Well... I gave it two days - damn AT2 dongle already crashed

[grymmjack]

grymmjack,

I use the same hosts on mac that I was using on my pc. I am embarrased to list them all because I have way too many and don't use any of them well.

Actually, I recently cleaned out the stables, sold Live and Reason and have so far kept Cubase, Tracktion and Pro Tools.

Both Reason and Live are fantastic programs but the musicians I partner with are using Tracktion and Pro Tools and for some reason, I always drift back to Cubase.

As far as I can tell, Tracktion is the best value going and I'm honestly more productive in Tracktion than any other.

One of these days, I'm going to settle down and learn one of them well.

But back on topic....

The dongle sucks and the load times suck but I have AT2, Miroslav Philharmonik and CSR from IK and they are all outstanding plug-ins...and they all use a dongle.

The Sampletank load doesn't actually suprise me (the open file handles.) ST does not stream the samples like HALion and Kontakt. It loads them into memory. Did you notice whether it was actually loading files or just opening file handles? Ooops, now I'm hijacking the thread with geek-speak.

Anyway, I can feel Amberience's pain...I'm just wondering if there's a workaround...like a template song with a couple of empty tracks with AT2 already on them. I mean after all, it's a plug that has some merits and it has it's own set of issues so let's get a workaround...

tracktion rules. i am a cubaser too, actually i think most of us are host whores to some extent. it's not our fault, it's the nature of the game -- those around from the beginning or near that have bought and upgraded and jumped from ship to ship hoping for a more symbiotic link between man and machine as it relates to music. i don't think you should be embarassed at all, in fact you should be proud that you have done your own footwork and found out first hand which is the best fit.

my list (and this is funny too):

cantabile - test lab/skin tests (but with the new build may turn into a small composition). it used to be minihost, but minihost started picking fights with my IRQL according to mister STOP ERROR 0x8008135 ... gotta love those informative messages right? though in it's defense the mac is the most cryptic thing i've ever tried to diagnose/debug. when there is no OS it just frowns at you and has a big arrow pointing to a disk. i asked my croatian buddy who was working with me at the time 'max, wtf does THAT mean?' (he's a big mac nut and a cool cat) and he looked at me in the face and said "oh, he's unhappy." ... well no shit..

after that it's phrazor - sketchpad for ideas (this is the coolest shit ever and is like kore for poor bastards who cant afford NI Komplete or whatever for VST).

then it's energy xt - which i embed phrazor into at times.

which sits inside of tracktion, which also has flstudio rewired to it. haha

so yea dude i feel your pain, believe me, it's one we all feel. the ones i've abanoned; cubase, sonar, cakewalk *, etc. quite a rough lesson to learn. if only tracktion were around back then..

and coincidentally i also have rebirth and madtracker rewired into tracktion at times as well. and i almost did it again getting swooned by orion 7, until i snapped out of it and realized WAIT i can ALREADY do this (ok maybe not as quickly or as funly (word?)) as in others, but i'm done wasting money on hosts! time to get to work and write some music!

i don't think sampletank was actually opening the files to read them, i think it was doing some kind of integrity scan. there is some protection scheme for the SE version i have that came with tracktion that wont let you load samples/patches that do not explicitly come with SE -- perhaps this is the reason? hrmmmmmm.. ponderous,.

hey if you want, IIRs (dude on here) is working with swavideo.com on a tracktion video tutorial .. it's very cool, and cheap ($25 i thnk it was for preorder) . might be a good step to take towards mastering the T2 environs. he's got such a sexy voice, i couldn't help myself

just think beergeek, we go through the same motions of deliberation when choosing plugs too, and if you are anything like me (or i wot 50% of the guys who frequent KVR) you are a plug junky and even if you have everything sorted, you STILL download the freebies, or the commercial demos and try them wasting hours of your life away just tweaking.

ahh well, get up c'mon get down with the sickness as they say.

[beergeek]

Yeah Hink...doesn't bother me either cuz I ain't in no rush...and it's the inital launch that takes the most time. That's funny on the guitarport and the pod...I have a toneport and it takes like 10 seconds max....BUT..I'm not connecting to an external device like the the pod.

So maybe that's really the deal...a dongle is really a sperate device like your pod. It sees the dongle as a mountable drive, has to read it and then has to find a license...

All very interesting but doesn't solve Amberience's problem

Me, I'm old and I really could use that 15 seconds...

[grymmjack]

i wonder how much of the delay is due to the fact that it's using USB which is slower than say an internal I/O board sitting on the bus directly ... ? i know that USB 2.0 is quick and all but mass production of these dongles i assume they cut corners somewhere. maybe it's just slow hardware -- also keep in mind the dongle is probably working in some encrypted fashion so it's doing some kind of decryption which is using some salt from the dongle or whatever (to decrypt you need salt) and these are usually very extensive/math intensive operations with encryption.

what happens if you remove the dongle hot, while the plug is going? does it break? what happens if you use the dongle in a usb2.0 port? is it faster?

[Hink]

Yeah Hink...doesn't bother me either cuz I ain't in no rush...and it's the inital launch that takes the most time. That's funny on the guitarport and the pod...I have a toneport and it takes like 10 seconds max....BUT..I'm not connecting to an external device like the the pod.

So maybe that's really the deal...a dongle is really a sperate device like your pod. It sees the dongle as a mountable drive, has to read it and then has to find a license...

All very interesting but doesn't solve Amberience's problem

Me, I'm old and I really could use that 15 seconds...

that's me too, I'm old and not in a race...I often spend more than 15 seconds trying to remember why I got up Look at it this way, think of the time you save not having to rewind every take...

[Hink]

i wonder how much of the delay is due to the fact that it's using USB which is slower than say an internal I/O board sitting on the bus directly ... ? i know that USB 2.0 is quick and all but mass production of these dongles i assume they cut corners somewhere. maybe it's just slow hardware -- also keep in mind the dongle is probably working in some encrypted fashion so it's doing some kind of decryption which is using some salt from the dongle or whatever (to decrypt you need salt) and these are usually very extensive/math intensive operations with encryption.

what happens if you remove the dongle hot, while the plug is going? does it break? what happens if you use the dongle in a usb2.0 port? is it faster?

I use to have my ilok in this



it's usb 2.0, but now it's tucked away on a cable extending from a hub under my workspace (I didn't much like that ilok hanging out off the side of my laptop) that is 1.0...there is no difference in speed as far as I can tell...

[beergeek]

Yeah grymmjack that's me...a plug whore...I've got more demos on this box that I can use...BUT...I actually do buy some of them. Then after i figured out whether i can do anything with 'em, I'll sell them or give them away. The biggest regret I have is selling z3ta+ which was doing me no good since I'm on a mac now and besides, I'm not a synth guy. Still, all in all, that was the coolest.


Honestly, the fact that I'm on a mac now helps me stay at least some more focused since a lot of it doesn't work on OSX

Oh yeah...Rhino...simply marvelous but PC only.

Symlink would be great (geek joke for the non geeks) but I can't get there...yet...Pro Tools is cool but not fast for me. I'm going to get a Logic Pro NFR license soon and I think that may be the bomb.

So I'm going to out myself and admit that I've made some stuff in Garageband that was pretty cool. Don't hate me, GB is pretty awesome for what it is.

BTW, I d/l Crystal (free) and unbelievable for a free synth.

Yikes...

[grymmjack]

Yeah Hink...doesn't bother me either cuz I ain't in no rush...and it's the inital launch that takes the most time. That's funny on the guitarport and the pod...I have a toneport and it takes like 10 seconds max....BUT..I'm not connecting to an external device like the the pod.

So maybe that's really the deal...a dongle is really a sperate device like your pod. It sees the dongle as a mountable drive, has to read it and then has to find a license...

All very interesting but doesn't solve Amberience's problem

Me, I'm old and I really could use that 15 seconds...

that's me too, I'm old and not in a race...I often spend more than 15 seconds trying to remember why I got up Look at it this way, think of the time you save not having to rewind every take...

i have a cute joke. i think it's from a movie. if you've heard it, piss off:

the old wolf says to the young wolf as they sit on top of a hill gazing down at a bunch of sheep. licking his lips the young wolf says to the old wolf; "hey pa, lets run down there and eat up a sheep!" to which the old wolf replies "nah kid, let's walk down and then eat them all." ...

shit i think that's wrong, damnit.

[beergeek]

i wonder how much of the delay is due to the fact that it's using USB which is slower than say an internal I/O board sitting on the bus directly ... ? i know that USB 2.0 is quick and all but mass production of these dongles i assume they cut corners somewhere. maybe it's just slow hardware -- also keep in mind the dongle is probably working in some encrypted fashion so it's doing some kind of decryption which is using some salt from the dongle or whatever (to decrypt you need salt) and these are usually very extensive/math intensive operations with encryption.

what happens if you remove the dongle hot, while the plug is going? does it break? what happens if you use the dongle in a usb2.0 port? is it faster?

Ah...you can't load another instance without the dongle hot...I'm using them in usb 2.0 ports ( I bought a freakin powered hub die to dongle excess) ...but...if the dongle is 1.1...the port kicks back to 1.1. That's something that they ccould change to speed it up and I suspect that's exactly what Hink is talking about with the Antares plugs. rather than load a new instance, the engine allows multiple threads.

Encryption? It's a simple hash dude, probably md5...d/l the actual license, combine it with a valid serial, create an md5 hash. That's probably why they've still been cracked. MD5 doesn't cut it anymore when pc's have the processing power of the old crays.

Yeah, someone with a clue needs to re-design the copy protection. The guys writing the software in most cases are musicians. The guys writing the copy-protection are security wonks..and THEY dictate what companies like IK have to put into the code to make it work.

The guys who wrote the cp could give a shit about how long each instance of a plug takes to load.

The guys who wrote the plug just want to make the money they deserve.

Hmmmm... I'm seeing an opportunity here

[beergeek]

i have a cute joke. i think it's from a movie. if you've heard it, piss off:

the old wolf says to the young wolf as they sit on top of a hill gazing down at a bunch of sheep. licking his lips the young wolf says to the old wolf; "hey pa, lets run down there and eat up a sheep!" to which the old wolf replies "nah kid, let's walk down and then eat them all." ...

shit i think that's wrong, damnit.

Yeah but they weren't waiting for AT2 to load so they didn't have to worry about the sheep running off..roflmao

[beergeek]

Oh...and btw, if anyone wants to call me a fanboi, go ahead, AT2 is pretty awesome and I need all the help I can get.

And for the record...I get them cheap from esoundz because I buy a lot from esoundz and other people use me as a referral. At the price I get them, it makes no sense not to...msrp is just not reality.

If that makes me a fanboi, lets just say I'm an esoundz slut, k?

lmao

[friteuse]

Hink, I fully agree with you - 15 seconds is nothing that can prevent me to work. I often record guitars with amps and I love to wait the few minutes until tubes are hot... But the difference is, I know why it's necessary and I know it's a 'good' thing going on in the amp. With AT2, I know I am gonna wasting time, beeing forced to wait for something, I really don't need. And this makes a big difference, it's just there for frustrating me and not to give me feeling of pleasant anticipation...

Second point is, there are not only Amplitubes. What, if I have to wait for every single EQ or Compressor? In an analog console, do you have to wait 15 seconds before you can use it?

Third point, while my amp is warming up, I can do a lot of things, i.e. micing, cabeling, or setting up my recording environement. While AT2 loading, I can't do anything but waiting (except plugin in the guitar, but this is done once and I use to record several guitars with more than one Amp...). This causes frustration getting higher, because the only thing I can do while those plugins are loading is, to think about the fact, they COULD do it faster...

So, it's not the point that I don't want to wait for things, it's the awareness that it's simply unnecessary.

Just my two cents...

[diverdee]

From what I remember of the blurb on synchrosofts site:
A great deal of the code of the synchrosoft 'protected' plug in is encrypted & in order to launch the plug the dongle decrypts the code in 'realtime'.
That's likely the cause of the delay - the plugin has to be decrypted before it can launch, kinda.
This is why it's dificult to release 'dongleless' demos - as so much of the actual code is dependant on the dongle decrypting it before it can work, so in effect to do that the company would have to create virtually 2 different versions & potentially make it much easier to crack by doing so.

[beergeek]

From what I remember of the blurb on synchrosofts site:
A great deal of the code of the synchrosoft 'protected' plug in is encrypted & in order to launch the plug the dongle decrypts the code in 'realtime'.
That's likely the cause of the delay - the plugin has to be decrypted before it can launch, kinda.
This is why it's dificult to release 'dongleless' demos - as so much of the actual code is dependant on the dongle decrypting it before it can work, so in effect to do that the company would have to create virtually 2 different versions & potentially make it much easier to crack by doing so.

Well, if that's the case...it might explain a lot...a silly, almost stupid practice but...that woukd certainly add up to seconds and not milliseconds.

[Hink]

Hink, I fully agree with you - 15 seconds is nothing that can prevent me to work. I often record guitars with amps and I love to wait the few minutes until tubes are hot... But the difference is, I know why it's necessary and I know it's a 'good' thing going on in the amp. With AT2, I know I am gonna wasting time, beeing forced to wait for something, I really don't need. And this makes a big difference, it's just there for frustrating me and not to give me feeling of pleasant anticipation...

Second point is, there are not only Amplitubes. What, if I have to wait for every single EQ or Compressor? In an analog console, do you have to wait 15 seconds before you can use it?

Third point, while my amp is warming up, I can do a lot of things, i.e. micing, cabeling, or setting up my recording environement. While AT2 loading, I can't do anything but waiting (except plugin in the guitar, but this is done once and I use to record several guitars with more than one Amp...). This causes frustration getting higher, because the only thing I can do while those plugins are loading is, to think about the fact, they COULD do it faster...

So, it's not the point that I don't want to wait for things, it's the awareness that it's simply unnecessary.

Just my two cents...

first point, though in princple sounds logical, how ever step 1, load AT2, step 2 pick-up guitar and get it strapped on or in your lap...which probably takes about 10 seconds (more if you're like me and you need to play a little riff before it's on), if your guitar isn't already plugged in...there's the other 5 seconds...by the time you're ready AT2 is ready...if something is going to get faster I'm quite comfortable waitng a minute for it to open if I can use it at zero latency (I use the line six editor whenever I use the xt live...it takes 55 seconds)...now there would be a reason for faster....

second point, you ask a question about a problem that does not exist so it's moot...you don't have to wait for every eq, compressor ect...so I'm not sure how it applies...if that were the case of course there would be more of a reason to complain and I would be right there with everyone...

third point....see the first point, but you're right....you can't do as much in 15 seconds

[Hink]

btw some analog consoles take longer than 15 seconds to warm up, patching effects will take more than 15 seconds...preparing an analog recorder for a project took me no les than 5 minutes ever...