Sonic Timeworks : Classic Plate released

cannonball · Post by **cannonball** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 2:18 pm

hi

doesn't realise the 2016 give us for free

alessandro

bbrian · Post by **bbrian** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 5:05 pm

Thanks for the update Warp. I'm really looking foward to the Ambience and Hall reverbs, and the CD-100 update. For what reasons are you considering not releasing the 2016? Lack of interest? Support of Princeton developers? You certainly knocked out a working model of it quickly! And how is your relab website doing? It seems to always be under construction...if you need a hand with any webpage stuff, I would be more than happy to help (for free of course), and likewise with any reverb tutorials or manuals. I now have 2 nice banks of presets cooking (P100 and CD100) but my ethernet card has died on my DAW and I am in the process of backing up my HD (I am worried it may fail...making some very loud clicking noises).

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 9:31 pm

On 2004-10-27 18:05, bbrian wrote:
...backing up my HD (I am worried it may fail...making some very loud clicking noises).

right - don't shut it off ! while the disk is spinning the head loading mechnism is rather safe, opposed to when the disk starts - therefore the noise (I hope you don't have it during 'regular' operation yet).
I once had such a candidate which could be re-vitalized if given a rest, reaching from a couple of minutes to a day. But sooner or later those will finally pass away.

good luck, Tom

bbrian · Post by **bbrian** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 11:36 pm

Yes I am fearing the worst since every single thing on my primary hard drive takes forever to load (and yes there are NO fragmented files). It even takes about 1-2 minutes for SFP to start versus only a few seconds in the past. Well thanks for the info, I've battled computer hardware most of my life and done tech support and whatnot, so I'm not so worried about it. Just hard to believe that my disk would fail after such a short time, since my other 2 hard drives work great and are both older.

Warp69 · Post by **Warp69** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 11:09 am

Hey,

The Ambience/Inverse will be released within 10 days and I will probably also finish the update of the cd100 at the same time.

Im still undecided regarding the release of the Hall reverbs. Also Im afraid it's possible to unprotect devices somehow with the right tool.

I would really appreciate any help regarding tutorials, manual and presets.

Regarding the website - well, Im just lazy...... I need to create all the graphics and that takes time.

Sorry to hear about your ethernetcard/HD. Hope you get it solved.

Cheers

[ This Message was edited by: Warp69 on 2005-09-02 00:31 ]

sandrob · Post by **sandrob** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 4:00 pm

http://www.uaudio.com/news/releases/plate140.html

cannonball · Post by **cannonball** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 4:51 pm

hi

uad just try to copy your idea

...but you have 78 peoples will buy
all your devices sp2016 included..i hope

[ This Message was edited by: cannonball on 2004-10-29 17:55 ]

[ This Message was edited by: cannonball on 2004-10-29 17:56 ]

bbrian · Post by **bbrian** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 7:12 pm

Warp, I understand your concerns about lack of interest in the 2016, especially if the native version is more CPU-friendly. At least you will have a fun toy for your own Scope cards! This is good news about the Ambience verb and CD100 updates. Since you have already finished the Hall programs, I hope you will at least try to sell them. You may as well try to get some money for work already completed. I for one, would not mind paying a higher price for the Hall reverbs. Even if few people buy them at a higher price ($149-200) this should still help you some. You should also consider that these devices are less than 1 year old, so you should not look at your sales count as final. I will start working on text for a P100 manual, but you will probably have to format it for me and add graphics if necessary, I can only do this in Word or plain text, since I do not have Acrobat Writer. I will use the Lexicon manuals as a reference but try to make the text even more user-friendly and incorporate little tips or examples for each parameter. This should only take a few days to finish.

blazesboylan · Post by **blazesboylan** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 11:02 pm

Nice Brian! I'd love to get my hands on that manual.

Warp: I'll buy your verbs, too.

If I may say so, I would recommend kicking Sonic TimeWorks in the arse. I know they're good folks and they're working hard, but man they gotta sort out their ordering issues. I wouldn't even be surprised if you've lost a sale or two thanks to a poor or defective sales process. (Scroll back through this thread to see what I mean.)

I still think that the "CW 3rd party developers" online store is a good idea. A place people can go and buy items on a whim, and go through a single simple interface, and buy multiple plugs all at once. Pool your resources and work together. From a customer's standpoint, I can't understand why all you developers haven't already started working on this.

Cheers and best wishes,

Johann

Warp69 · Post by **Warp69** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 8:04 am

Hey

@bbrian : Thank you very much for your help regarding the manual - really appreciated.

@blazesboylan : There's reason for the ordering issue - STW have to pay a penalty which time someone use a stolen credit card. So we have to give the money back + 10% extra. I don't think it would help with the "CW 3rd party developers" online store - None of the 3rd party developers have sold alot of devices - not even CW. I would imagine that less than 10% of the user base buys additional devices.

Cheers

[ This Message was edited by: Warp69 on 2005-09-02 00:32 ]

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 9:14 am

Well, 78 sold units is not a lot, im totally aware of that. Your estimation of 10% of the user base buying devices is probarly not wrong either. And i also guess that most people buy synths rather than effects as well.

If you consider the amount of marketing that goes into these devs, the 10% isnt a suprising number. I think an interesting idea mould be to try to make a deal with CW where they include a FULL VERSION of one of the algos with every new 6dsp+ card, with an upgrade path for the other algos (maybe $99 for one, $160 for two, $210 for three and $260 for four.) This upgrade should be a one time only deal, so after they IE buy a pack of three algos, they will need to pay $99 for every algo afterwards.

And if i understood you correctly, you are afraid of piracy (Quote: Also Im afraid it's possible to unprotect devices somehow with the right tool). Well, of course it is possible. AFAIK, TC stuff and RTAS gets cracked all the time because there is a market for it. SCOPE or .devs WOULD be cracked if there was a real demand for it, and if cw didnt have one foot in the grave one year ago. Anyway, people will still buy your devices even if there is a crack available.

OT, i wonder how many % of the VSTi based musicians actually pay for their software :s

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 10:06 am

On 2004-10-30 10:14, piddi wrote:
... you are afraid of piracy (Quote: Also Im afraid it's possible to unprotect devices somehow with the right tool). Well, of course it is possible. AFAIK, TC stuff and RTAS gets cracked all the time because there is a market for it. SCOPE or .devs WOULD be cracked if there was a real demand for it,...

there may be an academic possibility but that's truely beyond realism.
first the protection check is done in DSP code - you'll need to be able to read that language at least. There's no symbolic dissassembler for that stuff which deciphers the opcodes and puts them in a listing with 'OS-calls'

It's the same situation as with the original Mac's ROM.
Someone wrote such a tool but that 'someone' was considered to be one of the world's leading compiler builders - a true one-in-a-million of talent.

He comletely reverse engineered the symbolic content of the ROM according to Apple's published docs - but there is no such public doc of SFP internals

and M68k assembly is a really simple kind of thing.
Needless to mention that with the tool above you could crack any Mac application in less than an afternoon - but only due to the fact that you knew exactly what was going on and where to look.

For example if an app expires on a certain date you look up all the calls to the machine's 'SysDateFunction', so one of those routines will be involved in the protection check.
A quote from the developer above: it's like a dog p*ssing on a pole, somewhere the program must sniff the mark and decide -
you just have to change the conditioned branch to an unconditioned one then...

All is done in the same memory space and in the same machine language and in the same application.

No chance on SFP - it's DSP assembler and Intel code, done on the card and in main memory and in different apps.
Nothing is documented, you have only a steam of opcodes.

But before you are able to even peek at this, the stuff is encrypted by 2 different programs with the unique number of the board - hidden in an eeprom that will die forever once you mess with it and screw things up...

you cannot 'watch' (or record) the process how a plugin reacts when 'activated', which is one common technique hackers apply. You just repeat a process with trial and error over and over to detect is operation strategy.

Do you understand now why CWA makes such a hazzle from moving devices from one board to another

my two cents (from the dark side...), Tom

medusa13 · Post by **medusa13** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 2:31 pm

I think Creamware should include at least a demo version of every single device found at the creamware shop in the installation CD. They should also include demos of devices that are not found in the shop by reaching some sort of agreement with the developers. There's not a better way to market something than actually letting people have a hands-on experince. I know that the devs can be downloaded, but I guess a lot of people doesn't bother in downloading them, and some aren't even aware of their existence.
So when you install your Scope system, at least you are able to try every single device available for the platform.

Martín

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 2:38 pm

well, you are way more educated in this field than me Tom, i know that

I made the assumption above on the fact that devs for both ver.2 (and 2.5), ver.3, ver 3.1a and (partly) ver 3.1c where cracked (ver 3.1c crack was "fixed" by copying 3.1a systemfiles to 3.1c). Mind you, many of the devs was totally unuasble, and your legally bought devs wouldnt work with cracked devs/SFP installed (post 3.1a).
But in my eyes this was a signal that it was DOABLE to some extent, and I just believed that if they REALLY wanted to use more energy on this they COULD have done it.

Lucky for us, SFP userbase isnt too big, and VSTi's has a much bigger market/status for crackers. and since VST's and VSTi's come out on a daily basis, i guess they turned full focus to that direction.

Sorry for hijacking thread, i'll stop it here.

Anyways Warp69, keep up the good work!

(and by the way, i dont used cracked devs, i pay for all things SCOPE)

[ This Message was edited by: piddi on 2004-10-30 15:44 ]

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 3:34 pm

Version 2.5??

Warp69 · Post by **Warp69** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 5:31 pm

Hey,

Im not talking about cracked version, but the possibility to unprotect finished devices done with DP/SDK.

Cheers

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 7:11 am

very right Warp69 - reverse engineering was one of my main concerns when CWA announced the general availability of the new SDK.
In that context you have a much boader range of viewpoints to analyze what's going on behind the curtain.

But probably CWA has changed a significant part of the protection since the demoes vanished from their servers, too.

May I remind on the former failure of the timeout check if you simply avoided the initialization of the DSP on device load - this was just a simple observation which clearly indicated where to look for tacky actions...

still concerned, Tom

Warp69 · Post by **Warp69** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 2:23 pm

Hey,

Im about to release the ambience and the inverse algorithms, but......... we're undecided regarding the price for both. Keep the price at 99 or raise it to 149.
How would you react if I raised the price from 99 to 149?

Some of the reasons : Weak dollar and unfortunately we have had some bad orders (stolen credit cards - we have to give the money back and pay an additional penalty of 5-10%).

Kind regards

[ This Message was edited by: Warp69 on 2005-09-02 00:34 ]

dbmac · Post by **dbmac** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 2:49 pm

How about $149 for first time customers, $99 for the Plate verb owners.
My biased suggestion.

/dave

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 4:42 pm

my suggestion: 149 for each duo is OK, all together for 298, to fire sales.
I assume the new algorithms have the same quality as the plate one's - then it still would be highly competetive...

Honestly the plate's price as a starter and intro was acceptable, but your reputation might suffer if you'd continue on that level.
It hurts somewhat, but imho we'd rather prefer to keep you interested as a professional developer in the long term - and you've proven you know the job.

cheers, Tom