rydans mi7 community feed

Copy protection, licence policies and the state of the software industry...

rydan — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:23:36 GMT

As some of you may already know, I'm not a big fan of copy protected software. I generally do not buy software with copy protection if I can find any reasonable substitute without. (Sonalksis, FabFilter, OhmForce and AudioDamage being examples of companies creating top notch plugins without copy protection for example. I'm a paying customer of all four.) Since I was unable to get Pace/iLok working well on my system even with quite a bit of support, I do not, ever, buy pace protected software. I also generally prefer challenge/response to dongles. All in all however, I MUCH prefer software without these things at all. Why? Well, the way I see it, all they do is make life hard for the paying customer. Most of the protected software is available in cracked form anyway.

Please note that this doesn't mean that I do support the use of illegal software in any way. If you use it, pay for it. However, this is a recommendation to vote with your wallet. If a company doesn't trust you enough to sell you software without some means to control that you use it “properly”, or with some means to control or limit how you use the software you paid to be able to use, simply refuse to buy their product. Kindly email them and tell them that you choose (and pay for) a competitors product based on the fact that they don't use any copy protection.

The music software industry still seem to be pretty decent, even those companies that use copy protection, but who knows what will happen when the “war” escalades. Right now, most companies allow you to sell or trade licenses, have nice upgrade deals, crossgrade deals and you name it. (And really nice companies, like AudioDamage, allow you to return the software if you don't like it for a full refund). In other parts of the software industry, things aren't quite as nice, and I feel that at least Waves is on their way to the dark side...

What got me started this time was the article:

http://studionebula.com/blog/2007/12/02/why-i-boycott-products-that-use-paceilok-and-why-you-should-too

combined with a proper horror story about software and policies in a slightly different field, namely CAD.

I work as a software designer for a company that designs and builds industrial machine systems. However, since I'm the guy around who know the most about computers, I tend to do my fair share of computer support as well.

So, well, server upgrade time. We decided to switch from per seat licenses to server based floating licenses for our SolidWorks CAD system. To switch from per seat licenses to floating licenses is expensive, like 1000 euro per license expensive, unless you own at least five licenses, then it's free. Luckily, we do.

Or so we thought.

You see, one of the licenses was bought in the beginning, before we became the company we are today. So, the first license wasn't bought by this company, but by a small company owned by one of the employees that acted as the current company's front until business was up and running. It was bought for the current company's use only, and with the current company's money. License transfer time!

Or so we thought.

Turns out, after long and hard discussions with SolidWorks, that their license policy doesn't allow licenese transfers. At all. If your company is bought by another company

that company MIGHT be able to take over your licenses, if they ask really nicely, and if SolidWorks is in a nice mood, and decide it should be allowed. Anyway, for us, it was a blank no. You cant transfer the license, can't sell it, can't do anything with it. Also, unless you have a support agreement that you pay annually, you aren't allowed upgrades, and you can't “rejoin” the support agreement, you have to buy the license again.

These licenses aren't exactly cheap. We're talking about 10000 euro+ for a license, and about 1000 euro per license and year in support. Also, for the last five or so years, my current company has paid the support fee for the license that now wasn't transferable. Talk about shitty customer support.

I REALLY REALLY hope we won't end up there with music software, so please, vote with your wallets, and vote wisely.

The acoustical perils of moving.

rydan — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 22:25:52 GMT

Well, me and my girlfriend moved to a new apartment a few months ago.

Now, since I´m somewhat of a music/studio addict, almost as soon as I got the stuff through the door (after painting though) I quickly rigged a "preliminary" version of my studio. Getting some synths and stuff up on a table, getting the computer working, monitors in place and so on.

Well, a couple of weeks later, a friend and colleague at the soco studio asked me to create an electro/dance remix for Vasa Gospel. Yea, sure, I said. I knew I didn't have the studio set up properly, but I thought I had it running well enough to put together a remix. No prob.

Right, went to work, and after the initial stuggle getting to grips with the material (gospel isn´t really the kind of music I normally work with), things were progressing nicely. All new parts laid down, and a few nights later, I had a mix that sounded pretty good. Or so I thought. Well, just a a reference, I played another remix that I and Spirou here on the forum had completed a few months earlier in my previous apartment,a remix that I knew had a similar sound, and one that I knew sounded good on most if not all systems.

Whoooa. That mix suddenly sounded awful. Boomy bass, harsh midrange, sharp top end. Not a good sign. By now, I was pretty sure that my nice sounding new remix was, in fact, sounding like crap. Bounced the remix and brought it to the soco studio. Confirmed. The bottom end was weak and lacking definition, midrange muddy, and all kinds of strange things happening in the highs. The vocals, that were quite a bit forward in the mix I thought, was almost unintelligible. Not good.

To make matters worse, I have quite a different set of plugins and stuff at home, compared to the soco studio, so moving the project and mixing there wasn´t really an option. So, well, I took notes of what was wrong, and tried to fix it at home. After a few repetitions of this procedure, I got the remix sounding pretty OK. Not entirely satisfied, but OK. Good enough to come out decent from mastering at least.

Right now, I´m trying to decide not if, but what acoustic panels to get. Those ghost acoustics panels sure look nice...

Kontakt2 Scripting

rydan — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:56:16 GMT

Hehe, have just started dabbling with the contact script engine, and, well, it rocks!

A bit of thinking and a bit of hacking, and all of a sudden, you get kontakt to make sequences, pseudo gate effects, and glitches and chops that would take hours of tedious programming to do with regular midi control, all controllable to the detail you choose, as random as you choose. Simply amazing.

Makes me think. Why o why doesn't all sequencers have a scripting engine in them. So you could tell them, for instance, "please chop this audio part into sixteenth, place them an eighth apart and reverse every third one." Would be pretty nice! ;o)

On the other hand, perhaps you have to be into electronica, and a bit of a geek to appreciate that kind of thing, but, hey, I am... =)

Perhaps it's time to have a look at Max/Msp...