Don’t Shoot The Messenger!
PACE have had a rough ride in some quarters over the years, but in my opinion it is mostly not their fault. If we where all nice honourable people, software manufacturers wouldn’t need to use copy-protection products like the iLok system to protect their business and investment through developing all these creative and useful plug-ins. I accept that PACE have a duty to provide a reliable product so that we, the software developers’ customers, are able to use our legally purchased plug-ins without problems and hindrance and I believe PACE have worked hard to develop a reliable system, as subcontractors to the software developers, to deal with end users like us through the iLok.com service.
The other criticism levelled at PACE and iLok is that it’s unfair to charge us for services like ZDT: after all, the argument goes, we have legitimately bought our plug-ins, and if we have a problem it should be sorted out as part of ‘customer support’. Well it can and it does. If you are not covered by ZDT then, as with most products, all it costs you is to ship the damaged item back to the manufacturer or their agent (in this case PACE) and they will fix the problem and send you back a fully functioning device. The charges for that service would reflect whether the item was in warranty or not.
What PACE and iLok are offering with ZDT is an insurance policy, similar in many ways to the sort of policy we take out to cover the possible loss of all our credit cards. In that case, all we have to do is phone one number and that company will contact all the different card companies on our behalf and get the lost cards blocked. We don’t tend complain about paying for that sort of service, and for professional users, $30 per iLok per year is peanuts compared with two weeks’ lost work and goodwill because you don’t have any plug-ins on your system to edit and mix with.
AIR Users Blog ProToolerBlog
Mike is Pro Tools genius and an award winning ‘audiomeister’, defined as ‘a person of great skill and authority in sound’. His vast array of credits include music (from classical to rock), drama and documentaries across all the BBC Radio networks, as well as audio post production for video and TV, ‘new media’, live sound, commercial CDs, DVDs and podcasts, helping clients tell their stories with sound. He has been described as "an oasis of calm in a stormy creative world"; "quick, creative & easy to work with"; "always going the extra mile"; and "invests himself in the success of your project"’.
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Seven radio producers – all based in the north of England – have joined forces to launch a new co-operative venture – ‘Radio Wizards’. It’s equally remarkable that their aim now is to work together on every kind of sound production... except radio!
"It’s taken over a year to get to this point," says ‘wizard’ Mike Thornton, "but now we’ve got a viable business plan, we’ve launched our website and we’re already starting to attract commissions. As a facilities provider we decided to facilitate this partnership and set them up with a web site to help kickstart this excellent partnership."
