KVR Audio

Woody Aki · Post by **Woody Aki** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 2:41 pm

God, I'm really sick of this...

TC Electronic LM2 - I wanted this so bad. Yet I'm no iLok fan.

Obviously I'm looking for alternatives from other devs, but chances are none of them could hold a light to the LM2, unless you know of a metering plugin that I might have overlooked.

lfm · Post by **lfm** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:02 pm

TC says that plugins ships with hardware - is that maybe without iLok. It should not need it as I see it if hardware involved.

Klangheim something is what I've seen often as reference for metering - $10.
Waves Dorrough stereo meters or surround version - overpriced though.

But if they measure up to LM2, I have no idea.

Mudcat007 · Post by **Mudcat007** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:09 pm

I would avoid anything from TC Electronics like the plague. Check out this thread at the Music Player forums: http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthread ... /2519034/1

By the way, A String, the poster discussing his poor TC Electronics experience, is the forum administrator over there. He is a really good guy and he got totally put through the ringer trying to work things out with them. I try to make people aware of his experience anytime TC Electronics products come up in a discussion.

Mushy Mushy · Post by **Mushy Mushy** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:11 pm

I really want a Spitfire, but it requires a pilots licence.

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:12 pm

Same here with various plugs. I hate the thought of the additional expense, and a hardware dependency that I don't need.

I wish these companies would provide an alternative for people who don't really want to go this route.

zvenx · Post by **zvenx** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:19 pm

At the risk of safeguarding their product from being pirated?

its one thing to take your stance that you wont use ilok. Fine, it is your right.
But on what universe is it bad for a company to take steps to safeguard their products?
rsp

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:31 pm

zvenx wrote:At the risk of safeguarding their product from being pirated?

its one thing to take your stance that you wont use ilok. Fine, it is your right.
But on what universe is it bad for a company to take steps to safeguard their products?
rsp

Well now we're getting to the unanswerable questions. If they are doing it for that reason, they're also losing business due to people not liking the hassle, so it seems somewhat self defeating.

No one has ever been able to provide any statistics that show how the use of dongles increases revenue for a company. How does anyone tell how many software pirates would say "oh well, I'd better buy it then"? There is certainly much more in the way of people saying that they won't buy it because the protection scheme is irritating to the point that the company has lost sales.

Even on this forum it seems to me that there's a trend for developers to drop the dongle or provide two alternate methods for software protection.

While it's just an opinion, it seems to me that at best the use of a dongle to increase revenue is speculative on the part of the developers.

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:49 pm

zvenx wrote: But on what universe is it bad for a company to take steps to safeguard their products?
rsp

In what universe is it good for a company to ask you to pay extra to safeguard their products ?

Tronam · Post by **Tronam** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:55 pm

Though not specifically dongle related, Urs has been pretty open about the fact that he gets a good number of product sales each month from folks who were using pirated versions of his products that stopped working due to his timebomb code. Anyone who can afford to buy a modern computer can afford to buy software, so I'm not entirely convinced of the black & white conclusion that all people who pirate would never buy it in the first place. I think it often just comes down to basic human psychology: the motivation to buy something drops precipitously once it has already been acquired. Why? Because money is not infinite. People will prioritize their money for the things they don't have or can't easily get, which is probably hardware in most cases.

lfm · Post by **lfm** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 4:06 pm

zvenx wrote:At the risk of safeguarding their product from being pirated?

its one thing to take your stance that you wont use ilok. Fine, it is your right.
But on what universe is it bad for a company to take steps to safeguard their products?
rsp

AT Cakewalk Sonar forum a month or so ago a guy reported having sudden freezes with Sonar X3.

Not so unusuall one would think.

But later on he posted it was solved - iLok was put in a USB3 slot in computer, and he moved to another USB 2 slot - and no more freezes.

The drivers for this kind of protection may really go below the OS regular API - and may cause erratic behavior anywhere in computer.

I think this a kind of experience we all want to avoid - so we avoid this kind of protection schemes.

Buying a product - we don't sign up for doing a lot of extra handling and troubleshooting because of the protection scheme.

Myself I have this now old story with Cubase and trial and Syncrosoft keys. Never got license down and Steinberg support could not fix it either.

Now Steinberg has a trial for Cubase Essentials without any lock or registration at all. That's a good development.

If a vendor has other products not using iLok - I don't mind buying. For me it's not against the vendor as such.

Some offer several schemes - as SPL that both have iLok and through PluginAlliance with their protection. Also a good solution - at least better.

solidtrax · Post by **solidtrax** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 4:10 pm

robojam wrote:Same here with various plugs. I hate the thought of the additional expense, and a hardware dependency that I don't need.

I wish these companies would provide an alternative for people who don't really want to go this route.

As soon as they provide an alternative, it's probably cracked within days. They don't chose for ilok because they think ilok is amazing and it's nice bonus, they do it because they want to protect their efforts so that people can not grab an illegal copy from anywhere on the web.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 4:32 pm

Add me to the recent no more ilok converts. It's not an aversion to dongles or copy protection per se, as I feel way more uncomfortable with challenge response. But I firmly believe now that the ilok driver is malware. But it's not only even that that turned me off. It's the company's support, or complete lack there of, and a kind of propellerheads attitude to their customers.. No matter what goes wrong, it could never be the fault of their software.. Total and utter apathy, and I can't stand that. So it's going.

What I don't understand is, that when this has been discussed at gearslutz, and a dev asks that if anyone can suggest another copy protection that works, they would consider it, but it doesn't exist, so they keep the ilok to protect their products. Then I suggest the FREE uhe system and provide links and proof that it works, and I have said it five times even, and they choose to ignore the post and not answer it. It's infuriating.

lfm · Post by **lfm** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 4:45 pm

solidtrax wrote:
robojam wrote:Same here with various plugs. I hate the thought of the additional expense, and a hardware dependency that I don't need.

I wish these companies would provide an alternative for people who don't really want to go this route.
As soon as they provide an alternative, it's probably cracked within days. They don't chose for ilok because they think ilok is amazing and it's nice bonus, they do it because they want to protect their efforts so that people can not grab an illegal copy from anywhere on the web.

Everybody knows why vendors use locks.
But there are other ways of doing it.

It's not like Waves, ToonTrack, XLNAudio, Wallander Instruments, Native Instruments went down the drain because of choosing another licensing principle.

Arturia went hardware path - and more or less abandon software now. And they used Syncrosoft eLicenser, but not the usblock version. I can suspect their pricing philosophy helped in how that progressed. It was €300 for just about every product for a long time.

People that are the least serious about musicmaking probably realize that supporting a product they like and is reasonably priced - is the way to go. Product will be maintained and the vendor still in business after some years.

There will always be a click of parasites that tnink it's a smart thing not paying for what they use. I don't envie them, they are running old versions with bugs and will not receive support like a paying customer is entitled to.

For those that don't like locks - why should they not express that.

Tronam · Post by **Tronam** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 4:47 pm

I suspect a lot of developers simply don't want to have to deal with creating and continually maintaining custom copy protection code across all their plugins to keep up with the latest warez developments. They'd rather license a standardized solution so they don't have to worry about it and can focus on the audio side of their plugins.

GeckoYamori · Post by **GeckoYamori** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 5:04 pm

Finally saw a great software emulation of Synclavier a couple of weeks ago. Put it in the shopping cart while drooling from the mouth, and then right before I was going to confirm the order I saw the iLok disclaimer.... total cockblock. Their convoluted, extra costly anti-pirate measure just lost them an otherwise enthusiastic customer.

Yet another plugin that I won't buy because it needs iLok...