I recently purchased music studio x8 and had awful problems with it, softsynths wouldn'r work on usb midi keyboard, some kind of bug, was within 14 days so got a refund, just got a license for samplitude pro x5 instead, had the thing running and set up in under 7 minutes playing fine with the keyboard.

I have a suspicion the updates cause the problem, when you get the software get the trial version installed, see it works, then enter your license keys, DO NOT UPDATE.THE SOFTWARE - seems to be a lot of people having issues after updates.

anyway all's well that ends well. Magix software seems to be a bit of a crapshoot.

I hear what saying, and have experienced that in past years more times than I'd like... but with current stuff, not here. I do think you might be on to something with the "update" thing though... I have stopped updating immediately while doing first install (when it first asks if want to update mid install) so that the core install can complete and reboot first (before doing any updates). Maybe this is why I haven't had that same experience.

For the Record, I also have the SPX5 and its great yes... I am now on Win 11 though, and since its last update was before Win 11 release, and showed a few audio driver errors here and there once using in new Win 11, I decided to get some of the newer features and stay current with X8 core updates with SMSX8. Working great here. I will keep SPX5 loaded if I ever need some of the deeper features Pro has, but suspect I'll be fine without it since I have various Sound Forge versions also.

Glad to hear your SPX5 is working great there! Its a super deal for sure!