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Exponential Audio acquired by Izotope

Personally glad to see Izotope going from strength to strength. I own plugins from both Izotope and Exponential Audio and they're all top notch, EA will fit in well with Izotope's offerings.
 
I honestly don't find it so elegant to present it as "we've acquired" that company.

Just seems like a kind of pure business strategy to make a bit more profits.

I prefer it much more when companies/artists cooperate as strong separate identities, like Spitfire and BT for their Phobos plugin, surely there are other examples but I think you get the point.

edit: Or also like more recently with Galaxy Instruments and Native Instruments for their NOIRE piano

However, congrats to Michael Carnes, I wish him all the best
 
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The email sent from Michael Carnes was very empathetic and supportive.
It's good for him, being a one stop shop for development, support, sales and marketing is not a small feat. For working in the sowftare industry and having spent time in many (small) startups, I am totally happy for him.
Exponential Audio's reverb quality are top notch (no pun intended) both as reverb tools but also as plugins themselves. You can see the attention to details in the availability of parameters and stability of the plugin itself.
I am sure iZotope will be quick to add a much more appealing "skin" to those plugins, but honestly, that UI roughness is perfectly fine when you get that quality of reverb for that very low CPU usage.
Anyways, good stuff for Michael Carnes, well done.
 
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It's interesting how this announcement came right after iZotope's highly-discounted sale on all their products in March. I think if I had known this was coming, I might have waited to buy the O8N2 bundle, because I agree with @ka00 I think it's possible, if not likely, that they will incorporate Exponential Audio technology into future versions of Neutron, Ozone, Nectar, VocalSynth, and other products.

Neutron 3 and Ozone 9 were both definitely coming, but this shows the probable pathway to persuade us to upgrade.

There was a $50 credit for spending $199 on iZotope products in March, which can only be spent in April. I have no doubt that a lot of people will use this to buy a new reverb. :)

There's a range of prices from PhoenixVerb ($69) to R4 ($209). Anybody want to make some comments on the advantages of the various products?

Also, how do they compare to Valhalla and Pro-R, both of which are on my someday list?
 
That's not really surprising. Michael isn't 25 years old, will maybe want to retire some day.

Izotope has lots more resources than Exponential. Should add value to both lines!
Seems like a win-win-win situation (us included).
 
The obvious thing to me isn’t that iZotope wanted a reverb effect in their portfolio, but rather they wanted a reverb guy to continue helping them achieve their vision.

What vision is that you ask? Glad you did. Neutron has a spatial positioning concept that (at this point) is rather worthless. But if it did what everyone wants it to do, then it would be a huge win for iZotope and the VI composer industry. How do they get there? Reverb. Who is the best? Michael Carnes.

That said - good for both of them. Good for us on the front. But man do I despise iZotope’s upgrade/release strategy. When I think of a model of how to “do it wrong” - it is iZotope everytime. Then again, I’m not sure from their perspective they have a way to keep the money flowing in without their strategy. So I can see it both ways... I just hate it from a customer side.

Congrats to Michael Carnes though!
 
TigerTheFrog said:
It's interesting how this announcement came right after iZotope's highly-discounted sale on all their products in March. I think if I had known this was coming, I might have waited to buy the O8N2 bundle, because I agree with @ka00 I think it's possible, if not likely, that they will incorporate Exponential Audio technology into future versions of Neutron, Ozone, Nectar, VocalSynth, and other products.

Neutron 3 and Ozone 9 were both definitely coming, but this shows the probable pathway to persuade us to upgrade.

There was a $50 credit for spending $199 on iZotope products in March, which can only be spent in April. I have no doubt that a lot of people will use this to buy a new reverb. :)

There's a range of prices from PhoenixVerb ($69) to R4 ($209). Anybody want to make some comments on the advantages of the various products?

Also, how do they compare to Valhalla and Pro-R, both of which are on my someday list?
Click to expand...

I picked up R2 then R4 a while back during sales, and I don’t find a much use for them. Now that so many new reverbs have come out that give you better controls and display, it seems a bit anitquated. The sound is ok, if a bit digital sounding. There are ways to customize the tails, but it doesn’t best what’s out there now. I would save your money for the two you mentioned (Valhalla is great for the price, Pro-R has great display, controls, presets) and perhaps PCM Reverb bundle for Algo verbs. :)
 
Very very cool news. Though I will mourn the loss of M7 Control. I hope it still functions for years to come...
 
jamwerks said:
Yeah we all love the sound of analogue reverbs!! :eek:
Click to expand...

Funny. :) Apologies but I come from the 80’s and 90’s where digital sounding meant it is such a smooth, even tail that it doesn’t sound like any real room, which is much more complicated. Back then they said they didn’t have the processing power in a computer to do such things, but my Lexicon 300L hardware (which I still have and use 25 years later for live shows) always does the job well and was hard to match until the PCM Reverb bundle came along. Yamaha Rev7 and SPX lines, Alesis, and even Lexicon came out with “digital sounding” reverbs that were reasonably priced (I used most of them in studio at the time) but sounded cold and sterile, without anything more than a metallic digital tail. Even the PCM hardware had this digital tail that wasn’t as pleasing as the 480L and later the 300L. You just had to pay the price (I think the 480 was $10k and the 300 was a “steal” for $5k in the mid 90’s).

Nowadays every live console has a built in reverb, but most of them have this same digital quality. Which is why I still lug in my Lexicon hardware, plug it into the system, and mix it in. Event producers always comment on the great sound, a biig part of that is level balance and eq (with good gear) but the secret sauce is the Lexicon. And on films or music it’s the PCM Reverb bundle. I also like using Pro-R, Altiverb, VSS-3, Spaces, Valhalla, and a number of others for different purposes (like film post) but for music secret sauce, it’s still PCM Reverb bundle. Nothing digital sounding about it. ;)
 
Hmm... mixed feelings. I hope that iZotope can drag the UIs out of the 1990s, but I bet we'll pay a hefty price annually for upgrades.

I wonder if they will kill off Phoenix and R2, since they are effectively superseded by Nimbus and R4.
 
Congrats to Michael Carnes!
I'm sure this takes a load off of him and probably gives him time to develop rather than answer support/sales questions and deal with website crap.
I've always hated iZotope's business model too. I always figured it was more in line with other software companies rather than a music industry company.
I have R4 and I'd probably use it more often if the gui was better.
Fingers crossed.
 
Here's what Exponential Audio's customers v'got when taking "advantage" from Izotope's "special crossgrade pricing".

I'll take Nimbus as an exemple.
Here's Nimbus's release notes (which applies to them all):

Version 3.0 released April 3, 2019

3.0.0 Release

iZotope branding for GUI and User Guide

Minor fix in VST logic to make sure input buffer is cleared. In a few rare cases, this had caused a noise at startup.
 
X-Bassist said:
I don’t find a much use for them. Now that so many new reverbs have come out that give you better controls and display, it seems a bit anitquated. The sound is ok, if a bit digital sounding. I would save your money for the two you mentioned (Valhalla is great for the price, Pro-R has great display, controls, presets) and perhaps PCM Reverb bundle for Algo verbs. :)
Click to expand...

Mmm, are you aware that it is Michael Carnes that coded the Lexicon PCM verbs?
 
So all my Exponential Audio plugins are showing up in my iZotope purchase history (Phoenix, Phoenix Surround, R2, R2 Surround, R4, Nimbus, Symphony, Excalibur and curiously the defunct M7Control), but none are showing up in iZotope Product Portal.

I'm confused - do I own the current iZotope versions or not? Or does this mean they expect me to buy/upgrade them all again?

Edit: never mind. All covered by the FAQ which I just found - https://www.izotope.com/en/products/exponential-audio-reverbs/faq.html

They do not appear in Product Portal and you can download and install the current versions. All good.
 
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