Starship Krupa

5 hours ago, abacab said:

That bit only works if you can log on and perform the iLok activations from the currently activated machine. If the machine ID with the activations is inaccessible (crashed, lost, stolen, upgraded or anything that could have changed the internal machine ID) for any reason, you cannot do it remotely.

Actually, no, I did initiate the reset request from my other computer. And it worked, for a little over half of the manufacturers. So the ailing system can be completely gone when you issue your reset request. Just go to a computer with iLok Manager on it, log in, and your dead system will show up with its location ID and all locally-stored licenses listed.

Aaaaand, it looks like my 2nd email did the trick, I have my Exponential licenses back.

The only remaining straggler is Pulsar Audio, whose Smasher compressor I have a license for, and which I never use.

48 hour update: I contacted iZotope last night and got email from their rep at 9:00AM my time (noon their time) saying "I have gone ahead and reset these iLok licenses."

Um, not yet, according to iLok Manager. They're still in iLimbo.

19 hours ago, Fleer said:

So if I understand correctly, I should do the following when something happens to my iLok account carrying some 200 licenses: 

- just use the iLok Manager (free) to reset the machine activations

As we have seen in my case study, that seems to result in about 60% of the companies responding.

With the rest, I've had to contact them directly, either via their support sites or (in the case of InMusic) email. Fortunately, I found that I can copy the activation codes and location ID from iLok Manager and paste it into email, so that made it much easier to do.

Everyone but iZotope got me my resets within 24 hours. My iZotope/Exponential resets still haven't come through.

Wow, bad iZotope, even after filling out a support ticket on their site that included all of the activation numbers, my iLok ID, and the location ID of the ghosted system, no license resets yet. You know things are dire when friggin' SONiVOX beats you by a day (at least).

As a big user of Plugin Alliance plug-ins, I heartily endorse this request. It is a chore to have to open them from the VST menu then name and save them in Cakewalk's preset manager.

One thing I'd like to mention because it's not obvious and it came as a surprise to me is that you can float individual views of Console, PRV, Browser, Inspector, whatever, wherever you want. I had thought that Console and PRV always had to be in the Multidock.

So they may not be in the Multidock, but you can certainly drag whatever you want to monitor 2, outside the Multidock or Main window.

But I agree, it would be nice to be able to tuck the Inspector and Browser in next to the Console and PRV in the Multidock rather than having to tab over to them.

1 minute ago, Grem said:

I bought a program long time ago that used Pace. Something went wrong and there was no recourse. I couldn't use the software any more. So I swore back then I would never use another product that uses Pace.

I'd have done the same. I guess I got lucky, the first PACE'd plug-in I got was when Eventide were giving away free licenses for UltraChannel. Late enough in the iLok game that it has mostly worked well over the years. To their slight credit, they do seem to be trying to make it less of a hassle, with this being able to issue reset requests from iLok Manager. After waiting for iZotope to get the message, though, I just sent them a reset request on their support web form.

When it comes to having to contact manufacturers for license resets, I had to reset my main DAW's Windows 10 installation, and wound up having to make license reset requests for WA Production and Soundspot licenses, which are both tied to the system in whatever way. Probably a key on the disk. You get a certain number of authorizations and then they don't allow any more. So on the hassle meter, it was about even. I doubt that WA or Soundspot allow deauthorizations either.

I think the smoothest way to handle it (other than not using any licensing scheme at all) is done by Plugin Alliance. You can deauthorize even offline systems from their website. Easy as pie, no manual reset requests, and it holds you to 3 authorizations.

2 minutes ago, Grem said:

I don't want to pay someone else for the ability to use what I already bought.

Says the guy with enough UAD hardware to start his own space program. 😄❤

I get it, I do. But, personally, I just see the iLok as another piece of hardware, like my audio interfaces or MIDI controller or whatever, that's part of making music with my computer system. The brand new price of the dongles seems high, but once you get into used iLok 2's, it gets closer to reality. I can, if I wish, use the local authorization.

And heck, my iLok 2 does after all, allow me to take those licenses anywhere I want to. As someone with too many computers who also likes to do music when he's traveling, that's a bonus.

I also understand how the idea of buying a $40 trinket in order to use plug-ins that cost $10 each (in the case of my AiR and Exponential products) seems rather ridiculous. And believe me, the "I turned off my network card and had to reset all of the iLok licenses" fiasco makes me feel much less warm and fuzzy about those locally-stored iLok licenses. That's just bad programming and worse QA, to have the thing go casters-up just because someone tried something that is not uncommon in the world of DAW's. There are plenty of other bits of hardware that can be used to identify a computer system, they don't need to use a NIC.

4 hours ago, Brian Lawler said:

Great dev.  That makes three nice freebies that they are offering.  Paid stuff is well worth it too.

Hear hear. Filterstep in particular is amazing.

32 minutes ago, Bapu said:

I've yet to have any problems with iLok (since 2007 IIRC) that were not user error and were user corrected.

I spend the $30/year for their protection plan and I have a spare iLok on hand for just that purpose.

Eduardo, with the number of plug-ins you have, two iLoks and $30 a year is pocket lint! Having the physical iLok is most definitely the way to go with systems that don't travel, and I must thank you again for your kindness. Before that, I had an iLok 1, which was not compatible with my Exponential Audio reverbs.

I need to get a small USB extension cable so that I can just use my second iLok2 on the laptop. An iLok is too nice a thing to risk injuring sticking out of a laptop.

So: for those following the saga, it's been just over 24 hours after stranding 20 iLok licenses by merely disabling the network adapters on my laptop.

The reset score so far has surprising results. Most of them have been reset. I did the original reset request through the new option in iLok Manager. PACE keeps you notified via email each time a company resets your license(s), so I have a timeline for how quickly each company responded. Also, the first email they send has a table of all of the licenses and manufacturers, with contact information. InMusic's (AIR, SONiVOX) and UVI's entries showed no email, only a website link, so I decided to contact them directly, via email in the case of InMusic, and a web form at UVI. This was going on the theory that if no email were shown, then iLok Manager wouldn't know how to contact them.

The absolute winner is Vienna Symphonic Library, who reset all of my VSL licenses in a matter of hours right from the iLok Manager request. Next was Softube, then UVI in the wee hours of the morning. Upon waking up, I found that InMusic had issued the reset pretty much upon start of their business day. then Soundtoys, then Eventide.

The surprise poor performers are iZotope, who still haven't reset my Exponential Audio licenses. Surprisingly good performance from InMusic, although I helped out by emailing them directly with all the information they needed. The email address I used was softwaresales@inmusicbrands.com.  Way better than expected. In the past, I tried contacting them via their websites, and it didn't work. I suspect that trying to use the support forms on the old AiR and SONiVOX sites is like trying to use them on the old Cakewalk, Inc. site. Nobody on the other end.

Tip: when I contacted InMusic (and UVI) directly, I gave them all of the original activation codes as well as the old iLok location ID of the laptop, and I'm sure that helped speed things up. If you're storing locally, I strongly recommend keeping these available, although they should theoretically be able to be gleaned from iLok Manager on another computer in case of complete system failure. Still, easier if you can just copy and paste them from a document.

So, overall, I'm sore about how merely disabling my network adapters bork't both iLok and Waves. That's just sloppy (and scary). I prefer local license storage on the laptop because less crap to haul around and this is making me trust it less. The laptop does have an SD card slot, so I'll look into using that, moving the Waves licenses to an SD card if I can. On the other hand, both companies' recovery solutions got almost everything back in under 24 hours. I suspect that if I contacted iZotope directly as I did with InMusic that they'd get me the reset pretty quickly, although I'm tempted to wait a bit longer just to test the system. Maybe it's an excuse to get more cozy with MTurboReverble and MReverbMB, which do actually rival the Exponential stuff.

As long as nobody gets pissy about doing the resets, I guess I'm okay with the iLok recovery process, although it does seem to rely on the companies involved still being around to reset your licenses. What happens when a company goes under and then iLok arbitrarily decides to give your computer a new location ID? No reset, no recovery? I'm not against the iLok dongle in principle, it's just part of whatever method companies choose for licensing. Of course I prefer the Meldaproduction and A|A|S type licensing, but that's not my business decision to make.

Wow, PluginDoctor is really a must-have for any plug-in addict. Especially if, like me, you've been very curious about what the various "character" EQ's and compressors in your toolkit are really doing. MTurboEQ and MTurboComple, I'm (literally) looking at you. All of those models in MTurboComple that have both a "compression" knob and a "threshold" knob. 🙄

I was charmed to find that one of my favorite "digital" compressors, MCompressor, actually has a little upward kink after the knee, which the dbx 165 emulations I ran through it also have. No wonder I like it so much. Turns out it has some "character" after all.

What I'm hoping is that by giving me a better insight into how these processors are actually behaving, I can do some weeding. Choose my favorite fast or squishy compressors, precision and character EQ's, etc. Do some checking into which ones are throwing off harmonics (desirable or not).

Check out this review by our own Dave Bitflipper: https://soundbytesmag.net/review-plugindoctor-from-ddmf/

He's right, the thing is just plain FUN.

Being a BIG fan of the singles from Daft Punk's Discovery, and their production methods in general, sidechaining has long been on my radar.

I got this bundled when I bought my new-in-box Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 a couple of months ago, and thought "a 2-band EQ?"

Turns out it has the lord's own air band. A real ear-pleaser. Haven't tried it on vox, but on breathy synth pads, it's the bee sneeze.

Wonder when they'll update Swatches so that we can try Tabby Dance and Caffeine.

Its lagging behind could mean that more soundpacks are in the pipeline, yay.

If you need to push bass down in the space, sidechain. If you wanna make room for the kick drum boom, sidechain. He don't lie, he don't lie, he don't lie: sidechain.

15 minutes ago, John Bradley said:

Picked it up from PluginBoutique when it was on sale for $19 back in February.

It wasn't worth it. Glitchy and problematic, at least on my rig.

Huh. I also snagged it during that sale and can say nothing but good about it. It is the plug-in to have for treating dialog samples in ambient productions, as far as I'm concerned.

5 minutes ago, rfssongs said:

I just don't need more hassles.

Nor do I. The problem for me is that a large swath of my most-used plug-ins are iLok licensed. XPand!2, Hybrid 3, Vacuum Pro, Boom, Exponential R4 and Nimbus to name a few. I use at least one of them in every project. My Meldaproduction reverbs can just about touch the Exponential ones, but only just about. To get synths that do what the AIR ones do, I'd have to spend a bunch more money and learn my way around the newer synths, which would likely be more resource-hungry than these.

So iLok is an unavoidable fact of my digital audio life if I want to use my favorite tools. All I can do is be aware of the gotchas and try to avoid them as best I can.

I also had the USB stick I was keeping my Wave licenses on go sideways a few days ago and did the once a year reset on the lost activations. When it rains, it pours.

I feel compelled to post this because I've long been someone who mentions that he's never had any trouble with iLok's local drive activation. This is no longer the case, and the failure is pretty spectacular.

Thanks to the kindness of a forumite, I have migrated all of my iLok licenses to a physical iLok on my main system.

On my laptop, however, I activated them to the local system. This is despite the fact that said forumite was extra kind and gave me not one but two iLok II's. I just didn't want to have a dongle sticking out of a USB port on the laptop.

Today, while trying to chase down an issue with clicks and pops, I turned off both my hardwire and my wi-fi adaptors and restarted Cakewalk.

Both iLok and Waves threw dialogs during scan saying that there must have been some change to my system and that they couldn't load the plug-ins.

I re-enabled my network adaptor and checked Waves Central and iLok Manager and sure enough, the licenses were shown as being activated to a system that was unavailable. Waves' support FAQ gave me a recipe for disabling all but one of the network adaptors and trying again, and that seems to have solved the issue.

No go with iLok, so I had no choice but to try the new integrated reset request feature in iLok Manager. There are 28 licenses from 8 different companies currently in limboland. I've not tried the built-in reset request feature yet, so we'll see how it goes.

I'm giving some thought to using a small USB extension cable to attach the spare iLok to the notebook in case of future "hardware changes" that really aren't.

Not much harm here; if I want to get full functionality from my laptop all I have to do is stick the iLok from my main DAW in, but if this had happened while I wasn't at home, I'd have been dead in the water, waiting for these companies to reset the licenses. Some of my bread and butter synths are iLok'd, such as my collection of AIR instruments. AIR is not known for excellence in customer service. In the past, when I bork't a system by replacing the system drive, it took me days to get a reset from them.

I had thought that iLok used a key on the hard drive somehow, but it's apparently also tied to the network adaptors, and subject to having the system ID change if you turn them off. So if you're thinking of trying that old suggestion to disable network interfaces while you're DAW'ing, tread lightly and maybe carry a physical iLok stick.

I'll report back on the results of the reset request. If it works, it's a very good advancement for iLok, but if it doesn't, I'll be chasing down AIR/Sonivox via their "support" forum at KVR.

PluginDoctor, you are MINE!

I seriously thought that this had already been addressed (no pun). Or was it only how Cakewalk would usurp the next available port for control surface duty if you started with your USB MIDI control surface unplugged?

And yes, Windows manages USB ports, but so what? That does NOT mean that Cakewalk should lose track and shuffle them around if you unplug a device and then restart the program. I believe that each USB MIDI device gets its own GUID, but even if that's not the case, most of the ones I've seen have unique friendly names, which Cakewalk can and does read (it displays them, after all).

Just because Windows manages them doesn't mean that Cakewalk can't or shouldn't gather and maintain its own information about them.

So IMO, Cakewalk doesn't have to lose track (no pun). Even if I'm wrong about the GUID's, at worst it might be lose track in the case of two USB MIDI devices with the same friendly name, which is a thing that I've yet to see.

If you want to see the information that Cakewalk can get from the OS regarding USB ports and devices, there's a freeware utility called USBDeview (scroll alll the way down to download it) that will show you. Each USB device has a manufacturer number and a product ID, which you can also read right from Device Manager: https://www.the-sz.com/products/usbid/ There's plenty of information supplied by the OS to distinguish one USB MIDI port from another.

A program should be able to look at that list, notice which devices are still there from the last time it started, which of them are not, and retain its configuration for the ones that are still there.

As the OP points out, there are other Windows programs that don't have the same issue, which suggests that it's possible to address.

I thought that it had been addressed. It no longer causes trouble for me, anyway, but that might just be for the control surface issue.

6 minutes ago, abacab said:

Why not save 1 or 2 alternative mix
sessions and bounce them, so your client can choose between 2 or 3
different “flavors” of the otherwise identical mix?

Well, one reason I can think of is that my ears and mixing moves might have accommodated for the variations while I was finalizing (yeah, right) the mix.

Something I don't need is a button that generates variations in a mix after I've decided that I'm finished. Why not just call it the "Rabbit Hole Generator," or "Too Much Choicerizer?"

The way that this works in the physical world is that every strip does indeed have tiny variations, especially when it comes to pots. But if we're "mixing with our ears" (which I thought was one of the points of using a channel strip rather than, say, a chain of Meldaproduction or Fab Filter "scalpels," then couldn't one's mixing moves have accommodated for the variations in some way?

TMT="Too Much Twiddling?" "Tweaker's Midnight Terror?"

On 12/4/2021 at 7:30 PM, msmcleod said:

Using the smart tool, select from the bottom, drag from the top:

Something I've discovered about this after tearing a certain amount of hair out: I can only get it to work if there's already a node later in the timeline.

Once I have created that first node, I can use this technique only to the left of it, not to the right.

Is this as-designed? I can't find it described in the Ref. Guide, but it's a big book and it wouldn't be the first time I've missed something.

10 minutes ago, abacab said:

V1 was worth every penny as a freebie!

I've started putting this across my master bus in every project. It's THAT good!

I'm happy to have rewarded whoever was responsible for its creation with my small contribution!

I also liked the earlier freebie bx_masterdesk Classic.

I submitted a mix to PA's online mastering service and found the results to be unsatisfactory. There's still a difference between having an all-in-1 mastering plug-in where I can tune each module the way I want and just letting an algorithm do its thing.

V2 looks pretty similar to V1, but with more "food processor" buttons.

I paid for v. 1 right before they gave it away in that intro bundle, and I don't regret it. All-in-one mastering plug-ins prior to this one were only for quickies, but I started turning it loose on quickies and decided that it was sounding pretty danged good for keepers as well.

And it's not as if I hadn't been using some top notch (or boost as the case may be🙄) mastering FX.

Nice UI's!

On 5/12/2022 at 7:42 AM, abacab said:

AudioRealism ADM CM

A favorite of mine. The built-in soundset is limited to just the TR-606, but you can also load up each slot with your own samples. They also give you about 30 samples for each drum to make it easier to put together your own kit. It will also do multiple outs for when you want to pan or process each drum sound on its own.