** Beware of SpinEQ on the new CM (CM78) **

[paradiddle]

This is as far as I can go in disaster control.

Holy shit! That must waste a lot of your time. I have WinXp on for 3+ years and I only back up my data. No OS reinstall. The only prevention I do is that when I uninstall something, I usually check by hand what to remove instead of having the uninstaller do it automatically.

[Jace-BeOS]

I learned a lesson - I think from this point forward, I might just limit my plugin choices to those that come in .zip or other format that allows me to see a text file on installation instructions and the .dll and whatever presets come with it. Unlike JaceBeOs, I want complete control of where to put the files.

Oh don't get me wrong: I feel exactly like you do. I DO indeed want and try to keep control over this stuff. What I gave up on was non-default installation folders for apps, customizing visual appearances and other niceties that turn into badities. Example: I had an app that refused to install on my system. The developer told me that users of non-US versions of Windows had problems. I have the US version... BUT, I customized how I displayed the TIME. I chose "a" and "p" instead of "AM" and "PM." I reset it to defaults and the app installer worked.

FREAKING DUH!

No more installer programs for me for plugins. They always have scared me, no matter whether it's a plugin or some other code.

Me too. I knowingly take a risk every time I audition a new tool on my system because the architecture of the OS is so complicated as to be brittle as hell. But I have to keep moving forward.

My advise:

The best thing to do is keep all of your user data on another volume entirely so that when you have to reinstall the OS to clean up what cannot be manually fixed/cleaned, you have less stress and complication and less work (less backup and restore).

This includes your documentation, keyfiles, presets, patches, samples, sysex files, instrument libraries, songs, templates, etc. Keep one volume/partition for all the applications (and the OS, i.e., C: ) and one volume/partition for all the stuff that is specific to you and your workflow.

Yes, this goes against my rule of not customizing, but I have found it is easier to undo the problems caused by, say, pointing an app like Reaktor to non-default directories for CONTENT, compared to the hassle of uninstalling and reinstalling applications that fail to work properly because you installed them to "C:\Program Files\Audio Apps\X" instead of just "C:\Program Files\X" - sometimes uninstalling and reinstalling only further complicates things. Especially if the product has customer screwing copy protection such as challenge-response, dongles, computer-ID or a combination (and really, it is the customer who suffers, not the pirates).

Don't use the "My Documents" folder to save anything that is yours (sounds to me that you're someone who doesn't anyway) and don't customize the location of your Desktop folder or the "My Documents" folder so that they point to your content volume/partition/drive. The feature is there, but no one tests the use of it and you WILL encounter problems if you do it.

If you do things this way, a reinstall will only require you to backup two things: your internet favorites and your desktop contents (if you use your desktop like I do ).

Jeez, I'll never ever audition the disk full of plugins that I have today as it is. I only get about 2 or 3 hours of tracking and editing a week.

Another reason why I stopped customizing so much. I found that I did more customizing than I did actual work! Same goes for auditioning all tools and sounds. I'm a greedy bastard when it comes to tools and sounds because I am inspired by sounds rather than melodies. This makes it VERY hard to create new material and leads to me testing and trying almost EVERYTHING, hoping to find inspiration.

[kovacs]

Sorry to hear that people have problem with this. The SpinEQ works fine for me.

The installer thing was solved with a separate download I think, there must be a link to it somewhere.

At the time it was first released we had to send off an e-mail to Spin Audio for a license #. It took a while for them to respond to everyone so people were pissed off (but literaly thousands contacted them).

I hope CM can get this sorted - either they must give it away or they must stop pretending it is a part of the CM Studio.

[AKJ]

Hi,

of course, it's not good that this thing happened, but now they fixed it. My personal experience with SpinAudio is very good so far. I first bought their FX Designer. Short time after that they stopped selling it separately but included it in the essentials bundle. so I asked how much an upgarde to the bundle would be, since I was interested in Roomverb M1, which is a part of the bundle. It's really the best native reverb you can get (expect from M2 which has the same basic algorithm but has more parameters to tweak and thus is over-complex to me). what they did was: give the upgrade to the bundle for free. I never had any install and deinstall problems (but that might be because I left the defaults), and also the pluins do not seem to have more bugs than others (ie basically everything is working fine).

that's my experience.

akj

[zeoy]

I sent an e-mail to spinaudio asking about the SpinEQ demo in CM studio and Dan replied within a few days giving me a download link and a serial so it's working for me now.
Thanx Dan