I'm pretty sure some of you, if not most of you won't believe me and think I'm affiliated with u-he somehow and want to keep you from using k'ed u-he plugins or so... But anyway, some of you won't and will find this VERY helpful I guess.

Ok, so what am I talking about?
After July, 4th, most of us were not able to open or use most u-he plugins anymore. It was called the "u-he" day. But then there were methods to reinvoke these timebombed plugins. And so I did. I installed the old Zebra 2.5.4 release from XDB which was told not to be timebombed and it worked again.
Also, I still had installed some other k'ed u-he plugins like ACE, Filterscape and Uhbik. So far so good. But after some days, I discovered a strange behavior on my system. It suddenly froze with a blank black screen. I couldn't do anything but make a hard reset. Then there were freezes with a white blank screen and also ther colors. First, I was not sure, what this was coming from, as it appeared in unregular intervals. But then I thought of the u-he plugins again and the timebomb. And I deleted all u-he plugins out of the plugins folders. Et voilà, no more freezes!!
So I installed some plugins again to test and verify my notion. I discovered the following:

Every time I started my DAW (It was Logic Pro X in my case and Vienna Ensemble Pro 5), there must have been a timebomb starting in the background, even if I did not open any u-he plugin.
But it got even funnier! After installing Zebra 2.5.4 again, I discovered that the Zebra timebomb was the black blank screen. And the Diva timebomb was a white blank screen. It seems that every plugin has it's own color. Isn't that funny? Funny guy, Urs Heckmann...
There was also a red colored blank screen, which must be connected to ACE or Uhbik and a green one.... But anyway, after deleting these plugins from my plugin folders, the problem ceased.

So I just wanted to tell you this in case you might have the same problem and still are brooding over this problem.

I hope I could help you a little bit!

 

Just loaded up Zebra2 and it is fully working again, (no demo screen pop-up), although the timebomb may probably hit again sometime in the future. As ArticStorm suggests make sure your DAWs can not access the internet when testing vsts

 

Exactly, as I already told you in that other place,
Urs is surely not so bitchy to screw with your system like that dumbass @ Tone2.
Also Urs is much more fanciful with his bombs, sprayed Diva, melting guis like a S.Dalì picture,
synths going outta tune like the VCO is analog for real and needs some servicing

Try the demo for some days and see what happens. *yes*

 

Yes i also only think that uhe:s timebombs is plugin related and to make only uhe plugins non functional nothing else
Also most of the s.c "craked" releases of uhe plugins have serial nr (except those R2R and early AiR who is patched but those are very old plugins) removed those seriel nr and the plugin is back to demo mode again..
Sounds like your Mac has been infected for some virus if so how is that possible? all my Mac friends say buy a Mac no virus i just laugh at them as Apple Osx is a big virus and yes i have a Mac
Or maybe the graphic card is starting to give up

 

I'm using the old zebra 2.5.4 by r2r...should be fine? no reported timebomb for this version I suppose?

 

@ Hans242 – The solution is very simple:
Don't use those new versions which have all the new time-counters, bombs + extra cheese by U-he. *no*
Use the older ones because the cracks work very good, regardless what the developers may say about it.

 

Ok, thank you all for the hints. I will delete all the k'ed u-he completely and then install only the old Zebra 2.5.4 by R2R and then I'll see what happens. *crossing thumbs*

 

It's not the plug-ins, that would be career suicide for a developer. Urs doesn't even implement home calling, he would never go so far as to do what you're insinuating.

 

price cuts! price cuts!

 

Until some cracker or team doesn't understand that trying to patch all bombs one by one + circumventing all clever tricks he uses is just masochism that brings nowhere, and decide to look at it another way and use another attack technique, you will see no 100% working crack.

Your solution for now are two:
- save and go legit.
- use DOA old release that includes legit serial (legit to the point a serial bought with stolen c.cards can be )

It woulb be nice to hear what Urs think about offers/discounts, but I think he's always been pretty clear on that,
So i wouldn't hold my breath.

 

what do tone2 do ? their watermarked stuff... ? or are they installing a huge trojan horse along the vstis ? or is the trojan horse called gladiator, nemesis, etc ? are they doing something really bad to consummers who have paid 200 euros ?

 

well, no comment from uhe about prices..

 

It's great at evolving soundscapes, rich metallic sounds, definitely all kind of noises, yes.
That's what I used it for for the moment. You can do whatever you want with it, it just needs some skills and some time tweaking, like any modular system

 

bazille interface may scare a few guys.

 

If that discount can make happen, i will buy zebra2 immediately.

 

i just read somewhere else that there is a zebra 2.5.4 and diva 1.1 released by the team DOA, who have bought the FULL RETAIL VERSIONS with some random credit card, and these versions are working flawlessly, can load all the presets (presets made for more recent versions like 2.6 or 2.7 may sound 5% different, but that's all), and will never timebomb or whatever, since they are the same versions people get when they buy the retail version.

so if that is the case, why people absolutely want the latest versions, when they probably can do everything they need with that ultra recent 2.5.4 version from 2013(and no, 2.5.4 wasn't made in 1939... well...)

DOA guys!!! it's not correct, what you are doing!!! i don't even what to know it it's true or not, i already have some great vstis i have bought.

So please, people, instead of searching for that 2.5.4 DOA versions, if you want to use the software, you should of course buy the legit copy from the legit retailer. don't google zebra 2.5.4 DOA, that is not nice !!

 

Sorry I'm late to this… we had a release coming up, which is always a stressful time

Ok, some of the things:

a) we don't do colourful timebombs that affect the system or anything else. Everything we do is always contained within our software. The only other thing we do is, we might launch a webbowser with a URL. This is also part of our feature set (e.g. link to our support web) and has nothing to do with phoning home, because there's no connection between our software and our server. Ever.

b) leaked serials may work on really old versions. We had at least two major upgrades in-between, adding new features. When I see downloads that contain the latest soundsets with the oldest version, it really hurts - not just because of the fact that those sound designers struggle, but also because a huge part of those presets will sound all wrong due to missing features. It's facepalm territory, or as we German's say, "zum Fremdschämen".

(funny thing is, a lot of people out there use our license retrieval system to ask for new serials for guenter raler and for karl sanser. With their actual email addresses… and then we might leave a comment on their facbook wall or something… always a great laugh at u-he headquarters )

c) Pricing… take Diva, sells for 179$. You get pretty good emulations of more than 5 vintage synths. Other companies would have made it 5 different plug-ins that sell for 100$ each. I think we do good prices, but we don't sell cheap.

d) Sales... we don't do sales. We do marketing upside down. We favour existing, loyal customers over fast growth. Part of that is, we do not charge for updates, even if we add new major features. The only time we ever took an upgrade fee was from Zebra1 to Zebra2, and it was 20$. That was in 2006. (The other form of marketing does a lot of discounts, but milks customers later - not my cup of tea)

e) Global problems. While yes, not everyone can afford our stuff, we can also not afford to cheap out - Germany is expensive to live in and the lives of 10 employees and their families need to be supported by what we sell every month. I wished we could solve the global economy, but I feel that we're not in the position to do so. We do however release freeware every now and then. We'd be thrilled to hear from people who use our free stuff to create songs that help change the world.

Cheers,

- Urs

 

It wasn't random credit cards, it was stolen ones. Those credit cards belonged to actual people who went through actual hell because some narcistic release group wanted to enjoy their "fame".

Seriously though, I wouldn't use Zebra 2.5.4 nor Diva 1.1 *no*