In Praise of IK Multimedia

[hobbes1]

i just wanted to give a public thanks for the excellent and fun products, the nice pricing and the outstanding after-sales service. i have dealt with Joe DeStefano (sales) and Paul Hudson (tech support; posts here occaisionally under IK_Multimedia) at IKM. they have both gone out of their way to make sure that all the products i've bought have set up and functioned properly.
for example, recently I was having a problem sorting out where the .dll files went during installation of AmpegSVX, CSR and T-racks. Joe spent his time with me freely, helping me sort that issue out. after asking me what DAW i was using (Reaper), being unfamiliar with it, he went to the Reaper website to download it and work with it enough to give me a hand. it turns out the .dll files were installed into a folder under Steinberg/vstplugins (an old, no longer used program), instead of to the regular vstplugins folder.
anyway, we have all heard of various boutique amp builders, guitar builders, etc who give great service after the sale is complete. i want the forum to know that there are people at IKM who, while being a small company themselves, also provide great service.
I am not affiliated with IKM in any way other than being a happy customer who has paid for all software received, other than the publicly advertised specials that IKM runs every now and then.

[Agreed]

IK's stuff is among the big bunch of software that I use (list on my blog), but I find myself going to X-Gear at least 70% of the time, because their stuff is consistently high-quality, dynamic, and functional; no matter what tone I'm going for, I can get it. I do quite like the offerings of others (Overloud TH1, Guitar Rig 3, and ReValver MkIII all have their draws - TH1 and Guitar Rig 3 moreso lately since Peavey has not done much with ReValver in the realm of bug correction and product life management, and it suffers from some unfortunate bugs despite having great sound quality and modeling accuracy). IK does good stuff, for sure. I try not to take sides because I think that all of the modern software has something that it does best, but IK's stuff is way up there in sound quality.

[hobbes1]

i would tend to agree with you on that feeling you've expressed. i have demo'd revalver and GR3 though not overloud and i thought that IKM's product had the overall better sound quality but maybe not as well thought out on some features. things like adding your own impulses into the software is a huge deal, imho, and there are other tweaks that i wish IKM would do. overall, IKM has a solid suite of products as i am finding out. i own nearly all of their software and am working my way through exploring sampletank, moog and 'tron as well as miroslav and sonic synth 2. there are a ton of great sounds there and some that are not so good.
in a conversation that i had with one of the IKM rep's a couple of months ago, he stated that there are some "interesting" thing coming down the pike from IKM possibly as early as this summer. this was during a conversation on whether IKM would release some more "boutique" style gear models. he asked me if i would be interested in being a beta tester at some point and i hope it works out. time will tell.
btw, i enjoy reading your reviews and columns. keep up the good work!

[IK_Support]

Hey, just wanted to give a quick thank you-this really means a lot. We try! Anytime we can help, just let us know!

-Paul

[eleanor296]

Hah, I've also had problems with Reaper.. almost the same thing: It somehow switched its VST folder from its own to the Steinberg one I still had on my computer that wasn't being used anymore... took me a while to figure that out too.