Hi Guys,

I was just talking with a client and suggested he check out Kjaerhus Audio plugins for his home studio. Then we discovered the domain is expired and the website is gone -- http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com -- (at least as of the time of this post). That was pretty shocking. Made me wonder what was going on with them -- they had some excellent products. In fact, Cakewalk's own VC64 Vintage Channel plugin is essentially a reskinned version of Kjaerhus' Golden Channel plugin. So that makes me wonder what's going on with VC64 as well.

If Kjaerhus has been having troubles or in the process of changing (for whatever reason) and/or perhaps was on the verge of going out of business (pure speculation), that would at least explain why VC64 was never updated to x64. I've been wondering what Cakewalk was going to do with Sonar 9 and finally updating VC64.... which seems a bit overdue by now.

Anyway, would love to know if anyone knows what's going on. Would be a shame to lose such a fine plugin developer, if that's what happened.

Or, maybe we can hope that Cakewalk loved VC64 so much, as well as their other plugins, that Cakewalk might have just up and bought the rights to Kjaerhus plugins for inclusion in Sonar 9. :)

That is "shocking"...I sincerely hope they aren't going out of business...Even their free stuff has been useful in many cases...

This discussion has been going on for a few months over at the KVR forums; downright nasty at times.  I think there was some mention of health and financial problems.  It's a shame it's gone since all of his plugs were very highly rated.  Maybe if Cakewalk steps in and takes the plugs over at least they can "live on" in some way.

If we all pinch in some $$$$. Maybe we can make a Non-hostile takeover....
Cj

MarlboroMan23


This discussion has been going on for a few months over at the KVR forums; downright nasty at times. 

well yer, if they are ill or just have money problems.. fair enough.. but in the case of superwave's vanishing act, the "ill feeling" was justly deserved.. they came back now, fair enough, but years later.

I'm sure cakewalk have direct contact with them anyway , so I wouldn't worry.

The concern with these things is whether you can carry on using the stuff when it comes to authorising it again and it's disturbing to think that if the ship sinks it takes down even people on dry land.

I agree about the authorization issue. I think if Kjaerhus is out of business for good (which I sincerely hope is NOT the case), then some provision should be made to allow people who have purchased the plugins to continue to receive authorization, at least for a little while longer, with a known cut-off date, instead of this surprising blackout. Someone as talented as the Kjaerhus team should be able to cook up some sort of simple authorization program (if they don't already have one) and at least provide an email address for a year or two for final, manual authorizations. Seems like a reasonable, responsible thing to do, after you've put so many years of hard work into it.

The question specifically related to Sonar is what happens with VC64... and by extension, whatever other plugins Cakewalk licenses or inclusion with Sonar. VC64 is already NOT x64 (as well all know, it requires BitBridge) and that raises questions as to its future. I've already stopped using it since it's not x64, but I was looking forward to the next "generation" of it. But now that it appears -- at least for now -- that Kjaerhus is no longer in business, I would be concerned about updates, unless Cakewalk has the source code (which I hope they do, but for some reason I doubt). It also makes me think twice about Cakewalk's approach to licensing third-party plugins without some deeper, longer-term relationship with the developers, and some sort of protection from this type of event -- it seems like Cakewalk has different models of working with third-party developers... like in the case of Rene, he's been involved in other excellent Cakewalk plugins and I believe he is actually partially or fully employed by Cakewalk now (correct me if I'm wrong)...  and I believe with Sonitus, Cakewalk actually has the source code in-house, if I'm not mistaken. However, with VC64 I get the impression it was a reskinned license only, which means we may be out of luck.

I understand such things happen, and are unfortunate. No one can predict the future. I just hope we see the Kjaerhus team back again. They clearly had something special to offer. At least, I hope all is well with their personal lives -- who knows, but sometimes "life happens" so I wish them well.

Standard practice when you enter into a contractual agreement to private-label a third-party vendor's products, is to include a clause in the contract that places the source code into escrow in case the vendor can no longer support the product. I assume CW follows this practice. It's also possible CW already has access to the source, in case they've had to customize it (e.g. make it work only with CW products).

That stinks.  I was just on their website about a week ago, but I knew it had been fairly inactive for a while.  Besides the VC64, I also have their Golden Modulator which I love.  It's extremely versatile and sounds really good.  The free "Classic" plugs are pretty good too.

Sad. I just downloaded a few of their plugins just last week...

I think if a company like this goes out of business they should just release all their plugins for free (and remove the protection). It is not as if they are going to lose any money doing that, but it will at least give those that paid for their products a chance not be left out in the cold with plugins that can no longer be authorized.