Grrrrr!

I am in the middle of a very frustrating computer, uh, episode. Again it has to do with my music program stuff. What is very cool now is that you can run signals through audio effects that are digital programs. That is, if you want a reverb you can get a reverb program and tailor your sound to whether you want your guitar to sound like it's in a closet or the Taj Mahal. You know, just by flipping through different digital patches.

It's simple and elegant except because it's digital it's easily copied and stolen. Thus, companies who spend money developing these things think of all sorts of ways to prevent people from stealing them. And, unfortunately, sometimes it seems impossible to actually install a program because of all the crap you need to go through.

My instant problem is my new Amplitube Fender program, made by IK Multimedia. I got another program from them, one that emulates all those Mellotron instruments. Unfortunately, that program didn't install right. I just figured since I was working on music that didn't use Mellotrons that I'd get back to it later.

But I'm having problems with this Amplitube too. It comes with a serial number. When you go through the process of registering it and enter the serial number the company sends you two more numbers, one of them is something like 24 digits, that you have to reenter. It took the first number but then rejected the second number which was the very number that IK Multimedia had just sent me.

When I emailed the website to complain I got a message saying that I should download their "Authorization Manager" which will help me authorize the program. Unfortunately, it took me three tries to install the Authorization Manager. Then it didn't recognize that the program was on my computer and tried downloading the program somewhere else in my computer. I need the program to sit inside an effects folder within my music recording program (Sonar, if you're interested) or otherwise Sonar doesn't recognize it.

So as it stands I've got a few hundred dollars worth of software from IK Multimedia that won't work.

It would be nice if there was an actual person I could talk with. Or yell at.