Recording Studio Software … Don’t Lose Your Licenses!

I was working with a client yesterday who upgraded his computer from an old dual G5 Mac to a Quad Core Intel Mac Pro.

He works heavily with soft synths and has well over 15 major plugins. If you’ve ever installed a soft synth I’m sure you’re familiar with the minor hassle of authorizing your computer to use it. Some use an ilok, others use challenge/response, some just need a serial number, others are more involved.

When my client built his system over the years, installing each of these plugins one at a time was really no big deal. However, years later now trying to install all of these at once it’s a MAJOR undertaking.

Why?

Who knows what authorization method each used! Some manufacturers actually use different methods between their plugins which makes things even more exciting. My client even meticulously saved each and every box/manual, everything. The problem is, software gets upgraded after you install it, authorization codes are emailed, email gets lost or or hard to find, time passes and when your software is just running fine, it’s easy to forget about this authorization nonsense!

To keep things as easy and simple as possible, I recommend you keep a spreadsheet with the following columns:

Manufacturer
Plugin name
Version number
Serial number
Authorization method (ilok, challenge response, other dongle, (?) serial #)
website
Your username for their site
Your password for their site
The email address you registered with their site

Having all this data it takes a lot less time to pull things together and get authorized.

The last and probably most frustrating detail on all of this, sometimes older plugins don’t work on newer computers and operating systems.

This was sadly the case with my client. As I said, he had a G5 and it was running OS 10.4. Nowadays we all use the much faster Intel chips on OS 10.6. The problem here is that the older plugins were written for the PowerPC and not the Intel architecture.

Some plugin manufacturers jump to offer free updates to their plugins so you don’t lose your investment. Sadly, other plugin manufacturers take this opportunity to force you to re-invest. Waves wanted $200 to upgrade the plugins he already spent $800 on, the symphonic plugin he uses also demanded over a hundred dollars, and one of the GForce plugins demanded just $20.

After you spend $4000 on the fastest new computer to run all the plugins you own, the last thing you want to do is spend another $1000 just to re-buy some of those plugins!

So, when you’re upgrading your computer be sure to check out your TOTAL upgrade cost in software as well as the hardware. You might need to save up just a bit more!