Received it Thursday:

Spoiler: E-mail

"The Sonnox team is delighted to announce that as of today, there will not be any need to have a physical iLok, or active internet connection, to use Sonnox Plugins.
(Please note that the Oxford Restore Bundle and Pro-Codec Plugins are coming soon).

How can I enable machine authorisation for my Oxford plugins?

Please follow this link to our support team's article on how to get your Oxford Plugins machine authorised.

Other changes that come into effect as of today.

1) Sonnox no longer charges a license re-registration fee for license transfers.
Please note that iLok does still charge a fee.
This change only applies to the additional fee that was previously applied by Sonnox.
2) Sonnox no longer charges fees for lost and stolen licenses for users without iLok's Zero Down Time or Theft Loss Coverage."​

Wonder if it has to do with the recent instability with iLok-authorized products/plugins - which happened worldwide. Even the physical "offline" iLok dongles were unable to authorize their registered licenses.

Interested if anyone could provide greater insight on this recent meltdown iLok event.

Anyway,

-------

EDIT:

Pardon my stupidity. What they're doing is adding the option to use iLok Machine Authorization, not getting rid of iLok.

But the iLok instabilities were a real thing.

 

Last edited: Jun 5, 2024

And guess who's back! Hooray

 

I did not notice any downtime at all from Sonnox iLok'd (cloud) EQ. ILok also had that issue with newest MacOS update for about 2 weeks?
Ditching iLok was probably a pretty big business decision for Sonnox. It would probably take more than some downtime.

 

Especially considering the warez scenario.

I did see a post on Instagram from the mixing engineer of Twenty One Pilots - he posted a screenshot of the iLok auth error and mentioned losing half a day's work because of that - and called out a change from the plugin developers in their copy-protection method. Can't remember the guys name

 

...also, i experienced it with all my McDSP plugins. Thought that my iLok account was being hacked, freaked out and changed the password immediately.

 

Who works on anything on a computer for half a day without saving periodically?

 

What I got from his post is that most of his plugins were iLok authorized, and he was unable to work since they won't activate.

 

I just checked on their website, and there's nowhere a statement that they are dropping iLok.
The only thing that seems to be different is that for most of their plugins there's now the possibility for iLok machine based activation, which wasn't (as far as I remember) the last time I checked about a year ago.

 

EDIT:

Just remembered that Pro Tools uses iLok. And the industry uses Pro Tools. If it was really global, that for sure left a mark.

 

Last edited: Jun 5, 2024

May that satisfy. (WRONG, you're right)



EDIT:

Joke's on me. You're right, should've read it again. Indeed, they're adding iLok Machine as an option

 

Last edited: Jun 5, 2024

He says he could not get into any sessions.

So that guy is using some DAW where he cannot disable the plugins before loading a project?

 

It was a major iLok services outage which lasted almost two days. A real nightmare for all users with iLok protected software

 

Maybe it affected Pro Tools directly?

 

In the replied comment, he says he doesn't use iLok Cloud. How come the dongles/machine auth still getting affected by that? Bizarre!

 

I honestly don't know, but I've read comments by people who had issues even with iLok dongles during this outage

 

Careful what you wish for.

Look how long it took for ilok to be beat by R2R and AUDiOUTOPiA before we were able to get our grubby little hands on all that top level ilok software.

If certain developers were to walk away from ilok today due to the recent issues and switch to some other form of protection, we could well be in for a very long and bleak winter in terms of future releases.

 

They are still very cool

 

My point was that saying someone lost a half a day of work due to iLok being down, is being melodramatic. I have no reason to think that guy doesn't know what he is doing, but that is the only other option. Plugins not authorizing does not stop the user from disabling a failed plugin/s while the DAW is being started. That is similar to some worker saying, the systems down. Guess we can all leave work now!

Usually it is some keyboard shortcut, or in the case of Protools it is this: (From Google) Make sure, Pro Tools is already running. Now, choose the session you want to open, hold down shift and double click on the session. It will open with all plugins deactivated from the beginning.

Big companies like Sonnox do not make rash decisions based on 1 guys tweet or whatever. Nor would iLok let them. There are some decent sized $ numbers involved, contracts, programmers with work changing things, etc. Getting dropped like this could cause other customers (of iLok) to consider doing the same thing.

 

Thing is (and I'm not sure if ít was the case) - Pro Tools requires an active iLok license to be used. If for some reason the ability to validate this license failed, he may've not be able to open the sessions.

Again, would need someone to confirm if Pro Tools was affected.

Sure they wouldn't drop iLok cause one guy rant, but having guys like him ranting may show us that the frustration with iLok may also come from inside the industry. Adam Hawkins is a very respected mix engineer.

 

The implication of "lost work" is not, I showed up and could not login to my iLok today. It is "I had a session open for 4 hours and lost everything I did." Either way, typing more about this is not worth my time. All my Sonnox plugins are working just fine.