Originally Posted by JohnJohnJohn
One thing I would note is the two price points you mentioned are both for the Pro plan. One is the regular price and the other is the sale price. I was not clear as to whether that sale price would be honored for the full two years it would take to achieve a permanent license. I suspect the sale price may disappear shortly and the monthly will return to full price! If so, the $528 (which was already too steep for my needs) could go much closer to the $924!
The "sale" price is the Annual plan price, where you pay for one full year instead of making monthly payments. Since you have the option of cancelling at any point on the monthly plan, you're offered a steep discount if you commit to a full year of service.

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They also offer a lower cost plan that is regularly $29/month but on sale for $16.58/month. The only difference I saw was 1 voice slot vs. 5 voice slots. I don't understand the tool well enough to know the impact of that. If I am only creating one voice at a time anyway could I just use the lower cost plan and generate each voice, one at a time? Why would I need 5 voice slots? Maybe that is a limitation I don't fully understand?
That is my understanding as well.

The 1 slot means that you only have one custom voice at a time. Creating a new custom voice replaces the old voice. They used to charge $300 per custom voice, but Joe said the figured out how to generate custom voices more cheaply, so they folded them into the plans. You can still add more custom voices, but it's an added cost. I didn't ask what that cost was.

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Finally, I'm glad you mentioned something that might not be immediately obvious... and that is they could go out of business and you lose all access to the tool and all of your investment. In the current business climate around AI and music I suspect they may be a desirable acquisition for a large corporation which could also completely change the terms of any lifetime license you might hold. But with that all said, it is not unheard of for tech to change or simply disappear entirely! I developed quite a few very successful Flash apps and Flash-based website enhancements back in the early 2000s and within a decade Flash was dead!
It really depends on what sort of use case you're getting from the product. I'm in the process of moving to a new computer - not being able to run Vocoflex was the final straw. I've got a lot of voices, which makes my investment in SynthesizerV much higher than two years of a Pro annual subscription.

I don't know how many high quality English voices ACE Studio currently has, but the demos I heard from earlier this year were pretty accented. However, with new voices and more training, things can change pretty quickly.

As for how long ACE Studio will be around, I have no idea. And yes, it's not unusual for companies to make claims that permanent licenses are no longer valid. All they need to do is claim that somehow the next version is a "different product", and the old licenses are invalid. Been there, done that.

While ACE Studio doesn't seem to have the same level of quality as SynthesizerV, they've got some cool features that SynthesizerV doesn't have. My guess is that they're using off the shelf libraries, which means that other motivated people can compete in the same market.

But the cost of a permanent subscription is a lot cheaper than what I've already spend on SythesizerV voices. laugh

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?