New Website And New Formats Question

[sorohanro]

Hi

I always appreciated your samples, mostly the free ones you used to have, which were a great help for a low budget musician (actually an almost no budget). I even got one of the cheap (as price) ones, the ElektrokontrV2 which did a fantastic job on my projects.
Now the situation changed for me, I got an a better budget and I wanted to get more samples from you. As a happy user of Kontakt, I would love this format. Is it still available ?

I have also the UVI Workstation with their free libraries and I think is a nice sampler but I dislike to be forced to use a iLok.

By the way, the new look of the website is somehow cleaner and more clear, easier to find your way.

[stanlea]

Wow ! New policy ! I'm happy to have caught the sfz versions before they disappeared. I understand that maintening only one format is easier, but don't you think you are going to loose potention customers ?

[thysm00]

Hi,

The freebies will be back at some point.
Now about the formats, maintaining all formats was one of the reasons, but not the main one.

If you ever face piracy, you will try to find the right solution to keep your business running and believe me, we had to do so...
I know that people are sometimes reluctant to use iLok, but it actually is a pretty cool way to authorize products, no service center, you can install it on multiple computers, all you need to do is move the key around.
But i will not try to convince anyone that our choice are the right ones, we simply had no choice.

Plus you may have seen that we have been working with MOTU on the MachFive 3 libraries and it actually happens to be a lot easier to use and develop on than Kontakt. As UVI is the engine behind the MachFive 3 engine, it was logical for us to use their format.

Arno

[sorohanro]

I am sorry to hear that you had problems because of piracy.
Despite of the tons of freebies you (and many other developers) offered there are still people who steal from independent developers.
And because of that, we, the genuine customers, will suffer.


On the studio, the owner got the Kontakt versions of the electric piano and "Academic Grand" just several days ago (or weeks?), so I decided to buy those next salary... salary is too late now

I have on my computer just 4 USB, all taken by devices that need fast data transfer. To add a USB hub just for a iLok is













I really wanted those pianos...

[stanlea]

Sadly, I can't use iLok nor UVI engine under Linux. But I understand your point of view.

[sorohanro]

First of all:
Second, maybe useful link:
How to Remove Your Stolen Products from Hacker, Warez and Download Sites…

[thysm00]

Yeah i know the procedure The main problem is that people like them so new links are posted every day... on a bunch of websites... so the only real solution was iLok. But as much as some people don't like it, i find it to be one of the most simple registration process. I currently need to change computer and this saves me a lof of trouble.

[Hupsi]

I just was tempted to buy the telematic until I noticed that I have to pay 50 US$ more to purchase an ilok. Forget about it, why should the customer pay for the copyright protection??? Besides I did not even find a reseller here in Hong Kong on the webpage.

Anyway, you may find your products on piracy websites but serious musicians will always pay for their instruments as they do not want to violate copyright when they publish their music. If the scriptkiddies play around with the pirated products, who cares, they will anyway not pay for it.

I dare to predict that you will chase away more customers with this ilok than what you will loose through piracy. Please at least look for an alternative which is free for the customer. I have spent a lot of money on your pruducts in the past, but no more desire under these conditions.

At lease for me there is one great producer of virtual instruments less on the market now. I will better save my money for the next great product from Orange Tree samples. Greg at least does put the customers to the front and I think he profits a lot from his happy customers.

[TechEverlasting]

I wish you guys luck with this new direction, even though it seems unlikely that I'll be doing business with your company any time soon. I'm glad I purchased some of your excellent piano and mallet percussion libraries while they were available in a form I can use.

My entire workflow is built around Kontakt, and I expect to spend about $1,000 for new Kontakt libraries in the next month. I have no desire to add another sample playback engine to my studio, especially since so much great stuff is out for Kontakt and more amazing things are coming. I use MIDI program change to organize articulations, and Mach V has completely failed to implement that. Also, I'll take NI's Service Center over the i-lok any day of the week. Last time I checked Service Center doesn't charge a yearly fee just to insure that my authorizations don't evaporate right before an important gig.

I can imagine how frustrating it is to deal with the blatant theft of your hard work. Speaking just as a consumer it really annoys me when I do a Google search for a library I'm interested in and the first five results are filesharing and torrent sites. I hope that the recent takedown of Megaupload might help with this, but it's probably like cockroaches where right after you kill a bunch more appear.

I guess the challenge here is for Acoustic Samples to come up with such amazing libraries that I'll be willing to deal with Mach V and i-loks to get them.

[thysm00]

I'm sorry to hear that iLok is such a deal breaker for you.

But in spite of what you might think, not everybody agrees and actually a lot of professionals prefer iLok as they all have one (i even have people that took the time to thank me for the transition).

serious musicians will always pay for their instruments as they do not want to violate copyright when they publish their music. If the scriptkiddies play around with the pirated products, who cares, they will anyway not pay for it.

Your theory about people cracking things and people being honest is true until you see your work being pirated. I sadly have seen the sales reports... the sales on the pirated libraries were divided by 10 and even got non existent for some products.

Anyway i'm sorry to see that you liked our products and that even if our products actually have been improved, you will not buy anything because of the protection. And instead of only seing the disadvantages of iLok (that by the way you only need to buy once), you should try to see why it's so convenient, reinstalling or moving a licence even temporarily is a breathe. Have you tried installing your software in a studio? Well with iLok, you just need to bring your key with you and plug it in, i think this is the reason why professionals like it so much.

Oh and by the way, sample devs have been looking for a protected platform for a long time... and given the features of the UVI engine, it will not take long before they use it too.

I use MIDI program change to organize articulations, and Mach V has completely failed to implement that.

That is not true, it is not build into the engine, but there is a script that you can add that does the same thing as the bank feature in kontakt.

I guess the challenge here is for Acoustic Samples to come up with such amazing libraries that I'll be willing to deal with Mach V and i-loks to get them.

Let's hope that our products will amaze you then Take a look at the Telematic, you might like it

[sorohanro]

I strongly advise people to try the new freebies in UVI format before they totally bash it, it may be convincing to some.

[kbaccki]

I strongly advise people to try the new freebies in UVI format before they totally bash it, it may be convincing to some.

What's so free about requiring an iLok to use the freebies?

Also, what's the deal w/ supporting iLok v1? Isn't that old hardware cracked? So what exactly is being protected?

If the goal is to simply "avoid being uploaded to torrent sites", then I think you're fighting a losing battle. Security protocols are man-made, and there's always at least one person out there smarter than you are. A reasonable goal would be to avoid casual copying, which acounts for probably 95% of lost sales for unprotected content.

[sorohanro]

I strongly advise people to try the new freebies in UVI format before they totally bash it, it may be convincing to some.

What's so free about requiring an iLok to use the freebies?

Ahem... did you check the freebies or just talk without knowing ?

The AS Free Collection is a bundle of 5 instruments that you can use for free.
This package does not require an iLok key, but keep in mind that the other paid libraries need one.

I am Romanian, so, in my country, bashing, bitching around and complaining is a national sport, heck, IS A RELIGION!!! but still, you beat me to that...

[kbaccki]

I strongly advise people to try the new freebies in UVI format before they totally bash it, it may be convincing to some.

What's so free about requiring an iLok to use the freebies?

Ahem... did you check the freebies or just talk without knowing ?

Must be thinking of some other s/w that requires the dongle for demo...

[gemada]

Sorry for the dumb question...I've downloaded the "AS-FreePack.ufs" file but it won't open (I won't extract/unzip)...what I'm I doing wrong?
Thanks