Starship Krupa Posted January 17, 2021 Share Posted January 17, 2021 Thinking about springing for the $17 tier even though I have all of these packs except Plastic Pop. I have an older version of Entangled Species and I know they've updated the Chromophone engine since then, to its betterment. 4 new packs and one update for $17 isn't too bad assuming that they're okay with trading in dupes. I'd prefer to know that that's a standard policy. I'm sure manufacturers prefer people going to them if they want a different product rather than hawking license transfers on the cheap to fund it, and this way of handling that is preferable to the transfer penalties charged by other companies. Worst case I'd wind up with Plastic Pop and an upgrade to Entangled Species for my $17. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fitzroy Posted January 17, 2021 Share Posted January 17, 2021 1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said: I'd prefer to know that that's a standard policy. It is NOT. I bought it, which resulted in one duplicate sound pack, and wrote to them asking about swapping it. They were very nice about it and replaced it with a random one, but they also made it clear that this is an exception, as they don't normally exchange sound packs bought "through these bundles". In fact, they also mentioned the possibility of transferring licenses, so for the sound packs bought on the cheap, they prefer that people find someone to trade with, if they end up with duplicates. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted January 17, 2021 Share Posted January 17, 2021 4 hours ago, fitzroy said: It is NOT. I bought it, which resulted in one duplicate sound pack, and wrote to them asking about swapping it. They were very nice about it and replaced it with a random one, but they also made it clear that this is an exception, as they don't normally exchange sound packs bought "through these bundles". Thank you much for clarifying this. I have a LOT of their lower-tier software, the kind of stuff you get in bundles or BOGO's and I wouldn't want to do anything that might dissuade them from participating in those programs. I've written them, to praise the product and to make a plea that they add some choices to that installer of theirs that spews 15(!) unwanted copies of AAS Player.dll/aax/vst/RTAS around my drive every time I install a sound pack. (I have a folder on my desktop called "AAS Wipe" that contains shortcuts to each of the places their installer puts the program where I don't want it) 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fitzroy Posted January 17, 2021 Share Posted January 17, 2021 11 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said: I have a LOT of their lower-tier software, the kind of stuff you get in bundles or BOGO's and I wouldn't want to do anything that might dissuade them from participating in those programs. Same with me, I saw it posted here that they replaced duplicates, and I wrote to them more for a clarification than a plain request, also mentioning that I'd be happy with any replacement. I won't ask them again, if I pick up another bundle down the road. Precisely for the reason you pointed out, they've been quite generous with their sound packs (freebies on Plugin Boutique, cheap bundles, and so on), and I don't want to dissuade them from continuing on that path. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted January 17, 2021 Share Posted January 17, 2021 Last year when I asked AAS about swapping my dupes, they pointed out that Humble Bundle had accidentally issued issued 2 codes for several banks, and so unfortunately would be unable to swap those items. But they did take care of a couple others for me. Never told me flat out that bundled items were not eligible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulo Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 Looking at this now it says that payment is to be processed via Stripe and for some reason that rang alarm bells for me. I'm sure that I read somewhere, maybe here, that Stripe is not a good thing. Anyone have any wisdom to offer on the subject? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antler Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, paulo said: Looking at this now it says that payment is to be processed via Stripe and for some reason that rang alarm bells for me. I'm sure that I read somewhere, maybe here, that Stripe is not a good thing. Anyone have any wisdom to offer on the subject? Stripe is fine - they're a credit card processing company. I think what you're referring to is that some service that allows you to sell your music (possibly it was BandLab Tip Jar/Albums?) only supported Stripe (and not e.g. PayPal), and people were slightly unhappy that Stripe were slightly less generous regarding fees that they charge. Nothing wrong with buying things through Stripe. Edited January 24, 2021 by antler 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grem Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 On 1/17/2021 at 7:41 AM, Starship Krupa said: I have a folder on my desktop called "AAS Wipe" that contains shortcuts to each of the places their installer puts the program where I don't want it Great idea!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 On 1/17/2021 at 8:41 AM, Starship Krupa said: (I have a folder on my desktop called "AAS Wipe" that contains shortcuts to each of the places their installer puts the program where I don't want it) ????? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris.r Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 (edited) On 1/17/2021 at 1:41 PM, Starship Krupa said: (I have a folder on my desktop called "AAS Wipe" that contains shortcuts to each of the places their installer puts the program where I don't want it) Just a heads up. To mess things even further, AAS managed to install their plugins twice in my default VST folder under two distinctive paths - the main folder and in a subfolder called 'Applied Acoustics Systems', that the installer created during recent update. Here's what happened: I installed the whole bunch of AAS plugins over a year ago, they went to my default VST folder - 'Program Files\Cakewalk\Vstplugins', in accordance with what the AAS installer suggested as a default path (I'm typically trying to keep all the defaults as much as possible in order to avoid unwanted installation path mismatches later when updating). Recently I've seen there are some updates available at AAS so I performed them without paying enough attention to any sudden changes in the default installation path (actually expecting it to keep the defaults as previously - all in all what could go wrong here, right?), and expecting that I will have to surf through the whole disk again afterwards to clean up from all the other unwanted places populated by the AAS installer. Unfortunately, the newer AAS installation routine changed the default folder to a newly created 'Applied Acoustics Systems' subfolder, so I ended up with all my AAS plugins installed twice. Few days later I've discovered the threat so I decided to uninstall everything, clean up the folders and make a clean install. Gues what, after a clean installation the AAS installer has put all the plugins in both places again, regardless the default suggested folder was only the newly created subfolder. It is now dropping the same plugins also to the main folder (as if the previous path was stored somewhere in the registry as a leftover after previous installations, and not cleaned), what confuses some other DAWs, Reason for example. You think there's nothing more that could surprise you? Try the AAS installer next time . Edited January 25, 2021 by chris.r 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 Also look in places named Avid, Digidesign, Steinberg, etc. for duplicate VST files. The key is to note any folder names of companies that you have never installed on your machine. And some installers even place ".aax" plugins in a different path by default, in addition to the VST paths you provided at installation. I think that some companies just assume you must need Pro Tools plugins, so they stick them in "Avid" for some reason. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 1 hour ago, abacab said: Also look in places named Avid, Digidesign, Steinberg, etc. for duplicate VST files. The key is to note any folder names of companies that you have never installed on your machine. And some installers even place ".aax" plugins in a different path by default, in addition to the VST paths you provided at installation. I think that some companies just assume you must need Pro Tools plugins, so they stick them in "Avid" for some reason. I wrote up a tutorial (with manufacturer-specific examples) on how to de-crapify your drive of spurious plug-in versions. Of course, I didn't catch everything that those wily manufacturers strew around, so others have chimed in. I may have missed an A|A|S or two, as it later occurred to me to do a search from the top level of my C drive for "AAS Player" and I found a 16th copy. Unbelievable. 16 useless copies flung all over the place every time I install a sound pack. Yes, for sure, Avid and Digidesign (which is where RTAS versions go, because the world needs RTAS, doesn't it?), especially after an iZotope installation/update. I think the canonical path for AAX is C:\Program Files\Commmon Files\Avid. I suspect that this is driven by suggestions from their tech support staff on how to reduce calls. It's easy enough to decline AAX, forget one has done so, then install Pro Tools First and wonder why the plug-ins don't show up. Then it's "how do I get them to show up in Pro Tools?" over and over again. This is Meldaproduction's rationale for still forcing installation of 32-bit versions (although they now allow you to install only VST3's, which is a great improvement). Especially weird in Vojtech's case because Meldaproduction's stuff (outside of the FreeFX Bundle) is decidedly not aimed at people unfamiliar in the ways of plug-ins. He's crusty enough to say screw it, we're not answering another support question from someone who fires up an antique program to work on an old project and forgot they excluded 32-bit versions or expects a reverse BitBridge. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeGBradford Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 I was thinking about your Tutorial thread earlier when I was wanting to see where my HB AAS soundpacks had sown their seeds! ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris.r Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 (edited) What I do if I have some doubts that the installer can go mad, or that the update might misbehave, is to run the installation process in sanboxie and see where all the files go on my virtual hard drive. If you don't use sanboxie or it's already too late now, there are typically installation logs created somewhere, where with some effort you can find a list of all files and their paths. 11 hours ago, Starship Krupa said: I suspect that this is driven by suggestions from their tech support staff on how to reduce calls. It's easy enough to decline AAX, forget one has done so, then install Pro Tools First and wonder why the plug-ins don't show up. Then it's "how do I get them to show up in Pro Tools?" over and over again. This is Meldaproduction's rationale for still forcing installation of 32-bit versions (although they now allow you to install only VST3's, which is a great improvement). An appropriate corner in FAQ on their websites would be the suitable solution in my opinion. Edited January 25, 2021 by chris.r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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