Not all that grateful, for once...

Earlier this week I've moved my Sampletank instruments (Sampletank, SampleMoog, SampleTron, etc) libraries to an external HD. 

When opening a project tonight, I was expecting I'd simply have to select a new path in the preferences. Turns out I have to re-authorize every darn instrument. (Is it me or that's just plain stupid?)

And to make things better, SampleTank itself, which is of course the one I needed NOW because it's in the project I'm working on won't re-authorize.

So after wasting almost an hour authorizing and TRYING to authorize, I gave up on that project I wanted to work on, contacted IK and decided to move on to a different project.

This one had Zeta in it. 

I bought Zeta on August 23rd. 
And today is November 23rd.

Now, for some reason, even though I've never demo'ed Zeta, it seems that every month it "times out" - but not just by giving me an error message or being muted, nah. Instead, Zeta proceeds to try to blast my monitors.

I didn't know which date it was today, but Zeta just gave me the heads up, by playing back one of those loud shrieking noises.

I think I've just lost everything above 12 khz for a while. Seriously. Man that hurts.

So it seems that the fix provided by Cakewalk (a clean re-install involving manually hunting down files, backing up some and manually removing hidden files) didn't really work. More precisely, it didn't fix anything but just "fooled" Zeta into believing that the demo period had just begun, once more.


So I thought I'd share w/ you guys, so that you'd know I'm not one of those happy-go-lucky new age hippie, after all those "I'm grateful threads" I've started recently... ;)

I don't think it's the intended behavior - that's not likely - but the behavior seems to be linked w/ the trial period.

I'm not all that happy and there's no way I'm jumping through those hoops again - but they got back to me quickly the first time and tried their best to help, so I'll wait and see what they have to suggest next.

The funny thing is that I've been having similar issues with Focusrite plug-ins which I need to re-authorize every month since I bought them, so again last week or the week before. In their case, though, it's a matter of a minute.

I'd be tempted to believe that I'm doomed or that there's an issue w/ my machine but every other products have been working fine since I've first installed them.

I wear cans most of the time. If Zeta ever blasts anything like that in my ears, they're going to have a lawsuit on their hands. 

Rain


I was sort of lucky I guess - I intended to rework on that Zeta song later tonight, so I would most likely have been wearing cans and this could have mean some serious damage. The meters instantly go into solid red/clipping.

But the whole IK authorization issue just forced me to change my plans.

You're starting to sound grateful again........ ;)

I've not had that issue with Z3ta, but maybe I've not had it long enough yet  - can't remember exactly when I got it. The thing that bug me about it is the sound it defaults to when opened (one of the free "bonus" sounds from the mutant pack- totally  unusable for me and loud as hell) as I do have a habit of pressing a key when a synth opens to see what I have loaded. I guess this will at least cure me of that habit !

As far as the Sampletank stuff goes and any of
my big library synths, I install the actual synth to the system drive , but always have the actual sound libraries on another drive anyway, supposedly they work better like that. Doesn't help you now, but might be something to do in future to save having the problem again.

I really have no clue why Zeta behaves the way it does - it doesn't really make any sense. Switching patches will actually change the type pitch and the place where it resides in the stereo field, moving from hi pitched center to low pitch hard right. But no need to touch any key, it's just like having a stuck note. Except that there is no incoming midi data.

As for SampleTank, I did what my years of troubleshooting have thought me to expect from level one tech support copy-paste type of solution (minus rebooting, because I had done that earlier).

I simply downloaded ST and re-installed it. For some odd reason, when I tried to authorize, it prompted me to update my Authorization Manager (which worked just fine a few hours before when I authorized Miroslav). Not the first time this happens. Once I did that, the issue was solved.

I could have done that earlier, but I had to work and I had already lost enough time.

Still doesn't make much sense that a sampler will require re-authorization when you move libraries around though.

This is why I hate copy protection. Having to re-authorize a product because you moved the library to another disk drive is f*ckin' ridiculous. 

I had a similar experience when I had to replace my motherboard and subsequently needed to re-authorize many plugins. One that refused to cooperate was also an IKM product (Amplitube), so I simply stopped using it. The product's come a long way since then but there's no way I'd consider buying it again.

The more paranoid the vendor, the more likely that problems are going to eventually ensue. I haven't had a problem yet, but Waves worries me the most. What will happen when the company deems one of my purchases as an obsolete product? Read about one such experience here.