But every Moog emulation is interesting and every fresh emulation is something new.
Boom Motherfucker!

 

Way to enter the forum! Instant new best pal, welcome

 

This thread is back? Psssht, nice try whoever resurrected it, but @vuuru_keg's schtick still isn't gonna fly in 2023.

 

I took a poll - i.e., I asked my friends (all professional musicians - studio, live, film, or combo).

- One will not ever use cracks. Even to try them out past the tryout period. He runs a clean ship.

- One only ever uses cracks (including DP). He's got friends who give him demo versions, etc.
Both these guys run modest but pro studios, both have Mac Pros (the big beasts). Not cracked.

- A fair number (40%) live in countries where paying $399 for one single plugin is insane. They might get paid $30-50 per live gig. And have 3-4 of those a week. They have gas, rent, and food and school fees for their kids to pay for. So plugins or DAW or VIs, are overpriced for their project studio budget in their respective countries. So cracks are welcome.

- Talking about kids - that's another segment. Some parents don't understand why they've got to fork over $399 for a compressor, when they've just paid $2,000 for a laptop with Logic - that has excellent stock plugins of its own. And most parents just can't afford a $2,500 laptop, let alone Logic or Sibelius, or whatever. Most parents don't even know what's going on behind that door. And many of those kids reside in the aforementioned countries where their peso, rupees or rupiahs, rand or ruble, simply don't weigh as much as the dollar or pound or euro.

- The majority of us - who do earn USD or Euro money and can afford the plugins - simply can't keep up. There's so many. Every month, I get my SOS copy and drool over some new one. I've got about 90 UAD plugins, 30 PluginAlliance, plus all the Eventides, all the PSPs, all the Native Instruments, a few indispensable Sonnox, and about 30+ Waves (all the fantastic Abbey Roads, and a dozen others I got on sale but that I rarely use). Even with 4th of July-Black Friday type sales, etc., it adds up to over $XX,000 (spread over several years).


So that's for the poll. It's a bell curve with two extremes. One who never uses cracks (a singer), and one who only does (a guitarist; guitars and amps are expensive enough he says). Most of the rest of us on that curve (various percentages of cracked against mostly legit).


Musicians/Engineers want the companies to succeed (well, maybe not Waves - they would fillet and eat the shark from Jaws alive), and I remember when most of us would keep the glossy product boxes on display shelves in the studio, so clients and fellow musicians could see we had legit copies, but the days of boxes are mostly/nearly gone: it's all downloads now - immaterial products (hint, hint).


Still, most studios I know/frequent have purchased their plugins and software - it's insanely stupid not to do so. And then there's touring engineers - FOH and playback, etc. None of those cats aren't taking chances with cracked anything - immediate support is paramount.

So do many pros use cracked plugins and software? You betcha. Do we use those exclusively? Not a chance. And never in a studio or on tour. I figure most companies accept this bell curve as a fact of life - I heard a few actually release their own cracks into the wild, to keep up the hype (and relevance) but I've no hard evidence of this but hearsay - and chuck it up ("piracy") to subterranean marketing costs.

 

There's WAY more to that that you think. Cracked stuff runs faster and more efficiently. And, it doesn't depend on internet connections to "validate" itself which uses more machine resources and processor time.

That might make some sense (although highly doubtful in real life) as there is so much bogus garbage out there now calling itself audio plugins - floating a crack to give their sub-standard junk a leg up. But most discerning users can see past crappy products no matter how many cracks are released. If it's junk, it's junk, just move on...

 

So true dude

 

We could say the SAME about ALL trends : tape emus, transients compressors ...
Apart ppl making BIG money, i don't see the usual user paying 200+ bucks for those plugins.

Studer A800 UAD, Ampex® ATR-102 regular price : 382 euros (yes, you read it right)
Abbey Road J37 Tape : 299 euros
Kramer Master Tape : $249 euros
...

Just some examples.
Only big studios can afford this.

As a side note : there are a LOT of "summer sales" now, reducing price by around 70-80%

 

cast my vote for " I try before I buy. If the plugin is getting into my workflow after a while - I'll probably buy it." I own most of my plugins as it's just wrong to steal from small outfits trying to make a living from something they put their heart and soul into. However, I justify using the renegade Valhalla plugins w/ the goal that I will buy them all when I can afford it. then there's some plugins you couldn't pay me to use - NI and Waves being a few. Fuck Francisco Partners private equity and the unethical shit they've been indicted on over the years.

 

it's a unfair fuckin world man

 

word

 

after reading some comments I just can't...

 

I like breaking the law.
Also money I could spend on software I'd rather spend on other things like pussy, drugs, hardware synthesizers, vinyl and CDs, family vacation.

 

Many R2R releases use less system resources (RAM, CPU, loading time) compared to legit. So when I buy a license it's just to support development but I still stick with R2R.

 

When I was younger and broke, everything was 100% piracy. Starting from Windows. I didn't make any money out of it - it was simply exploration and learning.
But in return, if I liked a plugin, I wrote everything best on the Internet about that plugin. I used to write many articles and recommend plugins to other musicians.

Now, I'm 100% clean.

 

Still no money to buy, I'm sure that the devs have a better computer than I do. Try before you buy is my only option.

 

As a noprofit organization, we would love to use - and contribute to - opensource softwares only, but unfortunally only few are usable for our needs (actually).

By the way, for those who are interested in, we're collecting open a/v alternatives in our HyMPS project:

Hybrid Multimedia Production Suite git

Feel free to contribute in any way you can/want.

 

I have often considered using freeware only, I can see that it will probably cover all of my needs. But when I visit the sister site it's like sending a kid into a sweet shop to buy a loaf of bread.

 

Last edited: Sep 29, 2023

A couple of weeks ago I deleted like 30+ cracked plugins that I never use
I always wait for Black Friday or other sales to buy at the lowest price. Until this moment I use cracked software.

 

I normally crack used plugins, so why not trying the other way round?

 

Rhodes offered me their MK8 plugin after I won a competition.

The fuck is that virus called Codemeter doing on my computer, taking up my already limited resources even when my DAW is not open ?

Can't wait for the cracked version.

 

Last edited: Sep 29, 2023