Quote onesecondglance:

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maybe in the Magazine Feedback section? since it's specifically about SoS? you'll be more likely to get a direct response from the mag then, too.

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DONE HERE!

J

Quote Tui:

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Quote redleicester:

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Do all Macs have memory faults?

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Well no, obviously. Mine don't.

Apple doesn't manufacture RAM, so the RAM chips are essentially the same as in any other PC. Macs really ARE PCs. There are more and more people who buy Macs with the intention to primarily run Windows on them. Strange, but true.

What I meant was, my (outdated) version of PLAY clearly has some bugs, but it's not unusable in the way some people describe it. I was wondering whether PLAY is also highly sensitive to minor faults in RAM. That was only a wild guess, nothing more. I'm still trying to figure out why PLAY won't work on your systems.

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When you figure it out, do let me and countless others know, then I suggest you tell EWQL, as they either refuse to respond to their "fill in a support question" forms, or just ban users off their forums for requesting help...

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Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

To be clear, I'm not defending in any shape or form EW's apparent disinterest in sorting out bugs.

Also, I'd imagine that writing the code for a really stable and complex sample playback engine isn't exactly a trivial task. When I think about it, every single one of the one's I use, from Ivory to EXS24, have some kind of a bug.

redleicester, if you come across one that doesn't, will you let me know?

You know what the really annoying thing is?

Often as not the bugs are not actually in the realtime sample playback code (which really actually is not that complicated), but in the GUI!

A large part of the cause (in general I dont know about in PLAY) is that the designers of audio plugins seem unable to use the standard widgets supplied by the OS and seem to feel an irresistible urge to invent their own, non standard interfaces.
Not only does it breed bugs, but it means that the normal assumptions about user interface design go out the window, everything from input focus behaviour to keyboard shortcuts gets seriously unpredictable.

Please, user interface designers CUT IT OUT, it is annoying.

Also, please stop rendering variable controls as knobs (it does not work on a computer screen and there are at least three ways of doing it, and they all suck), In fact stop trying to mimic physical control panel layouts on screen, it does not work! There is nothing wrong with using sliders, radio buttons and spinbuttons to control a plugin, and for dead certain, I dont need a plugin emulation of some random compressor taking up half my 1600 * 1200 monitor!

This rant bought to you by a 'Creative' sandblaster <spit> driver that I spent nearly 20 minutes trying to work out how to control.
Never did get it to work in a sane way.

Regards, Dan.

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Audiophiles use phono leads because they are unbalanced people!

Quote Tui:

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some kind of a bug.

redleicester, if you come across one that doesn't, will you let me know?

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Wish I hah! As I have said, I totally agree with you - plugin coding must be a complete minefield and something I would freely admit that I would struggle to comprehend in principle, let alone manage to do myself. However, simple matters of customer support not abust, considered marketing not self-aggrandising, and perhaps a drop of realism goes a long way: despite their claims, Play is NOT the world's first 64-bit sample player, nor is it the world's first networked sample player (in both cases VSL got there a long time earlier, and in the latter case, the network control still doesn't exist even two years after they announced it).

The simple fact is that there are some people such as yourself who have no trouble whatsoever, and for whom Play performs as advertised (barring the fact you use multiple instances for single instruments instead of a single instance multi-timbrally.) However, there are also many for whom Play does not perform at all well, and it would appear from this thread and others that for the majority of those the "bug" or "issues" or "problems" are deal breakers - not something that can be worked around in a simple manner. For those people to be left out in the cold, or fobbed off with either inane excuses, ill-aimed and ill-informed rhetoric or worse, ignored completely is frankly shocking behaviour.

I have total sympathy for EW - to tackle their own player and bring the design in-house is a brave step, if not unique to them, yet the way they have gone about supporting the venture is both morally and practically reprehensible.

Plenty of other developers have had teething problems with their plugins and have rushed to update, change, modify and mend their software whilst keeping users well and truly in the loop as to what is going on: in the case of Play, the only cogent support that has been forthcoming for many of us was to be told our systems were faulty, inadequate, incorrectly installed or otherwise useless and that it had nothing whatsoever to do with Play - then half a dozen months and updates later it suddenly works rather better if not anywhere approaching what one might deem normal. Now surely that leaves a bit of a bad taste in one's mouth, given the installation, hardware and other software hasn't changed a jot, therefore if one was to believe support, Play should still be as inoperable as it was on day one... Madness.

To add a lighter note towards the end, and put things in some sort of context, I strongly believe that much of the ire and rancour is from those who used to have multiple Gigastudio rigs: when it worked, it was golden, but more often than not it was a complete pig, with successive updates serving only to introduce new problems as quickly as they fixed old ones. They were completely caught out by the arrival of Hyperthreading processors, leaving the platform single-threaded, and one ended up jumping through all sorts of hoops recommended by internet colleagues rather than "support" in order to set up systems specifically to run GS alone.

Thankfully those days are past, and GS3.2 and 4 were excellent, and their demise is a terrible shame, but for the interregnum variants it was a horrendous headache. Since then, we have been blessed with many excellent and stable plugins, whether due to simpler coding or better beta testing is moot, but it does serve to make Play stand out all the more like a sore thumb.

I do reiterate that I sincerely hope it is fixed - not only have EWQL had thousands off me over the years, and a great deal of usage and exposure, but furthermore I WANT to be able to use SD2, Goliath and others as regularly as I have used RA, SD1 and Colossus in the past. However, if they are not up to the job of being run on a large multi-machine rig in a mission critical environment, then they belong on the shelf.

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Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

play is very unstable
it actually wouldnt run the lience from my ilok so i contacted ewql and they were very helpful but the program is just very unstable..its like I hope it works this time kinda thing

Quote dmills:

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Often as not the bugs are not actually in the realtime sample playback code (which really actually is not that complicated), but in the GUI!

A large part of the cause (in general I dont know about in PLAY) is that the designers of audio plugins seem unable to use the standard widgets supplied by the OS and seem to feel an irresistible urge to invent their own, non standard interfaces.
Not only does it breed bugs, but it means that the normal assumptions about user interface design go out the window, everything from input focus behaviour to keyboard shortcuts gets seriously unpredictable.

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Interesting point, and it coincides with my observation that whenever audio software has a bug, 99% of the time it appears to be graphics related. This is even true for Logic itself (i.e. screen redraws, font behaviour). Audio hardly ever seems to get affected.

One ramification of non-standard GUIs would be the constant need to update the plug-in, every time the OS gets upgraded, since it is highly like that Apple or MS change the OS in ways that clash with non-standard apps. If that is what's occurring, it would explain a lot... For a start, it would explain why many plug-ins get updated frequently, with every OS cycle, without any obvious changes in functionality. Hmmmmmmmm...........

Quote Tui:

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Quote Steve Hill:

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Quote Tui:

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Clearly, PLAY isn't broken for all users, but only for a certain percentage. How high that figure might be, I have no idea, but that's immaterial.

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It's not immaterial.

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No it is. I was trying to make the point that, as long as there is a single user out there who runs PLAY without problems, a blanket condemnation is simply inappropriate.

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Tui that doesn't make any sense at all if you think about it. If a company sells 1 million units of a product, 999,000 of them don't work and 1 does, then that deserves every inch of a blanket condemnation and more. You're suggesting that something has to never work, under any circumstances, to be written off as badly designed, unfit for purpose and a rip-off. Realistically, the pass mark must surely be a lot higher than that.

I certainly understand where you're coming from. I've had products in the past that work just fine for me, while garnering huge amounts of approbrium on forums. Sometimes one is just lucky.

This is certainly not the first thread like this I've seen though, and people like red are not the kind for whom the problem is likely to be carelessness or user error. Taking this along with the fact that EW products are not cheap, and come with the kind of price tag that carries an implication of reasonable roadworthiness and customer support, I'd say this situation sucks.

I sure as hell won't be buying.

Incidentally, am I the only one to notice the irony of this happenning a mere few months after the world's most powerful, stable, low-latency sample engine - Gigastudio - went to the wall due to lack of sales and lack of support from sample developers. Doug Rogers and Nick Phoenix were two of the most vocal and determined in their refusal to keep developing for the platform because of its open architecture (and presumably because they wanted to hold onto to the software-portion of the profits in a total system rather than paying license fees).

All fair enough, that was their commercial decision and they were entitled to make it. And sample users were entitled to blindly follow them into a world of "romplers", based on the somewhat dubious logic that installing and using fifteen different all-in-one engines made by different (non-specialist) companies, using fifteen different copy protection systems would be "easier" than loading fifteen companies' samples into a single engine.

But they've now spent several years and God knows how much money developing a sample player, only to find that it was actually a little more difficult than they realised, their product is a lemon and there may actually have been good reason to keep entrusting that part of the process to Tascam or NI. God knows Giga was a buggy POS when it first appeared a decade ago, it was only the relentless and painstaking process of refinement and upgrades that turned it into the product it became. Maybe PLAY will be the same in another ten years. If it lasts that long.

Quote idris y draig:

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errr, I can cite several examples of a real slating in the pages of SOS.

assorted monitors , a roland digital mixer, one or two mics, and various softwares, and some oddball processors, have had their sales careers abruptly slashed by a poor SOS review....


i recall one beuaty by Hugh...

" I cannot think of a single reason to recommend these monitors."

or words very close to that....

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Heh, my favourite was the review of the CME VX MIDI controller keyboards a year or so ago. Total slatage of the most devastating order, including the immortal quote from the manual about how you musn't touch the flying faders while they're moving or you risk setting the keyboard on fire!

In general though, I do agree with the sentiments voiced here that SOS reviews tend to err on the polite side. They make too many excuses for things that just don't work: "Exhibited some problems, but I'm sure these will be ironed out soon", "the developers assure me that an upgrade is on the way" etc. I'd rather see a much more straightforward application of the principle that if a product is advertised as being able to do something, it needs to bloody well do it or it's not fit for purpose.

And yes, it would seem to make sense that major software releases at least should be tested on two or three different systems before reviewing. Not sure how much that would add to the cost of the process though.

Quote Wurlitzer:

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I was trying to make the point that, as long as there is a single user out there who runs PLAY without problems, a blanket condemnation is simply inappropriate.

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Tui that doesn't make any sense at all if you think about it. If a company sells 1 million units of a product, 999,000 of them don't work and 1 does, then that deserves every inch of a blanket condemnation and more.

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I'm not sure how I could make it any clearer. There are several people here, who claim that "PLAY doesn't work". Frankly, that's bollocks. It's the same kind of bollocks as claiming that Waves installers and plug-ins "don't work" - I say that as someone who absolutely loathes Waves' business approach (not to mention their installers).

There is no business in selling something that "doesn't work". If you stop to think about it, it'll become obvious.

Not only does PLAY work on my systems, it evidently works on many, quite possibly most, systems. How do I know that? Well, just have a look around on the net, there are certainly some complaints about instability (I have expressed my own here), but only few users appear to complain that PLAY doesn't work at all.

Posters on other forums compare QL Pianos with Ivory and Garritan, for example. They can only do that if PLAY *works*. Do I need to go on..?

I can see that, for some people, PLAY doesn't deliver. My advice is, if you care enough for the sounds, do some trouble shooting. If you can't be bothered, you can a) throw PLAY in the bin, b) not buy it in the first place, or c) drive up to EW's headquarters and give THEM a bollocking.

Wow...I'm really thrilled by the number of people that are having problems with PLAY.

Luckily, I didn't upgarade to PLAY or buy a new product from EW because I was concerned about the iLok C/P system. I was going to carry a laptop with me and having two keys (Syncrosoft AND iLok) was something that I really wanted to avoid.
Pheeww! I was thinking of going for Voices Of Passion , Ministry Of Rock and Gipsy.

Yes, from my experience from what I've seen in their forums their support is unacceptable! That was similar to an EMU unofficial forum I had found in the past. They seem not to give a damn about their customers, all they want is a "clean" forum with no negative threads.

Maybe they should learn something from VSL.
I'll explain myself:

I own several VSL collections and I found a bug on their plugin UI. I posted on their forum with a link to a video reproducing the problem. I guess that if I was on an EW forum I would be banned forever and my post would be deleted. Instead of that, they replied immediately, they were keen to help and finally, they admitted the problem and promised to fix it in the next update.

Now, that's what I call support. EW, should take a hint.

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Cubase 5.5 RME UFX, Asus P6T, 12Gb Corsair Ram, Intel i7930, Powercore Firewire, Asus 9400GT Silent

Sorry to resurrect this, but anyone had any joy with the latest batch of updates?

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Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

Hey welcome back Red happy new year merry crimbo chortle chortle

Quote table for two:

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Hey welcome back Red happy new year merry crimbo chortle chortle

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Ta me ole mucker. To you and yours too.

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Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

Cheers chum

Ooooh!

Look what you can buy when you sell 100,000 copies of your boat anchor!!

EastWest may not be able to design a piece of software to save their lives, but they sure have great taste.


Tokyo Brothel As Studio

Quote reid:

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Ooooh!

Look what you can buy when you sell 100,000 copies of your boat anchor!!

EastWest may not be able to design a piece of software to save their lives, but they sure have great taste.


Tokyo Brothel As Studio

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Have to say it's amusing that there's only one picture of the actual studio....

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Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

Quote redleicester:

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Sorry to resurrect this, but anyone had any joy with the latest batch of updates?

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Ah forget about Play - just use PLAY 2!!!

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www.youtube.com/leonardngmusic

Quote Len:

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Quote redleicester:

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Sorry to resurrect this, but anyone had any joy with the latest batch of updates?

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Ah forget about Play - just use PLAY 2!!!

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You'll get just as much sense out of one of these - more, possibly....

Quote reid:

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Ooooh!

Look what you can buy when you sell 100,000 copies of your boat anchor!!

EastWest may not be able to design a piece of software to save their lives, but they sure have great taste.


Tokyo Brothel As Studio

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Dear God that's one offensive looking place...and that's coming from someone posting this from HERE

Mash

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www.matthewcracknell.com

Yeah, Envy does look a bit 'Gap advert' doesn't it... the suites look alright though.

I'm in two minds about the EW studios though — I can't decide if the 'horrific radioactive mishap in Ikea' thing works or not.

I think it might not...

It's pushing my buttons.

Their software must have made them a lot of coin.

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www.mikeandersonmusic.co.uk

Quote thejazzassassin:

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It's pushing my buttons.

Their software must have made them a lot of coin.

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Or maybe they're just spending a lot...

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madtheory creations
Synths and pianos for Kontakt

OK, I admit this isn't directly connected to the music technology aspects of East West's PLAY software. And I probably could be accused of flogging a dead horse for the sake of my own satisfaction. But it's too good to resist....

For readers not fully aware of the brains trust behind PLAY, one of the culprits is Doug Rogers. Given PLAY's rocky start and EW's policy of denydenydeny about any issues with it, you can't help but smile as we join Doug Rogers in 2004, as he fails to get his new Lamborghini to drive up a hill, gets a bit tetchy when the fine folk who sold it to him don't want to hear about his problems, and then wonders how on Earth anyone could treat their customers in that manner.

Sound familiar?

The knockout line comes at the end of Doug's post on 7th May 2004 - the irony contained within this link is breathtaking......


Dontcha just hate it when companies sell things that don't work?

"Honda van, BMW, Lexus 430 and Lotus Espirit.." and of course a Lambo.

What a tosser.

Is Play still a load of Bollox? I've not yet installed my QLSO Play Edition, but have seen a few updates since. Was wondering what the current verdict is.

P

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Composer, Producer, Sound Designer
www.universal-sound-design.com

Quote Pete (Conz) Connelly:

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Is Play still a load of Bollox?

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It still works brilliantly on my two Intel Macs (I've also installed the updates). So, not much of a change.

Quote Len:

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"Honda van, BMW, Lexus 430 and Lotus Espirit.." and of course a Lambo.

What a tosser.

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Yea, what a tosser! The number of cars you have is intrinsically linked to how much of a knob you are, right? Right? Oh dear.

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www.mikeandersonmusic.co.uk

Quote thejazzassassin:

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Quote Len:

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"Honda van, BMW, Lexus 430 and Lotus Espirit.." and of course a Lambo.

What a tosser.

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Yea, what a tosser! The number of cars you have is intrinsically linked to how much of a knob you are, right? Right? Oh dear.

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And to top it off, he made his money to pay for all those cars by selling software that DOES NOT WORK. What an evil genius.

He should be running Microsoft, by the sounds of it.

Aren't I glad I bought Kontakt! Yes I am!

Tui, you're fighting an impossible corner. It works (with some bugs, you've admitted) on your Macs... it seems you are lucky!

It's clearly disingenuous to blame under-specced systems and RAM faults when the machines in question aren't far off being cutting edge, and other software runs just fine.

There is *obviously* something very wrong with the software.

Like King Canute, you hold your hand up and try to stop the billious tide of embittered PLAY users, but telling these people not to condemn PLAY or EastWest when their expensive software doesn't work, when EastWest refuses to take them seriously and fobs them off with excuses, while the boss of EW swanks around in a fleet of luxury cars - is futile.

These people are angry for a reason.

I do find it puzzling that SoS hasn't met any serious problems with EastWest's products. They are lucky too, I guess. It would be good if SoS could do an article about how to solve problems with PLAY (in the same way they do articles about how to solve problems with acoustics), although since these problems are with one particular advertiser's product, it probably isn't viable for them.

I am a software developer btw, and I drive a Skoda Octavia.

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Battle flags are flown at the feet of a garden gnome.

Quote thejazzassassin:

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Quote Len:

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"Honda van, BMW, Lexus 430 and Lotus Espirit.." and of course a Lambo.

What a tosser.

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Yea, what a tosser! The number of cars you have is intrinsically linked to how much of a knob you are, right? Right? Oh dear.

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Jay Kay, anyone?

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Battle flags are flown at the feet of a garden gnome.

Quote reid:

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He should be running Microsoft, by the sounds of it.

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A cheap shot, Reid! You and I have crossed swords before, on the subject of Macs... (I'm a PC, you see)...

Windows XP is a good operating system, I've always been very happy with it, and Windows 98 wasn't bad either.

(the less said about ME the better... and I've never been tempted by Vista... I mean, why?)

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Battle flags are flown at the feet of a garden gnome.

Quote Richard Graham:

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Quote reid:

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He should be running Microsoft, by the sounds of it.

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A cheap shot, Reid!

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Well, most of the time that's all I'm good for on the SOS forums Richard. I can't deny it.

Quote Richard Graham:

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You and I have crossed swords before, on the subject of Macs... (I'm a PC, you see)...

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Have we? Blimey, I normally steer well clear of Mac vs. PC bickering - was this ages ago ? You'll be relieved to hear I'm now at the point where I believe that if a computer works as intended, it's good, if it doesn't then it's bad. Everything else is just noise.

Quote Richard Graham:

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...and I drive a Skoda Octavia

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Two Wheels Good here - no car at all. Though I like to think out chum Doug would approve - they were pointlessly expensive.

Hi Reid, I totally agree with the "two wheels good" philosophy, and used to cycle 10 miles to and from work in all seasons, however I have a family which says different and since I'm the only driver I have the joy of ferrying everybody around in my polluting metal box, while getting stressed out, piling the pounds on through lack of excerise, and paying through the nose to burn up irreplaceable hydrocarbons.

But who am I to complain, at least I don't own any EastWest sample instruments. Or a computer with only one mouse button.

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Battle flags are flown at the feet of a garden gnome.

With you on the mouse..... recently got a new MacPro and the 'Mighty' (who are they trying to kid?) went straight to eBay. Have been getting total mousing satisfaction from a......wait for it....... Microsoft two button job, for the last 4 years. Oh the irony.

Do you think this thread is veering a bit too far off topic for the mods pain threshold to endure? Somebody say something bad about EastWest - quick!

Quote Richard Graham:

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Tui, you're fighting an impossible corner. It works (with some bugs, you've admitted) on your Macs... it seems you are lucky!

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I'm not fighting any corners. Frankly, I find this thread (and its siblings over at gearslutz) rather amusing.

So I'm "lucky", for managing - apparently against all odds - to produce some 30 radio jingles, all of which featured PLAY instruments, without great difficulty? And the SOS reviewers were inexplicably lucky to not experience any major problems with PLAY? Furthermore, some on this forum seem to have strong opinions about PLAY, entirely based on hearsay, but without ever using it.

You'd have to admit, this has some comedy value.

That's some fairly wild hearsay there Tui, given the number of working professionals on this and other boards who have expressed serious difficulties in running Play. The age old rules apply - just because it doesn't work on our systems, doesn't mean it isn't working for everyone, and conversely, just because it works on yours, doesn't mean it works on everyones...

Off the top of my head, I can think of 5 Pro's on this forum alone who have had massive difficulties with Play, and in my own circle of colleagues, not ONE of them has had a smooth ride, Mac OR PC.

So kindly give a thought to those who are having the problems you so enjoy deriding, even if you clearly cannot muster any sympathy.

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Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

All I've seen on this thread so far is people carrying on about how bad PLAY is supposed to be. Not a single one of those who have problems with it have indicated that they've carried out basic troubleshooting, in order to determine what the cause might be. Do I feel sympathy for this sort of an approach? No.

When, on top of that, some other posters, who've never even used PLAY, chime in and declare that it doesn't work, I really begin to think we're in Monty Python territory.