The price of software, which is the right one and why?

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 2:43 pm

Well yes, maybe... but all those things depend upon a lack of knowledge in the users. If you want to buy something, you need to do some research on it, instead of being sold the product by marketing hype alone. The criteria for evaluating something should not be "does product X have feature Y?", but instead something like "how well does product X implement feature Y?".

Of course, it's obvious to everyone concerned that most users simply do not evaluate products like this.

If you think like a consumer then you'll be treated like one.

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 2:58 pm

Exactly. It's defintely the case that certain products have qualities which cannot be appreciated by the majority of people. Therefore the cost needs to be higher, because the market is smaller.

This can, of course, be abused (i.e. make a product expensive just so that it seems good). I've seen this for myself recently, with the Hartmann Neuron - a prime case of marketing/style over substance. I do think that this kind of phenomenon is quite rare though.. but in any case, nothing can take the place of proper research in a buying decision process.

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 7:24 pm

I just was not too impressed by its resynthesis quality or its sound quality in general.. sounded a bit grainy, a bit like a wavetable synth. The voice count was also not very impressive in my opinion.

That's not to say it might not be a useful instrument with its own character, but if I had that kind of money, I'd buy a Kyma system.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 7:53 pm

On 2005-03-21 14:29, astroman wrote:
considering the (low amount of) knowledge put into the product, (low) quality of parts and the final result, Creative Lab's cards are awefully expensive

cheers, Tom

quite right

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 8:01 pm

I think the SCOPE software is very cheap for what they offer, and that the amount of "lincencies” and not “copies” - as you have rightly corrected me, - is very low… I still am crazy about Vectron… I wish I had the money to buy this extraordinary piece of software.

I agree completely to the fact that people undervalue good things, because they are difficult to discover, like a healthy life.

_________________
Music is the most Powerful Language in the world! *INDEED*

[ This Message was edited by: Nestor on 2005-03-21 20:02 ]

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 4:16 am

On 2005-03-21 14:29, astroman wrote:
considering the (low amount of) knowledge put into the product, (low) quality of parts and the final result, Creative Lab's cards are awefully expensive

cheers, Tom

my first contract of the computer years was for a track made on awe64 in 1997. even the voice recordings, ie with lots of hiss, have been kept on the final track. some recording were remade on neumann/otari though
the track is available on planetz : spacef/grrio aujourd'hui.
it's with the proceeds that i've bought my first pulsar...

the real value of things is what you make with it i would say...

emzee · Post by **emzee** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 6:30 am

The real value of something is what you make with it......

Great point....

I think that's where music software is pretty good value.... if you choose sensibly and take the time to learn how to use it. An individual or band can present CD quality material to the market for a fraction of what it would have cost a few decades ago.

Now.... I better practice those scales...

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 7:03 am

The guitar guy in a local shop has in his private collection about 200 guitars of the 50's and 60's, lots of them special customs and/or played by famous people. They are hung coat-hanger style, 2 rows of 50 on the left of the room, 2 rows of 50 on the right.

When asked what some of them are worth, he says the only right price is the price someone wants to pay for it. Some were discoverd on old atticks, covered under decennia of dust, while others he got still were daily used in recording sessions or gigs.

So what exposure is the product getting? Does it find it's customer?

spoimala · Post by **spoimala** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 12:30 pm

On 2005-03-21 13:29, dArKr3zIn wrote:
There is one device which can pretty much 'do it all' - the computer. However, if you limit yourself to just that one device to make your music, then the final output is going to be pretty limited in terms of the tonal palette, and also in terms of the creative working methods used to make it.

Of course in studio it's not a problem, but I'd want my live rig as portable as possible. And so far, I don't want to rely on Windows...

It's the same with software.. there's plenty of freeware around, but in general it doesn't really break any new ground. This is unsurprising as it takes a lot of blood, sweat, tears and TIME to write something groundbreaking.

So you think that Linux hasn't broken any new ground?

It's amazing how good quality stuff open-source community makes, for free!

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 1:38 pm

I'm not disputing the qualities of Linux or Open Source software.. I have the deepest respect for these principles, and a lot of admiration for people donating their time and effort for free.

However, I don't think it's all that useful in professional music making.. I somehow doubt that there's many studios in the world running Linux rigs for sequencing MIDI and audio. Most people want things to work with the minimum of effort, and not wait for the next revision, download the source, compile it and hope it works.

I also think that to get the best out of a programmer, you need to pay him. I know people who write both free and commercial audio software.. They do their best work for paid projects. Things might change when we have suites of robots writing code for us, but until then, programmers have to eat.

[ This Message was edited by: dArKr3zIn on 2005-03-22 13:41 ]

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 2:51 pm

Eat! What! A crate of Jolt Cola will do fine =P

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:18 pm

Personally, I hope it wins too. I guess it might be a workable system for even commercial companies, if the software was free with paid support perhaps. It will be interesting to see how things pan out.

[ This Message was edited by: dArKr3zIn on 2005-03-22 21:19 ]

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:23 pm

On 2005-03-22 14:51, symbiote wrote:
Eat! What! A crate of Jolt Cola will do fine =P

Its amusing you should say that.. most coders I know practically live on the stuff (the more ubiquitous red-packaged cola variety though).

Regarding the paid support thing.. I can see this as a viable way of driving down costs for existing software - a cheaper license if you were not given any support whatsoever. If you needed support you'd have to pay for it.

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:34 am

On 2005-03-22 21:23, dArKr3zIn wrote:
On 2005-03-22 14:51, symbiote wrote:
Eat! What! A crate of Jolt Cola will do fine =P
Its amusing you should say that.. most coders I know practically live on the stuff (the more ubiquitous red-packaged cola variety though).

Yeah, over here, the fridge is full of soda, Guru (some energy drink) and Red Rave (another energy drink.) So wrong.

BTW, about Linux, 4 out of the 5 fastest (publicly-known =P) Supercomputing Clusters right now run Linux. I don't think any computer on the top500 runs Windoze, maybe one or two somewhere near #500 =P.

Audio-wise, it's much easier to modify the kernel to make it real-time, or at least prioritize audio, than to try and do the same with XP (or wait for M$ to modify it, which won't happen unless you are one of their multi-million $ clients.) Interface-wise, it's still a bit of a b*tch to code under, whatwith all the different distribs, kernels, X11 servers, windowmanagers, and piling up of sometimes conflicting libraries of time. I tend to prefer the BSD model on that front, but would happily welcome any Linux-based solution/system/spaceship.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:07 pm

If Linux ever arrives to be like our today main OS, well, the main OS will take the place of Linux and Linux the "money business one". Where there's large amounts of money, there's greedy people behind it.

I can't forecast Linux as the winner, unfortunately...

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:30 pm

I dunno, Linux has a couple of big player behind it now, notably IBM and HP/Novell. Once M$ start lacing DRM heavily into Windoze, people will start moving in flock to Linux/BSD, and the software market will most probably follow.

Right now, the situation is, people don't move to Linux because of the lack of applications/support, and companies don't port their applications to Linux because there's no market =P.

JoeKa · Post by **JoeKa** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 2:17 pm

I think there´s a problem about pricing of software:
A majority of companies will hardly be able to estimate how many copies of their software will really be sold. So they calculate their prices to compensate the cost of development within a certain timespan, like 6 months or so... then again, it might be the case that the piece of software sells like 4 times as often in those 6 months, and for twice or triple the calculated timespan. But the issue is: they can´t give away the software as soon as the dev. cost is covered, and they can´t even chop down the prices that much, either, cuz the earlier clients would then feel betrayed and lose faith in that company.
This difficulty about estimating the sales in advance for proper price calculation got worse with the tremendous numbers of cracked version users in the past years, too. But after all, isn´t it the crazy pricing of good software that creates those many illegal users in the first place...?
I don´t think I have a final answer to the pricing issue, and honestly, I wouldn´t ever want to be responsible for such decisions either.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 4:11 pm

I remember once when 3D StudioMax went to half price from one day to the other...

: There were many complains about it... The price was something amazingly expensive, around $20.000!!!, and came back to $10.000!!! Madness... those who bought a copy the day before, were completely angry and wnated to understand how they could do such a drop. This is historial.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 6:40 pm

On 2005-03-23 14:17, JoeKa wrote:
...But after all, isn´t it the crazy pricing of good software that creates those many illegal users in the first place...?

not at all - it's a certain attitude of ignorant, careless, self centered, inconsequent minds - a sign of the times.

like this one: lots of people in germany currently complain about workers dropping in from the east, doing jobs for lower wages

the same people considered it completely normal to buy half of the Spanish isle of Mallorca or make cheapo holidays - or have their teeth repared for polish or czech dentist fees ...

cheers, Tom