Crow Hill Your Black Friday Gift Is Here!

[cclarry]

Use this code for $15 off

BANKOFCROW-BF15

https://thecrowhillcompany.com/shop/

[cclarry]

I can't add anything to my cart...weird

EDIT:  I had to be logged in...

Edited Friday at 01:50 PM by cclarry

[cclarry]

Pocket Strings for FREE!

[BTP]

Their website is very slow at the moment.

You can't use this on the old freebies, which aren't free anymore.

[MusicMan]

Small String Gestures is really quite nice for the price.

[Starship Krupa]

Very nice products, and it's hard to beat the price, but why oh why do we have to install yet another service just to install the product(s)?

I got the free Antelope EQ and it installed a service. I think Softube installs one too. None of these is necessary in order to use the plug-ins, they're only required during the install process.

<rant>

These are plug-ins. All an installer needs to do is download the VST3 package and copy it to the VST3 directory. If your installer needs to install its own service just to perform a download and file copy, something is WRONG with your installer. And they never install with manual startup, always automatic, so they're always sitting there waiting for another installation.

I don't mind a well-designed omnibus installer shell, in the case of companies whose plug-ins a have many of I even like the ones that work well. But I draw the line at installer services. In practice, it just means that I have to go in and set the startup to manual, or in the case of really aggressive ones where instantiating the plug-in(s) triggers a start, disabled. Then the installer pitches a fuss next time I try to install one of their products. None of this rigmarole is endearing, really the opposite.

My computer is probably capable of running these stupid things without my noticing any performance hit, but as with any running program, it's just another thing to go wrong, another bit of complexity that nudges the system closer to error. No matter how benign they think these things are, if there's a mistake in the code they could have memory leaks or any number of other issues. Or someone else's program could have a conflict.

I used to work in the commercial software biz, I get that the corporate ego says that one's own product is the most important program on a user's computer, and that the user should welcome multiple entries in the Start menu, etc., but if you really must flex, just dump an unasked for shortcut on my desktop like everyone else.

</rant>

[pseudopop]

14 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Very nice products, and it's hard to beat the price, but why oh why do we have to install yet another service just to install the product(s)?

It's just another form of DRM, one that inconveniences honest users and is never even seen by those who sail the high seas.

[Starship Krupa]

45 minutes ago, pseudopop said:

It's just another form of DRM, one that inconveniences honest users and is never even seen by those who sail the high seas.

These services that are only used during installation are part of an authentication mechanism then.

So many companies manage to do it without installing a friggin' service. A|A|S, MeldaProduction, Plugin Alliance, IK Multimedia....

[pseudopop]

21 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

These services that are only used during installation are part of an authentication mechanism then.

So many companies manage to do it without installing a friggin' service. A|A|S, MeldaProduction, Plugin Alliance, IK Multimedia....

But how else would they track your plugin usage and gather information about your system, or phone home every now and then to make sure you have nothing unlicensed installed, or show you advertisements about their latest plugins? Think of the poor companies!

[Starship Krupa]

10 hours ago, pseudopop said:

But how else would they track your plugin usage and gather information about your system, or phone home every now and then to make sure you have nothing unlicensed installed, or show you advertisements about their latest plugins? Think of the poor companies!

They must be disappointed in me, because as soon as the install is done I disable the service. Then I try instantiating them in Sonar. So far I haven't had any complain, but if I did, I'd just uninstall the plug-in.

It only happens with freebies because the companies where I actually spend money on plug-ins don't use install helper services. No coincidence, that.

The only running service I tolerate for plug-ins is Waves, and even their stuff works fine without it. It seems to only be used for their kluged-on preset browser.

[Colin Nicholls]

On 11/28/2025 at 11:58 AM, Starship Krupa said:

Very nice products, and it's hard to beat the price, but why oh why do we have to install yet another service just to install the product(s)?

 

Bum. I had no idea. I love Crow Hill both as a company (respect for Mr Henson and what he does) but I had no idea the app needed the service, although I had my suspicions that "something was up" because every time I come out of Standby/Sleep on my DAW, that fricken' Crow Hill App is running and I KNOW I closed it.

I'm going to try disabling the service and see if that app starts itself up again by itself.     DISAPPOINTED! </hercules>

[MusicMan]

14 minutes ago, Colin Nicholls said:

 

Bum. I had no idea. I love Crow Hill both as a company (respect for Mr Henson and what he does) but I had no idea the app needed the service, although I had my suspicions that "something was up" because every time I come out of Standby/Sleep on my DAW, that fricken' Crow Hill App is running and I KNOW I closed it.

I'm going to try disabling the service and see if that app starts itself up again by itself.     DISAPPOINTED! </hercules>

There were a lot of similarities between the Crow Hill app and the Ujam one and I've seen the exact same thing you mentioned about it being open after the computer has been sleeping.