I think it carries stigma. If you don’t use “pro,” you’re not a pro. The “studio” suffix has less of that issue. I’m fine with “commercial.” Just don’t create a distinction that in any way denigrates the non-commercial users who may be perfectly fine players and even contributors to the project.
I’d prefer to not call either product simply “VCV Rack”. This leads to confusing/awkward conversations:
“You should try VCV Rack, it works in FL Studio now.”
“Okay, I tried downloading VCV Rack, but it only installed a standalone version.”
“Ah, I meant VCV Rack Studio.”
If the products are called unique names, there is no confusion whether the term “VCV Rack” refers to the general software or the software variant.
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- VCV Rack : Free
- VCV Rack Komplete: pro support and daw plugins
- VCV Rack Ultimate: Komplete + all commercial module by VCV
- VCV Rack collector: ultimate + all commercial modules by 3rd party
- VCV 4Ever: all commercial modules monthly subscription
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The problem with that is “VCV Rack Community” already means something - it is the group of people who use VCV rack, particularly those that hang out here and on FB.
Therefore saying something like “Download the VCV Rack Community” sounds very odd.
I’d say the clearest names would be:
“VCV Rack Standalone” and “VCV Rack Plugin”. The commercial version that contains both could be called “VCV Rack Studio”
So you could say “VCV Rack Studio includes both the standalone and plugin versions of VCV Rack”
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Agree, but I think the current idea is “VCV Rack Community Edition”, which doesn’t have that problem (at least to my ear).
This makes sense. It struck me that @Pyer’s solution above does fully differentiate the product lines while capturing the benefit of the existing name.
@Pyer proposed:
- VCV Rack
- VCV Studio (includes plugins, and a build of VCV Rack that can talk to plugins)
The launch announcement is then, basically:
- Existing VCV Rack as you know and love it is being released as V2, with no qualifications and nothing taken away, and it’s still free and always will be, which is why we didn’t change the name;
- A new paid product, VCV Studio, can also integrate with your studio; it’s a special build of VCV Rack plus a VST2 plugin (other formats to follow). This is what we used to call Rack for DAWs.
Anyway, ducking out of this thread for a while as I’m not adding much that’s new. Naming stuff is hard…
Final thought: I think Studio is a great idea (hat tip to @attheleash!) and should definitely be in the name of the paid edition, whatever the final configuration of the two product names is.
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your ideas might interfere a bit too much with the Native Instruments way of naming and cause some trouble with them.
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I am pretty sure that was a joke post 
His serious proposal was above…
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I am pretty sure that my post was a joke post
my serious proposal was above…
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Haha sorry, I saw it before the wink was added 
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a joke it was
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This is great thinking. It avoids any loaded language which I think a lot of proposals don’t.
It does exactly what Andrew doesn’t want - it implies that one version has less features than the other
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VCV Rack and VCV Rack Max?
If I knew nothing of VCV and saw “VCV Rack Complete” I would assume it came with every possible premium module.
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But isn’t it the case that the integration into a DAW as a plug-in is a powerful feature that the basic version lacks?
read Andrew’s reasoning above
Just ICYMI, Andrew has marked a solution post
“Complete” does not, of course, refer to the existence of all possible VCV plugins from third-party providers, only all VCV products are included. I think that’s understandable.