including pricing, open source, etc...).

For VST you can either look towards JUCE or WDL-OL (by Reaper developers).

I think Propellerhead went through far too much trouble to create a strong format to suggest it was just about making money. If that was the case they could have just created a thin format with much less effort. RE's on the other hand requires a lot of careful attention to design, testing and developing the format. You just wouldn't do that if all you wanted was control over sales and then add in VST support afterwards.

[JiggeryPokery]

By allowing VST plugins, they essentially allow to bypass this entire path.

Not necessarily. Steve Duda already hinted at why. One or two people took that to mean he was doing an RE version of Serum when he quite specifically said no such thing. Obviously if I mention it here I'd get a written warning for breaking the NDA, but given he appears in the official 9.5 announcement video, he's got a different NDA to the rest of us. One that doesn't seem to apply...

[pongasoft]

For VST you can either look towards JUCE or WDL-OL (by Reaper developers).

Thanks I will look into it.

You just wouldn't do that if all you wanted was control over sales and then add in VST support afterwards.

This is just my opinion obviously, but I believe they had no intention to ever add VST support afterwards when they worked on the shop model since they knew that it had the potential of killing the shop (since you bypass it entirely). I think REs/the shop may not be the success that they were expecting and as a result have decided to go a different route and drive Reason sales massively up by allowing VST plugins (note that Props never release any stats, even to developers... so hard to know). From my own experience, my FREE rack extensions that are in the shops have not generated any kind of numbers that would allow an engineer/company to make any money off it if they were paid extensions (but maybe it is just me of course).

Again this is just my opinion/theory

Yan

[pongasoft]

By allowing VST plugins, they essentially allow to bypass this entire path.

Not necessarily. Steve Duda already hinted at why. One or two people took that to mean he was doing an RE version of Serum when he quite specifically said no such thing. Obviously if I mention it here I'd get a written warning for breaking the NDA, but given he appears in the official 9.5 announcement video, he's got a different NDA to the rest of us. One that doesn't seem to apply...

I am not sure what you are referring to but my point is that any developer can now write a VST plugin using any toolchain, framework, etc... they want. They can host their VST plugin on their own website and distribute it/market it that way. They can write their own documentation without relying on approval from Propellerhead. Essentially you just work on a plugin that works on any DAW, and it just happens that Reason is now one of them... no shop, no NDA with Propellerhead, no constraints.

Of course you can "port" your plugin to the RE platform if you want tighter integration, but you don't have to anymore

Yan

[theshoemaker]

By allowing VST plugins, they essentially allow to bypass this entire path.

Not necessarily. Steve Duda already hinted at why. One or two people took that to mean he was doing an RE version of Serum when he quite specifically said no such thing. Obviously if I mention it here I'd get a written warning for breaking the NDA, but given he appears in the official 9.5 announcement video, he's got a different NDA to the rest of us. One that doesn't seem to apply...

I am not sure what you are referring to but my point is that any developer can now write a VST plugin using any toolchain, framework, etc... they want. They can host their VST plugin on their own website and distribute it/market it that way. They can write their own documentation without relying on approval from Propellerhead. Essentially you just work on a plugin that works on any DAW, and it just happens that Reason is now one of them... no shop, no NDA with Propellerhead, no constraints.

Of course you can "port" your plugin to the RE platform if you want tighter integration, but you don't have to anymore

Yan

I think some might miss the point. There are a lot of the customers, that just don't want another Synth with presets, but have something modular to play with. Some might not give your product a shot if not implemented as rack. If your product is unique and outstanding, they will buy it anyway. There are some tools from Kontakt like Reaktor 6 which I'm going to use ... with PSQ , because I love this modular stuff.

[RequiemMachine]

By allowing VST plugins, they essentially allow to bypass this entire path.

Not necessarily. Steve Duda already hinted at why. One or two people took that to mean he was doing an RE version of Serum when he quite specifically said no such thing. Obviously if I mention it here I'd get a written warning for breaking the NDA, but given he appears in the official 9.5 announcement video, he's got a different NDA to the rest of us. One that doesn't seem to apply...

I am not sure what you are referring to but my point is that any developer can now write a VST plugin using any toolchain, framework, etc... they want. They can host their VST plugin on their own website and distribute it/market it that way. They can write their own documentation without relying on approval from Propellerhead. Essentially you just work on a plugin that works on any DAW, and it just happens that Reason is now one of them... no shop, no NDA with Propellerhead, no constraints.

Of course you can "port" your plugin to the RE platform if you want tighter integration, but you don't have to anymore

Yan

This is my biggest issue with a lot of the VST talk around here. People saying devs can bow make VSTs. If they wanted to make VSTs they would have. Its not just now magically an option because they're going to be available in Reason. Those that make REs are making them because they want to. Its been an option for them longer than REs have existed.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[CharlyCharlzz]

Well a Mr Nobody who does a VST and do not invest in a Promo , does not have beta testors and is outside of the RE'shop will have a hard time making his vst famous and even distribute a small amount of plugs unless he does that uner another Big Flag .

Small devs will still have more success in the RE World I guess unless there vst is that much of a fantastic crazy thing that get anybody curious imho.
I know that at least 3 Brands of VST's did not even want to try to make any RE's until the day VST are working , strange but .... fact's.
I am pretty sure RE's are not Dead , some vst devs will only start to make RE's now , others will never do one again and some will do both when so will only use that format to have more money made and not being cracked .

[ReasonUser]

Not necessarily. Steve Duda already hinted at why. One or two people took that to mean he was doing an RE version of Serum when he quite specifically said no such thing. Obviously if I mention it here I'd get a written warning for breaking the NDA, but given he appears in the official 9.5 announcement video, he's got a different NDA to the rest of us. One that doesn't seem to apply...

With the "VST Wrapper" already working, I guess this means the PropShop will be selling VSTs now too.
Maybe with the ability to design your rack appearance if the developer so chooses.