From my vantage point Paul and Matt are both losers in this battle. I'd have to guess that Paul must have liked KAB at least a little, and now he can't use it. Matt has had his company's name be-smurched, somewhat at his own hand no less.

And really, they ought to take it off line, settle it, and then report back their successful resolution.

I'm really quite happy to hear that someone had luck getting past the "too many authorizations" problem with Sound Forge. I had given up on it when I ran into that snag because other companies threw up too many roadblocks for me to even bother trying again. Now I will!

Waves is probably the most despicable of all the pro-audio software developers. However, my turn to shed a little light. If you complain to them loud enough and often enough they will, eventually, resolve the issue. I was one caught in the V3 trap, they were no longer supporting the challenge/response authorization, and wanted money from me if I wanted to keep using my legally licensed software. BAH!!!

They sent me a solicitation a short while ago and it ticked me off enough that I replied, probably less than politely.

Much to my surprise I received an email that provided steps to resolve the situation. They asked me not to share the steps, and I grudgingly honor that request, but they did suggest that I tell anyone else experiencing this problem to contact Waves directly.

oops, wandered a bit far off the track there...

Good salepeople can tell a customer they are wrong and have said customer love them for it.

ORIGINAL: Mick

Well Matt you sure have kicked up a storm here but I think I can help if you follow this advice: Create a new user/profile here on the Sonar forum. Post a reply to this thread claiming that you are the real producer of Kick Ass Brass and that you have no idea who this MattatAMG guy is but he is obviously mentally unstable, and that you would never have treated a customer this way. Then send out the missing authorization immediately and apologize to Paul. Also, it would be helpful if you told us how much you love Sonar and hate software piracy. That will turn things around.

Richard

I understand, you wrote the software (I assume, or at any rate, you own it), you feel like its your little baby. (and yes, I feel qualified to say this, I've been doing software development for over 30 years). It's hard to let go of that and understand when to relax and connect with your customers, who in their perspective, have paid good money to use your product any kind of way they want to.

But you have to do this. Your responses to this post have merely confirmed that, yes, you are a control freak and yes, you will be a problem with authorisations if for some reason you think the customer should have installed it on a pink-coloured box instead of a green one or because you don't like their music or what have you.

I'm sorry to be so frank but Matt you have to let go here. May I suggest you copy the NI model. You can reauthorise as many times as you like but not repeatedly for the same hardware config - you have to permanently rescind a registration to re-register. I assume your challenge/response is based on hardware in some way, so this should be easy to do. At present, I hate to say it but your responses here have simply confirmed the OP's point.

This is very well put. If I were Matt, I'd send you a free copy of KAB for sharing such good advice and trying to save his business from his own worst instincts.

Well using warez is still not acceptable IMO, but you make a good point that some will avoid the hassles that come with being a legit buyer.

Personally, I'm happy to pay for a good piece of software, because I want to encourage the developers of the products I like to keep making stuff.

I've been buying Toontrack's stuff for 5 years now and I hope they stay in business forever. Ditto with Cakewalk of course.

The reality of consequence can be found HERE and scroll to the bottom (for now).

If Matt has statistics of how much their clients need a re-authorization, that's great. But a average should never tell you if a user is over using anything.

Are you responsible for his computer maintaining? If you are, great, you may say it's too much. But if you're not, you have no right to judge.

In less than 30 months, I must have experienced at least 10 systems reformats and re-authorizations. I had everything running on an old DAW and mounted a new one. I got a lot of crashes and need to format. The first memory kit was faulty and I needed to return it. Then I got problems with the motherboard and bought a new one. Then it would simply turn off sometimes. I found it to be incompatibility with the audiocard. Then I traded the mobo with a friend and kept this config for two months until my first mobo comes back from the RMA. Then again, I had problems and had to format at least twice. I used four mobos and three memory kits in this machine, not counting the old DAW and the new one I'm planning to buy now.

I really didn't know there were limits on this. You should let me know this earlier, so I would think better and buy a Motif or a Triton and not worrying about my DAW letting me down. But as far as I remember, when I buy for a license, I have the right to use it whenever I want or need to, right?

As some said above, I also used a lot of warez in my beginners days. Never had problems with it, but I started to make some money and bought every app I use. It's not pleasant to know that when you pay for it, you have more problems than before.

I agree with the people. You should hire some attendants, vendors, people who know how to deal with people. You look like you're a genius and can deal with programming. Keep on doing that and let another more qualified person to do the other job. It will be better for your company, as your last messages didn't helped to clean your company image.

And I never understood all this mess with authorizations issues. Why do you need to be so strict? Dude, if someone wants to crack your software, it simply will, no matter what method, system, dongle you use. So relax and threat your client the way you should. A good relationship with a client is what makes them buy your products, not anti-piracy systems.

There is/was a general guideline regarding dealing with customers: a happy customer will tell one other person about his/her experience while an unhappy customer will tell ten other people.

KAB response = not good.

audiorealism.se

Bought ABL Bassline years ago, lost the serial, wrote mails, wrote mails, wrote mails. No answer. Flamed his board, got nice pm and free ABL Pro (which I paid afterwards because me not being an ass.hole), deleted my flames, went on appreciating his apps. And told the people about it.

It's easy. But not for everyone. Apparently.

This is exactly why I'll NEVER buy anything that needs authorization...... NEVER! Only people getting screwed are paying customers....

Rico

Wow what a thread.

I don't know much about licenses and legalities and EULAs and all that, but it seems to me if the developer can actually confirm that the user is legit it shouldn't even be a consideration on whether or not to issue another authorization. Not doing so just because you think the user (read: paying customer) isn't meeting the developer's expectations of a knowledgable computer technician seems extraordinarily out of context and rather disrespectful to the very people who are paying for your house (so to speak).

Hi Paul,

I've seen you here for quite some time and I am sorry to see you have trouble with one software company. After reading the response from Matt (I must assume he is Matt 8 from AMG) I must say, I am shocked that Matt would take such a stance in an open forum. Paul, thanks for the "heads up" regarding this company's misguided policies.

I looked at AMG's website and notice some other attitudes that go against good customer relations...

<Note that the mispellings are as they are on AMG's website>

<snip>
All material on AMG CD’s has been specifically recorded by artists chosen by AMG and the artists haveconsented to such material being licensed by AMG under this Licence. Licensees should note that AMGspecifically does not warrant that it owns all rights to all material comprised in its CDs and AMG acceptsno liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss arising from the use by Licensees of AMG’sProducts.
</snip>


So, my understanding of this snippet is, AMG may be including material that they don't have specific rights to ("AMGspecifically does not warrant that it owns all rights") and they are attempting to (by legalese) put this potential copyright infringment off on a paying customer?! Just one more reason to avoid companies like these!

I've met quite a few software developers in my time. They've all had some sort of quirky character trait - some of them were they nicest people I've ever met on or offline and others were the nastiest human beings ever to grace the earth.

It reminds me of an old nursery rhyme:

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good
She was very, very good
But when she was bad
She was horrid!

Hmmm....Paul hasn't chimed in in a while....I wonder if they are, indeed, working something out behind the scenes....I hope for Paul's sake they are, but I don't think Mr. Matt is likely to have suddenly seen the light, so to speak...hopefully Paul will let us know....

ORIGINAL: Mick

This is a big exaggeration. You're assuming the 50 people on this thread who said they were turning away were going to buy KAB if not for the bad behavior of the developer, which is probably not close to true. Also the assumption that at least 10 times more will "turn away" without saying anything seems without merit. There may well be ten times as many people who will decide to never buy products from this company because of this but it's unlikely many of them happened to be planning on doing so to begin with. So the conclusion that 550 sales have been lost is off-base. It probably takes several months for KAB just to sell 550 copies . In other words there probably weren't near 550 people who were planning on buying products from this company during the lifetime of this thread. In order for them to have lost 550 sales there probably would have to have been several thousand people who were otherwise going to buy one of their products (I'm assuming a large percentage of these potential customers will never even see this thread)

ORIGINAL: SteveJL

Huh! 2000+ reads, 84+ replies. KAB costs $300 US, and they a LOT of other stuff. At least 50 people here have said they are turning away, you have to figure at least 10 times more will without saying anything, so 550 x $300 = $165,000.00 lost revenue, probably more because of the other products not sold. Google search on "buy kick ass brass" brings up a lot of negative stuff, also a negative Review on Amazon.Com, it's all gonna hurt AMG, could hit $1M. lost, easily. He could have done some damage control here, but chose the low road. Sad.

I wan't planning on buying anything from them and never will.