iZotope, part of the Soundwide group, has announced the end of many of their Exponential Audio plugins. We have the details.

In a statement on their website, they say;

“Exponential Audio products, R2, R4, R2 Surround, PhoenixVerb, PhoenixVerb Surround, NIMBUS, and Excalibur are no longer available for sale on iZotope.com. Support for these products will remain in effect for 12 months from your date of purchase.

Stratus and Symphony reverbs are still for sale and have recently been updated with M1 support. The good news is that Stratus and Symphony can open presets from the other reverbs (except Excalibur). PhoenixVerb, PhoenixVerb Surround and Nimbus presets can be opened in Stratus. R2, R2 Surround and R4 presets will work with Symphony.”

You can read the full article here

In the FAQ section, they go on to say;

“Why are you discontinuing these products?

iZotope is continually developing new products, services, and solutions to enable and innovate around audio production journeys. We occasionally need to retire older products in order to focus our resources and development efforts on building new, innovative products and features.”

In response to customer concerns on social media, one of their team wrote;

“You have nothing to worry about. As long as you keep the software on a supported system, it will run forever.

If you upgrade to a new OS or computer, then it's at your own risk. That's not unique to us but to any company.

We're keeping Stratus and Symphony and just patched both recently.

Those were the last 2 and most recent products EA made before we acquired them.

It doesn't make sense from a logistics standpoint to keep older products that are 10 years old with very old code and unresolvable bugs around.

It makes more sense to retire them peacefully and go on to create new and better things.
Your money wasn't wasted; you're using them and enjoying them and will continue to use and enjoy them as you see fit.”

We are somewhat puzzled by the “keep older products that are 10 years old with very old code” comment. Some of their most popular products are older than 10 years old, futhermore, some of the most iconic software and plugins in our industry, including DAWs, has code which stretches back over a decade. In fact, one of Soundwide’s flagship products, Kontakt, was first shipped in 2002.

• We Name Our 10 Audio Plugins Of The Decade

We know that at some point many products face End of Life decisions, however, it does feel as if the legacy and work put into Exponential Audio products was never fully realised under the stewardship of iZotope. A brand with some of the smartest and hardworking people in the industry on their team. Some of whom, we are glad to call our friends. It’s puzzling to say the least.

Discuss.

UPDATE:

The team at iZotope have been in touch since we published this post wanting to offer some clarification and context to this decision. Here’s is their response in full. We’d like to thank them for their input and the additional information about the crossgrade options:

One thing customers may not realize about our Exponential Audio products is that they are built on two core engines. One engine features more “natural”-sounding reverbs, the other engine focuses on reverbs with more “character.”

The “natural reverb” line includes NIMBUS, PhoenixVerb, PhoenixVerb Surround, and culminates with Stratus 3D as the best, most modern version of this engine. The other versions are variants that have older tech.

The “character reverb” line includes R2, R4, R2 Surround, and culminates with Symphony 3D. As with the other line of reverbs, Symphony 3D improves on the tech and innovation of the other variants. 

As a software company, we must continuously review our product portfolio in order to plan how and where we invest our development resources. In order to best deliver on our reverb products, we decided to streamline our Exponential Audio product line to these two most modern versions of these products: Stratus and Symphony. As a sign of our commitment, we have updated them both (and their 3D versions) with M1 support and have also refreshed their user interface design.

Alongside this transition, it’s important to us to offer exceptional crossgrade deals to customers who own the versions that are being discontinued. We want everyone to experience the latest and greatest, if they so choose. These offers are available within customers’ accounts at izotope.com.

One last benefit of the way these engines evolved, for anyone considering the upgrade, is that:

• PhoenixVerb, PhoenixVerb Surround and Nimbus presets can be opened in Stratus 3D.

• R2, R2 Surround and R4 presets can be opened in Symphony 3D.

We're glad that there is this form of backwards compatibility and it helped us feel more confident in making the decision.
Customers with additional questions can always reach us at support@izotope.com