Before you buy anything from this company...

[JacksonP]

Based on my own experiences, reading this forum and internet in general, I'd say that this company has big troubles with their products and even bigger problems with their customer service. There are amazingly lot of frustrated people with products that doesn't work still waiting for customer service, myself included.

I've put my money to several products from Arturia. My most recent thing was to buy this AF-controller (I allready had the software) straight from their company, which was obviously a mistake. Keyboard quality is in general not very good, but my unit is also clearly malfunctioning: some keys doesn't send note on messages like others. Serious player really cannot play with this kind of controller. Immediately after I got it I contacted Arturia about this case. What happened: nothing. They simply doesn't answer my case. If they don't give me money back or at least give a better unit (this is my legal right as a customer!) all I can do with AF-controller is to give to my children for a toy keyboard (unfortunately quite expensive toy). I have no guts to sell it to anybody.

Like MANY others here, I also have had problems with AF-software and their other products. Few times I have almost lost my hearing when this soft has crashed in logic. When this VERY noisy thing happened few times on stage and it was amplified with PA-system, I decided not to use it anymore in live gigs. So I would think twice before buying anything from Arturia.

[mike c]

Agreed with crappy customer service.  I have posted 4 questions since late October that all have not been responded to.
I won't even bother anymore and will just take my money to other developers.

[JacksonP]

I have good news and then bad news:

First, finally Arturia reacted to my case!!  (How much is it because of this critical first post of mine? For me it's the same...). Today UPS brought me a replacement unit (for AF-controller) and Arturia didn't even want to have this first (malfunctioning) unit back.

So far so good. Now the bad news: the second unit is having exactly same problems. It's maybe even worse. So now I have two malfunctioning controllers. So now my critic is not so much about this french company or its customer support but the quality itself of those controllers. In the bottom you can read this nowadays so typical text "made in China". It also has "QC passed" label. I don't know what it has passed but for sure no real player had tried to actually play with it.

Basically I'm Just trying to find any solution to this and I'd like to ask you two things:

First, I'd like to know if someone else have had this problem with AF-controller? How typical it is?

I shoot two clips to demonstrate my case (with brand new unit straight from the box)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05XFgt7aKdI

here you can see "good keys vs. bad keys" more closely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrp0aBIRD1Y


Second, If someone have had this problem, is there a way to fix it? Antoine told me that it can be fixed by opening the unit and readjusting those rubber contacts which are under keys. I opened the first unit and I must say that I can see no difference with functioning keys and malfunctioning keys. So I cannot imagine any adjustment to them.
 

[JacksonP]

Now FINALLY good news:

And this information is specially to Arturia technical team as well. First of all I am not a technician of any kind. I just play digital instruments I have no idea what's happening inside these machines.

I ran my own "blind" tests with these two malfunctioning units. What the hell, I had nothing to loose here. After breaking both them to pieces I finally discovered that it's not about the rubber contacts (like Antoine suggested to me). Those contacts were all well enough placed there. Instead of that, problem was THE WHOLE CIRCUIT BOARD (I am not sure if this is a correct term) which has these rubber contacts (under keys)! That board was just too loosely attached in those points which did not work. Simple as that. Just pressing it up from the bottom and same time tightening those screws made it function again. Anyway all those screws were already tightened (in china) but obviously not enough. Funny thing is that Antoine or anybody had no idea of this problematic.

My story had finally happy ending: now I have to functioning units and T-shirt (Arturia send me one as a "wooden spoon")! They are not perfect for my fingers but now I can say that at least they work like supposed.

I really hope that my too long fight with AF-controller helps someone else having similar problems and Arturia too...

 

[Jimmie]

Hi,

I am having the exact same issue.  I don't completely understand how you went about fixing it though.  If you would upload a quick video on how to fix or send me some pics, that would be awesome!  I have battled with this issue for over a year and Antoine also send me a message about the rubber contacts.  If you want to send pics, please email me at dub6@hotmail.com.  I really appreciate your help! 

Jimmie

[Jimmie]

So I tried taking everything apart and sort of understand what was done to fix the problem of the "un-tightened" circuit board but this fix was unsuccessful for me.  The rubber contacts all looked the same (no way to tell which is good or bad).  From what I could tell the rubber contacts were in place as they are suppposed to be...in fact there are two plastic prongs which fit perfectly into the circuit board (to keep it in place) and found that there really wasn't any wiggle room.  I'm not sure what else to do at this point.  If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it. 

[Henning]

Hm, I received answers within a day 

[PIGI]

i have to confirm the bad of arturia.
no tech support and really buggy software. i bought the AF and the Jupiter and every day was a problems.. sometimes its dont recall the preset i used the day before, sometimes its crash and more..
i tried to contact the support but still dont have the reply, and today, after many months, i dont wanna it!
buying arturia software is been the worst choice of my life.
this way to make software really encourages the piracy, cause why i have to spent money for crapy forgotten software?
arturia only looks for origin or spark user.. really thanks!

[Antoine]

@PIGI
The last message I got from you in our incident tracker is back to January 2010, and part of the Jupiter-8V beta test. 

Please send me a private message with your actual case number, just in case I missed something.

[PIGI]

the case you are speaking about plus another case, the most important > 58572 (2008-12-31)
i still dont have a reply, sure i dont expect it now.
bye