Why no official IK Multimedia forum?

[tovokas]

Sorry if this has been discussed in the past, but I can't find any old threads...

First off, I'm not a hater! I really like my IK plugins. Outside of StompIO, ARC, and SampleMoog I own them all. But over the past year or so, at various times I've had the need to send 5 questions to IK Multimedia using their support forms - both sales and technical questions - and I never received a response to any of them. Not one.

I'm not a phone support kind of guy (I guard my anytime minutes with my life…), so I've had to scramble and find answers elsewhere, often here on the Sonic Reality forum. For a variety of reasons, I'm guessing this must put the Sonic Reality folks in a difficult spot.

The activity level and responsiveness of a company's forums speaks volumes. It shows a willingness to be open and engage with customers. Unanswered questions stand out. Sure there will be an over representation of folks with problems, but an interactive board tells you a company is alive and confident in its products. That you're not speaking to a brick wall.

And with the reality of challenge/response and activation, we're more dependent than ever before on the responsiveness of a company online.

So why no official board?

[beergeek]

Sorry if this has been discussed in the past, but I can't find any old threads...

First off, I'm not a hater! I really like my IK plugins. Outside of StompIO, ARC, and SampleMoog I own them all. But over the past year or so, at various times I've had the need to send 5 questions to IK Multimedia using their support forms - both sales and technical questions - and I never received a response to any of them. Not one.

I'm not a phone support kind of guy (I guard my anytime minutes with my life…), so I've had to scramble and find answers elsewhere, often here on the Sonic Reality forum. For a variety of reasons, I'm guessing this must put the Sonic Reality folks in a difficult spot.

The activity level and responsiveness of a company's forums speaks volumes. It shows a willingness to be open and engage with customers. Unanswered questions stand out. Sure there will be an over representation of folks with problems, but an interactive board tells you a company is alive and confident in its products. That you're not speaking to a brick wall.

And with the reality of challenge/response and activation, we're more dependent than ever before on the responsiveness of a company online.

So why no official board?

This actually has been discussed and Squids was the one trying to hook them up with some moderators. It hasn't come to fruition but might still...

I've had some delay before with support questions but never a no response. Maybe your email is getting spam filtered for some reason?

[Squids]

Remember that IK's HQ is in Italy and English is not their native tongue. I am sure an Italian forum would be much easier. But to staff up a predominantly English speaking forum is a task and a half. It has been discussed though and could happen at some point... I will offer my services to help out and I am sure some other users that are given the okay to would as well so it could be done. But no news on that for now.

As far as your emails not getting answered... most likely for whatever reason either your email or theirs did not go through. These days with spam filters it is entirely possible. That's why a phone call does help. Plus there is a user on KVR called "IK support" which is really Jason. You can find him and PM him to say "hey, are you getting my emails?". If you are in the US then he would be one of the people getting them. If you are elsewhere then I really don't know who handles what in Europe but again... all of the emails ARE answered by IK. They don't just decide to ignore you specifically. So there is probably a reason behind it that relates to emails or something... phone is a good back up though.

[tovokas]

Thanks guys. I'll double check to see if any e-mail weirdness if going on.

[Chester Desmond]

I've had a fair number of log-in problems at IK, their "security\cookie related items" seem different than most sites, so if you are using an onsite support ticket\form, you might try a regular e-mail client, assuming you can find an email address onsite.

[zerocrossing]

I thought the same thing. There's a Yahoo group but the good one is moderated by someone who never approved me so I can't be in that club. I did find this though:

http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/

Pretty good.

Mark

[idragosani]

I thought the same thing. There's a Yahoo group but the good one is moderated by someone who never approved me so I can't be in that club. I did find this though:

http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/

Which Yahoo group did you try to join? There was an older one that got so overrun with spam that it became useless.

So I created this one:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ikmulti/

And have only ever rejected one person because they typed

asdhgasdjhgashdgfj

or similar in their subscription message.

Granted, the traffic there is very low, in fact almost non-existant. No one has posted anything since last summer.

-- Brett