Stability > VST support

Didn't exactly make Torq a shining success, did it?

That is true! Phew... These are the times when I am frustrated by a good product development team let down by other business teams.
I am sure there are a number of reasons why Torq was not successful, but am also sure that in-built VST support was not one of those reasons. :) I hope you had a chance to see that in action. I write software programs too and do not see why VST support would affect stability of Serato. Please point me in the direction of any information that can help me understand why this would affect stability. Thanks!

So as a developer, you don't see any correlation between allowing plugins from any trusted or untrusted source, and potential instability?

For real?

I can think of a number of reasons due to which VST plugins from any source (trusted or untrusted) can cause instabilities. However, I also respect the judgement of a DJ to try and test a plugin with the software properly before using it at a gig. If I load a plugin and do not find it to be stable or even as not giving me my desired results, I will not use it. All that the software has to do it allow it to load and communicate with it. I am not going to refer to Torq every time I talk about this but just giving a look at what it does will make you think that this ability is definitely worthwhile. Torq (I'll try to make this the final mention in this thread :D ) even did not load a number of my VSTs, but what loaded and worked for me, I was very happy with and it never caused any instabilities for me, ever.

Hang around this forum long enough and you will see that level of judgement is non-existent in a HUGE number of DJs.

And it is Serato who will receive the complaints when people's cracked VSTs crash their software in the middle of a gig.

I think that products cannot be made to cover up for the lack of judgement of users. Lack of proper judgement can make users to mess up even what is already available in Serato. This must not be a criterion for turning down a good and useful feature.

Here, I concur. :) But these issues are easily solved.
I agree that each feature that is decided to be included into the software brings a great responsibility of managing and maintaining it. This feature will require a fair amount of effort to go into it. The power that the feature gives to a DJ, in my opinion, is definitely worth the effort as a trade-off.

Look at Virtual DJ... it's super customizable to a fault. The trade off when you try to make a DJ software overly versatile with VST plug-ins, user made skins and mappings for every controller under the sun, is that the software becomes unstable. It's easy to say "test it at home before playing out live" but you may test it at home for 4 hours, then play out live for 4.5 hours and have it crash on you. The reason I switched to Serato ITCH and Serato DJ is, (as cliché as it sounds) it just works. I don't want other cooks messing with the recipe, nor do I want to have to test, tweak and struggle to make Serato work for the sake of having a few more effects. If you want VST plug-ins then use Virtual DJ with your controller (they have mappings for everything) but don't complain when your controller becomes quirky, laggy and unreliable... just sayin'.

As mentioned earlier in my post, I will refrain from mentioning other software, what they can do and the godzillion features they pack. It is not about who has the bigger .... (stick?) :D. The primary reason behind Serato's success, according to me, is the stability that it offers. It just works (not a cliché for me when something actually works :D). All I am looking for is a little scalability to do something more.
In this discussion, I am surprised that when a software can have a bridge for something as comprehensive as Ableton Live, people are worried about having something as simple as support to load VSTs. I am able to use the bridge for Ableton, load VSTs in Ableton to do whatever I want and then send the sounds over to Serato. I understand that the bridge is for SSL and Serato DJ does not have a bridge as yet, as far as I know. What I am really surprised about is the resistance to VSTs on this thread. VSTs are a universal standard.
For any feature that you can think of (even as simple as bpm detection), we can discuss longer about the problems that will be caused due to the feature and why the feature should not be included, than the time it takes to implement that feature. It is a state called 'Analysis - Paralysis' where we keep analyzing but do not do anything about it.
I have made a few feature requests here but am not as tenacious about the others as much as this and the other one to save SP-6 bank settings and launch them at the press of a key. E.g. Key detection, Timecode, Right-Click, Camera capture, etc. but they are not a priority for me. I can live without them. I believe that VSTs are a standard and unless someone can really convince me that it is either 'not required' or 'not possible', I will continue to ask for it. So far, the only arguments I hear are 'might not be advisable' which sounds as though it might be something that they might not be able to manage or maintain. I am sure that a product of the stature of Serato will definitely be able to. So these arguments to not have this feature are not good enough.

Sorry, my other request was for launching snapshots (combination of effects, eq and all other settings for a deck) at the press of a key. Not relevant to this thread but just correcting myself :).

This will be a major features of the new deckadance
Watchwww.youtube.com


only Serato can assert that, and if it's true : stability first, as usual.

Just to give an idea, Watchwww.youtube.com. This was upgraded in the 2.X version.

Just to give an idea, Watchwww.youtube.com. This was upgraded in the 2.X version.

For some reason, my earlier post appeared 4 times :D. Somebody who can control this, please delete the duplicates. Thanks!

For some reason, my earlier post appeared 4 times :D. Somebody who can control this, please delete the duplicates. Thanks!