Samplitude users - how do you deal with poor support from Magix?

[thewonders]

I am a long-time DAW user and a Samplitude user since Pro X. I've used lots of other DAWs and used Sonar for many years, but after trying Pro X I bought it and never looked back, and I have no regrets. Samplitude works better for me than most other DAWs and I use it's features more than the add-ons in other DAWs. A few months ago I upgraded to Samp Pro X3. I'm very happy with Samp - as you can tell, I'm practically a fanboi.

But as happy as I am with Samplitude, I am just as annoyed and frustrated with support from Samp's company, Magix. I have read here and on other forums of Samp users complaining about Magix's poor support, and lately I have experienced it myself. I have been having an issue with some of the virtual instruments in Pro X3 Suite. I opened a support ticket a couple of weeks ago and I got a few responses from Magix support, but when they couldn't easily solve the problem they stopped responding to me. Calling the Magix U.S. support telephone number, I've never had anyone answer the phone (other than a recording) and no one returns my call when I leave my number. I have read posts here and on other forums since I've owned Samp and I know many other Samp users have been frustrated with Magix's lack of support... some posts suggest that the U.S. support number is nothing more than a joke. Even the support tech who was at first communicating with me told me that "(Magix) cannot provide full Support for the US" - so basically, Magix will take our money but won't always help us in areas where their software is broken. So I have a serious question I'd like to ask other Samp users who cannot get their Samp issues resolve through Magix support - what do you do? Do you just live with your problem? Do you use another DAW to cover for the problem areas of Samp? Have any of you returned your software for a refund? Have some of you dumped Samp simply because of the poor support issue? Class action lawsuit?

Just wondering how others are dealing with being ignored by Magix support. And wondering if this is just something I need to accept as part of the price I pay to use Samplitude?

[Silaris]

In all my years of using Samplitude, I have never had to contact support. Therefore, I am unsure of the level of customer service I would receive. Based on posts from other users, it appears to be mixed.

With that said, Magix is seeking a US hotline person at this time to address the problem: http://support2.magix.net/boards/sampli ... -wanted33/

Until the position is filled, I would contact Magix via the Samplitude/Sequoia customer support number for the office in Germany, as they do speak English, to my knowledge.

Good luck with getting your issue resolved.

[Robert Randolph]

Just wondering how others are dealing with being ignored by Magix support. And wondering if this is just something I need to accept as part of the price I pay to use Samplitude?

Yep. It is.

Your choices are basically to try to get help via other users on the forum, or contact the german office.

It's been this way for a long time.

[siriusbliss]

Magix is not a normal company.

Real support comes from other users on the forum, and/or the beta testers who can post bugs on the beta forum - but still with no real know-how or status as to whether or not the bug will be resolved.

As far as the Vita plugins, for all I know they are built by the Magix Music Studio team, and then added in to Samplitude and even Sequoia before their subsequent releases, so I don't know how well the different teams inside Magix even communicate.

I've seen your post on the main forum, but I haven't had time to test it.
Have you tried re-installing the plugs? Re-scanned your VST folder?

I like to use the Vita plugins as place-holders for adding in other VST's at a later time.
They are good-quality light-weight plugins.

G

[lfm]

I found Magix support in germay rather decent. Overall helpful - but that until two years ago or so. One example of personal helpful people - I had 70GB to download Independence library - but no way I could do that, so they told to ship them thumb memory drives and they promptly fixed that over to those and sent back to me. That impressed me.

Usually support for me is about bug report and getting acknowledgement of those, and possible workarounds. And some suggestions and feature requests.

But communication between different parts of Magix is really bad - I talked to Waves about problems they acknowledge existed but talking to Magix US support they had no knowledge there was a problem. This was when Waves Element synth crashed Samplitude ProX. It took 16 months before they fixed that, first on Sequoia and then Samp.

Waves has since a year dropped official support for Samplitude for VST3, it used to say they did when ProX2 was released - but withdraw that later. They never fixed scanning of VST3 and remain unsupported still by Waves - only VST(VST 2.x that is).

With ProX2 I fist had crashed whenever I used VST3 from Waves, only when exiting though. They fixed this after 4-5 months or so, but then Waves came with v9.6 shell and I could not even scan through what I had from Waves as VST3.

So this unreliable behavior made me drop ProX2 and Magix for any future money from me. Recently starting with video stuff, looked at editors - and just don't think about Magix anymore and they bought Vegas from Sony and will probably destroy that too. Why buy into products and make you dependent on vendors that are not reliable when it comes to maintenance - beyond me.

Looked at Independence, which I bought from Yellowtools when they owned it, and it does not support AAX still????
They don't even target main daw for professional studios with their products, some do, but since they bought Independence they probably won't go into that code and do AAX adaptions. They did some basic adaptions for their licensing, that's all.

I find Independence Pro Suite an excellent sampler and library - so why don't they fix AAX?
I don't trust bridges and wrappers and stuff, I want reliability.

So many signals to stay away from Magix!!!!

[bungle]

Im just waiting for all my post Sony products to stop working, no discounts for previous users, independanxe updated for 3rd parties but not for users.
Not a company i would ever invest in ever again.

[siriusbliss]

I'm just the opposite. I dumped Waves because I had so many issues with their bloated plugin design that I could not even get it to run very well in Ableton Live ( which a producer forced me to use on a gig).

I'm also not going to expect Magix to implement whatever the industry throws at it on a whim. VST3 in general is still a crap-shoot anyways. I have no need for it.

Sequoia and Samplitude are amazing DAWs and do 95% of what I throw at it without a hiccup. It is what it is.

[bustedfist]

This is a non-issue. 99 times out of 100 user forums are a much better source of support. Unlike official support, most likely provided by a spare janitor who barely knows how to run a mop, or one of the test Chimps on break from the lab, the forum is full of users who use the what-ever every day and have real scenario experience.

Ask support how to install a driver or software on an unsupported OS, for example, and see where you get. Go to the forum and the issue's been sorted with complete instruction as to methods and all.

Only time I'd call support is if I felt like yelling at someone over wrong info on literature or just let them know I knew they weren't very bright. I'd never expect an intelligent response in either situation, and less so that they were actually listening in the first place.

Sure, there are the 1%'ers, but I'd rather forego the Easter Egg hunt finding them can be like.

[thewonders]

This is a non-issue. 99 times out of 100 user forums are a much better source of support. Unlike official support, most likely provided by a spare janitor who barely knows how to run a mop, or one of the test Chimps on break from the lab, the forum is full of users who use the what-ever every day and have real scenario experience.

Ask support how to install a driver or software on an unsupported OS, for example, and see where you get. Go to the forum and the issue's been sorted with complete instruction as to methods and all.

Only time I'd call support is if I felt like yelling at someone over wrong info on literature or just let them know I knew they weren't very bright. I'd never expect an intelligent response in either situation, and less so that they were actually listening in the first place.

Sure, there are the 1%'ers, but I'd rather forego the Easter Egg hunt finding them can be like.

In my experience it is not possible to solve every software problem with peer-to-peer support, although I would agree that generally user forums are a better and faster form of support. But that hardly makes this a non-issue... a company that so blatantly ignores their paying customers is a serious problem, and certainly this is worth thinking twice before purchasing their products. We should, and this is not unreasonable, be able to expect intelligent and informed response when we purchase from the companies that create the software we use and depend upon.

The only reason that a company as established as Magix has such poor U.S. support is that it was a corporate decision to not spend the money here. It is more important to them to make sure their CEO, board members and stockholders get big paychecks than spend the money to support their customers. Essentially, a company decision to ignore paying U.S. customers.

[bustedfist]

This is a non-issue. 99 times out of 100 user forums are a much better source of support. Unlike official support, most likely provided by a spare janitor who barely knows how to run a mop, or one of the test Chimps on break from the lab, the forum is full of users who use the what-ever every day and have real scenario experience.

Ask support how to install a driver or software on an unsupported OS, for example, and see where you get. Go to the forum and the issue's been sorted with complete instruction as to methods and all.

Only time I'd call support is if I felt like yelling at someone over wrong info on literature or just let them know I knew they weren't very bright. I'd never expect an intelligent response in either situation, and less so that they were actually listening in the first place.

Sure, there are the 1%'ers, but I'd rather forego the Easter Egg hunt finding them can be like.

In my experience it is not possible to solve every software problem with peer-to-peer support, although I would agree that generally user forums are a better and faster form of support. But that hardly makes this a non-issue... a company that so blatantly ignores their paying customers is a serious problem, and certainly this is worth thinking twice before purchasing their products. We should, and this is not unreasonable, be able to expect intelligent and informed response when we purchase from the companies that create the software we use and depend upon.

The only reason that a company as established as Magix has such poor U.S. support is that it was a corporate decision to not spend the money here. It is more important to them to make sure their CEO, board members and stockholders get big paychecks than spend the money to support their customers. Essentially, a company decision to ignore paying U.S. customers.

Sorry, no issue, on hindsight, was a poor choice of words.

I was just trying to state that it's sadly the norm for official support to be bad. It's an opinion based on experiences of many and with a touch of common sense involved. I've seen the result of getting hit in the head with a hammer, so experience and common sense tells me it not a thing I want to do as a first resort to forget a pain elsewhere on my person. I'd rather seek remedy elsewhere.

[Hink]

I'm going to remain neutral on CS at Magix, I had one major problem several versions ago and the then head of N. America support did a great job with me. Kraznet spent hours (over several days) trying to help me but even he couldn't, Tim did. In fact Tim and I became friends over that and remain good friends, but for some reason Magix cut him loose. He has told me stories about people he's tried to help and tbh it's not a job I would want nor do I really think many of us would want. As a rule I'm a tough customer, I do have a history of really getting on CS from all sorts of companies so I'm not exactly sympathetic with companies. I am thankful I have no issues with Samp but also I haven't upgraded to Pro X3 because frankly without good support here I am concerned and Pro X2 has my needs well covered but I already have time and money invested in Samp, I really like working in Samp...so I just hope CS improves.

Meanwhile there is still the forum which is actually a great forum, there is Kraznet and his videos...so there is hope

[Acid Mitch]

I've had pretty decent support from Magix in germany when I've needed it.

[thewonders]

I've had pretty decent support from Magix in germany when I've needed it.

Would you give them a call for me.

[khanyz]

Magic and Samplitude have different support. If you have Samplitude then you deal with the Pro support, if you have Music Studio then you deal with the regular support.

I've used Samplitude since the mid 90s and had nothing but great support.

[bustedfist]

Is there a full moon tonight?