TOPIC: Dirac licensing approach needs to improve

I've just wasted hours of my sunday having my Dirac Live Calibration Tool crash on me, update with the lastest build and now I hit max install limit. You've got to be kidding me. Its the same computer. I've uninstalled and reinstalled to no avail and now I have to wait for support to help. There are so many other s/w licensing approaches in the world infinitely more user friendly than this.

Please can we have a self-service licensing model.

Makaio2000 wrote:
Call me old-fashioned, but this sort of thing does cause me to shy away from the Dirac products a bit. I'm really turned off by the functionality of such an expensive product being handcuffed to the ether like this. Anyone else feel this way? Anyone? Bueller?

-- Jim (Just sayin', probably regret it; but hey, it's Saturday night and I'm stuck at home & grumpy) :o/

...and I'm so grumpy that I got the days of the week all mixed up

Makaio2000 wrote:
Hee! I just assumed you were an early riser in Auckland.

I think most expensive software "phones home" altho perhaps not to the extent of Dirac. I had a panic one night when my old copy of Photoshop refused to run because Adobe's license server wasn't responding. It turned out (after several dead ends) that the software was so old that Adobe had turned the server off. They did however make a version available that didn't need to contact the license server. Only wasted one night on that one :-P

I'd agree it's a concern but I don't think miniDSP can do anything about the licensing, other than let Dirac Research know what customers feel about it. @Makaio2000 and Jim, could you give some examples of more user-friendly licensing models? (Just thinking it might help miniDSP provide feedback to Dirac.)

@ Makaio2000,

Sorry to hear that you had issues. A simple email to our tech support ticket (minidsp.desk.com) will suffice for us to reset your license.
In a normal scenario, actually it is self service providing your uninstall your software "WHILE" connected to internet. it will basically clear the license from the Dirac server. I say normal scenario because there was a bug in the very early release (now solved) which wouldn't correctly unlock the license of an old software.

With this said, we're not closed to ideas. As John is mentioning, there is little we have control over this software. It's all Dirac IP, software dev so what we can do is provide some feedback. Whether it gets implemented, it's a bit outside of our control but the Dirac guys are good listeners.

DevTeam

I've just hit the same issue. I'm trying to upgrade from version 1.0.2 to the new 1.1.4 and same effect "You've exceeded your licenses..."

I did try to uninstall via Control Panel before installing new version (while connected to internet) - did not help. So I've e-mailed support too.

****

The license should work whenever your DDRC is connected to PC. CLIO measurement system works like that... One buys a license to go with a specific box - so it would make sense to use the box as the "physical dongle" and there would be far less issues.

Ergo
Estonia

Few things in following up on this.
1) The minidsp support team reacted promptly - thank you for that! I'm not back in operation now...
2) Dirac clearly can make this thing a little more user friendly. I did some poking around and came across the Dirac Activation Portal (portal.dirac.se) that looks like they have the ability for self-service but hints that this was a feature that has been deprecated. Pity since you have to have a hardware product to make the software useful. This rampant licensing paranoia isn't helpful to the consumer. Would be great to reactivate this approach.

Regardless...I'm back to loving the most important audio component I have - the DDRC-22D !!!!

Just wanted to add my experience. I had this same problem, maximum install reached. I emailed MiniDSP support through the "Contact" on the website. They reset my license and I tested that it worked in less than 10 minutes after my initial email. Amazing support!

You may check if it works the same way of the standalone DLCT version...
uninstall DLCT by using the uninstall application in the Dirac folder (NOT the operating system's uninstall utility) while being online,
that should remove the hardware ID from the server and make a new installation available.

Flavio

Hi Flavio, I tried that several times, including rebooting after uninstalling, and it didn't work. I wasted several hours, fortunately MiniDSP tech support straightened it out quickly after I contacted them.

@ LesC.

no worries, it's not from your side. There was a known bug for the early version of DLCT issued to miniDSP that wasn't clearing the Dirac Licensing server. Bug was now solved by Dirac team since the past 2 revisions, but in the mean time, if you're doing an upgrade from a very old rev, we do need to manually reset them. Sorry for the inconvenience and glad to hear that you're up and running again.

DevTeam