Samplitude good, Magix bad
-
- KVRAF
- 4584 posts since 21 Sep, 2005
-
- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 868 posts since 18 Sep, 2007
They simply haven’t delivered Spectralayers 8 even though it’s been out for nearly 2 weeks, apparently Steinberg sent them upgrade codes on the 30th. Worse, they simply can’t be bothered with updating customers or responding to support requests. Worse still, I receive 5 spam mails from them daily offering me a virtual cornucopia of upgrade possibilities even for products I don’t own!
I just want the product I paid for.
I dumped x3, x5, and now I will dump x6 before I even get started. All because of poor support. I should have bought Cubase.
Magix. Please sell Samplitude to a company that isn’t bizarre and unprofessional.
I just want the product I paid for.
I dumped x3, x5, and now I will dump x6 before I even get started. All because of poor support. I should have bought Cubase.
Magix. Please sell Samplitude to a company that isn’t bizarre and unprofessional.
-
- KVRist
- 439 posts since 8 May, 2007
Hi SAW75,
In the title, you have "Samplitude good," but I think that it's becoming bad.
It seems to be less and less stable as the developer(s) have messed around with the code over the past few years. Pro X6 test version has the same problems with VST3 that X5 did. The developer(s) don't seem to understand VST3 very well at all. For more than two years, I've been trying to get them to address various issues, but VST3 is not on their list of fixes, despite claims to the contrary. In particular, there is something that they are doing wrong with the handshaking or protocol --- probably something simple that they are oblivious to. In the new test version, I'm seeing crashes for VST2.
I'm not upgrading either, and I would advise others to take a very close look at any upgrade before purchasing to make sure it's still usable.
Occasionally, I do get reasonable replies from Magix support, but yes, they don't really communicate often. However, I've had disappointing experiences with other DAW manufacturers, most notably Cakewalk long ago who failed to provide any useful information whatsoever for seven out of seven technical problems I submitted.
Regards,
Dave Clark
In the title, you have "Samplitude good," but I think that it's becoming bad.
It seems to be less and less stable as the developer(s) have messed around with the code over the past few years. Pro X6 test version has the same problems with VST3 that X5 did. The developer(s) don't seem to understand VST3 very well at all. For more than two years, I've been trying to get them to address various issues, but VST3 is not on their list of fixes, despite claims to the contrary. In particular, there is something that they are doing wrong with the handshaking or protocol --- probably something simple that they are oblivious to. In the new test version, I'm seeing crashes for VST2.
I'm not upgrading either, and I would advise others to take a very close look at any upgrade before purchasing to make sure it's still usable.
Occasionally, I do get reasonable replies from Magix support, but yes, they don't really communicate often. However, I've had disappointing experiences with other DAW manufacturers, most notably Cakewalk long ago who failed to provide any useful information whatsoever for seven out of seven technical problems I submitted.
Regards,
Dave Clark
-
- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 868 posts since 18 Sep, 2007
@dave The few plugs I use are working well. A combination of vst2 and vst3 on x6. That said I am no expert on vst3 and it’s features. Overall I am experiencing stability. I am using the program mostly to edit light multitrack projects that I have recorded outside the box.
So Magix did respond and said for technical reasons they could not send out Spectralayers licenses and it would be a few more weeks. I am on the fence… I specifically chose Samplitude for my current project but they offered me a refund and I could go with Cubase now at the start of things. X6 is working for me but Magix seems like less than a pro company to me and I worry about bugs and issues down the line.
Should I except this refund and make the switch to Cubase now?
So Magix did respond and said for technical reasons they could not send out Spectralayers licenses and it would be a few more weeks. I am on the fence… I specifically chose Samplitude for my current project but they offered me a refund and I could go with Cubase now at the start of things. X6 is working for me but Magix seems like less than a pro company to me and I worry about bugs and issues down the line.
Should I except this refund and make the switch to Cubase now?
-
- KVRist
- 162 posts since 20 Jul, 2009
I have Acid Pro 10 and there is a wealth of bugs with it such as VSTs resetting to default on adding a plugin or MIDI not being received by VST3 instruments. Magix removed a paid feature of the Stem Maker in Acid Pro 10 via an update.
I have dealt with their support and the site for logging the tickets which is designed to stop as much as possible the logging of the issue and then it takes them ages to respond and reply to emails, and in the end just logged it as another bug which they probably will never fix.
I wish I had never bothered with Magix.
I have dealt with their support and the site for logging the tickets which is designed to stop as much as possible the logging of the issue and then it takes them ages to respond and reply to emails, and in the end just logged it as another bug which they probably will never fix.
I wish I had never bothered with Magix.
-
- KVRian
- 980 posts since 6 Jul, 2009
It may not be a bad idea to get the refund and switch.SAW75 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 08, 2021 11:55 am @dave The few plugs I use are working well. A combination of vst2 and vst3 on x6. That said I am no expert on vst3 and it’s features. Overall I am experiencing stability. I am using the program mostly to edit light multitrack projects that I have recorded outside the box.
So Magix did respond and said for technical reasons they could not send out Spectralayers licenses and it would be a few more weeks. I am on the fence… I specifically chose Samplitude for my current project but they offered me a refund and I could go with Cubase now at the start of things. X6 is working for me but Magix seems like less than a pro company to me and I worry about bugs and issues down the line.
Should I except this refund and make the switch to Cubase now?
I'm on Suite X3 at the moment, but I'm not sure I'll upgrade. Windows 11 is around the corner, VST3-only is around the corner, needing to upgrade my computer is around the corner... With those and other such considerations in mind, it's hard to see myself sticking to Samplitude. VST3 is hit or miss for me in X3, and it sounds like that is an on-going issue with newer versions of Samplitude.
A lot of the features that got me onto the Samplitude when Pro X have mostly been incorporated into other DAWs at this point (although the Object Editor is still its own thing), and Samplitude releases are now trying to generally play catch-up to other DAWs. MIDI editing in Samplitude has always been fine but hardly pleasurable, and now that other DAWs have caught up to Samplitude's exclusive features (to reasonable levels), it's hard to see why I should continue putting up with Samplitude's MIDI implementation.
Now, I would be much more likely to stick with Samplitude if I were confident in Magix as a company. But I'm not. They have no direction whatsoever. Other than buy-and-hold-Intellectual-Property, they have no strategy or vision. The portfolio of products they've accumulated the past few years make no sense. Everything feels like abandonware scraped up and patched together, and the development team seems to be out of their league keeping the random assortment of software operational. Support? LOL -- try going to their forum, it will take a month or two for another user (and never a company rep) to answer your question, if it gets answered at all.
They need to retire most of their portfolio and focus on actually improving and modernizing a small number of core products. Since I don't see this happening, it's hard to recommend staying with Samplitude.
-
- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 868 posts since 18 Sep, 2007
I specifically complained about this to them. The support system seems to be set up as a deterrent to actual communication. I am really put off by it.boomt wrote: ↑Thu Jul 08, 2021 2:08 pm I have dealt with their support and the site for logging the tickets which is designed to stop as much as possible the logging of the issue and then it takes them ages to respond and reply to emails, and in the end just logged it as another bug which they probably will never fix.
I wish I had never bothered with Magix.
-
- KVRist
- 439 posts since 8 May, 2007
Hi all,
As a caution about VST3, I should relate a few things I have found and reported to Magix, especially for those of you who find that VST3s are working. Some plugins (for example the more recent MeldaProduction's plugins) can work sometimes and then not other times. So each time you edit a project, a specific plugin may work or may not work. A plugin I wrote myself worked in individual channels, but in the master channel, worked with live audio but not with WAV export. The same behavior was found by Magix support for a Fab Filter VST3 plugin. A Blue Cat Audio plugin, if I recall correctly Axiom, had one parameter that always failed to initialize properly. Sampletank 4 VST3 transposes MIDI by two semitones downward upon save and reload. So what you hear when you first work with it probably won't be what you hear the next time you work on a project. Interestingly, you can "resync" ST4 with the host (exclamation mark in ST4) and each time you load a project with ST4 in it and it will cause the proper tones to be emitted. This behavior itself indicates that proper communication with VST3 plugins is seriously deficient.
In order to ensure that all VST3 plugins are working, you have to tediously check everything out each time you load a project and each time you export something to WAV, listening for unexpected dissonances, lack of modulations, etc., etc. If you don't do this, you cannot be sure that everything is OK each time you use Samplitude.
In closing, I should also mention that Magix is aware of these problems and has acknowledged that they exist; they continue to ask for patience while these problems are addressed. But it does not appear to me that they are actually working on VST3, but instead on such things as GUI details like making the title bar of the first loaded project the same size as subsequently loaded projects instead of stretching all the way across the screen. Yes, this looked a little weird, but I'd rather have ST4 working correctly. I'd rather have Axiom fully instantiated without negecting one of the parameters.
Regards,
Dave Clark
As a caution about VST3, I should relate a few things I have found and reported to Magix, especially for those of you who find that VST3s are working. Some plugins (for example the more recent MeldaProduction's plugins) can work sometimes and then not other times. So each time you edit a project, a specific plugin may work or may not work. A plugin I wrote myself worked in individual channels, but in the master channel, worked with live audio but not with WAV export. The same behavior was found by Magix support for a Fab Filter VST3 plugin. A Blue Cat Audio plugin, if I recall correctly Axiom, had one parameter that always failed to initialize properly. Sampletank 4 VST3 transposes MIDI by two semitones downward upon save and reload. So what you hear when you first work with it probably won't be what you hear the next time you work on a project. Interestingly, you can "resync" ST4 with the host (exclamation mark in ST4) and each time you load a project with ST4 in it and it will cause the proper tones to be emitted. This behavior itself indicates that proper communication with VST3 plugins is seriously deficient.
In order to ensure that all VST3 plugins are working, you have to tediously check everything out each time you load a project and each time you export something to WAV, listening for unexpected dissonances, lack of modulations, etc., etc. If you don't do this, you cannot be sure that everything is OK each time you use Samplitude.
In closing, I should also mention that Magix is aware of these problems and has acknowledged that they exist; they continue to ask for patience while these problems are addressed. But it does not appear to me that they are actually working on VST3, but instead on such things as GUI details like making the title bar of the first loaded project the same size as subsequently loaded projects instead of stretching all the way across the screen. Yes, this looked a little weird, but I'd rather have ST4 working correctly. I'd rather have Axiom fully instantiated without negecting one of the parameters.
Regards,
Dave Clark
-
- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 868 posts since 18 Sep, 2007
You are literally killing me man hahah… because I decided to hang on to Samplitude anyway. But seriously, I am sending Magix my album with a note attached that says,
I made this despite you
lol
I made this despite you
lol
-
- KVRist
- 439 posts since 8 May, 2007
I think that's a great idea!
-
- KVRAF
- 2319 posts since 10 Jul, 2008 from Orbit NE US
gadgets an gizmos..make noise https://soundcloud.com/crystalawareness Restocked: 3/24
old stuff http://ww.dancingbearaudioresearch.com/
if this post is edited -it was for punctuation, grammar, or to make it coherent (or make me seem coherent).
old stuff http://ww.dancingbearaudioresearch.com/
if this post is edited -it was for punctuation, grammar, or to make it coherent (or make me seem coherent).
-
- KVRist
- 66 posts since 14 Mar, 2007
For years I have been in a love-hate relationship with Samplitude. I started my composing with Samplitude.
It was great @ Samplitude 9 pro. But as they went on making upgrades, their stability took a massive hit.
Sudden midi key / scale changes have there since 9 pro. Never happens with Reaper or Reason. Sudden Crashes are common since long.
Couple of years back, Samplitude Pro X3 just wiped out my entire project, just like that! I asked for help but to no use.
I even mailed that project to Kraznet, even he couldn't figure out what had happened! This incident shook me immensely.
So I never depended on Samplitude for any outside client's, commercial projects where I was on a deadline.
Still I upgraded to Sam Pro X5 out of my sheer love and nostalgia for SAM, but it still tortures me in between.
Just yesterday, it was crashing for just automating a volume of a track!!
You just never know when SAM will crash on you, in middle of the session, anytime, anywhere! Nothing you can do about it!
Yet version after the other, we - the lovers of SAM have been shelling out money hoping to have a good rock solid, stable & permanent DAW, yet they go on upgrading the versions without concentrating on stability part of it!
How am I supposed to upgrade for $249 after all these years of loyal support and getting a sub-standard piece of software???
It was great @ Samplitude 9 pro. But as they went on making upgrades, their stability took a massive hit.
Sudden midi key / scale changes have there since 9 pro. Never happens with Reaper or Reason. Sudden Crashes are common since long.
Couple of years back, Samplitude Pro X3 just wiped out my entire project, just like that! I asked for help but to no use.
I even mailed that project to Kraznet, even he couldn't figure out what had happened! This incident shook me immensely.
So I never depended on Samplitude for any outside client's, commercial projects where I was on a deadline.
Still I upgraded to Sam Pro X5 out of my sheer love and nostalgia for SAM, but it still tortures me in between.
Just yesterday, it was crashing for just automating a volume of a track!!
You just never know when SAM will crash on you, in middle of the session, anytime, anywhere! Nothing you can do about it!
Yet version after the other, we - the lovers of SAM have been shelling out money hoping to have a good rock solid, stable & permanent DAW, yet they go on upgrading the versions without concentrating on stability part of it!
How am I supposed to upgrade for $249 after all these years of loyal support and getting a sub-standard piece of software???
