Not precisely piracy; but a lawsuit ensured

 

Yes, but you have my permission (as long as you don't model the original flaws)

But they are not. I have said that very few plugin companies actually pay royalties, among them are UAD, Waves for the SSL line (but not all the other lines that emulate hardware), and Slate for FG-Stress (but not his other emulations).

Slapping a thinly veiled cheeky pun on it instead of using the original name doesn't mean you didn't copy it and profit from the original's reputation.

Yes, and cracking software is easy-bizy, right?
"Oh we just copied the original, but we did some hard work for it, so it's not piracy!"

 

You seem to have confused both what it is the act of emulating the hardware, and what piracy is.

when you are emulating you are creating a representation of said from the ground up; and even in those considerations, you are ensured a lawsuit if you claim that without the authorization of what's being emulated.

Piracy is the unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work

If you'd have to compare it with illicit actions, an emulation would fall closer to counterfitting or making a bootleg version of something -counter to what piracy is-; But in the essense, an emulation is not the product that it is emulating (and will never be given the limitations of the digital world)

The act of cracking a software -however- is the act of modifying such software in an unauthorized manner, and redistribute it as the software itself.

---
Now, to be clear, and as I always stood with it in discussion, I'm not against either piracy or emulations (with nuances); I'm pointing out the differences
---

 

You all keep repeating the "authorized software" argument. But it's not. 90% of analog modeled software is not authorized by the makers of the original products, and is CENTERED around imitating the original product perfectly. It's incredibly rare to see a company suing for reproductions of their products nowadays, just as it is incredibly rare to see software companies suing pirates.

Analog modeling companies use the original scheme. Software crackers use the original code. Not much difference, in my opinion.

 

Behringer has lots of cheap stuff but they have been shelling a lot more money into development and their new toys are high quality.
analog synth Deepmind 12 comes to mind or their new daw controllers.
Also a lot of their older stuff, like EQs or the multigate pro can be found in pro studios and touring rigs.
http://www.music-group.com/Categori...Synthesizers-and-Samplers/DEEPMIND-12/p/P0AC5

 

No. Just cannabis... a lot of it.
Don't believe me? Here's what we do on our spare time...

 

Welcome back to the fold, VS!!!

Absolutely and without a doubt, they are spending big money in developing product . Of course much of their newer boxes are tapping lines that they bought up such as Klark-Technik and Midas (Midas transformers, what exactly are they?), which is good as well as an economically savvy thing to do. Their new Pultec type clone is a mere $299 in the States and the orders for them are incredibly high and mounting, though some people that know what to look for are implying that they seem to have once again poked a look under the hood of another's product and borrowed the ideas to create the needed shortcuts to lower the bottom line. In this case it would partially be Warm Audio's use of a 4 tap inductor winding as opposed to the original Pultec's 6, and in both KT and Warm the outcome is that the frequency curves are different. A cat who I dialogue with who is a very talented mix engineer with one of the sweetest studios this side if Eden has a pair of these EQP-KT eq's and thinks that they are better than any Pultec clone plugin he has tried and the reason he uses them now. He says that it does't behave like a vintage unit but is very good, and for some applications to him better than a vintage unit (he did not get into the details).

I personally don't know, have heard or seen older Behringer EQ's or a Multigate Pro in any "pro studio", though have seen many in touring rigs. I even bought a Behringer feedback suppression unit about 16 or so years ago for a multi use hall/theatre that I was having horrible feedback issues with. The multiple lavalier mics that the performers were wearing were constantly feeding back, and constant riding of the eq was just too much to deal with in addition to the numerous mic changes between players, which by the way became it's own dramatic nightmare. It helped me and the tech on the board deflect lots of angry vibes from the director and the players, and then even so, the audio for those two weeks was some the worst work that I ever did...that damned and cursed room. Thank you Behringer, you saved my ass (sort of)!

 

Thank you

Behringer sure took a lot of heat and quite a few lawsuits for their methods.
Thanks for mentioning EQP-KT, looks like a winner to me. At 299$ its cheaper than some algo emulations, will bookmark that one
Hey, if the multigate pro is good enough for Hetfield, it certainly cant be bad.
Scroll down his equipment, you can find it there.
http://www.uberproaudio.com/who-plays-what/68-metallica-james-hetfield-guitar-gear-rig-and-equipment

 

I think this is a very valid question with no simple answer. There are lots of nuances to the idea of reverse engineering, patent law, and trademarks, and this has been the same question of quite a few court cases.

As far as ethics and intellectual property debates go, I see this as a matter of philosophy which depends on your worldview and how you feel about capitalism and such things. Regardless of how one can frame such things within legalities or terminology/semantics, yes, clearly if you are basing a model after something that has proven to be successful then you are profiting from the hard work of others. But some would say the ability to copy one technology into another domain or to replicate a behavior with a self-invented method (involving no "inside knowledge") is simply innovation and not theft.

It's the same question that arose around IBM PC clone manufacturers in the '80s. If you could clone the BIOS without looking at the original code or tech documentation and engineer your own system simply by observing the behaviors of the IBM "black box" then it was considered okay. So in that case, they were profiting from the userbase that IBM had generated but--Compaq, for example--ended up making millions. It's shady territory though when a couple sharks start fighting over the same meat. Any time there are profits to be had, watch out.

Corporations like to pretend their feces never stink and it's always the common person (plebes!) that is ruining the world, and they tend to have the money to frame it in any way they choose. Until the titans have to fight each other, and then it is spectacularly entertaining to watch. Can you smell the blood in the water, yet?

 

Agreed, except in the case of analog modelling the product has been translated to another domain/medium and in the case of software it remains 98% the EXACT same language and code. Crackers just create a modified version (not to make that sound simple, necessarily) based entirely from the original whereas modellers create an emulation based on measurable and/or observed behavior.

However, I think if you took the schematics for something and made a 1:1 digital model of each component (capacitors, transistors, etc.) with the same signal path, etc. then you'd be a lot more legal liable than simply trying to copy the behavior of a device. In one case you are copying the very design and the other you are just copying the effect.

Isn't it still plagiarism when you reword something though? How much creativity and cleverness is needed before something is innovation and not just a ripoff? Shrug.

 

You're absolutly right with these questions.

If I make a music track with a sample which come from a track of an other composer, I must pay royalties.

These plugin companies should pay royalties only if they quote the name of the original manufacturer.

But a lot of developers don't do it and "only" bring the original hardware to mind.And don't pay nothing.

However a lot of developers don't only make vst emulating hardware.

 

I totally agree with this. I've thought the exact same thoughts myself. Why aren't they coming up with something original instead of stealing other people's hard work and selling it as their own?

I don't think this is about justifying stealing software. Its a matter of principle that the people who are making copies and getting around copyright laws by calling something CLA-2A and blatantly saying that its an emulation that's as good as the hardware is on really shady grounds to start with. Its rich of them to be crying about piracy when they are pirating the product that they are selling.

It feels a lot like rap artists to me - where they blatantly take somebody else's hard work, like Booka Shade's Mandarin Girl, put some vocals over the top and release it under a different title, different artist and no mention of Booka Shade anywhere in the release. You have kids buying that track with no idea that it is 10 years old and just blatantly stolen.

On these lines again, when these artists perform live, they are still masquerading as the original artist, using other people's hard work to tour and make more money, whilst a pittance might dribble back to the writer through performance rights. Music has been a shady world for decades.

I guess it all depends on who has the most money to shout the loudest about who should be branded criminals.

 

Maybe I got somethiung wrong but that sentence implied for me that the OP thinks its easy to make such a plugin. They just "take presets". It probably costs the same amount of time for a software engineer to make a great plugin as an electro engeneer to develope a hardware unit.


2 words to your analogy. If paint the mona lisa with water colours. Or make her with pottery. And sell it. It is not a crime. Software and hardware are totaly diffrent things. People that clone hardware as hardware steal. Software plugins are inspired by.... Like I am inspired to paint the mona lisa with watercolours or make a pottery mona lisa.

Some of the "so called analog modeld plugins" sound so different to the hardware as a pottery mona lisa is differnt to a painted one.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 23, 2017

Read my first post again. Making a plugin and making a plugin that "models" something else is a completely different thing, because the companies exploit and profit from the original's quality and reputation. And no, making "Verbsuite" or even the modified-convolution technology of it took way less work than creating the Bricasti M7, let alone the other 8 reverb units that they ripped patches from. If you've ever created an impulse response file you'd know how easy it is.

And don't give me that shit about "inspired". It's not inspired. They directly claim that they copied products down to the smallest detail and they claim that it sounds and functions the same. This is what they use to appeal to you with. It's blatant plagiarism. It's no different than copying code, because the hard work isn't coding it, it's to create a good product in the first place, a step they completely skip. Because why bother creating a good product when you can just steal the design of another?

 

yes its pirating, if you dont 'pirat' yourselves like roland's vs product, the product will pirated by some business shit guys.
in music production, sell your songs at low pirce as soon as possible to prevent pirating.

only highend hardware effect/synth worth to buy, ignore those shit soft plugs

 

I mean, kinda. No digital "version" of analog "warmth" will do anything liek analog distorts etcs. Because the two things are incompatibly different. It's just bullshit marketing, liek the ppl selling gold (OMG GOLD) digital cables etcs.

 

Yawn

 

I personally think that here we are going further any piracy/copyright opinion or other stuff like that. The problem is more complicated (or simple depending on what you think). The original question of this thread is extremely correlated with the "Universal Turing Machine". It's mathematically demonstrated that exist a turing machine (called universal turing machine) that can simulate any other turing machine. Nowaday that universal machine is any computer like the one i'm writing on, capable of "simulating" every other computer builded so far. So...is my pc brand a "all the others pc" thief? The problem is complicated as you can see. Hope my message can be reason for reflection. Best regards.

 

you cannot copyright electromagnetism

 

Is analog modeling pirating?

We asked an expert...



No mate. That's a kind of music innit.