KVR Audio

stardustmedia · Post by **stardustmedia** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 7:19 am

chili beans wrote:Right, anyways i backup all my downloads to a fostex 4 track than bounce down to two tracks to save space

I bet your projects and samples sound much warmer then

basslinemaster · Post by **basslinemaster** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 7:32 am

EnGee wrote:Just an opinion!

If IK adds the cost to the final price, it means it charging 'every' customer even if he/she won't re-download. So maybe they are being fair to charge only those who want to re-download?

Personally, I don't find it that offensive to pay extra for re-downloading. It is only going to happen when I loose my backup, right? So, I consider it like a part of the cost to 'solve' a problem. Also, the charge for good servers and service are not cheap if quality is required. Yes, there are very cheap servers but are they using these cheap servers? I doubt that.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 0#p6188112

I suppose some people don't know us, but it's slightly amusing to see the paranoia. We have been delivering Lifetime Free Updates for 17 years now and have over 30,000 demo installations per day. If we were doing something nefarious I am sure it would be all over the net by now. Word of mouth is a very important form of advertising for us.

30,000 demo installations (not customers downloading FL Studio) a day, at 0.5GB each, 15,000 GB a day.

chili beans · Post by **chili beans** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 7:43 am

stardustmedia wrote:
chili beans wrote:Right, anyways i backup all my downloads to a fostex 4 track than bounce down to two tracks to save space
I bet your projects and samples sound much warmer then

Yes, my backups are oozing with vintage warmness...

EnGee · Post by **EnGee** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 8:05 am

basslinemaster wrote:
I suppose some people don't know us, but it's slightly amusing to see the paranoia. We have been delivering Lifetime Free Updates for 17 years now and have over 30,000 demo installations per day. If we were doing something nefarious I am sure it would be all over the net by now. Word of mouth is a very important form of advertising for us.
30,000 demo installations (not customers downloading FL Studio) a day, at 0.5GB each, 15,000 GB a day.

So, IL doesn't charge their customers for the download and doesn't add the cost of that to the price. They just love people and doing this as a sign of love?

IK problem IMO is being more transparent than it should be in this! Just add the cost to the final price, and don't mention anything (Just suppose everyone will redownload only once as average, so that is $15 or whatever more to the final price)! All will be happy. It is the same (if not better for the company to charge everyone silently), but the presentation and marketing is different! Who would argue that time? No one

trimph1 · Post by **trimph1** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 10:01 am

chili beans wrote:
trimph1 wrote:
chili beans wrote:Wow, does anyone here even play music? Worrying about a companies download bandwidth? Really?
Why not? When you pay to use their servers?
Right, anyways i backup all my downloads to a fostex 4 track than bounce down to two tracks to save space

I just do my downloads on knotted rope

basslinemaster · Post by **basslinemaster** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 12:15 pm

EnGee wrote:
basslinemaster wrote:
I suppose some people don't know us, but it's slightly amusing to see the paranoia. We have been delivering Lifetime Free Updates for 17 years now and have over 30,000 demo installations per day. If we were doing something nefarious I am sure it would be all over the net by now. Word of mouth is a very important form of advertising for us.
30,000 demo installations (not customers downloading FL Studio) a day, at 0.5GB each, 15,000 GB a day.
So, IL doesn't charge their customers for the download and doesn't add the cost of that to the price. They just love people and doing this as a sign of love?

IK problem IMO is being more transparent than it should be in this! Just add the cost to the final price, and don't mention anything (Just suppose everyone will redownload only once as average, so that is $15 or whatever more to the final price)! All will be happy. It is the same (if not better for the company to charge everyone silently), but the presentation and marketing is different! Who would argue that time? No one

Umm... they said they have 30,000 DEMO downloads a day. Presumably that either doesn't include registered users downloading registered versions from their user areas, or if it does, I can't imagine it's more than a thousand or so a day (except on days of new releases of FL Studio). The point is that the cost is minute. The sort of hosting plans a software company like IKM or Image Line use, is going to offer unlimited bandwidth, and cost hundreds of pounds a month, but that's chickenfeed compared to the profits they make.

And as I've already said many, many times, the number of customers actually wanting to redownload in any given year is going to probably be less than one percent. And they can go on a cheaper, slower server.

The fact is that Image Line are serving 15,000GB a day for non-customers alone, and they manage to do that without charging anybody for redownloading, and IKM don't offer a demo of Sampletank 3, so aren't dealing with 15,000GB of downloads to NON-customers a day, yet they somehow still think we're stupid enough to believe that it costs them 15 Euros to supply 40GB of data (or however much you might be redownloading.) It doesn't.

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 12:16 pm

Torches and Pitchforks.....

My take is simply this: their business model is their business model, no one forces us to buy from them. Personally, I just upgraded my computer, and moved everything over to the new one via Timemachine. All I had to do was get new authorizations for my products, and I was up and running very quickly. In fact, my IK products were the first I re-authorized, it was very simple.

If I hadn't been able to use the Timemachine, I have all of my sample content backed up to DVD-Rs. Timemachine was obviously faster and less of a hassle. Again, comparing and contrasting Ik's policy in this regard to that of others is probably a waste of time and energy, unless one feels the need to vent.

I have vented on occasion regarding IK's not upgrading ST2.5 to 64 bit, and I still think that is a fair gripe, especially since they zig-zagged on 'no cheap version to load legacy content' issue for ST3. I didn't particularly like that, but the GUI for ST3 is still a vast improvement over ST2, and I got it at a reasonable price.

As far as their propensity to de-value their products with their group buys, I never buy software with the expectation that I'll be able to sell it down the road. It just doesn't seem to be worth the sturm and drang. So far, on my new computer, I haven't loaded a couple of plugins because, basically, I have no real use for them. I doubt I'd get much for BFD2 or Garritan Orchestra at this point in time.

basslinemaster · Post by **basslinemaster** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 12:37 pm

None of that is what I'm talking about - I'm talking about them charging 15 Euros to redownload software, and then claiming that this is justifiable... and acting like we're idiots who can't do a simple Google search for hosting costs... which is a pretty bad way to treat your customers. They've been exposed, as they deserve to be.

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 1:26 pm

Well, not to quibble, but I see €9.99 + VAT, but I get your point, and I did address it. Their policy is what it is. No one is twisting our arms to buy their stuff. Most new prospective customers who really want their products will note their policy and and make their own backups. That is what I did.

trimph1 · Post by **trimph1** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 1:41 pm

Basslinemaster is right here. Even if you have backed up your own stuff it is still a strange business model.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 2:24 pm

Yet Bombadil is right too. Their policy is what it is. You don't have to buy. Actually it's even pretty stupid to buy and then complain. Because you threw money at them in the first place. And Internet traffic still costs money.

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 2:24 pm

trimph1 wrote:Basslinemaster is right here. Even if you have backed up your own stuff it is still a strange business model.

I get that. Maybe bitching about it here will get IK to change their policy, but in the meantime, I'll merely adapt to it.

Here's another example from my recent experience, though. I own VSL SEs and a couple other of their instruments. In doing the crossover to the new computer, I didn't manage to move the VSL folder off of my Timemachine before it reacted to the new computer and erased everything from my old one (still scratching my head about that one). So, I decided to try to download from the myVSL page, and it was sending me the instruments @1.4 megs a second. Free, but effing slow as molasses. So, I had to go find my VSL USB sticks. Then I downloaded Retro Machines at NI, and they were sending it to me @ 20megs/sec. So, free at 1.4 megs/sec is hardly free in terms of time and hassle.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 2:37 pm

[DELETED]

trimph1 · Post by **trimph1** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 2:46 pm

I guess too many IK threads were around here.

Someone also moved my thread as well...

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Thu Nov 12, 2015 8:24 pm

Peter - IK Multimedia wrote: alerts you to the time frame in which you should download your purchased libraries

WTF? Yeah, this may be news to you but I don't have other software that restricts "time frame in which you should download your purchased libraries." And don't trouble yourself explaining, I have no interest in it. The thread 'issues with IK' or whatever, I said it's too complicated to deal with ultimately (here's your shot to point out I'm stupid, go for it). I don't want my musical thought completely disrupted because I loaded AT3 and there's nothing of use in it because I need to 'restore' and need to research the procedure, for instance. Even as I know to do that now, I don't want to have doubt. I'll stick with AT2 (I purchased every bit of that software, Note Well), f**k this shit. EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD WORKS WITHOUT THIS LEVEL OF HASSLE. I update NI or what-have-you, it's going to work when I next launch it. I will never buy anything further from you either. My time on earth is limited and you lot have robbed me of some of it by being dense and up your own ass to a ridiculous extent.

POOR customer service.