Waring about Arturia

[electro]

Companies like Uhe, however, that trust their customers with a simple serial, earn my repeat business. I have more paid Uhe products than I have from any other small vendor. Granted, that's not many, but I don't think twice about buying his stuff.

Small vendors should think about this. I may buy a product on impulse, I might use it for a while, but the C/R choice may keep you from earning a loyal repeat customer.

I will be buying U-he's Satin the moment its available without even bothering to demo. I know to expect nothing but high quality and hassle free installation from U-he and the Serial# reg for DIVA did not go unoticed.

[dwringer]

Skipping reading most of this as it was summed up on the first page.

3 is a lot more generous than some companies that use elicenser.

And if you've had five builds in the past year, you're doing something wrong.

And, of course, as mentioned, Waves (which is oddly praised) actually has a more restrictive policy in place. Many retailers also REQUIRE a physical authorization device, and don't give you ANY soft activations. iLok's also cost about twice as much, and are probably more common these days.

You guys should really do your research. It's like buying a car, locking all the extra sets of keys in it, and then complaining that the dealer wants you to pay for the labor of having another key cut.

[chokehold]

By the way, Waves only grants you two before it starts costing you money.

Can you quote a source for this statement?

[Numanoid]

The warning in buying Arturia VSTs such as MiniMoog and Brass 2 is that after 3 Authroization codes they say you should buy an E-Licenser you would like to continue using THEIR PRODUCT. This is the only company out of all my software which requires an E licenser after so many uses.

For real?

BTW, could you update the thread title? Waring -> Warning

[dwringer]

By the way, Waves only grants you two before it starts costing you money.

Can you quote a source for this statement?

To be fair, I referenced that statement but personally cannot verify its truth, so I apologize.

However, I have tried to demo Waves products with no success, presumably as a side effect of their arcane authorization system. I managed to successfully install, and personally verified the .dll's went to the right place, but my DAW refused to see them.

Anyway, I have a feeling this thread is endorsed by one of Arturia's main competitors. I can't believe the amount of Arturia bashing that goes on around here, honestly, and corporate agendas seem like the only explanation. FFS, I didn't want to like their products, but honestly they sound great and are well-made.

[Numanoid]

but honestly they sound great and are well-made.

...unless if you bought Analog Laboratory Hybrid synth, wherein the hardware doesn't work properly with the software, and instead of fixing the problem, Arturia decide to discontinue the product, leaving those who bought the product behind, and instead launch a new similar product Analog Lab, which coincidentally is in fact even more buggy than it's predecessor

[chokehold]

Well, I'm not the biggest friend of Waves but I do have and use and love some of their effects. I don't find their authorization system arcane at all.

Buy a serial, the serial is put in your Waves account, you open the license manager and it syncs the new license from your account. You can then "dongle" the license to a HDD, a USB stick, whatever.

Should you deactivate a license, it is flagged as unused again and returned "to the Cloud", and you can assign it to something else. I have done this several times before, I never had to pay anything.

That's why I felt it should be appropriate to at least quote and link a source to support such a statement. Just saying something is not proving something.

If they started screwing people over, I'd be all in favour of exposing them. But without a reliable source for such an accusation, this smells just like another attempt of spreading false rumors to hurt their sales.

As I said, I'm not Waves' biggest fan, but I don't think something like this is appropriate.

[Integratron]

Thanks for the heads up re magix. Yep. Typical forced "screw you we will give you an auth if WE want to" mentality.

I SO hate c/r it's crazy.

Heck I used to change my machine twice a year at least and do a lot of different dual boots and stuff.

My macs are going to be replaced at some point in the next year so if I buy something now I'd be using 2 auths minimum and if I bootcamped it would be 4', then when new machines comes and these go.. Ditto.

That's simply evil on magixs part.. A holes.. Absolutely thanks for the warning, as awesome as their effects are, I will never ever support them after reading that. I mean they don't even GIVE you the option of putting them on a dongle! If they are going to enforce auth count, that's the least they should do.

When I had a problem with Magix, they were very kind and refunded my money. I won't go into the details!

[Halma]

Can't talk about the company the OP mentioned but I am not a big fan of C/R either.

As someone else already mentioned the only thing that worked flawlessly for me too is (was) the propellerhead concept. This is the only dongle I have and ever will have. I won't buy any new stuff either with dongle (e.g. ilok 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9...) or limited installs.

That's why I believe in "no copy protection" beside from the serial or registry thingy. I think most of the independent developers are doing it that way.

That often results in lower prices because some of the licensing costs for copyright protection mechanisms are pretty expensive (and will be cracked anyway most of the time).

Beside that costs I am always afraid of "new problems". I am an oldschool computer guy. I started with them 30+ years ago. I have seen mostly every protection mechanism. Anybody remember those old Lucas Art adventures where you have some sort of "analog paper dongle" to solve the riddles inside of the manual on a specific page? Anybody remember those annoying copy protections from the late 90s/early 2000 that screw up every system? Damn, the installed software sometimes worked like a charm...not!!! The only good thing were those guys who wrote programs to get completely rid of them after you have encountered those kind of problems.

Anyways, I think you guys already got my point. Good luck to those companies who try to survive with their copyright protection scheme. It's not 1990 anymore and writing great software is not a secret anymore and with that new thing called "The Internet" chances are high to get similar or even better stuff from independent guys who appreciate every new customer as the customer appreciates the amount of work and vision the dev has put into their products in paying for them.

Regards
Sebastian

[pandashake]

By the way, Waves only grants you two before it starts costing you money.

Can you quote a source for this statement?

Sorry, I see they have changed it since I called support last. Now if you "lose" your license more than once a year, you are just shit out of luck. In the OP's case, five rebuilds in one year would equate to five lost licenses *if* he were using their "elicenser"-type option, as it is tied to system and network ID. This I know from experience because I had a wifi adapter that would send different data back to the cloud, showing that the drive that my licenses where on wasn't part of my system anymore. It was/they were - I didn't change hard drives - it was just the network adapter acting wonky. Long story short, my licences are on a flash drive now.

[pandashake]

I should, however, note that Waves does have a way to access your computer (if you let them/download their remote helper) and see what exactly happened to your system and then they will grant you a new authorization. It's a pita, though. Much easier to just have them on a flash drive.

[Nanakai]

Hi this is a message for people considering Arturia products.

The warning in buying Arturia VSTs such as MiniMoog and Brass 2 is that after 3 Authroization codes they say you should buy an E-Licenser you would like to continue using THEIR PRODUCT. This is the only company out of all my software which requires an E licenser after so many uses.

I have done aboit 5 clean installs in the past year due to whatever reasons and switching computers also. So this post is for your information to use caution when buying product in which will not let you easily get more authorizations.

I have Waves plugins and love them. But with Waves it is extremely easy and effacacious.

Wait.... you delete the licenses that you have stored on your computer, requiring Arturia to generate new ones, and when they ask you to keep it on a USB licenser, you have to issue a warning to KVR? Do you know how the eLicenser copy protection system is intended to work?

1) You get your authorization from the company to download a license
2) You keep this license safe either in a software or hardware dongle
3) When you reformat your computer, you keep this license safe from being deleted as it is (theoretically) the only one you get

The fact that Arturia has given you so many new licenses is, as already mentioned, unusual for companies who license out hardware c/p tech. Now, I don't like it, and I think everyone who doesn't like it should calmly communicate this to companies who dongle, but that's the way it works. Arturia asked you to get a dongle so that you can protect your license without them having to issue new activation codes (essentially, giving you an entirely new product).

By the way, Arturia has issued a "warning" of their own, on their own website, and even including a video:

http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/sup ... osoft.html

I do feel for you, dongles suck. But this is like complaining that you keep throwing away a piece of paper with your Zebra 2 serial on it, and U-he isn't giving you a new one.

[softska]

The fact that Arturia has given you so many new licenses is, as already mentioned, unusual for companies who license out hardware c/p tech. Now, I don't like it, and I think everyone who doesn't like it should calmly communicate this to companies who dongle, but that's the way it works. Arturia asked you to get a dongle so that you can protect your license without them having to issue new activation codes (essentially, giving you an entirely new product).

By the way, Arturia has issued a "warning" of their own, on their own website, and even including a video:

http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/sup ... osoft.html

I do feel for you, dongles suck. But this is like complaining that you keep throwing away a piece of paper with your Zebra 2 serial on it, and U-he isn't giving you a new one.

That's my biggest problem with some of these dongle protection. They claim you can use as virtual dongle but then you can't move the license (eLicenser must move via usb dongle; codemaster you're totally out of luck, and ilok has no virtual dongle at all).

I wish more company do what Waves and Plugin Alliance did. At least there's some way to move the license... I just burn another license activation of my Duende plugins because of re-install.

[Nanakai]

That's my biggest problem with some of these dongle protection. They claim you can use as virtual dongle but then you can't move the license (eLicenser must move via usb dongle; codemaster you're totally out of luck, and ilok has no virtual dongle at all).

I wish more company do what Waves and Plugin Alliance did. At least there's some way to move the license... I just burn another license activation of my Duende plugins because of re-install.

Yeah, I hate it to pieces, but this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who owns Arturia licenses. If you don't like it, don't buy and inform the company that you're not buying because of their policy - that only makes sense. I'm just saying that far from being nefarious, Arturia has actually gone above and beyond in this case.

[masterhiggins]

I do feel for you, dongles suck. But this is like complaining that you keep throwing away a piece of paper with your Zebra 2 serial on it, and U-he isn't giving you a new one.

+1

It's not asking too much to have users to be responsible for their licenses. People shouldn't be bitching at Arturia because their p*rn addiction f***ed their computer. As computers are inherently imperfect, technical problems are always a possibility. That's why I have a RAID 1 for my Time Machine. There's a good chance at least one of those drives are going to die in the near future. $25 for a USB eLicenser isn't a huge expense (imho).

-Sam