Has Vital really lost its reputation? [looong text]

[NBG]

Hello everyone,

here are a few thoughts from a fresh Vital newbie

UPDATES:

The topic par excellence in all forums (here, KVR, Discord, Reddit etc):

When will there be updates again? Is Matt still alive? The plugin is dead! Vital sucks! Plus all kinds of speculation, insinuations etc.

04/23 - Matt wrote here:

‘Hi, yes I’m fine. I did have to step away from the forum and discord for a while because of an unexpected family health issue which took my full attention (I won’t go into details but everything turned out OK thankfully). And yes, I’m still working and Vital (and some stuff that might go into a new plugin). I think when I have some time I’ll hire somebody to give more support and respond to users so it’s not just silent from me if I have to step away for something like this or if I just want to focus on development.’

11/23 - Matt wrote here:

‘I’m still here and working on Vital. I’ll make an announcement when there’s a new version.’

His last post here is also from 11/23, but he had been online for the last few days…

He is a one-man company like many plugin manufacturers, please don’t forget. He probably also has a daytime job.

I love Vital too, but what exactly do you expect?

That there will be a monthly update? With what kind of features? Even more LFOs? What exactly is so ‘urgently’ missing?

Why don’t you just make music with Vital? That’s what the plugin is for! Not just to play around with it and wait for new effects…

I also have a few wishes regarding the UI, but that’s it for now. Everything else is just ‘nice to have’.

There was a lot of hype about Vital in the forums at the beginning, but now there’s really only grumbling. Will that a) motivate Matt or b) even bother him?

Should he continue to develop Vital or spend most of his time answering the same questions in forums and announcing the progress of his development every day?

All in all, it’s just pretty sad how quickly people throw in the towel in a huff and immediately move on to the next synth…

By the way, here is Vital’s release timeline to help you understand:

• 11/20 - 1.0.0 first release (after 3+ year of development)

• 12/20 - 1.0.4

• 01/21 - 1.0.5

• 02/21 - 1.0.6

• 02/21 - 1.0.7

• 03/21 - 1.0.8

• [ here the first users have already complained about the lack of updates!!! ]

• 09/22 - 1.5.1

• 09/22 - 1.5.2

• 09/22 - 1.5.3

• 10/22 - 1.5.4

• 02/23 - 1.5.5

• [ here Matt had to justify where he was after only 2 months… ]

SERUM:

Version 2 is now suddenly out and Matt will of course have a look at it first. They have partly taken over things from Vital, but Matt can get a few ideas from them again.

So that can influence the next release but also delay it accordingly…

But Vital will hopefully always remain Vital. For example, I don’t need most of the new features of Serum 2 (Multi Sample Player, Monster Arp, Clip Sequencer).

STABILITY:

Vital 1.5.5 runs flawlessly on Windows 11 and FL Studio 24, no crashes or problems so far.

I think it will also work without any problems for the majority of users, but of course they don’t always write about it in the forums

There are only a few left for whom it doesn’t work or only works partially (which, according to Matt, is quite annoying/time-consuming to find out).

PRESETS:

I tried Vital 5 years ago, but somehow I couldn’t do anything with it and deleted the plugin.

For the last few weeks I’ve been looking for a synth with at least 3 oscillators that can halfway replace my old V-Station from 2003, as it’s buggy, Novation won’t be updating it any more and the plugin probably won’t be able to be activated on a new PC despite being ‘freeware’

After adapting some of my old V-Station presets to Vital, I quickly realised that I could do a lot more with Vital.

I’m more the type of person who generates new sounds based purely on oscillators, a bit of filter, sparse effects and that’s it!

I don’t need any crazy LFO modulations, any complex sequences or wild rides through the wavetables etc.

But Vital has lost its reputation for precisely these functions, especially because it is considered a Serum competitor and has attracted a corresponding audience.

There are thousands of presets and dozens of sound banks for Vital, but most of them are filled with psytrance, dubstep, overdriven sounds, overloaded sequences and generally too many effects on top.

The majority of these presets are merely a showcase of Vital’s possibilities, but are virtually unusable in a musical context.

So if you buy Vital, you have to deal with sound design yourself and that certainly puts a lot of people off.

I recently bought a few sound packs because the demos sounded quite good, but then realised that almost all the presets were based on Osc 4 with one sample.

Since Vital is freeware and the majority of ‘poor’ users are guaranteed to only use the free version, this will certainly not encourage any of the well-known sound designers to create sound banks for a fee.

PRICE:

I can understand the somewhat strange pricing, Matt wanted to make Vital legally accessible to everyone for free, but at the same time somehow still earn money with it.

But if there is ever a version 2, I would do away with all the different pricing models and charge a flat $69 - $89 for it.

Thanks to 1.5, people know roughly what they are getting and that 2.0 is ‘easily’ worth it.

I own the Pro version, but the bottom line is that I didn’t buy the plugin itself, I just paid for the additional presets and TTWT - which I don’t need.

CONCLUSIONS:

Extremely cool synth, modern homepage, cool YouTube product presentations, smart forum.

There is (currently) no support and updates are only sporadic.

I don’t have that many ‘real’ feature requests for updates, it’s just important to me that Vital remains fundamentally functional and that the same thing doesn’t happen to me as with the V-Station…

[Herold]

02/23 - 1.5.5

Version 1.5.5 was already released in fall '22. Since then there have been no more updates and there won’t be any more. Matt’s “reaction” speaks volumes…

Presumably it was the same with his last synth “Helm”? First great hype and commitment, then suddenly nothing?

It’s a waste of time to write emails to support, report bugs or ask for new features.

Vital is usable but dead.

Even if there are updates again: who cares about them? The trust is simply gone.

Also read these both threads:

Should Vital be sold?

With all respect to Tytel for creating an awesome synth - given we haven’t seen even a single bugfix update in like a year or so, do you think Vital development would be better handled by a company that would have resources for it, from user’s perspective? We’ve been told that there’s a lot on Vital’s roadmap, but given Matt’s apparent ability to allocate resources to Vital, it doesn’t seem like those will come to being any time soon. One developer is only one human being who only can do what …

Thought Experiment: Matt should abandon the free version and sell Vital for half the price of Serum, (with regular Black Friday sales)

I think that Matt should consider abandoning the idea that Vital can be a free synth and should consider marketing it as a superior competitor to Serum but for close to half of Serum’s price. The added revenue could result in the employment of some business, marketing and programming experts who could build the project into a truly magnificent and dominant powerhouse.