what’s holding back the GPU Audio project from downloading the Vital source code and trying a proof of concept? They don’t need Matt’s permission at all, but the burden of proof for this idea is on GPU Audio.
3 Likes
True. This would ve a win-win arrangement though, so optimally Tytel would be involved to make it into Vital official release eventually. Then again, it’s purely imaginary for now, and I believe Tytel, and GPU Audio, have their hands full already. At least Tytel, given Vital’s update cycle.
I wish the best for Vital’s future, it could provide good business with preset marketplace, hopefully allowing expansion of development team. They could even integrate the marketplace straight to preset browser, allowing anyone to release their presets, and separate those from designed preset packs from registered preset developers, and take a commission from the sales.
Whatever Tytel’s gonna do, I hope they will get the development going. There’s some room for improvement even within the synth itself. That’s another discussion, and I’ll be posting some of my views one day when I’ll have time. If those won’t get into Vital, maybe some other synth devs find them useful.
1 Like
Okay I’m fed up with waiting and cancelled my sub. If there’s nothing else we can do as user community to get the message across I guess I have no choice.
3 Likes
i’ve subscribed, cancelled, resubscribed, and cancelled my subscription already, and this is depending on what i can afford. i’m not really that great at sound design but i try to use it as much as possible. i’m always seeing new tutorials that surprise and inspire me. Vital is a hit, there’s no two ways about it. I’m thinking Tytel may have gotten a lot more success from it than he expected and possibly got a little rock-star-itis. Well deserved if you ask me. Or maybe there’s some personal life normality going on. It’s that real life thing that can get in the way of running a company, and all too often people sacrifice their personal relationships for the sake of financial success and then there’s the folks who don’t, and it hurts their climb up the list of the richest guys in the world. Whether it’s rock-star-itis or family matters, at least we know his priorities are somewhere else at the moment. But I trust Tytel because he made Vital, which is more than a proof of concept, and proof that he knows how to prioritize things. Proof of life would be cool, but maybe the best we fans can do is trust Tytel to make the best decisions he can.
4 Likes
Or less than he expected because so many people are using the free version. I’ve seen all over the internet where people are calling Vital freeware. Yes there is a free version but it is a commercial product.
Every day that passes with nothing but silence from Matt is just another shovel of dirt on Vital’s coffin. Soon it will be dead and buried.
Shame as it’s a great synth but obviously Matt can no longer handle its development for whatever reason.
3 Likes
i like to give the benefit of the doubt. he’s obviously still paying for this website and it’s probably not cheap for whoever owns the server. I think he might have blown a gasket making Vital, it’s quite an effort. who else has made and coded a synth of this caliber by themselves and run the entire show? the big devs have coders slaving away. the small devs usually don’t make anything on this scale. this synth more or less stands alone in terms of accomplishment, so maybe that’s why he got tuckered out.
5 Likes
Well Tytel referred to a personal issue in another thread.
Obviously, as Vital is a commercial product, where paying for it produces a certain kind of relationship between the customer and the provider, that’s the point where you scale up and hire people to do things that meet the expectations of a commercial product instead of ghosting your customers.
6 Likes
agree. or at least get some volunteer help, which might be challenging to vet those people, but entirely possible. he just needs some buddies to help out!
3 Likes
Vital is open-source. Anybody can take the reigns and bug-fix or create something new with it.
5 Likes
mind ye, i’m not cryin about support, just offering my shoulder to support the vital siblings who need to water it.
I wish that was the latest version though, that code doesn’t have all the 1.5.X improvements.
2 Likes
No I don’t think Vital should be sold, in part because; there’s a questionable implicit assumption that monetizing/commodifying somethings solve some real, apparent or perceived problem(s); doing so may create foreseen and unforeseen problems; and because it is doubtful that the ‘superset’ crony-capitalist plutarchy and its money-- how it ‘works’-- is/are fundamentally-viable (in the long or medium run).
(Incidentally, as an aside, many countries currently appear to be in the process of de-dollarization or breaking free of the US Petrodollar stranglehold.)
In any case, if you want to throw money at Vital or much of anything else for that matter, how about forming a ‘FLOSS/p2p’ group of investors from Vital’s interested users and creating a Kickstarter/GoFundMe-type campaign to raise funds? I’m unsure it’s necessarily a solution/response, but at the very least, it might prove a worthy experiment that, even if it fails, could be a success insofar as gaining insights and whatnot.
In today’s day and age, and the way the pseudoeconomy seems to work, we’re often put in a kind of expectation, even bind or stress, that things have to be constantly upgraded to have some semblance of worth.
“The important thing to understand about collapse is that it’s brought on by overreach and overstretch, and people being zealots and trying too hard. It’s not brought on by people being laid back and doing the absolute minimum. Americans could very easily feed themselves and clothe themselves and have a place to live, working maybe 100 days a year. You know, it’s a rich country in terms of resources. There’s really no reason to work more than maybe a third of your time. And that’s sort of a standard pattern in the world. But if you want to build a huge empire and have endless economic growth, and have the largest number of billionaires on the planet, then you have to work over 40 hours a week all the time, and if you don’t, then you’re in danger of going bankrupt. So that’s the predicament that people have ended up in. Now, the cure of course is not to do the same thing even harder… what people have to get used to is the idea that most things aren’t worth doing anyway…” ~ Dmitry Orlov
4 Likes
I get where you’re coming from. I just don’t think that regarding Vital as a free synth that should not seek for monetary compensation for it’s developer’s work on an ideological anti-capitalist basis will reform the dominant western economy. I’d just like to see Vital improving, even the slightest to optimize its workflow and usability of the features it currently has.
Additionally, I don’t see money as communicator of value and optimal resource usage as destructive feature of capitalist economy. That’s a different question from what values the economy is based on, how it should be regulated, and where it is taking our world. But that’s a completely different issue.
I’m happy with whatever solution there could be to keep Vital developing even the slightest and provide its users and hopefully the developer a fair value, now and in the future.
If Vital would be completely free and open source I probably wouldn’t think aloud here about how monetizing could encourage its development, even though most complex FOSS projects seem to lose to commercial products in stability and usability. However, it’s a commercial product that I’ve been paying for, and as a customer I need to make choices about how to distribute my scarce monetary resources. It’s an awesome synth as it is, but as we know some users are facing some bugs, and there are multiple even minor tweaks that would make its use even more streamlined. Plus, I’d be happy for Tytel if he could make some good money out of it for the value his work has given us, but that requires communicating that the development is there, at least when needed to address possible issues the minimum.
A fundraiser isn’t even a bad idea. Even if Vital would go fully FOSS and gather some tech savvy users to aid in its development would do. However, given Tytel seems to be almost completely off the hook regarding Vital I don’t see how any fundraiser would change anything .
As a user the business part of it isn’t really my concern as long as it provides the value I’m paying for. In the end, I just wish Vital would keep on improving, as it is an awesome and unique synth that I respect as a sound aficionado, a customer and a user.
But as said, I believe I understand where you’re coming from - for you this seems to be an ideological issue, and that would probably require a whole different conversation in a whole different thread. That said, even though I completely recon the destructive nature of market capitalist economy that’s not sufficiently steered and regulated, I still stand for money as communicator for optimizing resource use. There’s of course a question how that logic should be applied, what should be commodified, and how that all fits to an idea of providing a good life to the largest populace possible should that matter. But that’s another thread then. Meanwhile reforming our economy I wish Vital can keep on improving and utilizing the features of the economy to provide the best value possible to everyone involved. 
1 Like
Yes it is. Vital’s old source code is open. Vital as business though is completely proprietary, and nobody seems to be interested in grabbing the code and taking it further as an open source alternative to Vital.
If that’s where it’s going to go, then why not. Every day not improving on Vital as business is a day lost to the opportunity it provides, as people can’t monetize their preset packs efficiently through the preset store, supporting Vital while doing so, and customers could lose faith in dev and consider the investment too risky. It doesn’t take much to communicate that the dev is there to fix any glaring issues the minimum, should those arise. The latter isn’t that much of a problem I guess given that plugins rarely break due to updates, but people buy on feel, not cold hard facts.
As said, I wish the best for Tytel, and I hope they can monetize the value their work gives to Vital’s users to a fair extent, to warrant the work done and hopefully encourage taking the synth further. If that’s not where their interest lies now, then that’s how it is. In the end it’s not my business. I just wish Vital lives on and hopefully improves, as it has an enormous potential due to its design.
1 Like
There has been a discussion about the work it requires, and apparently some single person enterprises have successfully maintained and provided support to very popular plugins. Then again in another thread a person stated that they’re not putting their money on Vital due to past experiences of losing tools to single person enterprises whose that single person lost their interest in the development.
So it all depends. Vital is still an awesome synth, and will continue to be that to the foreseeable future. Things evolve, and stagnant tech will get outdated at some point. But I’m still using Synth1, and it still actually sounds quite dope if you know your way around analog synths - they’re capable of much more than they’re usually regarded for. And when did it get the last update again?
(Had to check - current PC beta was released 10th of June, 2014. Little did I know that Daichi released a new mac version in 2021)
This is to say that what was great back then will probably continue to be great in the future as well, although the cultural context changes the status of old tech. Surely in some years someone has built an AI synth that can just listen to Vital and make anything it can, provided it has a capable enough synth engine. But people will probably still be using Vital for sound design and exploration purposes, or at least just for fun. Or maybe someone teaches Max/MSP AI to tweak it, since that’s surely going to become reality. Who knows.
And what do we know, maybe Tytel resurrects some day with a brand new Vital version. Then I can continue to pay for it until Tytel’s gone again.
I don’t see a real reason to give up on Vital as a sound design tool any time soon if you can live with its weird envelopes, unless AI replaces it completely. It really does things in a different way. I feel like I’ve only scratched its surface yet. Just take it as it is and don’t put all your eggs to the same basket, as you shouldn’t do in any case.
i think the question of whether vital should be sold is kind of moot, since the free version is almost identical to the pro version, with the exception of the text to wavetable. also, there must be some serious stuff going on behind the scenes, i don’t think tytel is willingly neglecting the customers and users. Worst case scenario, if things get too bad i wouldn’t mind if a group like the Surge Synth Team took over. I think EvilDragon is working with them. (you out there bud?)
Vital really is a masterpiece. it would be nice to know if the purchases and subscriptions are being received by Tytel or if he’s been disappeared or something. but since that kind of feedback is missing, there must be something serious going on. on the other hand, imagine if Vital is the least important project he has going on, maybe there’s another project that is even more mind blowing being worked on. Don’t want to dwell on the negative.
3 Likes
If you or another are hinging your own profits on Vital, then consider re-investing some of them in Vital or Vitalium and/or going the Kickstarter/GoFundMe route.
Otherwise, why bother with a FLOSS project and/or changing its model when you already have MassiveX or Serum? They’re wavetables too and already for-profit proprietary.
If Matt says he’s still working on stuff and hasn’t abandoned the project-- and I seem to recall reading that here-- then I don’t see why some of you feel the need to micromanage him.
Some of you seem to want to eat your cake and have it too and, frankly, I’m unsure I like it.
Has anyone in your and a similar boat tried to contact Vitalium’s devs, made a request or two and maybe offered them some kind of deal for it? That way, since it’s FLOSS (AFAIU), Matt could simply reverse-incorporate the changes/improvements into Vital for those who want to continue using Vital and Matt could continue focusing on whatever he wants. Win-win-win.
3 Likes
FOSS isn’t important to me. I care about having reliable tools, and I’m willing to pay for that to not need to organize or take part of the development of those tools.
To what extent Vital can be considered FOSS is questionable, since the available source isn’t current, but quite old. It’s not possible to use 1.5.5 patches with a synth compiled from the old source. It could be stated that Vital has a FOSS version for sure.
I don’t have any need to micromanage anyone. It’d just be relieving to know that the current and emerging incompatibilities and bugs would be fixed at least.
Sure, there are many other wavetable synths out there, but there’s only one Vital. I happen to enjoy Vital a lot. But whatever, I’ll just build my patches on other synths then and keep Vital around as a non-serious toy.
2 Likes
I just wrote this in another section of the forum:
Vital’s great! Where Vital can do text-to-speech, if somehow attached to AI, theoretically, it could do any sound, maybe even just by talking to it…
Us: “Hey, Vital!”
Vital: “Good morning! Ready for some music?!”
Us: “We sure are! Watcha got!? Any ideas since yesterday?”
Vital: “I sure do!..”I’ve got the free RVC running on my computer in the form of Pinokio. Maybe it’s related in a very tangential way to Synplant 2. I’ve yet to use it, but we’ll see…
…But maybe that’s part of my points above; to keep an open mind, look around and don’t put all your eggs in one basket or bother/bother with the artists or coders too much.
Coding may become somewhat obsolete anyway, just like much of our use of browsers for example to access the net. Lots of code behind them that we don’t see or bother with and maybe shouldn’t as humans.
Much should be the jobs of computers/AI at least mainly to free up more time for humans to do what they love, prefer and are better at or more suited to doing.
1 Like
Just FYI, Vital is open source and licensed under a copyleft license, GNU GPL v3, vital/LICENSE at main · mtytel/vital · GitHub . Anybody can go build their own version so it doesn’t need to be “sold” except for the trademarked name, logo, and all the preset rights. There are some components that interact with web services and those would have to be replaced too. I think the text-to-speech is one of them. The main synth engine itself though is available on GitHub right now.
Vital might even technically be in violation of the license because they have released v1.5.5 but not published the source code. Legally, it should at least be shared if asked for directly. Maybe there is some loophole because it is “early access” and not released, but I’m no lawyer and I doubt anyone is going to send the EFF after them.
1 Like