Hello Arturia,
As you may already read out of the caption of this post, I'm not really happy with the latest updates. This concerns the Laboratory 1.5.1 as well as some of the single synth updates. With the last updates (2.5.1), there came this problem with choosing an ASIO sound device and your tech support told me that this would be a problem with my driver and I should go back to the previous versions. Okay, I did and still had a lot of trouble with bluescreens and so, untill one day,
Antoine finally told me that it is probably my video driver that is causing this trouble. Wow, it took them months to find this out even if I sent them douzens of minidump files and bluescreen reports!
Now that this was fixed with a driver update, I thought I could maybe finally use the software bundles I bought round eight months ago. But no, actually I was wrong!
Not only that I still can't choose another sound device on the ARP2600 V2, MiniMg V, Mg Modular V 2 and Prophet-V2 in standalone mode and ARP2600 V2, MiniMg V and Mg Modular V 2 are crashing my DAWs (Samplitude Pro X, Ableton 8.3.2) when they have to be closed, now I can't even close the standalone version of ARP2600 V2, MiniMg V and Mg Modular V 2! Windows is just not able to close the application window. Even when I log out and in again, the application is still running and is shown on the task bar and the task manager.
I guess that all these issues have to do with my video card and none of them have to do with my sound device, but instead of making this clear to me, Arturias support decided to leave me in the dark about the reasons for that trouble and release updates that don't fix that. Okay, it's not a high-end product and maybe I should get a new PC, but before purchasing the
AE The Player 25 +
Hip Hop Producer Bundle and the
AE The Laboratory 49 +
V-Collection 2 Bundle, I had an
Arturia 60 Day Trial Extended Demo (that is by the way still available, although it should have ended by the end of 2011) running for months! (since june and I bought in october and november)
I didn't had any trouble with the software or my video card driver. No, everything was just fine and fun. That was one of the reasons I purchased the Arturia products. Another reason was that I wanted to get a complete production solution. I thought I would only have to upgrade to Ableton
Live and everything would be fine. But since then, I wasn't able to produce music anymore.
(only one track finished in the last six months!) No, I was busy encountering and discovering bugs I had to note down and report to the tech support and developement teams!
And now?
Now I'm just a hobby musician that has to go back to scool for two years and learn a real job, because the jobcenter has nothing to do but writing sanctions.
I'm poor, I'm unsuccessful and now I'm done with music production.
But hey, I still have some very good equipment I can't use. Maybe I'm lucky and I just don't realize it! Who knows?!?
Anyways!
The latest updates didn't change anything. But if I would keep the Mini V and Modular V installed, I couldn't even use them with the Laboratory anymore, because the new Laboratory uses a lot more RAM and so I can't use it to finish my existing Live Sets.
And that leads me to the bugs I encountered, testing the new Laboratory 1.5.1 update.
- I'm unable to copy a scene (save as). The new scene is not shown but appears after a restart. Save as just loads the first scene in the list. (depending on your preset filtering)
- Deleting scenes doesn't delete them from the list. I have to restart the Laboratory before the scene is really deleted from the preset list.
- You can't see which sound and/or scene is copy protected and which not, anymore.
- Choosing a melody doesn't mark it. Only the first that is listed (depending on your filtering) is markable.
- Costum Controls are not assigned when a sound is picked as part of a scene. Except Oberheim SEM V and Wurlitzer V sounds.
- Oberheim SEM V sounds are silent in standalone mode, if they have no melody assigned.
- All Oberheim SEM V sequences have hold probably turned on.
- When I load a Oberheim SEM V sequence in scene mode and play it, it doesn't stop and when I pick another sound, the choosen sound plays as a sequence (hold). Only EFX sounds can stop this behavior.
- After opening the Audio & Midi Settings, in standalone mode, I had a strange sub bass and pop sound sequence playing that could only be stopped by closing the Laboratory, after playing the first notes.
After a computer restart I was able to stop the sequence by loading a new preset. (First played key triggered this sequence again) Then I didn't had this again.
My system- Intel Pentium 4 (2,8 GHz)
- 3 GB RAM
- ATI Radeon 9200 Series (128 MB)
- Windows XP Pro SP3 (32-Bit)
I even tried all the latest updates on a new installed system on a second hard drive but it didn't change anything! All drivers where up to date and all the latest system updates where installed.
So, there are three possible reasons:
- Single Core processores are no longer supported
- Windows XP (32-Bit) is no longer supported
- 128 MB video memory is not enough
Okay, multiple cores are recommende, but I had no problems last year, so why do I have so many issues with the Laboratory and the V-Collection now? All the synths I was allowed to test in beta status (Jupiter-8V2, Oberheim SEM V, Wurlitzer V) are working without any trouble and even the CS-80V2 is working without any problems.
Where the hell is the difference between them and the ARP2600 V2, miniMg V (Mini V), Mg Modular V 2 (Modular V) and Prophet-V2?
Can someone explain that? Could someone may test this with Windows XP (32-Bit) on a multi core processor or with an older video card? Or can somebody else confirm some of these bugs?
Could Arturia please update the minimum system requirements if so?
