Digital decay as it pertains to vst technology

Off-Topic
1

I decided to do a project of remastering one of my older songs from 2005. I expected this to happen, when I loaded the song, I was missing some of the plugins… vsti’s which I used to use but haven’t used in years. I don’t have them installed anymore. I tried to get around it by using other freely available vsti’s to re-shape the sounds from scratch. I was happy with some of the ones I replaced for bass and pads, but not happy with the lead. So when I get home I am going to have to find the install CD for one of the vsti’s.

But it got me to pondering… Not just about “digital decay”, but also about vsti’s. vst is no longer a cutting edge new technology, it has been around for a good 15 years. Will we ever see early vsti’s ever considered to be “vintage” or “classic”? Just like hardware synths? Or will they just be forgotten? Who will preserve them?

I guess it doesn’t matter. I like to ask stupid questions. All but the most important ones will probably just decay with all the other disposable stuff from our generation. And nobody will ever remember.

Or will they? I guess it just depends if someone cares enough to archive all the vst’s. It would be quite a project though, and I’m not sure how it would be handled with ones that are not free. Is it possible that the more obscure of the paid vsti’s will be the most likely to die, because they can’t be archived legally, but nobody will remember them enough to still have the install files, and the developers websites or ways to pay for them will be gone in 5, 10, 20, 30 years.

What… Yes, I am thinking long term here as I like to do sometimes.

I guess the internet archive would be a good place to keep something like this… It seems like the best bet for “future proofing” information.

So I wonder what the hell is this:
http://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3A%22opensource_media%22%20AND%20%28subject%3A%22vst%22%29

It looks sorta like people put pirated copies on the internet archive? Wtf?

I guess stuff like this
http://archive.org/about/dmca.php
gives it hope, but still I think that vst’s will become obscure quicker than they could be proven that they deserve to be archived.

I guess it doesn’t matter… In the end it’s all just digital signals creating vibrations on cone shaped sound reproduction devices, going into our squishy auditory input devices.

Well, I have argued against myself enough now. Anybody else want to comment on digital decay, the age of vst technology, or anything else pertaining to these subjects?

:slight_smile:

2

There seem to be some commercial installers on archive.org indeed. But I think it’s ok, since it are no full versions, serial or copy prot stick required. So I guess it’s legal.

3

Calling for abandonware?

Expecially with vsti’s or genrally music software with closed file formats, I guess this will really come to topic more and more often. As for trackers, you already see working efforts to emulate the original software, or even create a software with reverse engineered capabilities in reading, playing and converting all the old files. Otherwise, stuff would be lost! It’s legacy art that would be lost!

I don’t know, there should be intiative to press upon software manufacturers, to put old binaries to public domain once they’re no longer sold for a certain time, and current products are no longer backwards-compatible. Some people even play really nice and opensource their stuff, which means not only preservation, but also chances to evolve to more modern state of the given software!

It’s a nice thinking step you’ve suggested - artists should care about their art, and that also means looking into the future and thinking about reproduction of scores (hehe) in original or modified form. Bad luck, if those synths used to produce a masterpiece were no longer available for such considerations, and it’s bound to it’s final state for all times (but some artist might prefer that prospective!).

4

Calling for abandonware?

It’s a nice thinking step you’ve suggested - artists should care about their art, and that also means looking into the future and thinking about reproduction of scores (hehe) in original or modified form. Bad luck, if those synths used to produce a masterpiece were no longer available for such considerations, and it’s bound to it’s final state for all times (but some artist might prefer that prospective!).

Yes, yes I am calling for abandonware :badteethslayer:

That is a great idea to rally the software companies to make their stuff available after it is no longer sold. The problem is it will only happen with about 10% of them :frowning:

But, I did have an idea… When I was downloading and installing the necessary vsti’s for my project, I put the install files inside the folder with the xrns files. Initially I did it out of convenience, but then I got to thinking: What if we were proactive and archived the vst files along with every song like this?

Then at least the artists would have a way to future proof their own songs. In fact, I think I will start doing this for all my own songs :slight_smile: Heck, Renoise should even come with an option to scan for vst’s at the same location as the xrns :slight_smile:

Some more futuristic dreaming here… But for larger and/or commercial vst’s that have data stored at an alternate location somewhere on your harddrive, it should be possible to make a symbolic link dll that you store in your xrns folder, which points to the real dll. Whenever it is time to backup your song data to DVD, cloud, whatever, or if you are about to uninstall the vst or reinstall Windows or something, it should be possible to automatically “roll” the entire vst package back into the xrns folder, that way it would remain portable.

Well, I can dream can’t I ??? :slight_smile:

5

FWIW, I don’t think it’s a stupid question at all.

I remember the Reocities project, a few years ago when Yahoo (?) announced to shut down Geocities. This one guy didn’t really have much connection with Geocities or anything, just thought to himself, “this is Internet history–ugly as it may sometimes be–and it should not be lost to time”. There were just a few weeks left and he just set his servers to start downloading as much content as possible, later on joining forces with the Archive.org guys, just click the link to the Making Of story, it’s a pretty interesting tale IMO.

I don’t have answers for you though, in particular wrt the commercial aspect of many VSTs. There’s a lot of stuff written about archiving digital stuff on Archive.org (there’s a blog and articles and such), could very well be that they have written about their recommended approach to archiving data partially based on commercial/copyrighted software. If you do find any (partial) solutions, please do update, I’d be interested to hear about it.

6

My answer to the aesthetic part of your question is “yes.”

Even with Renoise available, some of us reading this board still keep our old trackers around because they don’t sound the same, they aren’t the same. That character is plenty of reason to keep the software (as well as hardware that can run it) around for years to come.

The advantage we have is that Impulse Tracker in DosBOX is cheaper than finding a working TB-303.

So, VSTs also have a character, whether they are trying to emulate what a piece of hardware does or not, partly because they don’t get the emulation quite right.

I’m sure even the ones who don’t know about anything older than deadmau5 will have their memories of old FL versions in time.

7

The advantage we have is that Impulse Tracker in DosBOX is cheaper than finding a working TB-303.

The disadvantage we have is that as opposed to maybe a couple hundred (?) classic hardware synthesizers, we have thousands, or even tens of thousands (?) of vsti’s. Archival is a mess, even worse than the SDCompo render project :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m sure even the ones who don’t know about anything older than deadmau5 will have their memories of old FL versions in time.

Yes, just as the ones before us said “What the hell, you’ll never be able to make music that’s worth anything with a computer”… And now computers are practically required, at least at some stage in the production process.