Quote:
Originally Posted by Knives&Guitars
An over simplified, verging on ridiculous Question= What is the best way to judge which companies to purchase? Reviews?
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I don't think it's a ridiculous question but I think it describes a problem without a solution because any attempt at a solution would be completely filled with subjective assessments.
The best I can suggest is to do what research is possible. If a plugin has a free trial option, grab it, try it, determine if it's worth investing money into it. If no free trial is available, watch what YouTube reviews are available. If buying hardware, check the return policy. I'd also suggest searching for the company name in various forums and seeing what other have to say about them. No doubt all of that will yield varying results but it should be enough a person to make a decision.
Where the purchase becomes a little more dicey is on the used market where returns aren't always well received or even possible in some cases. For example, sometime earlier this year, I sold my Pro Tools vanilla license because a Pro Tools Ultimate license came with my Carbon interface and I had no need of two licenses. I listed it in a bunch of places and someone said they wanted to buy it. He paid me, I did the paperwork Avid requires for the license transfer, and a couple of days later it went through. The night before the successful transfer email arrived from Avid, the buyer realized he was buying the vanilla license and not the Ultimate license. He emailed me asking if I could cancel the sale. I didn't know if I could at that point and told him I'd inquire. Before I could call Avid the next day, the transfer was finalized by Avid and I told him there was nothing I could really do now because Avid won't let him transfer the license back to me for 90 days. We agreed the best solution would be for him to sell the license when the 90 day lock period expired.
Something I didn't mention when I started the thread was that I've imposed a rule on myself this year. I'm only listing products from companies and/or products with which I have had positive experiences or whose reputation and products are known to me as being solid. I did this because of
my bad experience with JZ microphones last year. I want to minimize any chance that I point someone in a bad direction. I'd have felt terrible if someone here had the experience I had with JZ based upon me listing their sale on the BF list. I'm not imposing that rule on anyone else (I'd have no way to police it even if I wanted to), but that's what I'm doing this year and going forward.