Melda MTurboAmp

[Starship Krupa]

On 7/12/2022 at 6:08 PM, Brian Walton said:

Log into your account and add it to your cart, should auto add a code for you unless they changed it.

Super! Got it for $17 and change with the discount, AND it came with Antares' Choir and a month's access to Auto-Tune Unlimited, which I guess is Antares' "all access" subscription.

Warning: installing that silly little automatic multitracking plug-in was the biggest hassle I've had registering and installing a plug-in in years. First you have to find the installer on their site, which, as it turns out, Choir is part of a larger suite, so you have to get the installer for the whole suite and un-tick everything but Choir. That installer also installs their portal program, which, when you run it, get this: tells you that in order to register and run Antares software, you have to go to a third-party developer's site, and download and install a necessary runtime library. I am not making this up, the 3rd-party developer is called "Wibu," and apparently their game is software licensing. I can't remember the last time a commercial product required that I visit a third party's site to get a runtime library. And when it last happened, the runtime library was probably Microsoft C++. This gave it the feel of installing something on Ubuntu, and having to run around and find and install dependencies. Yeesh!

I never heard of this Wibu, how do I even know that I want their stuff on my 'puter? The installer indicated that you can install components that allow license sharing across networks, but I unchecked that. I don't need more than the two seats. Oddly, there was a graphic of an iLok-esque USB dongle on the install shield window for the Wibu CodeMeter runtime.

These people make Auto-Tune, for heaven's sake. It's practically a household word. It seems unprofessional to make users do this. If your product needs a runtime library, bundle it in the installer. Especially if it's one that nobody's heard of. Some people get really twitchy about installing unknown downloads.

[marcL]

8 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Super! Got it for $17 and change with the discount, AND it came with Antares' Choir and a month's access to Auto-Tune Unlimited, which I guess is Antares' "all access" subscription.

Warning: installing that silly little automatic multitracking plug-in was the biggest hassle I've had registering and installing a plug-in in years. First you have to find the installer on their site, which, as it turns out, Choir is part of a larger suite, so you have to get the installer for the whole suite and un-tick everything but Choir. That installer also installs their portal program, which, when you run it, get this: tells you that in order to register and run Antares software, you have to go to a third-party developer's site, and download and install a necessary runtime library. I am not making this up, the 3rd-party developer is called "Wibu," and apparently their game is software licensing. I can't remember the last time a commercial product required that I visit a third party's site to get a runtime library. And when it last happened, the runtime library was probably Microsoft C++. This gave it the feel of installing something on Ubuntu, and having to run around and find and install dependencies. Yeesh!

I never heard of this Wibu, how do I even know that I want their stuff on my 'puter? The installer indicated that you can install components that allow license sharing across networks, but I unchecked that. I don't need more than the two seats. Oddly, there was a graphic of an iLok-esque USB dongle on the install shield window for the Wibu CodeMeter runtime.

These people make Auto-Tune, for heaven's sake. It's practically a household word. It seems unprofessional to make users do this. If your product needs a runtime library, bundle it in the installer. Especially if it's one that nobody's heard of. Some people get really twitchy about installing unknown downloads.

I had about the same feeling. But the Wibu CodeMeter did even NOT install on one of my systems (I guess because my temp directory was on another drive). I re-downloaded and the same thing (something about an invalid configuration in a file on the temp, created by the installer itself)! As you said all very unprofessional! 👎

[Starship Krupa]

18 hours ago, marled said:

As you said all very unprofessional! 👎

To add injury to insult: I was checking through Services, and it installed something called "Antares Central Services." When I disabled it, the plug-in still performed its single trick well enough, so it's apparently not even necessary. They just install it because they can.

I swear, audio plug-ins that install services. I think most of us dislike installer shells in the first place, and to have them also install their own little do nothing service whether it's needed or not is antagonistic. It's obnoxious, like an installer that puts a shortcut on your desktop without asking, or worse, after you tell it not to. I always feel like the CEO of the company just took a dump on my lawn to mark their territory. Like they can't even imagine someone not wanting a shortcut to their installer shell on their desktop.

There is one service I will tolerate, and that is the PACE Licensing Service, because I know that it does the job of a virtual iLok. And they aren't coy about it, they explain what they're doing and ask during the process whether you want to go ahead. It's not "surprise, now you have Waves Local Server installed just so we can do our kluged-together preset browser! How do you like your permanently-running Softube Install Helper, which is only used while you're installing one of our products?"