Acid Pro broke MMP2019

JoeSchmoe wrote on 4/30/2019, 3:42 AM

So I'm back to using a PC after all these years having switched back from a Mac 8 plus years ago. I found out that Cakewalk during this time is now defunct and was in the market for a new sequencer. Ran across MMP and purchased the Pro version that comes with a ton of VST instruments I could choose from. Downloaded, installed and all was well until the evil Magix guys gave me an offer I couldn't refuse on an upgrade path of my old Acid Pro ( just kidding it really was a heck of a deal)

Anyway, I bought the upgrade to Acid, which also came with sets of VST instruments (some of which I "purchased" with MMP19) now all of the instruments that come with Acid Pro and are duplicates in MMP19 will NOT work in MMP. It just says it needs an authorization.

A quick email to Magix tech support and I find out that this is an issue between MMP and Acid (one doesn't know what the other has purchased kinda thing.) So, my question, if anyone is in the same boat and has figured out a work around for the time being. The contact told me it "MAY" get resolved in a future update - but I'm not holding my breath on this as his tone was much like "yea.. . . prolly not gonna happen"

I would really like to use both programs as 1) I purchased them and 2) I just think differently when working within one prog vs the other (creature of habit thing since I have used both types of programs since the early days of Acid 1 back in the 90's and sequencers since before that.)

Any ideas?

Thanks

Joe

Comments

Graham-Hawker wrote on 4/30/2019, 9:02 AM

I installed a trial version of Music Studio. I can't remember if it didn't work or whether Music Maker broke but having both on one computer didn't work. So I'm not surprised by your problem. Is there anyway to have the instruments from the two programs in different folders? Cakewalk isn't defunct. It's now owned by Bandlab and available for free.

ralftaro wrote on 4/30/2019, 9:33 AM

Hi Joe,

I'm pretty sure I sent you that e-mail, and I don't think that's a very accurate reflection of what I would have tried to get across to you. And if there was a (legal) workaround that someone in this forum would know and share with you, I can assure you we would have already given that to you.

Just to make this clear again: This is not a technical malfunction, and your ACID installation didn't "break" anything. The current Music Maker generation and the ACID product line are simply using two different DRM systems now. ACID cannot connect to the MAGIX in-app store system back-end, and thus doesn't have any knowledge of the purchase status of the instruments you're using in Music Maker. Music Maker, does no longer feature Protein (MAGIX' traditional copy-protection), and thus doesn't interpret the authorisation of any installed add-on instruments that came with other programs like ACID or Samplitude Music Studio. So, this is a bi-directional issue.

Potential solutions:

1.) ACID needs to get some sort of access to the data in the store back-end. This doesn't need to be a fully-featured in-app store system, but at least some one-time syncing function, into which you can enter your MAGIX credentials, and which will then unlock the instruments it has picked up from Music Maker and that you own through the store system. This solution has already been more or less promised by ACID development/product management, and is just a matter of time now.

2.) For Music Maker, it would be a thinkable solution to have ACID instruments (at least the ones that Music Maker can actually handle and that are featured in the in-app store) unlocked by entering the ACID serial number into Music Maker, just the way this works for Samplitude Music Studio and older Music Maker versions. This should be fairly easy to implement, from a technical and time investment point of view. I have proposed it to development, but it's a political decision. Will probably take a bit of time and nagging... 😉

Cheers!

JoeSchmoe wrote on 4/30/2019, 10:53 AM

Well sorry but it’s been my experience the users of a program find workarounds to issues tech support can’t approach w/o repercussions and it’s what a forum is for imho. In my book it doesn’t really matter about splitting hairs about what’s happening just the fact my functionality of the program is “broke” or severely limited and not what I paid for.

Besides this something to consider should someone find themselves in a similar position. There is no mention of this problem of instrument incompatibility other than they will not work outside of magix products. So yea mmp is broke after the install of acid pro :P lol

browj2 wrote on 4/30/2019, 1:09 PM

@JoeSchmoe

Any instruments that you got, activated, downloaded and installed with MMM will not work in ACID and vice versa, unless you also got the same instrument, activated, downloaded and installed it for both programs. Is this what you are talking about? You have an instrument that you purchased with ACID and it doesn't work in MM and you did not purchase this instrument in MM?

In MusicMaker, have you downloaded and installed all of the instruments that you purchased with MM, through the Store? You actually have to do this step. Are you logged in to the Store in MM?

What is indicated when you scroll over the upper left icon under Store, Instruments, on instruments that you have purchased with MM? Do you see a price or an icon with a message that says that you have already purchased the instrument? You can toggle Show purchased items by using the parameter gear at the top right of the Store interface.

Show us a screen shot of the MM Instruments tab. Widen the window if need be.

Now, any instruments that you got, activated, downloaded and installed with MM should work with MM. Do they?

Any instruments that you got, activated, downloaded and installed with ACID should work with ACID. Do they?

John CB

JoeSchmoe wrote on 4/30/2019, 4:29 PM

Ok I'll get ya screenshots asap within the next few days but, in a nutshell, here's what happened.

Installed MMP - installed about 5 instruments from the store. They worked.

Installed acid pro 7 (had no instruments - thought it may have been from Sony at that time but not sure) then purchased and upgraded to Acid Pro 8, I did not download or purchase any instruments within Acid. There were instruments that were installed during the upgrade. I did notice that it was uninstalling certain instruments that were "duplicates" All the duplicates now have a lock icon and engaging them asks me to activate them.

Then, downloaded the final 3 or so in MM and those work. . . I'll get a complete laundry list and screen shots when I get home in a few days.

Thanks

Joe

browj2 wrote on 4/30/2019, 5:53 PM

Installed acid pro 7 (had no instruments - thought it may have been from Sony at that time but not sure) then purchased and upgraded to Acid Pro 8, I did not download or purchase any instruments within Acid. There were instruments that were installed during the upgrade. I did notice that it was uninstalling certain instruments that were "duplicates" All the duplicates now have a lock icon and engaging them asks me to activate them.

Then, downloaded the final 3 or so in MM and those work. . . I'll get a complete laundry list and screen shots when I get home in a few days.

@JoeSchmoe

Hi Joe,

Just to clarify, in which program do the duplicates now have a lock icon on them, MM or Acid?

John CB

JoeSchmoe wrote on 4/30/2019, 6:38 PM

Mmp 2019

browj2 wrote on 4/30/2019, 7:13 PM

@JoeSchmoe

Under Program settings, try pressing on Clean Up Store, then restart MM, then log in to the Store and see if you can redownload the instruments.

BTW, do the instruments that don't work in MM at least work in ACID?

John CB

johnebaker wrote on 5/1/2019, 6:58 AM

@JoeSchmoe

. . . . MMP . . .

A small point however an important one to avoid confusion.

Magix Music Maker is usually referred to as MMM or MM, with the addition of the option, ie: Basic (free), Plus or Premium. Adding the version number, Help > About, also helps to identify which patch it is up to.

HTH

John EB

JoeSchmoe wrote on 5/1/2019, 7:03 PM

It's funny that you should mention current patches. I went to clean the store as John CB suggested and lo and behold there was a patch update ready for me to download and install. Which I did. A couple of restarts and another cleaning of the store and BAM all instruments to MM are working again. Locks are still on the instruments that are specific to the Acid Pro 8 install from within MM - which kinda sucks but I'm back up and running in MM

Go to Acid and find that I'm getting instruments glitches and all kinds of crazy crap. Un-install/re-install and removing of any odd VST plug-in paths and it's finally working again. All instruments to Acid work within Acid and those from MM ask for purchase and auth. Here's to hoping that someday soon there will be some happy sharing of instruments between the two. But for now I'm up and running.

Thanks, all, for your help!

The only real drawback is that projects I was working in on both programs have become corrupted and opening them starts the headache all over again. I'll see what I can salvage and move on.

@Graham-Hawker

I found out about BandLab picking up Cakewalk's Sonar but I lost 3 of their synths (Zeta, Rapture and Dimension) it made me so sad to find out - using their synths require talking to a server for an auth code which is now defunct and the programs are forever in the demo zone :(

browj2 wrote on 5/2/2019, 11:15 AM

@JoeSchmoe

Glad to see that you've got it sorted out.

This problem of instruments not working across the range of Magix music products has been an on-going problem since Magix started up the in-app Store.

I have instruments in MM that won't work in Samplitude.

I purchased some instruments directly from Magix before the existence of the in-App Store, and I could no longer get them to work with MusicMaker, no way, no how. I used up 2 coupons to get them. Magix admitted that they these purchased instruments wouldn't work with MM.

Hopefully, Magix will get this sorted out and instruments purchased under the Store will work across all Magix music products, but I'm not holding my breathe.

Looking at an instrument (Cinematic Soundscapes) in the Store, very bottom, it says, "VITA Solo instruments by MAGIX only run in MAGIX host products (Music Maker, Samplitude Pro X, Samplitude Music Studio, ACID Pro, ACID Music Studio." Thus, I would expect that if I purchase an instrument in the Store in MM, it would work in Samplitude and ACID.

John CB

Former user wrote on 8/28/2019, 5:14 AM

What happens if you install ACID Pro 8 on a machine with Samplitude Pro X4 Suite? Will ACID invalidate the instruments installed by Samplitude?

This is a critical issue that seems badly documented. How does this work?

I kinda wanna install ACID to use a few features and ReWire it, but I won't bother if I'll end up having to deep clean and reinstall everything.

I don't want to install just to check, because uninstalling ACID breaks Sound Forge Pro by deregistering all of its DX plugins. So I'd basically have to remove everything and reinstall SFP and Samplitude.

Can anyone inform me on this risk?

ralftaro wrote on 8/28/2019, 9:05 AM

What happens if you install ACID Pro 8 on a machine with Samplitude Pro X4 Suite? Will ACID invalidate the instruments installed by Samplitude?

You wouldn't have to expect any such problem. Please also see my post above. Even with the original post, there never was a problem with one program invalidating the instruments of another one. It's just that the coexistence of the two copy-protection systems tends to produce a bit of confusion among users as to what should work and shouldn't work. For ACID and Samplitude Pro, there is no problem whatsoever, as both product lines use MAGIX' traditional DRM system ("Protein"), and thus know how to communicate between one another with regard to feature activation. There definitely isn't any problem of invalidation of instruments that have already been successfully authorised for one product line.

Hope this info helps!