It's curious how the most frequently maligned software/developers in AS are the ones who make cracks difficult or impossible.

Go start a thread about Cubase and count the number of people who show up to tell you how cheap reaper was and how it lets you draw an automation envelope in the shape of you fellating yourself while holding up a sign that says "fuk cubase lul" and cubase doesnt let you do that, does it? Its almost like they have it on google alerts.

Similar things happen with uhe, which is weird because from what i hear uhe has been soundly cracked, but it's almost like theres a collective ptsd about the times when it used to timebomb or whatever.

Im sure some legit customer somewhere has had problems with their copy protection but im on their kvr forum at least once or twice a week and ive never seen it mentioned. Also i thought it was pretty clear that when urs talked about "exploiting" warez users he was talking about how he lets the plugins function for a while, so you have projects with diva or whatever and then suddenly it doesn't keep tune or something and you have to buy the plugin. It's about uncertainty/anxiety as to whether the crack will continue to work.

Im not gonna get into the ethics of warez because i don't care and dont have any problem with it, but you'd have to be pretty dense to not see that if anyone is being wronged in that equation it's the developer. Do you, and have fun, but the righteousness comes off super dumb. I dont think the teams themselves in their NFOs have expressed that sort of indignation about it unless the protection schemes are really anti consumer

 

The way I see it, it's a killer deal on the effects - which also throws in the synths for free. Not the synths I would have preferred, but I can definitely make use of them for that price.

 

Apparently? Urs is very proud of his time bombs, and the measures he takes to avoid scrutiny. Maybe his AP is only triggered in non-isolated environments.

It's mostly about the kind of behaviour customers should expect from devs. Someone who proudly boasts he conspired to create protection w/ Tone2 is enough for anyone to be very cautious about investing in them. It does seem (from the quote about "telling other developers") and his "expertise" that he is the one in the driving seat. But for me, it's as much just his attitude that's a deal breaker.

I think we both understand that there is a meaning coders use "(running an) exploit" which is more sinister. There's also this phrase about buyer beware or something, dunno if ya ever heard of it? =)

 

Last edited: Feb 17, 2019

Yes, and did any of his "time bombs" ever write in a HOSTS file or did it ever screw with anyone's system? All I ever see is mentioning "melting GUIs", "creepy voices" and buttons that open a web browser.

That's how I see it. Context matters.

 

It seems to me that Urs was the brains behind Tone2's AP, given how vehemently and proudly he defends this collective, meeting-of-minds AP. He says that this behaviour is perfectly acceptable, anyway, so you should rest assured that it is. As far as his synths go, they screwed w/ my system at least.

Indeed. This context is of a coder who is openly talking about his desire to "sadistically" "cause stress" to suspected pirates and proudly conspires w/ Tone2. I won't say it's naive to think that he means something other than the blindingly obvious: exploiting / running exploits on machines of suspected pirates. But errr.. maybe..? Exploiting embarrassing photos he finds on suspected pirates' twitter maybe? Exploiting their goodwill and generosity by some unexplained phenomena, perhaps? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

How, 1 dollar for 1 vst instrument. Can't get a better deal.

I'm curious about what you THINK about vacuum pro.

they use great words on the product description. .. got the classic 'analog' warmth, that even makes your keyboard sweat.. got everything. .
Air was the 'official' company making plug-ins for protools, i believe. .
their stuff used to be very expensive. Of course, when people spend dozens of thousands on protools HD hardware, what is 200 or 300 bucks for one plugin... almost nothing..

any good sounds in there that can't be found anywhere else ? Or just commun classic crap?

 

By the time avenger was out, and there was a V.R version on az, i picked it, installed it, and played with the instrument.
Presets sound quite cool. Then, a few weeks later, the plug-in couldn't work anymore, it kept asking for the license.

It left me with the impression there wasn't a lot of presets.
Yes, if i buy a 220 bucks instrument, i want it to come with 1000-1500 presets.
Just like today video games are sold with very little content, so there can be a ton of dlcs, expansions, and other paid additional content for people to spend hundreds or thousands on it,
I thought Avenger, presets-wise, was on the greedy side.

There were a bunch of expensive expansions for sale, since day one. Like the goal of the product was keeping selling more and more expansions to customers. . a bit like Nexus did: 300 euros for the main vsti, and dozens and dozens of 100-euros expansions, with 128 presets, that were basically just some hardware or software instruments, a few sampled notes and patches.. and there we had, the new 100 euros trance expansion was ready.

I felt Avenger had been built 100% around monetizing those expansions...

Sure, people will say 'heyy, only when you create your own patches, you can see how good the instrument is..' yes, but, unfortunately, not everybody is willing to read 500 or 600 pages of the manual, to properly understand its structure and be able to create all the skins he wants. Many people rely on presets.

And when i buy a vst instrument, how good it sounds is important, but it's not all. The instrument must have a ton of commercial soundbanks available .
Avenger soundbanks are super expensive. 40..50..+60 bucks... if we spend 220 euros/$ on avenger, and later, we must spend another 200 or 300 euros, for just a few extra soundbanks...'Huston'. ..

But besides the presets issue (for me anyway), avenger sounds great, and the interface is a pleasure to work with.

Because it doesn't use any c/r crap, but only a serial number, avenger could be one of the future next acquisitions.

 

AFAIK, u-he stuff aren't the most intrusive in the market. ..
When the copy protection detects a bad s/n, the plug-in was not 100% cracked, etc, it will analyse if the user is a power user, that is using 40 zebra and diva instances per project, 12 hours a day, on plenty of projects, or if the user is just launching zebra/diva like 2 or 3 times a week...

Then, there are the stupid people, who use cracked plug-ins, with the Internet full open, without any kind of firewall. Obviously, when the plug-in timebombs, etc, the first thing it does is opening a webpage... ' you are using a non legit version... you should buy it'...
Those idiots will even click on the u-he logo.. that will promptly connect to a server, to check if there is a new version.
If people are just too stupid to use Internet without a proper firewall, etc... when they get caught, is almost well done.

I believe if the plug-in has received a good serial number, it shouldn't normally be doing all kinds of things to the system, scans, hosts, etc.

Where have you heard uhe plug-ins do all kinds of nasty things ? Just curious. .

 

The problem ain't Cubase. The problem's Steinberg. If they don't worry you, hell fine with me, enjoy yourself.

I pay for most (that's most not all) of the stuff I use, I pay for all the stuff my work depends on. It isn't the tool I judge, but the vendor. I really don't like the attitude Urs Heckman brings to the table. It leaves me feeling I can't rely on him or his products. I love Softube, for example, and they're soft iLok. I pay for everything that has price that I use, but only during a sale. Their support is faultless, and I get to feel they're on my side, so I'm on theirs.

I'm lucky. I can afford it. The dudes who can't, I don't care if you're using a crack. That's your choice, like using Cubase or e-he.

 

this is not another 'race' debate, but

What do uhe, tone2 and NI have in commun. ..?
yeah, they all are german.

so when people were talking shit (300% well deserved shit) about tone2 despicable techniques, urs hekmann felt the obligation to 'defend' his german budy.... because we all know how the german companies, websites, advertisings, plaster their pages, documents, articles, with the 'made in germany'... logos.

oh, this microphone costs 1.27 euros ? Let me buy 5'000 units, because 'made in germany' ALWAYS mean perfection.
sure, many german brands create vry good products. But so do other countries. It became a trend 'if i put made in germany on this product, its value gets multiplied by 100'. Again, not criticizing. The german quality, precision, etc, needs no presentation

so, when people were attacking the markus mofo, it became like a matter of pride 'who dares attacking a german company ? !'
and so urs hekman had to do something for his buddy... and the overall german reputation 'hey, if millions of users around the world start learning a german plugin company is doing this and that, people might start thinking , hey, we'd better watch out, these 6 companies are also German, they could be doing the same shit as markus'..

 

Does diva and zebra sound good ? I think they do.

Is urs full of shit, pretentious, who thinks he is the best dev ever, and all the other smaller devs should listen to him, etc etc ?
Of course.
I remember reading his kvr comments, like bragging ' with all the warez versions used, when users click on the logo, they are redirected to a page..many, are afraid of having been caught with a time bombed version, we make at least 2000 euros each month, with those idiots'.... then, devs complain piracy is sooooooo fuking bad...

Or when he was bragging 'or plug-ins have at least 5 protection layers. . R2r and other groups could only pass the 1st or 2nd layer'... bla bla bla, or plug-ins will never be cracked again, or old zebra versions didn't have the new copy pritections, so it was easy to crack... we saw how the teams did to crack it, but then we fixed it'... never again anytime will crack or plug-ins. ..

A few months later, people released the full bundle, with a registered username i can't remember... lol.. 100% working plug-ins with a 100% legit username/pass= 100% lol

Then, he kept his stubbornness about prices. . No way to even offer 10% off... because users who paid full price wouldn't like to see a 20% off, 3 months after they spent full price. .

Sorry, i know it sucks, but... price reductions are a commun thing. .. Christmas. . Summer. .. valentine... namm...everybody slash their prices. .. but mister uhe, NO. That was the times we was selling hundreds of plug-ins every single day, and making over a million net per year... at 150-200 bucks each plug-in, why lowering the price, if all the rich guys are happily spending their 200 euros. .

Funny, this NI business... using NI to offer 60%...

R2r stopped releasing NI stuff. Have they created the ultimate copy protection ? Are companies like uhe going to work with them, and use all their power, money, advertising force... we could see some junior employees at NI coding the boring UHE mac/win updates...while most uhe devs could spend 100% of their time creating new synths and technologies for both UHE AND NI... ?

Does it smell like a plug-in Alliance kind of thing, at NI... ?

yes, many people think urs is full of (sh)it ... i think they are not 100% wrong.
The 'ohh, or plug-ins are so amazing, if we decide they must cost 500 euros each, it's because we KNOW they're worth it' mentality, sooner or later, it hits you in the fuking face.

A little bit of modesty, can't do any harm. .

 

Some of that is fair. the pricing on those soundpacks is stupid. I've never once considered buying them, even on sale, but on the flip side I'm thrilled people keep buying them because they keep adding free features to the synth itself. Since I bought it they've added a very intricate chord section to the arp, along with a strum function for the chord arp, they've added both PM and true FM between oscillators, they've added a granular synthesis engine, the list goes on. It does absolutely everything and is really pretty easy and intuitive. It's just probably the least limiting synth I've ever used.

Tbh I've never even looked into the library enough to feel like it was limited. but I can believe it. If you like making your own patches, Avenger is an absolutely stellar synth though. Btw the manual isn't that long and most of how the synth works is immediately obvious by looking at the interface.


@Fudsey Plange interesting choice of words, what makes you think i should be worried about steinberg?

 

I think it was a great deal even though there's nothing particularly special about Vacuum Pro. I like it but I imagine "common classic crap" might be a fair description of sorts. :D It seems like a synth one might find in a DAW - does lots of stuff you want it to do, just nothing amazing about it. Well, maybe "the tubes". Nice interface? :D

I do like the pads, they have something I really like.

Like this first preset in this demo:

Because it reminds me of The Cocteau Twins?

 

Last edited: Feb 18, 2019

I've got more experience with zebra but that is one synth that could take a long time to master every aspect of programing with. I think you could make any sounds in repro using zebra, possibly diva as well.

 

Is that like how I blow in my Nintendo tapes to make them work? Hmm, it seems I may be screwed in this area..

 

1. Urs did not write a single line of code for Tone2 products, particularly not on copy protection. Markus is way too protective of his intellectual property to let Urs have any peek at it.

2. The aim of unintrusive copy protection is to make using warez more tedious than buying a legit copy. Using words like "being sadistic" is tongue in cheek and usually perceived as a funny stab in the matter. Any other perception seems rather paranoid, or "guilty as charged", if you ask me.

3. Claiming that it is a "conspiracy" when a few dozen developers meet up to discuss how to make better copy protection is a far stretch. You can not know what happened if you have not attended any of these meetings or forums, so it must be evil?

4. Those meetings happend years after Tone2 did their weird protection. Have you ever considered that those meetings also happened in order to *prevent* such behaviour? Because Urs also says that bad examples hurt the reputation of all developers. (Unsurprisingly, your message is actual proof of that, since you put Urs and others in the same bag as Tone2)

5. "Exploiting wares" means "Invite users of pirated software to buy". It does not mean installing viruses or any other exploits. As you can clearly read in your vast array of links to quotes from Urs - in the parts you would't quote because they don't fit your message.

 

game over.

the campaign is over

 

If you only need presets, can get all synths from the world... (a lot of presets to use) but if you can make your own sounds, only need Diva, have all oscillators, al filters and all envelopes from most used synths, no need more.

 

One thing i, and many people hate, on urs attitude, is the 'pay or die'.
We all remember urs answer, when people were asking about price cuts, about 200 bucks being a fortune, to most people, and his answer was like 'ohh, if you live in a poor country, buying food is already expensivr, and you don't have the 200 bucks to pay us for our plug-ins, maybe you should choose another hobby than making music'...

How awful is this ?
In another words, if you don't live in a rich country as germany, you love music /want to make music, but you don't have the 200 euros we ask, you should stop making music, you should stop having dreams. .. and if somehow the only way to make some music with some correct tools was getting some Warez versions, no, you still should change hobbies. Grab some old socks, roll them, and make a ballon.... Or grab a piece of paper, and build a kite ... no, no, go to the swamp , and try to catch some frogs !

That is what you should be doing, instead of dreaming of making music.. if you don't have 200 euros. If you are so miserable, that you can't even buy one of our plug-ins, pick another hobby..


This was Urs mentality. How cool is that ?

Then, there's the old excuse, about the evil pirates. You don't sell more, because you saved on advertising/google adwords ? It's pirates fault.
You ant making more sales, because the market is saturated, with a ton of competition.? It's the pirate's fault
Everything that happens, is because of Warez.

When was the last time a company selling good plug-ins went bankrupt ? None.

FL studio was the first daw young musiciens would try to install, after watching their favorite dj using it. Today, thousands and thousands of those kids went legit, and bought fl studio. How bad was piracy, for image-line /flstudio...? I'd say how GOOD...
The same applies to ableton live. And many other plug-ins. Warez hlped them growing.
Even urs was laughing, because the guys using Warez, without any firewall, when plug-ins bombed, and users saw the message 'you are using a non legit version..', many would end up buying it.. he claimed we would make at least 2'000 euros per month, with that.
Warez, bad ?

Let's say a diva release at az gets 5'000 views. From those 5000, maybe 100-200 will install it. From the 200, 100 will uninstall it, because too much cpu.. don't like it.etc etc...from the 100, 60-70 will launch the plug-in once a week, and only 20-30 will use it heavily. Probably, from those 30, 5 or 10 will go legit.

It's about time to stop thinking there are 5 million people using a warezed diva or zebra, 3 millions using warezed waves.. 4 millions using ableton live warez... no. Often, big releases barely have 2 or 3000 views on az.

One of the problems with uhe, is the fact that he wants everybody to pay for his plug-ins. 0 tolerance. Thanks to Internet, sellers can reach customers, from all over the planet, from places they would never dream of reaching. Thanks to the Internet, plug-ins, that can be replicated on a server, 1 million times, and sold 1 million times, for no extra costs, can be sold to customers located 10'000 km away from berlin. Money can be made, even from people living in the north pole. How great internet is ? How fantastic of an opportunity it is , right ? We can become rich, by simply selling bits of compiled code, via internet.
But when 1 single person, from around the planet, finds a way to to use a plug-in, without paying. .. oh LORD, punish him !
That guy should be put in a gas chamber, as an example of what happens to those who not buy their plug-ins.

Come on... relax a little...

 

Ok, i know i could have used diva cracked, it would have worked as fine as the legit version.
But a few years ago, i had said, if there was a price drop, i would buy it. I love how diva sounds, i want to be committed to it, read the manual, use it seriously. Many will call me an idiot, for making uhe even more rich. Maybe i should have kept the money, and use V.r versions. ... i also bought it, because it's just a serial number.
Though, a free years ago, uhe had released an important divs update, and 3 or 4 days later'sorry guys, we forgot to remove a bomb/other, you must download the new version'...
I wonder if uhe plug-ins are coded to not work beyond 2020...2021... or are coded to not accept any future windows '11' update...to force users to grab a newer version... and to render obsolete the current versions. ...everything is possible.

So, after visiting the NI page at least 300 times, i finally decided to get DIVA


___________________________________________________________________________
Hello Donald,

thank you for purchasing a license for Diva! This is the username to authorize your product with:

Donald Trump

Here is your serial number:

MAGA-2019-NEWW-0RLD-0RD3-RMAR-T1AL-LAW

__________________________________________________________________________


Why did i only get Diva, instead of the whole pack ?
Because, after deep reflexion, i was like, ok
I like diva. Repro sounds nice, but it's nothing we haven't already heard 1 million times..diva can generate beautiful, lush choir/string/pads, perfect plucks, wonderful basses, great leads, etc etc etc... whereas repro, with its limited oscillators, modulators, etc, will always have a quite limited sound palette.
Regarding the effects. . Yes, satin is great. But it loves cpu. You're not gonna use it everywhere. Colorcopy, twangxxx, yes, those are nice little plug-ins. . But hey, your not going to use spring reverbs all the time. Finally, presswerk... yes, great UI, etc etc.. but at the end, for just a quick compression on a channel, there is nothing presswerk can do, that the 3 or 4 compressors that come with Cubase pro 10, can't. ...

Cool plug-ins. .. but at the end, it's just the cubase/other stock plug Ins, with 1 or 2 extra options, and a beautiful, warm GUI...nothing more, nothing less. And repro... I'm sure retrologue 2, with a bit of saturation/double chorus/bit reduction, can make 100% of the repro sounds.

I paid 90.. instead of 270. That makes 180 bucks less. It could be used to get zebra 3, when it releases by april 2021, or another instrument. I would love to have Uvi's Falcon, with that incredible Ircam granular algorithms. After watching many YouTube videos, and drooling over the specs, effects.. i read 'you need a fuking i-lok to run falcon'


So there you have it. Thanks for all your wonderful comments and opinions. It was really helpful.

By the way, i woke up this morning, my hair is much longer, my skin is much smoother, and my weenie is at least 2cm bigger.
The first positive side effects for going legit with plugins, are already happening ;)