Think twice before you buy at reFX

[chaosWyrM]

It sounds to me like you're making this a lot harder than it has to be.

it sounds to me like you have that ass backwards.

you are screwed, you cannot use the software you have paid for and there is no way around this.

well...sure there is. put your thinkin' cap on, youll come up with something.

media producers and software devs have spent the past 30 years having their cake and eating it too. they want their products to be thought of as actual real things (that can be "stolen")...but then they dont let you actually really buy them with the actual real money you give them. its a scam...it always has been.

it started with phillips/sony...they made media...and then they made the equipment to copy that media, and then cried about how people were using the equipment they made and sold. so then they pushed for new rules so they could make money on both ends and cut the customer out. why was it that EVERY product you could buy was returnable if it was defective or you just didnt want it...except music or software? why could i buy a pair of pants and then bring them back if i didnt like them later...but i couldt return that shitty huely lewis and the news cd my stupid aunt got me for christmas? or that rts that wouldnt run even though my computer met the specs?

media and software companies spent millions on lobbyists to fundamentally change consumer laws to trap everyone behind the 8 ball. give us your money...but you dont own the thing you bought...and you have zero recourse if theres an issue with it...or you simply dont want it... (unlike EVERY other item you buy).

but...on the positive side of things. you dont have to play their game if you dont want to.

[samsam]

I love those old Vengeance samples, some of the them sound like chunks of commercial dance tunes, it's uncanny!

[Caine123]

It is really sad to read such things about good products.... companies need to be more user friendly and if not not being supported. Sadly their succrss is great it seems and i also bought their stuff....

[rezoneight]

Did you ever think that they don't list a physical address because of people like you?

This is a ridiculous comment. What are you implying?

[pixel85]

I love those old Vengeance samples, some of the them sound like chunks of commercial dance tunes, it's uncanny!

Because those were chunks of commercial dance tunes Some wave files had embed data with names of artists and tunes from where those samples were stolen from.
Besides that a lot of those samples sounded good at home sound systems but in good professional studio you could hear how awfully flat and lifeless some of the samples were (after that experience I didn't touched Vengeance samples anymore).
From what I remember Nexus also sounded mediocre at best (it was a decade ago tho). Not to mention Vanguard which in my list is on top of the worst sounding synthase I ever heard.
I don't get it how it is that people are raving so much about such mediocre products coming from ReFX.

[pixel85]

Well... if you do EDM type music, Nexus will be the much better choice than Omnisphere. It really depends what you want to do with it.

Can you elaborate why? You can make entire dance tracks in so many subgenres with Omnisphere without touching any other synth or drum machine. Why Nexus is better?

[chk071]

https://refx.com/samplepacks/

[noiseboyuk]

As a lover of Omnisphere, I'd actually agree with chk071 that Nexus is still superficially better in this area. In terms of raw synthesis for these genres, I don't think there's a huge amount of difference under the hood and of course with Omni you can roll your own til your hearts content. But the Spotlight EDM library Spectrasonics released as part of Omni 2.0 is a relative weak spot, tending to sound harsh and horrible more than aggressive and pumping. I think that's largely down to the sound designers, aside from Seth Norman there seemed few in the Omni bank that were really genre specialists.

Of course, you'd be buying 3rd party banks in Nexus to get the good stuff in the specific area(s) you need, and there may very well be very good 3rd party Omni banks in some of these areas too now. In general its still one area where if I'm preset-surfing, I'd go to Nexus or Avenger as a first port of call though.

[chk071]

As a lover of Omnisphere, I'd actually agree with chk071 that Nexus is still superficially better in this area. In terms of raw synthesis for these genres, I don't think there's a huge amount of difference under the hood and of course with Omni you can roll your own til your hearts content.

Of course. The thing is, there's so many production ready EDM packs for Nexus that it of course would be a better choice, because, that's what such romplers are about. Having a instant toolkit with ready to shoot sounds at your hand.

[SciFiArtMan]

I refuse to buy any more products from these Canadian bastards, until they come out with something I like and imagine it will help my music - especially if it's on sale!!! That'll show 'em!!!

[vurt]

As a lover of Omnisphere, I'd actually agree with chk071 that Nexus is still superficially better in this area. In terms of raw synthesis for these genres, I don't think there's a huge amount of difference under the hood and of course with Omni you can roll your own til your hearts content.

Of course. The thing is, there's so many production ready EDM packs for Nexus that it of course would be a better choice, because, that's what such romplers are about. Having a instant toolkit with ready to shoot sounds at your hand.

so youre saying "romplers killed music because everybody is using the same sounds, so it all just becomes noise"

hmmm. good point.

[noiseboyuk]

I refuse to buy any more products from these Canadian bastards, until they come out with something I like and imagine it will help my music - especially if it's on sale!!! That'll show 'em!!!

This is my new favourite post.

[ramseysounds]

I'll say it openly: If I can't open my existing tracks because Nexus deliberately crashes them (there's some evidence for that), I'll open them with a pirate copy and replace this plugin afterwards and polish the sound design a bit more than usual before.

I own Nexus. Great synth. Great customer support. I'd be staggered if 'Nexus deliberately crashes'. Sounds like sour grapes to me. Can't believe the audacity of the pirate comment

[donkey tugger]

worst sounding synthase I ever heard.

Need to have pretty good ears to hear interactions at the molecular level;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthase

[vreckan]

I own Nexus. Great synth. Great customer support. I'd be staggered if 'Nexus deliberately crashes'. Sounds like sour grapes to me. Can't believe the audacity of the pirate comment

There is no such thing as "great customer support" at reFX. There is just a quick responding number of people or bots. Being quick doesn't mean being helpful or customer oriented.

I've been using Nexus 2 for years. I own a few dozen additional soundbanks (at least on paper and in the user profile). After many years my eLicenser broke down. That means: I can't use my paid(!) licenses and my paid(!) software with the broken eLicenser.

That in itself is not a problem and it should be, because otherwise the eLicenser would not make sense. For exactly this reason I always have a replacement at home - you never know what will happen.

At Steinberg, that was no problem at all. There you can find the "Zero Downtime" program. You click on it, get a temporary key immediately and can continue working with a new eLicenser. Then you fill out a form, send it to support and after a check you get a new activation key while the old eLicenser is deactivated. This is exemplary and customer-friendly behavior and this makes even such kind of protection acceptable and tolerable.

Nothing happens with reFX. You can't get a temporary key - support talks about it, but they don't give it away. Instead, you have to be implicitly described as a liar and fraud who wants to obtain a second license. You try to coerce them at your own expense - and that's neither cheap nor easy, since the eLicenser has to be declared to customs - and send them to any anonymous mailbox at your own risk, without even getting any guarantee that you'll get a license immediately afterwards (not to mention how long that might take).

Let me be frank: Even if one out of a hundred people were to lie, the damage would be minimal. But the damage caused by pissed off customers who are affected by such ridiculous and customer-hostile behavior is many times higher and leads to the fact that hardly any of the affected customers will ever pay or recommend a cent to this company again. At best, access to the license can be so important that it has to be paid for in a forced manner - but that doesn't change anything and at best means that the person no longer uses Nexus in any further production.

The behavior of reFX is neither rational nor clever. It's ridiculous and 100% customer hostile. You don't need to talk nice about that.

I deliberately didn't say a word about the quality of the sounds. Also not about the purchase price. Nexus is not a hi-end synthesizer, but first and foremost a "convenience tool", a preset player with current sounds that can be used directly. A kind of time saver for highly commercial or time-critical productions. To my sound perception, the presets are quite ok - but I don't play in extreme ranges, but in the pitches covered by the presets and I rarely play the built-in effects, but my own, separate ones. In fact, I only use certain presets - because Nexus is also a blender. The soundbanks contain only about 2% to 3% really useful sounds for my purposes. But it's the 2% to 3% that really save me time.

Whoever wants the ROMpler and has the money, buys it - but most customers don't know what to expect when their eLicenser is stolen, lost or simply broken. If customers were to suspect this, they would probably think again about whether the price is appropriate - because in case of doubt you are standing with your back against the wall and cannot work on your projects.

Steinberg shows that things can be done differently. Steinberg, too, risks that there might be a case of abuse - but at the end of the day this should be the absolute exception. And there is likely to be an understanding there that an abuse case among dozens or hundreds of emergencies is less painful than pissed off customers who also talk about it.

By the way:

At my eLicenser there seems to have been a problem with a usb contact. A friend had repaired it with a little solder. Steinberg was so kind as to allow me to copy my Nexus license to my new eLicenser, for which I am extremely grateful. But that didn't help me much - the factory-soundbank works, but the rest doesn't. Because changing an eLicenser with reFX is also undesirable and not easy. After all, I can now open my projects - which was not possible on the Mac without the license, because the hosts are crashed. This gives me the chance - even if it means work - to replace Nexus in my projects with an alternative.

Nobody gives me back the hundreds of Euros I invested in this ROMpler. However, I won't do business with the a**holes of reFX anymore and after this experience I won't tolerate their pranks and won't use their software anymore. Who behaves in such a way opposite paying customers, that deserves neither loyalty nor understanding. At least in my opinion.

And yes: If I hadn't had another option, I would have used an alternative way as a legitimate self-help considering the antisocial attitude of reFX, but the only way to at least still use my project files and replace Nexus with an alternative. I don't have the slightest bad conscience - on the contrary, it became clear that the honest customer at reFX is neither appreciated nor can expect quick help.

Let's be happy that there finally was no need to check out alternatives. However, reFX is fully burned for me and my advice is still the same: Do not buy at reFX. Look for alternatives!

Just a few words to Omnisphere:

I own a license of Omnisphere too. But to be honest, I've used it only 2 or 3 times. The company has really impressive showcases and some sounds are pretty impressive if you play them on your keyboard. There are also nice performance features and you can tweak sounds extensively if you want. For me, however, Omnisphere is a monstrosity that requires a steep learning curve to get most out of it and many of the sounds are more for cinematic soundtracks, orchestral work or something similar - they are just "over engineered" to some degree and tweaking them requires (for me) too much effort. In this case I do prefer tools from u-he or LennarDigital etc.

Also some words about Spectrasonics:

Omnisphere is not that expensive if you have a look on the huge factory sound library. But if you have it and you find out that it doesn't fit your taste or workflows, it's not very easy to sell it to a friend. It's surprisingly difficult and to my latest information it also costs some money. Spectrasonics claims that this is due too licensing of the soundbank, but to me it's just bollocks. They do want to have control and they do not want that used licensed were sold cheaper than new ones... Anyway... If you are into cinematic sound production, Omisphere is a powerhouse. For electronical music (House, Techno, XYZ-Step etc.) it's IMHO a bit too much in every manner.