That's right. You've heard of rent-to-own, now we've got own-to-rent!

Antelope finally launched their line of native plugins today, and have decided that existing customers will have to pay for all their plugins again via subscription.

Antelope's justification: "They're completely separate products"

For those that don't know, Antelope are a company with a similar product model to UAD: You buy their interface, you buy their plugins and you use the plugins through the DSP in the hardware. Handy for people who record through the interface with plugins on at zero latency.

The bottleneck with the Antelope experience has always been using the plugins while mixing in your DAW like a normal plugin. You have to route to them as if they're a hardware insert, which means you have to render tracks online instead of offline. Super clunky. Their solution to that is a bridge plugin called AFX2DAW which supposedly allows you use their plugins straight in your DAW. I wouldn't know, it's never worked for me on Windows, it's glitchy and unreliable. Instead of fixing AFX2DAW they've decied to release all the plugins in native.

Unlike UAD though, existing pre-owners of Antelope plugins+interface wont have access to the plugins in native format unless they pay for a subscription. The subscription is discounted in the first year by 50-75% for existing customers and then it's $149 per year after that.

The current customerbase is obviously disenchanted, so Antelope has responded by censoring people's reactions in the facebook group. Right now they're deleting comments and even suspending the people from participating in the group. I've even seen NEW facebook accounts join the group today and say positive things about Antelope as if nobody would notice, lol.

So since they deleted it i'm now motivated to share my customer journey here instead:

1) Buy the hardware for $1,300 on the marketing promise of being able to use their plugins in your DAW.
2) Spend hundreds of dollars on their plugins.
3) Realize their bridge plugin (AFX2DAW) isn't available for Windows (not mentioned in their marketing).
4) 1 year later AFX2DAW is available on Windows, it costs over $100.
5) Buy it. Realize it doesn't work properly on my system. Notice other users have same experience.
6) Realize they have a policy where they don't allow you to sell/transfer your plugin licenses.
7) A new solution arises: native plugins announced. Hope is restored.
8) Realize they expect us to buy all our plugins again for $149 per year.
9) Watch customer comments get deleted in real time (as well as my own) as Antelope stubbornly says things like "Things in life aren't free" and "They're completely separate products" and "It's not like Waves because we're not forcing anyone to subscribe"

And that my friends is the story of being slapped in the face by a company you've invested in.

Great hardware, good plugins, terrible business. They've lost me.

 

Yes, I got that email. AFX2DAW works better on MacOS than windows but this does sour the pot.

 

Well their plugin business was already a mess and with this they just killed it, I mean theres no plugin of theirs that is a must have and that couldn't find for free or in the sister site, and even if they have a plugin that you like their bad DAW integration make you look elsewhere. The world has lost nothing, Antolope an opportunity to rival UAD.

 

Just when you thought you heard about every half-baked, idiotic, hair-brained, industrial capitalist notion to keep flooding the market with more and yet more useless shit, you hear about stuff like this.....

 

I own some similar DSP based systems from Sonic Core, 20 years ago those DSP based systems were much more powerful than available computers for producing audio. Today native plugins are very good, but DSP based systems still have the advantage of real time near to zero latency even with many plugins opened, but they can't do off line rendering, just like outboard in the studio. Not a problem for me, if a song is 5 minutes, I can wait that time ro record. Off line rendering is technically not possible. Also what I like about DSP based systems is that they are made for the long term, no stress about new plugins every day, it just works like it is. I think that the near future will make DSP based system less attractive and the companies are are moving to native. Moving to native requires a complete new approach for programming the software, maybe Antelope is in a very bad financial situation and they are trying to improve (in a bad way).

 

Okay, I understand the bad mood. But honestly, you're not losing anything. You just don't get an extra goodie on top of the product and the pro/con you signed up for, right?

 

Yeah, this could well be the case. But word-of-mouth is everything in this business, and they've just pissed off all their loyal customers who would've recommended Antelope to their music friends. Logically very short-sighted imo.

That's a reasonable assessment, and I can understand how someone could make this assessment from the outside. Antelope staff have a similar perspective. I think the key thing to understand here is the psychology of investment. Let me re-direct your attention to my experience going down the sales funnel -- I was marketed the promise of being able to use their plugins in my DAW. I've spent almost $2,000 on this company for that experience, and they haven't been able todeliver on that promise. I do really like their plugins, especially their Fairchild emulation (best i've heard) and have always wanted to be able to use the plugins inside my DAW. Although it's not technically a loss, it feels like a loss after spending all this money and time and yearning for a particular experience. The solution is right there, they fixed it, but it's behind a subscription. It feels like a real slap in the face after everything.

Something i didn't mention in my original post is how much time i've spent troubleshooting issues with drivers etc trying to get things to work that break (their software is a headfuck). When you spend time on something you become more invested.

To add insult to injury, after spending all that money i discovered a policy they have that says you can't sell the plugins on the used market. They don't allow license transfers. So now i can't even step out of the ecosystem without them keeping my money. Just another example of their business acumen.

In retrospect if i had known about all this before i bought the interface, i wouldn't have bought it. I would've bought UAD instead. So that's how it feels like a loss, I've spent $2000 to feel stuck in an ecosystem that wants to milk my pockets and not let me sell.

 

Agreed. Pretty crappy, this whole situation. They've doubled down. I've grabbed my popcorn and will enjoy the shit show. I've bought a few UADx plugins during this sale since I figured the plugins I've bought from Antelope would be behind a sub wall. I'll just spend my money with UAD since I can actually own them and not have them double dip.

 

I have thought about buying one of their products in the past, but after reading all this, I am 100% sure that I will never buy anything they have to offer, and I am pretty sure that I am not the only one they lost. I never looked into their products more deeply, so I am not sure if I ever would have, as there seem to have been a lot of flaws regarding their software and their business model all along. Furthermore, I am rather happy that I don't have to worry about it anymore, and I have one less option to consider for the future.
I guess it won't take long until they realize that they f'ed up big time.

 

Even if you did have a crystal ball, you would have spent approximately the same amount of money on UAD stuff, and still be in the same boat. 2000$ sounds like a good amount of money, but 2K does not go far in UAD land.

Also, their (Antelope) production is limited quantity when compared with UAD. No one is going to pay top dollar for used UAD interfaces when there 10,000 other studios/producers trying to sell them. Even getting screwed like this, you might just be lucky your alternative plan didn't turn into a reality.

 

For 2K i would be able to buy a used UAD unit loaded with plugins, and i'd actually be able to use those plugins in my DAW, unlike my current situation.

 

Not Necessarily. If they get the reaction from their userbase/customers loudly enough on forums etc, they still have an easy way to mostly calm them down. They comp the application to those who really make a stink, or even make it free for everyone.

Remember when Bitwig did this kind of a stunt with some "new additional separate product"? I think it was under 100$ for it, and they ended up adding it into their new application update a few days later.

People who became customers after you would still be getting nearly the same thing, for 20 bucks a month.

 

Last edited: Jul 12, 2023

Wow, Antelope have been blocking people's youtube comments from being publicly visible too. I know this because some other youtuber commented about it and i have 2 youtube accounts so i cross-checked it, and he was right, my comments weren't visible to the public. And I have the screenshots to prove it, but i already posted it on a Gearspace thread so i'll just leave it there.

So i've witnessed them deleting comments on both their facebook group AND their youtube channel. The comments they're deleting are by no means disrespectful or rude too. Bizarrely, the ones they're choosing to delete are way more rational than the ones they choose not to delete. The comments they don't delete are the ones that sound like they were written by babies.

Not sure how they think they can get away with censoring customer experiences. They must think we're idiots. They've deleted truthful reports of the customer journey that prospective customers deserve to see. Did they think we wouldn't notice? What a bunch of shady characters. So disappointed with the Antelope team. Can only sigh and close my browser now. I've said enough about it on the internet. Hopefully prospective customers find this thread when they google Antelope in the future

 

Last edited: Jul 12, 2023

It is indeed important to care about such things before making "investments".

 

But you still can't use UAD interfaces properly on Windows, right? You would probably have to account for the cost of an Apple machine (and every expense that comes with the switch from PC to Mac) to have a smooth UAD experience. I know they did release an Apollo Twin USB version for Windows long ago, and that their interfaces technically should work with Thunderbolt equipped PC's, but they still don't really support Windows AFAIK (could be wrong though, I lost all interest in UAD as a company long ago).

It's pretty much the same with Antelope. Windows support is nothing but an afterthought. That they use "Windows support" in their marketing is probably their biggest offence. I have never heard of a single person who has had a good experience with Antelope products and Windows. Same as with UAD.

I think the only DSP ecosystem that truly works okay with PC's is the Pro Tools HDX system (not saying it works perfectly though). I've heard a lot of good things about TC Electronic Powercore as well, but they officially ended support for it in 2018. It was already dead long before that though.

 

Last edited: Jul 12, 2023

Native comes, ok cool let's R2R work =)
Grrr F°¨^ them, subsription plan sucks

 

If after doing my research i deemed UAD not suitable for Windows, i would just get something else. There are plenty of reliable drivers that work well on Windows. RME and Motu being the main ones that come to mine right now of things that have great DA converters and reliable drivers. Apogee would be another one i look into it. The point is, retrospect would have me avoiding Antelope. Doesn't matter which other company i chose. The notion that i'd have to buy Mac to have a reliable setup is pretty misinformed

But yes you're right, it appears Windows was an afterthought for Antelope. I fell for it

 

Do you live in the EU? If so, I would contact a lawyer. You are definitely allowed to resell software:
"What this means is that, under EU law, software companies have no right to prevent users from selling their digital downloads to others; effectively, the software distributor's rights to control distribution are exhausted after the first sale." The Guardian

I wonder why nobody from the EU has sued all those fucking companies violating EU law yet.

 

I don't live in EU.

I didn't know that. It's possible they got around some sorta loophole since the DSP plugins can only be accessed through the hardware? Maybe it technically counts as an extension of hardware instead of software?

At any rate, i have zero interest in taking a matter like this to a lawyer Some battles are not worth the time or energy