Is Tracktion now an orphan?

[Spitfire31]

...but I haven't received a response either.

My guesses in ascending order of likelihood:

1. Beno is sick of dealing with us.
2. Beno is busy.
3. Beno has been told by the manager whose head is exploring his colon not to bother responding because controlling information is way more important than having any happy clients.

Or, perhaps more likely:

4. Beno's talents are now benefitting a completely different Mackie project and so, he's not authorized to comment officially on Tracktion, regardless of its state (or non-state, as the case may be).

/Joey

[Mr. Tingle]

whether they have quit or not, to leave the mac version in such bad shape for so long is poor.

[I've recently brought a mac, I turned it on, loaded up T3 and had a crash within 2 mins (on a demo tune), so it really is bad]

[koolkeys]

Considering that T3 has been out for 18 months or so, it's hugely worrying that stores are STILL trying to clear their shelves of unsold T2 boxes...

The messages seems to be pretty clear that - at least since it was turned into a boxed product - Tracktion has not been a very successful product. With unsold T2 boxes I doubt many retailers would be stocking up on T3, and it is in any case cheaper still to buy T2 boxed and then upgrade.

So it's hardly suprising if Mackie don't continue to place Tracktion high on their priorities - it does seem to be one of their products that has basically bombed.

I need to ask something here: where in the world do you get the impression that Mackie didn't have success with T3? I am assuming it's just a guess, but I believe you would be incorrect, and I'll leave it at that.

Just saying! Not trying to stir it up.

Brent

[headquest]

Hi Brent

...An "educated guess", based on retail in the UK... our UK stores are still attempting to sell off T2 at a ridiculously low price, and still failing to finally shift their very old stock.

So on the front pages of the big stores (e.g. Digital Village) you see these "please take it off our hands" deals on T2 without mention of T3 (although you can get it as a "customer special order").

On top of that, promotion in stores, online stores, magazine adds and coverage (used to be featured frequently in CM etc) have all long dried up over here. UK exposure for the product is hence at zero now.

I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

Naturally in the States where you are it may well be different - i.e. they may have finished clearing old T2 stock many months ago and now have T3 flying off the shelves. Is this your experience?

[GermanFafian]

Hi Brent

...An "educated guess", based on retail in the UK... our UK stores are still attempting to sell off T2 at a ridiculously low price, and still failing to finally shift their very old stock.

So on the front pages of the big stores (e.g. Digital Village) you see these "please take it off our hands" deals on T2 without mention of T3 (although you can get it as a "customer special order").

On top of that, promotion in stores, online stores, magazine adds and coverage (used to be featured frequently in CM etc) have all long dried up over here. UK exposure for the product is hence at zero now.

I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

Naturally in the States where you are it may well be different - i.e. they may have finished clearing old T2 stock many months ago and now have T3 flying off the shelves. Is this your experience?

Not to mention that it took 6 months or more for T2 to arrive to mainland europe. Way too long after the big advertising campaign Mackie did and with no chance to buy (back then) a download option. So many of us felt left out so most moved on.
I still use T2 for certain things (mainly audio edition) but found my way around with other apps that cost me less money and haver better customer support (once it took me 3 days to get an aswer for "too many installs" after a PC crash and re-install )

[oxbee]

Hey guys, take a deep breath and relax. We know nothing about those assumptions that T could have suffered a setback or could be discontinued.
Mackie is not really a software company. That may explain why they don't put pressure as any other software company would do to have the things working. They're more probably on the "if it ain't broken, don't change"...

On PC, T3 latest version is perfectly stable for most of us. No hassle. It's a very good and stable tool and guess what? You can even make music with it ! Okay, we could be nit-picking and track down any bugs that have been still there since T2.

However does it prevent me to do music? Not a single time. If it does for you, maybe it's time to switch to something else like a different host but I won't guarantee it will be better. I know Cubase users who fell in love with Tracktion... like myself. I left the whale for the dolphin.

In a not-so-far past, peoples used to make music with their elderly Atari ST and good old and not updated sequencer just because it was perfectly working for them. I read in an interview that "The Chemicals Brothers" are still into their hardware samplers and old Cubase version. Same thing for many artists. I also read that Roykspop use a very old and obscure sequencer on Atari to make their music...

I'm more on this side of things. It works and will work this way for a long time. My main goal is to make music.

I almost regret to have switched to T3. Tracktion2 worked for me and it was a bit better especially with CPU consumption.

[rockstar_not]

I almost regret to have switched to T3. Tracktion2 worked for me and it was a bit better especially with CPU consumption.

I'm glad that I never switched. T2 still rocking here. The lure of loops was almost too hard to resist, but I did and I'm glad for it.

-Scott

[unforgiven909]

I started a thread on the official Tracktion forum in hopes of eliciting some sort of response from the company.

http://forums.mackie.com/scripts/forum/ ... 7;t=002492

Just crickets so far, I'm sorry to say. I really believe in T, and would hate to have to move on to a less forward-thinking product.

[KrzysiekK]

I don't know where you would get that kind of idea.

direct him this thread and the twin one titled "oustanding bugs in 3.0.4.6" (now in 3.0.4.8 actually).

suppose the next version is indeed full of new features

I could never make myself going into T2; during demo tryout I even perceived it as downgrade to T1 in some issues; now T3 inherited what has been "improved" in T2 + instability. But I finally went for T3 because of some important features; I risked willing that further upgrades will fix the issues. How can I trust T4 will be a product for me?

It's not Tracktion, admittedly, but it does have some interesting corresponding features, such as a modular plug-in area that provides a capability quite similar to rack filters.

and it has ext. CC automation which ACTUALLY WORKS.

What I like with Mulab is that the developer is very close to the users and answer to every question in the forum, and one of his main goal is to make the most 'bug free" software as possible.

+1

On PC, T3 latest version is perfectly stable for most of us.

oxbee, what is your DAW hardware if it is not a secret? I ask because I've found it to work better with other PC than mine. So maybe it suffers from notorious problems when running on certain platforms (my case) ... maybe.

Thanks

[skipkent]

Yes, Mutools Mulab 2 is coming soon, and I really love it.
For me, Tracktion is still the best, but I was disapointed when T3 came out because the old bugs were still there. Now we have that Mackie guy that say "I assume
that there will have to be new features rather than bug fix releases
next. ". It's really a shame because Tracktion need bug fixes to be the best, and some improvments on the new features that came with T3 (Folder track, Global track, ...).

What I like with Mulab is that the developer is very close to the users and answer to every question in the forum, and one of his main goal is to make the most 'bug free" software as possible.

If you like this sort of 'developer intimacy', the other topy 2 choices would be Reaper and SAW Studio. The SAW Studio forum is very satisfying in this regard. But you have to buy the program, of course ($$$) !

[oxbee]

oxbee, what is your DAW hardware if it is not a secret? I ask because I've found it to work better with other PC than mine. So maybe it suffers from notorious problems when running on certain platforms (my case) ... maybe.

This is my humble config. It's quite an old machine but it does the job! Here you go:

Hardware:
- Power Supply: Hyper R 500W silent (rock stable power supply with very precise and accurate voltages, probably the best on the market, the best I ever had)
- Motherboard: Asus A7N8X-X Nvidia Chipset
- CPU: AMD 2400+
- RAM: 1Gb Corsair DDR PC3200 RAM
- GFX: Gigabyte 7600GS AGP Fanless Silent
- Harddrives: 1x160Gb, 2x40Gb and 3 external USB2 HDs for backups and storage, all IDE ATA.
- Sony DVDROM Burner
- Audio: M-Audio Audiophile 24/96
- Midi: M-Audio Axiom 25 USB2 (brand new!)

Software:
- Windows XP SP2 latest updates
- Tracktion3 v3.0.4.8
- Audiophile's driver: v5.10.0.5057 (latest)

I use a 8.5ms latency but can easily reach 5.2ms. It just tends to stutter on big projects so 8.5ms is far enough for recording (auto compensation is 0.20ms). I record a lot of external things (voice, guitars, bass guitar, synths, percussions...) in most of my songs so I really need that to be accurate.

I don't use 64bit mixing, no realtime, no ASIO direct mode. It is better without them.

My PC is really used as a multi-fonction machine (including some of my job tasks like virtual machines and such...) and I just keep it as unmodified as possible. I just think twice when I need to install something either hardware or software. It just keeps the issues away .

I hope it could be useful to you.

[KrzysiekK]

Thanks for detailed information.

I can see two issues which may bring the difference in our experience:
1. I use a lot of softsynths with automation/CC
2. a PC I also used to test T3 with is equipped with 7300GT GFX which is similar to yours in specs (though PCIX, not AGP). Not sure whether GFX is really an issue in case of my problems but according to what happens, it seems to be responsible for most of problems (if I can actually call it responsibility - T1 did not suffered from these problems).

The rule is that after loading a new project/edit I open any bigger, more sophisticated/animated VST gui, T3 slows down and it freezes when it comes to automation completly. I can hide all the plugin GUIs but the problem still remains - until I reopen the edit or restart the application.

But timing/note length problem seems not to be related with VST gui in any way. I simply open a new project and set the output to hardware MIDI. No plugins. The recording of drum machine is terrible.

Must be resources management problem. I am convinced of that. OS performance monitor is working like crazy while T3 performance monitor shows nothing though the whole system is frozen.

[virtualsamana]

Further response by Tony Cochran (no relation to Johnny) after I explained the reason for the speculation was the lack of communication from Mackie with their user community:

---------------------------------------------
Speculation on a forum by a poster who uses his last line to say "let the speculation begin!" is not information. The forum is strictly for users to communicate with each other since Mackie changed the way that we monitor and post to the forum a couple of years ago. Only very few announcements make it to the forum from us now. Unless you hear an OFFICIAL pronouncement from Mackie that we've discontinued Tracktion or adopted another software title, then everything else is just garbage. The reason software ONLY companies like Ableton or others like them have such a super active forum is just that, all they do is software. We don't have such a software centric focus, but that doesn't mean that the product is dead.



Tony Cochran

Digital Tech Support Rep - Level 1

Tony.Cochran@loudtechinc.com

LOUD Technologies Inc.
16220 Wood-Red Rd. NE | Woodinville , WA 98072
800.258.6883 ext.1176 | fax: 425.892.6594

Always include full email history in reply

Please include System /OS Version numbers

The Forum http://forums.mackie.com/scripts/forum/ultimatebb.cgi

Check it out!

From: Drew [mailto:feelmydread@yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2008 3:38 PM
To: Digital Support
Subject: Re: info: Tracktion



Thanks Tony,



I appreciate the response.

There has been a lot of speculation of the product being orphaned at the KVR RAW Material Software Tracktion forum.



http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=22



People are worried because no one from Mackie had made any attempt to post at that forum or the official Mackie forum for a long time (three months).



There is a general feeling that the developers of Tracktion aren't making much effort to communicate with the Tracktion community. There is also a genuine love of Tracktion's unique workflow and features. It may help to post something at the forum to assuage the concern.



Thanks,



Drew

[tovokas]

...Mackie changed the way that we monitor and post to the forum a couple of years ago. Only very few announcements make it to the forum from us now.

...The reason software ONLY companies like Ableton or others like them have such a super active forum is just that, all they do is software.

As the old joke goes: 'well THAT'S your problem...'

I understand (somewhat) that the level of communication from Mackie isn't going to be on par with that of a smaller software firm, just as I don't expect timely and exciting new updates from Martin & Co. about my guitar. But Tracktion is a piece of software, lives in a world of changing operating systems and hardware, and competes directly with other software packages who do communicate on a more aggressive schedule.

Again, I'm a big Tracktion fan, but I've seen basic questions here and on the official Mackie forums go unanswered for extended periods, which is apparently Mackie's corporate approach. But elsewhere on the web, if I'm looking to buy a VST from a vendor, and there hasn't been activity on its forum for months, I'm extremely unlikely to pull the trigger, and I'm guessing that's not unusual.

I WANT people to buy Tracktion. But fair or not, perception is reality on the web, and even if 'definite word' has not come down from above that a product has been canceled, customers can and do make judgments based on clues like forum activity, and in this case I can't see that being to Mackie's advantage.

[headquest]

That's very well put tovokas.

There really is no point in any company going into business with a product that they don't intend to promote/support as well as their main rivals, or at least as well as they can.

Taking any product to market involves grit, determination and a genuine commitment, not the sort of complacency that Tony/Mackie's answer reveals.

Equally disturbing is the fact that is you read his response, Tony does not actually confirm that Mackie are still committed to Tracktion - he simply says that until they official pronounce, there is no evidence. Most strange.

I think what was asked for is a simple yes/no answer. However committed they are to hardware, and however much they think that exonerates them from providing basic support for their software line, surely it doesn't take much time out of the day to simply provide that confirmation?