abacab Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, Fleer said: I remember Simon Bangs, a good guy with efficient support. Larger GUIs for AIR instruments? (2017) https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6807952 "Will be a Yay, just taken longer than hoped we are moving all the Plugins over to a new platform which is more modern and plays nicely with all sizes of screens." -Software Brand Manager -inMusic Brands Edited November 12, 2022 by abacab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dubdisciple Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 I occasionally get decent service but it is so inconsistent. I think it is a crapshoot. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 3 hours ago, dubdisciple said: I occasionally get decent service but it is so inconsistent. I think it is a crapshoot. I honestly don't think inMusic is even trying hard to deliver. Compared to when IKM messes up with a new release, at least they try to fix it and Peter@ IK usually does his best to communicate in both directions. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PavlovsCat Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 18 minutes ago, abacab said: I honestly don't think inMusic is even trying hard to deliver. Compared to when IKM messes up with a new release, at least they try to fix it and Peter@ IK usually does his best to communicate in both directions. I had to roll back Windows after one of their plugins caused massive problems on my Windows PC. When I reported it to the company, they acknowledged they were aware of the problem and were working on it. When I went to KVR, I found that someone reported the identical problem more than a half a year earlier and one of their customer support employees wrote the same thing to them that was written to me several months later. As I recall, it took the better part of a year after that before they resolved the problems -- and people posted about them at every music forum I know of. InMusic, relative to the size of most plugin developers, has A LOT more resources. The company has a habit of buying software companies with long neglected software (like the AIR plugins and BFD) and creating new problems to the point where when I see that InMusic is the owner of a plugin, I would have a hard time justifying buying it. IK on the other hand isn't perfect, but they are in no way comparable to InMusic software, which has provided me with the worst experiences I've ever had with any kind of software and I've worked in tech and with software companies for three decades. With IK, when there's a problem, their support is responsive -- Peter T is a good man (okay, we go back two decades, so I'm certainly biased about him personally, not IK) -- IK puts people on resolving it. I have never had IK software cause problems that caused be to reinstall or roll back Windows, their support has always been fairly prompt and they resolve software problems in a timely manner. So really, no comparison. IK is a decent company with dependably decent software, InMusic literally buys companies with long neglected software and has made that software A LOT worse in the case of AIR plugins and BFD3 (one of our very tech savvy regular forum members posted this week that he uses a pre-InMusic version of BFD on his machine -- which is wrote runs well; something people who've had post-InMusic versions of BF3 since the company purchased BFD3 rarely say), Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dubdisciple Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 37 minutes ago, abacab said: I honestly don't think inMusic is even trying hard to deliver. Compared to when IKM messes up with a new release, at least they try to fix it and Peter@ IK usually does his best to communicate in both directions. It took me almost two years to get a question answered for me. I would hate to be someone heavily invested in something like an MPC. Owners tend to be very loyal. Imagine being reliant on that as primary means of production and dealing with their service. IK has always been easy to work with even when there is a glitch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daveiv Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 5 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said: I had to roll back Windows after one of their plugins caused massive problems on my Windows PC. Same. Some of their products installed an ancient version of iLok which made Windows BSOD on launch. I had to fix it by going into terminal and manually deleting the file. I got a refund from the store, but the responsible InMusic brands never responded to my email. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PavlovsCat Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 Just now, daveiv said: Same. Some of their products installed an ancient version of iLok which made Windows BSOD on launch. I had to fix it by going into terminal and manually deleting the file. I got a refund from the store, but the responsible InMusic brands never responded to my email. Exactly. You know, it's been a while, but yeah, as I recall, they didn't respond to my official support tickets so I made numerous forum posts and finally got a response in a public forum and then saw that someone with the identical issues posted about them several months prior to my experience and they gave that person the identical response they gave me that they would soon have the problems resolved, which of course, made it clear to me that they were not working at a reasonable pace. I would say that their lack of reasonable, timely support is at the point where I don't find them even a respectable software developer. Their brand has what we call in the industry a negative brand image with me. When I see InMusic owns a software company, I generally will run or won't buy it without A LOT of forum users posting that it's working on Windows 10 and a machine similar to mine. I own BFD Eco and they've offered the upgrade to BFD3 for Eco users for $49USD for at least a couple years now and when I've posted about contemplating it, I see responses from people who don't own it stating things like, "It's 50 bucks for a some really nice drum libraries, just buy it!" But if it is anything like the year I spent after installing one of their AIR plugins on my computer that took me two days and roll back or reinstallation of Windows (it's been a while, that was a year and a half ago) to work again, that kind of pain isn't worth it. I can say without hesitation that InMusic is not a company I want to work with again. Terrible. About as bad as it gets for a well known brand in this business. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daveiv Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 4 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said: Terrible. Terrible indeed. I regret I wasted several hundreds on products now belong to InMusic. Issues you mention are my main reasons I'm moving away from plugin based VIs. Plugins, their installers, their license managers are operating system level programs that can do anything to a computer. They can (and do) spy on you, they can lock you out of using the product (activation/licensing errors), or they can directly harm your computer (like the iLok BSOD issue). Kontakt libraries are just bunch of files you download and move around; they live in Kontakt without access to your computer. If Native Instruments vanishes tomorrow, we can just find a portable version and continue our work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PavlovsCat Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 (edited) 11 minutes ago, daveiv said: Terrible indeed. I regret I wasted several hundreds on products now belong to InMusic. Issues you mention are my main reasons I'm moving away from plugin based VIs. Plugins, their installers, their license managers are operating system level programs that can do anything to a computer. They can (and do) spy on you, they can lock you out of using the product (activation/licensing errors), or they can directly harm your computer (like the iLok BSOD issue). Kontakt libraries are just bunch of files you download and move around; they live in Kontakt without access to your computer. If Native Instruments vanishes tomorrow, we can just find a portable version and continue our work. It's worth noting that daveiv is a software engineer sharing these views on software. I think that's particularly significant in this case when we're discussing software. EDIT: Okay, I'm from Chicago, where we pride ourselves on being upfront. So I'll just come right out and say what I really meant with that last sentence: I think that's particularly significant in this case when we're discussing software that sucks. Edited November 12, 2022 by PavlovsCat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 Well I didn't intend for this to turn into an inMusic/AIR bashing thread. But the responses have been interesting... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 13 minutes ago, daveiv said: Kontakt libraries are just bunch of files you download and move around; they live in Kontakt without access to your computer. If Native Instruments vanishes tomorrow, we can just find a portable version and continue our work. Well the modern Kontakt libraries are encrypted in the NI format, so they are locked into NI unless the keys are made public. So no moving them around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daveiv Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 17 minutes ago, abacab said: Well the modern Kontakt libraries are encrypted in the NI format, so they are locked into NI unless the keys are made public. So no moving them around. Fair, they're Kontakt-only. I meant you could move them between computers without activation and such (except the licensed Kontakt Player ones). Ultimately, we'll need decent sample libraries for an open format like SFZ to save us from all the drama. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monomox Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 On 11/11/2022 at 4:26 AM, aidan o driscoll said: A set of brand new plugins from AIR MUSIC TECH - 8 in all https://www.airmusictech.com/ "8 incredible new plugins developed by AIR for the award-winning Akai Professional MPC platform are now available for your DAW in VST/AU/AAX formats." Oooooor, hear me out, they could fix their old plugins so that they would not crash my DAW. Just an idea. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fret_man Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 19 hours ago, PavlovsCat said: something people who've had post-InMusic versions of BF3 since the company purchased BFD3 rarely say), OK, I'll say it. I use post-InMusic B FD3 with several of its expansions and it works just fine in Studio One & Win11. I especially like that it automatically loads up the drum map so I can tell what's what. The ONLY issue is that I have to re-authorize every 3 months, which is just a click of a button (as long as your PC is online). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daveiv Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 18 minutes ago, fret_man said: OK, I'll say it. I use post-InMusic B FD3 with several of its expansions and it works just fine in Studio One & Win11. I especially like that it automatically loads up the drum map so I can tell what's what. The ONLY issue is that I have to re-authorize every 3 months, which is just a click of a button (as long as your PC is online). BDF3 uses iLok for authorization? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Roseberry Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 IMO, The Air plugins (for MPC Key-61) are pretty decent. Some of the instruments hold their own vs. a traditional keyboard workstation (Montage, Fantom, etc). They're not going to best the likes of Pianoteq, Keyscape, Omnisphere... and other top-tier VIs. I bought the Mini-D (for MPC Key-61). It's OK. Nothing more... nothing less If you compare it to something like a Moog Matriarch, it comes up very short. ? If you're composing with the MPC Key-61, it's useful in that environment. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 It seems that the inMusic is consolidating their acquired and newly developed software assets into the AKAI Pro and MPC ecosystem. Leaving everything else in the "legacy" dustbin... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lionel Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 It’s really interesting hearing all of these stories about AiR. I’ve been using their plugins since the days of Pro Tools LE/M-Powered. And a few years back, I purchased all their plugins from PB. I’m on Win and MacOS and never had any issues. Guess I’ve just been lucky. AiR plugins aren’t my go-to’s, but there are some hidden gems that totally make a difference in my production. Being a long-time user of AiR, one of the good things about their products is that they don’t discontinue their plugins unlike certain other companies. *cough*…Izotope *cough*…NI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JT music Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 Take advantage now that they are expensive before they give them away later at $5 in PB ? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fret_man Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 21 hours ago, daveiv said: BDF3 uses iLok for authorization? No, they don't. They have their own license manager. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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