iZotope, Brainworx, and Plugin Alliance are now part of NI

Honestly, this makes a lot of sense. Echoing others, Buying Unfiltered Audio would hav been a better long-term bet than Plugin Alliance. Yes, they've got experience with subscriptions, but really, outside of Kniff Audio and Unfiltered Audio, there's not much shouting at me.

Izotope makes sense, as others have suggested.

One thing I've started to notice recently, is asking the community what they think once NI has done someting. Interaction is great, but you can analyse sentiment from the forum without asking what people think after the fact; as a community, we have no input, and nor should we, but asking how we feel about things after you're already committed is only going to spring negative results.

However, the biggest bit of news that will come from this, is when you announce the new hardware lines. Please don't bundle all the software, because some of us will just want to upgrade the hardware itself. I own most of Izotope's products, all the good stuff from Kniff and Unfiltered Audio - and Komplete CE (and too many 3rd party products) - a hardware upgrade without the bundle would be sweet.

Traktor says hello.

RIP Soundwide, thanks for the free plugins

I sincerely hope NI survives this "merger"

I've got products from iZotope, PA and NI. While I'm not averse to having them all under one stable, I hope some actual thought has gone into this in terms of aligning everything as far as offers, upgrades, etc., is concerned.

iZotope's upgrades have often been terrible value, and it's been easy to get a far better result buy buying from third parties - in fact, I think it's always the case. But sometimes the upgrade path is AWFUL. Their site is pretty confusing as far as product lines and purchases is concerned, and it's not something I relish looking at.

PA has generally been good, and I actually like that you can build a custom installer, download it, and then get your offline DAW sorted in one hit.

I've had some bizarre offers in the past - NI doing me a better deal than iZ do on some software, or offering me an 'upgrade' to something that's below what I already own.

Please make sure you actually think about your users (many of whom will be across more than one brand), rather than just chucking it together on a Friday afternoon.

InMusic in the news now for buying Moog... Just an FYI since it relates to Mutis post...

Moog already moved from hand to hand in the past. But luckily it has such a big name that they managed to remain “independent” in some ways (meaning they buy them but they don’t tell them how to do things). Let’s hope it’s the same case this time