Ok, Im going to just step in here and say, even tho I have zero authority, you folks need to take a chill pill. For the love of God, Ive never seen such a whiny group of old farts. Jesus, and I thought I was a grumpy SOB.
The pricing is listed at 75 euros for the first upgrade and 45 for each subsequent upgrade. To upgrade all three licenses, that is, lets see, Im not very good at math, even as a physics major, but lets take a shot at this...
75 + 45 + 45 = 165 Euros
Now, that seems like alot, until you consider a couple of things. First, you KEEP your 3 existing licenses for VEP 6 when you upgrade. This means, you are really ADDING another VEP license to your key, the new version to be specific.
I dont know about the rest of you, but Ive paid alot of money for my software upgrades, often times, not worth the price. Cubase Pro runs me $150 yearly, with a base price of $600, and thats just for one license.
Second, for many users, we dont use the server portion of VEP. Vienna in my opinion, incorrectly sold VEP in a 3 pack bundle in the first place, it should have been sold as a single license, giving users like myself the option to buy VEP for 100 Euros or so rather than the 285 it currently is. I guarantee, it would have sold better if it had, because honestly, at 285 Euros, it flat out is not worth the price if you only need one license. Vienna is fixing this with this upgrade.
For those bitching about epic orchestra, I find this absolutely fascinating. How many bought VEP 6 specifically for the first epic orchestra? I know it was one of the three reasons I made that purchase, was so that I had a light weight library for sketching. It is the reason I purchased Smart Orchestra as well, its a nice light library for sketching. Im looking at Epic Orchestra 2 and I just made this purchase specifically because of Epic Orchestra 2, because, it has more than Smart Orchestra, but still remains light enough for some sketching.
I dont have any Synchron libraries, to be fair, and I only have licenses for MIRx complete, Instruments Pro, Ensemble 6 & now 7, Smart Spheres, and Special Edition complete, just to give you an idea of where Im coming from. However, I do have some significantly heavier libraries, the entire East West platinum sound library for example, and it is a complete bear to use for sketching, simply because loading a brass section is an easy 45 second load on a SATA SSD. Cinesamples is not much better, and my spitfire Albion collection is probably on par with cinesamples. Vienna is my go to for sketching, and if it werent so expensive for their complete libraries, it would be my go to for a final project.
As a user of the Special Edition libraries, this pricing structure also makes sense from the sense that, it appears Synchron is the direction Vienna is going, and my guess is, the VI collections will be phased out. That doesnt make me exactly thrilled, to be honest. However, it does give me an opportunity to play with the Synchron stuff at a frankly unparalled price point. No other company I know of is offering an orchestra in a box for less than $100 Euros, and Vienna now is, and you are getting Ensemble Pro on top of that. Or, you can look at it the other way around, you are getting Ensemble Pro with some great sounding libraries perfect for sketching, with more flexibility than other lightweight libraries.
Is it diengenuous for Vienna to suggest they are "giving away" Epic Orchestra 2 with the purchase of VEP 7? Yea, a little bit. I mean, shoot, they could just charge 45 Euros for each upgrade license including the first license. That might have been a better strategy. Provide an option, 45 Euros for each VEP upgrade, including the first license, or, 75 Euros for the first license and we will bundle epic orchestra.
So yea, I guess for ya'll that have spent thousands of dollars on Vienna sounds can bitch about the additional 30 Euros that Vienna is charging because they are forcing the epic orchestra to be bundled in to the first VEP upgrade, or, you can take your head out of the sand and realize that they are restructuring how VEP is sold to make it more pallatable for people who dont need 3 freaking licenses of VEP and have made a decision to basically charge 30 more Euros so that people who have never used Vienna before can have a decent library to understand what they are getting.
Lets also not forget, Synchron, which is as feature complete as instruments pro, cost nothing, and in many ways, is even more feature rich than instruments pro. Lets also not forget, Synchron is brining many of the FX capabilities that Vienna suite provides, at no additional charge, other than the cost of buying a library.
In many ways, Vienna is moving forward and trying to come up with more attractive pricing because, Vienna is just not attractive to new users. Its pricing is unjustifiably expensive and has no real affordable ways to test drive its products.
You can debate that last paragraph, until you start to look at the market right now. To have a decent library to work with, Vienna's only option was the Special Edition library at over 1700 Euros. Look to East West, you have a monthly payment option of $25. Spitfire offers their Albion 1 collection for $300. Heck, even 8dio has their orchestral starter pack for $600. I for one am glad to see Vienna providing some options for people who dont have thousands of Euros to spend, an alternative option.
God bless you Paul, the rest of you, either buy the upgrade, dont buy the upgrade, or wait and see, and feel free to ask questions. However, lets knock it off on the whining. No one is forcing you to buy it. If you dont need or want EO2, wait and see what VEP7 brings. If EO2 does interest you, 75 Euros is a great price for EO2 alone, putting aside youll get a license for VEP7.