Never seen a DAW rated this low before on Music Radar

Wow, that is a pretty damning review. I honestly can't recall seeing as bad a review for any peice of software.

Didn't I also hear something about them owning rights to any music you create in it?

bitflipper
I remember trying to get Yellow Tools to work...what a disaster. After a day of frustration I deleted it.

Independence?   If so... same here.   I actually did get the piano and one other synth loaded and working at one point, but somehow lost them and never it got them back.   While the patches sounded nice they weren't nice enough for the hassle.
 

I bought Independence back in the Yellowtools days, I did not have problems authorising until Magix took over. No matter what I did I could not get it running.

It was one of the few times I have needed to contact support. Why the clear instructions I received by email were not in the documentation I could not understand. Once I had the instructions it worked well.

I have not had issues with loss or authorisation when connecting external disks or hardware.

Independence is still my go to for saxes. The Kirk Hunter orchestral instruments are as good as it gets in a factory library. I still use them occasionally even though I have larger Kirk Hunter Kontakt libraries because they are a lot lighter on resources.

I think Independence had a great trajectory for a product but it got too overwhelming for their support. The original Ilok idea was a disaster and when ported over to electronic registration it got even worse. The program was really well designed IMho. I think Magix was able to buy it as a package and all they planned to do was dockey around the registration bit. Which got even worse.
Too bad because the samples are great - the sampling / synth / playback aspects are really good. It had a bright future in my opinion. I still think it kicks Kontact to the curb - ( I can't stand the Kontact interface ). It's still the only sampler that I know of that supports external VST instruments residing right along it's own Synth / Sample engine ,which makes it's potential huge. I was doing a few projects where I was taking some Steely Dan midi files and just plugging in Independence instruments and the samples just fit so well right out of the gate. I still use it - but I know there is no growth planned so it pretty much just lives as Rompler for me.

World Flutes are great! :^)
 
I gave the Magix Samplitude Pro demo a test drive recently (amongst several others).  To see how easily I could get on with each, I gave myself the (hopefully) simple task of inserting ARC2 into the master channel fx bin without any reference to help or manuals.
 
Most that I tried (e.g. Studio One, MuLabs) I figured out within seconds.  After 10-15 minutes of staring at Samplitude's interface I just felt like the apes at the beginning of 2001 A Space Odyssey sitting in front of the Monolith.  I felt sure that I was looking at something of great power and sophistication, but entirely alien in its origin and beyond my capability to understand.

bitflipper
I remember trying to get Yellow Tools to work...what a disaster. After a day of frustration I deleted it.

They had a big sale once and it led to a 100 page plus is rants on KVR about how bad the products were. I would have preferred Cakewalk would have bought them than Magix. They really haven't promoted Independence. 

Jim Roseberry

kitekrazy1
 This one you would know for sure. You have built a system or more for him. He uses Nuendo. 

Ted never liked any version of Samplitude.  

Yep.  Ted didn't like Samplitude, Athlons, overclocked Celerons, Logic (after it went Apple) or Cakewalk (after they didn't give him a free copy for not filing betatest reports.)
 
He did gush over one of my tunes once, so he's OK in my book.  

Magix also make Samplitude and Sequoia which are both stand out applications.  It did make improvements in the mixing department and when it created it's own line of VST's it helped. The inbuilt mastering tools are pretty good though with the "all in one place" approach rather than to a new project before burning.
 
What has let it down was the MIDI support which is obviously a big part of any DAW/