KVR Audio

Lotuzia · Post by **Lotuzia** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:28 pm

There are a lot of criterias :

Updates : Free, affordable, less affordable
Transfer licences : Becomes NFR ? Free ? Affordable ? Less Affordable ? Not allowed before a certain time ? Not allowed at all ?
Major adaptation to OS/64b/Mac/Windows/AAS/ ?
Support of old OS/Systems ?
Answers to support emails ?
Major bugs : Adressed asap ? Delayed ? never happening ?
Autorisations (number of) ? Policy when you become short of autorisations ...

Etc etc.

Lotuzia · Post by **Lotuzia** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:29 pm

There are a lot of criterias :

Updates : Free, affordable, less affordable
Transfer licences : Becomes NFR ? Free ? Affordable ? Less Affordable ? Not allowed before a certain time ? Not allowed at all ?
Major adaptation to OS/64b/Mac/Windows/AAS/ ?
Support of old OS/Systems ?
Answers to support emails ?
Major bugs : Adressed asap ? Delayed ? never happening ?
Autorisations (number of) ? Policy when you become short of autorisations ...

Etc etc.

Hank the Knife · Post by **Hank the Knife** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:32 pm

MillerSam wrote:Steinberg is Yamaha

Lol, then the statistics I gave must be at least ten years old.. I already wondered about the Japanese currency (I translated the figures to euros..). Sorry, my bad!

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:53 pm

Hank the Knife wrote:
MillerSam wrote:Steinberg is Yamaha
Lol, then the statistics I gave must be at least ten years old.. I already wondered about the Japanese currency (I translated the figures to euros..). Sorry, my bad!

Actually, no. Just because Yamaha owns Steinberg doesn't mean they don't keep house for themselves. They purchased a brand. But they're surely not so dependant on it, that Yamaha will die if Steinberg dies. So there surely won't have been ground breaking changes to your statistic.

Hank the Knife · Post by **Hank the Knife** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 5:19 pm

@chk071
Maybe, I didn't gave the source because of the Japanese currency. I googled again and now the currency has changed to dollars. In a different value. Maybe an update. Curious.
http://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Worki ... .11,39.htm

EnGee · Post by **EnGee** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 5:43 pm

Companies that I have dealt and bought their products which have good support/license transfer and/or good protection policy are Presonus, NI, Ableton, Arturia, Air music, Waves and Waldorf (hardware).

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 6:01 pm

Hank the Knife wrote:@chk071
Maybe, I didn't gave the source because of the Japanese currency. I googled again and now the currency has changed to dollars. In a different value. Maybe an update. Curious.
http://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Worki ... .11,39.htm

I'm curious if revenue is the american, or general meaning of the word. Like sales volume opposed to income. 10 to 25 million income seems a bit utopic. Not that i remotely have an idea of the real numbers...

woodsdenis · Post by **woodsdenis** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 6:09 pm

Fabfilter, Uhe, Xfer, Melda

Nielzie · Post by **Nielzie** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 6:14 pm

D16

edit: oh and AAS!

SLiC · Post by **SLiC** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 6:15 pm

As big Companies go, NI are good guys, even give nice free gifts at Christmas and I have never had a problem in 10 years buys, selling or registering.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 6:18 pm

Yeah, NI is great.

Also had good experience with Propellerhead (2 license transfers, quick and issue free), Steinberg and Tone2.

Taika-Kim · Post by **Taika-Kim** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 8:47 pm

License transfer fees for me don´t really matter if the software is not that expensive, but when the prices are going at over 75€ or so, I start to think about that. Omnisphere is the only plugin I bought, that I can´t sell (I bought it used), but I made the exception for the nice selection of preset sounds it has. The bummer is, that if I update to version 2, that stays also not for sale, but otherwise my experience with Spectrasonics has been very very good.

I can also appreciate consistent pricing policy like with U-He (ok so he´s mentioned only in every message so far, quite an achievement), Spectrasonics and Valhalla. It´s kind of funny situation with normal pricing, that you know that if you wait a bit, you will get 30-50% off easily from the price.

Cross-platform support is nice, like the next thing I need is Bitwig Studio since I went Linux, and I would certainly not, if the same license didn´t do for Windows also, since I need to do some things over there too for a long time I guess.

KV331 Audio did a nice job of sending me the license key for my educational license even before I had sent them my study card, and they have a strong presence on the forums, that always gives a nice feeling. But I am not expeting that from any company, since having people sitting on forums is not the most important thing. But it´s a nice extra anyway

bigcat1969 · Post by **bigcat1969** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 10:10 pm

I offer full refunds on every purchase, 100% off sales and great educational discounts. How fair is that!

Seriously NI is surprisingly good for being the big dog in their area.

MarlaPodolski · Post by **MarlaPodolski** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 5:23 am

I won't bother to elaborate too much, but some companies I refuse to do business with are listed below. These 'usual suspects' have extensive and shakey reputations and don't need an awful lot said about them in the first place: their issues tend to be known. The reasons vary from very poor customer service, arrogant attitudes, terrible licensing requirements or icky lic. software. All of this, regardless of whether their products are any good. There are almost always great alternatives to anything these sell, and I haven't regretted one minute for avoiding this bunch:

Cakewalk - a company that seems to love leaving its bugs unfixed while adding at least one more bug to each and every update. Meanwhile, now owned by Gibson Guitar, a company that should be king of this list if it sold its own software, Gibson possibly the ultimate worst and most overpriced in products of any company in the realm of music.

IK Multimedia

Native Instruments

UAD

Steinberg - better under Yamaha's ownership but still a bunch of arrogant snots (as is their forum!)

Scuffham Amps - forum stiffling (and dead), licensing writes to boot sector-matrix-potentially dangerous (and foolish)

U-he - products overpriced, never put on sale as opposed to most reasonable companies, service can be slow, firm seems scatterbrained in general

There are 2 or 3 more, but I just wanted to cover what I call 'the big 7'.
Yup, it's some popular products and big names, but if you think you can't live without their goods you are fooling yourself. Believe me, you can produce plenty of hits and make a fortune without them or the troubles they bring.

BBFG# · Post by **BBFG#** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 5:57 am

And if that doesn't earn this thread a lock, I don't know what would.

Which companies have the most reliable and fair policies?