# Soundpaint not working suddenly just now. Seems like a server issue, Is it just me?



## chomeaso

**********************************UPDATE************************************


*24th/07/2022*


-The *error was resolved* as they released the beta version shortly

-There was a server problem along with a bug which caused the software not to work.
The details were explained by "Matt", engineer from Soundpaint commented on this thread.

-There were lot of assumption including if there was a 'call home' function built-in the software.(Checking if the software has valid license)
We were told this was not the case by Matt.

-Lot of people got frustrated including me during this incident.
If you read through all the posts on this thread, you'll most likely realize
the core of the problem was the lack of communication.

Like
1. You need to get on their discord to get regular update
2. Live Chat on the webpage doesn't seem to be online most of the time(At least I was never able to). The fact it says 24/7 on the page, bothers me(personally) Like I mentioned above, just get rid of 24/7.

Waiting for the official email from the company or an announcement that will finally bring conclusion to this whole incident. Software's great, and got a hug potential for sure. But this whole thing was quite a dramatic journey which it didn't have to be in the first place.







**********************************Original Post************************************



I was loading some of the cues from the film I'm currently working on and they have few soundpaint patches.
I noticed they weren't making any sounds and I open up the instruments and it wants me to log-in. Why now suddenly?
I pressd the log-in button but it only says 'soundpaint server responded with an unknown error'

Few tricks I tried,
-Shut down the program and re-open
-Shut down the computer and re-boot
-Checked if there's firewall blocking Soundpaint or DAW(Cubase)

by the way, in soundpaint homepage there's 'contact' button and there are two options
-chat with us
-email us
above it says- 24/7
Ironically when I press to 'chat', the service is not online, so the only thing is to email them.
It's not really 24/7, is it. and that's okay. just don't over-advertise or promise for what you cannot offer

If it is just me who's having trouble, it's probably my problem. if there are others having same issue, maybe they're having some sort of server problem. Either way, I do not feel comfortable these things can happen in the middle of the project and you need to be online and get permission from the main server for the products I've bought? Just for that, I'm kinda losing confidence in this company.

I'm very nervous as I'm in the process of finalizing this film I've been working on for last few months.


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## davidson

I'm getting the same issue, so you're not alone. So does this mean we're at the mercy of internet connections and servers to be able to use soundpaint?


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## chomeaso

davidson said:


> I'm getting the same issue, so you're not alone.


At least I know now that I'm not alone! haha hope this issue gets resolved soon.


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## jules

Same here !


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## stigbn

Same issue for me - good thing I haven't bought anything on soundpaint, I only have the free piano.
I've had similar problems with Positive Grid's Bias FX (guitar effects) and I've completely stopped using it now, because there has been some issues with connection.
I think there's other software that relies on connection but that allows you to work for a while if there's no connection (adobe cloud?).


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## davidson

stigbn said:


> Same issue for me - good thing I haven't bought anything on soundpaint, I only have the free piano.
> I've had similar problems with Positive Grid's Bias FX (guitar effects) and I've completely stopped using it now, because there has been some issues with connection.
> I think there's other software that relies on connection but that allows you to work for a while if there's no connection (adobe cloud?).


If it's the case where you're locked out of soundpaint due to their server errors or the user needing a 24/7 internet connection, I'll be dropping SP faster than you can blink and requesting a refund for my most recent purchases. Fingers crossed this is something else.


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## doctoremmet

@Soundpaint What's up? Is SP indeed "always online"?


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## KarlHeinz

doctoremmet said:


> @Soundpaint What's up? Is SP indeed "always online"?


That would be indeed strange especially as the "core" software is supposed to be free. I have not thought much about it to be honest but at least it seems to checkup version and libraries evrytime it starts. But I thought it would then quit connection. Maybe worth looking for the settings if this could be changed.....


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## Maarten

doctoremmet said:


> @Soundpaint What's up? Is SP indeed "always online"?


After a complete disconnect from the Internet, SP is still working, so I doubt it.


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## doctoremmet

Maarten said:


> After a complete disconnect from the Internet, SP is still working, so I doubt it.


Great


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## davidson

Maarten said:


> After a complete disconnect from the Internet, SP is still working, so I doubt it.


It's not here. Are you mac or PC? Maybe its platform specific? Also, what version of soundpaint are you running? I don't remember it calling home on startup before version V1.1.


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## sostenuto

Here is southern Utah, U.S. _ Win11 Pro _ Standalone asks for Login, and does not respond.
STATUS _ Server respponded with an unknown error.
Cannot chceck version, but updated very recently.
Resends KEY, after e-mail input, but already showing properly.
Solid, wired 60 Mbps home network. All else working fine. ???

Also thought SP was installed locally and not requiring constant server connection ! 😒


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## Giscard Rasquin

Same problem. Quite unfortunate as I´m also on a deadline. Let´s hope we get this resolved soon.


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## Maarten

davidson said:


> It's not here. Are you mac or PC? Maybe its platform specific? Also, what version of soundpaint are you running? I don't remember it calling home on startup before version V1.1.


Mac version. RLS 1.0.0 May 6 2022. So there is a version V1.1?


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## Bee_Abney

It's not working for me either. This is going to need a proper fix. Products authorised by web-based iLok have this problem. Which means I'd never want to rely on anything that was authorised that way.

If it works with no internet connection, I suspect the problem is that it automatically reaches out to Soundpaint for information, but that with problems at their end, it is getting failure to re-authorise. If your work computer isn't connected to the internet at all, then this wouldn't happen - there would be no failed attempt to re-authorise.


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## Germain B

Same here.


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## doctoremmet

doctoremmet said:


> Great


Update: not so great. I’m on the latest version of SP and cannot use it in any way. It also does not recognize my latest additions in terms of UDS licenses.


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## Maarten

Still no problem. I have never logged out SoundPaint after installation of it.
So maybe there is a local flag on our systems that keeps that 'logged-in' status and if there is, it will not check. If you have logged out, than maybe the flag is put on 'logged-out' status and you will be forced to log in, and when the login-server has problems, you're toast?


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## chomeaso

I hope to hear some update that they are aware of the situation and working on it to fix this?


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## sostenuto

Site is not coming up with usual Chat option. 8Dio also has no agents online.
Few SP purchases so far, but may backoff depending on how this sorts out.


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## Dr.Quest

No issues here on Mac Catalina.


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## davidson

Maarten said:


> Mac version. RLS 1.0.0 May 6 2022. So there is a version V1.1?


Yep, they released 1.1 weeks ago. I can only assume they added in this call home BS with that version.

@Dr.Quest Did you not update to V1.1 either?


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## AndrewS

Same issue here on OS X 10.14.6

EDIT: just heard from support on the Soundpaint site. It's an issue with AWS.


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## Wunderhorn

AndrewS said:


> Same issue here on OS X 10.14.6
> 
> EDIT: just heard from support on the Soundpaint site. It's an issue with AWS.


This is disturbing.
We have to have an official clarification from @Troels Folmann regarding this. If this means that Soundpaint MUST constantly call home to ensure your 'licenses' I want *nothing* to do with it anymore!


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## jangomd

We're experiencing the same problem here on OS 12.4


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## sundrowned

FWIW from the SP discord


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## NoamL

If the call home is handled through AWS, how can they ensure no future outages will ever happen? With the best of intentions, it's still just not in their hands.

This is a big problem if you sell a product and delivery/assurance of that product is in a 3rd party's hands.

Interrupting people's work mid project because a server went down somewhere... that can't happen.


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## SupremeFist

Wow. No Soundpaint for me any more.


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## NoamL

Bee_Abney said:


> Products authorised by web-based iLok have this problem.


Is that true? Would a completely air-gapped no-internet PC with an iLok plugged into it or an iLok license on the machine itself, not be able to use iLok-authorized plugins? Stuff like Cinematic Rooms.


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## sostenuto

This raises fair refund question, in terms of proper, prior disclosure. 
Will respect related TF response, when current issue is resolved.


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## Maarten

davidson said:


> Yep, they released 1.1 weeks ago. I can only assume they added in this call home BS with that version.
> 
> @Dr.Quest Did you not update to V1.1 either?


No problem with 1.1.0 also... Mac Monterey 12.4


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## doctoremmet

I am pretty deeply invested in Soundpaint, from the get-go. I mean from the anticipation stages, to having had the privilige to be a beta tester and since then I have purchased quite a few libraries because I like the “legos with samples” concept AND I want to support the developers, who I like. So, invested in terms of money, but mostly in terms of time spent, and dare I say -within limits of course- ‘emotionally’ being the vocal fanboy I sometimes am.

I would like to know if this is the outcome of some “unplanned dependency” on some cloud service that wasn’t foreseen, or if this is an actual architectural choice. Although I am merely a hobbyist, I do completely support the sentiments worded here. A musical instrument needs to work, even on the moon - without ANY dependency on having an active “ping”.


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## Dr.Quest

davidson said:


> Yep, they released 1.1 weeks ago. I can only assume they added in this call home BS with that version.
> 
> @Dr.Quest Did you not update to V1.1 either?


No I did not. Haven’t updated in a while.


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## Bee_Abney

NoamL said:


> If the call home is handled through AWS, how can they ensure no future outages will ever happen? With the best of intentions, it's still just not in their hands.
> 
> This is a big problem if you sell a product and delivery/assurance of that product is in a 3rd party's hands.
> 
> Working composers generally hate the product auth / licensing busywork already even when they (or their assistants) can allocate that work to downtime. Interrupting their work mid project because a server went down somewhere... that can't happen.


I'm hoping that the step they take to prevent it happening again is to drop this constant authorisation or re-program Soundpaint to default to authorised when it cannot check. Then outages should only affect downloading/re-downloading libraries. Perhaps authorisation could be checked only when doing that.

I don't know. But I'm not jumping ship yet until I see where this goes. It is a crazy system, but VSL have effectively adopted a similar system for the non-physical iLok (obviously, a professional relying on VSL products would have to get a physical iLok still).


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## doctoremmet

Bee_Abney said:


> But I'm not jumping ship yet until I see where this goes.


Same.


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## Bee_Abney

NoamL said:


> Is that true? Would a completely air-gapped no-internet PC with an iLok plugged into it or an iLok license on the machine itself, not be able to use iLok-authorized plugins? Stuff like Cinematic Rooms.


It only applies when there is not an option to authorise to the machine, and you don't have a physical iLok. You then authorise a web-based iLok account for yourself. It doesn't need to be connected to the internet constantly, but something like once every fifteen minutes - so brief outages have no effect.

Cinematic Rooms isn't affected by this, as it is your computer that gets authorised.

I have a few Sonnox plugins that are authorised this way. If I put my laptop to sleep for half an hour with a project open containing one of them, when I wake it up I have to reinstantiate the plugin because it has lost its authorisation.

It's a minor problem when everything is working; but it is a real danger if things don't work, with my internet connection or iLok's - it's more likely to be mine. But I can live with that for some plugins that I could substitute with others. But not for a library or vst instrument.


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## Drundfunk

Sometimes I do wonder if working composers are actually involved in developing these things.... . Good luck to anyone who is on a deadline and is affected by this. Not like this job is stressful enough as it is...


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## Bee_Abney

Drundfunk said:


> Sometimes I do wonder if working composers are actually involved in developing these things.... . Good luck to anyone who is on a deadline and is affected by this. Not like this job is stressful enough as it is...


In this case, yes! Troels oversaw this, even if he didn't program it.


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## SupremeFist

NoamL said:


> Is that true? Would a completely air-gapped no-internet PC with an iLok plugged into it or an iLok license on the machine itself, not be able to use iLok-authorized plugins? Stuff like Cinematic Rooms.


No, if you have an ilok dongle plugged in you're good. The cloud authorization is for people who don't want to buy the dongle (and in that case yes you could be screwed by an outage).


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## c0nsilience

Ironically, I just moved around 600 GB of SP libraries off of an external SSD to format it!


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## Bee_Abney

SupremeFist said:


> No, if you have an ilok dongle plugged in you're good. The cloud authorization is for people who don't want to buy the dongle (and in that case yes you could be screwed by an outage).


You don't actually need the dongle for most products, you can authorise your machine. It's only those few products that only permit either a dongle or cloud authorisation. Then, a dongle is necessary to avoid the risk of not being able to use it.


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## SupremeFist

Bee_Abney said:


> You don't actually need the dongle for most products, you can authorise your machine. It's only those few products that only permit either a dongle or cloud authorisation. Then, a dongle is necessary to avoid the risk of not being able to use it.


Yes I forgot that. I only bought the dongle when it turned out that Seventh Heaven didn't offer machine authorisation (and iirc there was an ilok cloud shortage quite soon after that so I felt very smug).


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## Drundfunk

Bee_Abney said:


> In this case, yes! Troels oversaw this, even if he didn't program it.


Or maybe he as his own unique version of Soundpaint. I also never heard Christian or Paul complaining about having to ask for re-activation for their Spitfire plugin libraries. My guess would be they have versions of the plugin which are exempt from those issues. It's only the customers who experience those problems and inconveniences, because how else could they combat piracy if not on the backs of paying customers... Obviously this is only speculation from my part, but I somehow get a feeling I'm not very far off with that assessment. Those issues are way too glaring to not notice them or not to predict them, especially if you are also a working composer like Christian, Paul or Troels, etc.... .


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## Francis Bourre

> Troels Folmann_ — _20:25​Yea. SP does work offline. This is a server related bug. Not SP.


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## Maarten

But the client (SoundPaint) is apparanty not smart enough to give you authorisation for using the downloaded instruments when there is a problem with the server.


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## Bee_Abney

SupremeFist said:


> Yes I forgot that. I only bought the dongle when it turned out that Seventh Heaven didn't offer machine authorisation (and iirc there was an ilok cloud shortage quite soon after that so I felt very smug).


I didn't realise that about Seventh Heaven. I demoed Cinematic Rooms I thought it was authorised to my machine (temporarily in this case). I guess my memory is not 100% reliable.

Well, I knew _that_!


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## Bee_Abney

That's odd. This doesn't look like a bug at all, but a server outage and bad authorisation system in Soundpaint. Curious.


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## Bee_Abney

Drundfunk said:


> Or maybe he as his own unique version of Soundpaint. I also never heard Christian or Paul complaining about having to ask for re-activation for their Spitfire plugin libraries. My guess would be they have versions of the plugin which are exempt from those issues. It's only the customers who experience those problems and inconveniences, because how else could they combat piracy if not on the backs of paying customers... Obviously this is only speculation from my part, but I somehow get a feeling I'm not very far off with that assessment. Those issues are way too glaring to not notice them or not to predict them, especially if you are also a working composer like Christian, Paul or Troels, etc.... .


If they were affected by those issues, I'm pretty sure they'd not be complaining publicly, anyway! But I'm pretty sure there would be security-free versions around during development, including the final stages before preparing them for sale. They could definitely be using such versions.


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## Markrs

SupremeFist said:


> Yes I forgot that. I only bought the dongle when it turned out that Seventh Heaven didn't offer machine authorisation (and iirc there was an ilok cloud shortage quite soon after that so I felt very smug).











iLok Machine Activation Is Now Supported By Seventh Heaven v1.3.4 - LiquidSonics







www.liquidsonics.com





Most Seventh Heaven licenses now have machine activation capability enabled automatically


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## c0nsilience

Bee_Abney said:


> That's odd. This doesn't look like a bug at all, but a server outage and bad authorisation system in Soundpaint. Curious.


AWS is certainly outside of their control, or any individual company's control. SP is a relatively light piece of software when installed. The libraries take up a massive amount of real estate, but that's to be expected. While not as tenuous as Vengeance Sound's authorization system, it does seem like SP's libraries are reliant on AWS for authorization, which can be problematic when a server outage is experienced, like today.


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## Bee_Abney

c0nsilience said:


> AWS is certainly outside of their control, or any individual company's control. SP is a relatively light piece of software when installed. The libraries take up a massive amount of real estate, but that's to be expected. While not as tenuous as Vengeance Sound's authorization system, it does seem like SP's libraries are reliant on AWS for authorization, which can be problematic when a server outage is experienced, like today.


Yes, but if that is so; there is a problem with Soundpaint in being vulnerable in this way. And the server outage may or may not be due to a bug; but it is the outage that is the problem from Soundpaint's point of view, not a bug as such.

Ah well, as I said, it was a curious statement; but he may have been speaking loosely.


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## Nico5

> Troels Folmann_ — _20:25​Yea. SP does work offline. ...



The Soundpaint 1.1.0.0 installation on my Windows 10 system begs to differ:


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## Drundfunk

Bee_Abney said:


> If they were affected by those issues, I'm pretty sure they'd not be complaining publicly, anyway! But I'm pretty sure there would be security-free versions around during development, including the final stages before preparing them for sale. They could definitely be using such versions.


Obviously I worded it that way for dramatic effect . My point is that they are not affected by those issues. In case of Paul and Christian they very well could have access to the database (or whatever) to re-activate those libraries themselves, or they have different versions of the plugin. In both cases they wouldn't be affected by this, at least not to the same degree as anyone else.


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## Daren Audio

SupremeFist said:


> Yes I forgot that. I only bought the dongle when it turned out that Seventh Heaven didn't offer machine authorisation (and iirc there was an ilok cloud shortage quite soon after that so I felt very smug).


Best practice to have iLok dongle as a backup in case iLok Cloud goes down for peace of mind. Deadlines are stressful enough.


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## SupremeFist

This reminds me of horror stories with the Roland Cloud stuff, which is why I never bought into it. Soundpaint really needs to immediately roll back and say the use of its instruments will never be dependent on an internet connection, let alone some third-party server uptime.


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## José Herring

chomeaso said:


> I was loading some of the cues from the film I'm currently working on and they have few soundpaint patches.
> I noticed they weren't making any sounds and I open up the instruments and it wants me to log-in. Why now suddenly?
> I pressd the log-in button but it only says 'soundpaint server responded with an unknown error'
> 
> Few tricks I tried,
> -Shut down the program and re-open
> -Shut down the computer and re-boot
> -Checked if there's firewall blocking Soundpaint or DAW(Cubase)
> 
> by the way, in soundpaint homepage there's 'contact' button and there are two options
> -chat with us
> -email us
> above it says- 24/7
> Ironically when I press to 'chat', the service is not online, so the only thing is to email them.
> It's not really 24/7, is it. and that's okay. just don't over-advertise or promise for what you cannot offer
> 
> If it is just me who's having trouble, it's probably my problem. if there are others having same issue, maybe they're having some sort of server problem. Either way, I do not feel comfortable these things can happen in the middle of the project and you need to be online and get permission from the main server for the products I've bought? Just for that, I'm kinda losing confidence in this company.
> 
> I'm very nervous as I'm in the process of finalizing this film I've been working on for last few months.


I downloaded soundpaint a while back. Didn't use it for a while, then when I used it again it wanted me to create an account and login.....hmmmmm.....no thanks. For now I'm sticking with just the old school 8dio.


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## José Herring

Bee_Abney said:


> I didn't realise that about Seventh Heaven. I demoed Cinematic Rooms I thought it was authorised to my machine (temporarily in this case). I guess my memory is not 100% reliable.
> 
> Well, I knew _that_!


Your memory is good enough to remember that your memory is not 100%. But, you remember 100% of the time that your memory isn't 100%..... Makes one wonder doesn't it? Maybe some things just aren't worth remembering so you choose not to. 

I'm feeling deeply philosophical today.


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## Bee_Abney

José Herring said:


> Your memory is good enough to remember that your memory is not 100%. But, you remember 100% of the time that your memory isn't 100%..... Makes one wonder doesn't it? Maybe somethings just aren't worth remembering so you choose not to.
> 
> I'm feeling deeply philosophical today.


I can't remember what that's like.


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## Wunderhorn

c0nsilience said:


> AWS is certainly outside of their control, or any individual company's control. SP is a relatively light piece of software when installed. The libraries take up a massive amount of real estate, but that's to be expected. While not as tenuous as Vengeance Sound's authorization system, it does seem like SP's libraries are reliant on AWS for authorization, which can be problematic when a server outage is experienced, like today.


If I buy a continuous license of a software or a sound library, I understand to have one initial process of authorization. OK.
Any more down the road and it starts looking like I am under a constant and unfounded suspicion of theft which quite frankly irritates the heck out of me.
Also, all server connections aside from user-initiated requests such as checking for an update, downloading add-on etc. must be disclosed and transparent in their purpose (not in a legal statement presenting when installing the software, but in the software GUI where it occurs) and must be *optional* in nature. Anything else makes it look like surveillance and essentially an invasion of privacy.
Just because the law has not caught up with it and it things are technically possible does not make it right from an ethical point of view.

Aside from all those discussion about ethics etc. there are situations and times when people need to travel or don't have a stable internet connection for whatever reason and that needs to be taken into account. A legally acquired license must be available to the user at any time. No questions asked.


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## doctoremmet

José Herring said:


> I downloaded soundpaint a while back. Didn't use it for a while, then when I used it again it wanted me to create an account and login.....hmmmmm.....no thanks. For now I'm sticking with just the old school 8dio.


Yet you use SINE?


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## KarlHeinz

I am really wondering when and IF there will be any detailed explanation about these general and important questions......usually my experience so far has been that these kind of (critical) questions are not the favourite ones to be answered in here.....and better get forgotten in the next library hype...lets see.

For me this all at the moment does not make really sense (connection needed or not ? If not how license could be lost ? Connection only for update check/libraries ? Settings to turn off these checks ? .......) and I now really wanted to know how this works in detail and how/if I have any influence on it.


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## Bee_Abney

KarlHeinz said:


> I am really wondering when and IF there will be any detailed explanation about these general and important questions......usually my experience so far has been that these kind of (critical) questions are not the favourite ones to be answered in here.....and better get forgotten in the next library hype...lets see.
> 
> For me this all at the moment does not make really sense (connection needed or not ? If not how license could be lost ? Connection only for update check/libraries ? Settings to turn off these checks ? .......) and I now really wanted to know how this works in detail and how/if I have any influence on it.


I doubt we'll learn as much as we'd like. But I hope we get something that is genuinely reassuring.


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## doctoremmet

Just received this email:

“Soundpaint Server Down for Maintenance
Sorry for the inconvenience!

Soundpaint access has been interrupted due to AWS maintenance. We are working on the issue to get it resolved as soon as possible.

For emergency access, we are releasing a beta version of Soundpaint that circumvents this issue. You can download Soundpaint version 1.1.1beta3 installers here:

Windows

Mac

Thanks so much for your patience, and we’ll keep you posted on any new developments, including full restoration of services.

Sincerely,
The Soundpaint Team

P.S.
For real-time updates, please check our Discord server”


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## doctoremmet

“Maintenance”? :-(


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## Alchemedia

Bee_Abney said:


> That's odd. This doesn't look like a bug at all, but a server outage and bad authorisation system in Soundpaint. Curious.


"Soundpaint access has been interrupted due to AWS maintenance. We are working on the issue to get it resolved as soon as possible."


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## Alchemedia

doctoremmet said:


> Just received this email:
> 
> “Soundpaint Server Down for Maintenance
> Sorry for the inconvenience!
> 
> Soundpaint access has been interrupted due to AWS maintenance. We are working on the issue to get it resolved as soon as possible.
> 
> For emergency access, we are releasing a beta version of Soundpaint that circumvents this issue. You can download Soundpaint version 1.1.1beta3 installers here:
> 
> Windows
> 
> Mac
> 
> Thanks so much for your patience, and we’ll keep you posted on any new developments, including full restoration of services.
> 
> Sincerely,
> The Soundpaint Team
> 
> P.S.
> For real-time updates, please check our Discord server”


Great minds think alike.


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## Nico5

doctoremmet said:


> For real-time updates, please check our Discord server:


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## Alchemedia

Alas, we've been SoundPainted into a corner.


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## KarlHeinz

Alchemedia said:


> "Soundpaint access has been interrupted due to AWS maintenance. We are working on the issue to get it resolved as soon as possible."





Alchemedia said:


> "Soundpaint access has been interrupted due to AWS maintenance. We are working on the issue to get it resolved as soon as possible."





Nico5 said:


>


If I need to join discord to get an explanation for this I think slowly it looks like there will be lots of free disk space for me coming in the near future......


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## sostenuto

Alchemedia said:


> Great minds think alike.


.......... well ....... 'minds' could work 🤷🏻‍♂️


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## KarlHeinz

Alchemedia said:


> Alas, we've been SoundPainted into a corner.


Sorry, usually I have no problems but today I absolutely cant follow you and dont know what you are really talking about


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## sean8877

doctoremmet said:


> Just received this email:
> 
> “Soundpaint Server Down for Maintenance
> Sorry for the inconvenience!
> 
> Soundpaint access has been interrupted due to AWS maintenance. We are working on the issue to get it resolved as soon as possible.
> 
> For emergency access, we are releasing a beta version of Soundpaint that circumvents this issue. You can download Soundpaint version 1.1.1beta3 installers here:
> 
> Windows
> 
> Mac
> 
> Thanks so much for your patience, and we’ll keep you posted on any new developments, including full restoration of services.
> 
> Sincerely,
> The Soundpaint Team
> 
> P.S.
> For real-time updates, please check our Discord server”


Anyone have the actual link to those 1.1.1beta3 installers? They didn't come through in the post above. I logged into my Soundpaint account but the engine downloads are still 1.1.0. Thanks.


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## Nico5

The link is in the Soundpaint discord server in the #general channel.
(Sorry, but I'm not comfortable sharing them here).

And the 1.1.1beta3 seems to work for me






Edit: Here's how I finally got it:


login to my account in the Soundpaint website
copy the discord link shown in the chat
open the standalone Discord app on my Windows machine
paste the invite link in there
go to the #general channel on the Soundpaint discord
open the link for the 1.1.1 beta from there
install
open standalone app
seems to work


----------



## Alchemedia

KarlHeinz said:


> Sorry, usually I have no problems but today I absolutely cant follow you and dont know what you are really talking about


That makes two of us Karl.


----------



## José Herring

doctoremmet said:


> Yet you use SINE?


I actually haven't used it in a while because one day I woke up and it wouldn't work. Since that day I've been a bit worried about it to be honest. Though I won't be giving up my JXL bones any time soon.


----------



## Nico5

I edited my prior post to show how I finally got the beta3 quick fix


----------



## sean8877

Nico5 said:


> The link is in the Soundpaint discord server in the #general channel.
> (Sorry, but I'm not comfortable sharing them here).
> 
> And the 1.1.1beta3 seems to work for me
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Edit: Here's how I finally got it:
> 
> 
> login to my account in the Soundpaint website
> copy the discord link shown in the chat
> open the standalone Discord app on my Windows machine
> paste the invite link in there
> go to the #general channel on the Soundpaint discord
> open the link for the 1.1.1 beta from there
> install
> open standalone app
> seems to work



You do know the Soundpaint engine is free and there are download links for the earlier version right on their website right? Not sure why you would have problem sharing the link. I'm not on Discord so not sure how to even get there.


----------



## KarlHeinz

Alchemedia said:


> That makes two of us Karl.


Phew....I can follow that


----------



## Nico5

sean8877 said:


> Not sure why you would have problem sharing the link.


If 8dio doesn't make that particular link more public, I don't feel I have the right or obligation to do so.


----------



## musicisum

Only got the free stuff… Didn't work today, thought a random bug since being outside of my regular studio. But it seems it's really inherent to the connected servers. Good luck for anyone on working with those on a deadline...


----------



## davidson

sean8877 said:


> Anyone have the actual link to those 1.1.1beta3 installers? They didn't come through in the post above. I logged into my Soundpaint account but the engine downloads are still 1.1.0. Thanks.


Mac https://soundpaint-artifacts.s3.amazonaws.com/mac/Soundpaint_1.1.1b3_2022_07_18.zip

Win https://soundpaint-artifacts.s3.amazonaws.com/win/Soundpaint_setup_1.1.1b3_2022_07_18.zip


----------



## AndrewS

Looks like the issue has been resolved for now. Hopefully an update is released soon that removes this as a possibility for the future.


----------



## sean8877

davidson said:


> Mac https://soundpaint-artifacts.s3.amazonaws.com/mac/Soundpaint_1.1.1b3_2022_07_18.zip
> 
> Win https://soundpaint-artifacts.s3.amazonaws.com/win/Soundpaint_setup_1.1.1b3_2022_07_18.zip


Thanks!


----------



## c0nsilience

Yes, it’s a free engine, but when it’s all said and done, some folks will end up having several thousand dollars tied up in libraries, so it has to work. When there is a bobble, communication, honesty, and transparency are key. 

The court of public opinion is a harsh judge. 😉


----------



## davidson

A gesture of a free soundpack for the inconvenience would help my opinion somewhat.


----------



## c0nsilience

Licensing per machine rather than backend library server authorization would probably be the ideal way to go.


----------



## chomeaso

Wunderhorn said:


> If I buy a continuous license of a software or a sound library, I understand to have one initial process of authorization. OK.
> Any more down the road and it starts looking like I am under a constant and unfounded suspicion of theft which quite frankly irritates the heck out of me.
> Also, all server connections aside from user-initiated requests such as checking for an update, downloading add-on etc. must be disclosed and transparent in their purpose (not in a legal statement presenting when installing the software, but in the software GUI where it occurs) and must be *optional* in nature. Anything else makes it look like surveillance and essentially an invasion of privacy.
> Just because the law has not caught up with it and it things are technically possible does not make it right from an ethical point of view.
> 
> Aside from all those discussion about ethics etc. there are situations and times when people need to travel or don't have a stable internet connection for whatever reason and that needs to be taken into account. A legally acquired license must be available to the user at any time. No questions asked.



I completely agree. I purchased the license and it should be available whenever and wherever I am.

I'm not here to argue that it's necessary to use the AWS to avoid piracy but I'm a customer bought 
several SP libraries who has a project that's due sometime soon. I cannot have issues like this.

SP making excuses that it's AWS problem not them, really doesn't help much here. The Fact SP is relying on AWS for constant authorization is a choice the company made. If you just say it's AWS problem and not taking responsibility, that brings up a question like 'does that mean SP will just let this happen again whenever AWS's having problem or so-called maintenance?'

Will they release new Beta-version every time this happens? 

if SP cannot provide a solution that prevents this from happening again. Any working composer shouldn't be using this. At least I won't be coming back to this company at all.


----------



## David Cuny

I had a look through their website.

If there's a notice that SoundPaint requires internet connectivity to operate, it's not certainly not obvious to me.

And although some people didn't run into any issues, the fact that some _did_ indicates that _some_ versions of SoundPaint require access to servers.

This is something that should always be disclosed up front.


----------



## doctoremmet

David Cuny said:


> This is something that should always be disclosed up front.


100% this


----------



## Nico5

David Cuny said:


> _some_ versions of SoundPaint require access to servers.
> 
> This is something that should always be disclosed up front.



Is there even a Systems Requirements page or section for Soundpaint or any of its libraries?


----------



## axb312

Nico5 said:


> I edited my prior post to show how I finally got the beta3 quick fix


Could've just posted a link. People cannot use Soundpaint without logging in or buying some (not free) libs anyway.


----------



## David Cuny

Nico5 said:


> Is there even a Systems Requirements page or section for Soundpaint or any of its libraries?


None that I see. In order to get any information, you need to create an account and click a button, after which it'll send an email with some details.

It _does_ state the minimum OS version needed to run. But there's no mention of any other requirements, such as memory, disk space, screen resolution, and so on.

And it _does _mention that SoundPain will prompt you for a personal Access Key after the installation, but nothing about having to validate from that point on:



> 2. Setting Up Soundpaint:
> 
> Upon successful installation, please open Soundpaint. The Soundpaint Engine will prompt you for your personal Access Key.
> 
> You will find the  Access Key on your  Account Page
> 
> Please copy/paste your Access Key into Soundpaint.



It also says it will check for new purchases or updatesthat if you go *Check Library Purchases*:



> 1. Go to settings in Soundpaint (located upper left corner)
> 
> 2. Click Library Management > Check Library Purchases
> 
> 3. Soundpaint will now check for any new purchases or updates
> 
> 4. If Soundpaint detects any new purchases or updates. It will immediately prompt you and open the Soundpaint Downloader



But there's nothing before the installation that says it requires an internet connection to use.

It might be buried in the EULA, but it's not stated clearly up front anywhere I've looked.


----------



## Nico5

axb312 said:


> Could've just posted a link. People cannot use Soundpaint without logging in or buying some (not free) libs anyway.


If 8dio doesn't make that particular link more public, I don't feel I have the right or obligation to do so.


----------



## Pier

NoamL said:


> If the call home is handled through AWS, how can they ensure no future outages will ever happen? With the best of intentions, it's still just not in their hands.


AWS will fail again. I can 100% guarantee that. In fact I can 100% guarantee that all cloud services will fail at some point.

There are certainly ways to mitigate this by having a distributed service across multiple regions and providers, but it's impossible to guarantee 100% availability. In fact AWS offers 99.999% availability for public critical infrastructure.

No software should run with the assumption that they will be able to "call home" at any time.

Also, will Soundpaint libraries keep running years from now in the event Soundpaint closes shop and there's no authentication server anymore?



doctoremmet said:


> For real-time updates, please check our Discord server”


Yeah that's a terrible idea.

What if people don't have a Discord user? What if they don't know how to use Discord? What if Discord also relies on some AWS service and fails?

What tech companies typically do, is they have a different website for these emergency updates, hosted on a different cloud provider. It's possible Google and AWS might go down at the same time, but it's much less probable.


----------



## doctoremmet

So @Soundpaint :: the “always online” requirements have vanished (except for checking for updates and new soundsets of course)? It would help to hear something slightly more explicit on the subject of “online dependency” in the light of pro composers rightfully worrying about availability (they do not wish to depend on AWS Service Level Agreements when deploying a computer based musical instrument). Thanks!

The current wording is vague. It could mean you’ve increased or upped your AWS service levels or something. Or made an online interface or API connection more robust. I think users want to know whether or not there will be any actual online connection requirements at all going forward, period.


----------



## musicsoftwaredeals

doctoremmet said:


> the “always online” requirements have vanished (except for checking for updates and new soundsets of course)? It would help to hear something slightly more explicit on the subject of “online dependency” in the light of pro composers rightfully worrying about availability (they do not wish to depend on AWS Service Level Agreements when deploying a computer based musical instrument). Thanks!
> 
> The current wording is vague. It could mean you’ve increased or upped your AWS service levels or something. Or made an online interface or API connection more robust. I think users want to know whether or not there will be any actual online connection requirements at all going forward, period.








Looks like it will still need to be connected once every two weeks for a check


----------



## doctoremmet

musicsoftwaredeals said:


> Looks like it will still need to be connected once every two weeks for a check


That sucks. ROLI has their system set up like that as well, which basically means there is still the exposure to the same risk we’ve now collectively experienced. Once the “phone home” fails you’re basically stuck. I’ve had this bad experience numerous times with ROLI. It makes one wonder…. What if they actually had gone bankrupt? Would my hardware / software basically have been ‘bricked’?

I hope Soundpaint will see the light and release a version that ONLY needs online connection for downloading. Otherwise the risk profile will basically still be the same in terms of potential impact and they’ve merely decreased the likelihood factor of the equation (risk = damage impact * likelihood of occurrence). That is not a true solution in my eyes unfortunately.


----------



## davidson

If we all make our thoughts known on discord, which seems to be their public facing communication of choice, they might take the matter more seriously.


----------



## doctoremmet

davidson said:


> If we all make our thoughts known on discord, which seems to be their public facing communication of choice, they might take the matter more seriously.


Will do


----------



## doctoremmet




----------



## chomeaso

Hum. Seems like they've decided to go down the same road. 
That's it
After the current project,
No more SoundPaint in my life


----------



## Nico5

It would be quite sad, if Soundpaint self-destructs by making it too risky to invest in their products.

Even Steinberg had to give up on that approach, since their customer base revolted:









Update on Steinberg Licensing


In November 2021, we announced the details of the new Steinberg Licensing system that will be introduced in early 2022 with the release of Dorico 4, to be followed by Cubase 12 and then other Steinberg software products. We received a great deal of feedback from our users around the world, and...




forums.steinberg.net


----------



## osterdamus

doctoremmet said:


> That sucks. ROLI has their system set up like that as well, which basically means there is still the exposure to the same risk we’ve now collectively experienced. Once the “phone home” fails you’re basically stuck. I’ve had this bad experience numerous times with ROLI. It makes one wonder…. What if they’d actually had gone bankrupt? Would my hardware / software basically have been ‘bricked’?
> 
> I hope Soundpaint will see the light and release a version that ONLY needs online connection for downloading. Otherwise the risk profile will basically still be the same in terms of potential impact and they’ve merely decreased the likelihood factor of the equation (risk = damage impact * likelihood of occurrence). That is not a true solution in my eyes unfortunately.


In the light of this topic, what would be the best way to secure a project for the future, once it’s done? Bounce everything to stems?


----------



## doctoremmet

osterdamus said:


> In the light of this topic, what would be the best way to secure a project for the future, once it’s done? Bounce everything to stems?


Definitely always do that, if you at least want to be able to return to a project and do a remix or something. Or re-use or re-work certain bits. Absolutely.


----------



## Nico5

osterdamus said:


> Bounce everything to stems?


Yes, and that’s always a good idea.


----------



## Bee_Abney

I posted this on Discord. I'm not really a part of their community there as I don't like using Discord much; but I hope our posts don't get dismissed.

Bee_Abney_ — _Today at 10:42​I love Soundpaint, and I love what the good folks at Soundpaint have accomplished already and what they are trying to accomplish still. But I can't ever use it on a deadline if it will stop working suddenly due to a programmed in need to access Soundpaint's servers for re-authorisation. The default has to be - if contact is not/cannot be made, it remains authorised and I can continue my work. Without knowing that this is implemented, I simply can't make Soundpaint a part of any template for work. Which means, I shan't be able to buy any more libraries. It has been hard enough trying to persuade professional composers that this is a great new platform with worthwhile functionality and amazing sounds; now that this vulnerability has been revealed, I would have to actively counsel them to stay away. I hope and trust that these matters can be both successfully corrected and that this can be fully and transparently communicated publicly (not just on Discord, which many actual and potential Soundpainters don't use). With love, respect and gratitude, Bee.


----------



## Bee_Abney

osterdamus said:


> In the light of this topic, what would be the best way to secure a project for the future, once it’s done? Bounce everything to stems?


Yes, I think that is a very good idea. Audio is the most enduring version of anything you do. If in the future audio formats change, there will be scope for conversion. But if your midi device and plugins cease to work for any reason - including backwards compatibility issues with new computers - there won't be any easy way to recover your work.

It's worth saving stems of anything you want to keep.


----------



## Markrs

It is a bit confusing as to what exactly SP needs to do.



> mattdio — Yesterday at 8:59 PM
> no, the server went down. SP should be letting you to continue using it if there's any network issues, but a bug creeped into our code for this specific scenario and wasn't caught in our testing phase. so even though you are still logged in, some essential account information was cleared locally (from the bug) and so now you are in a state where SP needs to contact the server to get it, and it can't...


This implies that the Bug caused account information to be cleared locally and SP then calls "home" to restore this information before you can continue. This then compounded with AWS "issues" when it could then call "home".



> Yea. SP does work offline. This is a server related bug. Not SP.





> it tries to refresh your session on the FIRST instance only. if offline, there is a timer that periodically checks to see if you are back online





> in only does it first time at launch. then i think every 2 weeks after that and when a library download finishes or you "check purchases" manually


This implies that it occasionally checks to see if you are back online, to check for updates or new purchases, but if you are not online, it doesn't stop SP from working.



> (talking from the software engineer viewpoint here ) just to address these comments above: we actually took great care to not block users out, yesterday was a 1-2 punch where an old service went down and then a single bug had crept into soundpaint source that blocked everyone out. i'm sorry it happened and it was very unfortunate -- please know i'm pretty pissed off with myself because i had noticed this issue over a year ago and added code specifically to avoid this scenario but some code got rearranged after that causing this bug. i should point out that bugs even unrelated to networking creep in causing you to not use the software (i always talk about an infamous case with a startup i used to work where the message codes got off by one and we released the new app and everytime someone created a new message, it deleted their account instead!)


----------



## Pier

Markrs said:


> This implies that the Bugg caused account information to be cleared locally and SP then calls "home" to restore this information before you can continue. This then compounded with AWS "issues" when it could then call "home".


Maybe not completely cleared locally but rather the verification process left some corrupted application state while failing to complete the process.

This happens all the time in multistep complex processes. I'm in fact dealing with something like this myself, literally, right now.


----------



## c0nsilience

SP is as good a program as any, but the vague responses in the Discord doesn't boost my confidence. It isn't difficult to answer directly whether or not software needs to connect to a server, why, and how often. No offense to the SP team because they are good people, but this just comes across like sandbagging.


----------



## Bee_Abney

c0nsilience said:


> SP is as good a program as any, but the vague responses in the Discord doesn't boost my confidence. It isn't difficult to answer directly whether or not software needs to connect to a server, why, and how often. No offense to the SP team because they are good people, but this just comes across like sandbagging.


Yes. Like you, I'm not doubting their good intentions; but this is a major PR disaster within our little world. The assurances are not easy to even understand, and no-one seems briefed to give a technical answer.

I'm still fairly confident that they can put this behind them; but will they count on people ceasing to worry when it hasn't happened for a while; or on also implementing changes so that there is nothing to worry about?

Very little that I do has a strict deadline; but just like I don't want to make presets using samples that I don't have the right to share, so too I don't want to adopt a working process that can't adapt to the rare, but most important, moments. And you'll never get media composers on board if they don't have an independently self-sufficient system to work on. Or imagine someone who wanted to play Soundpaint live! On a tour, fortnights roll around again regularly. Every two weeks!

Anyway, it is a heatwave here, and I'm worn out with it; maybe things won't look quite so bad tomorrow; or maybe I really am not going to be buying more Soundpaint libraries.

My best wishes to the Soundpaint team that they find a good path through this.


----------



## SupremeFist

As far as I can tell from recent discord messages they are still insisting that SP will ping servers every 2 weeks for validation (without the user's authorization), which inevitably creates a failure point where some bug might be reintroduced that locks users out again. So as long as this is the case, I'm out.


----------



## sostenuto

doctoremmet said:


> That sucks. ROLI has their system set up like that as well, which basically means there is still the exposure to the same risk we’ve now collectively experienced. Once the “phone home” fails you’re basically stuck. I’ve had this bad experience numerous times with ROLI. It makes one wonder…. What if they actually had gone bankrupt? Would my hardware / software basically have been ‘bricked’?
> 
> I hope Soundpaint will see the light and release a version that ONLY needs online connection for downloading. Otherwise the risk profile will basically still be the same in terms of potential impact and they’ve merely decreased the likelihood factor of the equation (risk = damage impact * likelihood of occurrence). That is not a true solution in my eyes unfortunately.


Fortunately _ have only a few purchases + freebies ! Many previous downloads now have errors and redownloads in SP fail. Now doing new downloads for everything. 
Not much to do otherwise, and find Discord a royal PITA. 
Fairly disappointed with SP now, and not even considering 8Dio as this all resolves itself.


----------



## doctoremmet

Well, FWIW, according to the most recent comments on Discord by an SP technical person there is no bi-weekly planned phoning home whatsoever. There apparently was an unfortunate combination of a code bug and an AWS outage that caused the issue yesterday. And the principle is: SP should and will work without any pings home. After installation and a first online authorization, any SP installation should academically work offline forever. This of course excludes the logical necessity to be online for updates of software and downloads of new libraries.

They also said there ARE regular pings when starting / running the software to check whether there are any updates and/or new library purchases ready for download. But normally these pings are not necessary to make the program work; i.e. when a user is offline the only consequence would / should be: no update notices. The software SHOULD work offline at all times. 

So that’s reassuring. I think they still need to reconsider whether or not architecturally a new bug could still create new problems further down the line or not. And I hope SP will send their loyal first adopters a general statement / explanation of what happened and how that was an accident, broader than the Discord crowd.

Disclaimer: this is just MY interpretation. No drama. No truths. Just how I read things. Cheers.


----------



## Robert_G

Bee_Abney said:


> Yes. Like you, I'm not doubting their good intentions; but this is a major PR disaster within our little world. The assurances are not easy to even understand, and no-one seems briefed to give a technical answer.


I love my 8Dio libraries, but 8Dio has never been known for great PR....
I have more confidence in Joe Biden's bicycle riding abilities then I do getting a straight answer from 8Dio.


----------



## Dr.Quest

doctoremmet said:


> Well, FWIW, according to the most recent comments on Discord by an SP technical person there is no bi-weekly planned phoning home whatsoever. There apparently was an unfortunate combination of a code bug and an AWS outage that caused the issue yesterday. And the principle is: SP should and will work without any pings home. After installation and a first online authorization, any SP installation should academically work offline forever. This of course excludes the logical necessity to be online for updates of software and downloads of new libraries.
> 
> They also said there ARE regular pings when starting / running the software to check whether there are any updates and/or new library purchases ready for download. But normally these pings are not necessary to make the program work; i.e. when a user is offline the only consequence would / should be: no update notices. The software SHOULD work offline at all times.
> 
> So that’s reassuring. I think they still need to reconsider whether or not architecturally a new bug could still create new problems further down the line or not. And I hope SP will send their loyal first adopters a general statement / explanation of what happened and how that was an accident, broader than the Discord crowd.
> 
> Disclaimer: this is just MY interpretation. No drama. No truths. Just how I read things. Cheers.


Nice to have a voice of considered reason in all this. Amazing how many people never even consider it could be a mistake.


----------



## CSS_SCC

My two cents: 8Dio/SoundPaint and Roli (previously) have been permanently banned from my purchases because of this "two weeks home call" nonsense. I have previously bought over fifty libraries from 8dio and more than ten of their SoundPaint equivalents. This behaviour is not to be encouraged. There are other vendors out there that appreciate my custom.


----------



## c0nsilience

Dr.Quest said:


> Nice to have a voice of considered reason in all this. Amazing how many people never even consider it could be a mistake.


No one would argue that software failing or a user not being able to login is a mistake. Software periodically needing to be "online" for authorization/user authentication and to ping a server for new purchases or updates is not a mistake, no more than if your car "accidentally" started when you turned the key in the ignition. Both are done by design.

What bothers folks, and bothers me as well, is that the developer wasn't upfront about this. So, when planetary alignment occurred and people couldn't get SP to work, it was a bit shocking as to why. It's logical to wonder how much $$$ to tie up in libraries that could suddenly be gone.


----------



## Dr.Quest

c0nsilience said:


> No one would argue that software failing or a user not being able to login is a mistake. Software periodically needing to be "online" for authorization/user authentication and to ping a server for new purchases or updates is not a mistake, no more than if your car "accidentally" started when you turned the key in the ignition. Both are done by design.
> 
> What bothers folks, and bothers me as well, is that the developer wasn't upfront about this. So, when planetary alignment occurred and people couldn't get SP to work, it was a bit shocking as to why.


According to discord that isn't what is going on. Read DoctorEmment's post. "an unfortunate combination of a code bug and an AWS outage that caused the issue yesterday"
That sounds like an error to me.


----------



## Nico5

Dr.Quest said:


> According to discord that isn't what is going on. Read DoctorEmment's post. "an unfortunate combination of a code bug and an AWS outage that caused the issue yesterday"
> That sounds like an error to me.


I'm still torn after my lengthy dialog with the developer on Discord


----------



## NoamL

From a super cynical perspective

1. The "emergency access" version of the plugin - that they were able to release on a few hours' notice - shows exactly how unnecessary call-home is

2. If they want to keep call-home in future versions of the plugin then they have no excuse not to issue refunds to people who don't want to use this plugin anymore. Since, unlike Kontakt and so forth, they can legitimately verify that you have lost access to the sounds. Removing your authorization from the call home server is like deleting the library from your system.

I hope that they will simply remove call-home from all future versions, and clearly communicate this to their community. This stuff is anti consumer and anti composer.


----------



## c0nsilience

Dr.Quest said:


> According to discord that isn't what is going on. Read DoctorEmment's post. "an unfortunate combination of a code bug and an AWS outage that caused the issue yesterday"
> That sounds like an error to me.


People not being able to use Soundpaint was indeed an error. Whether it was a combination of AWS + code bug, who knows, it might very well have been.

This wouldn't have occurred at all if Soundpaint only interfaced with an AWS server for library downloads, new purchases, updates, etc. All of which would be user initiated.

What's problematic is that folks were just trying to use Soundpaint and it wouldn't work because it's dependent on a server connection. They weren't trying to download or update anything. So, all of this was going on in the background. No one knew that this was going on in the background until there was a problem and then Soundpaint stopped working, much like a browser-based app would if there was no internet connection.


----------



## c0nsilience

NoamL said:


> From a super cynical perspective
> 
> 1. The "emergency access" version of the plugin - that they were able to release on a few hours' notice - shows exactly how unnecessary call-home is
> 
> 2. If they want to keep call-home in future versions of the plugin then they have no excuse not to issue refunds to people who don't want to use this plugin anymore. Since, unlike Kontakt and so forth, they can legitimately verify that you have lost access to the sounds. Removing your authorization from the call home server is like deleting the library from your system.
> 
> I hope that they will simply remove call-home from all future versions, and clearly communicate this to their community. This stuff is anti consumer and anti composer.


They can also legitimately make you lose access to the sounds...That's what's scary a bit. It's just this side of being how a subscription service works on a free engine with paid content.


----------



## Technostica

I'm reminded of the adage that it's often not the initial issue that does the lasting damage but the response to it, which in some cases amounts to a cover-up. 
I am not suggesting anything nefarious is going on here, but the seeming lack of clarity in the response, at least as reported here, doesn't fill me with confidence. 
This thread has already descended into a drama zone with some people seemingly already jumping ship before any serious damage to the hull has even been verified.
There lies the issue, in that companies need to take crisis management seriously and get ahead of the rumours, speculation and conspiracies. 
That requires owning the narrative and not expecting people to sign up for Discord or Facebook etc to get news. 

Personally, I have never used SP and don't plan to in the near future. 
I figured I can give it a year or two to mature and then take a look. 
This drama as reported here hasn't changed my opinion either way. Too early to tell what is actually happening here.


----------



## c0nsilience

@Dr.Quest The thing is, if people knew upfront that Soundpaint needed to be in contact with a server periodically, for whatever reason, that might influence whether or not they elect to use it in their workflow. Some folks, myself included, aren't comfortable building a workflow up around downloaded software that just might stop working. Do you see why this might be an issue?


----------



## NoamL

c0nsilience said:


> This wouldn't have occurred at all if Soundpaint only interfaced with an AWS server for library downloads, new purchases, updates, etc. All of which would be user initiated.


Yes... software and library updates should always be user initiated and optional. Send an email and let the user choose whether to take action. Composers often do not want to mess with their tools mid project.


----------



## Pier

Nico5 said:


> I'm still torn after my lengthy dialog with the developer on Discord


I seem to remember you are dev in your day job or am I mistaken?


----------



## Nico5

Pier said:


> I seem to remember you are dev in your day job or am I mistaken?


not currently - but was for many years - including co-founding a software startup.

In that latter case, since we served the enterprise market, we even had our software in escrow, so if the company disappeared, our customers could get at not only the working binaries, but also the source code.

It was a primary requirement to ensure the customer would not suffer, regardless of what happened to us.

When we branched out into offering our software as a cloud service, we had a spare set of servers on warm standby in a different data center, so even if the primary totally failed, we could get our customers back on the air within an hour.

So yes, I have some related experience.

And that experience also makes me wonder why a software developer has been trying to field my questions in the Discord forum, rather than senior company management/owners.

Bugs happen, but when we had a significant crisis, it was one of us founders that carried the resulting customer conversations.


----------



## CSS_SCC

My point is that I have paid something for a piece of software that needs to work. If that piece of software goes behind my back and refuses to work because the developer does not trust me that I have already paid for the software or is not competent enough to recognize that it will damage his brand, then fine. Most likely I can't request a refund as the software has been bought a long while ago. But I can choose not to sponsor the developer attitude. And to be vocal about it to any prospective customers. Roli has had very nice hardware. Because of their "two weeks call home policy" I would not buy any new hardware or software from them. 8dio/SoundPaint seems to suffer from the same issue. The team at 8dio/SoundPaint has been very active around here promoting their wares. Now, suddenly, their only point of update is Discord. Good luck getting me back as a customer!


----------



## David Cuny

c0nsilience said:


> Software periodically needing to be "online" for authorization/user authentication...


There's an unintended consequence here.

Even though the program wasn't connecting in order to validate the user was authorized to use the software, it _was_ connecting online and trying to authenticate the user for a different purpose.

The unintended consequence of this was that, during an AWS outage, if the user couldn't be authenticated, the application wouldn't allow the user to use the software.

Not the intent, but _functionally_ the same thing. Sure, it was an edge case, and bugs happen.

And this one happened to be a _massive_ bug.

Sending software customers to a Discord server for the fix? __

That's what happens when you have a software developer in charge of fixing things. It only makes sense if you're an IT person.

For the rest of the world? Not so much.


----------



## Pier

Nico5 said:


> not currently - but was for many years - including co-founding a software startup.
> 
> In that latter case, since we served the enterprise market, we even had our software in escrow, so if the company disappeared, our customers could get at not only the working binaries, but also the source code.
> 
> It was a primary requirement to ensure the customer would not suffer, regardless of what happened to us.
> 
> When we branched out into offering our software as a cloud service, we had a spare set of servers on warm standby in a different data center, so even if the primary totally failed, we could get our customers back on the air within an hour.
> 
> So yes, I have some related experience.
> 
> And that experience also makes me wonder why a software developer has been trying to field my questions in the Discord forum, rather than senior company management/owners.
> 
> Bugs happen, but when we had a significant crisis, it was one of our founders that carried the resulting customer conversations.


Totally agree with you.

I'm in software too. I think the fundamental issue is that companies like 8Dio, OT, Spitfire, etc, are not really software companies but are trying to jump into desktop software, web dev, etc. Completely different business.

I've seen this happen again and again with other industries. I've personally worked with a couple of big companies suffering to adapt their paper publishing workflow to a digital one.


----------



## Nico5

Pier said:


> Totally agree with you.
> 
> I'm in software too. I think the fundamental issue is that companies like 8Dio, OT, Spitfire, etc, are not really software companies but are trying to jump into desktop software, web dev, etc. Completely different business.
> 
> I've seen this happen again and again with other industries. I've personally worked with a couple of big companies suffering to adapt their paper publishing workflow to a digital one.


I was just typing the following as your post came in (which I fully agree with):

My current intuition about the situation is as follows:

The errors being made by 8dio can be easily explained by a lack of experience of the owners in now running a software company, rather than being "just" a sound design company.

The number of things that can (and will) go wrong when making your own software is many times higher than when making and delivering libraries for Kontakt. I've seen some degree of that also with at least one other library developer turned software company whom I've bought from and followed closely.

Customers of these new software companies (even if long time library developers) have to decide for themselves, if they can forgive errors due to being newbies or if they can't.

However, there's also a lesson for customers who depend on their software suppliers not making beginner mistakes. If a piece of software is very vital to your own professional well being, you may want to hesitate depending on something that's new and not yet proven.

Software is hard. Cloud services, too.


----------



## c0nsilience

Early adopters always suffer, sometime with a smile on their face. I've been there many times. A lot of it depends on if the manufacturer/developer truly cares about the user. If they do, most will forgive mistakes and the software and user base blossoms. If they don't, well there's a lot of software that doesn't make it to v.2.0.


----------



## c0nsilience

@Nico5 It sounds like you and your co-founders were professional, through and through. There's a ton of great software out there where this is the case. As such, your perspective on it is helping to inform my own on this matter.


----------



## Pier

Nico5 said:


> I was just typing the following as your post came in (which I fully agree with):
> 
> My current intuition about the situation is as follows:
> 
> The errors being made by 8dio can be easily explained by a lack of experience of the owners in now running a software company, rather than being "just" a sound design company.
> 
> The number of things that can (and will) go wrong when making your own software is many times higher than when making and delivering libraries for Kontakt. I've seen some degree of that also with at least one other library developer whom I've bought from and followed closely.
> 
> Customers of these new software companies (even if long time library developers) have to decide for themselves, if they can forgive errors due to being newbies or if they can't.
> 
> However, there's also a lesson for customers who depend on their software suppliers not making beginner mistakes. If a piece of software is very vital to your own professional well being, you may want to hesitate depending on something that's new and not yet proven.
> 
> Software is hard. Cloud services, too.


----------



## Nico5

To give further context to my comments in this thread, I should also say, that I find SoundPaint a very worthy new contender in the field of sample players. It already has some very rich sound mangling and tweaking functionality in this first generation. And a rather inviting user interface. And since the addition of user sample import (including different samples across the keyboard), it's already a quite delightful sample tinkering platform with much potential to become a real sampling powerhouse. 

So I'm really hoping that this episode will prove to be just a minor growing pain and not a strategic blunder. 

I'm keeping a very hopeful eye and open mind towards Soundpaint. -- If they do the right thing on server tethering, I might become an outright fan.


----------



## matt ingalls

hello. i am "developer on Discord" @Nico5 mentioned. i just now joined VI-Control to try to set the record straight. (although in all honestly, i have my doubts if some of the members here will listen -- it seems like you have made your own assumptions and are more interested in hating on things than knowing the facts, but i will try nevertheless)

Soundpaint has NO "two weeks call home policy!" if you leave Soundpaint open for two weeks it will attempt to sync your purchases with the server, but it will not log you out if it cannot connect. The same thing happens when you launch Soundpaint if no other instances are currently open. Yesterday's outage was from our server going down, in combination with a bug in Soundpaint that crept in where it was not handling the "server unavailable" message as intended, unfortunately resulting blocking users out. Once you install libraries and have your purchases synced with the server, you should be able to run Soundpaint without talking to the server ever again. As far as i understand, we have many customers with studios offline and this was a requirement from day one. 

This was an honest bug that i am embarrassed and pissed off with myself because i added protections for this exact scenario last year, and didn't catch the bug creeping in a few months later after some code was restructured. i am very sorry if it put anyone out, but then again i've been doing this long enough to know that "bugs happen" and all we can do is try our best to prevent them and fix them as fast as we can.

I don't quite understand "this is what happens when a software developer in charge of fixing things" comment, unless by "fix" you mean something like "customer relations" in which i would probably agree , but i felt like the situation was such i should post directly rather than wait for official channels. If you mean that we aren't following a more traditional hierarchy for software developement, then i would respectfully disagree -- Soundpaint development has been the most efficient of any company i have worked for, for the very reason that we do things outside the normal manager-heavy software company. 

i'll probably lurk around here for a bit to reply to any questions you have before returning to the much more civil Discord chat


----------



## David Cuny

matt ingalls said:


> I don't quite understand "this is what happens when a software developer in charge of fixing things" comment, unless by "fix" you mean something like "customer relations" in which i would probably agree , but i felt like the situation was such i should post directly rather than wait for official channels.


Hi, Matt.

Yes, that's _exactly _what I meant. 

Hopefully, there's now a support team and plan in place for when the next disaster happens, so you don't have to improvise.

Then again, _all _battle plans are perfect... until the fighting starts.


----------



## chomeaso

Hi Matt,
Thanks for dropping by Vi-cotrol. *Welcome*



matt ingalls said:


> hello. i am "developer on Discord" @Nico5 mentioned. i just now joined VI-Control to try to set the record straight. (although in all honestly, i have my doubts if some of the members here will listen -- it seems like you have made your own assumptions and are more interested in hating on things than knowing the facts, but i will try nevertheless)
> 
> Soundpaint has NO "two weeks call home policy!" if you leave Soundpaint open for two weeks it will attempt to sync your purchases with the server, but it will not log you out if it cannot connect. The same thing happens when you launch Soundpaint if no other instances are currently open. Yesterday's outage was from our server going down, in combination with a bug in Soundpaint that crept in where it was not handling the "server unavailable" message as intended, unfortunately resulting blocking users out. Once you install libraries and have your purchases synced with the server, you should be able to run Soundpaint without talking to the server ever again. As far as i understand, we have many customers with studios offline and this was a requirement from day one.
> 
> This was an honest bug that i am embarrassed and pissed off with myself because i added protections for this exact scenario last year, and didn't catch the bug creeping in a few months later after some code was restructured. i am very sorry if it put anyone out, but then again i've been doing this long enough to know that "bugs happen" and all we can do is try our best to prevent them and fix them as fast as we can.
> 
> I don't quite understand "this is what happens when a software developer in charge of fixing things" comment, unless by "fix" you mean something like "customer relations" in which i would probably agree , but i felt like the situation was such i should post directly rather than wait for official channels. If you mean that we aren't following a more traditional hierarchy for software developement, then i would respectfully disagree -- Soundpaint development has been the most efficient of any company i have worked for, for the very reason that we do things outside the normal manager-heavy software company.
> 
> i'll probably lurk around here for a bit to reply to any questions you have before returning to the much more civil Discord chat




I am very happy to hear your explanation and that clarifies some questions

Maybe your assumption on how some people here would not listen to you as they made up their mind was a bit bitter but I appreciate you came to talk to us.

first of all, the fact there's not such thing as 'call home every 2 weeks' is a relief.
I am not the most tech genius guy but without the bug, this wouldn't have happened even if aws server went down?

Now my beef here is, there was lack of communication or the effort to communicate with us from Soundpaint. *Would you not agree?*

I know Vi-Control is not where we should be using for an official communication, not saying that.
The email we got from SP after this incident only saying this was aws server error and provided us beta version. Great how fast it happened relatively 

But without your explanation finally, there was lack of information about how these things actually happened and how it will be prevented in the future.
To be honest, those assumptions made in this thread, with lack of information of the situation,* they were quite fair assumptions to be made*.

That's why I'm happy to hear from you here. Some clarification finally.
Maybe next time, not you _but the company_ will *send us an email* with an explanation like one you made here, will help us not to panic and start talking our assumptions here.
*So please*! Let us know about the situation, if Soundpaint don't talk to us, we can only assume and things can get radical like how you assumed some of us are not in status to hear your explanations as we made up our mind.(I guess I feel bitter about that comment)


----------



## R10k

matt ingalls said:


> hello. i am "developer on Discord" @Nico5 mentioned. i just now joined VI-Control to try to set the record straight. (although in all honestly, i have my doubts if some of the members here will listen -- it seems like you have made your own assumptions and are more interested in hating on things than knowing the facts, but i will try nevertheless)
> 
> Soundpaint has NO "two weeks call home policy!" if you leave Soundpaint open for two weeks it will attempt to sync your purchases with the server, but it will not log you out if it cannot connect. The same thing happens when you launch Soundpaint if no other instances are currently open. Yesterday's outage was from our server going down, in combination with a bug in Soundpaint that crept in where it was not handling the "server unavailable" message as intended, unfortunately resulting blocking users out. Once you install libraries and have your purchases synced with the server, you should be able to run Soundpaint without talking to the server ever again. As far as i understand, we have many customers with studios offline and this was a requirement from day one.
> 
> This was an honest bug that i am embarrassed and pissed off with myself because i added protections for this exact scenario last year, and didn't catch the bug creeping in a few months later after some code was restructured. i am very sorry if it put anyone out, but then again i've been doing this long enough to know that "bugs happen" and all we can do is try our best to prevent them and fix them as fast as we can.
> 
> I don't quite understand "this is what happens when a software developer in charge of fixing things" comment, unless by "fix" you mean something like "customer relations" in which i would probably agree , but i felt like the situation was such i should post directly rather than wait for official channels. If you mean that we aren't following a more traditional hierarchy for software developement, then i would respectfully disagree -- Soundpaint development has been the most efficient of any company i have worked for, for the very reason that we do things outside the normal manager-heavy software company.
> 
> i'll probably lurk around here for a bit to reply to any questions you have before returning to the much more civil Discord chat



I agree with chomeaso - from what I've read on here, aside from the bug, the biggest issue has been the lack of a clear message like yours. Perhaps that's something the Soundpaint team can work on in the future. As mentioned, an email would've solved a lot of the drama.

Side note: Discord is cool and all, but it's not the be-all and end-all of communication. For those who don't use it, nothing is searchable on the web. Often it looks like nothing is happening in the Soundpaint world because communication is wrapped up in that one little house. I am on the Discord chat, but I can see what it's like for those who aren't. All communication outside of that space is second-hand information. That's why Discord info needs to be crystal clear.

EDIT: By the way - love your work! (and I'm not being facetious when I say that) Soundpaint is coming along nicely.


----------



## doctoremmet

matt ingalls said:


> it seems like you have made your own assumptions and are more interested in hating on things than knowing the facts, but i will try nevertheless


Hi Matt, thanks for chiming in. I think this ^ may SEEM like people are hating, but I think that is a bit of an unfair assessment. It is what happens when people can intuitively feel that sometimes management takes the time to be on this forum to talk to us and share their vision, and enthusiasm about the great musical instrument that is Soundpaint, and at other times management is nowhere to be seen and people have to gauge what is happening on a Discord server and a rather vague email message.

Those are indeed “beginner mistakes” in terms of damage management from the perspective of software development. Noone is really hating here, but rather expressing annoyance and concern. They are people with emotions, which means they actually LIKE your instrument, and are worried. Please do not mistake that for hate, or call it that. 

Again, thanks for the explanation. Much appreciated.


----------



## matt ingalls

chomeaso said:


> I am not the most tech genius guy but without the bug, this wouldn't have happened even if aws server went down?


that is correct.



chomeaso said:


> Now my beef here is, there was lack of communication or the effort to communicate with us from Soundpaint. *Would you not agree?*



well i have to admit i'm not familiar enough with our support channels to have an opinion -- i only just lurk on Discord. i did receive the emails about it. i don't think there was any intended deception by 8dio though, we were just frantically trying to fix the problem and we are kind of short staffed right now with summer vacations and in the middle of a studio move. 



chomeaso said:


> I know Vi-Control is not where we should be using for an official communication, not saying that.
> The email we got from SP after this incident only saying this was aws server error and provided us beta version. Great how fast it happened relatively
> 
> But without your explanation finally, there was lack of information about how these things actually happened and how it will be prevented in the future.
> To be honest, those assumptions made in this thread, with lack of information of the situation,* they were quite fair assumptions to be made*.
> 
> That's why I'm happy to hear from you here. Some clarification finally.
> Maybe next time, not you _but the company_ will *send us an email* with an explanation like one you made here, will help us not to panic and start talking our assumptions here.
> *So please*! Let us know about the situation, if Soundpaint don't talk to us, we can only assume and things can get radical like how you assumed some of us are not in status to hear your explanations as we made up our mind.(I guess I feel bitter about that comment)


well i joined here because i was taken aback that after some details i gave with some you on Discord, it seemed like it wasn't conveyed here, almost like it was intentional to misrepresent my comments.

anyway, we do have a company-wide meeting tomorrow and i'm sure this will be top topic and can make sure to have them send out a more detailed description of the outage.


----------



## Nico5

matt ingalls said:


> well i joined here because i was taken aback that after some details i gave with some you on Discord, it seemed like it wasn't conveyed here -- intentional


I don't know if you're angry with me. If you are, I'm very sorry.

However I hope, that you can understand that it was bewildering to me (and others in this thread) that company leadership, who are very frequent communicators here, didn't speak on the topic so far.

And it was therefore not entirely clear to me, how much of your communication in the Discord chat was really representing the company at forever policy level vs how much you were just commenting on this particular set of circumstances from your own perspective.

In our Discord chat (unless I totally missed it), I also didn't see anything phrased quite as clearly as you have phrased it here:



matt ingalls said:


> Once you install libraries and have your purchases synced with the server, you should be able to run Soundpaint without talking to the server ever again.


I've also posted in this thread that I thought very highly of Soundpaint. With a high potential to turn into an outright fan.

Seeing how much you personally care and that you've tried your best to calm customer nerves speaks very highly for you. -- Soundpaint is lucky to have you on their team!


----------



## SupremeFist

Thanks for the clarification!


----------



## c0nsilience

@matt ingalls Welcome to VI Control. 🙂

If you decide to hang around beyond this thread what you're going to find is a community unlike just about any other on the web these days. Somewhere in-between the extremes of Soundpaint's Discord, which is full of slightly biased early adopters, and the snake pit that is KVR Audio, exists VI Control. Home to consummate audio professionals, semi-professionals, hardcore hobbyists, and folks that are passionate about their creative tools. What I've found is a highly intelligent community of people, helping each other and engaging in meaningful discussion with some depth to it. It's a fairly rare gem in a web of polarized doom scrolling.

In my estimation, these are the folks that will be around after the early adopters have moved on to the next latest and greatest. There's certainly a high level of expectation from music tech companies on here and if any product is being discussed it's _almost_ always a good thing with the silver lining being that there isn't any such thing as bad PR.


----------



## sostenuto

Whether 'my bad' or NOT _ finding Discord quite ineffective for personal needs, and frankly tough when not following regularly _ which there is minimal time to do. VI-C Forum is personal 'lifeline' for wide range of daily needs. Not my place to judge Discord, yet not finding it useful, especially in regard to these frustrating SP issues.


----------



## Bee_Abney

Does anyone understand the technology enough to make a first post in a new thread with a positive message in the heading? It might help to get the word out to those who see 'headlines' and then vaguely remember problems that Soundpaint is now adequately programmed, as was always intended, to default to remaining registered when contact with home base cannot be established. There will still be some who are upset that it tries without asking permission from the user; but most people will be content if to know that there isn't a built in weakness here.

Avoiding developers or software due to technical issues is not unique to Soundpaint. In different ways, some of us have to avoid certain developers due to recurrent technical problems that render them unreliable on our own systems (examples that come to mind are Engine II on Macs and the Spitfire player on some people's systems - some people just cannot rely on them so do not use them). The fear was that there was an inbuilt weakness rendering Soundpaint unreliable on the system of anyone whose composing computer was ever connected to the internet. (There were also other fears, concerning permission, transparency, communication, and so on.) If someone with a genuine technical understanding of the programming can communicate this fully in an initial post to a new thread, it might get the message out there a little better.

Basically, I love what Soundpaint is doing and I want people who might enjoy it and benefit from it to know that it is a sound investment of time and money.


----------



## chomeaso

dear Bee
please excuse me if I didn't understand you fully.
Are you worried the name of thread will affect people having negative opinion while the error had have been solved?


----------



## Bee_Abney

chomeaso said:


> dear Bee
> please excuse me if I didn't understand you fully.
> Are you worried the name of thread will affect people having negative opinion while the error had have been solved?


Probably not, thinking about it.

But the the first six or seven pages of the thread might be an issue! Maybe an 'In Praise of Soundpaint' thread would be a better idea. There are technical issues all over the place with different things, so perhaps there's nothing troubling with the title of the thread as such; just that there is nothing out there to counteract any negative impressions that may have leaked out for this incident.

If you wanted to, and only if you are comfortable that it is so, you might just add something like 'Problem resolved' to the heading. That seems to be something that some people do.

Sorry, I'm having a bit of a depressive moment - not feeling sad, just my brain isn't working adequately. So I may be talking gibberish.


----------



## chomeaso

I don't completely disagree with you. 

I'll later add an 'Update' on the first page that the error was resolved and how it's not related to checking our license every once in a while.

To me this thread is still on going.
and also I hope all the possible users read the whole process through.

I was glad Matt was here to clear some of our questions. but the core problem that arose in this thread is, to me, communication.
as Matt mentioned that they were gonna have a meeting



matt ingalls said:


> i'm sure this will be top topic and can make sure to have them send out a more detailed description of the outage.



I am waiting to see an email that goes through the whole incident.
that will make this case closed officially.

and that live chat on there website, was never available to me everytime I click it and it saying '24/7' above still bothers me. it's okay not to offer help 24/7 we are all human. but 24/7 is very misleading here.

anyway, I'll do something about that first post. but I ain't sure about touching the title of the thread.


----------



## Technostica

Bee_Abney said:


> Sorry, I'm having a bit of a depressive moment - not feeling sad, just my brain isn't working adequately. So I may be talking gibberish.


Sorry to hear you aren't feeling so well. 
Whatever the state of your brain, your heart is clearly in the right place on this.


----------



## KarlHeinz

Simple question as I stopped following this earlier and dont want to read threw all of the pages: Is it save now to start the latest Soundpaint installation before the "crash" and without needing to search on discord for any beta-updates ?


----------



## sostenuto

Would like to help _ BUT _ waited a bit, then to Beta, then issues with some content /dnlds, then directed tp latest Update. Some tedious dnlds, but all seems well now. 
Discord has been far from helpful, yet have never sorted it fully. Hoping you /we get further useful comment here !!


----------



## doctoremmet

KarlHeinz said:


> Simple question as I stopped following this earlier and dont want to read threw all of the pages: Is it save now to start the latest Soundpaint installation before the "crash" and without needing to search on discord for any beta-updates ?


According to the Discord v1.1.1 has been officialy released, so it should just work. The whole thing was caused by a bug, that was solved and patched in said update, if I am not mistaken. So you should be good. No need for redownloading any libraries.


----------



## Wunderhorn

What do we know now about whether Soundpaint needs to have Internet connection in order to run everytime it's launched or can still be used offline?
(Trying to decide if I need to ditch it altogether.)


----------



## doctoremmet

Wunderhorn said:


> What do we know now about whether Soundpaint needs to have Internet connection in order to run everytime it's launched or can still be used offline?
> (Trying to decide if I need to ditch it altogether.)


That is NOT the case. So no worries.


----------



## doctoremmet

The thing was, every time you start up SP it checks to see if there are software updates and new purchased libraries. Due to a bug it could not start the program when the SP server on Amazon Web Services was down. It was an unfortunate way to find a bug. The team has assured us that there was never any intention to “phone home periodically” (like ROLI does for instance) to check for authorization. The whole design philosophy is: an installed version of SP should and will always work on any system that is offline, academically speaking: forever, without any issues. 

If the first “ping” (the one during startup) is unsuccesful for whatever reason (your computer is offline, or SP’s AWS server is) it wouldn’t have any consequences: SP will just work.

For the record: I support the notion that it would indeed be helpful to state something of this nature in the OP and to adapt the thread title to include the words “(resolved)” or something of a similar nature.

The only additional resolution I’d like to see is a return of the usual SP spokespersons to VI-C to chime in on the matter and reassure the user base a bit more formally. As much as I appreciated the developer stopping by, the discourse that followed was not entirely frictionless, which I regret (being a pretty big fan of 8dio and Soundpaint). I understand they will have some sort of “post mortem” meeting shortly and hope they can share a bit of the learnings on here


----------



## c0nsilience

What's absent from the thread and what is likely to set everyone's mind at ease/set the record straight is @Troels Folmann chiming in. He's fairly active on VI Control from time to time and he runs 8Dio/Soundpaint. His wit is always welcomed and I think would do a lot for any sort of "damage control" that needs to be done, not to discredit @matt ingalls contribution to the thread in any way.

With a small company, it's important for the founder(s) to chime in especially when they are the face of Soundpaint.


----------



## Technostica

Agreed. It's very good PR for a senior figure to pop in and clarify exactly what the situation is.


----------



## osterdamus

@chomeaso: It's been concluded that this was an innocent and indeed unfortunate bug (they do happen) and that SP does not require users to be online and / or authenticate at every startup. I honestly don't believe that people will read through this quite overreactive thread, which is pretty obvious here and here.

It would be fitting for you to do yours to deescalate the topic overall and close this case / thread properly for posterity. I therefore suggest that you, as a bare minimum, simplify and move your update text to the top of the first post, not keeping it at the bottom. In addition, I suggest you do so without making it contingent on SP making changes to their website or you receiving a formal writeup of information you have essentially already received (from Troels and @matt ingalls).


----------



## Jrides

I don’t think any further action is necessary by the OP. The update seems perfectly fine. Clear and straight to the point.


----------



## chomeaso

osterdamus said:


> It would be fitting for you to do yours to deescalate the topic overall and close this case / thread properly for posterity. I therefore suggest that you, as a bare minimum, simplify and move your update text to the top of the first post, not keeping it at the bottom. In addition, I suggest you do so without making it contingent on SP making changes to their website or you receiving a formal writeup of information you have essentially already received (from Troels and @matt ingalls).



I'd be happy to move that update part on the top. Fair point.


I'm not sure how to simplify the point I made up there. Those were the best I could do.
The bug was resolved but like I said *I am still waiting to receive another email*.



matt ingalls said:


> anyway, we do have a company-wide meeting tomorrow and i'm sure this will be top topic and can make sure to have them send out a more detailed description of the outage.



*Because I was told we would.*
and I'm allowed to wait for what was promised?
I'm not on a mission to destroy their business. I've been using their product very well until this happened. I still want to, in the future. Maybe.... I kinda panicked this time and it will take some time to restore my belief. I generally do believe what Matt said that this was not what we suspected but an honest mistake.

The reason why I'm waiting for this 'detailed description' is,
Lack of these information was why we all panicked. I'm sure there are plenty people in the world using Soundpaint and not on this forum and discord either. As much as the quality of the product matters, how things were dealt with, when a problem occurs is important. This thread is awefully longer than it should be, but in some way it shows how this problem was dealt with.

I say things about 24/7 live chet thingy but those are purely my additional opinion. When I receive this 'More Detailed Description of the Outage' *I'll put (case closed)* on the title if that will brings some peace to many those who worry this would affect their business badly and unfairly. I'd probably quote the email itself on the first page.

I'd still keep my opinions included, however, because it should be okay for everybody to have their own opinion.

I do want official end to this. It is getting way longer than it should be.


----------



## matt ingalls

chomeaso said:


> I'd be happy to move that update part on the top. Fair point.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure how to simplify the point I made up there. Those were the best I could do.
> The bug was resolved but like I said *I am still waiting to receive another email*.
> 
> 
> 
> *Because I was told we would.*
> and I'm allowed to wait for what was promised?
> I'm not on a mission to destroy their business. I've been using their product very well until this happened. I still want to, in the future. Maybe.... I kinda panicked this time and it will take some time to restore my belief. I generally do believe what Matt said that this was not what we suspected but an honest mistake.
> 
> The reason why I'm waiting for this 'detailed description' is,
> Lack of these information was why we all panicked. I'm sure there are plenty people in the world using Soundpaint and not on this forum and discord either. As much as the quality of the product matters, how things were dealt with, when a problem occurs is important. This thread is awefully longer than it should be, but in some way it shows how this problem was dealt with.
> 
> I say things about 24/7 live chet thingy but those are purely my additional opinion. When I receive this 'More Detailed Description of the Outage' *I'll put (case closed)* on the title if that will brings some peace to many those who worry this would affect their business badly and unfairly. I'd probably quote the email itself on the first page.
> 
> I'd still keep my opinions included, however, because it should be okay for everybody to have their own opinion.
> 
> I do want official end to this. It is getting way longer than it should be.


we did discuss this and everyone agreed there should have been better communication -- i understood they did sent out a follow up email. we do have 2+1 great people in-house that do all the 8dio/soundpaint in-person customer support and i think that's where most of the focus is. the discord chats for better or worse are the "official" community discussions. i'm not sure how much they look at 3rd party boards. i think in general us engineers get thumbs up when we post -- "straight from the horses mouth," as it were. i personally wouldn't care about hearing from the Troels but i do understand where y'all are coming from.


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## matt ingalls

doctoremmet said:


> The whole design philosophy is: an installed version of SP should and will always work on any system that is offline, academically speaking: forever, without any issues.
> 
> If the first “ping” (the one during startup) is unsuccesful for whatever reason (your computer is offline, or SP’s AWS server is) it wouldn’t have any consequences: SP will just work.


just to clarify: one instance of Soundpaint has to be online and logged in to validate any newly installed library. after that, no server communication is needed to run -- you can be offline forever after that. the usual download should be no problem as you are online anyway. you can though install libraries copying from other machines/drives, so if you do that offline you will need to take the destination computer back online before you can use those specific libraries.


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## CSS_SCC

While for the team at SoundPaint this might be a sensitive issue to have someone telling them "good luck getting me back as a customer", I will detail why I have had that reaction and why I think is warranted: it is all about the style of communication and attitude towards the existing customers.

Because of the shared team, I am thinking of 8dio and SoundPaint as one and same company.

It's been now ten days since the incident has happened and with the exception of this thread, I haven't had any communication from the company - and even this bit of update here has not been officially endorsed by any of the management/support team.
I have tried to see if there is any acknowledgment of the error on the SoundPaint website/news/support section and there isn't any kind of public information about that.
I have tried to go on both the community forums for 8dio and SoundPaint and it gives me an error (tried with three different browsers both on my desktop and my mobile and on two different Internet providers just to exclude errors from my side).
I have never used Discord.
I did not receive any e-mail updates from 8dio/SoundPaint since May (and it was about activating my account on the new 8dio website).

Plus, from the support section at 8dio:
"Can I automatically update my owned libraries?  
We do not currently have an automatic updating system. However, this is something we are working on adding as soon as possible.
If you see an update for one of your owned libraries is available, or want to check for available updates, email us at [email protected]. From there we will add any updates to your account "

As I previously mentioned, I own over 50 libraries from 8dio and more than 10 from SoundPaint. This incident shows me that the actual style has not changed and I am not willing anymore to pay for the privilege of being ignored.


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## matt ingalls

Not sure what lib updates have to do with this thread, but FWIW, we do have patch updates implemented for Soundpaint libraries. I am not involved with the 8dio side, but i do think they are currently creating a way to do the same for the Kontakt libraries.


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## chomeaso

matt ingalls said:


> we did discuss this and everyone agreed there should have been better communication -- i understood they did sent out a follow up email. we do have 2+1 great people in-house that do all the 8dio/soundpaint in-person customer support and i think that's where most of the focus is. the discord chats for better or worse are the "official" community discussions. i'm not sure how much they look at 3rd party boards. i think in general us engineers get thumbs up when we post -- "straight from the horses mouth," as it were. i personally wouldn't care about hearing from the Troels but i do understand where y'all are coming from.



Good to have you back Matt.
The only mail I got related to this incident was on the 19th which didn't really fully described the whole situation like you did here.

Since you posted on the 20th, only emails I got was promotional emails from Soundpaint.
Yes, been regularly checking spams, too.
Well maybe I won't get any further email after all.

Good to hear some more details on how the program runs. Thanks for that.



matt ingalls said:


> just to clarify: one instance of Soundpaint has to be online and logged in to validate any newly installed library. after that, no server communication is needed to run -- you can be offline forever after that. the usual download should be no problem as you are online anyway. you can though install libraries copying from other machines/drives, so if you do that offline you will need to take the destination computer back online before you can use those specific libraries.



Whether we receive further email or not, I'll wait for few more days and try to put 'case closed' mark on the title. If there's no point on waiting why drag this any longer anyway. I'd like to quote Matt's posts on the top as well. But also, I'll include the fact there wasn't official follow-up email on this matter and you should check the discord to join the 'official community'.(I won't, but there'
ll be people happy to join them)

Personally Matt, really appreciate how you came here and try to explain and lighten up the situation. As you pointed out, good to see SP realizing that there could have been better communication. Like you said above, If your understanding is that they sent out an follow-up email and we didn't, that shows poor communication inside the company unfortunately. It is not your fault. Or maybe everyone else got the email and I didn't, or I just missed and that'd be my fault.(If so, someone share the email for me?)

I just find this whole thing can be resolved so easy and we can put an end to this, since initial error was just a bug. Maybe I'm the one dragging this over this email I've been waiting for. I feel very stupid.


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## CSS_SCC

matt ingalls said:


> Not sure what lib updates have to do with this thread, but FWIW, we do have patch updates implemented for Soundpaint libraries. I am not involved with the 8dio side, but i do think they are currently creating a way to do the same for the Kontakt libraries.


Nothing against you personally as previously said but this is what has greeted me today when I started SoundPaint. Yesterday was working fine. Version 1.1.1 (Jul 20 2022 13:23:27). No update available.






And to come back to the discussion: The point that I was making is that there is a difference between the company saying to themselves "We fixed the issue!" and me, as an end-user, knowing that you have indeed fixed the issue or that you are aware of the issue if there is no proper channel of communication between 8dio/SoundPaint and its customers. So I am again asking: where is the information that this issue has been fixed in any of your public facing channels available to the world. And please do not direct me to email support/chat/join Discord or ask me to login to check what is the latest version.

How difficult it is to actually have a public page on your website with the latest version information for every product/library sold, the release release date of that version and the corresponding change log?

Is 8dio/SoundPaint expecting that each and every customer will send an e-mail to support to actually ask for the latest update?

I do not expect you - Matt - as a programmer to be the one that is making that decision because it really should not be your remit, but there is an expectation from the company to actually communicate properly with both prospective and existing customers.


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## matt ingalls

CSS_SCC said:


> Nothing against you personally as previously said but this is what has greeted me today when I started SoundPaint. Yesterday was working fine. Version 1.1.1 (Jul 20 2022 13:23:27). No update available.


interesting. this was the same DAW you were using yesterday? are you using multiple instances/accounts or anything like that?



CSS_SCC said:


> And to come back to the discussion: The point that I was making is that there is a difference between the company saying to themselves "We fixed the issue!" and me, as an end-user, knowing that you have indeed fixed the issue or that you are aware of the issue if there is no proper channel of communication between 8dio/SoundPaint and its customers. So I am again asking: where is the information that this issue has been fixed in any of your public facing channels available to the world. And please do not direct me to email support/chat/join Discord or ask me to login to check what is the latest version.
> 
> How difficult it is to actually have a public page on your website with the latest version information for every product/library sold, the release release date of that version and the corresponding change log?
> 
> Is 8dio/SoundPaint expecting that each and every customer will send an e-mail to support to actually ask for the latest update?
> 
> I do not expect you - Matt - as a programmer to be the one that is making that decision because it really should not be your remit, but there is an expectation from the company to actually communicate properly with both prospective and existing customers.


yeah, i don't really know what to say -- i'm just an engineer and only here to set the facts straight, i'm not really here (or very good at it, if you ask my wife!  ) to offer apologies or ease any concerns. i would say that i do not think anyone else is looking at this forum so if you want to get more information or issue complaints, it would be best to contact soundpaint directly or post on the Discord forum..


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## CSS_SCC

It was the standalone version. If it helps, I have went from whatever version (I did not check at the time) was not correctly functioning last week (and started me on this thread) to the beta shared on this forum and then to the 1.1.1. Generally, I have used SoundPaint standalone not in a DAW. From time to time I use it in Nuendo 12 (12.0.30 currently installed) but it's been more than month since I even loaded it on a track in Nuendo.


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## matt ingalls

CSS_SCC said:


> It was the standalone version. If it helps, I have went from whatever version (I did not check at the time) was not correctly functioning last week (and started me on this thread) to the beta shared on this forum and then to the 1.1.1. Generally, I have used SoundPaint standalone not in a DAW. From time to time I use it in Nuendo 12 (12.0.30 currently installed) but it's been more than month since I even loaded it on a track in Nuendo.


ok thanks. that sounds like the bug. although if you logged in after it happened on any of those versions it shouldn't have shown up again. let me know if you do see it again on 1.1.1.


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## CSS_SCC

OK, if there's a log file option that I can enable somewhere that I can later send your way if the login prompt appears, please let me know.

Side note, even though I live in a large city, the internet in my particular area is quite flaky (if I really need to upload/download something reliably I have to use mobile data/5G).


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## Jdiggity1

A nifty feature of this forum, is that you can actually see the last time a user was active by clicking on their profile.
Hypothetically, we could apply this to see if "soundpaint management" are indeed no longer active here, or perhaps simply choosing not to contribute.

Hypothetically.


EDIT: My point being, I don't think anybody need hold their breath for a "word from management" on VI-C anymore.


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## doctoremmet

So? Last seen: past sunday. Pretty recent check-in, no?


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## doctoremmet

Nico5 said:


> ... what's the last time a word was posted?


Hehe. Never mind. I forget how this forum has a knack to always interpret shit in the most negative way possible. I am glad our website mod helped us achieve that moment sooner. Proceed. There is no hope and the entire world will go to shit. And the thread goes on the ignore list.


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## Jdiggity1

doctoremmet said:


> So? Last seen: past sunday. Pretty recent check-in, no?


Precisely.

Recent enough to have not only seen this thread, but also the notifications from being tagged in it.
And yet.... (?)

All I'm saying, is if anybody wants to communicate with the face of the company, you're clearly much better off using the direct lines either on their website, or discord servers.


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## CSS_SCC

matt ingalls said:


> ok thanks. that sounds like the bug. although if you logged in after it happened on any of those versions it shouldn't have shown up again. let me know if you do see it again on 1.1.1.


Surprise, just started SoundPaint standalone today and... See below!


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## davidson

CSS_SCC said:


> Surprise, just started SoundPaint standalone today and... See below!


Strange, I've been using it without issue for the last few hours. Is this the first time you've initiated it since the issues months ago? What version are you running?


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## CSS_SCC

Used it last week in standalone. Just verified and it's the same 1.1.1. I have looked also on the SoundPaint website and it's indeed the last version available.


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## jcrosby

Working here just fine as well....


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