Legacy Products: Absynth, Vokator, Spectral Delay

The EULA does not matter if the software is incompatible due to:

1. OS Updates
2. Architectural Incompatibility (VST2 will NEVER be ARM Native, for neither macOS nor Windows)
3. DAW Updates

That's ignoring certain things like how unusable many of NI's Instruments and FX are on HiDPI displays (without scaling up the entire display, defeatuing the purpose of getting one at all).

You can still install and run the software where it will install and run. The issue with depending on Dead Software/Abandonware is that there is no chance that issues will be rectified when they pop up.

And once that happens, you will have tons of projects rendered [partially] incompatible due to your continued and ill-advised use of that plug-in.

The only material utility Absynth 5 retains at this moment is its ability to still be loaded so that you can stem out those projects and avoid a catastrophe later on.

I don't know about you, but I have better things to do than clutter my space up with legacy machines whose only purpose is loading projects due to the use of now-incompatible plug-ins.

When a plug-in is discontinued, it comes off of my system and I cease using it. Fortunately, stemming out projects is and has been a standard part of my archival/backup process for years… for these exact reasons.

I don't know why people are still debating this on these forums. We've had these discussions dozens of time. It's time to let it go. If you want to keep polluting your projects with Absynth, then do so. But understand what the status of that project is, live with it, and don't come here for help when it blows up in your face.

Activate those old products with an old version of Native Access, if possible. But I think things like Vokator and Spectral Delay are so old that you really are far past the opportune time to "move on." I can barely muster up any sympathy for that situation.

Have a good day.

Reading EULA before purchase is to protect customer, not company. And it is not that difficult to proove one has read it before purchase. Do not be affraid.

I do not understand the "modern" approach, "it is old, get rid of it".

I use 100 years old plates and cups. They are much better quality than 99% of current ones. I use 20 years old Eventide H8000. It is still better than most of current "toys". And also almost 20 years old audio interface Fireface 400 made by RME still outperforms many of current junk boxes….

We're talking about software.

Bringing in hardware and trying to use that as a cope argument is intellectually dishonest and bad faith argument.

Your hardware FX will not stop working simply because you upgraded your OS, moved to an ARM Machine, or your DAW decided to stop supporting VST2. It stops working when the hardware breaks down, at which point you may or may not be able to simply repair it and continue using it.

Again, Audio Interfaces (Class Compliant), Hardware Effects, MIDI Controllers (Class Compliant), Drum Machines, etc. are not comparable to a software synth like Absynth 5.

And Class Compliant is parenthesized because if you depend on hardware drivers then they run the exact same risk as any other software application. Your Fireface 400 isn't going to perform that great if the driver falls out of compatibility and they discontinue it and refuse to update it - unless it functions as a class compliant device (e.g. normal on macOS, less so on Windows).

Same with Komplete Kontrol Controllers, Maschine Controllers (Depend on NIHardware services, Controller Editor, etc.) and other peripherals with similar "handicaps."

Are you even thinking about what you're writing?

Any "hardware" that depends on software/middleware is at the mercy of the developers' willingness to continue to support the software that device depends on.

Well I have some disagreements.

…certain things like how unusable many of NI's Instruments and FX are on HiDPI displays (without scaling up the entire display, defeatuing the purpose of getting one at all).

Well that's a good point. The world still has too much software with hard-to-read interfaces.

You can still install and run the software where it will install and run. The issue with depending on Dead Software/Abandonware is that there is no chance that issues will be rectified when they pop up.

And once that happens, you will have tons of projects rendered [partially] incompatible due to your continued and ill-advised use of that plug-in.

The only material utility Absynth 5 retains at this moment is its ability to still be loaded so that you can stem out those projects and avoid a catastrophe later on.

I'll grant you that we should "stem-out" any mildly useful Absynth 5 tracks, including any new tracks that anybody might be making still.

But that's not the "only" material utility that Absynth 5 has. It is still a VERY usable and exceedingly MUSICAL instrument, and as such, I recently reinstalled it and have put a copy of the VST2 DLL file into its own folder so that I can use it in Cubase, Maschine, Live, and any other host that can still access VST2 plugins.

I don't know about you, but I have better things to do than clutter my space up with legacy machines whose only purpose is loading projects due to the use of now-incompatible plug-ins.

I don't wholly disagree with you, but…

When a plug-in is discontinued, it comes off of my system and I cease using it. Fortunately, stemming out projects is and has been a standard part of my archival/backup process for years… for these exact reasons.

…I won't "immediately" remove a discontinued plugin. Especially if it still retains some level of musical value, and if it doesn't cause problems on a given machine. Everybody should have a stemming process, yes. That's a good "best practice" that everybody should have.

I don't know why people are still debating this on these forums. We've had these discussions dozens of time. It's time to let it go. If you want to keep polluting your projects with Absynth, then do so. But understand what the status of that project is, live with it, and don't come here for help when it blows up in your face.

Well, we need to debate. We're humans, and that's what we've been doing for millennia. And it's unfair to refer to Absynth as "pollution" for projects. Especially not since the original author has made comments that he would be open to future development of Absynth, to bring it up to date. The story here is not over with, and it doesn't really matter what you think about people carrying on the debate without you, because if we want to debate, well we will, thank you very much.

Activate those old products with an old version of Native Access, if possible. But I think things like Vokator and Spectral Delay are so old that you really are far past the opportune time to "move on." I can barely muster up any sympathy for that situation.

The version of NA doesn't matter. Everybody should be on the most current version of NA.

Some of NI's products are so old that you can't activate them with ANY version of NA…so for those products, you'd need to employ a copy of the old "Service Center" utility. This is why I've retained all of my DVD versions of older Komplete products. But I haven't had to install anything from them for years now, plus the old activation infrastructure is no longer functional anyhow, so I will probably discard them sometime in the next couple of years.

Do you use Reaper?

And I totally understand the sentiment. Why code when you can create!!