A diary of dealing with IK Support; a farce finally resolved more than 5 months later.

[machinesworking]

Note that I havent had much need for their support before now, but when I bought T-Racks 5, some of my oldest T-Racks modules werent recognised for some reason. I contacted them, and fairly quickly, they issued me with a registration code that resolved that.

Then in mid-April I bought T-Racks 6 (note that this is the tier of T-Racks 6 that's just called 'T-Racks 6' rather than with any suffix like 'Intro' or 'Pro' or 'MAX') and some other stuff via another deal, at Humble Bundle, mostly to hoard content but for the TR6 upgrade.

When I bought T-Racks6, some of my oldest T-Racks modules weren't recognised for some reason. I did the 'reinstall old purchases' dance in every possible variation multiple times and nothing changed.

I think the sad truth is support doesn't have easy answers, because IK is completely geared towards getting customers to buy the total packages and their whole multi tiered authorization systems kind of falls apart if you have multiple ways you've arrived at dozens of their plugins and apps. In other words if you had upgraded to T-racks 6 Max it would be smooth sailing. Which is a "convenient" bug IMO.

Not excusing their crap behavior here, I love Amplitube, T-Racks and Tonex but their whole system is a total joke, overtly complicated and stupid. Currently I own Total Studio 4 Max and it's the exact same price to upgrade to TS 5 Max as it is to get T-Racks 6 Max, which is just...?? I don't think I ever had a completely working installation of Sample Tank until getting 4 Max.

[whyterabbyt]

Note that I havent had much need for their support before now, but when I bought T-Racks 5, some of my oldest T-Racks modules werent recognised for some reason. I contacted them, and fairly quickly, they issued me with a registration code that resolved that.

Then in mid-April I bought T-Racks 6 (note that this is the tier of T-Racks 6 that's just called 'T-Racks 6' rather than with any suffix like 'Intro' or 'Pro' or 'MAX') and some other stuff via another deal, at Humble Bundle, mostly to hoard content but for the TR6 upgrade.

When I bought T-Racks6, some of my oldest T-Racks modules weren't recognised for some reason. I did the 'reinstall old purchases' dance in every possible variation multiple times and nothing changed.

I think the sad truth is support doesn't have easy answers, because IK is completely geared towards getting customers to buy the total packages and their whole multi tiered authorization systems kind of falls apart if you have multiple ways you've arrived at dozens of their plugins and apps. In other words if you had upgraded to T-racks 6 Max it would be smooth sailing. Which is a "convenient" bug IMO.

Not excusing their crap behavior here, I love Amplitube, T-Racks and Tonex but their whole system is a total joke, overtly complicated and stupid. Currently I own Total Studio 4 Max and it's the exact same price to upgrade to TS 5 Max as it is to get T-Racks 6 Max, which is just...?? I don't think I ever had a completely working installation of Sample Tank until getting 4 Max.

Yeah, I agree with this. Cant remember if I mentioned in the start of the thread, but I had a similar issue when I upgraded to T-Racks 5, some of my older modules werent showing as authorised. Different subset, though.
At that point in time, though, when I logged the problem with IK, they responded quickly, and provided a solution - a new serial number which resolved the issue straight away.

When I contacted them this time, I included an explanation of that, and included the old ticket number for reference, and asked if a similar solution might be needed. Ive had no response to that question or any reference to it.

'a total joke' sounds about right.

Update : Its now been 8 days since my last response from IK
Troll Count : 2 (though due to an unexpected intervention, those posts have now been deleted)

[whassup]

Update : Its now been 8 days since my last response from IK
Troll Count : 2 (though due to an unexpected intervention, those posts have now been deleted)

Interesting. Thanx for the notice.
I hope that I wasn't count #2? If so then I am sorry and out.

[whyterabbyt]

Update : Its now been 8 days since my last response from IK
Troll Count : 2 (though due to an unexpected intervention, those posts have now been deleted)

Interesting. Thanx for the notice.
I hope that I wasn't count #2? If so then I am sorry and out.

not in the least.

[Caine123]

i had an open ticket over a week and they didnt get back and then they couldnt help too . you are mostly out on yourself!

i just can briefly tell you to try and stay away of IKM products, when they work they are really well sounding and a lot of good instruments included, the FX are also really nice but keeping them working is another part.

Suppert
is just bad and never fixed my problems, even didnt respond sometimes anymore or even responded at all on some topics.

Problems
i ALWAYS fixed the problems myself and support never could help me out.
if you run into authorization problems you are nearly out yourself, they wont help here, only thing which could help is offline authorization.
having a new update? yay maybe these fixes some probs, for me, stability of Tracks 5 plugins got better with the latest update, but they crashed immediately all older projects i used the plugins or when they load they dont recall settings -> roll back and having authorization issues
importing all old sampletronik etc. libraries into the new versions? works with problems as well, importing not always works, some ptaches dont load. many patches sound totally different, others need to be tweaked by ear as they are not backwards compatible and much more.

stay away from them, even Peter is no help from IKM who just promotes they stuff. i suspect they sell a lot of cheap licenses and free licenses to get people into their IKM structure and once you use their stuff never expect help especially technical support. IKM is maybe the worst company i know of atm and im glad i found nearly for all replacements and just need time to replace them in each project . for sampletroniks etc. i exported the stems and will move on. so much time wasted just to have these plugins keep working. (again the plugins themselves are really nice!)

let that be a lesson for you, maybe one day they get a working system but 10 years now and they always solve one issue and open a new open

[elxsound]

Any update? I see Peter is posting about Prism.

[TheSweetSpot]

It always amazes me when companies who make excellent products continue to get in their own way. Their installation and customer support reputations are well-known and they even use AI for the voiceovers on their YouTube videos now. The long-ish one about T-Racks 6 last year had cringeworthy mispronunciation of words in it. The new Prism one is a really short one; surely it wouldn't cost much time or money for a human to do it?

I'm sorry you've had to deal with this, OP and hope they get back to you and help you at some point. Their rep's absence in this thread makes them look really bad.

[Scotty Ellis]

Any update? I see Peter is posting about Prism.

Conveniently ignored. Typical IK support

[whyterabbyt]

Update : its now been 2 weeks since their last response.
The problem was logged in April, ie 3 months and 3 weeks ago.

I did try installing the recent 6.3.0 update but it has made no change whatsoever.

[whassup]

[oobesan]

I learned the hard way as well. No uninstall instructions. No support. Eventually, I wiped my entire hard drive and manually reinstalled everything without any IKM products. Awful company.

[whyterabbyt]

Update : Its now been 5 weeks since the last response I got from IK.

[zerocrossing]

I opened up a support ticket on July 16. Still nothing but the automated response. Pretty amazing.

[whyterabbyt]

Unbelievably Ive had a reponse from IK within an hour of asking why there's been no response for 5 weeks.

Equally unbelievably, their response is that if I want to use modules I already own within T-Racks 6, I have to buy them again....

"After reviewing your account we see that you own T-RackS 6 and not T-RackS 6 MAX. In this case the modules that are not available for you to use in T-RackS 6 are not showing as they are not available in your version of T-Racks 6. However, you can still use them in T-Racks 5. "

And that's despite the fact that some of the modules I owned before I bought T-Racks 6 do work in T-Racks 6.

edit : Its also a direct contradiction of what they say in their FAQ at https://www.ikmultimedia.com/faq/index.php?id=1518

Will T-RackS 6 INTRO load my older modules?

If you have purchased any modules for T-RackS previously, these will be available in the paid versions of T-RackS 6, T-RackS 6 PRO, and T-RackS 6 MAX immediately after authorization.

[skyman88882002]

I'm starting to think the lower tier versions are designed to break and not work. The IK plan is to get you to buy the lower tier, have it not work as promised, then make you feel like you HAVE to buy the Max tier just to get what you wanted in the first place. I honestly feel like the lower tiers are just a big bait and switch tactic to get you to spend additional money before you eventually end up buying the Max version anyway. This company is always coming really close to the line of deceptive marketing and fraud in my opinion. Don't even get me started on the time they grossly misrepresented the number of presets in all of their new Syntronik 2 models.