Need an EQ? Pay what you want!

The much discussed pay-what-you-want model (Jane Siberry, Radiohead, etc.) is not just a music industry topic anymore. 5 months ago, a "young" software house, DDMF, has started adopting this model for its two products, the LP10 and the IIEQ PRO (respectively, a mastering equalizer and a parametric tracking equalizer).
We asked DDMF's developer, Christian, to tell us something more about his products and his pricing model.

Hi Christian, how did the DDMF story start? Did you model your EQs after specific hardware models?

Well, let's see: it began in 2006 when I was between two jobs and had some time to kill. As a scientist I had acquired quite a bit of numerical programming experience, and as a hobby musician I had a good overview over what went on in the plugin world. In my research projects I had used Fourier analysis of all sorts of signals for some time, and I wanted to see whether I could come up with a good-sounding FFT-based equalizer. That's basically how the LP10 was born. It wasn't specifically built after legendary hardware products, but its frequency response (which can be shaped very precise with an FFT-based EQ) follows exactly the ones of RLC modules which, after all, are the essential building blocks of hardware EQs.
Having the basic setup already available, I was then able to develop the IIEQ, a more "go-to" style EQ, in relatively short time. At that time I thought that the LP10 was really something special and the IIEQ more standard (although it offered 10 fully parametric bands),

I know your products had a "traditional" pricing scheme back then. Why did you adopt the pay-what-you-want scheme?

Yes, I offered the LP10 for 40 Euros and the IIEQ as freeware. Ironically the IIEQ received much more attention (well, it was freeware after all) so after some months I decided to publish an extended version of the IIEQ, the IIEQPro, as payware. And indeed, it sold better than the LP10!
But during all these months I never was really sure about the "right" price for the EQs. On the one hand side, there are competitors who charge more than 200 Dollars (and whose products can usually be reproduced by either the IIEQPro or the LP10 to an accuracy of -70 dB or better, by the way).
On the other hand, from my observation 90 percent of the market are young hobby musicians who, in all likelyhood, will not spend that much money on an EQ, but rather get it from emule or some russian torrent site (where my products had also appeared from day one). So when Radiohead published their new album based on the "pay-what-you-want" method, I immediately thought that this was a very interesting approach that would fit very well for DDMF. It would solve the piracy problem, it would allow everybody to buy an EQ from me (and if it is only for a dollar, it's still better than nothing) and, as I only realized later, it's also quite a good marketing tool. In fact, while before this price model DDMF was just another developer, it is now recommended in discussion forums much more often simply because it's an interesting thing...

Let's talk about the results. How do people behave with this scheme?

After 5 months the average price is still around 10 Dollars, and that's really nice! I mean, the users can get away with 50 cents, but they deliberately pay more, sometimes even 50 Dollars, simply because they really like the product. So apart from the model being financially more successful than the old pricing scheme (it's not making me a rich man, but I'm quite sure I'm above the average VST developer) it's also much more rewarding since I have the feeling that people really appreciate what I'm doing.

What we should expect from DDMF in the next months?

In the near future I finally will release new versions of the EQs with full mouse handle control, as this is clearly number one on the request list. I'll probably redesign the whole GUI and add a few other features while doing this, so it's gonna be a major update. It's also tempting to pursue other types of effects like compressors, but at the moment there are no immediate plans.

EULA: don't give up!

From BBC site: "The National Consumer Council (NCC) has accused 17 firms, including Microsoft, Adobe and Symantec, of using unfair end user licence agreements (EULAs). The NCC has asked the Office of Fair Trading to launch an investigation".
The news is not yet on NCC site, so we could not investigate further, but we'll try to have a direct contact with them, as soon as possible.
It would be interesting to deal with these issues at a global (vs. national) level, since these EULAs affect the rights of millions of users worldwide and it's time to make them better.
EULAs need to be as short as possible and readable by common users (and not just by a good laywer), do not need to be a sort of punishment for the customer (e.g., the "I have a desktop and a laptop, may I install..." faq), and well, they just need to be fair and well balanced (more respect for users' privacy, more responsibilities for the holder, etc.).
Is it too much to ask?


Unusable EULAs on Usability Blog
The Anti-EULA on BoingBoing

Music industry: torrents vs. middlemen?

Yesterday, on What.cd's (one of the most famous post-Oink torrent trackers) home page, you could have read an announcement which has already generated a lot of buzz on the interweb: Alphabasic, a U.S. indie label, has agreed to release its latest album on the site. Here you find an excerpt from the company's CEO letter:
"Hello listener…downloader…pirate…pseudo-criminal…
If you can read this, then you’ve more than likely downloaded this album from a peer to peer network or torrent.
You probably expect the rest of this message to tell you that you’re hurting musicians and breaking just about every copyright law in the book. Well, it won’t tell you that.
What I would like to tell you is that my record label understands that a large portion of people pirate music because it is easier than buying it. CDs scratch easily, most pay-per-download sites have poor quality and ****ty DRM protection, and vinyl is near impossible to find or ship without hassle.
In many cases I wonder why people buy CDs at all anymore. A few like the tangible artwork, some haven’t adapted to MP3s yet, but most do it because they have a profound love for music and want to support the artists making it. Kind of restores your faith in humanity for a moment eh?
So, now what?
Like the album? About to go “support the artist” on iTunes?
Well, don’t.
Alphabasic is currently in a legal battle against Apple because NONE of our material (Sublight Records included) receives a dime of royalty from the vast amount of sales iTunes has generated using our material.
Want to buy a CD just to show your support?
If you don’t particularly like CDs, don’t bother.
Retailers like Best Buy and Amazon spike the price so high that their cut is often 8 times higher than the artist’s. Besides, most CDs are made out of unrecyclable plastic and leave a nasty footprint in your environment.
If you do particularly like CDs, buy them from the label (in our case, alphabasic.com). After manufacturing costs are recuperated, our artists usually receive over 90% of the actual money coming out of your wallet.
In addition, all of our physical products are made out of 100% recycled material.
Want to show your support?
Go here and browse our library of lossless, DRM-free downloads.
Already have that?
Then feel free to donate whatever you want to your favorite artist. 100% will go directly to them.
Hell, you can even donate a penny just to thank the artist.
If you really like ‘The Flashbulb - Soundtrack To A Vacant Life’ and want to show your support without it going to greedy retailers, distributors, and coked-up label reps, then click the button below.
[link to http://www.alphabasic.com/index2.htm ]
If you send us your mailing address, Alphabasic may occasionally send you various goodies (overstocks, stickers, even rare CDs) in appreciation and encouragement for your support.
Thanks for reading....
Benn Jordan
CEO - Alphabasic Records"

From label's homepage, Benn seems to be satisfied with the results of its viral effort. Is this going to be a new trend for labels? Well, we can agree on one thing: all those promises associated with the digital distribution (lower prices for users, better deals for artists, etc.) were basically lies. Users are in most cases paying a lot of money for barely acceptable compressed files, and artists in some cases get even less royalties than from phisical supports's sales. The pay-what-you-want model (Jane Siberry, Radiohead, etc.), even if interesting, can't be a solution for new artists. Free music with ads between songs? Come on, let's get serious! Oh, and don't let me started with new vinyls' prices: music industry is going to become something like: "you are a real music lover? Fine, be prepared to pay top dollars for the 'real thing', be it vinyls or stupid special editions".
Sometimes I'd like to close my eyes for a moment, and wake up in one hunded years...

Off-the-record: Antares [ENG]

As promised in the Harmony Engine mini-review, this is the interview with Marco Alpert from Antares.

What's your role in Antares?

I'm VP of Marketing. I have responsibility for all marketing and brand management activities as well as participating in product specification and GUI design. I've also been known to write owners manuals.

How many people work at Antares now, and how many at the beginning?

When I joined Antares in 1998, I was one of three full-time employees (including Dr. Andy). However, all of our sales and distribution was handled by an independent company that we eventually acquired.
Today, Antares consists of a core group of nine employees and an additional network of very talented people to work with us on a contract basis.

Antares' latest effort is Harmony Engine, released some months ago. At a first look it seems it shares a lot of things with Autotune and the Avox suite of plugs. Is it correct to define it as a sort of "modular advanced mixture" of your previous discoveries in vocal technology or does it add something new?

Well it's true that a great deal of the processing technology shares some (but far from all) elements with Auto-Tune and AVOX. What we really believe is new is the way that a musician can interact with and specify the harmony generation. It was our goal to offer all of the traditional ways of harmony programming, but also add methods that let people without formal training in vocal harmony arrangement approach the harmony generation process from a purely musical point of view.

Harmonizers are a very special beast, that's probably why we don't see many of them on the market. Why it's such an "holy grail" for a developer?

I'm not sure I'd characterize it as a "holy grail" in the way that Auto-Tune is considered a holy grail. However, it is a tool that is applicable to a lot of different types of musical endeavor. I think the reason you don't see many on the market is simply that they're hard to do (well).

I found Harmony Engine to be a powerful creative tool. I prefer to define it as creative tool, (in the vein of previous hardware products like the Digitech Vocalist Studio, one of Eno's classics, by the way) more than a truly "realistic" one.
What do you think about that?

What I think about that is that I'm happy to hear anyone say that they find something we make to be a powerful creative tool. If it helps you make the music you want to make, it's serving its purpose.
As to Harmony Engine's "realism," certainly, if you shift pitch a ways and solo individual harmony voices, it will be obvious that you are not listening to an individual singer singing that part. And, of course, for many of those "creative" uses, it isn't about realism to begin with. However, it's been our experience that used skillfully in the context of an entire mix, Harmony Engine can provide backup vocals that are quite convincing.

While testing Harmony Engine, I guess you tried it also on several instruments. Did you get any interesting or surprising result that you would like to share with our readers?

Well, quite honestly, virtually all of our testing was done with human voice. However, during beta testing, one of our testers sent us a track he did using it with a tin whistle, of all things, and it was quite wonderful.

I know you're also the author of Harmony Engine's user manual, and I think you did a great job with that. Writing a good manual unfortunately is often not a top priority for developers (both software and hardware). Is it because they estimate that just a very few users will actually read it?

I can't really speak for the motivations of other developers, but I wonder if there isn't a chicken-and-egg situation with people reading (or not reading) manuals. Maybe if the typical manual were less intimidating or, dare I say, less boring, more people would read them. If you have a tool with a lot of capabilities, you obviously do your best in the GUI design to help people understand how things work. But there're always going to be subtleties that you will only discover from reading the manual. My goal is to write a manual that is both clearly informative and enjoyable enough to read that someone might actually read it. In the end, it helps the user to get the most out of our product and, incidentally, tends to reduce the number of frustrated customers calling our support people.

Auto-Tune is ten years old. Did you expect it to be the best selling plug-in of the decade?

Well, let's say that we were cautiously optimistic that it would be a success.

Did you have a special celebration for its 10th birthday?

Yes, we took it to the zoo and bought it all the ice cream and candy it wanted. It had a great time.

I've read that the algorithm used in Auto-Tune was first developed by Dr. Andy Hildebrand, while working as a geophysicist, to analyze seismic data for locating oil under the earth's surface (?!?). How the thing evolved into the product that we all know?

Quite simply, geophysical exploration is heavily dependent on the analysis and processing of sound waves. The main difference between geophysics and music is that the waves tend to be of radically different frequencies. Consequently, a great deal of the DSP technology Dr. Andy developed for geophysical analysis is equally applicable to music.

Antares is basically a software company. Your latest hardware product, the AVP, was released in 2002 (by the way, it's still on sale). Will we see more hardware Antares products?

Probably not as Antares branded products. However, over the years we have participated is a number of partnerships with other companies, and we are always open to technology licensing opportunities with other hardware manufacturers, so it isn't out of the question that some of our technology might show up in other hardware products.

How do you see Antares in 10 years from now? Will you be busy at making androids singing in harmony or what?

Ten years? Yikes! I'm not even sure what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. But hopefully, whatever it is we're doing 10 years from now, it will still include making cool, powerful, and fun-to-use tools for creating music.

About piracy: how does it affect your relationship with customers and, assuming you know about BanPiracy, what do you think of their approach? Will Antares join them?

That's really a topic for an entirely separate discussion. But obviously, our ability to continue making tools like Auto-Tune and Harmony Engine depend on people being willing to pay for them, just like they'd (hopefully) pay for any creative tool they used. This is our livelihood. It's how we all earn the money to pay our rent, buy food, whatever. I can assure you that if we were into becoming wealthy entrepreneurs, we'd certainly not be in the music software business. We do this because we love music and are happy to be able to make a living producing tools that help people make music. It's unfortunate that there are enough people who believe, for whatever reason, that they should be able to essentially steal what we produce, that we are forced to take measures to try to protect ourselves from that theft. Our goal is to do our best to ensure that those measures have as little as possible effect on our loyal customers.

Oh, how could I forget this? After so many years and all the doubts about JFK, Marylin, Lennon, etc., could we, once and for all, at least know if the (in)famous Cher's fx was AutoTune or something else?

It was Auto-Tune. Used by a second engineer on a grassy knoll just outside the studio.

Off-the-record: GForce [ENG]

As anticipated in the Virtual String Machine review, we asked GForce's Dave Spiers some questions about, well, VSM, his past, piracy, and... his Citroen DS Pallas (?!?).

First of all, I am talking with Dave from GForce Software, GMedia, or what else? I admit I'm a bit confused with these brand names after all these years...

Hey, it confuses me at times too, eh eh!
Gmediamusic was a company started by my partner Chris and myself way back.
We initially released the M-Tron as well as some sample CDs which were
branded as GForce.
Discussions with other developers lead to GForce being used as an umbrella brand under which we started collaborating with other independent developers such as Ohm Force. The Minimonsta is a prime example of this - a joint project under a single brand.
Eventually Chris and I found that GForce was taking up the majority of our time so this year we decided to stop duplicating things like websites and organize ourselves a little better. Hopefully this'll give us a bit more time to devote to things like development and keeping the new GForce website fresh.

Let's talk about VSM: I've seen your picture with all those fantastic machines you sampled and, let me say: wow! Are they part of your personal collection or you borrowed them here and there?

Some of the instruments belong to us but we were lucky enough to talk to Gordon Reid (Sound On Sound Journalist) very early in the VSM development.
Gordon was investigating the entire genre for a series of articles and had bought some wonderful examples during the course of his research.
We recorded many of these and learned a huge amount about the String Ensemble
history in the process.
Chris and I would take it in turns to do the recording while the other picked Gordon's brains about the actual instrument.

While making VSM, did you thought that you were going to become the most hated person for all those people selling their old string machines at ridiculously high prices?

Actually, it might have the opposite effect. We're half-anticipating that, in much the same way as with the M-Tron, VSM will simply introduce these sounds to a new generation and as it starts being used more and more, some of the wealthier musicians will think "I really want an original Freeman String Symphonizer/Solina/Elka Rhapsody etc".
If that happens, it's possible prices will rise.
Years ago you couldn't give Melly's away, that's definitely not the case now.

I know it's not a rock'n'roll question, but... could you give us some details about the recording chain used during the sampling sessions?

All the instruments were recorded via either an RME Fireface 800 or a Metric Halo
2882. They key was getting hold of the best instrument examples as possible and if I remember correctly we recorded three ARP Omnis until we found the best one.

Some of the instruments you sampled had also extra-string presets (like horns/brass), which in some cases could create an interesting blend with the string's sound. Since I don't see them in VSM I guess you just wanted to stay true to the "string-only" approach, isn't it?

Yes. The whole idea came about when we were asked to find a Solina for a UK band, Kasabian. It took a while but and when we found one and started playing it, we just fell in love with that sound. I was a huge fan of 70s funk (Roy Ayers, Herbie Hancock, Lonnie Liston Smith etc) and playing it brought a ray of sunshine to an otherwise damp and miserable English day.
It also coincided with a friend of ours working on the last Goldfrapp album and after we heard the track Number One, where the main riff is a Roland RS505, we thought "We have to build a retro string ensemble instrument".
Of course, we could have gone off at all sorts of tangents but we had to keep focus as much as possible - hence no brass or organs.

The additional synthesis module (filter, adsr) is a nice bonus: is it something completely new or did you re-adapt some of your previous
creations?

It's all completely new. We much prefer creating an instrument from a clean canvas instead of taking old code and tweaking it. Maybe that's why we take so long, he he!

How many people worked on VSM? I've read that Art (ex Bitshift, and author of Phatmatik Pro) was involved in the team too.

We're probably talking a hardcore team of three or four, but I have to say that it's always hard to give a definitive amount of people who work on a specific instrument because people dip in and out of the project as it progresses. By the time you count beta-testers and various musicians, this figure would be much, much higher.
We're lucky to work with some very smart people and all their individual expertise is welcome and sometimes vital. However Art was the main engineer and he was the one who probably suffered the most amount of sleepless nights.

About the fx section: I suppose it's thought for the machines who were originally missing a modulation section. After what the phaser and ensemble have been modeled?

We started by looking at a Solina-based ensemble but often when we added this to, say an Elka Rhapsody, it would make it sound too much like a Solina. The same would happen with a Roland type ensemble - it would just make everything sound very 'Roland' which defeated the idea of having this collection of diverse instruments, each with their own character.
In the end we took an average and opted to give the unit a high degree of flexibility where people could add some colour without it becoming too overbearing.

Still about the fx section: why no delay? I suppose the answer will be: "anybody has at least one", but I'll try to ask anyway...

We did discuss this at length but when we heard the phaser in 12 stage mode, the phaser won the fight.

I've read that we're gonna see some expansion packs for VSM in the future (like you did with the M-Tron). Could you tell us something more about them?

I'm working on these now and at the moment there's a few things that have definitely been short-listed such as the Hohner K4, Yamaha CE25, Korg Lambda, Elektronika EM25 as well as something else which will be the jewel in the crown. Sorry, I can't say what that is just yet though.

As expected, the VSM is also a "virtual award" to the italian manufacturers of the times (Elka, Siel which was the real responsible for
the Arp Quartet, Crumar). But is it true that you thought the word "violoncello" on the Elka Rhapsody preset was a mistake? I had so much fun reading that!

Yep. I freely admit that I was confused by it which is embarrassing considering the time I've spent in Italy. I know my old friends at Generalmusic are going to tease me mercilessly at NAMM over this.


GForce describes itself as a company with "an emphasis on vintage synthesizer modeling". Since "vintage" is not a static concept, do you think we will see you modeling 80's and then 90's synths in the next years?

It's possible. We just love stuff that's slightly 'out-there' and in the early days there was a lot more of that than in the 80s and 90s. I love it when an industry is trying to find its feet because people come up with totally oblique ideas within which there's a certain magic.

I've read you worked with many, many artists, as programmer and engineer. Which has been the most difficult or the weirdest request you had during those years?

In the old days people used to say things like "Create me a sound that goes Zzzzzmmmmmoooooyyyoowww" and think that I could read their minds.
That used to be difficult because studio time was amazingly expensive and they'd sit
their tapping their fingers while I'd plug modules into modules and try to find what was in their heads while they commented "Make it more orange sounding"
The thing is I love those situations because that's where you learn your craft. It's the same with being on the road - you have to have your shit together because the show MUST go on.
I could talk about this kind of stuff all day but there's one example I can remember where I was up a mountain in Switzerland reprogramming loads of borrowed keyboards for a Debbie Harry gig because none of ours had arrived for a huge festival gig. I borrowed various instruments from people like Dave Stewart & Billy Idol and set to work with about an hour to go before Debbie took to the stage. We pulled it off but the pressure was pretty intense.
Chris, who worked with Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson, has some brilliant stories on that front too.

What's your take on the (hotter than ever, lately) piracy's affair? How does it affect your relationship with customers, and what do you think of BanPiracy's actions?

Piracy is a major problem for all developers, especially small niche ones like ourselves and I don't think there's much of an excuse for it nowadays with all the good freeware available. I have more respect for someone who can take a few bits of freeware and create a great track than I do for a warez addict who just goes through the motions.
The sad thing for me is that this industry is losing programmers to big business because we can't compete in terms of salary and because they become demoralised by seeing their work passed around as worthless. It's hard to see people who love what they do and are very good at it walk away to something far less creative.
The BanPiracy thing is alarming on many levels - if their numbers are correct and studio piracy is as endemic as they say then maybe their existence is part of a 'cause and effect' situation. I like to stay positive so we hope the pendulum will settle more in the centre-ground at some point.

You were a sort of pioneer in hardware midi controllers with the Phat Boy. Do you see GForce involved in something hardware related in the future?

It's possible and there's no denying that hardware can't be pirated, which is what I think makes it attractive to software developers.
What I love about software though is that these are still early days and there's a spirit of adventure that's exciting. I spoke to the boss of a hardware synth company who said "If you're not able to manufacture in China, you won't even get on the playing field" which to me implied that everyone is chasing lowest cost manufacturing over creativity - software isn't like that.....yet!

Gforce is not known for being a super-productive company. Is that because in these years you spent too much time in trying to bring back to life your "vintage" Citroen Pallas ? (sorry, I found your personal page about that and I had to ask!)

Hehe - the truth is that my DS has been garaged for about 5 years and I still haven't found the time to devote to it.....yet. Every year I say "This year I'll get it back to tip-top condition" but something always conspires against me.
Everyone here has outside interests and it's these things that inspire and excite us within GForce. For example, during this last year I've contributed to two films, a couple of albums and helped out in a techie capacity on a couple of tours. It's inevitable that you draw from this stimuli and ideas are formed. Some of mine and Chris' best ideas have come from just talking about solutions to problems we've faced that day on the way to and from gigs or studios.

I swear I won't tell anybody... What's going on in your secret labs?

Hehe - I wish it was as simple as that but in truth we have lots of projects running concurrently and focus may change depending on what's inspiring at a particular moment in time. For example, we may hit a difficult point with one product so we'll put it on the back burner for a while and bring something else to the fore. I think of it like doing a mix - sometimes you have to give yourselves space so that you come back with fresh ears.
VSM only came about because of having to find that Solina and if you would have asked me a month previously what we were working on, I'd have said something totally different.

Ok, we've finished, you can have a beer now!

Cheers - Your health and our warmest regards to Italy!