Trying the demo, I'm confused...

[cyuzik]

After doing a ton of reading, I was seriously considering the full version of RC, and decided to try the demo because I really want to add a program like this to my workflow. The feature list looks like what I'm after, and I want to use something with an active developer and a positive user community of behind it.

Initial impressions with the software honestly aren't good. I don't get the very non-intuitive user interface, and why everything seems to have been created with such non-standard GUI controls. The universal help and link to documentation button ("F1") that works in virtually every Windows program since the early 90s, but does nothing in RC. Why is the file button an icon of two eight notes, instead of the word "File" at the top with the other menu items? Drag-and-drop works in some places, but does nothing in others.

Since installing the demo a few hours ago, the entire program has crashed on me several times without any error message or anything. One moment it's running, the next I'm looking at my Windows desktop wallpaper and icons. Digging through the windows event log indicates a generic application error with event id 1000.

I'm very interested in the capabilities of the melody generators that are in the much more expensive full version of the software, but for some reason those aren't included in the demo of the full version?!? Why not? Okay, then, perhaps there's a money-back guarantee if I decide after a reasonable time period such as a couple of weeks that it's not for me? No, the website says explicitly that all sales are final and no refunds will be offered. It's not like this is cheap software either. USD$149 (sale price) can buy an entire DAW and some good VST plugins too.

I've watched several videos on YouTube to try to decide if this software will have any value to me at all, but maybe I'm watching the wrong videos. I despise videos where the presenter doesn't own a microphone (come on, Amazon sells mics for 10% of the cost of this software), runs at full speed while occasionally jiggling the mouse around over something like somehow that will telepathically convey the method behind the madness. If we're lucky, perhaps the video will have occasional have annotations added to the screen.

Please help me out. Can anyone point me to some videos that explain the user interface and software, ideally with some narration? If not, can someone perhaps suggest a different program that covers the same bases as this but has an intuitive user interface and better documentation?

[NTO]

Did you try this one
viewtopic.php?f=285&t=518104

[cyuzik]

Did you try this one
viewtopic.php?f=285&t=518104

I hadn't tried this one. Watching it now, thanks for the link.

[musicdevelopments]

Hi cyuzik,

thank you for your feedback!
You have a good point about including the melody generators in the demo. It will be part of the demo in the future. If you re-download the demo version now, you'll find them in the full edition.

The UI seems non-standard but this is a cross platform application that looks the same on macOS and Windows, pixel by pixel. So far very few people missed the old-fashioned drop-down menu on the top. Otherwise the standard buttons, checkboxes, menus, lists are there.

You'll find narrated videos for version 2 and version 3 on these links:
Version 3: http://www.musicdevelopments.com/videos.html
Version 2: http://www.musicdevelopments.com/videot.html

While the version 2 videos are older and show an earlier UI, those are still very useful. Making these videos was a huge effort from Chris Caulder (v2) and Gene Brown (v3).

I am sorry about the crashes in the demo. No-one reported crashes so far in the paid version. A long beta testing period precedes each release.

Thanks,
Attila

[cyuzik]

Hi Attila,

I've downloaded the new demo version and the melody generator loads up. I'll give it a good test drive. Thank you for the quick response.

While I understand your motivation for having pixel-perfect software between Mac and Windows, I would guess that it's likely a minuscule percentage of your users actually use both. If that's true, then it may make less sense to keep such an obscure interface and possibly use lose potential users when 15 minutes in they can't get the software to do anything useful.

I'll report back soon.

Chris