IK 25th Anniversary Group Buy!

[Craig Fowler]

22 minutes ago, locrian said:

Everytime I think of buying something from IKM I get frustrated by their convoluted marketing and give up.  It's just not worth the hassle.

I guess it depends on your tolerance:tightwad ratio. Mine skews towards tightwad!

 

I've had a really irritating time installing the main Sampletank library and was getting kinda pissy. Then I thought, 'you know what? I didn't pay for this. I'll deal.'

 

But I don't blame others for giving up if they've already got what they need. I was going to update to Amplitube 5 at some point anyway and figured I might as well do it when I get oodles of freebies.

[Luc]

36 minutes ago, Craig Fowler said:

I've had a really irritating time installing the main Sampletank library and was getting kinda pissy. Then I thought, 'you know what? I didn't pay for this. I'll deal.'

What was irritating about it? I never installed any SampleTank libraries before and wondering if there's something I should know before starting to make the process easier.

[locrian]

1 hour ago, Craig Fowler said:

I guess it depends on your tolerance:tightwad ratio. Mine skews towards tightwad!

I too am a tightwad, and was considering participating in the GB.  But the sheer number of alternative plugin providers enables us to indulge our tightwadish tendencies without testing our tolerance.  And that's why I never end up buying from IKM.

[Craig Fowler]

37 minutes ago, Luc said:

What was irritating about it? I never installed any SampleTank libraries before and wondering if there's something I should know before starting to make the process easier.

Couple of things. The full Sampletank download is upwards of 90GB IIRC, and it seemed that even when I thought I had plenty of hard disk space available (e.g., 150GB+) I'd run out, the download would essentially crash, and I'd have to start over.  Unlike a lot of libraries, the installer doesn't delete the zip files, so it took me a fair amount of trial and error to get it running, even after I'd done what I thought were sensible things (e.g., downloading to an external drive but installing to a separate location). Also, some--most, actually--libraries seemed to install just fine, whereas others won't load and give me some sort of 'things are bad/you are bad' error message. I still haven't got the core Yamaha grand library to work - and because I deleted all the zips after the installer gave me the all clear, I don't have that individual file to reinstall.

 

Honestly, I don't know how much of this is just user error and how much comes from a wonky installer, but it's certainly frustrating not to be able to just download specific Sampletank libraries. Maybe there's a way to do this (it would make sense - Syntronik lets you download the whole kaboodle or individual synths - so I could have just missed something), but I couldn't find that option.

[Craig Fowler]

42 minutes ago, locrian said:

I too am a tightwad, and was considering participating in the GB.  But the sheer number of alternative plugin providers enables us to indulge our tightwadish tendencies without testing our tolerance.  And that's why I never end up buying from IKM.

Entirely fair. With that said, I think their Hammond and Sunset Studio are top of the tree. Those are so good that for me it would be worth enduring the installer hassle...although it's only with this group buy that I've had any issues. I preferred the old authorization manager.

[Craig N]

Accidental duplicate post

Edited September 28, 2021 by Craig N

[Craig N]

I think what we must be seeing with this increased pace is all the people that thought they'd wait to see if the group buy got up around the 20 mark before jumping in / jumping in again. It's getting to be do or die time. It may not make it to 25 but if you want to get in at 19 products for the price of 1, now is the time. I was originally going to hold out until it got to around this point before making my mind up. 

[Jacques Boileau]

5 hours ago, locrian said:

Everytime I think of buying something from IKM I get frustrated by their convoluted marketing and give up.  It's just not worth the hassle.

I understand and it's a fair point, but it's their choice to market their products as they see fit. IK's model may seem complex to grasp at first, but easily doable. Learning music, the workings of a DAW and plugins is such an higher order of magnitude to learn that it dwarfs this many times over! My point is: it's a shame to see you give up on such a great sale because of something I know you can wrap your head around. And it is not required to overthink it! You will still get a great deal without going through the loops some have suggested. In fact, most of the complexity resides in people finding loopholes to save a few bucks. Nice if you care, but you can't really blame IK for that!

If something interest you in the IK catalog and it is part of the sale, catch it while you can and you will be rewarded with so many freebies, you won't regret it, I promise! ?

[telecode 101]

175.. wow.. this totally looks like it will extend into Octo

[Jacques Boileau]

Yes, yes, yes! ?

I love announcing loosers! ?

Edited September 28, 2021 by Jacques Boileau

[Piotr]

13 minutes ago, Jacques Boileau said:

Yes, yes, yes! ?

I love announcing loosers! ?

There are no losers here ?

People will get more IK stuff for free, IK will get more instant money for grow and extend customer range and advertise greatly on plugin market, there are only winners in this GP 

[Jacques Boileau]

24 minutes ago, Piotr said:

There are no losers here ?

People will get more IK stuff for free, IK will get more instant money for grow and extend customer range and advertise greatly on plugin market, there are only winners in this GP 

Yes, loosers in the 'guess the number of freebies' contest makes everyone winners! ?

[Jacques Boileau]

The secret has been revealed!!!!!

The last tier is 2000 to make it an even 25000!

Now we know this will have to go the full length to 25 for the price of one! Yes Siree Bob! ??

Edited September 28, 2021 by Jacques Boileau

[Tim Smith]

5 hours ago, Craig Fowler said:

Couple of things. The full Sampletank download is upwards of 90GB IIRC, and it seemed that even when I thought I had plenty of hard disk space available (e.g., 150GB+) I'd run out, the download would essentially crash, and I'd have to start over.  Unlike a lot of libraries, the installer doesn't delete the zip files, so it took me a fair amount of trial and error to get it running, even after I'd done what I thought were sensible things (e.g., downloading to an external drive but installing to a separate location). Also, some--most, actually--libraries seemed to install just fine, whereas others won't load and give me some sort of 'things are bad/you are bad' error message. I still haven't got the core Yamaha grand library to work - and because I deleted all the zips after the installer gave me the all clear, I don't have that individual file to reinstall.

 

Honestly, I don't know how much of this is just user error and how much comes from a wonky installer, but it's certainly frustrating not to be able to just download specific Sampletank libraries. Maybe there's a way to do this (it would make sense - Syntronik lets you download the whole kaboodle or individual synths - so I could have just missed something), but I couldn't find that option.

I had many of these same problems earlier on. Since that time IK has updated their download distribution portal. This 'should' make things MUCH better now. It's still a lot of files but things have been going smoother. Hats off to IK for improving this issue. Not sure how large A5 is. I mostly had those issues with ST4. Smaller downloads like additional plugins should be painless. Much depends on your network. If you have the average cable modem connection should be fine. 

[Tim Smith]

I still don't know exactly what I want to look at here. The organ looks interesting but another maker who will go unnamed just offered an organ that might work for me better. I still think for anyone who is just getting started this one is tough to beat. No matter how much some might dislike the business model, at least IK hasn't resorted to the monthly payment to keep things going or the subscription renewal..........yet. I have to hand it to them for that. Coming from a customer vantage point I like simply buying the product and updating it so far for free from IK. 

I'm not gonna lie, the mix plugs look like reworked modules that were used in ST4 and others. No harm in putting them all in one place, giving them a name and marketing them as modules. Sort of an alternative to the TRacks shell. That package looks interesting because it's all there in one place and easily managed. Do I need it? No. Will I buy it? Maybe.

Depending on your major product purchased looks like most things are about 399.00 US on the upper end to qualify for anything either at that same price or for less. So essentially what we are buying is a product package we select for 399.00 or thereabouts. I know of nowhere else a person can spend that amount and walk away with this much either plugins or instruments hopefully unattached in any way in the future. The reciprocal part of it comes in when they come out with new products and you buy additional things off of their online portals. It also makes them front and center for many who bought into these deals as compared to some other maker selling their plugins one at a time with less unity in the systems. Hopefully people who buy in here are loyalists for a long time to come.

I have been using IK products for longer than I care to share here. They have always been at or above all but the very best and most expensive plugin makers. They manage to come close enough to them that many times it doesn't make a huge difference. Plugins will never make you a better mixer. Only YOU make you a better mixer.

I noticed AT5 has stage capabilities for anyone who wants to take a computer on stage. For the traveling regular guitarist I don't see that working, but then those guys are like unicorns right now. If you see one consider yourself lucky. The rest of us who might end up in Ed's bar down the street on the weekend might consider it over a hardware alternative. As a keys player it's the same thing with me for ST4. I might do it but probably won't because I have hardware alternatives. For the 3 million who will play their guitar in front of a computer screen might as well go for it.

OK I'm long winded....I'll stop for now.

[Doug Steinschneider]

The IK Product Manager is a big improvement over the old system of Authorization Manager plus manually downloading individual sound zip files, then individually expanding them all. I just installed all the freebies in 5 minutes and then walked away from the computer - everything was downloaded and installed when I came back to the computer hours later. 

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

17 hours ago, Dave Schreier said:

This is definitely true - I've worked around it by converting the cc11 to NRPN "expression pedal".  To convert data from the controller pane in the PRV, first convert that to an envelope and from there to NRPN.  Then it seems to freeze or export with smooth volume changes.

Try it Peter - you'll be able in to recreate this I'm quite sure.  Then you could pass it along to support, no?

 

It is best when the person/people having an issue report it directly and can work with tech support without me as a middleman.  It also keeps everything in a trackable ticket system which helps everybody in the long run as known, fixed, and any other issues (and the resolution for said issues) are clearly documented in that system. 

15 hours ago, chris.r said:

The support guys wanted me doing a video on it. I didn't do it as I wasn't even sure what are they going to look for since there's just a long note and a simple CC#11 movement recorded with my expression pedal. Nothing really to show off. It works fine on playback but it fails on rendered audio, and that's it. It's been months now and I'm still wondering whether it's a real issue or just me.

BTW, Peter can you confirm that Amplitube 4 is still supported (asking literally almost on every subject now, lol)?

What exactly is your weird behaviour Grem? I don't recall any issues with dragging midi loops from MODO Drums in Cakelab.  

Pretty long way around. I wouldn't even be sure where to start with converting CC to NRPN. Are you in Cakewalk?

Pretty sure Peter is on Mac, then he might be not able to reproduce this. To me it seems IK stuff is tested more for Mac than Windows.

You can report AmpliTube 4 issues and support can verify if the devs are able to update/fix anything but as I'm not in tech support I'm not sure 100% on whether those issues will be fixed or if moving to AmpliTube 5 is going to be the proposed solution.  The support reps will have better information on that than I would, and likely based on which/what issue you are having (they may already have a fix/workaround, too, for example)

I am on both Mac and Windows.  Honestly for audio production I much prefer Windows but I do have a Mac laptop I'm typing on right now and it has a lot of audio software on it too, of course.  But I still will do any more serious work in Windows as the bang for the buck performance-wise is much better there IMHO.

[husker]

1 hour ago, Doug Steinschneider said:

The IK Product Manager is a big improvement over the old system of Authorization Manager plus manually downloading individual sound zip files, then individually expanding them all. I just installed all the freebies in 5 minutes and then walked away from the computer - everything was downloaded and installed when I came back to the computer hours later. 

I wish it worked like that for me.  IK Manager will not authorize anything for me - I have to use the old authorization manager for everything.

Plus, after 180 days, we'll still need to do everything manually.

[Grem]

6 minutes ago, husker said:

Plus, after 180 days, we'll still need to do everything manually.

Why? Not understanding.

[husker]

27 minutes ago, Grem said:

Why? Not understanding.

The downloads are only good for 180 days.  So, for example, when I rebuild my DAW next year, I'll be unable to download them via IK manager, and will have to revert to the manual install/activation from my saved downloads.