[BIAS Inc. has closed; authorization, updates still available for now]

[machinesworking]

Sad to see for sure, but if they went out of business because of lack of sales, then they deserved to go out of business. I liked the software when I messed around with it years ago, the loop editor was great for instance! but the price was ridiculous. They also gained a reputation for releasing buggy versions, with some "pro" people stating it's a PITA to work with because of that, Chris Carter comes to mind, I think that, coupled with pricing themselves at $499 for Bias Peak Studio with no DDP export like the $125 DSP Quattro and $80 Wave Editor has sunk them.
Seriously, they cost 4 times the price of their competitors. Wave Editor started out at $249 which was IMO ridiculous and they lowered it. They seem to be doing very well with it. Bias seems to have been managed by people who wanted to keep selling to a few people a top tier product, but they seemed to have not noticed that other companies are getting out similar product for a hell of a lot less.

Hopefully the technology gets sold to somebody who can use it, but I somehow doubt it. This seems ego driven more than a symptom of the economy etc.

[antithesist]

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/7956712-post55.html

[BertKoor]

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/7956712-post55.html

Very informative, that's the extra background info we wanted to hear I think.

[audiojunkie]

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/7956712-post55.html

Interesting. It sounds to me like they were treading water already, and just barely surviving. Inter-office morale problems would rarely bring a company to its knees, unless they were on the brink going down to begin with. Interesting post.

Edit: More and more, as I think about it, it seems like a lousy cop out to try to blame inter-office morale problems on the business failure. More than likely the business was failing, and the added stress was causing the morale problems that made certain team members react understandably poorly. If this is correct, it's pretty lame for the CEO to try to pin the blame on the workers. The CEO is the leader of the company, and responsibility should be pointed there, not to a few unhappy employees that could see the writing on the wall. Just my thoughts.....

--Sean

[tommyzai]

I had no idea they were going under. I was under the impression they were about to release a multitrack version of Peak. I talked with those guys on the phone once a week for years. I'm in shock. Peak is the cornerstone of my madness. What should I do now? Use it until it is obsolete or switch to another editor/mastering app. Any suggestions?

[Jace-BeOS]

Several years back, I tried Peak on OSX. I found the window layouts clumsy and the menu layouts far worse. Similar to my feeling about Cubase. The waveform display was terribly imprecise, being antialiased lines instead of actual values. Zooming sucked and customization of the controls was a poor tease. Peak is a cluttered and unreasonably expensive product, long lacking fundamental code updates to modernize anything but the surface sex appeal. It remained an OS9 application in its general form, despite most other developers moving with the times (not all but most). It never had much GUI improvement aside from glitter (nothing structurally effective). Its cost was not competitive. If the underlying audio engineering was good, it doesn't really matter when the GUI is poor or the OS support not modern.

These are developer culture issues. I'm in agreement with the statement that they deserved to shut down and the statement that the CEO should take full responsibity as leadership, not pass the buck on "morale." Morale comes from somewhere, especially bad morale.

[crohde]

Dear valued Bias Peak customers,
Steinberg would like to inform you of a crossgrade offer available as of June 29, 2012: all users of the latest Bias Peak version will be eligible for a crossgrade to WaveLab 7 at a bargain price. From June 29, please refer to our website at www.steinberg.net for more information on this special offer that will help you move from Peak to our WaveLab audio editing and mastering suite.

[phonosuper]

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

http://www.bias-inc.com (http://www.bias-inc.com) is down at this moment. Forever?

[ObsoleteAcc99]

lol and there is a guy on ebay selling peak for 999 i put a joke offer in for $49 thinking i'd still be able to authorize it, lucky he declined it..

but these dealers still selling this are absolute crooks. They are as bad as the devs that close down. I still see it sold at many places and it's pretty bad mojo IMO.

ps yes its down.

the guy must be beyond a peasant if he can't keep the auth server up.

[Knuckleheadz]

Guys, apologies if this has already been posted.

I am running BIAS Peak 7.0.3 on Mountain Lion with no issues (so far!)

I only installed it a week ago by which time the authorisation servers for BIAS must have been turned off (as I got an error saying I was not connected to the internet - I expect the Auth Manager could not contact the server and assumed that was the cause)....

... HOWEVER, if you go to Library/Application Support/Audio/BIAS/Licences on your currently authorised copy there are a number of .BAF files.... If you copy these to your new unauthorised installation and restart Peak, it will automatically authorise your new installation!

Now that BIAS have gone (and I am waiting for SoundForge for Mac) I have stored my licence files somewhere safe so I i need to re-install for any reason I can re-authorise Peak.

Hope this helps some of you out.

Jon

[Knuckleheadz]

Does anyone know how to get the MP3 format to work? Looks like the installer for this was on their server too!

[Knuckleheadz]

Sorted... its the same process as it was for Peak 6... Show Contents of Peak 7.app, browse to plug-ins folder and add the two LAME .bundle files

[ObsoleteAcc99]

Guys, apologies if this has already been posted.

I am running BIAS Peak 7.0.3 on Mountain Lion with no issues (so far!)

I only installed it a week ago by which time the authorisation servers for BIAS must have been turned off (as I got an error saying I was not connected to the internet - I expect the Auth Manager could not contact the server and assumed that was the cause)....

... HOWEVER, if you go to Library/Application Support/Audio/BIAS/Licences on your currently authorised copy there are a number of .BAF files.... If you copy these to your new unauthorised installation and restart Peak, it will automatically authorise your new installation!

Now that BIAS have gone (and I am waiting for SoundForge for Mac) I have stored my licence files somewhere safe so I i need to re-install for any reason I can re-authorise Peak.

Hope this helps some of you out.

Jon

that will only work for the same machine though buddy, when you upgrade (as the bias auth works ONLY on your network card address), it's adios Peak

[Knuckleheadz]

ahhh... that is a stumbling block!!! thanks for letting me know.

I think by time I go to upgrade my MBP I'll be happily on SoundForge

Thanks again
Jon

[believeprod]

ahhh... that is a stumbling block!!! thanks for letting me know.

I think by time I go to upgrade my MBP I'll be happily on SoundForge

Thanks again
Jon

Hey Jon,

Question for you,

Any idea how to do what you did but on Peak 6?

I don't seem to have "Library/Application Support/Audio/BIAS/Licenses"

Assuming it's hidden somewhere else.. but couldn't find it.



So pissed about this authorization thing. They shoulda made it free for everyone on their way out.

They didn't even do so much as send out an email saying hey guys, if you hafta re-authorize eventually you're gonna be f**ked!

I took my mac in for repair and I guess something they did made it so Peak needed to be reauthorized. I tried to de-authorize it so I could input my serial again and when I did that it told me I had "run out of authorizations" WTF?!

Grateful for anyone who can help me sort this.

-Sky