SampleTank 4 MAX v2

[Examigan]

We used to use a knowledge base for our support to help people with many questions that they would send us. We’d just copy and paste the steps do whatever it was into an email, and that takes only a minute or two. That is better than just saying something like “try an LFO”.

[Teksonik]

So what is tech support supposed to do with questions that are indeed answered by the manual? Like the one that spurred this discussion.

And further, without being able to see your screen and see what exactly you are or are not doing wrong, how are they supposed to know where you're deviating from "TFM" and what you need to do differently? And how much does it cost (time = money) for them to walk you through all of that? And does that cost get rolled into the price of the product, thereby increasing costs for you?

I assume you realize those points apply to every tech support team from every developer and not just IK.

Does every support team get questions that could have been answered if the end user studied the manual? Absolutely, but to turn it around how do we know if the manual includes an answer to a question we have? Use our time (remember time =money) to spend the day studying the manual like there's going to be a test later? Never lose sight of who is putting money on whose table.

Does manpower drive up costs? Of course, including the cost to populate forums with sales staff who can't answer such questions instead of support staff who possibly could.

Anyway....when will I ever learn? Sampletank installations are always a freaking nightmare if there are previous versions installed.

I'm using the Product Manager instead of manual installation for the sound content and that's probably where I went wrong. So now I'm ending up with sample content being installed without the instruments being installed. I also received the following message even though there is more content in the ST3 folder than in the ST4 folder and there is more than enough free space on the drive:

IK 091924-2.png

So where is the answer to this question in the manual? Of course it's not there. That's when Tech Support has to come in but I don't have the willpower to try contacting them now especially if there is going to be a month's lag time. I imagine they're getting hammered with support requests after such a no-brainer sale.

And now the Product Manager won't even open but that could be due to the IK servers getting slammed after selling a 90 GB product for $1,$10,$20, and $30 price points. No one could have possibly anticipated the crush that would cause on the servers /s

So what was supposed to be a day to enjoy ST 4 and the new extra libraries has turned into a day of doing my own tech support. My fault, I should have anticipated the inevitable IK Migraine.

I think I'll just uninstall ST 3 and 4 and start with a fresh install. I'm backing up files as we speak.......

[jones-y]

I assume you realize those points apply to every tech support team from every developer and not just IK.

You assume correctly. They also apply to tech support in many other industries.

how do we know if the manual includes an answer to a question we have? Use our time (remember time =money) to spend the day studying the manual like there's going to be a test later?

Come on man. The man's question was how to assign modwheel to vibrato. There is no synth manual in existence that fails to explain the synth's modulation routing system, so the entire premise of this line of questioning, that "the answer might not be in the manual" simply doesn't apply here. So the answer to your question above is yes. Use your time to learn your tool. Read the friendly manual for however long it takes, watch a tutorial, ask somebody on a user forum, whatever.

Whatever it takes to not be the guy who calls tech support to figure out how to assign modwheel to vibrato.

Anyway.... <paraphrase: I have experienced a legit tech support issue> ... So where is the answer to this question in the manual? Of course it's not there.

Of course?

if there is going to be a month's lag time

I'd presume there wouldn't be, as long as you're not asking them how to assign modwheel to vibrato.

That's all you're getting from me on this topic, because it's beyond silly. Please continue to have a great day!

[Examigan]

Maybe I should clarify a bit:

I wanted to assign vibrato. For one element it's not too difficult, but I wanted to see if there was another way, maybe a quick method to assign many elements all at once. This guitar preset that I like to use has a large number of them.

It's not like in most synth plugins (e.g.) using a mod matrix - select Vibrato or an LFO (depending on the synth), set rate, assign it to mod wheel and that's it.
Also, many synths have that built-in with their presets, and you don't even have to adjust much at all except the depth and rate.

guitar elements.jpg

[jones-y]

ST4 is like its hardware ROMpler cousins, where each layer (Tone in Roland Speak, Element in Yamaha terminology, etc.) is effectively a full bore synth in its own right. They all share the flaw that you may have to make changes to four or 8 (or more) LFOs or envelopes (etc) to make a change to the whole sound. As a compensation, they all have a way to copy most settings from one layer to another.

Set up the mod routing the way you want it on one element, save that as a Mod Matrix preset, and then load it into the other elements (and/or other instruments). See Paragraph 5.3.12 in the manual. If that doesn't work for your situation (say for example, you have some other mod routings you want to preserve), then your only other recourse is to set up the mod routing manually on each element.

[Examigan]

ST4 is like its hardware ROMpler cousins, where each layer (Tone in Roland Speak, Element in Yamaha terminology, etc.) is effectively a full bore synth in its own right. They all share the flaw that you may have to make changes to four or 8 (or more) LFOs or envelopes (etc) to make a change to the whole sound. As a compensation, they all have a way to copy most settings from one layer to another.

Set up the mod routing the way you want it on one element, save that as a Mod Matrix preset, and then load it into the other elements (and/or other instruments). See Paragraph 5.3.12 in the manual. If that doesn't work for your situation (say for example, you have some other mod routings you want to preserve), then your only other recourse is to set up the mod routing manually on each element.

That's a great idea about using the mod matrix presets. Thanks!

[jones-y]

Glad to help!

[Teksonik]

That's all you're getting from me on this topic, because it's beyond silly. Please continue to have a great day!

Yes implying that Tech Support is not there for the paying customer no matter the question and that the burden always falls on the end user is beyond silly. I've done tech support for other developers and yes you'll get questions that could have been answered by the manual but the job is customer satisfaction not employee satisfaction. Don't take care of your customers and you might wake up one day and find you no longer have any.

If the question was that easy to answer then tech support shouldn't have taken more than five minutes to help the paying customer.

Again we are the ones who are putting food on the tables of developers so they owe us not the other way around.

For the record I won't contact IK support for technical issues unless there is simply no other option since based on my experience there is little chance of getting an acceptable response.

At any rate I'm trying to finish the ST4 Factory content installation today and the Product Manager did open....once. It then proceeded to "copy" the same files over and over and over in a loop even though no actual changes were being made to the file system. Files that were already installed yesterday so I just shut it down. Now it won't open again on two different systems so I'm just going to wait a week and hopefully the IK servers will cool down by then.

EDIT: Oddly enough I'm getting a download speed of 25 Megabytes per sec from the manual downloads section but the Product Manager refuses to open. Maybe the samples are on a different server than the one the Product Manager needs to connect to in order to function.

[Stirner]

In the Product Manager after click on Install there is the text "Install starting, please wait..." and nothing happens. No error messages are shown. Very strange. I tried to uninstall everything and restart, but it does not help. There is enough free space on the disk. Very strange..

[Examigan]

In the Product Manager after click on Install there is the text "Install starting, please wait..." and nothing happens. No error messages are shown. Very strange. I tried to uninstall everything and restart, but it does not help. There is enough free space on the disk. Very strange..

How long did you wait? I think it takes a while to get going. Also maybe their servers are slammed because of the Humble Bundle deal.

[Stirner]

How long did you wait? I think it takes a while to get going. Also maybe their servers are slammed because of the Humble Bundle deal.

No, I think, the download speed was great. The problem is, I wanted the libraries to be installed on an external drive and I had an earlier installation of some libraries on the system drive and wanted the new ones to be installed somewhere else. I think, Sample Tank is very sensible about folders. Now everything is broken and uninstalling and reinstalling doesn't help. But showing no error messages at all is very strange.

It's ok. I payed only 1$. So, No IKM for me anymore - till the IKM Total Bundle costs 10$. Than I will try again

[LaserLobes]

Does anyone know

[IvyBirds]

Does anyone know if IK Multi is still doing the 180 days download window for sampletank or are they done being psychotic?

A while back IK dropped the 180 day limitations on downloading, you can now download whenever

[Teksonik]

So I thought the IK servers might have cooled down a bit by now but....I keep getting this with the Product Manager:

IK PM 092424-1.png

It just hangs apparently looking for a connection to some IK server but the odd thing is I can download the individual ST4 sample content files at speeds up to 50 Megabytes per sec so I don't know what's going on. I was able to open the manager earlier today but now it's been stuck for over ten minutes.

Even if I get lucky and the Manager connects and I then try to resume installing the sample content it just gets stuck in an endless loop copying files from who knows where to who knows where for who knows why. It never resumes installing content so I've been having to do it manually.

IK 092424-3.png

IK makes some very nice effects and fairly good instruments but their installation software is headache inducing. It's worse if you have ST2, ST3, old third party libraries, and Syntronik etc content installed. It just becomes an utter mess....

[mambo888]

How long did you wait? I think it takes a while to get going. Also maybe their servers are slammed because of the Humble Bundle deal.

No, I think, the download speed was great. The problem is, I wanted the libraries to be installed on an external drive and I had an earlier installation of some libraries on the system drive and wanted the new ones to be installed somewhere else. I think, Sample Tank is very sensible about folders. Now everything is broken and uninstalling and reinstalling doesn't help. But showing no error messages at all is very strange.

It's ok. I payed only 1$. So, No IKM for me anymore - till the IKM Total Bundle costs 10$. Than I will try again

You are lucky you paid $10, I paid $700 for the same total bundle, thank you IKM for considering your paying customers so much. If you gave 50% discount I would not say anything. Don't be surprised if I don't buy anything from IKM again.