My Experience with InMusic Authorisation

BFD3 General Discussion
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I registered my BFD3 on the 10th of this month on my 2015 Intel MacBook , running Catalina. Tempted by the free-pack , I updated to 3.4.4.29 fully.
Had a session until midnight on Wednesday 25th , and switched off.
On firing up next day at 12.00 , I was dismayed to find my BFD3 authorisation had disappeared. I visited the website , to check I could log-in , and could. But the Licence Manager (LM) wouldn’t prompt any change from “unauthorised”.
I opened a support-ticket and had some response which was unhelpful.
Not being a Mac expert , I did what anyone would do , and reinstalled BFD3 from LM. Still the same unauthorised status - server not communicating obviously , or some conflict maybe.
Later in the day the software authorised , but on opening Cubase , the BFD3 wasn’t available.
I then have a message from support telling me the server was down , and to wait until further notice. So I waited.
I finally got the message that server was up and running , but when I fired-up LM it was authorised , but BFD3 would still not load in Cubase.
At this point I decided to reinstall LM fully - by over-writing.
This did not work out well.
I then get a message from Sam at InMusic , telling me that the server would be down for a while , and to wait until further notice. Oh great.

My client of the day had booked 3 days of time in my studio , and I’d given him free time the previous day to map his drum settings on BFD3 , using my pre-production suite , with my help now and again.
Well , my client walked out after 3 hours of no BFD3 , with me incurring great loss.
Alex telling me to use another platform for composing midi-files , whilst BFD was down , well , this was an unbelievable comment. My client was sold on my glowing reports of BFD3’s sounds , and had brought his own midi-files with him - and he bloody left with them as well.

Finally got another Alex E-mail telling me the server was 100% now.
So I fired up LM , and it was unchanged - couldn’t complete request at server. What was I to think?

As far as I was concerned , all I’d received from support was someone quoting FAQ’s at me , and on trying to explain exactly where I was and what I’d done - all I got was questions I’d already answered , from Alex.
This was extremely unprofessional and I let him know in no uncertain terms not to contact me again. My last message involved heads and toilets , and the word ‘useless’.

I’d read the entire Bug Report section , and general section of this forum. I trawled the internet , and read thread after thread of complaints about BFD3’s new licensing regime , and much criticism of InMusic’s approach to consumers.
So I decided to delete the lot , and seek fresh alternatives.
I’d read Drew’s comments on which files to bin , but they were no help.
So I deleted/binned everything I could find that was BFD3/InMusic.
DownLoaded LM for a final time , and it had me logged-in still? Of course it didn’t work , and this time , the App wasn’t showing in the list?
Unbelievable.

I fired up my older Mac I’d migrated from , and BFD3 was running fine.
I even updated the App to 3.4.4.29 , and it ran faultlessly.
Ok good. So at least InMusic haven’t blocked my account for personal abuse to staff members!!!

At this point my only solution was to go back to the newer Mac and do a thorough search.
A friend told me - hold down the Apple key and click F.
I then searched for BFD and InMusic.
Sure enough there were multitudes of files. So I deleted everything completely.
There was one InMusic file , which was the authorisation block. So that went too.
Restarted , downloaded LM. It prompted a log-in on the website , and even opened that dialogue. Plain sailing. I downloaded the 3.4.4.29 App , and it fired-up fine , both as a Standalone and in Cubase - although I now have no library , and will need to download that tonight in down-time. Then I will need to map everything again , obviously.

I do have the Library pen-drive , but the installer is out of date , and InMusic tell me they have no plans to ever use hard-copy in the future , and my request for an updated remote-installer was turned down flat.
I was also told there would be no chance of any financial reimbursement (return) , and my subtle hints of placating me with a free pack were also met with a brick wall. They couldn’t care less.

This has been ongoing for the better part of a year , from what I’ve read , and I’m disappointed that more info to help users solve their issues isn’t available on this forum. All we get are paid apologists , with the odd file-deletion suggestion , and usually the promise that the next update will solve any current issues.

Now , a more experienced Mac user will shelve their complete library to a temp location , or rename the files temporarily - and then simply delete everything else BFD and InMusic. This seems to be the wisest course of action , since the process for a new adopter is seamless , as long as there is no vestiges of previous installations. There is no magic file to delete - they all have to go UNTIL specific info is given , which I believe will never happen. Plus you will really want the BFD server to at least be turned-on.
Sam claimed it happened in their down-time (!!!) , was done by a third-party , and that they had no idea it had happened , until the support requests arrived. Very poor show indeed. If it was my business , and I claimed my software to be the best - I would be alerted straight away , be out of bed and back at work solving the issue at 3am , no matter what.

So there you are. 2 days of exploring my Mac’s folders , and my own sanity - and almost a grand gone down the drain.
My fault for not being a better Mac computer user , and being so involved in their cyclic fobbing-off bullshit , that I couldn’t step back and take control.
I have no doubt that I corrupted existing files as I endlessly tried to re-download and authorise from my end - but I did find my solution eventually by going old-school and wiping the lot.

I hope this would perhaps help others in some way.
In no way am I trying to put people off from buying the App.
But just be warned that you will need to have the contingency plan of deleting everything , after preserving your libraries and mappings in temp folders , when this authorisation failure occurs.

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“Welcome to the community”

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Day two arrives.
After getting my head around reverting to a peasant-class Samsung Evo SSD in an external USB enclosure - I decided to transfer all my installed BDF samples to this external drive.
I also copied all the downloaded files , and put those in a backup folder.
Rescanning just that external drive went fine , and BFD3 was working just fine , and LM showed the correct info , although once the downloads folder was empty - LM tried to re-download the library again! I caught it , and cancelled the download , and deleted the portion it had done so far. Not happy there. This was a pristine clean install.
I still downloaded to the Mac’s downloads folder , as I wanted to have complete control , and wished for nothing BFD3 to be in my documents folder.
YET , even though I selected my external drive’s location as the install path , the thing still installed fully in the onboard documents folder AND the external drive’s folder. So , thorough deleting and testing ensued , and I finally got to the point where everything was now on the external drive - and the thing worked fine.
At this point I realised that LM was simply a mish-mash of shite , hell-bent on causing problems with file-repetitions and hidden full libraries.
But still , I had been thorough and professional , and with a zero-tolerance approach , I got what I wanted - which is basically the ability to terminate my relationship with BFD3 at any time , simply by un-plugging the external drive.

What could possibly go wrong , you might ask.
Yeah - downloading the free Horsepower was just the thing I needed to fuck up a perfectly executed install.
Once again I downloaded to the downloads folder , and installed on the external drive - fully expecting to perform the same copying , backing-up and deleting as before.
Didn’t fucking happen. The MacBook froze completely , after un-mounting the external drives , and my dongles , with the only option being to do a hard shut-down on my excellently built Mac. If I criticised LM before , that was nothing compared to how I feel about it now.
On restart , Horsepower was installed in LM , and I went through the motions to isolate it to the external drive , and delete all other files elsewhere.
Well fuck me if it hadn’t installed to the downloads folder as well. On deleting this folder , and firing LM , it tried to re-download Horsepower. I then found it fully installed in my documents folder as well.
You have got to be joking.
So this is your flagship , bug-free , updated , beta-tested , Licence Manager - that buffers millions of dollars worth of users from the InMusic sales and Marketing team? You are in fairy-land - simply either in denial , or lying through your teeth.
I really don’t care which , but I will never again believe a word that comes from anyone associated with BFD3 development , or any InMusic lackeys.

BFD3 now resides on it’s own “sacrificial” drive. I won’t be buying any packs , even though wooden snares would be nice , together with some Chinas , Spokes , and all the other stuff that should really come with the core-library in a $400 piece of software.

There were other issues too today , but I won’t bore you with those.
Needless to say I got through it , and have what looks like a clean-install - even though it was anything but. The only thing seamless is the steady progression of ill-informed gloss purveyed by your resident crack-paperer.

I found a guy in Cyprus today , who is selling a retail Halion 6 on discs for $200.
I am currently in discussions , and will almost certainly be buying it to replace my Cubase 11 Halion SE.
The Halion will load all my original pre-release LM4 DFH mega-samples (complete with Chinas and spokes) , and to be honest - that was all I ever needed to achieve fantastic results over the course of 12 years , before my Xeons were de-commissioned , in favour of Macs - and the DK-008 was succeeded by the new BFD.

I seriously do not think I will ever rely on BFD3 as a main platform for percussion , and that external-drive can now sit in the cupboard , unless some demented child wishes to play plinky-plonk on the tiny GUI Drumkits whilst I search for their medication.

I will continue to read your posts on here for a while , as a source of amusement , and I thank all who contributed to helping me come to my senses.

I won’t be responding to any posts on this thread , since the above is clear as mud.

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Toontrack is calling for you. Save yourself the pain and move on.

BFD ALWAYS downloads to the downloads folder and puts many things in the Documents folder, this is normal for it.

Yes that LM always checks Download folder tab to see if it has those downloaded. EVERYTIME

Best way around that is to copy your Downloads to another drive for safe keeping then delete those from the Downloads tab and it won’t do that anymore. However you may not see the them in the Installed Products list I think.

It does that scan of the downloads folder EVERY TIME you boot BFD3 BTW, only way around it is to hit the Pause button on each library every time and who wants to do that???

BTW, NO Professional upgrades a damn thing when working with a client, just saying. You are asking for it when you do and has proved this way here. I don’t do it and won’t do it

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Does Toontrack work offline? Do they call home at mysterious undisclosed times and then shut themselves down? Which of their products is your favourite?

I guess I’m considering my options at last, the veil has lifted. I am reborn :slight_smile:

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I fully updated to 3.4.4.29 long before the client arrived with his midi-files , and he spent a day mapping in my suite - prior to his 3-day session. We finished at midnight.
Next day at midday , BFD3 was unceremoniously unauthorised , the server was down , and we return to the top of the page to read it all again.

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OH MY!!! Gotta love online auths

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Yikes.

A community and a company’s reputation will live and die on the quality of its worst customer service.

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Yes you can work offline.
No calling home at mysterious undisclosed times and then shut themselves down.
Superior Drummer 3 is their flagship program, fairly in depth, a lot of options and features, GUI is quite good to look at, check it out at ToonTracks site.

EZDrummer 3 is their next step down, and as the name suggests, ‘easy’, but don’t let that fool you.
Check them out, I have owned both, sold both, although at that time it was EZDrummer 2, and I own both again. I’ll sell you EZDrummer 3 if you are interested, it also comes with EZDrummer 2 as 3 was an upgrade from 2, so they are joined at the hip so to speak. The benifit is you get all EZ2’s kits to use in EZ3. Check EZD3 out at ToonTracks site.

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Much appreciated, again! :slight_smile:

I got some reading to do.

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The thing is, you could change the default path where LM downloads stuff befpre (haven’t checked in the newest version, that’s why I write “could” instead of “can”). BUT, the catch is, if the path is on removable storage, once you fire up LM and the storage is missing it will crash and burn. You either have to use a local (always connected drive) for the downloads and then move them over, or wait for a fix where LM will reset to a default path if the downloads path is not found at first.

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I downloaded all 19 expansions I have purchased yesterday, told BFD to install them on an external drive, which it did, not none of them went to my downloads folder (although this has happened in the past).

Everything went extremely smoothly except for the core library (which I didn’t reinstall) and modern retro - both are still showing that annoying licence button in the LM,

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On dealing with BFD running downloads and removing them… I believe the correct way is to “x out” the download from the LM. Close the LM. Then, manually delete the expansion installer folder from your Downloads location.

In the LM preferences, I choose a separate drive location for downloads, than the default location on my system drive. You could create a BFD downloads folder on your BFD3 content install drive/location, but it should be a separate folder from where your content is installed to.

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The chances of the authorisation systems three monthly login requirement being purely a piracy measure are very slim, but who knows.

Gonna be very interesting to see what the results of my Subject Access Requests are.

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X them from the LM yes. However if on Mac you should look in the Library Application support and there is a particular file that keeps track of the download logs if you will. If you trash that you STILL have all your downloads in the download folder and the LM issue of it checking every time is gone. You actually don’t have to trash the download itself

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