I know this isn’t a “fix this in the program” post. But I’ve been using BIAB for several years, and had the audiophile edition since 2015. I don’t upgrade as often as I’d like to because there are no price breaks for owners of the expensive edition. EVER.
It’s frustrating because 95% of what I’m buying I already own. A couple times over. Why isn’t there,
A. An upgrade pack for audiophile people. Let us download just the updates (it’s ok to put WAV files into a heavily compressed ZIP or RAR file. It doesn’t affect the sound quality) and give us a price break, or,
B. Just offer us a discount for a limited time when you release new versions in December like you do for everyone else.

I have hard drives piling up in a drawer. If you won’t give me a discount, then at least let me resell my old hard drives so I can recoup part of my investment. It’s like being told you can buy a new car at full price but you can’t sell your old one.

Don’t get me wrong. I love BIAB. I just don’t like having to pay so much more for a 5% improvement. Please, PG Music, do something nice for your audiophile people. Thank you.

There is only an introductory upgrade discount offered to audiophile owners for the previous year (e.g. 2018), and not for earlier years.

All other products offer introductory discounts for both the previous year and also to upgrade from earlier years.

This is likely to hold back some customers from upgrading their earlier version. Users of all other products get offered a special introductory discount for earlier years, but not the Audiophile users.

Definitely needs looking at.
+1

Maybe you could just send PG a 2T SSD (very light on postage cost) and they will load it up for you, as most of the cost is the actual hard drive. Maybe have an Audiophile Update download but you would need a good internet connection. RAR will shrink to 25% a lot smaller than ZIP.

Good suggestion Pipeline. I'm not sure if PGM could setup to do that, but it would save costs for sure.

I have tried asking exactly that, sending drive in... Couple of months ago when I called in. I do not believe they will do it in such manner. That would mean keeping track & responsibility of other peoples property.
I see only 2 better alternatives.

1) have the update packages "downloadable" and make it $75 cheaper than sending physical drive.
2) send update (just update) on usb flash drive, which would cost a bit cheaper than spinning hard drive, cheaper to send, easier to store. Reusable.

Consider that VAT or whatever it is that Europeans have to deal with. Apparently they pay a tax based on the value of the shipment. They are looking for a less expensive method for delivery than the USB 3.0 drive. If a better method were found it might encourage more to upgrade to the audiophile version.

Everywhere I read it says RAR is lossless:

Piano, Acoustic, Rhythm TrainBeatMike12-key Ev16 090 = 930meg (wav)
Piano, Acoustic, Rhythm TrainBeatMike12-key Ev16 090.rar = 460meg

CountryEven8 = 142meg (wav)
CountryEven8.rar = 84meg

Drums Multichannel.wav = 1200meg
Drums Multichannel.rar = 370meg

True, but the 2019 audiophile version takes up a little under 1.5 TB. That's still a huge download even if compressed, or a flash drive more expensive than the USB 3.0 drive they use now. I don't know what the better answer is.

You would not want to download what you already have, so what would the Audiophile update be ? maybe 200GB ? and if you RAR it around 100GB.
Toontrack Superior Drummer 3 download is 240GB and that's 24bit wav/aiff.

That’s true. This presupposes PG Music will develop an audiophile PlusPak. Makes sense to me.

Just compared BB19 wav files with BB18
RealDrums +4GB
RealTrack +187GB

close guess was 1GB out, so yeah about 100GB RAR Audiophile Update download.

It could save folks at both ends of the rope time and money.

+1 for digital audiophile download update.
Also,
+1 for 128gb usb flash drive update by mail for those with slower connection or if they just want a hard copy.

Yes, +1

+1 for an audiophile download update.

With lossless compression if possible otherwise full WAV. 200gb would be a huge download but not unworkable.

Here's a Flash Drive USB 2.0 256GB for $10 https://www.amazon.com/256GB-Metallic-USB-Flash-Keychain/dp/B07H6S8J9F/
or a Micro SD 256GB for $4.80 https://www.amazon.com/256GB-Micro-Memory-Adapter-SD18HL-256-C6/dp/B077VNT6WY/

I tried file compress and extract and then compare to check lossless ability.

My results:

pn4448.WAV 170,931,644 bytes
pn4448.RAR 040,946,143 bytes
reduced to 23.9% of original

After decompressing, files were identical (lossless)

So if my calculations are correct, there would be a download saving of approximately 76% which is extremely worthwhile for such a large archive. PGM just needs to make the newer audiophile files available as a download.

Another +1

I would gladly send back ANY of my current Audiophile hard drives if I could get them upgraded for a reduced price. It's only a software update and maybe a few hundred megs of new Real Tracks.

And there's a really simple way to prove that using compression like WinRAR does not affect the sound of your audio:

Take a wav file. Preferably something sonicly complicated.
Compress it.
Extract the copy.
Put them both (original and decompressed) into any good DAW. Make sure they are EXACTLY lined up.
Flip the phase on one of them.

The sound will completely disappear. Because the signals are identical and phase-cancel each other out. If you hear anything, then either the files are not aligned or the compression has "colored" the file.

I have done this test with WinRAR myself and found it completely cancels out every time. Therefore, the compress has not affected it in any way.

+1 again for some solution to this.

Another vote of support. It appears to be a workable solution.
+1

+1.

How about if both the standard version and the audiophile were both the same price with just an added cost to cover the larger drive, rather than simply promoting the audiophile as a superior product with an added cost for that?

Even though we know it probably is.

As I'm sure you know, the base program is the same for any version. The audiophile isn't a superior product as a program; it is superior because of the data (RealTracks and RealDrums) fed into it.

But I think the Audiophile version contains all the 'extras' except for those few separate purchase paks that were never included (such as Jeff Lorber). So while I agree with you, I would want to make sure about the exact details.

Some good suggestions have been offered here recently about alternate delivery modes, including flash drives, compressed lossless downloads, and shipping the drive back for reloading. It bears further exploration, especially for those who have VAT tax or more hard drives than they need.

+1 for a download file of just those changes since the last version - but any compression would HAVE to be lossless (otherwise why bother with the Audiophile version?).

Really interesting thread!

+1 for making AE updates available to download with similar discounts to other products. Need to look after your biggest fans (customers).

The audiophile version requires over 1.5 TB of file space on the drive they ship. You get up-to-date versions of everything. I’m not sure how large a download of just the updated files each year would be, but it would be substantial.

The thing I like about having the hard drive is that I don't have to download Band in a Box to use it and I can save all the files on the drive and not have to worry about my computer loosing all the files. I do agree that most of the stuff you end up getting with the Audiophile edition each years is really just the same thing but this year's edition was worth the price of being able to have a VST version which basically gave Mac users RealBand.

Yes, +1 from me too! Paying full price again and again for most of the stuff we have paid for already seems unfair. Even if we had to download a half of a terabyte, we live in the 21st century and Internet speeds are fast. Downloading a half of a terabyte on a relatively slow connection is still faster than waiting days for a delivery by mail. Countries with connections that are too slow to download huge files are also probably not safe to send expensive Audiophiles to too.

Audiophile version owners are your biggest fans PGM! Please give us that consideration. Thanks.

I just had a look at the special prices for the 2020 release. To upgrade Audiophile 2019 to Audiophile 2020 is only US$199. This is just US$100 more than what the UltraPak 2019 to UltraPak 2020 and seems like a pretty good deal.

https://www.pgmusic.com/bbwin.packages.htm