MPC Plugin alert: Air OPx-4 Expansion - Pro Motion!

EnochLight wrote:Right, so the exact same number of presets for both Fabric XL and regular Fabric, just using half the samples for regular Fabric. Sorry - your initial post was a bit confusing. Just wanted to be sure.

Fixed it sorry, my adhd kicked in

So the Pro Motion OPx4 presets have some additional stuff at the top of the file 'ACVSspff', this is not present in a preset saved from within the plugin itself. Licensing related, or perhaps related to the Plugin Expansions folder?

I've just tried putting some of my Fabric XL presets into the 'Plugin Expansions folder', they show up within their own category in Fabric XL but they will not actually load.

Tried the same with some of my own OP4-x presets, and again, they show up in the preset list, but refuse to load.

Currently it seems Akai have locked this 'Plugin Expansions' folder to work only with official preset packs. If that's the case then that's lame AF.

Yeah, basically the Fabric XL comes with two directories, one for Fabric, and one for Fabric XL. You can copy one or both folders into the Plugin Expansions folder.

The Marco Polo Flavor Pro expansion is dog doo doo right now though... and needs an updated release.

MPC-Tutor wrote:So the Pro Motion OPx4 presets have some additional stuff at the top of the file 'ACVSspff', this is not present in a preset saved from within the plugin itself. Licensing related, or perhaps related to the Plugin Expansions folder?

I've just tried putting some of my Fabric XL presets into the 'Plugin Expansions folder', they show up within their own category in Fabric XL but they will not actually load.

Tried the same with some of my own OP4-x presets, and again, they show up in the preset list, but refuse to load.

Currently it seems Akai have locked this 'Plugin Expansions' folder to work only with official preset packs. If that's the case then that's lame AF.

Weird, because for the Fabric presets, I can load them in no problem from the main page, but hadn't tried from the Program interface.

Agree that it is lame if you *have* to have a SKU through Akai to put presets into this folder.

EDIT: Tutor... I can also load Fabric presets from the Program UI interface...

There's something weird and clearly not well tested going on here.

NearTao wrote:
The Marco Polo Flavor Pro expansion is dog doo doo right now though... and needs an updated release.

Ugh... that sucks. Does the OPx-4 Pro Motion presets load fine from within the plugin UI browser though?

I think that a new update will drop over the weekend as I can't belive they will use the same authorization server as for plugins.
In my mind they will use a different service for plugin instruments/effects and different one for expansions (plugins and system).

By Fabric presets I meant my own custom presets, rather than the ones they just released. I've tried a few different things now and cannot get user presets to load when installed into the Plugin Expansions folder - they show up and can be browsed, but when you double tap them it does nothing.

These custom presets all load fine when installed directly into the plugin folder itself (i.e. Synths > Opx4 > Presets), it just seems that the Plugin Expansions folder 'shortcut' is set to only work with official licensed presets.

I added some additional OPx4 presets to the Pro Motion folder, and they show in the list, but do nothing when loaded.

I suspect it's all related to the <ACVSspff > stuff at the top of the XPL file on these new presets.

NearTao wrote:

MPC-Tutor wrote:So the Pro Motion OPx4 presets have some additional stuff at the top of the file 'ACVSspff', this is not present in a preset saved from within the plugin itself. Licensing related, or perhaps related to the Plugin Expansions folder?

I've just tried putting some of my Fabric XL presets into the 'Plugin Expansions folder', they show up within their own category in Fabric XL but they will not actually load.

Tried the same with some of my own OP4-x presets, and again, they show up in the preset list, but refuse to load.

Currently it seems Akai have locked this 'Plugin Expansions' folder to work only with official preset packs. If that's the case then that's lame AF.

Weird, because for the Fabric presets, I can load them in no problem from the main page, but hadn't tried from the Program interface.

Agree that it is lame if you *have* to have a SKU through Akai to put presets into this folder.

EDIT: Tutor... I can also load Fabric presets from the Program UI interface...

There's something weird and clearly not well tested going on here.

dustyslices wrote:I think that a new update will drop over the weekend as I can't belive they will use the same authorization server as for plugins.
In my mind they will use a different service for plugin instruments/effects and different one for expansions (plugins and system).

I am surprised they are bothering to protect the presets because anybody could go page by page and just duplicate them anyways… plus I would think the money to be made would be to drive people to the instruments/effects anyways.

Edit: a healthy preset ecosystem would in theory generate more sales than paywalling everything.

NearTao wrote:

dustyslices wrote:I think that a new update will drop over the weekend as I can't belive they will use the same authorization server as for plugins.
In my mind they will use a different service for plugin instruments/effects and different one for expansions (plugins and system).

I am surprised they are bothering to protect the presets because anybody could go page by page and just duplicate them anyways… plus I would think the money to be made would be to drive people to the instruments/effects anyways.

Edit: a healthy preset ecosystem would in theory generate more sales than paywalling everything.

Well.. they had to establish some sort of authorization for upcoming "system expansions" so why wouldn't they milk the f**k out of preset expansions at the same time - especially if it will use the same authorization service?

btw. Tutor can you send me that <ACVSspff > header via DM pls ?
I'm not interested in these expansions enough to buy them in order to just have a look at the .xpl lol

TBH I don't really care about them protecting their paid presets, but it seems completely vindictive to stop third party developers from also utilising the 'Plugins Expansions' folder shortcut to make it easier to distribute their own preset collections.

The two systems should be able to sit side by side.

MPC-Tutor wrote:TBH I don't really care about them protecting their paid presets, but it seems completely vindictive to stop third party developers from also utilising the 'Plugins Expansions' folder shortcut to make it easier to distribute their own preset collections.

The two systems should be able to sit side by side.

Agreed... they did the work... they should get paid if they want to... but this is an extra level of anti community that smells bad.

dustyslices wrote:btw. Tutor can you send me that <ACVSspff > header via DM pls ?
I'm not interested in these expansions enough to buy them in order to just have a look at the .xpl lol

the <ACVSspff> tag is different per file... and my guess is contains a hardcoded path in it. I'm not sure if it is encrypted or some kind of checksum... or a key... I'll play around a bit with the file to see if I can figure anything interesting out.

EDIT: All I am going to say is wow... this is the lamest way to copy protect a preset I could imagine. They are junking up the file with ^M characters... somebody must've hacked a "copy protection" together on a dos or windows box... and it looks like they just took x number of characters of the header and munged it somehow.

EDIT2: If you "repair" the header, to remove all the <ACVSspff> junk... the patches load just fine from the file system and don't seem to need anything special... and as far as I can tell with A/B comparisons sound the same. This copy protection is really hokey.

NearTao wrote:

dustyslices wrote:btw. Tutor can you send me that <ACVSspff > header via DM pls ?
I'm not interested in these expansions enough to buy them in order to just have a look at the .xpl lol

the <ACVSspff> tag is different per file... and my guess is contains a hardcoded path in it. I'm not sure if it is encrypted or some kind of checksum... or a key... I'll play around a bit with the file to see if I can figure anything interesting out.

EDIT: All I am going to say is wow... this is the lamest way to copy protect a preset I could imagine. They are junking up the file with ^M file... somebody must've hacked a "copy protection" together on a dos or windows box... and it looks like they just took x number of characters of the header and munged it somehow.

so... just to be clear... currently none of you guys are able to load any preset despite you bought the expansion pack right ?

I can load presets for OPx-4 and Fabric/XL through the Program Interface and the MAIN menu interface.

To load Marco Polo Flavor Pro presets, you have to do it off of the filesystem using the folder menu in the Program Interface.

No matter what, all of these files need to be in the proper directory on the filesystem or they will refuse to load if they are burdened with the SKU header.

EDIT: Confirmed that putting "non entitled" files in the "Plugin Expansions" folder seems to not load. Given how boneheaded this seems to be implemented, I half suspect that with a little elbow grease we could figure out how to make content that is "entitled" to at least one of the three plugin expansions so you could load your own content into these existing expansions.

A few notes on the entitlement
* It appears at first glance at least, that it's always the same number of characters (haven't bothered to count yet), so it's possible this is a fixed length "key"
* The directory path and filename matter, so it seems they have somehow baked this into the key.
* if you replace the "entitlement header" that is obfuscating the real header with the plain text header the content will load properly as long as it is outside of the plugin expansions folder

NearTao wrote:If you "repair" the header, to remove all the <ACVSspff> junk... the patches load just fine from the file system and don't seem to need anything special... and as far as I can tell with A/B comparisons sound the same. This copy protection is really hokey.

Yes, the header contain name of the preset, public key and expansion codename (ARPE2 - for opx4).
It looks like firmware is not ready yet to read that header but preset will load just fine if you delete/swap the header with a "free" one.

EDIT:
just paste everything after <state> into any copy of factory preset and it will work just fine. <state> is a plugin...state lol so if you dump it into a copy of regular factory preset it will work just fine.