News from Mackie on international upgrade path inc. plugs!

[RaymondHayter]

I wanted the upgrade to get the RM IV plugin, so I was disappointed not to have been able to get the boxed version as an upgrade.

But it all worked out fine: I bought the $20 online upgrade, then bought $35 US DK+ drum sampler. It's lightweight and works really well. You don't get all the drumkits that you'd get from RMIV, but you can build your own kits very quickly, and it works well with Tracktion.

If, like me, you're not a great keyboard player, then you'll love the Tracktion 2's step sequencer.

Raymond

[audiobot202]

Mackie, you've had PLENTY of time to get to grips with the international market. So, any excuse you offer on this issue is really just buying more time I feel.
There have been PLENTY of bug fix requests and feature requests. If you haven't seen them and taken note already, then you don't visit here as often as you say you do.
New customers don't always want to wait for their local retauiler to pick up a few copies for the shelves.
There are other, more practical distro methods in this day and age, why not use them?
As for the boxed price in Australia...well, all I can say is that our retailers are taking a mighty fine cut of the pirate markup. It's a bloody joke.

[Germ777]

I really think the time for corporate Mackie to figure out the distribution details was during the long development of the application, not two months after it was officially released This doesn't seem fair to T2 and Jules IMO.

Hmmm! Wasn`t this what I just said?
Not in the same short sentence, but that was the point I was trying to make

[paladium]

talking about cracks

Lots of the music software is horrendously
expensive in the first place (waves chargeing
2000 dollars for some fx , djeezes). You gotta think about for instance softwaresamplers like halion/kontakt.

I mean to get going you first need to invest in a powerfull computer, then a good audiocard and then
fork out hundreds of dollars for the softsampler,
(then you need a library because all get shipped
with crap libraries).

I mean by then you bought yourself a hardware fully
expanded sampler and good library, that doesn't crash as you installed another update...

That's why products like Tracktion give them a run for their money, Jules showed that you don't
have to be forced to use cracks by making
good software for little cash.
I'm sure the big companies would sell a lot more
with decent prices instead of trying to
put a lot of effort in copyprotection.

[headquest]

There have been PLENTY of bug fix requests and feature requests. If you haven't seen them and taken note already, then you don't visit here as often as you say you do.

Exactly

Assuming this guy isn't just another forum "hoaxer" anyway, he definitely needs to get real!

[headquest]

Lots of the music software is horrendously
expensive in the first place (waves chargeing
2000 dollars for some fx , djeezes). You gotta think about for instance softwaresamplers like halion/kontakt.

I mean to get going you first need to invest in a powerfull computer, then a good audiocard and then
fork out hundreds of dollars for the softsampler,
(then you need a library because all get shipped
with crap libraries).

I agree with you about the samplers - Kontakt is particularly expensive... (and it amazes me that it can't even auto-map samples by recognising their imbedded root pitch!)

I'd better put on my bullet proof jacket before saying this, but...

...Reason is the answer (at least for beginners, as your post implies). The whole program costs less than either Halion or Kontakt, and NN-XT is a great sampler which does everything a general user could want. The library is not bad either, although I disagree about the libraries that ship with the others - Kontakt 2 has VSO samples, for example

[ceenda]

I agree about Reason. (though don't take the jacket off yet... )

The sequencer needs an overhaul though. Each track is still pretty much 1 long static piano roll and even though you can group notes into clips it's still a bit archaic.

I just wish Re-Wire wasn't so... clunky? There's something awkward about having to save in both apps. I wish Re-Wire would just automatically save on the Client side as well.

[headquest]

I agree about rewire. It has some great advantages, but I nearly always bounce to audio before saving so that I don't need to reopen Reason for that instrument the next time.

[rogerhuxley]

I'm happy - 20 USd and a few minutes download on dial up (40 !) and a vistit to My Mackie and alls well. I was registered T1 and I can use it on 2 computers legit.
I like the T2 - its much better MIDI and colour wise - not perfect but much easier to get into than Cubase SL3 - about 300 GBP incl upgrades.
Cracking is another form of idol worship and greed.
Cheers 2 all concerned.

[paladium]

'...Reason is the answer (at least for beginners, as your post implies). '

I'm with you on reason on the sampler subject,
but i have one con, it may be very stable and has good Gui , but to my ears reason lacks some in the soundquality departement, it lacks in uppermid and topend, you can say well go through rewire and mixout tracks in an app that has full eq, but it's
not ok for an app like reason to take such means.

Overall reasons pretty good and it's one of the only
companies that do some REAL betatesting, if their not pretty sure they won't release.

I don't know if the high frequency issues are solved in Reason 3 as i did't try it yet.

no need for a bulletfree jacket..

[ceenda]

I always thought it was the mid to low range EQ that was problematic with Reason? (i.e., lacking a rich, fuller sound and generally coming across as a bit 'tinny'?)

[headquest]

I'm with you on reason on the sampler subject,
but i have one con, it may be very stable and has good Gui , but to my ears reason lacks some in the soundquality departement, it lacks in uppermid and topend, you can say well go through rewire and mixout tracks in an app that has full eq, but it's
not ok for an app like reason to take such means.

I don't know if the high frequency issues are solved in Reason 3 as i did't try it yet.

In a word, YES this is solved in Reason 3, and that is the biggest single reason to upgrade imho. (and I agree that the sound was not good enough in the previous versions... )

Having said that, I mostly use Reason (in line with your previous post!) as an instrument/sampler rack, so I do rewire it into my main host (was Tracktion but I recently defected to Ableton Live).

Overall reasons pretty good and it's one of the only
companies that do some REAL betatesting, if their not pretty sure they won't release.

I agree, and this that Mackie could learn from their example . If they had done a thorough beta test for T2 a lot of the issues that have pissed people off could have been spotted sooner and hopefully resolved. The limited testing done by the select group clearly didn't work well enough.

At the same time, Mackie could have been getting their rather feeble act together on the marketing/distribution front. This is exactly what Propellerhead and Ableton do (to use examples I am familiar with... I'm sure there must be others)

no need for a bulletfree jacket..

[ModuLR]

I agree, and this that Mackie could learn from their example . If they had done a thorough beta test for T2 a lot of the issues that have pissed people off could have been spotted sooner and hopefully resolved. The limited testing done by the select group clearly didn't work well enough.

very one sided way to look at things headquest... especially making the assumption that bugs would be resolved sooner...

So I s'pose when you discover a bug like this...

Code: Select all

Step to replication:

1. Insert a loopable Audio Clip
2. Make sure snap is on
3. Stretch or shorten audio clip to match a bar length
4. Place clip in Loop Mode
5. Drag loop so it covers 4 bars (for example)
6. Zoom in on white lines within loop and notice they are timed perfectly falling precisely on the bar.
7. Zoom out quite a bit.
8. Now grab white bar inside looped clip and shift loop. It will shift with a snap.
9. Now shift loop back to original position. It should look like it's in the correct position
10) Now Zoom back in, and you'll notice that in reality, the white bar isn't snapped in the proper location.

It will throw the entire loop off easily if you are not aware of this... The only way to get it back is to zoom until you can see each tick.. then move the white line precisely on the bar as it was originally.

you'll think the beta testers were not doing their job becaused it exists in the present version.

BTW, I'm not claiming that new bugs weren't discovered (of course there will be new discoveries with a larger base of users)... but it's the assumption that everything will suddenly be fixed because of it. People seem to selectively forget the vast pressure from users in this very forum to release it.. and all the non sense that went along with that.

[pHz]

If they had done a thorough beta test for T2 a lot of the issues that have pissed people off could have been spotted sooner and hopefully resolved. The limited testing done by the select group clearly didn't work well enough.

sorry but this is just plain rude mate ... you have NO idea how much time and / or effort any of us have invested in the testing program nor how big / small the beta team actually was (neither do i TBH) ...

... you MIGHT in some specific cases possibly be justified in saying the testing program had some holes in it but to say we only did "limited" testing is just wrong ...

slainte rob

[IIRs]

maybe if I asked Jules nicely he could arrange a special version for headquest, with all the bugs I found put back in..?