what do you think winners do right?

[harryupbabble]

i'm just guessing but methinks their entry:

is easily installable.
works in many different operating systems.
works in many different "recent" daws.
is cpu friendly.
has lots of varied presets.
is useful to many different musicians.
is nice looking (subjective).

there are usually over 30 entries in these developer challenges.
that means some testers might only have time to test one per day?

[Phuturetone]

...plugin sounding great (maybe?)

...promotion, sound/video demos, marketing, easy to use, manual, lot of friends on KVR, luck... everything.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Win.

[RunBeerRun]

Only good presets. Remember Anna? That was one

[melomood]

It's kinda like RuPaul's Drag Race. It's nice to win but just being eligible for entry means you've arrived. Even if your entry is an acquired taste or for a specific task only a studio engineer could truly appreciate, it can find an audience & build a rep
Maybe I'm not being my cynical self enough today...

[harryupbabble]

but i got the feeling, ah heck, to quote a band... more than a feeling, that some developers actually wanted to win.

i was rooting for them and when the results came in, i was disappointed for them because they weren't even one of the five winners. maybe they were disappointed too.

maybe the 5 winners can share why they think they won. one already did. it didn't occur to me that having lots of friends might be a reason to having had more votes. that's probably true. or maybe it isn't true. i don't know.

if vurt is a developer, and i do really really like the guy, i am pretty sure i would not vote for his entry if his entry is not too useful as a musical tool to me.

better yet, maybe other voters can share their reasons for voting the way they did.

maybe some developers can do better next time by maybe learning something obvious that didn't occur to them?

to me, as a voter, if i can test it then i can decide to vote for it or not. but if i have trouble testing it then i can't even put it in my "possible entries to vote for" pool.

[Saffran]

Understanding how most people behave when using a software is a big plus when creating it.
Some is burried so deep in to the technology that they do not understand the concept of "workflow". They just ascertain the code/gui works and that's it. No need to change anything that technically works.
Unfortunately, they themself is not aware of this and can't get help because they only hang out with other "techies".

[Eine Alte Oma]

I do think that there was something sketchy going on with those votes. I mean, sure it is a lot of work to complete such a huge synthesizer and when i checked out the demo video i did saw some good modern functions, like those warp modes that make it a little comparable to something like vital. but there is so much oldschool stuff in there, that has always been, and is still, confusing when it comes up in synths... like a modulation system that doesn't utilize drag n drop. or the whole control section and sync to host. or an oscillator mixer that is detached from the oscillators themselves, like in an old modular system, but without actually being modular. but i don't think it's sketchy in the sense that someone has cheated or so. it is more likely that the young producers of our time just don't have a kvr account. if they even came around to check out the challenge at all they probably just grabbed the freebies and went off into the distance with them. it will take a lot of years until they realize that this is a passion they want to put more effort into, and that they want to participate in the discussion around plugins. so my conclusion is that the vote was probably just dominated by older musicians and music experts, who just enjoy older looking things more, because that's how they roll. not dissing! if you make music, and use synths like that for hours to get into trance, then you are 100% musician, just like any youngster who might use something like vital or serum instead to get lost in the music for hours. the outcome of this developer challenge shouldn't matter too much for the developers. the most important thing is that everyone was seen and equally able to present their creations, and that we were all able to download and play around with it to come to our own conclusions. if any of these plugins has sparked inspiration in at least one of us, the contest has succeeded and the developers have succeeded.

[donkey tugger]

It's kinda like RuPaul's Drag Race.

It's more like the inverse of Rand Paul's Drug Race - "Winners don't do drugs".

Is that the time?

[Tj Shredder]

For me to vote for an entry, it has to deliver something new and inspiring. The 100th clone of an analog synth or compressor or filter would not get me interested. And it has to run on my system or I can‘t test and thus can‘t vote for it… If you look at the discussions I think the most talked about was GR-8 and it still wasn‘t number one. (I did not vote for it for the above mentioned reason…)

[melomood]

Yea but a fair amount of that talk was about what needed fixing and when it was fixed. Sorry but I saw what I saw. You may have higher expectations but you still only get to be that one vote.

[Michael L]

I observed that users don't spend much time learning new plugins. Thus, the winners are outstanding examples within familiar genres. WhispAir, FXFX Influx, Laras Composition, Virtuosity Drums, and Grain Strain all fit that. Nettle is outstanding but an unusual synthesis method, so it needed more presets that show the musical possibilities (rather than FX).

[melomood]

It's kinda like RuPaul's Drag Race.

It's more like the inverse of Rand Paul's Drug Race - "Winners don't do drugs".

Is that the time?

You have an unhealthy Rand Paul obsession. Is it the firey Mike Brady perm? The neighborhood brawls? His sketchy libertarianisms? The YouTube suspension?

[Michael L]

It's kinda like RuPaul's Drag Race.

It's more like the inverse of Rand Paul's Drug Race - "Winners don't do drugs".

Is that the time?

You have an unhealthy Rand Paul obsession. Is it the firey Mike Brady perm? The neighborhood brawls? His sketchy libertarianisms? The YouTube suspension?

What do RandPaul Drag Race winners do right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjDq0ZgdYgY

[kingozrecords]

I do think that there was something sketchy going on with those votes. I mean, sure it is a lot of work to complete such a huge synthesizer and when i checked out the demo video i did saw some good modern functions, like those warp modes that make it a little comparable to something like vital. but there is so much oldschool stuff in there, that has always been, and is still, confusing when it comes up in synths... like a modulation system that doesn't utilize drag n drop. or the whole control section and sync to host. or an oscillator mixer that is detached from the oscillators themselves, like in an old modular system, but without actually being modular. but i don't think it's sketchy in the sense that someone has cheated or so. it is more likely that the young producers of our time just don't have a kvr account. if they even came around to check out the challenge at all they probably just grabbed the freebies and went off into the distance with them. it will take a lot of years until they realize that this is a passion they want to put more effort into, and that they want to participate in the discussion around plugins. so my conclusion is that the vote was probably just dominated by older musicians and music experts, who just enjoy older looking things more, because that's how they roll. not dissing! if you make music, and use synths like that for hours to get into trance, then you are 100% musician, just like any youngster who might use something like vital or serum instead to get lost in the music for hours. the outcome of this developer challenge shouldn't matter too much for the developers. the most important thing is that everyone was seen and equally able to present their creations, and that we were all able to download and play around with it to come to our own conclusions. if any of these plugins has sparked inspiration in at least one of us, the contest has succeeded and the developers have succeeded.

I think because of the pandemic and setting; people wanted fun and cool looking and great sounding. Synths don't always have a chance. This was the right year for it because people liked the instant gratification of pressing a key, rather than fx.

Every year is different.