absolutely! well said.

 

That's a fair comment, and we are thinking about a file based sharing system. At the moment you can share by right clicking a patch or pack.

 

Good point, but I would say we have actually made it super easy for 3rd party content creators. We will think this over... thanks for the feedback.

 

It's like free crowdsourced marketing. Content sold on your own website doesn't get people to go buy your synth because they already own it.
But it's also free library creation. No-one buys Serum thinking about the 20 Serumpacks that you can buy from Xfer. They buy it knowing there are 50,000 presets out there . If selling content was really a big moneymaker, Xfer would be pumping out their own packs and they don't.
But every time someone else puts out a pack, they go market it themselves , and eventually people realize how much content they are locking themselves out of by not buying the synth.

 

It's disrespectful to set such a short term trial window for those of us who work for a living, might launch the synth, get a call, talk for 20+ minutes, and be locked out of the demo.

Let me make this clear for you now - your sales numbers will make it abundantly clear later: 20 minutes is disrespectful. Live and learn.

I don't own or use Pigments. Also, have you tried telling the state trooper who pulled you over for speeding: But Officer: everyone else was speeding, so I "thought that was a good approach?"

Good luck to you with your product, and your mentality/approach. And I mean that: if you have a good product, and I'm just wrong or my mentality is out of date and you sell tens of thousands of licences: good for you. But I doubt it. Highly.

 

E.X.A.C.T.L.Y.

 

I doubt their intention is to be disrespectful, lets keep things civil here. Its nice having a dev here that is asking for feedback and seems open to it, lets not scare him away. The 20 min is annoying, but i don't think its disrespectful. After all, you can just open up another window of the plugin. From Nigel's words he is new to this world, and is doing what they know to best for them currently.

I do think Acustica's model is the best tho, they have caught me with exactly that sequence of events. Made a bunch of presets while demoing, ended up buying it when the demo ended, as i had already invested a fair amount of time into the plugin and used it within quite a few projects.

Whatever Nigel and his team decide is best for them, im happy to have him here, and appreciate his dialog with us.

Im going to grab the rent to own. I was on the fence when demoing, but ultimately decided against it, but either they didn't have rent to own as an option then, or i completely missed it. The whole ultrawave thing is really cool, and the synth is relatively easy to program. I was off to the races in 5 minutes with no tutorial or manual.

 

Good marketing news in this so-called logic World...

 

Honestly we are happy to get feedback, and it is good to consider whether our choices are the right ones.
I think 30 minutes is enough time to play around, and you can relaunch it over and over.
This is also what Serum does, although the limit is 15 minutes according to the search I ran. I can't remember as I purchased serum 12 years ago lol.

Thanks for your support Keen to hear what you like and don't like.

 

I think this is a fair way of doing it, given you can just re-open the plugin again when it expires.

Other plugin demos I've used with different approaches that come to mind:
UAD I believe gives a 14-day trial period where I believe there are no plugin restrictions. I've bought quite a few from them. Cherry Audio does 1 month.. also fully useable, but they hit you with white noise every so often (which is kind of annoying, but it is what it is). I've also bought quite a few plugins from them too, based on demos.

Anyways, I think your trial model works just as fine as any. It gives a person time to play around. When the trial expires, as you mentioned, you just re-open a plugin instance - no need to re-sign up or anything. Works for me.

I gave it a pretty quick trial. I'll demo it some more, but here are some quick thoughts:
My first thought I have to be honest about up front is "do I need another $150 synth, and does this do anything more than what I have already" and my quick answer is no. I think this is quite a good synth, I'm just not your target buyer. I own just about everything I need, already.

The big plus: the interface is so well done. I mentioned this in another thread. It doesn't just look nice, it's well organized and very easy for me to follow. I've been a lot more into sound designing, myself, so it was good to pick up this thing and understand where everything is and just get busy using it, immediately. The preset packs that were included were pretty uninspiring for me though, but that's because I like to make more of an 80s retro sound. Yes, I saw the 80s retro stuff in there, but it was too modern/polished sounding for my tastes. But that's very nitpicky of me. I doubt many other people are like "hmm, let me find a good sine wave" preset . (I kid) And yah, these are just presets.. I can play around to create something instead.


So yah, pretty interesting plugin. I like the design of it. It feels like it's in competition with Pigments, Phase Plant, Vital, and Serum. This probably goes back to what @clone mentioned in another thread, but I have a few billion presets for Serum (modest exaggeration) so it's always been the winner for me in that grouping, even though it isn't the best of the group at this point. That's pretty much all I need from this type of synth, but I can see people really liking this.

 

Last edited: Jan 28, 2026 at 4:59 PM

I agree very much! 20 or 30 minutes is nothing if you are trying to explore sound design possibilities.
Not being able to save anything makes it even worse.

I just demo'd the recently released drum plugin by Okay Synthesizer.
https://okaysynthesizer.com/

They offer 14 days unlimited trial with saving and recalling of presets. Zero limitations.
This kind of generous trial possibility contributed a lot to my decision to buy it in a heartbeat within less than 2 days

 

It is?

 

So its 20minutes but you can restart that 20minutes any time indefinitely?
Its not bad actually but 30min would be better.
At least with this method if i do not get round to trying it there is no time out & i actually prefer that to a 14 day unlimited.

 

To disrespect someone means to show a lack of regard, consideration, or courtesy for them as an individual. This is the case here: lack of regard and consideration - I never said the practice was discourteous.

Civil means (2.) courteous and polite - I was both.

Perhaps you projected whatever is going on in your world upon my words - I have my sentiments, you have yours, please respect that.

 

My apologies Nigel - I thought the entire demo period expired after 20 mn. I am just finding out now that relaunching the VSTi reinstantiates the demo period.

This is new to me and vastly different information from what the original post stated. I think that's perfectly acceptable. Although I wonder how that's any different from a perpetual license - but never mind, I've no interest in debating this topic further.

As I mentioned earlier, good luck to you with your new product - I'll see you around on the floor on a trade show somewhere I'm sure.

Peace.

 

When the 20 mins is up, even the plugin itself says the demo has expired and you will need to buy (im paraphrasing slightly). If someone hadn't mentioned that it can just be reloaded, I might not have noticed.. and yah.. that is definitely not a good demo. I do think 20 mins per instance is perfectly fine though, for a demo. Certainly not industry leading, but it's not bad.

 

Last edited: Jan 29, 2026 at 3:06 AM