Bruno de Souza Lino

On 3/8/2021 at 12:42 AM, Maestro said:

I don't need that.

Then you don't need SpectraLayers. The unmix feature is the same one spleeter users, down to using the exact same dataset. You even get the same artifacts. The same applies to the feature in Acustica and RX.

On 3/7/2021 at 11:10 AM, Paul_in_wales said:

not sure why you think they have zero usb ports - the ports aren't USB A, but an adapter or hub than costs  a few dollars solves that.

And now you have one piece of hardware that doesn't work unless another piece of hardware is present. Invariably, you're gonna lose that hub the moment you need it the most and... You know the rest.

On 3/7/2021 at 12:20 PM, artturner said:

really hate that when I buy a door, I have to also buy a lock. Why should it cost me money just because some people are thieves? And that lock seriously slows me down going in and out of my house. If I lose my key, then what? I'm locked out!

Doors don't require locks to work for starters. You have the choice to not use a lock, but that's your own security concern. The analogy doesn't work because a door prevents access to a physical object that can be taken. None of the software that makes use of ilok needs it to work. It's just there to prevent people to use it without paying steinberg. If you want a better analogy, ilok is like buying a door to your house but you don't own the keys that open it.

8 hours ago, Maestro said:

Personally, you buy an entire PC to use your DAW, so I'm not seeing the point.  The dongle isn't really that big of a deal, and I don't think that rationale is totally appropriate considering we buy hardware to use software fully ALL the time - including things that plug into our USB ports - Audio Interfaces, MIDI Controllers, etc.

You don't necessarily need an OS to make the PC function. As I mentioned before, the software doesn't need the dongle to work. This is different than OSes not working without a PC. The same applies to MacOS. You don't need an Apple device to run it as it has been proven time and time.

8 hours ago, Maestro said:

Steinberg has a Zero Downtime Policy.  That is a "solved problem."  Dongles are sold at Guitar Center.  Many people can just drive to the store and get one.

Said downtime policy failed when they released Cubase 11 and many people couldn't use the software because of that. Comparing with the software solution, you don't even need to be connected to the internet for it to work. The license only has to be present in the machine.

Secondly, many people have internet, but not all have the luxury to have a music store that carries that piece of equipment. The vast majority of music stores around the world don't sell software, let alone dongles.

8 hours ago, Maestro said:

There is nothing with the eLCC software that interferes with PC performance or gives it additional reasons to BSOD.  It has existed over a decade.  We have enough data to say this - definitively.

Fair enough.

9 hours ago, Maestro said:

Even when they get rid of the dongle, I wouldn't be surprised if it remains optional and a TON of people continue to use it.  I think I will likely keep my licenses on the dongle because having to manage machine licenses is a PITA - particularly when replacing machines.

For ilok maybe. For the eLCC, it's two clicks away to send your licenses to cloud and other two to generate new licenses for transfer. Much faster than driving to a store to buy a new dongle.

9 hours ago, Maestro said:

If they gave two activates for the software, people would keep one dongle in their desktop at all times and use the other one to move between their laptop or whatever.  If one Dongle breaks, the other is still pristine in the desktop, so it's less disruptive - and owning the dongle is less risky overall.

Invariably, you're gonna lose one of those dongles, then not buy another one because you already have the desktop one. Then you're gonna lose the desktop one.

9 hours ago, Maestro said:

I think the policy behind how many activations you get for the software exacerbated the "complaints" about the dongle.  A lot of software that uses iLok gave 2-3 activations; even when they were dongle-only.

A lot of new ilok software only gives you one activation because they work on the assumption that you'll either move that dongle around or have the same cloud session across.

18 hours ago, paulo said:

Whose fault is that then?

The consumer's.

17 hours ago, Cookie Jarvis said:

I never understood the dongle hate. It's nice to just plug in to one of your machines and have the software just work...and if your machine dies and you build a new one just install and go! No internet checks, no license refreshing, no annoying popups while recording, etc. Simple serial is my favorite form of authorization but after that I'll take a dongle any day over activation, deactivation, reactivation...

What happens when the dongle dies though? That's the biggest problem right there and one of the primary complaints of iLok when they started. You don't know the quality of these dongles, how much can they withstand user error, if they damage your ports and so on. There's also the issue that the dongle might not work for you because of physical size constraints, maybe it draws too much power, it doesn't fit in the only port you have available and that was also a problem with non-USB dongles back when they were widely used. Software based licensing has none of that.

Plus you have the largest elephant in the room at the moment. A big portion, if not the vast majority, of musicians use Macbooks. How many USB ports they have now? Zero. How are you gonna use your dongle with them?

12 hours ago, Maestro said:

I'd only buy this if I wanted SpectraLayers ($100 cheaper than from Steinberg), but I don't need it since Cubase comes with the One version and it does the one thing I need from it - remove vocals from music

SpectraLayers Pro allows to split other features and also deconstruct audio into its basic building blocks(pitch, transient and rithm), then edit each aspect separately.

On 9/13/2020 at 6:59 PM, antler said:

Does Spectral Layers have any advantages over iZotope's RX?

iZotope has more features. The killer unmix feature is the same on both of them. It uses the same datasets even. Interface wise, SpectraLayers is better. Less "baby's first audio editor"  than RX.

On 3/1/2021 at 4:57 PM, dee said:

i am suprised people still willing to pay same plugin 2x or 3x times with waves WUP plan.......if people would  stopped paying this, waves  would have to change the strategy of selling those plugins......

 

 

 

 

That will never happen. Either people don't change because they don't want to learn a new tool or because they only do it when everyone else does it. It's a similar case with ProTools, except a good portion of old ProTools users own Avid shares, so they have a vested interest in not changing.

8 hours ago, Anxiousmofo said:

Are full license holders second class now? Good times. 
 

this is my sphere:

Well, you only giving money to Presonus once, instead of for the rest of your life so...Guess which one Presonus will prioritize.

At least you're not required to offer billing information to try or demo products like you have to do with Adobe nowadays.

15 hours ago, bluzdog said:

My wife thinks I have too many amps

Those amps are what will save you in the cold winters when the heater breaks. The more vintage, the more heat they generate.

3 hours ago, Marshall said:

That’s exactly how I feel. The way they are pushing subscription is a turn off to me, but so long as they never force it on people who prefer to buy, I will try to tune out the endless noise pushing subs I don’t need or want. 

They way every single DAW manufaturer wants to create their own social media hub and then introduce a subscription model to justify that is 100 times more annoying.

8 hours ago, Paul Young said:

Probably because a lot of Mac systems no longer have the traditional USB ports.

None of them do and the Apple Hub blocks one of the ports. If you have a Macbook Air, it only has ports on one side. Also, you have to use one of the Thunderbolt ports to charge it.

29 minutes ago, Paul Young said:

I'm wondering if Yamaha considers the eLicenser a sunken cost and they will be phased out.  VSL is the other company I know of that requires that dongle.  VSL also has the worst replacement policy out there.

Could be because no other DAW uses these dongles anymore. We're also seen people using laptops and mobile devices more are people are not buying many Pro Steinberg licenses because...Well, your laptop might only have two or three ports and having to sacrifice one of them for a piece of software is a nono. There's also the problem of reliability. These USB dongles are not cheap and they tend to be rather fragile. If it breaks, there's also the issue of how you get your licenses out of them, since they use encrypted proprietary file systems. Even iLok shaped up quickly and introduced their cloud solution to mitigate that issue.

Just now, Wookiee said:

Would you care to clarify to whom you are referring too. Your comment is vague.

Refer back to the UNO Synth Pro post and the recently closed Total Studio MAX post. In both instances, the person that stepped over the line and took it personally was the marketing one. A person that's being paid to do that job and should in no way be shielded by any flak from customers.

32 minutes ago, cclarry said:

Here is the apparent REAL Price Structure at Sweetwater...

$499 is the MaxGrade Price
$599 in the Crossgrade Price
and $899 in the Full Price

So they have eliminated the TS Max to TS Max $299.99 Upgrade completely from resellers

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/search.php?s=Total+Studio+3+Max

It's almost like they're copying the scalping tacticts used by PC hardware resellers...

Dual Rectifiers are not scaled correctly to work at 240v either and it's not uncommon for their output transformers to blow up when they're plugged into that voltage.

Triple Rectifiers are better. More headroom.

14 hours ago, dwf2008 said:

almost every VCR transport button set has a "Go to beginning" button. Cakewalk has one but it is a little tiny button under the big one where it should be.

Ctrl + Home sends you to the beginning of the project. RTZ (W) sends you to where you parked your Now Time. Two different things.

On 2/25/2021 at 11:39 PM, Bapu said:

Remember: Never put him on bypass

But life did put him in...uh...lifepass.

7 hours ago, Magic Russ said:

This package goes to show how far IK has come in terms of modeling.  The Mark III models that have been part of the package since version 3 are nearly useless.  The Mark III in the MB collection on the other hand has some really good sounds in it.

And the Mark stuff is the only thing worth it in the pack. Everybody has Dual Rectifier emulations.

3 hours ago, Wookiee said:

Keep it nice peeps, all are entitled to an opinion just do not step over a line, some can be sensitive.

Eh... The only person that stepped over a line was the one you shouldn't defend...

4 hours ago, musikman1 said:

If I can manage it, I may end up upgrading my processor and motherboard along with the SSDs and RAM, otherwise I'll stick to just SSDs and RAM.  My friend was recommending Ryzen AMD 5600X 8 core 16 thread processor.  He said it's very fast and outperforms some of the Intel i series processors.  I don't know much about the technical end but I know he is very good at what he does, he's been a business computer tech for years,  so I trust his recommendations. The customer reviews on that processor are mostly very good from what I can see. 

Only thing Intel CPUs are still king is single core performance, which is becoming less and less important nowadays as we only recently started to get SKUs that are stable enough to reach 4GHz without requiring excessive amounts of energy or cooling.

5 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

Back in the day it was rare to see a dongle thread go by without some idiot making a stupid double entendre joke. I guess those days are over, especially as some of you are about to lose your dongle. 

And I agree that this is a welcome move. 

Don't worry about that. Some people are still rocking upwards of seven dongles on a single pc. That's a ***** and a half.

Running the standalone version as admin, then doing the second half of activation solves the issue. The same holds true for Rapture and Z3TA+ 2

On 3/1/2021 at 5:41 AM, Starship Krupa said:

One issue with the Cakewalk plug-ins is that they would need their licensing code stripped before inclusion with CbB.

Not if they only need SONAR Platinum to be present. Other plugins that are licensed separately, sure.

1 minute ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

Honestly this is a pretty good deal if you own just one of the MAX products and can get the discount.  Even if you own nothing it's pretty good (though pricey) and you want everything.  But once you cross the mid-way point, the deal value starts to drop off.  I don't think IK is being vindictive.  They have always been like this.  It's not exactly new for them.    Certainly no reason to get upset about it.  It's just commerce.  They make an offer, I decide if it's reasonable for me.  I'm more interested in what new things they may be developing at this point.  I'm pretty sure Mixbox and the T-Racks modules I'll get one of these days, if the deal is right.

Only issue I have with IK is that they go Steinberg on users when a new product is released. People have been complaining about MODO Bass bugs for years. No fix. People have been complaining about the improper scaling of amp reverb on Amplitude. That issue is still present in version 5. There are quite a bit of requests and complaints about their product manager. It only receives updates when they offer a freebie or new products are introduced. There several security concerns and doubts on why their installers are not signed when even free plugins have signed installers. I can guarantee you your next IK update will have an unsigned installer.

But that's a bit off topic. I feel they're being vindictive because their marketing person for into quite the argument in this very forum and told all complaining owners to "be prepared in the next few days".