JohnBussoletti
09-11-2002, 12:42 AM
Here's an email exchange with Sonic Foundry regarding my experiences with the Acid 4.0 upgrade. The short story is, Acid 3.0 works fine with my hardware, but Acid 4.0 doesn't. And Sonic Foundry says "it doesn't have to because we no longer support your older hardware since Alesis no longer supports it." Pretty lame excuse for failing to provide upward compatibility in your products. I think. What does the forum think? Here's the email chain:
Kimberly,
It turns out that if I ignore the "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" dialog box, moving it off to the side, Acid 4.0 comes up and seems to work, at least in terms of being able to play the demos and the like. Since I still have Acid 3.0 and it works just fine with my ADAT/PCR card, I can use Acid 3.0 to do my recording and, if I need the feature set of Acid 4.0, either use it in its current brain-dead-but-perhaps-functional state, or I can put it on my laptop and use it there for mixing stuff that's already been recorded.
But come on! Your engineers haven't added ANYTHING to Acid 4.0 to provide functionality to use my hardware. It was already there in Acid 3.0 (which continues to function, I point out). What your engineers have done is to introduce bugs into the code that make it incapable of performing the actions that the previous version continues to perform. Now you can play the "we don't have to test functions with hardware that is no longer supported by it manufacturer" card, but the fact of the matter is that your engineers have broken the code in the new version.
That's not a good sign, and I'll sure be more hesitant about any future purchases from Sonic Foundry, if this is any indication of the coding abilities of your engineers. I should also publish this exchange on the Audio Forums page under Sonic Foundry. The folks there have already been grousing that some of the "major upgrades" of some of your products are more fluff than substance. I'm sure they'd also appreciate learning that your engineering staff has no qualms about making a new version fail to work with hardware that performed perfectly well with the previous version.
And, on a final note, while Alesis has been going through some tough times, I have had some correspondence with their user support staff in which they indicated that when the dust settles from whatever acquisitions that are or have been taking place, they may come back to do Win XP drivers for the ADAT/PCR card. Do you think it might be worth your engineer's time to fix the bugs in that case?
By the way, if you point your browser to http://www.alesis.com/products/recording/index.htm
you'll find an item "ADAT Edit PCI/ADAT Interface Software" with a live link to a page that was written in 2001. If you look at the link, it tells you that the PC Edit has no support under Windows 2000 or Windows XP but runs fine under Window ME.
For a "no longer supported" card, it still seems like Alesis continues to sell them and develop new products (AI-4 interface) for their ADAT systems.
Frankly, your excuses for failure to support your product are pretty lame. I'm disappointed, but will just take it as a lesson to avoid your products in the future.
Meanwhile, if I dig out my debugger and trace this stuff through, maybe I can patch the code myself to get out from the annoyance of the "illegal operation.." dialog box...
John Bussoletti
-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly Kroll [mailto:KKroll@SonicFoundry.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 6:44 AM
To: 'John Bussoletti'
Subject: RE: ACID PRO 4.0 support request from John Bussoletti
Hello,
Once a manufacturer stops supporting hardware, so do we. Which means that
our engineers do not add the functionality to use that hardware. If you
would still like a refund, please reply back with your order number.
Best regards,
Kimberly Kroll
Customer Relations Representative
Sonic Foundry
1617 Sherman Avenue
Madison, WI 53704
** For clarity, please include previous email thread when replying **
Phone: 800-577-6642
Fax: 608-250-1745
homepage: <http://www.sonicfoundry.com/>
registration: <http://www.sonicfoundry.com/registration>
downloads: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download/step1.asp
tech support: <http://www.sonicfoundry.com/support>
software updates: <http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download>
For tips-n-tricks, general usage questions and more, visit Sonic Foundry's
product forums: www.sonicfoundry.com/forums (http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums)
-----Original Message-----
From: John Bussoletti [mailto:bussolet@pop.halcyon.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 3:16 PM
To: 'Kimberly Kroll'
Subject: RE: ACID PRO 4.0 support request from John Bussoletti
Importance: High
Kimberly,
The peculiar thing is that Acid 3.0 works fine with the card. What have you
done with Acid 4.0 to cause it to no longer with the drivers for the Alesis
ADAT card?
I may have to return my copy of Acid 4.0 and request a refund. If your new
products don't work with the same hardware as your earlier products, you're
forcing your customers to buy new hardware as well as new software in order
to use the new software. That increases the expense of upgrading,
dramatically in this case, and makes the new features of the new release
much less valuable for the required investment.
If you cannot or will not make Acid 4.0 compatible with the same devices
that you supported under the same operating system as Acid 3.0, then I
request a refund.
John Bussoletti
-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly Kroll [mailto:KKroll@SonicFoundry.com]
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 11:43 AM
To: 'bussolet@pop.halcyon.com'
Subject: RE: ACID PRO 4.0 support request from John Bussoletti
Hello,
Thank you for writing. ADATASIO.DLL is a component of some older Alesis ADAT
bridge card. This card which from what I hear, now relies on third-party
drivers to continue to exist because the manufacturer has discontinued and
dropped support for it. If a company stops supporting a piece of hardware,
so do we.
** For clarity, please include previous email thread when replying **
Thank you,
Kimberly Kroll
Customer Service Representative
Sonic Foundry
1617 Sherman Avenue
Madison, WI 53704
Phone: 800-577-6642
Fax: 608-250-1745
homepage: http://www.sonicfoundry.com
registration: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/registration
tech support: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/support
software updates: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download
For tips-n-tricks, general usage questions and more, visit Sonic Foundry's
product forums: www.sonicfoundry.com/forums (http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums)
-----Original Message-----
From: bussolet@pop.halcyon.com [mailto:bussolet@pop.halcyon.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 6:52 PM
To: unansweredtechsupport@sonicfoundry.com
Subject: ACID PRO 4.0 support request from John Bussoletti
Name: ACID PRO 4.0
Product: ACID PRO 4.0
Product Version and Build: 4.0 Bld215
Product Serial Number: 7N-PHCWP2-2DWJHW-NNKM49
Windows Version: Windows 98SE
RAM: 1024MB
Processor Speed: PIII/600 MHz
Sound Card: Several: ADAT PC/Edit, Creative SB Live
CD Burner (make & model): CyberDrive CDRW361248
Message: Upon loading, program fails:
ACID40 caused an invalid page fault in
module ADATASIO.DLL at 018f:10003708.
Registers:
EAX=100114f8 CS=018f EIP=10003708 EFLGS=00210202
EBX=82571e88 SS=0197 ESP=0468ff54 EBP=0468ff98
ECX=00000000 DS=0197 ESI=04480ea0 FS=4817
EDX=bffc9490 ES=0197 EDI=8254079c GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
8b 51 04 52 ff 15 30 12 01 10 6a 00 c7 46 14 00
Stack dump:
04480e00 04480e80 00000234 00000000 10003749 100042b5 04480ea0 8254079c
00000008 82571e88 c0000005 0468ff70 0468fd84 0468ffbc 10006ac8 10012070
Debugging under Visual Studio 6 shows:
Unhandled exception in acid40.exe (ADATASIO.DLL) 0xC0000005 Access
Violation.
It appears there is may be a bug with Acid 4.0 in dealing with my ADAT
PC/Edit card. Acid 3.0 works fine. If you can't furnish a fix, I'll be
forced to cancel my order and request a reimbursement of my upgrade
purchase.
Kimberly,
It turns out that if I ignore the "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" dialog box, moving it off to the side, Acid 4.0 comes up and seems to work, at least in terms of being able to play the demos and the like. Since I still have Acid 3.0 and it works just fine with my ADAT/PCR card, I can use Acid 3.0 to do my recording and, if I need the feature set of Acid 4.0, either use it in its current brain-dead-but-perhaps-functional state, or I can put it on my laptop and use it there for mixing stuff that's already been recorded.
But come on! Your engineers haven't added ANYTHING to Acid 4.0 to provide functionality to use my hardware. It was already there in Acid 3.0 (which continues to function, I point out). What your engineers have done is to introduce bugs into the code that make it incapable of performing the actions that the previous version continues to perform. Now you can play the "we don't have to test functions with hardware that is no longer supported by it manufacturer" card, but the fact of the matter is that your engineers have broken the code in the new version.
That's not a good sign, and I'll sure be more hesitant about any future purchases from Sonic Foundry, if this is any indication of the coding abilities of your engineers. I should also publish this exchange on the Audio Forums page under Sonic Foundry. The folks there have already been grousing that some of the "major upgrades" of some of your products are more fluff than substance. I'm sure they'd also appreciate learning that your engineering staff has no qualms about making a new version fail to work with hardware that performed perfectly well with the previous version.
And, on a final note, while Alesis has been going through some tough times, I have had some correspondence with their user support staff in which they indicated that when the dust settles from whatever acquisitions that are or have been taking place, they may come back to do Win XP drivers for the ADAT/PCR card. Do you think it might be worth your engineer's time to fix the bugs in that case?
By the way, if you point your browser to http://www.alesis.com/products/recording/index.htm
you'll find an item "ADAT Edit PCI/ADAT Interface Software" with a live link to a page that was written in 2001. If you look at the link, it tells you that the PC Edit has no support under Windows 2000 or Windows XP but runs fine under Window ME.
For a "no longer supported" card, it still seems like Alesis continues to sell them and develop new products (AI-4 interface) for their ADAT systems.
Frankly, your excuses for failure to support your product are pretty lame. I'm disappointed, but will just take it as a lesson to avoid your products in the future.
Meanwhile, if I dig out my debugger and trace this stuff through, maybe I can patch the code myself to get out from the annoyance of the "illegal operation.." dialog box...
John Bussoletti
-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly Kroll [mailto:KKroll@SonicFoundry.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 6:44 AM
To: 'John Bussoletti'
Subject: RE: ACID PRO 4.0 support request from John Bussoletti
Hello,
Once a manufacturer stops supporting hardware, so do we. Which means that
our engineers do not add the functionality to use that hardware. If you
would still like a refund, please reply back with your order number.
Best regards,
Kimberly Kroll
Customer Relations Representative
Sonic Foundry
1617 Sherman Avenue
Madison, WI 53704
** For clarity, please include previous email thread when replying **
Phone: 800-577-6642
Fax: 608-250-1745
homepage: <http://www.sonicfoundry.com/>
registration: <http://www.sonicfoundry.com/registration>
downloads: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download/step1.asp
tech support: <http://www.sonicfoundry.com/support>
software updates: <http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download>
For tips-n-tricks, general usage questions and more, visit Sonic Foundry's
product forums: www.sonicfoundry.com/forums (http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums)
-----Original Message-----
From: John Bussoletti [mailto:bussolet@pop.halcyon.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 3:16 PM
To: 'Kimberly Kroll'
Subject: RE: ACID PRO 4.0 support request from John Bussoletti
Importance: High
Kimberly,
The peculiar thing is that Acid 3.0 works fine with the card. What have you
done with Acid 4.0 to cause it to no longer with the drivers for the Alesis
ADAT card?
I may have to return my copy of Acid 4.0 and request a refund. If your new
products don't work with the same hardware as your earlier products, you're
forcing your customers to buy new hardware as well as new software in order
to use the new software. That increases the expense of upgrading,
dramatically in this case, and makes the new features of the new release
much less valuable for the required investment.
If you cannot or will not make Acid 4.0 compatible with the same devices
that you supported under the same operating system as Acid 3.0, then I
request a refund.
John Bussoletti
-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly Kroll [mailto:KKroll@SonicFoundry.com]
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 11:43 AM
To: 'bussolet@pop.halcyon.com'
Subject: RE: ACID PRO 4.0 support request from John Bussoletti
Hello,
Thank you for writing. ADATASIO.DLL is a component of some older Alesis ADAT
bridge card. This card which from what I hear, now relies on third-party
drivers to continue to exist because the manufacturer has discontinued and
dropped support for it. If a company stops supporting a piece of hardware,
so do we.
** For clarity, please include previous email thread when replying **
Thank you,
Kimberly Kroll
Customer Service Representative
Sonic Foundry
1617 Sherman Avenue
Madison, WI 53704
Phone: 800-577-6642
Fax: 608-250-1745
homepage: http://www.sonicfoundry.com
registration: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/registration
tech support: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/support
software updates: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download
For tips-n-tricks, general usage questions and more, visit Sonic Foundry's
product forums: www.sonicfoundry.com/forums (http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums)
-----Original Message-----
From: bussolet@pop.halcyon.com [mailto:bussolet@pop.halcyon.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 6:52 PM
To: unansweredtechsupport@sonicfoundry.com
Subject: ACID PRO 4.0 support request from John Bussoletti
Name: ACID PRO 4.0
Product: ACID PRO 4.0
Product Version and Build: 4.0 Bld215
Product Serial Number: 7N-PHCWP2-2DWJHW-NNKM49
Windows Version: Windows 98SE
RAM: 1024MB
Processor Speed: PIII/600 MHz
Sound Card: Several: ADAT PC/Edit, Creative SB Live
CD Burner (make & model): CyberDrive CDRW361248
Message: Upon loading, program fails:
ACID40 caused an invalid page fault in
module ADATASIO.DLL at 018f:10003708.
Registers:
EAX=100114f8 CS=018f EIP=10003708 EFLGS=00210202
EBX=82571e88 SS=0197 ESP=0468ff54 EBP=0468ff98
ECX=00000000 DS=0197 ESI=04480ea0 FS=4817
EDX=bffc9490 ES=0197 EDI=8254079c GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
8b 51 04 52 ff 15 30 12 01 10 6a 00 c7 46 14 00
Stack dump:
04480e00 04480e80 00000234 00000000 10003749 100042b5 04480ea0 8254079c
00000008 82571e88 c0000005 0468ff70 0468fd84 0468ffbc 10006ac8 10012070
Debugging under Visual Studio 6 shows:
Unhandled exception in acid40.exe (ADATASIO.DLL) 0xC0000005 Access
Violation.
It appears there is may be a bug with Acid 4.0 in dealing with my ADAT
PC/Edit card. Acid 3.0 works fine. If you can't furnish a fix, I'll be
forced to cancel my order and request a reimbursement of my upgrade
purchase.