Did the demo get shown to you after a while?
Or did you do something specific beforehand that made this appear

 

I just loaded it into my DAW and then, because you mentioned 15 minutes, I waited, and then the demo screen appeared.

 

Did you install the +++ version? Because I waited almost 50 minutes in Ableton 12, and I didn’t face any issues
I put it back on for testing, it's been about 5 minutes and I'll check ableton from time to time.

 

Last edited: Nov 7, 2025 at 7:38 PM

A user on the sister site wrote this:
@thetattimaster

Spoiler

Yes, I had previously installed "Xfer Records Serum v2.0.23 VR", but as everyone knows, it had several issues, mainly with modulation and related features not working properly.

After that, I tested several recent patches by TCD by installing them over the original VR version. This latest patch seems to be working perfectly fine. It’s been almost three hours now, and everything is still running smoothly. I’ve used every feature, pressed every button, and assigned every modulation just to find any bugs, but I was unsuccessful.

I don’t see any reason for it to trigger a timebomb or show an error later on, since timebombs typically behave like demo restrictions where certain features are locked or time-limited until the demo period expires.

At this point, it’s safe to say this release feels perfect. I’m not jumping to conclusions yet, but three hours of flawless use is pretty solid in my opinion.

 

Yes, BUT there has been so much broken stuff in these incremental releases there's no way to definitively determine that any of them are safe to use and won't bomb at any given moment. It seems to me that the dev of this thing puts more time into injecting more bloated bombing code into this thing than actually fixing the plethora of bugs in the legit version. Strikes me somewhat odd that after so many iterations post v2.0 release of this thing that so many bugs still exist in every one of these "updates". Kind of smacks of too much time bomb code coming back and biting the legit version in the ass. No way I would ever "buy" anything from this dev.

 

We need to be patient and give TCD and VR some time. The more time bombs they put into the process, the better it is for us.
I've had the plugin open for almost 40 minutes without doing anything specific to see when it will give me the demo warning. Before, it was up to 50 minutes

 

I kept Serum 2 open for exactly 1 hour and 12 minutes in Ableton 12 on Windows 10, and I didn't face any issues. No demo appeared.
Let me point out a few things:
First, I turned off the automatic update tick in the General section.
Second, in the Host section, I had blocked these a long time ago.

Spoiler

127.0.0.1 xferrecords.com
127.0.0.1 104.28.21.50

Third, when installing +++TCD, I only checked the VST3 option.

I'm tired for now. Tomorrow, I plan to work on a project, and I'll be using Serum in that project. If there are any issues, they'll likely show up then.

 

I can see the laughter on Steve Duda's face from here, literally

 

You can't literally see it, can you?

 

The good thing is that there are earlier versions that do actually work and are production worthy... So let em laugh.

 

When I worked on the 1st available fully unlocked Serum release years back (v1.33b4), there already were a lot of traps & timebombs.
This behaviour increased dramatically when I cracked v1.35b1 a year later but what I had was a team of testers here in the forum
and on the sister site and the testing phase took several weeks to make sure everything is working.

That's what TCD is missing. Testers who show the issues before it's getting shared in public.
It's better to take the time it requires than to be the 1st to share it.