I am currently working with a friend on a eurorack module that we’re considering porting to VCV. We’ve both been working on finishing our doctorates, so things have been a bit slow. Regardless, we’re getting to the stage where we are looking to raise some capital to move from the hand-soldered prototypes on our desk to something closer to the final, manufactured version. As I mentioned, we are considering VCV, both because it would be useful (I use VCV in addition my eurorack, and would like to have this module) and because it’s a low cost way to introduce our ideas to the community, and get feedback for the UI before we settle on a fixed design. With that, we had some questions that might push us one way or another, or, at the very least provide me with some ammunition to convince my friend, who is doing the code on this project, that it’s worth it to port the project:
Assuming that the project is strong enough to become popular in the community, how much does the average module raise, even a broad range would be helpful to me. Is this something where you have to build a brand over time, or can interesting modules rise to the top on there own?
For those who have developed a module in euro and VCV, how did you handle that? Was it VCV first, then euro, or the other way around?
Has anyone here created a module that was popular enough that you decided to move the project over to euro?
Are there any benefits to bringing a project over to VCV that I might not have thought of?
What are some of the challenges of importing a project from an ARM-based system to VCV. I know that audible instruments (and others) are excellent ports of Mutable’s ARM based modules, but I don’t know the level of difficulty involved.
Is it common to receive direct user feedback on VCV plugins?
Does anyone know if it’s possible to provide licenses to modules outside of the VCV ecosystem. For example, if we use kickstarter for our hardware module, would it be possible to include a license to the VCV version?
Thank you to whoever takes the time to read and answer part of this. I would really like to port this module to VCV and any information I can have that would make this possible would be greatly appreciated.
I would say if the module is interesting enough it will get used even if it’s a newer module to the collection. There is news of the rack that alerts anyone interested of new developers and new modules, as well as a number of YouTubers who do module highlights - esp. Omri Cohen
Leonardo Laguna Ruiz has created modules under the Vult brand and some are being released as hardware now.
I think the number of eyes on each module and the speed at which this happens is a significant advantage. We have seen Starling and Erica in recent months join the VCV module fold and I think there will be more coming down the line, the size of the user group would, I’m guessing, provide an order of magnitude improvement on the speed at which bugs are found and usability problems are identified, with any user feedback/ideas being just a huge bonus on top of these gains.
As a user and not a module creator I can virtually guarantee that if your modules get used you will have significant user feedback, having done this many times myself.
x 4 As a prototyping environment to help tune a module’s panel and functionality, I think VCV is a no-brainer, and I am totally convinced your real module will be better after having tuned it in VCV. I have never made any real modules, but just the amount of design iterations that happened on my VCV Rack sequencers make it such that I really think you should give it a shot in VCV, I know you will not regret it.
x 6 Yes, and even more so when you are responsive to the feedback; it is actually incredible to see what good insights people here will give you. Speaking by experience… if the list was small, I would take this space to personally thank everyone that helped by providing feedback on my modules.
Good luck and welcome to the group!
Marc Boulé
x Impromptu Modular
x Geodesics (with Pyer)
x ???
A well-designed plugin returns a decent salary for the time spent on it, but nobody’s getting rich on Rack plugins (including me), just like nobody’s getting rich on Eurorack modules. A successful plugin also needs good marketing (such as blogs/articles/magazines), just like a successful Eurorack brand.
Most modules available as both Eurorack and VCV Rack began with Eurorack, except for Starling Via, which was released simultaneously, and Vult, which was developed for VCV Rack first.
Vult
You’ve mentioned that VCV Rack is a good testing and trial platform for yourself and your users, and that sounds about right. Befaco has even found its open-source VCV port to noticibly increase sales and brand awareness.
If your DSP code is sufficiently abstracted away from STM32, ATMega, Arduino, etc headers, porting to VCV Rack is mostly trivial.
Yes.
If you distribute your plugin through the VCV Library/Store, you are allowed to add licenses using the VCV Developer Dashboard, which you get access to after signing the VCV Store agreement.
yes! my current employer was so scared I was abandoning the ship because I was successful in creating useless VCV RACK modules that he proposed me an increase of 25% of the salary that I didn’t accept: I want a 42% more!
Disse il pappice alla noce, "ramm’ tiemp’ cà t’ sp’rtus’ "
Wow, thank you so much for all of that information. I had a suspicion that this was the case, but it’s great to have that confirmed. On an unrelated note, I’m sorry to have missed your talk at Stanford a week or so ago (I only found out about it the day of), I am preparing to include VCV Rack in a course I am teaching in the Fall at UCSC. It is a wonderful way to learn synthesis.
They don’t. Users tend to tick “add” to all the free modules upon installing the program and rarely re-visit the plugin screen. There is no visibility boosting like there is in an app store.
I tracked SkJack and Skylights popularity with a Kibitzr job for some months. I used two methods:
Both total popularity was counted, but then the table was sorted by this to find ranks.
I then looked at both rank and total popularity.
Neither plugin ever gained in rank over that period of time. I don’t recall others changing rank very much either (though I did not look as closely to them.) Edge did slip above SkJack and remained sandwiched between the two for some weeks.
The total number of installs for every module trends upward but their relative rank rarely changes.
Vult did.
Any assembly code you used has to be rewritten. Any chip specific optimizations go out the window. You’d have to re-optimize for intel/amd chips instead. And any analogue components need to be modelled since you obviously won’t have them anymore.
Thank you for the in-depth response. I think my use of the word “raise” introduced some unintended ambiguity. By raise, I meant, to put it bluntly, “how much money does the average module make?” I realize that my use of the phrase “rise to the top” afterword made that horribly unclear. My apologies. I’m just trying to get an idea if it is possible to raise money for prototyping hardware from VCV.
