iZotope/Soundwide discontinuing many plugins

The Studio
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Iris 2, Breaktweaker, Trash 2 and many Exponential Audio reverb plugins:

iZotope Trash 2 und andere Plugins eingestellt - Die Alternativen! - gearnews.de (sorry, this one is in German, didn’t see an English source for the Exp Audio stuff so far)

Sad for me since I like all three… glad at least StutterEdit got a recent update…

Since PluginAlliance has joined Soundwide recently, are their plugins next?

2

Yup, saw that.

I’ve always wondered why they never seemed to give a shit about Iris 2 because it’s a powerful synth.

I also recently got BreakTweaker for cheap. I’m guessing glitch is not exactly in fashion these days so they decided to can it, which is also a shame because there aren’t many good glitchy type drum machines.

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The email:

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Iris2 lost potential (watch for a new synth no doubt).
Trash - self xplained
Breaktweakers always been interesting and used occaisionally (similar but more flexible than Steinbergs LoopMash - again discontinued as I recall.
Im a fan of Unfiltered audio - well worth checking if not already.

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hahahaha

Is it that bad? I think I got Trash 2 for free when buying some other stuff, prob never installed it

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I don’t really get it since they updated StutterEdit a while ago and I really thought BreakTweaker would be next. There are many more multieffect glitch plugins like SE as compared to glitch drum plugins like BT… I hope Nerve 2 will extend on the repeater features v1 has when it is finally released by Xfer…

But yeah, Iris is great with its spectral filter, I hope MFXxx is right and there will be a new synth with this feature…

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I like UA and have some of the plugins, but don’t use these very often tbh. Great options in general but I think I was a bit disappointed by the spectral mangling plugin since it has a kinda lofi sound compared to other spectral tools such as the ones by Zynaptiq imho… Have to try it out more though, too many tools lol…

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Imho it’s a good plugin, outdated now of course, but I also got it for free too years ago and I did use it before getting some other stuff like Shaperbox and Saturn.

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Don’t hold your breath…

As of Oct 19: “Well, no news, sorry. I am busy at work on things but I don’t discuss plans anymore, as they can be outside of my control.”

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I always thought Iris 2 was kinda rubbish. Very bloated, inefficient CPU usage and just somewhat bland. Trash 2 good but overtaken by Guitar Rig and TH-U, probably others too.

I get that developing is expensive and focus is needed so while no big loss to me I understand the pain for those that rely on these in their workflow.

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Didn’t know they are merging companies

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I hope Iris lives on in some form or another. It’s my go-to sampler. I’ve looked at a few of the more powerful sampling systems (Falcon, Kontakt, etc.) but for the amount of sampling I do, which is to say about one in 10 songs uses a non-drum sample, I don’t want to learn a really deep sampler.

I have some of the Exponential audio stuff I either got for free or super cheap after the acquisition of Exponential by Izotope, and it’s OK. Other than Excalibur, I don’t think any of it has made a mix because there was an issue for a while where those plugins would output mono only in FL studio. I just quit using them and I have Eventide/Valhalla stuff now.

Excalibur actually is a pretty cool idea, kind of like the modern equivalent of the early delay line effect boxes that you could set up to do chorus, delay, reverb, etc by directly controlling the delay taps. But also with modern CPU power so it can be very clean, you can add distortion, etc. I’ve never programmed anything, but there are a ton of presets that do what they say they will, and they’re super tweakable.

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We are lucky to be alive to enjoy these wonderful wonders of late-stage capitalism:

In 2017, EMH Partners invested €50 million into Native Instruments, followed by another investment in 2020, which gave EMH a majority stake in the company. The investment drove a 60% growth in revenues for the German concern and doubled the number of active users on their platform to 1.5 million. It also allowed Native Instruments to expand to seven offices worldwide, employing over 400 people. […]
Not six months later, EMH Partners, based in Munich, as well as the founding shareholders, sold the majority of their shares in Native Instruments Holding GmbH to Francisco Partners , a global private equity firm specializing in investments in technology companies and technology-related businesses. As part of the transaction EMH Partners, members of the Native Instruments founding team and key Native Instruments’ employees retained a minority stake in the company. […]
It only took a couple of months before the music industry understood what Francisco meant by: consolidate the fragmented music creation software industry . In March, Native Instruments announced that “they have teamed up to form a new technology group” with iZotope , appropriately dubbed the Music Creation Group . The financial structure wasn’t detailed and the press release at the time didn’t mention if Native had purchased iZotope or if this was a merger of sorts. However, it appeared that both NI and iZotope would operate independently in their respective enterprises.

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Yeah, I know, Steve takes his time and usually doesn’t do announcements of upcoming stuff when it’s not 100% there. No doubt it’s gonna be good when it finally arrives though… Still using Nerve 1 a lot and made many presets for it…

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I partly agree with regard to the general feel of it, the thing I love about it is the great time-dependent spectral filter which still is unique in this form afaik…

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I think if you make a lot of use of the spectral filter, Falcon and Kontakt won’t do much for you. I like Falcon, but it’s a completely different beast imho, and I have the same feeling for Kontakt (not using that one though).

Haven’t used much of all these reverbs, I got some for free and used some a few times, but I just love Pro-R too much to use much other stuff lol…

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So true. Global monopolies + Hedge Funds/Private Equity firms, aka 21st century capitalism cancer.

It’s a perfect illustration here. 2 original companies (NI and iZotope), Let’s merge them and call them something real lame!! “Music Creation Group” - perfect.

Goodness gracious me & all that :roll_eyes:

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Off topic, but the king of this has to be the merger of Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (which is inoffensive) and Peugeot to create… STELLANTIS.

I’m not the first nor will I be the last to say that name sounds much more like an erectile dysfunction medication than a car company.

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Sadly they’ve just added trash to the newer versions of Neutron, way dumbed down version of it, with far less customization. However if you have the whole package you can get more detailed than one can by just having Trash2.

Somewhat off-topic, but I am just waiting for the people over at OHM to invite me for the new beta round of Ohmicide! I love it, and would love to have my home studio computer updated to a modern OSX, but there’s certain plugins that just will never get updated, thus I stay on OSX 9 on a Mac Pro 2019! :sob: :rofl:

BUt yeah can’t imagine what producers like Arca, and few others who heavily rely on Iris2 will be doing! I enjoy Iris, but also just never used it enough to care that they will no longer support it.

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I’m not seeing impending doom here personally. I think they said we can still expect maintenance updates for another year, just no new sales anymore. After that… on the windows side at least, I’d expect these plugins are going to continue to work at least until the next major windows version (ie Windows 12) and probably beyond that. They’re already all VST3, so even Steinberg’s VST2 purge isn’t going to end compatibility for these.

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