Five Years, What A Surprise...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there…
-David Bowie, “Five Years”
Last week was Audio Damage’s fifth anniversary. In that time we’ve released 21 plugins (counting three different versions of Discord), dealt with the abject stupidity of Digidesign, the flighty schizophrenia of Apple, and the bovine stalwartness of Microsoft. We’ve made plugins for XP, Vista, OS9, OSX 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, and soon 10.6. We’ve made VST2.3 and VST2.4 plugins with VSTGUI 2.3, 2.4, 3.0, and 3.5, along with RTAS for OS9 (briefly), AU for 10.2, AU for 10.3, and AU for 10.4 and onwards, in three distinctly different versions of Xcode, CodeWarrior, and two more-or-less the same versions of Visual Studio. Some time in the immediate future, we’ll have to man up and make VST3 plugins, too.
To make those 21 products, I’ve personally made about 100 nearly complete user interfaces, and spent a sum total of what has to be many months, if not years, staring at Photoshop CS and 3D Studio Max. Adam has coded well over 200 individual DSP blocks, along with a couple dozen user interface objects and a complete parameter management system, among many other important things you don’t see, but make plugins work. We’ve put up with documentation (or the lack thereof) that is truly awful, from companies that should know better. We’ve seen at least three plug-in formats that we know of either come and go, or never get out of the starting gates. I assume there are more that we don’t know about.
We’ve thrown a few elbows in the industry, made a lot of friends, bought a bunch of ads, faced some fairly intense competition, bitched and moaned about inconsequential shit, and dealt with shit that isn’t inconsequential at all. We’ve moved the corporation from one state to another and moved my actual ass to a different state entirely. We’ve put up with rampant idiocy from people that style themselves members of the creative community but are actually members of some kind of bullshit that doesn’t have a name.
We’ve also met a metric shitload of extremely cool people, made what we think are some pretty good plug-ins, and had a lot of laughs. This business fucking rocks, no doubt about it, and you’d have a hard time getting me to go hunting for a new job. Adam and I would like to thank each and every person that has supported our little company through its birthing pains. The road is wide open from here, and here’s to hoping for a 10 year anniversary post in 2014.
30 comments
People who flaunt their use of pirated software are a special breed of idiot, indeed.
Hip Hip Hurray !
Oh, and congratulations!
Hip Hip Hurray indeed!
Well done to you and Adam. May the good work continue for at least another five years!
And may that prick who condones using pirated software (especially when it is as reasonably priced as AD) eat his own faeces and have his cock drop off and magically re-appear on his forehead.
Hey, congrats on five years. Twenty-one plugins in that time is a pretty good record.
Can't say much about what's going on in that link. I guess publicizing that you've screwed a small business is cool?
Congrats! 21 products in 5 years, that's pretty impressive. Good thing you guys love your work.
"Hey, I'm YACHT! I'd like to hug the world! Yaaayyy!! Everything is sooo excellent, all the time!! By the way, I use pirated software!! Soooo cooool!! Here I am in Australia, smiles all around!!!!"
Ugh. What an ass. What is it about omnipresent positivity that drives me up the wall? If I didn't dislike that picking up the pennies song enough already. And he's friend's of friends so I'm predisposed to like him...
Note to self- no posting after drinking, it really accentuates my negativity...
Thanks AD. Your plug-ins are inspiring. It's obvious you guys love what you do. I'm glad Audio Damage exists... and that some people respect you enough to actually buy your products so you can keep making more!
Hugo
congrats on 5 years. isn't that some kind of magic number for any business?
looking forward to what you guys come up w/in the next 5 years.
btw- i think your copy protection scheme is perfect. i bought a new laptop recently and out of all the plugs i had to re-install yours were the easiest to register etc. thanks for having common sense and not making me jump through a shit load of hoops.
congrats! keep putting out those great plug-ins. i bought automaton and love it. can't wait to see what you guys have up your sleeve for the next 5 years!
Congrats guys....here's to many more years of the same great plugins, good humor and perceptive/sarcastic blogging
Thanks also for the YACHT, there's something mildly comforting about having the f@cktards of the universe identified...we know who and what to avoid well in advance.
terminal3: well done. Your deadpan humor completely took me in, obviously.
You'd think by now that I'd've learned to not fall for such things. :-)
--Adam
"We've seen at least three plug-in formats that we know of either come and go, or never get out of the starting gates."
Three? DX/DXI, VST3. What else?
I still can't get over the genius of frigging RATSHACK, let alone the likes of the paradigm-shifting hall of mirrors that is Automaton.
Happy 5th Birthday, AD! These are your cute years! In another decade or so, your voice will crack and you'll become so obsessed with girls that you won't be able to concentrate on plug-ins.
Awkward times ahead.
- c
Happy Birthday :)
well at least that pyramid-headed dude gave you a link...
that was nice of him... o_O
Happy 5th anniversary Adam and Chris. Don't let the bastards grind ya down!
Oh yeah, Happy Birthday. You guys deserve all the best. I can only hope more companies start to look at how you do business and follow suit.
AM I NOT HUMAN? DO FUCKTARDS NOT BLEED?
This is intense, dudes. First off, I'm sorry and it was totally stupid to "brag" about using pirated versions of AD's plugins. I wrote AD an email saying this much and more. I hope we work it out.
Have all of you really purchased every piece of software that you use?
Those YACHT tracks on your hard drives you're deleting, did you BUY them? I'm a musician and I haven't bought music in years, nor have almost all of my musician friends. If you didn't buy those tracks, how is this different than my stealing of the AD plugins?
Nobody is innocent when it comes to piracy, and most of the time we don't realize that the people we hurt could be our friends in a different situation. It's rare to come to face-to-face with the people behind the software, music, and media we pirate on regular basis; I guess that's part of the problem.
Here's the thing, and it's fucked up for software developers for sure, but I see software piracy as a liberation of sorts, and that's all I was trying to promote in the interview. All of these tools exist now to level the playing field so people don't have to spend thousands of dollars on recording studios, web development, advertising, promotion, video editing, production, etc. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be about money, just the idea that everyone could start have the same shot at using awesome software and tools to realize their ideas without being limited by lack of money and resources. I've done almost literally everything on my own regarding media and music creation and I wouldn't have been able to if I'd have to pay for all of it. Obviously I'm not talking about AD's $49 plugins, but shit like $1299 editing suites, etc.
To clarify: none of the laptops I bought we're $2-$3K. The most expensive was the 12" PowerBook, and that was $1,599.
I don't have a design job, YACHT is my full-time job.
I rarely wear my asshat. RARELY.
Any other questions? Y'all are quick to become mean S.O.B.s.
Well, congratulations.
5 years in any part/corner/aspect of Music is a success.
I've only found out about your work thru joining and reading blogs this last 3 months.
(an aside: I read with glee that Yacht paid for something, although he mentions it with such regret.
Till he paid for the software his computer was just a gun used in holdups against developers.
He's now part of our community that pay developers to remain in the game. He is slowly becoming a 'Man' leaving behind his boyish ways.
I watched a video last night at a gig (yes, I play music) in the set break. It had this hardcore techno with young adults bouncing and prancing in the fields wearing tie-dyed cheesecloth shirts billowing in the breezy wheat-fields of the director's mind. So beautiful, so back-to-nature, so +ve... such a manipulation, product placement, tinseltown vomit.
Somewhere Yacht aspires to dwell in his virtual talent world?
It's his regret to pay that angers me so much. And the bird signs in the pics. No face, so he's just a bunch of words.
F*ck Jona Bechtoit. May he remain in the darkness of his being, may his vibrations modulate his universe to where the sun don't shine. Fk all the non-payers like Jona out there. I pray he gets his Real Estate license like his dad really wants.)
Well done Chris, mighty, mighty.
Well, Yacht, your music sucks. Uninspired and lifeless, clearly due to the fact you just take from others hard work, sucka.
Congrats on the milestone. I guess you're not 90% of small businesses. AD plug-ins rule. They make shit sound like a record. That's the highest praise I can think of and 100% true.
Oh and Yacht is one huge Douchebag. Cry me a river. The minute you start pulling a profit is the minute you get right with your software. Buy educational copies if you're so broke. Or grow up and get a day job like the rest of the world.
Wow. I'm impressed. YACHT's post is naive to the point of hardly deserving a response. How is software piracy a liberation? You should liberate your head out of your ass and think through the consequences of your actions. I use legal software for the same reason that I don't steal my hardware, and since I'm a student I end up using lots of free tools. Does the fact that I buy my software make me some sort of fascist? An enemy of equality? No. I think it makes me an honest guy who can safely make offhand interview comments without having to worry about the legal ramifications of gear-related questions. YACHT's implied jab at those of us who are such suckers as to obtain our tools in an honest manner really rubs me wrong. Oh, and he didn't do everything literally on his own. He stole from others to make it happen (as he said). Way to go, dude.
PS: I'm a musician (of sorts) and I actually my music. Try it sometime.
I see the "interview" has been edited since this posting.
I am an artist and I still buy music! I OWN all my tools including software; Editing suites and all, including graphic, video, and sound. This is included in the cost of doing business and creating my art.
If you truly want to use tools that are created as tools of liberation than go open source. Help develop them as such. To steal commercial developers work is not liberation. It's just laziness.
I actually like some of the yacht catalog. I sometimes like that 8bit lo-fi. Never heard Yacht until now, and i would have purchased it off itunes like I do with all my non-vinyl music purchases. But, if you feel that digital piracy is liberation, you cannot personally expect anyone to reward you for your own work
Hmm. I think you might have missed CR's comment saying that you aren't a bad person, just an idiot. That would be about my take on it, too.
For the record, I spend upwards of $300 a year on music, though, to be fair, most of what I listen to probably wouldn't make it on to the torrent sites anyway. That said, I don't have a problem with burning a mix cd for a friend of stuff that they would otherwise never listen to, to turn them on to it, but I think that's quite different from going and downloading something you already know about and are looking for. Likewise, I don't have a problem getting a cd like that from a friend, but if there's something on it that's insanely brilliant that I find myself listening to all the time, I get the whole album from Amazon or itunes.
In other words, if you USE it, you should pay for it.
To put this in perspective, a lot of us work day jobs of varying degrees of shittiness and save money to be able to afford the gear we use. Back when I made my living playing music, I had to struggle to come up with money for new strings and maintenance on the instruments I needed.
All that talk about leveling the playing field is great, but he only way you can avoid being completely hypocrytical about it is to use free software. There's plenty of free plugins out there, and Garageband is perfectly good for a lot of stuff, and you can make the rest in something free like PD or Supercollider. (or something cheap like Plogue) Presto: playing field leveled.
One other thing about said level playing field: It's not the gear, it's the musician. A great musician can make far better music with a pile of trash, an old 57, and a Tascam 4-track than most people could make with all the gear in the world. This kind of puts lie to that whole "liberation" bit, because we're all alredy free to make great music if we have the potential to.
If you don't believe me, check out Konono No.1. They make crazy-ass music with nothing but stuff they made themselves from junkyards in west Africa. As in, they made the mics and pickups and mixers with magnets and wire from old car stereos and carved the rest of the parts of wood. Having just checked out your stuff on itunes, I think I can say with confidence that they make far better music with that stuff than you could even if you had a million bucks to spend on gear.
Once again, I should reiterate that I don't think you are necessarily a bad person, I just wanted to clarify some stuff.
- a spaced monkey
Yacht,
I take issue with so many of your viva-la-revolucion asshole precepts that I don't even know where to begin.
I almost feel like you are some fictional "composite character" invented by a NYTimes reporter for shock value in some corny article about "digital culture."
Is "post-ethical" a word?
If not, can I claim coining?
Jesus Christ.
Disgusting.
Goodnight.
- c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eA3XCvrK90
I wrote a clever, rude, line-by-line fisking of YACHT's message, but then I figured I'd be preaching to the choir, his message speaks for itself, and I might as well be positive instead.
Congratulations, Chris and Adam! Thanks for the great software. Expect an anniversary present in the form of the purchase of another couple of plug-ins this week...
Since Yacht asked: yes, I have paid for all of the software I use. Not doing so would make me a criminal as well as a hypocrite.
It's a really, really bad idea to use pirated software for business purposes. Quoting from the SPA's website ( http://spa.org/ ):
"What are the penalties for pirating software?
The Copyright Act allows a copyright owner to recover monetary damages measured either by: (1) actual damages plus any additional profits of the infringer attributable to the infringement, or (2) statutory damages, of up to $150,000 for each copyrighted work infringed. The copyright owner also has the right to permanently enjoin an infringer from engaging in further infringing activities and may be awarded costs and attorneys' fees. The law also permits destruction or other reasonable disposition of all infringing copies and devices by which infringing copies have been made or used in violation of the copyright owner's exclusive rights. In cases of willful infringement, criminal penalties may also be assessed against the infringer."
Note the bit about "additional profits." That means, basically, if you write a hit song using a pirated plug-in, the publisher of that plug-in can scoop up _all_ of the money from that hit. There's also those bits near the end about "destruction or other reasonable disposition of all infringing copies and devices by which infringing copies have been made or used". That means that the publisher can seize and destroy the computer(s) you used to write that song, and all of the CDs you pressed with that song on it. Then, finally, note the closing statement about "[I]n cases of willful infringement, criminal penalties..." I don't think I need to spell that one out.
Yacht has publicly admitted--bragged, even--that he has willfully infringed upon the rights of Audio Damage, Inc. and several other software publishers. He has stated that he is using pirated software in for-profit activities. This is enough for the SPA (to put it prosaically) to take him down so hard that he won't get up again for a long, long time.
Now, is Audio Damage going to pursue legal action against Yacht? Of course not. We have better things to do with our time and our resources--namely making plug-ins for our honest customers. But other publishers of software may not share our opinion.
Pirating software is illegal. Bragging about your illegal activities in public is laughably stupid.
--Adam
Wow, this is depressing. I have never heard of this Yacht but seriously this guy makes a living off of his music!? I am really doing something wrong with my life.
Happy birthday Adam & CR and many more to come!
oh yeah, Yacht? words aint enough to express my contempt.
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