Amplitube force installing drivers unnecessarily? why?

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

Stay safe, Theo! Snowed under? That sucks, I've been there (I've spent most of my years in the northeast US).

Yeah the virutal lol.

I move very slowly with the back issue and have lots to do today so for me that's "snowed under", i have to try and get everything done.. the problem is i can't control myself and keep coming back to KVR to answer just one more post.



i managed to get alot done though

Good that you can get some done, but you might want to have the KVR addiction looked at I hope that the answers given help and if you still need more information support can elaborate where necessary. Might shoot you a PM too, if I have anything else of pertinence to help you out directly. Thanks!

[Ah Xoc Kin]

There DEFINITELY IS a problem with IK's ticketing system, and there always has been.

Maybe that's why they were number 1 in the poll about worst customer support, now deleted.

My experience has been as follows:
1. Create support ticket.
2. Receive answer that does not solve the issue.
3. Ask IK to provide a solution.
4. Wait.
5. Wait some more.
6. Remember that patience is a virtue.
7. Contact one of the IK people at different forums via PM.

In the end, none of my tickets have been resolved in a satisfactory manner, or even resolved at all. Some of their software is OK, but I seldom use it these days.

One in the many hundreds may follow this pattern, as pointed out by me above. That poll was deleted because it was a specific smear job by a user with a specific thorn in their side from what I could see, but it was a mod's decision not mine. It was slanted from the beginning, and with clear purpose against us. Again, one out of the hundreds may follow the steps above.

What are the odds then of contacting support twice and having bad experiences twice? This was in 2011 and 2013.
I got your PM and instead of contacting support again I decided to just pay more for my upgrade since it meant wasting less time. Probably my last IK purchase.

I have hundreds of plugins from over 70 developers and IK's support is the worst I've experienced. Even if this happens only once out of hundreds of times, it has happened to me twice.

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

Ah Xoc Kin - Thank you. Looking outside the odds and the numbers then, because we do process hundreds successfully all the time but your experiences were both not good, I have used your experience as an example to make sure we're looking at the support from multiple angles in order to improve. This is WAY on the radar and I hope you can understand how I definitely feel for your experience and wish it were better, and it can and will serve as a mark with which we can improve services. I've made some suggestions but also consulted those more in touch with the support system and how it works so they can hopefully improve upon both my suggestions and the general support so cases like this don't happen.

I will check to see if I have your ticket numbers and user name, but if those have not been provided, I would truly appreciate it so I can get specific instances/stumbling blocks for the team to look act.

Thank you.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

well i got to say Peter, after my last reply to support re the crashes, with more reports attached, haven't heard back... it must be over a week now.

i will go back to 3.5 of all the t racks stuff for now, and use the pultec without latency fix.

and just avoid amplitube as much as i like the product itself sound wise, until an installer without forcing us to install startup kexts is provided

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

I'll see what happened, Theo, but as far as connections and startup kexts they will answer that too - however, I've worked I.T. security and I've never had any issue or red flag with an IK product in all the years (including before being employed by IK and being directly in I.T. security) I've been using these products.

Edit - they are still looking into some complex items for you as stated in the reply Support sent to you on Thursday.

[Ah Xoc Kin]

...I will check to see if I have your ticket numbers and user name, but if those have not been provided, I would truly appreciate it so I can get specific instances/stumbling blocks for the team to look act.

Thank you.

I provided the ticket number a while back. IIRC, I posted it in another thread. In summary, IK was supposed to get back to me with a solution to my issue and instead they just closed the support ticket. It's irrelevant now, but hopefully this helps you.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

sorry i had lost track of time and they replied today to say they hadn't forgotten.. very kind of them.. and that they needed more time. of course that's ok, i guess i hadn't really realised i was being a bit impatient.

Anyway, the driver thing is different but i don't know whether to bother them with a text on that too.. i would bet the driver does not cause crashing, it's more of a "why on earth should it be starting up when i don't need it". It's launched on every system boot and totally unnecessary for "those who will never use IK hardware". Surely that makes sense? If you can give those people ANY reason why they would want IK hardware, stealth pedal and stomp I/O drivers loaded on system boot, then please do so. Note: this is how the mac IK Amplitube installs, i don't know about windows.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

well never heard another message after that, although 4.1 seems stable.

Now, please, any progress on removing the forced installation of system drivers for stealth I/O and stomp pedals, two absolutely 500% unnecessary drivers, for someone who will only ever want to use amplitube software? Like, at least half of us?

If anyone can give me a good reason why i would want to install these drivers, please do so here. Please.

If anyone can give me a good reason why even though i don't need them, it is perfectly ok for Ik to install "stealth drivers" (in the purest sense of the word, since the installer just does it without any knowledge, and mac doesn't have a simple 2 minute system restore like windows) then please tell me.

[mandolarian]

well never heard another message after that, although 4.1 seems stable.

Now, please, any progress on removing the forced installation of system drivers for stealth I/O and stomp pedals, two absolutely 500% unnecessary drivers, for someone who will only ever want to use amplitube software? Like, at least half of us?

If anyone can give me a good reason why i would want to install these drivers, please do so here. Please.

If anyone can give me a good reason why even though i don't need them, it is perfectly ok for Ik to install "stealth drivers" (in the purest sense of the word, since the installer just does it without any knowledge, and mac doesn't have a simple 2 minute system restore like windows) then please tell me.

Can't supply a good reason. But, here's a a couple jaded ones.

First, lazy programmers and platform dependencies. It's so easy in the dev biz to become so enmeshed in your product that you're blinded to the possibility that anyone would question your deployment choices. Custom installation options, which as a user seem like a no-brainer, requires a very robust installation platform, which is money better spent on marketing.

That and maybe no one at IK HQ ever dared asked the question, what if they don't want to use Amplitude?

Second, it's deliberate marketing malware. IK is first and foremost a marketing company who happen to sell plugins. That they created a plugin system that talks to its servers on the internet while exchanging data with google is terrifying enough, but that users pay IK for a sound plugin that then tracks users' usage, browsing and shopping patterns in the pursuit to develop a more effective marketing plugin system is gravy.

'Custom Shop' is marketing code for consumer spying, that's why I've disengaged from their data aggregation system and won't be 'upgrading' to the Custom Data Collection Shop. Own and like many of their plugins, deplore their 'gated community' marketing manoeuvres. I'm not bashing IK. They're brilliant marketeers who have great DSP chops. Just not going to volunteer anymore to being a paid data point on their next PP presentation. While it's accepted there's little privacy on the net, I'm not willing to surrender the last shred of privacy in my DAW.

What happens in the DAW, stays in the DAW. And not just for artistic reasons.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

mandolarian, Thanks for taking the time, but I guess re the amplitube installer part, well, i never thought it would be difficult to compile a new installer! in fact i thought i was asking the simplest of things, so you have quite shaken my thought a bit there. Anyone else care to chime?

Does it bother anyone else that KEXT DRIVERS ARE BEING INSTALLED on their systems without their knowledge! Amplitube does NOT tell you this, it just does it.

I am finding the lack of support here truly weird, after the way that so many members went off at pace for installing a driver similar to this, and STILL DO even though it is 100% stable now. What is the difference? a kext is a kext. The pace driver was not a VIRUS as some claimed, but just a buggy driver for when pace using software was instantiated, just like my ESI keyboard used to give me a blue screen in Cubase. It was a bad driver. Bad drivers are just that, and can be fixed with updates, as pace did.

I don't know why these guys got such a worldwide thrashing and IK can just install USELESS stuff for anyone who DOESN'T use IK hardware and that is OK?

What the?

And i can't sell it as it's tied to my total bundle i think and we all know the new shop system i can't sell anything!

Sorry but i am refusing to install this and I am going to maybe inform a couple of magazines to see if they want to print it.. why not? maybe that will put some pressure on.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

so i decided to do a poll. i hope i get some votes.

Peter, Brian and Obik, please don't vote, although i wouldn't think you would tbh, you are fair guys

[ObsoleteAcc99]

bumpies! Thanks for the votes so far

[ObsoleteAcc99]

Ok so 15 in favour of poll an 7 "don't cares" and 2 fish. Oh and 2 "non ik" users. So so far the poll is almost 100% ik users.

Sorry to bump this - but it is getting votes now yet no one else seems to be commenting? It's kind of weird talking to myself.. (talking to myself, talking to myself, i, talk to myself) that was hummed to a nice melody

Besides the actual votes would be great to see some text to explain WHY you don't care or why you do?

This poll is the chance to pressure IK into changing it, and not only that, i could post it at other places too.. I reckon some people don't even realise the installer is doing this.

IK *have* changed policy before due to peer/KVR opinion.. so... there's a chance!

DO keep them coming, please I really, really appreciate it. Would love to be able to install my amplitube 3 some day again

Oh.. i bet you if i had done a poll on the store connecting to google and google ads every single time it's launched, there would have been 100 votes already saying "fhdj$&$*%*( change it IK!"

Not everyone has an outbound firewall, in fact, tons don't. Or they do but on simple automated settings. (which basically allow everything )

Nothing will get past little snitch, it has never failed to catch something here.. it's quite amazing.. naughty IK!

But yeah, that's for another time, but do feel FREE to comment about that if you like, as this topic was originally half about the google (and some other unknown site i forget now). so it's still on topic to do so.

[bk]

I voted "yes, it bothers me", but frankly, I didn't realize it did that. Line 6 does something similar, but allows you to opt out during install.

[cosmosis]

I very much dislike setups that install unnecessary stuff, even more so if it's drivers and I generally stick with my small choice of programs that I can trust, and most of them I even turn into portableapps. I like a clean drive and registry. I don't even touch Java and avoid Javascript and Flash.

VSTs from the big boys can be bloated and make a mess over several directories, just like programs from many other big companies. I can happily say that only a handful of those I find unrepleacable.

I avoid dev/company bashing and I'm mostly giving TheoM a high-five/you're-not-alone. I gotta say Amplitube is one of the messier and heavier ones from VST land, and Custom Shop is when I said no no never no thanks. I feel that's a bit too close to addware with banners trying to sell me more stuff, not to mention I don't like my apps doing any kind of communication, not even for updates.

I'm sure IK's stuff works great for many people's workflow/whatever, and they have all kinds of stats and a big marketing team selling things by the pound, but I felt like dropping my opinion anyway. I'm just a dude playing with neat instruments and effects, if my opinion would make any impact.

BTW I voted
"I do not use IK amplitube or anything related BECAUSE of this issue"

;ending rambling now