ZYN V3 : Final price ?

[Marginal Ray]

A demo suggests that the final version will be commercial. Well. Such a brilliant work deserves consideration. I’m fully ready to pay for it. Of course, it would be the price of the GUI and the latest improvements of the synth. Not the price of the synth itself. Except if Paul Nasca is rewarded for the conception of such a fantastic synth (and presets), sounding at least as good as the best commercial synths in almost every category.

[fundamental]

Yep, it's just for the GUI rewrite that's getting a price attached. All commits, changes, and enhancements to the core zyn will remain free as always. The GUI will be sold on an open-source-eventually model (with the length of 'eventually' still getting nailed down). After chatting with a few other devs it seems like $60 USD is a reasonable price for the UI.

[Marginal Ray]

I don’t know… Several commercial synths are sold under or around $100 (Synthmaster…), and more expensive ones can often be bought via promotions (Izotop Iris2 up to 22 €). So $60 just for a GUI seems a bit much.

Of course, your GUI is excellent, and Zyn has so many features that you didn’t finish it in couple of days.

Zyn, with its new GUI, could (should?) be sold around $ 150-200 to new clients. Success can be expected because of its incredible quality. But $60 for the full synth is much too cheap, not credible for such a great and “heavy” machine.

I think you could find a way to sell the full synth for its “normal” price (around $150-200) involving Paul Nasca (except if he really doesn’t want!). In this case, the original version should no longer be available.

Will I pay $60 for the GUI? Possibly, but I’m familiar with the original interface, and I think it’s a bit overpriced. If you expect selling the GUI to Zyn users only, $60 may be the right price to reward your work. If the goal is to sell Zyn as a new mega synth (for a higher price) to new customers, the old zyn “fan club” could get a temporary discount?!

[jackoo]

In this case, the original version should no longer be available.

I'm sorry, but the original version shall always be available (in its current state)!

[Marginal Ray]

OK. So a free version and a commercial one with modern GUI. I'm afraid $60 is a little expensive regarding to the "price" of the synth itself. A question of balance, even if the new GUI is really cool... Another argument is the perfect integration in windows 64 bits. Let's wait for the final product...

[fundamental]

So, here's the numbers:

- Active users on the sourceforge website - 2,500-3,000 per month
- Downloads from sourceforge excluding jackoo's VST - 2,000-4,000 per month
- People willing to pay for the UI rewrite according to those interested enough to fill out the usability survey ~54% (from 96 responses)
- People on the mailing list detailing only the 3.0.0 UI - 388 with ~57% reading a significant portion of it
- Approximate hours spent on only the 3.0.0 UI - ~700

My end goal is to get payed something like a reasonable salary for the invested time. Most of the time spent was done fulltime while I was away from my primary job and the decision was strongly influenced by the feedback that most sites had which was:

"zyn is a good sounding free synth which is complicated to use and has an ugly/cumbersome UI"

I'd like to think that the new UI (even with the existing flaws) addresses the primary issue that most users/reviewer have with the synth (mismanaged complexity and overall uglyness of the original fltk UI). That said I may end up misvalueing how much this fix is to existing users.

[Marginal Ray]

Fundamental, Zyn deserves your interface. I don’t know any synth with a better one.

In my user/customer opinion, I just think that $60 is a little expensive for an interface, as good and complex as it is. I will buy it, not because you spent so much time (this is the rule in any business), but also because it’s not just a GUI (integration in Windows 64 bits is another point).

If you want to sell it to this price, you must of course be very careful with bugs (more than Microsoft with Windows 10!), Zyn must run Win 10, and a Mac version would be a good thing because many home studio musicians (and most of the professionals) work with Mac. And Zyn under Mac would be something totally new.

Anyway, I think (but I can be wrong), that Zyn users will hesitate to spend $60. It’s difficult to find the right price in software. Look a Waves, the leader in pro world: $200 for a plugin, sold $50 during temporary promotions. And there are promotions every days. What’s the “normal” price?

OK. Now, some bugs:
Original Zyn (vst) works with the ZynAddSubFX folder in c:/
The new zyn in not recognized by Reaper, if putting the w64-package in the vstplugins folder (or in c:/) even if the folder is renamed in ZynAddSubFX. VST rescan doesn't change.
To get the new zyn work, I had to remove the old ZynAddSubFX original folder from C:/. So it is not possible to load the new and the old zyn in reaper.

Several knobs don’t work:
- Knobs right and left of the keyboard (modulation wheel, Velocity, VRDN, Octave…);
- In part setting / controllers : impossible to split my midi controller. No effect if turning knobs...

I’m not a technician. May I’ve done something wrong?

[fundamental]

In my user/customer opinion, I just think that $60 is a little expensive for an interface, as good and complex as it is. I will buy it, not because you spent so much time (this is the rule in any business), but also because it’s not just a GUI (integration in Windows 64 bits is another point).

I agree entirely on the time spent not correlating to price.
I was just throwing out all the numbers that I've been looking at while I've been trying to figure out what a reasonable price is.
The numbers show that zyn has a healthy user base at the moment even without acquiring a large amount of new users (which the UI revitalization may end up doing (though who knows for sure...)).

If you want to sell it to this price, you must of course be very careful with bugs (more than Microsoft with Windows 10!), Zyn must run Win 10, and a Mac version would be a good thing because many home studio musicians (and most of the professionals) work with Mac. And Zyn under Mac would be something totally new.

Most of the reason why the release the taken so long has been due to the iterative rounds of bug testing and fixing. Basically all of my non-linux testing has taken place on a windows 10 machine, so it should work relatively smoothly there. OSX support is in the works, though it's moving along much slower as no testers appeared interested in it and I don't have a local machine to test with.

Zyn wouldn't be new to OSX though. There's a build out there in either macports or homebrew and there's an official build of the standalone offered on the zyn website:
http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/download.html

Anyway, I think (but I can be wrong), that Zyn users will hesitate to spend $60. It’s difficult to find the right price in software. Look a Waves, the leader in pro world: $200 for a plugin, sold $50 during temporary promotions. And there are promotions every days. What’s the “normal” price?

I'd say there's two segments in the market that they're trying to address with this. $200 (or whatever the typical high is as some products are always on a light sale) ought to correspond well to the value that the target users would have for the product. $50 would correspond to acquiring people who would not normally be targeted by the product. Based upon the price difference they might even be targeting an impulse-buy segment.

With that lengthy ramble done, since you find $60 high, what price do you personally find reasonable? (anyone else reading feel free to chime in)

OK. Now, some bugs:
Original Zyn (vst) works with the ZynAddSubFX folder in c:/
The new zyn in not recognized by Reaper, if putting the w64-package in the vstplugins folder (or in c:/) even if the folder is renamed in ZynAddSubFX. VST rescan doesn't change.
To get the new zyn work, I had to remove the old ZynAddSubFX original folder from C:/. So it is not possible to load the new and the old zyn in reaper.

I'm guessing that Reaper doesn't support multiple plugins with identical names. I can try to replicate, but more often than not windows VST hosts tend to not provide much information on why they do/don't detect plugins.

Several knobs don’t work:
- Knobs right and left of the keyboard (modulation wheel, Velocity, VRDN, Octave…);
- In part setting / controllers : impossible to split my midi controller. No effect if turning knobs...

I’m not a technician. May I’ve done something wrong?

I'm guessing they broke while porting code over to windows. They should all be fixed before the release and I've documented them at https://github.com/zynaddsubfx/zyn-fusi ... s/issues/4 to ensure they're not overlooked.

[nineofkings]

Is the price just for the GUI, or for the GUI and subsequent bug fixes? In other words, are "functional" bug fixes going to be done to the free version at the same time as the GUI version? If so, a reduction in price even to $50 would probably be reasonable, since you're paying for "just" the UI. If not, $60 is great, as you're paying for the additional convenience of faster support.

[Marginal Ray]

Zyn3 for PC, Mac, Linux : $59 ($49 without Mac, a question of prestige!). But introduced as a GUI for a freeware, it would be twice too expensive. Zyn 3 is more then a GUI. Its also a modern OS integration.

[nineofkings]

In that case, the price is totally worth it imo.

[fundamental]

Is the price just for the GUI, or for the GUI and subsequent bug fixes?

The plan is to have a 3.0.0 license cover 3.0.x versions which should include bug fixes and minor feature additions.

In other words, are "functional" bug fixes going to be done to the free version at the same time as the GUI version?

It depends upon what exactly you're referring to as the free version. If you're referring to jackoo's work, I don't believe he's planning on releasing any additional versions. If you're referring to the underlying GPLv2+ code (aka https://github.com/zynaddsubfx/zynaddsubfx ), then any change affecting the underlying sound generation code will be available as it's fixed. From a normal windows user's perspective all bug fixes will only be available via additional 3.0.x releases which will be covered by purchasing a 3.0.0 license.

[Marginal Ray]

ZYN: FOR INSIDERS?
I own and tested enough commercial VST to be convinced that Zyn is great. For example, a Moog bass sounds more organic, more “real”, with zyn then with Arturia Minimoog (first version). If you spend $179 for Diva (U-He), you’ll get the real Moog sound. This finding can be done for many other kinds of sounds, so you have to spend at least $500 for a bunch of synths to compete with Zyn. This is also why I wish a V3 Mac version. Until now, I had the feeling Zyn was for insiders (despite many downloads). Something special from the Linux word, ported to Windows. With this new commercial GUI/OS integration, is a larger distribution not expected?

A MAIN BUG?
In an existing Reaper project with old Zyn tracks, ZYN 3 is loaded with default sound (a sinewave). All sound settings from the old Zyn are lost. I hope there is a workaround.

[fundamental]

With this new commercial GUI/OS integration, is a larger distribution not expected?

To be quite honest I have no clue if it will notably change the overall scale of distribution. Historically the limiting factors for the synth have been stability, plugin support issues, hard to understand collection of parameters, hard to control collection of parameters, a difficult to navigate interface, and a plain old ugly interface. I do think it may have also suffered from the stigma of being a linux-based/(originating?) open source tool (odd as that may sound) as it may not have been considered/treated as a serious option in the past. Many musicians may end up retaining the impression that theses issues left on past version.

It has developed a solid reputation though and a large portion of these issues are addressed via 3.0.0. I'm not sure that correcting all these issues will result in a short term influx of many users though. I don't expect the number of downloads for the 3.0.0 version to be all that high due to the barrier of it costing anything above $0. Additionally I don't have any marketing background and I think that's what primarily changes peoples attitudes if they've had a limited exposure to any software.

For the release there's should be a:
- a demo video by two proficient and enthusiastic zyn users
- possibly a few new demo songs
- a normal release announcement via kvr forums, linux-audio-announce, zynaddsubfx-user, the 3.0.0 mailing list, and the linux musicians forum.
- a press release via music radar, bedroom producers blog, and create digital music

That should produce some additional visibility, but it's totally unclear what the response will be outside of the core userbase.

A MAIN BUG?
In an existing Reaper project with old Zyn tracks, ZYN 3 is loaded with default sound (a sinewave). All sound settings from the old Zyn are lost. I hope there is a workaround.

That's unfortunate. Looking at the source for jackoo's VST version the save/load handler within the VST bindings is essentially the same to what the new version uses. I would have expected them to load just fine. Based upon the glacial speed of debugging on windows I imagine this won't be addressed on the initial release, but I hope this issue can be corrected by 3.0.1. As per a workaround you would have to load jackoo VST version, export the master setting file via a .xmz and then load the new plugin and load the .xmz file.

[Laurent75]

@ Marginal Ray : In Reaper rename the old zyn vst ( to for example zynaddsubfx_499.dll ) and Reaper will recognize both the old vst and new ZYN3.0 vst. I did unzip the w64-package into a folder in the vst directory while the old zyn vdx version was located into another folder. Works perfectly

Only problem I have so far is that I didn't succeed to access more then 1 stereo on the new zyn3 vst plugin. The vdx version has 16 stereo outputs, 1 for each part.
Maybe someone knows if this still is a bug or feature or can explain how to access 1 vst output per part in the zyn3 vst plugin ?

My setup : Win7 64bits with Reaper 64 bits, testing and lovi'n the zyn3 version
Kind Regards. Laurent.