Deactivating plugins episode 100

EnochLight wrote: Yeah but - daily or every time you start a project (as mentioned above) is absolutely *NOT* how the system is supposed to work. Guaranteed that's not "as intended". I'd keep submitting requests and blow up their social media channels if this were happening to me (full disclosure: I do not get this error at all on my Live II nor my Force).

True - I would hold them by the balls at every given opportunity.

<rantMode>
In my opinion, the authorisation check should be completely offline with an option to manually enter the serial directly into your machine, without any internet connection - there’s no „buts” and no „what ifs” - it’s my machine since the second my money landed into their account and I don’t want to rely on their additional services or faulty servers. Seriously, we need to stop normalising such rapist behaviours from the large companies that will take your freedoms, one small step at the time „for our safety and convenience”. Can’t wait the day they launch „most powerful” cloud based stem separation or some other shit and just to go full Adobe at later date if you let them, running background checks on YOUR device as to what you’re using and how you using it, or even running some AI training that will implement „intelligent” sample chopping for „your convenience”.
Call me paranoid but I can clearly see a message like this popping up in the future:

„Due to regional / licensing restrictions from one of our partners, the loaded sample cannot be modified. For more information please visit: https://yadayada.yadayada/info.html
To subscribe or buy more tokens please visit: https://yadayada.yadayada/topup.html
Sorry for any inconvenience.”
Yeah… small step at the time…

</rantMode>

Just adding my two cents to that old thread.... I'm just back from touring with my MPC Live and unfortunately I had to reactivate my plugins at least before every second concert, either by asking for the venue's wi-fi or getting a hotspot from my phone. ...Of course wasting precious soundcheck minutes every time that happened...

I had toured several times with my MPC Live (and other MPC models before that) without getting any problem whatsoever but this time I had the unfortunate idea of using Mini-D for one of the tracks.

I'm really angry at Akai for this absurd web-licensing thing. This not the kind of behaviour I expect from a professional music instrument. I shouldn't have to ask for permission to use plugins I already paid for before every show.

...now if someone knows some kind of hack that would allow us to keep permanent plugin activation on the hard drive I'd be glad to hear about it. Until then I'll have to limit my use of optional plugins, for fear of having to drop tracks from my setlist in case I have to play in a venue with bad data reception....

That sucks. You can always sample the plugin audio into the MPC.

B-Wise wrote:That sucks. You can always sample the plugin audio into the MPC.

That doesn't do anyone a lot of good if you are using the plugin as part of your performance. Using this logic you can also just playback the entire set from your phone...at your house...through the Internet.

This is the reason I have not bought a single plug-in. I use the Mpc for sampling and midi, nothing else. I know there are some tempting FX out there to buy. Some are really expensive for what you get, some are actually a fair/cheaper price, but this whole "activation thing" has me staying away from it all.

Nutrisse wrote:

B-Wise wrote:That sucks. You can always sample the plugin audio into the MPC.

That doesn't do anyone a lot of good if you are using the plugin as part of your performance. Using this logic you can also just playback the entire set from your phone...at your house...through the Internet.

It's better than no sound at all. You can still set up an sample version project with macros setups so you can still put on a performance. Regardless, Akai needs to fix this issue!

B-Wise wrote:That sucks. You can always sample the plugin audio into the MPC.

Of course... but in that case part of my performance was manipulating the synth sound with the q-links, so that fun real-time aspect would be lost.

re201 wrote:…I'm really angry at Akai for this absurd web-licensing thing. This not the kind of behaviour I expect from a professional music instrument. I shouldn't have to ask for permission to use plugins I already paid for before every show.

...now if someone knows some kind of hack that would allow us to keep permanent plugin activation on the hard drive I'd be glad to hear about it. Until then I'll have to limit my use of optional plugins, for fear of having to drop tracks from my setlist in case I have to play in a venue with bad data reception....

Unfortunatelly you’re on your own here as it is at least a „grey area” both legally and ethically (latter one being a bit of a stretch lol)
Just FYI, the authorisation screen on your machine doesn’t entirely work the way as it might look on the surface.
What you see over there is not a list of plugins that announce themselves as the ones that need to be unlocked, rather it’s a list of plugins that system should lock and apply authorisation to, meaning that if you remove certain plugin from that list, it won’t be checked for the serial number. That’s about as much as I can tell you, but you wouldn’t believe how many ways you can skin the akai’s „authorisation cat” and all of that just because of their broken system. What grinds my gears is that despite, I’ve paid for most of the plugins, I still have to resort to cracking that sh**t up

re201 wrote:

B-Wise wrote:That sucks. You can always sample the plugin audio into the MPC.

Of course... but in that case part of my performance was manipulating the synth sound with the q-links, so that fun real-time aspect would be lost.

Yes I get but at least with samples in the drum program you can setup a alternative project that can still performance stuff with the available tools. This is not ideal, but it's better no sound at all because the plugin won't activate. I hope they fix this soon!

[/quote]
Yes I get but at least with samples in the drum program you can setup a alternative project that can still performance stuff with the available tools. This is not ideal, but it's better no sound at all because the plugin won't activate. I hope they fix this soon![/quote]

Yes, I understand. I've done a lot of "plan B" programming over the years with the MPC. I know a lot of stuff can be done with resampling etc (the MPC auto-sampler, despite its quirks, has been quite useful).

The problem is that if we're paying for "new tools" (in this case the plugins) but then right from the get-go we always have to preemptively spend time on a plan B for when these tools will fail (especially if they're almost literally programmed to fail because of the authorization thing)... then it just defeats the purpose of having these new tools. No thanks. I'll just stick to using my hardware synths.

One other problem anyway is that at this point the MPC's CPU is a bit under-powered for all these synths/FX... especially if one has a long setlist. I have to be pretty careful and only use the essential FX, etc, otherwise after a few songs the CPU starts getting close to 90-100% (the stop-stop command can reset the CPU but it doesn't work if you want the set to be non-stop).

re201 wrote:Yes, I understand. I've done a lot of "plan B" programming over the years with the MPC. I know a lot of stuff can be done with resampling etc (the MPC auto-sampler, despite its quirks, has been quite useful).

The problem is that if we're paying for "new tools" (in this case the plugins) but then right from the get-go we always have to preemptively spend time on a plan B for when these tools will fail (especially if they're almost literally programmed to fail because of the authorization thing)... then it just defeats the purpose of having these new tools. No thanks. I'll just stick to using my hardware synths.

One other problem anyway is that at this point the MPC's CPU is a bit under-powered for all these synths/FX... especially if one has a long setlist. I have to be pretty careful and only use the essential FX, etc, otherwise after a few songs the CPU starts getting close to 90-100% (the stop-stop command can reset the CPU but it doesn't work if you want the set to be non-stop).

Like I said it sucks that we have to deal with these issues on a professional piece of gear. All I can do is offer emotional support & a workaround. I'll even add one of these things for Akai

Once again I hope they fix this ASAP!