http://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech/magix-music-maker-2015-premium-617969

I never liked Magix software. Their authorization makes one worship iLoks. They also took over Yellow Tools which was another disaster and authorization and support doomed them. A grammy engineer was given a copy of Samplitude and after using it he named it Sampli****.

I'd never buy any of their products. Check out what Music Radar says about authorization on this entry level DAW.

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

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

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

That, IIRC, applied to their bundled sampled instruments only. They required a special license to use them commercially.

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.
 

If you've got Norton on your machine (which shouldn't be on a DAW), that can cause issues with the Magix authorization process.
 
Independence was a nightmare as far as authorization.
Connecting (or removing) an external HD would reset it.
 
As for Samplitude, authorization is quick/easy... and doesn't reset like mentioned above.
 
As for "Grammy Winning Producer", they're all over the place.
One guy/gal's opinion is just that... one opinion.
One of the best mastering engineers on the planet uses Sequoia.
 

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.

Ouch. Definitely the harshest review I have seen from them. I too tried Independence and deleted afeter a week of frustration

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.