This kinda stuff is why I sometimes start ignoring new products. PA created this huge urgency to buy a bunch of stuff for the holidays. Now they want more money for this new version. A lot of people probably wouldn’t have bought during the holiday if they had known this new one was coming out.

I considered getting stuff during the holiday sale, but the vouchers for the SH and Focusrite came out too late. PA tech support also took days to reset my trial demos on a couple things. Sale was over by the time they did. With this new one, my only option is to pay $179. Didn’t see any other vouchers.

So I did not get a lot last year. Some PA stuff while it was cheap before the mega bundle existed. The VSE2 during a sale. Traded for Duende Bus. Then I waited for the holiday sales. Financed a UAD bundle and got VSR-24 and EQ84.

It can be a real pain dealing with the pressure to test all these things out and decide whether to get them during the intro sale. If you don’t, you’ll be waiting months or years for a similar price. Then there’s always the chance some other new revolutionary product will come along after you’ve spent on the last new release.

If prices are low, we can impulse buy left and right. For a lot of people, maybe it’s better that they don’t buy so many plugins. You could maybe improve your work more by building a 9900k based computer that will enable you to work at higher rates and/or use better combinations of plugins that your current cpu can’t handle.

We can be unhappy about prices, but I don’t think it’s much of a solution. Just don’t buy it. If the market isn’t there, the prices will have to drop. Even UAD is changing. Giving away 4 of their newest and most expensive plugins if you buy a satellite. Companies that charge hundreds for plugins even during sales are extremely rare. Maybe just Cranesong and MAAT. But the Cranesong stuff did go for $150 a couple years back briefly.

Next week some small developer could release something that blows everyone away and costs $50. In that case, subscribing is an asset. One can just drop their sub if they feel they no longer need it. For a lot of us, we already own tons of PA and new releases are the only interest we have in PA. At least they offer a cheaper sub option if one just has to have the new SH right now and doesn’t wanna spend $100+. I wouldn’t mind seeing a $5 a month option for any 2 plugins. Maybe make it exclusive for heavy hitters. A company would have to release some real extraordinary stuff for me to consider spending more than $50 a year on them at this point.