Are devs leaving? (minor thread broken out from other one)

I would be quite happy to have it on the other side of the fence. :bird:

I couldnt add your modules yet due to a license conflict between BSD-4 and GPLv3.

Would you mind opening tickets/issues on your gitlab repository please? We can then continue the conversation there. Thanks

That’s a shame, but if you feel that way then fair enough.

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This makes me sad to hear. I really enjoy your modules and was fine with the open-sourcing plan. I hope after awhile we can share space here in the community with you again!

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Your Substation project was the most impressive “all round” project I have ever seen in Rack. By “all round” I don’t just mean the modules themselves, which were excellent, but the approach, the philosophy, the design, the marketing, the website, the manual, the way you priced them, the promise to release the source code after a year which you did… all of it was just absolutely top notch.

I don’t really understand why you wouldn’t feel welcome here as I’m sure most Rack users feel similarly about what you managed to achieve. (I’m not prying or wanting you to explain). I can only imagine it has something to do with the negative direct communications you received from a vocal minority after releasing the source code. I’m truly sorry you had to deal with that as there was nothing wrong with what you did imo - quite the contrary. You were open and honest about everything from the start and did exactly what you said you would. Nothing but respect here.

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Well said. I was wanting to say something similar, but was struggling with the words.

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Sorry to hear. Your plugins are 1st class and thanks again for open-sourcing them.

Definitely work through that burn-out first, tyhings will look better once through the slump.

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I’m not currently developing for VCV at the moment. But I hope that I will again at some point.

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I think you have a great product with Substation, I really love using it. I do think porting it to AU/VST/VST3 is a very smart move. This is your product, your baby. Do whatever you want, enjoy freedom. Regarding a career, think about what you have (substation), and when designing a port, think about how it can help you build something that may get you out of your current situation. I think it has the potential, and if you already have 4 additional modules, save them for a plugin port. Dont release them on VCV. I wouldnt. I would save them and launch my own plugin.

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I personally prefer to have a clear distinction on what’s open source, what’s free and what’s paid.

I do think that changing the “rules of the game” does not feel good for the users. Like suddenly open-sourcing (or making free) a paid plugin. Specially if the paid cost was significant (the exact amount varies from person to person).

We have had a few cases of open source where the “rules” have been made clear from the beginning. I remember a developer (you could help me with the name) that said that he/she was going to make a module, and open the code once a certain amount of donations was reached.

The second case I remember was the Audible Instruments Preview. Where you paid to have early access to the module, knowing that the code was going to be open after some months.

Not specifically when purchasing VCV stuff, but it has happened to me a few times that I purchase gear or software and some days/weeks after the manufacturer drops a big discount. That makes me upset my myself for not waiting a little bit.

If you have been here long enough, you may remember that I used to have a “donations” button for the Vult modules. Back then I received very disproportionate donations ranging from $0.001 to $100. The tiny donations are completely useless since PayPal takes all the money. The large donations made me feel uncomfortable. That why I decided to go with the paid modules route. That way there is a fixed donation amount. If you cannot afford it, you can still enjoy all the free modules. If you can donate, you get back a set of my most complex modules.

The sad part of the paid plugins is that they have a 0.1% of the users of free modules.

In summary, I think that the rules set by VCV are reasonable. They do not let you do whatever you want but they are easy for the end user.

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That’s can’t be right, surely? So if there were 10,000 Vult users only 10 of them bought the premium plugins?

I feel like this is a misleading statistic though. It would include all the people who installed Rack to give it a try, subscribed to Vult Free but then gave up. It would be interesting to see what the ratio is like for people who have been using Rack for more than a couple of months.

I do not have neither exact or updated numbers. I was thinking on the number of VCV Rack users compared to the people that has purchased a Vult paid module. VCV Rack has a massive number of users. If the real number is 1% then 99 out of 100 persons do not have the “pleasure” of using my paid modules.

The point here is not how little or how much a paid plugin sells. It’s more about how paid plugins have less traction. The number of times I see one of my paid modules displayed on a video is small compared to the free modules. Many users actively avoid paid modules because the patches cannot be shared with all the users. Thankfully for me, there are in the community power users that create really cool things using some of my paid modules.

Regarding my paid modules, I thought about making Vult Opulus part of one of my paid packages because I spent many hours developing it (making the prototype boards, analyzing it, improving it, etc). But if it would be a paid product, I would be restricting the use of Opulus and I really want people to try it. But thanks to the good reception of the VCV Drums I got a very decent payment and decided to make both Opulus and Jorus free.

Big thanks to all of you who have purchased my plugins. When I started receiving money, I thought about buying some expensive synth once I had enough contributions. But what really ended up happening is that I’m using that money to build the hardware and prototypes I’m interested to create. That is more rewarding to me than going to a store and picking the most expensive gear. With that money I finance my research and that results in more modules.

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I do notice this tendency to pick a free module over a commercial one for the reason you mentioned. Even if I don’t plan on sharing it in the future. Another personal reason might be that limiting myself to using only free modules force me the be more creative. This is also true for the Host and Host FX module. I really like my Valhalla delay and reverb, but in 95% percent of my noodlings I’ll use Plateau and Chronoblob.

I don’t want to hijack this awesome thread, but a question that I have been asking myself ever since I started VCV some months ago is:

Why are there so few established commercial and open source VST developers coming to VCV?

I know we have Cytomic, Surge, Chow DSP, etc. But given the openness of VCV and pull of affordable modular in the audio world on one side and the vast number of VST’s out there on the other, it is a surprisingly low number in my estimation.

I’m probably biased and irrationally prefer an integrated VCV module on my screen with lights and cables over Host FX and a modal window. But still, why so few?

Your commercial Vult modules automatically swap out for the free version if the user opening the patch only has the free version don’t they? I know we do the same with ShapeMaster.

That is a really good question!

Pyer and I are currently working on a compete redesign for the Surge XT Rack release and we have taken the opportunity to rethink what it means when “VST meets Rack”. What’s different about porting a VST to Rack compared to a hardware module? How can we combine these two different technologies and ways of working to offer users the best of both worlds? Can you have an interface that is intuitive and familiar to users of both?

We’re really excited about how the project is progressing and hope in some ways it could form something of a template for VST developers generally, who might see what we’ve done with Surge and think “Oh… I see how my VST could work in Rack now.” It remains to be seen whether that will happen of course but would be great if it did.

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only really good things can come from the collab of the @steve and the @pyer . Excited for what may come :slight_smile:

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Me too!!! It was a real eye-opener seing that demo video of Surge XT and now I can’t wait to have all that glory in Rack. Thanks a million for your efforts, to you and Pyer :two_hearts:

I would suspect it is because VCV is a smaller userbase compared to all DAWs combined. Also on price point commercial VCV plugins also sell for a lot less than most commercial VSTs.

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This is true - but many VST are based on JUCE these days which is C++ codebase the same as Rack iirc (not really my area!). So porting those kind of VSTs to Rack is fairly straightforward (at least the DSP part) and offers another commercial outlet for existing code with relatively little time/effort.

The price difference is another matter… its hard to know to what extend a cheaper Rack version of a plugin would directly poach sales from the more expensive VST version.

I think because development is maybe slow? I have no idea really, just a guess. No Arm support, no AU, no VST3. I also think Cardinal has maybe thrown a little monkey wrench as well since its free (missing lots of third party stuff), and it supports arm, au and vst3.

If I am a developer, I would think that I would like the widest audience as possible. If I see only VST2 available, and vst2 is already wiped out by Steinberg for future development, its going to be a no for me.

I could be wrong, again, just a guess

It’s gonna be amazing. And Steve and pyer are a pleasure to work with. But the new modules are gonna be really wonderful - I’m already reinvigorated musically in rack from using them

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