I made a really good sounding JUNO-6 emulation for free, shared it in the KVR forum - this is what happened

[ustk]

@CassD said in I made a really good sounding JUNO-6 emulation for free, shared it in the KVR forum - this is what happened:

It’s not like devs don’t have backend costs too… Apple dev certificate, hosting etc.

For a year now, I spent more on the different charges than what comes back... yes, I'm currently paying to work at a point I can barely eat...

[David Healey]

Edit: Updated from my earlier post that had some incorrect figures.

This got me thinking.

I have one free product that generally gets positive reviews, but I've been considering making it a paid product - especially since I've just completed a big upgrade for it. So I decided to run some numbers.

17,292 people downloaded the free product.
400 (2.31%) became paying customers on average (very skewed, see the bit below)
The average delay to conversion is about 84 days.
336 (84%) of converted customers bought only once.
During 2023 and 2024, the freebie benefited from YouTube exposure, Facebook ads and product marketing, around 3-5% of downloaders went on to become customers.
Based on downloaders acquired since that marketing activity stopped, the conversion rate appears closer to 0.3-0.7% (roughly 1 customer per 150-300 downloads).

So for approximately every 1000 downloads I get 5 customers. They go on to spend more than the freebie cost me (not including the initial cost to create it), so I guess the freebie stays for now. But that conversion rate is terrible.

[Sifres]

Could it be that your 1.0.6 has no more working arpeggiator? Couldnt get it to work.

KVR crowd seemed a bit annoyed that you dissed the TAL version though, good that you changed it.

[dannytaurus]

@ustk What are your HISE products? Or is this from consulting on other HISE products?

[Morphoice]

@ustk same here.

[Morphoice]

@Sifres I didn't diss Tal — I have great respect for them. All I asked was whether it sounds better, given that the Tal version is many years old and doesn't model certain things that mine does. The chorus topology is wrong, they did not model the BBD, etc.etc. It's a great synth but it's not a Juno. Same with Arturia, who are a multi-million dollar company and couldn't even get the Memorymoog filter right.
But I don't think making it sound good is what people care about. People would rather have fancy buttons and wooden panels to play around with. That makes them feel more like they own the hardware they could never afford. And that's fine. The established developers know this and deliver.

So I won't be putting effort into a good sound anymore, and I won't engage with those people who are not my customers. I'd rather spend time at the pool with my girlfriend. The plugins I made are the plugins I wanted to make, because I use them myself in my music and they sound the way I like. I enjoyed the journey of making them over the years. I don't own a CS-80 anymore, and will probably have to sell my Juno and Simmons too. So my plugins have me covered, and with them finished I'll probably move onto something else.

[dannytaurus]

@Morphoice When you're making plugins that you want to use yourself, you can never lose. No matter what the critics say.

[Morphoice]

@dannytaurus absolutely. It was important to me to get that chorus right, the competition just doesn't. Along the process I also modeled most of the 808 voices in faust from their schematics, indeed by single resistors, capacitors etc. That handclap is fire!!! And there is one other thing I want to figure out before I move on, that's the non linear algorithm of the AMS RMS16. And so far it sounds like I'm almost there. But both will probably never get out. Or maybe at some point I just dump all the DSP for free on some website before I die. Who knows ;)))

[Morphoice]

@Sifres on the arpeggiator that's not even implemented yet. there's some info on my website what has been modeled yet and what not. although the arp should be fairly simple, I want to get the sound right first, then add a few things like the initial bend the cs-80 has and some mods. then I'll do the arp. I've literally never used it on my real JUNO. I have the Tubbutec mod installed on mine, the buttons have different functions then anyways lol

[Orvillain]

I've been posting on KvR on and off since I was a teenager. FFS, I'm sooooooo olllldddddd.

But yes ... it has always been a bit of a Wild West type of place. Not for the feint of heart. I had a guy stalking me around the forum recently, commenting on all my posts, telling me how he was going to make sure everyone knew what a POS I was - for the crime of having and then leaving a job I did my best at for 18 odd years!

There's not enough asylum's in the world apparently!

Having said that, there are some easy wins you can do to head it all off at the pass:

• Just have Claude build you a stupid installer. Use Inno on Windows, and MacOS packages; make sure MacOS performs a postscript process to remove the quarantine flag that Apple helpfully decide to add to almost anything you download through a browser these days.
• Have a proper list of features, known issues, known omissions, and "keep it simple, stupid" - don't give them any more ammunition!
• There's a big difference between "I had a crash", "there's a bug" and "I don't like this" - a lot of the time, you can simply ignore the "I don't like this" stuff.

[David Healey]

@Orvillain said in I made a really good sounding JUNO-6 emulation for free, shared it in the KVR forum - this is what happened:

make sure MacOS performs a postscript process to remove the quarantine flag that Apple helpfully decide to add to almost anything you download through a browser these days.

Won't the installer itself have a quarantine flag if it's not codesigned/notarized?

[Orvillain]

@David-Healey said in I made a really good sounding JUNO-6 emulation for free, shared it in the KVR forum - this is what happened:

@Orvillain said in I made a really good sounding JUNO-6 emulation for free, shared it in the KVR forum - this is what happened:

make sure MacOS performs a postscript process to remove the quarantine flag that Apple helpfully decide to add to almost anything you download through a browser these days.

Won't the installer itself have a quarantine flag if it's not codesigned/notarized?

I've made a few this way now and sent them out as test builds to clients, with no problems. They might end up with it, but if you run it on MacOS and it says "open anyway" then that's probably good enough to start with.