Open Letter to Avid/Digidesign

[javaman717]

Dear DigiDesign,

So I've just paid $700 for an Mbox 2 Pro and Protools LE, $100 for the SIIG "Digidesign Approved" Firewire express card, $2,500 for an HP "Digidesign Approved" laptop, and guess what? They don't work. Not even close.

I guess with all this "Digidesign Approved" gear, I'm getting a "Digidesign Approved" sound. It sounds like - static, actually. Pure static. And that's all. Great work, guys. It really improves your already stellar reputation.

Yes, I've followed your stupid, sophomoric, and meaningless troubleshooting guide to the letter. Over, and over, and over, and over again. Oh - way to go, by the way - making your customer pay silly amounts of money for mediocre hardware and then forcing us to spend hours (in my case, about 60 hours, now) making our system match the one that your half-ass developer happened to be running when he wrote the bloated, buggy, laughable pile of code you call "Protools."

Yes, I've called your arrogant and stand-offish "tech support" staff. Rather than getting any help, I was rather suprised to learn that I knew far more about the inner workings of my rig than they. I would have never considered myself a hardware expert. You'd think a "software company" like yourself would know the difference between the northbridge and southbridge of a chipset.

So it's over, DigiDesign. Yes, you can tell me all day that your software is the industry DAW standard. But the problem is, I don't care. All that means is that there are thousands - perhaps even tens of thousands - of other musicians out there who daily suffer with the refuse you call "product," daily wishing that someone - anyone - would come along and release them from the horror of your incompetence. Then, as a 20-year veteran of the <i>real</i> software development world, I remember that DAW programmers have always been second rate, and yours are considered posers even among the DAW community. You see, what matters to me, and any musician worth listening to, is the music - not hours and hours of tinkering and tweaking a perfectly good system just to get a half-rate, simi-passable and otherwise completely mediocre sounding DAW to actually boot up and run without any problems.

I suppose, in the end, the joke's on me. I bought your product because it was the "industry standard." And I'll be returning it, first thing in the morning. I'll also be advising anyone and everyone I meet to stay as far away from anything with an Avid or Digidesign label as they possibly can. I'll remind them that the only reason you exist at all, is because the average big studio has too much time and money invested in your garbage already to make the leap to something else - and even if they did, there are unfortunately just too many poor dupes out there who still think you have the best product on the market.

I can only hope that, before one of your PR people sees this post and deletes it from your forum in a desperate and rather pathetic attempt to save face, that a few potential customers are able to read it and, by buying some other product than yours, save themselves hours of hair-pulling, swearing, and stress.

Yours truly,

A very unhappy ex-customer

[spicemix]

Did the tech support you contacted sound US-based? I am wondering if they have offshored it.

Sorry to learn you got caught up in all this...really Pro Tools is for Mac HD owners and that's the only thing considered industry standard about it. It's grim outside of that rarefied air.

[kbruff]

Originally Posted by spicemix

did the tech support you contacted sound us-based? I am wondering if they have offshored it.

Sorry to learn you got caught up in all this...really pro tools is for mac hd owners and that's the only thing considered industry standard about it. It's grim outside of that rarefied air.

oh gawwwd - lol

Directed to:javaman717

you know what the other folks are gonna say right....

post a sandra report...

[P4Vi7]

I am also on the edge. Constant white noise bursts ..... no sign of acknowledgement from them that it is a prob even though there are at least 6 differant threads ( some 6 pages long ) with others experiencing the same thing.

To think I got my other band mates , 4 of them to buy into this ... now I just have to teach them to use another DAW ... That works!

[rqstudio]

Just hold on a few more months, there'll be another Hybrid Pro Tools you can buy that is rebuild from the ground up and guaranteed to work on most any computer.

[sw rec]

Wow, Java, sorry you had such a bad experience with this, but you gotta know, there's TONS of us running this thing day in & day out with no issues with it at all. (Present company inclusive. I make my living with my LE rig. If it didn't work I wouldn't use it.)
Yeah, post that sandra report, I'll bet we can help.
And I don't agree with that comment about this being for MAC HD owners only. Just read a MAC post about all kinds of issues.
"The only thing that makes a person fail is if he quits."
Just sayin.....

[pianosound]

Originally Posted by sw rec

Wow, Java, sorry you had such a bad experience with this, but you gotta know, there's TONS of us running this thing day in & day out with no issues with it at all. (Present company inclusive. I make my living with my LE rig. If it didn't work I wouldn't use it.)
Yeah, post that sandra report, I'll bet we can help.
And I don't agree with that comment about this being for MAC HD owners only. Just read a MAC post about all kinds of issues.
"The only thing that makes a person fail is if he quits."
Just sayin.....

+1,,,,,,, Very sorry for the probs you're having!! But what sw rec has to say is right on! I don't make my living with PT's, but everything in my sig, + more, has been payed for with PT's. I've used PT's since the 1st 001, 3 PC's, seldomly ever a problem. A SANDRA can show a potentialy very simple fix, and after using PT's,,,, you'll see why its the 'industry standard'. And if you're using W7,,, remember the drivers are in beta form, and Digi will come through,,,, they always have!!!

Mike

[DigiTechSupt]

Sorry to hear about the negative experience you've had.

We searched our records but couldn't find any calls from you. What # did you call, and who did you speak with? It's also a bit confusing because your most recent post was 12/23/09 where you said:

I'll be damned - Windows 7 64-bit, PT LE 8.0.3, running like oiled glass. Haven't tried anything fancy yet, but straight out of the box it's purring like a kitten. Happy player.

We did find 1 online case that you started last month about a bad disc, and we responded the next day with a DigiDelivery of the installer.

You stated you would be returning the Mbox 2 Pro but if you change your mind and are interested in troubleshooting this further please let us know.

[javaman717]

Ok, first of all, allow me to apologize to your support staff. I realized after the fact that I was speaking with the retail center's staff, not yours - that's my mistake!

I'm impressed enough by your above-and-beyond efforts to contact me to hang onto the unit for future use (when I can upgrade to a Mac and - hopefully - get better results). Regardless of the amount of frustration your software has caused me up to this point, that level of customer service is well-deserving of recognition, so, thanks. You may have just saved a customer.

[audiocr381ve]

Wow, apparently you just needed to vent.