Subject:Is SONY Mkting Dept aware of Unreliability effect?

Posted by: Cielspacing

Date:10/25/2015 12:40:01 PM

Yesterday I went to open My Spectralayers 3.0 and it asked me to activate (when It has been perfectly activated and working several months already).
I come here and I see that several -let me emphasize- PROFESSIONAL users have found their access suddenly blocked for no apparent reason.
See thread :
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showmessage.asp?messageid=919627

SONY may see this as a functional glitch or minor software malfunctions, however... are their Marketing and Financial departments aware of the disastrous effect this UNRELIABILITY has on their customer base?
I doubt they are aware of the extent and depth of such errors. This is not a gamers market that is got frustrated because their temporary game has stopped, we are part of a productivity sector that requires minimum functioning assurances for our tools. Any exception and we lose clients and tarnish our valuable trajectory.
No wonder Izotope is severely draining Soundforge and Spectralayers customer base; they DO offer and deliver amicable working flow and reliability. For long SONY Creative have pioneered functions and features, now they have been copied while competitors made their versions reliable. This at a time that SF and SL have been plagued by registration/activation/update problems.

Lately we have seen SONY developers and engineers coming to the Forum to assist us, excellent move. However, all their efforts -past and present- are severely tarnished by these probably considered by SONY management as "minor" problems, when they are mayor issues indeed.

///I hope this awareness gets heard and helps us all, those issues aside, SONY has excellent tools (still better than Izotope's cloned ones at several regards).

Subject:RE: Is SONY Mkting Dept aware of Unreliability effect?

Reply by: Dexcon

Date:10/25/2015 11:54:53 PM

Agreed.

I have both SpectrLayers3 and iZotope products, including RX4 Adv, and I'll probably be using RX4 even more from now on because the activation issue hit SpectraLayers3 on my computer on Friday. Trying to register it failed with the error code of -41 which, according to SCS's website is "too many activations". Huh? I've only installed it twice: 1st when I bought it back In Jan 15, and 2nd in April when the SSD C drive with the OS failed and had to be replaced. Then all of a sudden on Friday, it falls in a heap with the activation problem. I've put in a support ticket on it, and hope that SCS will fix this up really, really quickly - especially if its a widespread problem as it now seems to be.

I really like SL3, and especially find its ability to work on 5.1 audio to be very useful. And its noise reduction tool is also really good. But now it's only in trial mode - and that's only for the next 13 days.

To add salt to the wound, Sound Forge 11 went into to its regular elevated privileges activation problems today , but at least the registry hack workaround enables it to work again until the problem recurs in three weeks time.

Subject:RE: Is SONY Mkting Dept aware of Unreliability effect?

Reply by: Cielspacing

Date:10/27/2015 12:13:51 AM

On Monday, next workday after I posted my Question at Support, Eric D. answered resetting the serial. Of course, before that happened, in order to support my claims, I attached several screen prints (JPGs) of my serials plus further screen prints of the pop-ups SL3 was showing.

This one, is the fastest response I have ever received from SONY Creative customer service plus I have to add another helpful and informative Chat session with support months ago. Therefore, it looks like SONY Creative is trying to improve in their support services.

What seems to be lacking is safety at the software developing side. Hope they catch up soon.
///Nowadays software developers competitiveness is being played at the work flow field, (assuming features are there already) and reliability is a given that must be there.

Subject:RE: Is SONY Mkting Dept aware of Unreliability effect?

Reply by: Dexcon

Date:10/27/2015 3:50:48 AM

That it great news, Cielspacing. SCS support also reset the SL3 activation for me on Monday (US time), and it is now working again.

Many thanks SCS Support for the quick response and fix.

Subject:RE: Is SONY Mkting Dept aware of Unreliability effect?

Reply by: UKharrie

Date:12/12/2015 7:56:03 AM

Price isn't just the first-buy....it must include the update "Cost of ownership" - and why wouldn't software companies want their existing customers to stay loyal - They are an unpaid Sales-force.
I've held-back buying SL because my PC isn't 64-bit and I probably need to extra RAM a 64-bit OS would allow. However, I do read the comments here and that must influence my "Time to Buy" - and "where"
I Look at RX5 ( is it?) and rather like their feature "De-Echo" ( Again I may not have the precise words)....they claim they can "fix" audio recorded in a small hall . . .. so the frequencies will be the same as the original ( just delayed) - I understand SL enables me to put a ring round frequencies that are above/below the voice/music I wish to keep - but I wonder how "Reverberation" can be removed?

The lack of activity in this Forum is not a concern - it shows how effective the Software is, doesn't it?

Subject:RE: Is SONY Mkting Dept aware of Unreliability effect?

Reply by: Sneddy

Date:12/12/2015 1:57:39 PM

I have RX 4 Advanced - RX 5 Advanced has added De-Plosive. RX 5 (standard) now has DeReverb which RX 4 standard didn't. If you have a file you what me to try out, please send me the link - I'm happy do do so. I've had mixed results. I think this is an area of audio repair which will continue to improve.

FWIW, I've update my Spectral Repair Webpage:
www.bobcroquet.com/spectral.htm - lots of Before and After .wav examples

Subject:RE: Is SONY Mkting Dept aware of Unreliability effect?

Reply by: UKharrie

Date:12/16/2015 6:41:07 AM

Sneddy, QUICKIE - I listened to yr "WindWAV" file and IMHO it's typical of a wrecked track - annoying but live-able with at a push. That is indeed one that I'd like to hear what SL can do.
Did you use a "Big Fluffy" that time? I guess not.
Good of you to share experiences. Yr obviously an experienced creator / sportster have you considered yr website having its own Forum?

Good luck.

Subject:RE: Is SONY Mkting Dept aware of Unreliability effect?

Reply by: Sneddy

Date:12/20/2015 9:05:40 PM

Thanks for giving it a listen. I actually created the 'wind' file to see how SL3 could handle it. I grabbed wind from a video that had nothing else, added some birdsong, and did the VO. I sent Cedar Audio a similar file and they put it into the beta of what is now Cedar Studio 7 and did a reasonable job of suppressing wind. Problem is CS7 is big $$ (worth it I'm sure). Of all my
software that deals with NR, Waves WNS does the best with wind. I'll try to put up a version in the near future.

Subject:RE: Is SONY Mkting Dept aware of Unreliability effect?

Reply by: UKharrie

Date:1/9/2016 7:01:37 PM

HNY
The trouble with real "Wind-noise" is that it upsets the auto-gain and manages to clip itself at the same time.
Last year I was filming where it was so windy holding onto the tripod didn't always steady me. The camcorder has a built-in fluffy which is just about workable up to "losing your hat wind-levels" . However the above footage was completely wrecked and I had no alternative except replacement. Fortunately the piece I did "to camera" was silent ( hand-waving ), so I could replace everything.

I suspect a wrecked soundtrack is just never going to be repaired, however fancy the software. For light-breezes some mics have a LF "cut" but this only supresses what is already present.
I'm working on a big-fluffy, with another one inside - but so far it really doesn't fix the problem when it's really windy - like on heathland. Birdsong is my target, since this is relatively consistent a "Standard" for comparison purposes.

However, I'm really more interested in the Software possibility of "Echo removal" - and since there is no clipping involved, the audio is "clean" - if a little confused. I don't think SL can do anything for that presently.
But maybe next version???