Is DS-404 a good sampler by today's standard?

[Amberience]

So I'm not allowed to reference to my own particular experiences? I have to take into account the entire worlds experience with DS404?

I used it. I found it to be buggy. It crashed Live 4, it crashed XT, it Crashed CMuzys, and it crashed FLstudio. On my system. MY system.

I can't speak for anyone else except myself, so I think that its not daft for me to say its shoddily made. I have my own experiences and there is no possible way for me to go with the rest of users when I've had a bad experience.

Now, you can tell when something is shoddily made by the way it performs. You buy a car, it breaks down, you get it fixed, it breaks down again, you get it fixed again, but still it breaks down. The evidence suggests its a poorly made product.

No different in the software world.

As for rational comparisons, I could compare Jesus and apple juice in such a way that it appears rational.

Rationality is only a measurement of conformity.

[Muon Software Ltd]

It crashed Live 4, it crashed XT, it Crashed CMuzys, and it crashed FLstudio. On my system. MY system.

But don't you see that this implies a fault that might not be related to DS404? how come it apparently works painless in CMuzys and FLstudio? don't you think that we TESTED this software?

Your experience doesn't appear to be a common one at all, and I guess when trying a piece of software for the first time you wouldn't know that. So you think the software is buggy. You go shouting about on a forum that the software is buggy. However the vast majority of people using it don't have the same problems and are thinking "what's HIS problem"? if this kind of report causes one other person not to want to try the software because of your comments, that's a bad thing IMHO. I'm all for user reviews, but there are lots of things a user can't and shouldn't try to judge as extrapolating from their own experience might not be valid.

There *are* some types of bugs that frustratingly appear on a narrow range of systems and are hard/difficult to reproduce "back home" on a developers test rigs. Over so many users and such a wide distribution like DS404 however the pattern typically emerges within DAYS, not years. When Cubase SX2 came out and broke DS404 we knew about it before Steinberg had even sent us our NFR - thanks to DS404's massive user base. So if there were lethal stability-killing bugs in DS404 we'd know about them by now surely?

There are also other kinds of bugs that only happen when a user does a certain thing in a not well-tested pathway of code. DS404 has been around so long and so widely distributed again, we'd expect to know about those too by now....and I haven't got a single bug report in front of me that says that anything like that is out there. Plus I've been spending a huge amount of time on the code recently for the update and I *know* where the bugs are - and none of them affect the stability in such a way as you describe.

Furthermore, did it occur to you that of the hosts you mentioned only one of them existed at the time DS404 was written and tested? even then, Computer Muzys really is full of bugs that have never been fixed since Joe disappeared from the face of the earth.

So - you apparently have a problem no-one else has, You never bothered to report it to us and there are no known steps to reproduce this issue. It has never been investigated, and at this stage we cannot rule out configuration or hardware weirdness. No-one else has had similar symptoms either.

So with so many unknown factors at play, I have no idea if you're just trolling - and I wouldn't want any newbie out there to think for one second that YOUR experience will happen to THEM if they try DS404. All things being equal, it won't.

Dave

[Amberience]

I'm not trolling. Just sharing my experiences. If the tables were turned and I was looking for a sampler, and I came across my comments from someone else, it wouldn't deter me from trying out a freebie.

If anyone lets my comments sway them from trying out DS404, how can I be held responsible?

I'm not responsible for anyone else's actions except my own.

Now please drop it I have my opinions based on my own experiences and for my mind that is good enough. I'm not spouting half assed approximations of what DS404 is like, I've tried it, I know.

It was asked if DS404 was a good sampler by todays standard, and I commented that its not.

I understand you wanting to defend your program that you created, but hounding me because I had bad experiences with your software doesn't make you look like a developer who cares about what their consumers think.

Let me ask you a few questions.

When creating DS404 did you ask the people who would be using it what they wanted?
Did you ask the consumer how they'd envision a good GUI?
Did you ask them if they want a propriety format, or a patch system like the EXS sampler?
Did you ask them if they wanted something to emulate hardware, or if they wanted something unique?

If you did, then kudos to you. You did what a developer SHOULD do, in my opinion.

If you didn't.. why not? Did you just make software that you would want to use? If thats the case, then how can you get defensive when people don't like what you created for yourselves?

Its the same sort of situation with the Propellerheads. They don't ask their users what they want, they make software that they consider to be professional... but their users don't... but what their users want doesn't matter. (I love Reason, but lack of audio recording and live audio inputs is very UNprofessional

At the moment I can only think of two who ask what their users want. Jorgen Aase and Ableton. Now I'm not saying be like them, I'm just showing you that your "don't judge our software, its free" attitude doesn't bowl over with me.

I don't remember any polls asking people what they wanted in DS404.. I don't remember anything in the magazine.. All I remember is boom.. one month CM released a sampler with 650mb of patches... which some were messed up I might add, because the following month they released a patcher to fix them.

See thats the problem with most of the major developers. They don't cater to their users. They don't ASK their users what they want, and then they have the cheek to turn around and criticise their users when they in turn criticise software they didn't ask for.

I'm pretty certain DS404 wasn't discussed with buyers of the magazine... I don't remember any two way communication. Of course feel free to correct me if there was.

For what its worth the bugs I experienced were when I tried to load one of the cm_Rhodes patches. It crashed about two minutes into loading the patch. I have 1gb of ddr, so I'm certain its not that the ram wasn't adequate. This happened with all my hosts, I never reported it because at the time I was using Reason more than I do now - so I figured f**k it, it was free, why bother complaining.

What I'm doing now is not complaining. I'm offering a constructive criticism. What you do with my comments is up to you.

[Muon Software Ltd]

Your original post doesn't tackle any of the above issues at all - which are all valid. You are quite correct, we didn't spend much time asking people what they wanted in a sampler. You can't, unfortunately, design things by committee. Get 100 people in a room and ask for their opinions and you may get one useful person with good ideas and 99 assholes who give rubbish feedback.

Either way, not relevent to the discussion in hand at all. What you said was that DS404 is "shoddy". Shoddy implies that it is buggy, and it doesn't work. Perhaps for you maybe, but not for anyone else it seems. So what's the root cause of the problem? your box? your configuration? a hidden bug that 4000 other registered users have failed to report? something broken in a host that was written *after* DS404 was last updated? I know what my money is on.

I'm not spouting half assed approximations of what DS404 is like

It sounds completely half-assed to me. "I have had a problem therefore everyone will have the same problem". Two guys buy the same make and model of car, one drives on regular paved roads and the other guy bounces around on dirt tracks all day. One car breaks down all the time, the other doesn't - is it the design of the car that's at fault? is it "shoddy"?

A typical windows installation is more like a dirt track than a smooth paved road for a piece of software. We can, and do, use defensive programming techniques to minimise the damage a badly-coded host or a badly-configured system will do but we can't predict everything a user might do or have on their box. To say that a piece of software is "shoddy" because it doesn't work on one machine when it works fine for every one else is a ridiculous distortion of the truth.

Enough of the general stuff - about your specific problem. I can load the CM Rhodes patch no problem at all. So what's up with this picture?

Regards
Dave

[Amberience]

"I have had a problem therefore everyone will have the same problem".

There is a word for what you're doing here: spin.

I never said everyone will have the same problem, in fact I have repeatedly pointed out that I'm only sharing my experiences.

In your analogy one guy is using the car for what it was meant to do, the other guy is using the car in a creative way and getting bad results.

The same thing can be said about your sample. Now, this is my last post relating to the buggy performance on my machine, at the end of the day, we both agree that my case is likely to be a singular one. But you need to understand some things:

I'm not saying that DS404 will perform badly for everybody. I completely accept that people use it, have used it, and will use it in the future without any problems what so ever. But I was sharing my opinion which is founded on my experiences with the software. That is what was asked in the originating post - Is DS-404 a good sampler by today's standard? Please explain why or why not? I love options.

Ignoring my buggy problems for a second, I still stand by the opinion that DS404 isn't a good sampler by todays standard, and it wasn't a good sampler by the standards when it was released. Even if DS404 works flawlessly for 1000 users, I am still afforded the right to formulate my own opinion. I have done this.

Tony asked for people's opinion. I gave mine. You're acting like I'm proclaiming my opinion to be fact, and I'm most certainly not.

To everyone reading this: THIS IS MY OPINION!

The fact its my opinion should be implicitly understood anyway, because this thread is asking for opinions. You wouldn't expect anyone to post facts when someone is asking for opinions.

Now, I gave an alternative. EnergyXT. He asked for "options", which translates to me as him asking for alternatives to DS404. I gave my recommendation.

Now... after all that, for you to come into this thread and start breathing down my neck because I didn't get on well with your software is not very professional. I was responding to a request, I wasn't slagging off DS404 for no reason, and I wasn't be half-assed. You just think I was because you don't understand that he wants opinions. He doesn't want hardcore facts about DS404. He doesn't want users to post their specifications and then a review of their performance with DS404.

He wants opinions. I gave mine. You attacked me.

I can only surmise that you were offended because I didn't like your product. I said it was shoddy because thats how it performed on my machine. A thousand other users might disagree, but it still performed that way on my machine, so that is all I have to go on. I'm not simply going to say "well, other people don't get this problem, so it was my machine" when he is asking for opinions.

If he asked for statistics on the performance of DS404, it would be a whole different story. But he didn't, so understand, an opinion is a subjective thing that we share. People don't always agree, but they understand that an opinion is unique to the person holding it.

I can only hope you understand this now.

[Amberience]

Enough of the general stuff - about your specific problem. I can load the CM Rhodes patch no problem at all. So what's up with this picture?

Regards
Dave

I'm not sure. I tried to load the CM Rhodes, it crashed. So I didn't bother working with the sampler after that. I had been using it for a few months prior to this, just loading in drum samples - using it as a sort of Redrum without the sequencing lane.

[Muon Software Ltd]

The problem with opinions is that they are too often stated as facts around these parts. Also, opinions have the mystical ability to deflect facts and reason like nobodies business.

I can easily handle "I don't like DS404's user interface/it doesn't do what I want it to do/it uses too much CPU compared to other much more expensive samples" and suchlike. But to call a product "shoddy" you are inviting the reader to assume that this is a fact of some kind - like you've been able to determine, by some mystical process, that the product is somehow falling to pieces and this is plainly absurd.

I'm not attacking you. Believe me, if I was attacking you then you'd know about it. I am merely stating, for the record, that what you are saying is wrong and isn't upheld by the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You have every right to your opinion and I don't care if you spout it but I also have every right to point out that your opinion in this matter is just plain wrong. Note that I only care about you describing DS404 as "shoddy" and by extension buggy. You can say what you like about the UI, I've heard it all before.

So. I'm "unprofessional" and you're "just plain wrong". Got to love the internet haven't you

It's come to that certain time of the day when I ought to be doing other things than sitting in front of this computer. Pardon me if I don't immediately respond to your next flamefest

Dave

[spaceman]

we need more E-Prime in these parts

[Amberience]

Ok. For those people who don't want to read all that previous bullshit:

DS404 is not factually shoddy, it just performed badly on my machine. Thousands of other people use DS404 and it works for them. Prior to DS404 crashing on me I used it as a redrum replacement. It didn't work out too well, so I took a souvenir... its pretty head!!

I recommend EnergyXT in its place. It will cost you around four times the price of the CM magazine, but in my opinion the performance and quality of the XT sampler far outweight DS404's.