That's why a simple nag screen is better than anything else (Reaper attitude) :
let ppl use free/cracked version BUT remembering them to buy the full product again and again

The more they really USE the product, the more they will get the nag screen ... and so being pushed to buy it.
Nothing is blocked/destroyed.
And if ppl are not really using the product, they will simply ignore the nag screen when they get it once or two per year.

Good attitude, good maker/user relation.

A nag screen is coded in minutes, whereas "good" protection will take several months of human hours ... just to attract scene hackers :D
It may work (like it worked for Cubase for years). But here we see it may fail too and being worse than gain.

 

well if you are a legit user of some acustica plugins and you choose to use the r2r versions of those plugins for resource and efficiency reasons, what right has giancarlo got to ban your account? you have paid for that software. that surely is illegal as others have alluded to. if there are also some r2r plugins in there, amongst the legit ones, that you haven't purchased, well then they can say something, but it surely can't be legal to deny access to a software product you have bought and paid for. hopefully giancarlo has realised this. as others have said, that guy has been rubbing me up the wrong way for years. he's a strange dude. some of the acustica plugins are legit very good tho.

a nag screen if r2r versions are found on your system that you haven't purchased, no nag screen/ignore it if there are r2r versions that you have paid for.

 

I can't find confirmation of this uturn. or the post in question on facebook. anyone got a link?

 

I gave up my few legit plugins, deleted Aquarius and started using the cracked plugins. Everything is running nice and smooth on macOS M1.
Shame on Junkcarlo and his shady protection system. I'm pretty sure there's tons of legit users quitting AA for good.

 

You have to really read the EULA for some of these conditions. They can put in "right to terminate contract" for any number of reasons, including reverse engineering and modification. The question is really if the things in the EULA are legal to put in a EULA, in your country. It sucks even if it is legal.

I was going to check the manual for one of them; but it was 14gb and was going to take 3 hours to download.

 

once you go crack, you never go back

 

Giancarlo is stating big things in store for 2024, and i believe him. Hopefully those abandoning ship for cracks dont regret their decision. I am upset with the revelations of bloat etc, but have voiced my concerns by emailing support and writing in gear space forums etc. I believe they can change, and will change. They already have updated for a handful of plugins.

 

Acustica Coyote.

 

It's popularity doesn't shock me—anything that hasn't really been released before is a draw for most people, at least to try out—but I do find it odd, the people I've talked to or met who swear that they're invaluable tools to have, with a few essentially claiming that "many can't be replaced." Really? They can't be replaced? There's a chance I *might have given you that one... fifteen-plus years ago, but not today.
The funny thing to me is that, I wasn't aware of the ridiculous size of the plugins, or the company's flaky attitude towards bug fixes... and that was never brought up once by any of these people who love AA plugins so much... strange, right?

 

Believing him is like believing election promises.

 

I only tried a couple of Acustica demos over their Aqua manager, I have never been a fan, especially the added latency and the silence when you change a parameter is not good for my workflow. I followed the discussion about the recent R2R discoveries and I'm a bit surprised on what I've read about banning legit users if they have pirated plugins on their computer.
I tried to reverse engineering how Acustica check if a user is legit and if I understood it right, they scan the local computer's files and then collect the data on a remote server. It looks that this is not allowed by EU regulation and I've read the EULA before installing the Aqua software and I have not found any point about scanning and collecting local data. This is unacceptable.
If at some point some customer with money to spend on lawyers , will decide to sue the company for that privacy violation it will be a PITA for the company.
I live in Italy very near to Acustica, I know him to be a Delphi programmer and the first version of the software was made on it, then he switched to Embarcadero RAD Studio and then to the actual more standard development and for each framework switch he had to start almost from scratch due to the incompatibilities between the environments. The software is not an example of good programming and he appears here in Italy on several audio courses and he gets presented as a programming guru and genius. The more I read the evolving of the story and the more this is disturbing.

 

That is an interesting choice to start with. At the time, it was by far the most preferred RAD environment of PC virus authors. They were using it because they could roll up all the dependencies into the executable as a single file. Be that what it may. Obviously, that is just one small use case, and not the only reason someone would prefer it.

 

Nothing is black or white.
GC was one of the first doing volterra/dynamic convolution.
He was not alone.
TriTone was doing a good job at dynamic convolution ... but they used Pluggo and it was abandoned.
There are some more examples i don't remember now.

Another point : Steven Slate devs bought AA products ... and they REsampled them for THEIR products.
Basically, when you use SS consoles, you may be using some AA resampled products.
So they made their own engine, but not done the "isolate consoles parts" job with real consoles.

I'm not always against GC. Only when he is an obvious lier and manipulator.
BUT he was clearly a visionary when he started Nebula.

Tell me who was doing volterra/dynamic convolution when Nebula 1 was released ?
I only remember TriTone on my side.

The same way when Kemper was released more than 10 years ago : no one was doing it.
Even Mooer made it years before IK ToneX with their MNRS.
And now we get NAM profiler for free.

Profiling (whatever method) was a very narrow domain until recent years.
So everyone in this domain more than 10 years ago can be considered as innovators at minimum.

GC and Kemper are among those innovators.

 

I wouldn't call it "decision", but rather "result of a tantrum"

 

Guess at about the same time as Nebula (2006) there was also Focusrite Liquid Mix, from their manual:
"Every Liquid Mix channel uses dynamic convolution to provide 20 EQs and 40 compressors, with an expanding library available."

This product was based on the technology created by Sintefex — an excerpt from their ancient website:
"Sintefex's Dynamic Convolution is patented technology that uses a unique process of applying a collection of impulse responses taken from the original equipment to exactly simulate the sound of the original equipment."

 

source on the slate thing??? cuz thats crazy!!

 

Its true, back then they also released a plugin throwing shots at Slate; look at the words on the plugin:
"I dont care they stole my idea, i care they don't have any of their own"

Its also funny AA wrote this as all Acustica does is steal samples from renowned audio brands

 

It was on gearslutz ... before they locked the thread

@6ixcore
About "stealing" samples, it is PROFILING

If you got that way, Kemper is "stealing" guitar amps for 12 years.

But some ppl think like you it seems :
https://www.kemper-amps.com/forum/t...filing-amp-manufacturers-using-tech-to-block/