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Spitfire ignoring bug report with Studio Winds Professional

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Vick

New Member
My first post, and it's a public complaint/warning/passive-agressive set of questions:

2 weeks ago I reported a bug with Spitfire's Contrabass Clarinet instrument where c1 and b0 have incorrect sforzando samples in their "long" articulation when vibrato is below 50%.

I had to pester them to even acknowledge they got the report.

They gave me an an ambiguous statement -- Not even about fixing it, but about when they'll even look at it.

1. Can anyone else with the library confirm the bug?
2. Is this poor customer support typical for Spitfire? They claim the delay is because they're being "inundated" with support tickets.

Even though there's a work around of bumping up the vibrato via CC for each instance of the note, for me that's a major pain since the composition in question hits those two notes very often, and I don't want vibrato...

I understand this is an obscure instrument and I could very well be the only person on the planet affected by it, but I would expect that two weeks after reporting the bug they'd at least have a better followup than they'll look at it "as soon as possible".
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Vick said:
I understand this is an obscure instrument and I could very well be the only person on the planet affected by it (…)”
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Spitfire will fix bugs according to how many reports they get on each.

It’s completely transparent; they’re writing it somewhere on their homepage.

So from your description of the bug you found, odds probably aren’t very good in terms of getting it fixed any time soon.
 
This is NOT an appropriate use of the forum, especially as a first post. But before I ban Vick (I'll give him a chance to respond, since maybe I've misread him) and move this thread to the Drama Zone, I'll make a couple points:

First, notice how "Vick" posts anonymously. ~sigh~ Where I come from (admittedly a different generation, so perhaps I'm out of touch), it's considered a bit on the cowardly side to slam someone on a public forum ... anonymously. Slamming their reputation with zero risk to your own. You can see the imbalance, right?

In my own case, where I post under my full name, people can see that I'm willing to stand behind my words. They know that I'm not going to talk shit unless I'm willing to put my reputation behind it. So when I do have something controversial to say (like that a company "ignores" their customers), they know there's real thought behind it.

As opposed to a slam-and-dash, which is essentially what this thread is. (I say "dash" because I can't help but notice "Vick" hasn't been on the forum at all since he posted this a few hours ago. I've seen this before, where the OP will sometimes be gone for days after dropping their little bomb.)

My second, and more important point (since it's the reason I'm going to ban Vick), is that this sort of thing is covered in my Posting Guidelines thread. Which people should read, especially if they're the sort of person who doesn't already instinctively know that anonymously posting a revenge thread like this, especially as a first post, is out of bounds.
 
You can go ahead and ban me, not worried about that.

I expected a human to at least acknowledge my report in less than the 7 or 8 days it took. Not fix it, just acknowledge the report.

Then I expected them to at least confirm they can reproduce it. Not promise to fix it, just at least acknowledge they can reproduce it.

Then, give me a realistic time line on when it will be fixed -- 1 week? 3 months? Undetermined?

Disagree if you want. Ban me if you want.

But, as I guess someone else pointed out, this isn't how they work. Which is pretty disappointing for a company that doesn't have any means to test their product ahead of time (Yeah, I know, nobody does...), and which has firm no refunds policy.
 
While I agree with your assessment that the turnaround time for an initial response is not great, and is fairly abnormal for Spitfire (or at least has been in my experience), to claim they're ignoring the bug/customer entirely is not a fair assessment.

Honestly, I wouldn't hold out hope for fixes to the Studio Orchestra line any time soon. They (SA support) have fixed patch files to correct legato not triggering (or no sound at all playing) on a number of the Spitfire Studio Strings Pro legato patches under the Mixed Mic folder that is still not a part of what you get via their own internal downloader. This line does not appear to be a high priority for them, which is a bummer, but I'm guessing it didn't sell well enough to get priority against other lines like SSO, BBCSO or Abbey Road.

I work for a software company (not audio-related) so I see firsthand the struggle that comes with a backlog of bugs to fix and not enough support devs to go around to fix them all. You have to prioritize according to what users are reporting and level of severity.

You also can't provide a timeline to a customer until a root cause is determined, fix scheduled with development, then scheduled for release once the fix passes QA and regression testing doesn't reveal anything else breaking from the fix.

All that to say, I enjoy roasting Spitfire when it's warranted, but this is not one of those instances.
 
@Trash Panda Yeah, that's a balanced assessment of the situation. I know something about product design so understand the QA process, and wouldn't complain about about it in most circumstances, just this "blind faith" issue when buying expensive sample libraries merits something better.

Moderator, I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm fine if you want to ban me or remove my posts.
 
2 weeks ago I reported a bug with Spitfire's Contrabass Clarinet instrument where c1 and b0 have incorrect sforzando samples in their "long" articulation when vibrato is below 50%.
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This will probably not help you, but if the library is "unlocked" in Kontakt, you might be able to easely identify the groups by playing, then select the groups affected (all microphones) and just move the samples around to fix this. If the wrong samples are mapped, you could try and delete these areas and extend the sforzando samples for neighboring keys so they fill the gap.

I don't own the library myself, so I can't look it up.
 
Sometimes you have luck with the same articulation working fine from another folder.
This could be individual articulations, stereo mixes or decorative techniques.
 
Trash Panda said:
I work for a software company (not audio-related) so I see firsthand the struggle that comes with a backlog of bugs to fix and not enough support devs to go around to fix them all. You have to prioritize according to what users are reporting and level of severity.
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Not excusing it, but I once inherited a product suite (as product manager) that had more than 11 thousand bugs logged in the system (a massive CRM with various other fintech and payments capabilities slapped on).

A week later, I was clued into a security breach that would have been avoided via five tickets that were created more than a year prior.

No real point to this except I suppose an agreement with your post. Software development is messy, and prioritization is difficult.
 
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Not an ideal solution, I know, but you could move/transpose the whole midi sequence up or down a half step, then adjust the pitch in Kontakt. Assuming those are the only two notes where the issue exists.
 
unclecheeks said:
Not an ideal solution, I know, but you could move/transpose the whole midi sequence up or down a half step, then adjust the pitch in Kontakt. Assuming those are the only two notes where the issue exists.
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I also use this workaround at times when a certain note for whatever reason sticks out in a negative way. But instead of transposing and pitch shifting the whole midi sequence, I often just isolate the offending note(s) and only transpose those, in a separate track, while disabling them in the original track. With this case of the OP, there are two adjacent notes 1/2 tone apart, if I read it correctly. So I'd probably substitute 1/2 tone above for the top one and 1/2 tone below for the bottom if the ranges allow.
 
Vick said:
Then, give me a realistic time line on when it will be fixed -- 1 week? 3 months? Undetermined?
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I can’t think of a single software company that would reply to a bug report with any estimate, even a vague one, of when they’ll fix it.

You file a bug, the company (maybe) thanks you, and you wait patiently.
 
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I've been sending bug reports and questions to quite a few companies over the past couple of weeks as I've been adjusting some things in my system and testing. My experience with Spitfire has been amongst the worst I've had, up there with Waves, so I sympathize with the OP (Avid and Apogee have been very good). The details are banal, but suffice to say I don't feel compelled to give them any more of my money. Make of that what you will, but I think it is fair to share a grievance. It may be that you are an outlier, or part of a trend. Impossible to know unless you do.
 
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