I'm wondering what the general consensus is on Companies hiding the price of their software, which seems to be becoming more prevalent these days?

As an example, I opened Sonnox's page for 'Voca' this morning and there's nothing on the page. It looks like you have to add it to the basket to find out how much they're asking.

Is there a hidden motive for this behavior, like tricking out some accidental sales maybe if your details are filled out automatically? There must be a deeper motive, other than wasting our time, are they just gathering 'clicks'?

 

Yeah, dark patterns.

Makes me glow with white-hot hatred. Company instantly goes on my shitlist, unless I absolutely cannot avoid them.

You know what's even worse? When they try to put items in your shopping cart without asking. How is that even legal?

Audio Plugin Deals once made me look at FIVE popups (that took 15 seconds each to load) for super-mega-duper-deals before they let me checkout.

 

That's funny you mention Voca.

When I woke up this morning I had an email from Sonnox and thought, ''hey that look cool'' let's see what this is about.

So I went on their product page and couldn't see if it's Windows compatible.

I'm mentioning that because about a month ago I bought ListenHub from them thinking I could use it remotely as they advertised until I figured out AFTER i purchased it that it was NOT compatible with Windows environment.

So this morning, before buying the plugin, I opened a Support ticket to make sure it is compatible with Windows because it's not written anywhere if it's MAC only or not.

 

It's for Mac and Windows. If it were only for one of them, it would be there. Just like Listenhub says on the product page that it's for MacOS.

 

Thanks for the explanation.

it would have been cool if they just mentioned it on the product page as ListenHub now seem to mention it about MacOS. (Which was not at the time I purchased it)

They learned about the mistake I guess which is only appropriate.

 

Yeah my feelings are similar. I never heard of them automatically adding things before. Imagine you have an autobuy function and where will you stand on getting your money back, especially on buying software? It looks wide open to scams in my opinion. Someone could easily grab a chunk of money from multiple sources once they figure out the 'autolimit'... I think it damages their reputation when they don't have transparency, but they can't exactly care or they wouldn't do it. It must be beneficial somehow...

On the Voca thing, I unsubscribed this morning after they hid the price, so also onto my shitlist. Why waste my time like that? I was interested enough to visit the site, but then they lose my interest by employing dirty tactics, imo, so now I don't trust them... And not making it clear what platform its on just takes it to another level of dumbness.

The popups is another aspect that pisses me off. Some can be blocked but there's sites where they won't let you read anything until you unclick their sales popup nonsense... I do the same, just shut that page down, but it must be working or they'd have stopped it already.

 

@reziduchamp
Just to be fair, when I asked for a refund for Listenhub, it was a no fuss process, really. Their Support are A1. Nothing to compare with other Audio product company. So there's that.

I'm gonna buy Voca later on today and see if it fits my need. I really love the idea behind their new product as the 1176 into a LA2A is my usual go to and then the added deesser is just toping it off.

What really intrigue me is that optimize option where they say it automatically set up input gain. I really wonder how a software can decide how hot I want to send my signal in a compressor.

Well see how it goes later on.

 

tbh I don't of this as some kind of dirty tactics or even scam. You just need to click "buy" and then you see the price of voca and all other sonnox plugins and when you click on it you even see the prices in USDollar, Euro and GBP which makes it quite transparent

 

Yup, i try to go straight to the important bits (price, compatibility, trial, etc) without even reading or watching all the marketing BS, but some companies truly try their best to make it hard and it's annoying as hell, wether by adding extra steps or shoving unnecessary info down your throat.

 

I saw a trial button alongside the buy button if that's a better option. I was interested in the hype thing like you, but they put me off already.

Yeah input gain is really interesting because my levels can vary a huge amount and I go on the quiet side to cover that, but with UAD on the way in (2A/76).

 

That's exactly my chain nowadays. So if I can use my UAD DSP for something else and use Sonnox, why not ? As I said, it seems to even include a Deesser which is awesome as I also have the precision Deesser on my Vox Chain. So that's 3 less plugin.

I just listened to the video example on the product page and it seems extremely clean at extreme settings so I'm wondering if this is really what I am after.

I think your suggestion of ''trying'' it is the best. I just hope I wont have to reset my projects and re-implement Voca if I decide to buy it further down the line.

EDIT: So I'm just reading the manual and Auto Input is actually mimicking a fader riding so all the signal comes in equally into the strip. So the input could possibly be used to run it hotter. That's very interesting. I still don't understand the Optimize function though.

 

Last edited: Aug 30, 2023

So I just bought it.

It is very clean.

If you want and desire the 76 and 2a saturation from the UAD plugin, that one might not cut it. What it does on the other hand is very upfront and clean highs vocals. Very modern sounding without the usual harshness. The Deesser could be a bit more precise but as a ''one solution fits all'' type of plugin, what it does is very decent. I think it's worth the price to keep 3 plugins out of my DSP chain. An extra slower and wider deesser might be needed after the chain in some extreme ''1073 saturated type of vocal'' cases.

 

If a company do this to me, I surely not buy anything else from them.
If there is no consequences of hiding such an important info, why would they change?

 

Transparency would be show you the price before you do anything.

 

Human mistake ?

 

I considered that as well, but I did click through to see the price out of interest and hit a ridiculous page of ADHD overload. It has a million options on there trying to get you to buy bundles I think, I saw something about the price for 2 or 3 items being different, like a % reduction thing so I imagined that their idea is to try and encourage bulk buys or something, and maybe they don't put the price up front so that you see all of that? I don't know.

That's in relation to Sonnox... This seems to be a policy that a lot of Devs are using now though so I've made the assumption that its a common thing with something in mind that feels like trickery, but I have no idea what I'm missing.

One random thought is with the increasing buyout situation I wonder if 'clicks' are more important for these businesses than the actual product now? Maybe they need click numbers to be able to sell on the Company, so that there becomes a higher value in clicks than actual sales? Its a random thought but I'm clutching at straws trying to understand this mindset.

 

Your ADHD comment made me laugh out loud haha. It's true that it look like a spreadsheet for scoreboard numbnuts.

And yeah, with all those new influencers and digital marketing agents and woke businessman, I would not be surprised if what you said about the Cost per Click type of strategy was right.

But we don't know. Maybe it's really just their way of doing things. One thing I like though is that I don't recveive tons of promotional emails from them. So I prefer their spreadsheet buying page then receiving a stupid email every week .

 

Haha... Yeah that's a good observation, like some financial geek had ideas about how to present the Company now, like somebody that isn't too interested in the product that they own, just the sales figures.

I thought I'd heard about a Sonnox buyout recently and if that's the case then it would add up that they're selling stats rather than 'music gear', 'promo, sales, stats, numbers...'

 

It's a dick move and I don't trust companies that do this.

 

the tactic i dislike the most is companies who screw around with the price of one plugin; to direct people into a bundle or subscription because it is a "better deal".

Soundtoys is first example I think of. One plugin is $200, but all 20 or thirty of them is like $100 more? So they sell Zero instead. Even Waves put a realistic per plugin price (maybe you have to wait for a sale). PA are just as bad, where someone buys one plugin for $250 only to see it next week for like 4 dollars. It makes anything they sell basically worthless.

it's the same mentality as this. They think someone will change their mind about a perpetual license for one if they can rope them into a sub/bundle by hiding the price on the site.