Are plug-in manufacturers running out of ideas?
Today at 8:00 a.m from Dirk Behrens | Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Anyone who has been dealing with music production on the computer and the world of plug-ins for a while has certainly wondered at one time or another whether there is still much room for innovation. Because honestly, who needs thirty different delays, equalizers, reverbs or the umpteenth wavetable synthesizer? And there are already more than enough emulations of all the classics. Are the developers running out of ideas?


In the beginning everything is new

Clearly, at the beginning everything is new. In the case of plug-ins, for example, this is the moment when they became feasible in the first place. In the course of the 90s, computers developed into multimedia machines that were suddenly able to handle graphics and sound easily. Long-established manufacturers such as Steinberg or Emagic transformed sequencer software into an entire digital audio workstation that could not only handle MIDI, but also audio material. And then a unified software interface appeared with VST , which increasingly expanded these DAWs with virtual instruments and effects .

Today, DAWs are the common standard in music production, but doing without them (keyword DAWless) almost seems like an anachronistic trend. While at the beginning of music production with software the discussions about the sound quality were still very energetic, it is no longer surprising when a song or dance track is created (almost) entirely on the computer - in the studio or at home.

With the advent of music software, emulation, hard disk recording (what a word!) and of course plug-ins , not only new possibilities emerged, but also a new market. Because the technical innovations ensured a liberalization that made it possible for "mere mortals" to produce music on their own without investing a fortune. This also meant that the number of potential customers suddenly increased.


Are plug-in manufacturers running out of ideas?

The market does not allow standstill, so new products are constantly coming out or old ones are being maintained and updated. In addition, there are always new manufacturers who want to get involved. So it shouldn't really come as a surprise if, for this reason, the market becomes increasingly saturated and things repeat themselves.

And yes, it is certainly not easy to develop fresh ideas. Equalizers , for example, are looking more and more similar in the plug-in world because, in essence, they have achieved the perfect balance of function and usability . Effects and synthesizers are hard to come up with big innovations, because somewhere the concepts exhaust themselves.


Technical advances require updates

Nevertheless, there is enough room for something "new" . And for several reasons. One driving force is the permanent technical development . The processors are getting faster and that means more CPU power . Plugins can do even more. This leads, for example, to better emulation of analogue properties, more detail and more complex algorithms. We are currently seeing that so-called “artifical intelligence” techniques are being used more and more frequently in software. This creates opportunities that were unimaginable just a few years ago.

New processors and new operating systems also mean that software becomes "obsolete". Then either updates or new developments are needed . We are currently experiencing this at Apple with the switch from Intel to the newsilicon processors. Plug-ins then become legacy software , which is replaced by new versions (and mostly has to be bought new). But that also has the positive side effect that some manufacturers are suddenly giving away a whole range of products, as happened recently with Audio Damage. If you are still using an older OS, you can be happy.

The progress is not only noticeable in CPUs, but also in other areas. Multi-channel audio and immersive audio are good examples. Plug-ins are constantly being released that deal with emulating studio environments on headphones. And some recent releases introduce multi-channel support to the already saturated effects plug-in market.


Evolution instead of innovation?

Plugins are also becoming more specialized . Not only does this mean that there is now software that does a single job (like eliminating background noise) but also caters directly to individual musical styles. You want a certain EDM sound or an "under water" sound? There you go, here is the right plug-in! Trends and styles always promote suitable products.

Many things that initially appear innovative are often just a combination of old ideas . This leads to something like one-knob effects , which carry out a whole series of processes in a well-dosed manner with a turn of the knob. Or exactly the opposite, if, for example, multi-band distortion is crossed with modulation and all parameters can be precisely adjusted. Personally, I still see a lot of future potential in the “ remix ” of several concepts.


The same but different

And what we must not forget: Programming is art! Take three reverb plug-ins and they all have a different sound. Especially with effects, I generally notice this again and again. That's why it's also legitimate to use your own approach, a little trick or perhaps a new method to develop synthesizers or effects that actually already exist in sufficient numbers. Of course, that doesn't automatically mean that every new product sounds better than "older" products.


What do you mean?

Is it even "problematic" if innovations are to be looked for with a magnifying glass? When it comes to music, films, books or other cultural and consumer goods, we don't make a big deal out of the fact that many ideas are repeated over and over again.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you feel a certain stagnation in the plugin development or do you think that a lot of new things are happening right now? Which plugins have surprised you lately?

Source / German: www.gearnews.de/gehen-plug-in-herstellern-so-langsam-die-ideen-aus/
https://www-gearnews-de.translate.g...l=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

 

They had no idea from the beginning. It has been nearly 25 years since the introduction of the VST SDK, and many people have wasted their lives developing and using these tools.

The path of music changed since then and set foot on the path of destruction. Unfortunately, this path is irreversible and no one can do anything.

 

Personally, i have some 15+ years of experience in mixing and i find myself using stock plugins almost all the time. Working with Sequoia and Ableton in a hybrid setup. Apart for some reverb plugins and FF ProQ3, i really dont need anything else. It has become more of a hype thing, oh you gotta have this or without this it does not sound analog. And yes, they are just rehashing old ideas, nothing new, nothing revolutionary.

 

You are more likely to see a new idea from someone nobody has ever heard of in my opinion.

Before the Internet, plugins, music, art and inventions of any kind all came out through a relatively defined set of channels. Creativity or something new was more obvious then because of those channels.
Now with most of the world online, any developer, creator, inventor writer with Internet access can release anything. In some areas the quality has gone up and in some perhaps nothing has changed.
So if something new is actually invented, if it does not reach enough people it is quite feasible that most of the world might never hear of it due to Internet overload.

I do not believe it is possible to run out of ideas if any person's focus is to seek, search and create. These days, that does not make money and nobody pays anyone for doing it unless they're employed in a corporate R&D department and they own none of their ideas then anyway. Also, if it is corporate, their ideas are contracted as intellectual property and many might never see the light of day, if it does not fit with the corporate vision.

 

There's still space to create amazing new plugins and FX. The time needed and the resources are another thing, specially if after all that you see them in "free" places just after 1 day or 1 week

 

There is a Plugin, in the North Atlantic....

 

not out of ideas out of a market. remember the early days of waves, the developers were very very well payed. they hired the best in the business. and the prices reflected that. also the industry was at a different point in time.
now its a hobbyist market with hobbyist bling bling guis.

 

Maybe it just takes a long time to discover new problems to fix; because they haven't made the plugin that can detect them yet.

 

Shame... I remember when the same happened to painting, when painters found out they couldn't discover new colors anymore and were limited only by those who already existed.
Surely, the death of music is approaching...

 

I still feel like there's a steady progression in the plug-in/DAW technology. Yes, most new plug-ins are just repeating the same old ideas, but it's the same thing with music, movies, games etc. You can't expect every new developer to reinvent the wheel with their first release, they need to start somewhere and that usually means creating their own takes on classic ideas/designs. There are ofc established developers that have been doing DSP since the beginning that are still just doing the same thing over and over (Waves for example) but they will probably fade into obscurity eventually, like many others have done.

The last couple of years we have seen tons of A.I based plug-ins, and ARA2 was IMO a big step forward in terms of workflow. There might not be much more you can invent to get better digital audio fidelity, but there certainly is a lot more you can do for a better and easier workflow, as well as more experimental sound design software. Algorithms created with machine/deep-learning is something that's not really new, but we can actually use them now without having a super computer to run them on. They also sound closer to analog hardware than most conventional circuit modelling algos.

 

The problem is that there are many small companies whose staff salaries do not come from a research budget. They don't have the money to do research. Sometimes something new happens like Celemony - Melodyne for example. It has been an extraordinary achievement of one person.
I would like to have stable software, without bugs and not never ending updates...!

If one would found a company that is not profit-oriented and works without profits, better plugins would also come out.

An example:
The MP3 format was developed from 1982 onwards under the direction of Hans-Georg Musmann by a group led by Karlheinz Brandenburg at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) in Erlangen and at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in cooperation with AT&T Bell Labs and Thomson.

 

TAL-NoiseMaker 5 released 01.08.2021 -
After more than ten years it was time to release a bigger update for our free TAL-NoiseMaker plugin.
The update includes following:

• Preset browser.
• Updated clean vector UI.
• Scalable UI.
• Backward compatible. No sound changes.
• A lot of changes under the hood to keep it maintainable.

https://tal-software.com

It was also great that the Vember Audio Surge was saved and improved.

Surge is a bit of a legendary synth in the open-source world and regularly makes our best free synth lists.

The Surge Synth Team refers to themselves as “open-source enthusiasts who randomly assembled to work on the Surge synthesizer.” I like that description; it kind of makes them sound like some open-source avengers.

The previous developers, Vember Audio, still host an archive of prior versions on their website.
https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2022/01/19/surge-xt/
https://surge-synthesizer.github.io

 

When the big players in the music scene can't think of anything else, they simply buy a company or the know-how to do it.
See Camel Audio Alchemy was bought out to the detriment of the users.
There are many plug-ins that still exist as 32 bit, but never have the chance to be developed further. It is too cost-intensive and time-consuming. As ArticStorm said, you have to pay your rent and put bread on the table.

You should set up a fundraising association to save old plugins. After all, we still have an open-source movement and team R2R to save some plugins over time.

 

The company Mastrcode Music, a one man company, had released the T-Force Alpha Plus version 1.5.2 VST, however he had serious programming errors, he told me by email that it would take longer to find the error than to make a new plugin.

So he started to rewrite a plugin, Mastrcode Music - T-Force - Zenith Beta 3 VSTi, it is in the beta phase also free to download at his Facebook account, I made a soundbank for it. You can see on Facebook how he worked on it, it looked promising, but then he stopped everything. There is also no message why and why not. https://www.facebook.com/MastrcodeMusic?_rdc=1&_rdr

You sometimes see people fail, companies go down the drain and that's a very big problem. It's almost always due to a lack of funds, because most people only know the system, they don't even have the idea that it can be done differently.

 

This synth was announced in a big way and has not been released until today:
Peter Gorges / Axel Hartmann / Peter Grandl

BABYLON FREEWARE SYNTHESIZER, EIN AMAZONA.DE-COMUNITY-PROJEKT
www.amazona.de/babylon-freeware-synthesizer-ein-amazona-de-comunity-projekt/
FREEWARE-SYNTHESIZER BABYLON: STEP 2 – KONZEPT & FEATURES
www.amazona.de/freeware-synthesizer-babylon-step-2-konzept-features/
FREEWARE SYNTHESIZER BABYLON: RUNDE 3 – ARCHITEKTUR
www.amazona.de/freeware-synthesizer-babylon-runde-3-architektur/