Audio Damage has announced that Grind – the plugin that “puts the damage in Audio Damage” – has been retired and is now available as a free download:
“We have deprecated Grind. 1.1.0 will be the final version, and it is now freely available on our Free & Legacy page.
The iOS version will be free as well, but can not be updated.”
It’s available as a free download via the AD site.
went on there the other day and grabbed this – I had no idea that so many of their plugins were retired and free – and not just old 32bit versions like other manufacturers – there is usable stuff there like phosphor, ratshack reverb, replicant, etc.
Not a fan of this practice. They currently have 35 „legacy plugins“, which means paying customers do not receive any support, and the plugins will become unusable with one of the next OS upgrades. I don’t feel confident investing in a company that doesn’t factor in long-term support and keeps churning out new plugins instead.
This is exactly why I stopped buying their Plugins, I was a a big fan of AD but not any more…
You’re not actually familiar with this company. Their legacy plugins are earlier and outdated versions. They continue to make product updates. I’ve been supporting them for 4+ years and all of my purchases are still accessible on Mac OS.
With a portfolio of 17 plugins and 35 legacy titles, that does not add up. Most of the legacy products are indeed retired and not earlier versions of currently available plugins. As for product updates, Audio Damage state themselves that some of the older plugins do not run on modern systems, so clearly, they are not updated.
Yep i just received my 4th Eos 2 update big thx Audio damage
The second plugin I’ve purchased from them that’s been abandoned. Meh, their pricing has been pretty reasonable, so I’m not outraged, just disappointed. I guess this is a hazard of purchasing software from smallish developers. I’m more miffed at Izotope for abandoning Iris, BreakTweaker, and Trash.
AD does have an unfortunate habit of abandoning stuff. I own licenses for a number of their “legacy” products and waited years for updates that never happened. From the outside, it looks like they leveraged whatever website failure they had years ago, forcing current clients to re-register with their new website, into an excuse to ditch that stuff. Software aside, they dropped a TON of people on their asses with their eurorack modules. That was pretty gross.
“they dropped a TON of people on their asses with their eurorack modules. That was pretty gross.”
What’s the story on that?
It seems like AD Eurorack modules were the hot thing 5-6 years ago, and then they suddenly stopped making them. Were people mad that they couldn’t get them anymore, or did the modules have problems?
They did the same thing they do with plugins: They retired their module range, so customers were left without firmware updates, bugfixes, support, and repairs.
A number of them had some build issues if I recall correctly. AD was really active on the forums for a while, there to support and pimp their wares and then basically bounced, killed the line, axed support and left people hanging in the wind. It basically felt like “fuck me, software is easier, I’m out”.
The ideal thing would be if discontinued plugins/firmware was released not just no-charge, but open source. Then anyone who cared enough could fix bugs and support modern hardware and OSs.
I know, it’s probably too much to ask, especially if the old software contains some IP or libraries that they’re still using for new products.
emailed about (now long discontinued) support on a plugin years ago (during its active years), and got the snarkiest most pompous reply I’ve ever encountered from a music company. I don’t believe i was being unreasonable. I’ll second all the notes here about abandoned support for a growing list of old plugs I spent a chunk of dough on. I’m aware of small developers, and the hard issues there of support for older products, but apart from any attitude it felt like short life cycles. If you want continued support for a few years (which i dont think is entirely unreasonable for any software brand), might I suggest considering some others. Anecdotally I have avoided staying invested in this brand for these reasons.