Arturia 10 year suite - my experience and observations

[Dreamflight]

I bought the Arturia 10 Year Suite as I used to own a hardware Jupiter 8 and fell in love with the virtual model for nostalgic purposes.

I have to say that the sound from the virtual models is exemplary and far exceeds what I would have expected from softsynths. I've been studying the manuals hard, learning to program the devices and it's all great stuff. The Mg Modular V in particular is just a beast - I'm spending a LOT of time with this and already have some original patches augmenting my music to great effect.

So, that said, what about the practicalities? In the old days there were problems with tuning of hardware synths, drifting oscillators, temperatures etc. These days we have those replaced with a new set of problems, namely bugs and copy protection.

First, the single bug I found so far. In the Mood Modular V, if you use VCA 2 as an output then it refuses to track keyboard input until you have manually clicked through all the 'keyboard follow' options (K1, K2, K3 etc) in the little display next to the controller oscillator you are routing to the VCA. Only after complete round of clicks (back to K1 again) does it follow the keyboard and not just produce a drone. This is a minor glitch, no problem really.

More important, I tested the demo version of 'Analogue Factory' before buying - hey, that's what demos are for right? And when I received the box set, which advised me to install the synths in a specific order to avoid licencing issues everything installed just fine, except Analogue Factory. The installer refused to install it saying that a newer version was already present. So the retail version doesn't recognise the demo version as being a demo eh? Not good guys.

Eventually, I realised that installing the updated version from online worked fine. So I installed that, and continued on my way. After installing and upgrading everything and also ensuring the synchrosoft software was up to date I tested all the synths in Logic Pro. Everything worked great, except Analogue Factory. When trying to run it, it just refuses, saying that there is no licence for V1.0. Which I don't have, I installed the provided version which is 2.x. I even uninstalled it, reinstalled it from the master CD, updated to the latest synchrosoft licence manager and tried again. Same problem. There is no licence for 1.0. On my Licence utility I show a valid licence for 2.0 but not for 1.0 and Logic refuses to accept that it's version 2.0 I have installed.

Seriously, Arturia, I totally admire what you've done with the software. It sounds great, it looks great (although why for the love of all that is holy can we not resize the plugin window on hi-res screens to see more of the synth interface?!) but the copy protection system absolutely sucks. I really, really hate it.

I raised a ticket for my problem on Friday morning (Case 79282) but have yet to even receive a response. Disappointing, for such a quality product to have such unfriendly software protection (what's all this about needing the original CD to import prests to the Modular V?) and sluggish tech support. I am happy that I bought the 10 years suite, it sounds great, but to be honest my experience with the Arturia software and support to date would make me think carefully before buying any future products.

Pros:
- Sounds great
- Printed manuals

Cons:
- Slow tech support
- Horrible horrible copy protection which just annoys the user
- Printed manuals were not written by a native English speaker
- Unable to resize the plugin windows with complex synth UIs inside
- Position of the Knobs on the Moof Modular V are difficult to see at hi res

Anyway, that's my experience to date. I hope someone gets back to me about Analogue Factory at some point soon.

Df.

[Antoine]

Hi Dreamflight,
I will just post a comment concerning the specific point of Tech Support, as I am notably in charge of managing this service.
Your case was just processed this morning, as promised (response under 24h to 48h). I don't know which place of the planet you are located, but we at Arturia at located in France, and "Friday morning" for you might just be "Friday evening" for us, so please consider some inevitability if you get an answer only by Monday morning.
You guessed it, the User's Manuals are not redacted by native English speaker, but they are corrected and validated by one of our American friends. Some typos or bad formulation may still reside though.
Thanks for your not-so-bad comments by the way. 
Best regards,
Antoine.

[Dreamflight]

You guessed it, the User's Manuals are not redacted by native English speaker, but they are corrected and validated by one of our American friends.

They could be a lot worse, for sure. I used to write technical documentation as part of my job (actually, on occasion I still do) so perhaps I'm a little more critical of this than is completely fair.

Thanks for your not-so-bad comments by the way. 

You are welcome - despite the few problems I have experienced the overall result is very positive for me and I have no regrets about buying the Suite.

With regards to the tech support, thank you for getting back to me. I was perhaps a little quick to call you sluggish, and for that I apologise. I was frustrated by the installation procedure and having enjoyed all the other synths so much it was a little exasperating to be unable to use the Analogue Factory due to the licencing problem.

I did receive your helpful mail this morning, and I will try out the procedure you supplied. I am travelling for business reasons this week, so I will be unable to do this until I get back on Thursday night, but thank you for the response and once again I apologise for my hasty judgement of the tech support.

Df.

[Dreamflight]

Just a note to confirm that the fix you sent me over mail worked fine :-)

Thank you Antoine.

Df.