Now I Understand Why People Hate iLok

[BMoore]

Frankly, if you're serious about a plugin, and you care about the copy protection, you should find the respective informations. It's not the company's task to write in bold letters "ILOK PROTECTED!!!!!" on the website. It's enough to list it in the computer requirements, really.

Also what may be your "essential" could be the next guy's "couldn't care less". Yes, really.

First. Which copy protection a VST uses is quite essential for most users.
Second. If ILok is the bees knees, every company should advertise iLok in very large letters.

[kbaccki]

This only says one thing to me: You don't push macOS to the boundaries as you push Windows. You are probably a designer (I'm just guessing) and a musician at home.

Xcode + Android Studio + iOS simulator + Android emulator + a couple phones and/or tablets, side by side by side. Plus the gimp, a couple other graphics utilities for screen grabbing and pixel measuring, color meter, probably a preview or two, plus excel and/or word... oh yeah emacs. The work mbp load is an order of magnitude greater than rumning reaper with a few dozen fx and 8-16 kontakt tracks.

At home, you use the Windows machine for real-time work, you use iLOK, etc.

"Real time work" is a measure of system capacity, not system and/or OS stability. System stability is about the hardware playing nice with the OS and the OS playing nice with itself.

How many Mac OS daemons have you had to run "delayed start"? Me, none that I can remember.

Its not that Mac OS doesn't have ANY problems. I didn't say that. Safari, for example, I can get that to lock up with the right javascript, requiring manual intervention. Maybe some other occasional issues with spotlight indexer or whatever.

My point is that IME windows has a lot more baggage than Mac OS... CEIP, for example. Why? The occasional windows update requiring rollback of said update. Certain windows services notoriously consuming lits of cpu even across reboots (requiring lots of googling to find workarounds, learn that its been a bug for several years, etc etc).

[2ZrgE]

Would they be as good ? Is the important question.

This is my point, yes they would. To rephrase your question as a statement you’re saying the best plugins are ilok protected which simply isn’t true.

Don’t get me wrong I am ilok’d. Only for Soundtoys and I love them to bits, but if you took them away from me I’d find a substitute in a heartbeat.

Someone should do a psychological study.

Give a group of people a VST in two variants, tell them that one is iLok-protected, and one is 'just' serial protected.

Let them hear the same sounds without knowing...

I'm sure most of the people would say that the iLok stuff sounds better...

[ChamomileShark]

well it is hardware isn't it?

[ghettosynth]

Would they be as good ? Is the important question.

This is my point, yes they would. To rephrase your question as a statement you’re saying the best plugins are ilok protected which simply isn’t true.

Don’t get me wrong I am ilok’d. Only for Soundtoys and I love them to bits, but if you took them away from me I’d find a substitute in a heartbeat.

Someone should do a psychological study.

Give a group of people a VST in two variants, tell them that one is iLok-protected, and one is 'just' serial protected.

Let them hear the same sounds without knowing...

I'm sure most of the people would say that the iLok stuff sounds better...

Soundtoys could be replaced. I don't even have the bundle because it's been one of those "on the fence" purchases for me for some time. But I challenged the group to name the replacement for some of Zynaptiq's stuff, particularly pitchmap. There were several others that I named off as well, but Zynaptiq's stuff is particularly distinct.

Moreover, because you could find a replacement is not a negation of the claim that the best plugins are dongle protected. I think that the best reverb plugins are largely dongle protected. There are some exceptional counterexamples, but it's a statistical statement, not an absolute statement. Eventide, Lexicon, TC Electronics, Exponential Audio, Ircam, and now even Liquisonics, are all iLok. Maybe you don't think that they're the best, but I'm not sure that you're going to convince many people otherwise. Again, if you know something that is much better than those and it isn't dongle protected, I want to hear about it.

[Michael L]

Perhaps iLok should make tutorial videos?

[wagtunes]

Would they be as good ? Is the important question.

This is my point, yes they would. To rephrase your question as a statement you’re saying the best plugins are ilok protected which simply isn’t true.

Don’t get me wrong I am ilok’d. Only for Soundtoys and I love them to bits, but if you took them away from me I’d find a substitute in a heartbeat.

Someone should do a psychological study.

Give a group of people a VST in two variants, tell them that one is iLok-protected, and one is 'just' serial protected.

Let them hear the same sounds without knowing...

I'm sure most of the people would say that the iLok stuff sounds better...

Soundtoys could be replaced. I don't even have the bundle because it's been one of those "on the fence" purchases for me for some time. But I challenged the group to name the replacement for some of Zynaptiq's stuff, particularly pitchmap. There were several others that I named off as well, but Zynaptiq's stuff is particularly distinct.

Moreover, because you could find a replacement is not a negation of the claim that the best plugins are dongle protected. I think that the best reverb plugins are largely dongle protected. There are some exceptional counterexamples, but it's a statistical statement, not an absolute statement. Eventide, Lexicon, TC Electronics, Exponential Audio, Ircam, and now even Liquisonics, are all iLok. Maybe you don't think that they're the best, but I'm not sure that you're going to convince many people otherwise. Again, if you know something that is much better than those and it isn't dongle protected, I want to hear about it.

iLok user here. No hater. Not even going to argue with anything you've said. Statistically, it does appear that some of the best reverbs are iLok protected. But here's my point. I have what I feel are excellent reverbs that don't require iLok. It's not like there are no alternatives that aren't great quality. So you CAN get a quality reverb without having to use iLok. That's all that matters. As long as there are choices, there is no need to use iLok.

Again, like I said, I have found only one product that absolutely has zero competition because it is the only company that makes what it does and that's Vocaloid.

Actually, Vocaloid itself you can compare to Kontakt. See Vocaloid is just the engine. It doesn't make any sounds on its own. In order to make sounds, you need a sound source. There, we have lots of competition. You have Yamaha, Zero-G and PowerFX just to name a few. And I am sure others will come alone over time. But regardless of whether you get your sound source from any of these companies, you need to get the engine and in order to use the engine, you need iLok. It is a true monopoly on the market as far as what the software allows the sound sources to do.

Everything else, you have choices that don't require iLok.

So outside of one platform, iLok is not a must have for anybody.

[Lotuzia]

Actually, Ilok give you the largest choice : No restriction at all.
While I understand and admit that one can perfectly live without it and be happy : I live much better with it.

[flugel45]

Actually, Ilok give you the largest choice : No restriction at all.
While I understand and admit that one can perfectly live without it and be happy : I live much better with it.

+1

I have no idea why this turned into an 11-page thread (Well, yeah, I do, this is KVR!), but I did read the first page, and saw the OP had refused to install the latest version of iLok manager. Case closed, right?

[Dewdman42]

At least with a lot of iLok products they are starting to provide the option more and more to do computer authorization rather then to the dongle. I only have one ilok product that doesn't allow this at the moment, MOTU MX4, which isn't even available 64bit and hasn't been updated in years.

Put me the camp of dongle haters. They never did anything but annoy me and make my life less convenient.

[wagtunes]

Actually, Ilok give you the largest choice : No restriction at all.
While I understand and admit that one can perfectly live without it and be happy : I live much better with it.

+1

I have no idea why this turned into an 11-page thread (Well, yeah, I do, this is KVR!), but I did read the first page, and saw the OP had refused to install the latest version of iLok manager. Case closed, right?

First of all, the iLok latest version is not a required update. Second of all, regardless of whether or not I update, that will have no effect on whether or not the PACE service starts which is what the actual problem is.

So no, case not close because your argument is irrelevant. iLok works fine. All my licenses are there. It's PACE that sucks.

[frizzbee]

no time to read 11 pages of unnecessary rant against ilok but did someone mention this most likely is a windows bug after an update? and that pace can nothing do about it since they haven't any control over your system? did someone mention this is an unnecessary thread from wagtunes again "just to inform us about his life" and totally not to get any attention?

[chk071]

Actually, Ilok give you the largest choice : No restriction at all.
While I understand and admit that one can perfectly live without it and be happy : I live much better with it.

+1

I have no idea why this turned into an 11-page thread (Well, yeah, I do, this is KVR!), but I did read the first page, and saw the OP had refused to install the latest version of iLok manager. Case closed, right?

First of all, the iLok latest version is not a required update. Second of all, regardless of whether or not I update, that will have no effect on whether or not the PACE service starts which is what the actual problem is.

How do you know? It could well be an issue with an older iLok version. Or some settings which get overwritten with a new version. At the very least, you wouldn't know, and it is always recommended that you have the latest version installed.

[Examigan]

I am not sure what can replace Falcon if iLok is an issue. For reverbs there is 2CAudio’s reverbs and unless I am mistaken.. Valhalla.

[wagtunes]

Actually, Ilok give you the largest choice : No restriction at all.
While I understand and admit that one can perfectly live without it and be happy : I live much better with it.

+1

I have no idea why this turned into an 11-page thread (Well, yeah, I do, this is KVR!), but I did read the first page, and saw the OP had refused to install the latest version of iLok manager. Case closed, right?

First of all, the iLok latest version is not a required update. Second of all, regardless of whether or not I update, that will have no effect on whether or not the PACE service starts which is what the actual problem is.

How do you know? It could well be an issue with an older iLok version. Or some settings which get overwritten with a new version. At the very least, you wouldn't know, and it is always recommended that you have the latest version installed.

Because all iLok is, is the license manager. PACE is the engine that loads iLok. My issue has never been a license issue. It has always been an engine not running issue. The one has nothing to do with the other. I can update iLok and PACE can STILL not load.

How do I know this?

Because when my iLok WAS the brand new version (at the time) on a brand new machine, I was already having this problem.

So what was I supposed to do then, when there was nothing to "upgrade" iLok to? Use the "Man On The Moon" version?

This is a PACE problem...Period.