ASC is just useless, looking for answers

[ASC_does_not_work]

I have had endless problems with ASC. I have never been able to download even a single instrument using it. Instead I download the instruments directly using a browser, install them, and hey presto ASC sees them. For one instrument this is an OK workaround. But I took the opportunity to acquire the V Collection, and that is 39 instruments. ASC could not download even one of them. Download failed, download failed. Every instrument downloaded first time using Chrome. That was something like 30GB if I recall correctly.

I spent way too much time going backwards and forward with support. They were polite, they offered me special builds of ASC, I turned on logging within ASC. But all to no avail. Nothing worked. They could not provide a solution, and frankly it was a waste of my time and patience. I gave up dealing with them. This is on a brand new MacBook Air M3.

I updated to Sequoia last week, and thought I would give ASC a try. It doesn’t even run. I have to force quit it several times, because it is ‘not responding’. If I leave it long enough, long enough being a non-standard term for impatience, it opens. But then it does not do anything. The status shows: Checking connection. How long does it take to check? I don’t know, because it sits there checking but not apparently doing anything. Well it takes about 10 minutes, it seems because it is now open.

I have seen the homily about ‘not updating to Sequoia for now’, but also in the same article it is mentioned that no specific issues have been observed. I have had enough of this rubbish. All I want to do is have ASC working. In my other life, I have done software development for about 30 years. Let me give you a clue: writing a program which makes a network connection, checks entitlements, downloads things, and installs them is NOT HARD. I was doing this back in the good old days of dial-up internet. But it seems to be beyond the competence of Arturia.

The final straw which leads me to make this post or rant is that today ASC takes forever just to open. That is unacceptable.

I would like to know if other customers are seeing problems with ASC on MacOS recent versions, and how they handle them. I don’t believe I am alone. It’s not my MacBook, it’s not the network. If it was, I wouldn’t be able to download these instruments using Chrome or curl.

Thanks.

[Funtmaster]

Welcome to the forums.

I feel your pain and can see it’s been a rough road. The only things I can think to ask is:

Do you have AntiVirus installed and if so, can you try with it disabled?

Have you tried creating a new account on your mac?

Have you tried on another PC/Mac if possible?

Can Arturia create you a new account and transfer purchases across or just use it as a test?

I know these suggestions may be grasping at straws but maybe…

[matjones]

HI @ASC_does_not_work and welcome to The Sound Explorers Forum!

Sorry to hear about your experience, i’m not a Mac user myself so cannot offer any solid advice other that what @Funtmaster has already suggested, i have however, created a support ticket on your behalf.

Please bear in mind what time of year it is currently though.

HTH!

[ASC_does_not_work]

Thank you for the reply, but I already have a support case open. ASC just seems to have problems unrelated to reality. I took advantage of the free Augmented Mallets offer today. It registered in my account, I opened ASC (it opened promptly this evening), and clicked to install it. It almost got to the end, then there is an error message: Waiting for other downloads to complete. I’m 100% clear here - there are NO other downloads waiting to complete, so this is a bogus error. Eventually this error did clear and for the first time, ASC actually managed to install something. So what has changed? I haven’t changed anything. My laptop is the same. No updates. So with my software developer’s hat on, ASC is unpredictable and unreliable.

[Jon_Vincent]

That sounds like there are ‘partials’ somewhere in an Arturia hidden folder that the downloader is waiting for the ASC to delete before it will install Augmented Mallets. This is because the Arturia installer makes sure there aren’t too many of its apps being installed at the same time, which would grind your computer to a halt.

All this sounds like it’s one big permissions issue, in so far as the OS isn’t granting ASC the right to install stoftware. Hence the partials still sitting there. And mostly this is Apple’s fault because the whole system is geared to installing software via the App Store not from developers’ custom installers. But to have your apps in the App Store, Apple sucks 20% of the purchase price because they’re scum.

Hopefully some tech bods here or Arturia staff can help you overcome this issue.

[mkochsch]

Curious as to anyone else having issue downloading over a network cable interface. My downloads repeated failed until I manually went into my network card and changed it from automatic to full 100 duplex.

[deepspace]

The Software Center is getting worse and worse, personally I wouldn’t use it at all if Arturia wasn’t forcing users to use it. I would very much prefer simply downloading installers from the account via browser, and then install whenever I want.
I understand the ASC has also to do with licensing, but then please make it work properly, Arturia!

It’s not only the issues mentioned here, there’s a bunch of other threads related to ASC problems, for example this one >> How does ASC work with offline or intermittent network computers?
And folks aren’t only complaining on this forum, but allover the web.

I’m right now having more or less the same issue you had there.
The difference is that I could install Augm Mallets Play, but next would’ve been the update of MiniFreak V, which turns out is waiting for no reason…

Of course there’s no other download running, it’s just hanging in the middle of nowhere.

And by the way, this is happening on Windows 10, so it’s not Mac related. The ASC is just buggy as hell, and that’s about it.

[deepspace]

@Jon_Vincent

All this sounds like it’s one big permissions issue, in so far as the OS isn’t granting ASC the right to install stoftware. Hence the partials still sitting there. And mostly this is Apple’s fault because the whole system is geared to installing software via the App Store not from developers’ custom installers. But to have your apps in the App Store, Apple sucks 20% of the purchase price because they’re scum.

That’s a clever thought, and to a certain degree it might indeed apply to MACs.
But as I mentioned in the post above, exactly the same is happening on Windows as well. Although I agree Apple is becoming more and more a real PITA for software companies/devs, this doesn’t seem to be OS related. So I’d say it’s not Apple or Microsoft to blame here.
Arturia is.

[Jon_Vincent]

@deepspace

I would very much prefer simply downloading installers from the account via browser, and then install whenever I want.

You literally can do this. Just go to the Downloads area. Arturia doesn’t exactly make it hard to do. But to install 30+ apps of a V collection this way is absolutely mind-numbing.

What complicates things is we’re not all having this issue. I’m using a Mac with MacOS Sonoma 14.7 and I’ve had zero issues. Everything works and installs.

[deepspace]

@Jon_Vincent

You literally can do this. Just go to the Downloads area. Arturia doesn’t exactly make it hard to do.

Yea that’s another one of those things, nice you’re mentioning it…
I got the Intro version of Analog Lab and updated it today. If I wanted to do that via web browser I have to download the full Lab installer with 3.35 GB (for Mac: 4.29 GB).

Updating via ASC downloads and installs ~ 740 MB, see below

Exactly the same with the full version of Augmented Strings.
So yes, you can technically do that via account/browser… it only takes four or fives times longer. To me that’s just a different way of forcing you into using the ASC. The sneaky way…

@Jon_Vincent

But to install 30+ apps of a V collection this way is absolutely mind-numbing.

Speaking of this, here’s a little conversation between two folks I recently saw somewhere else (screenshot below). I don’t have the V-coll myself, but seems having more Arturia software simply brings more (ASC related) problems…

I’m glad for you that you don’t seem to have issues, honestly.
Unfortunately there’s quite a number of people with an absurd amount of issues.

[Jon_Vincent]

@deepspace

To me that’s just a different way of forcing you into using the ASC. The sneaky way…

I think your persecution-complex maybe overtaking your rational thinking. Any size-differences will likely be because ASC downloads a compressed version which Windows can’t natively unpack and install. From a downloading perspective, the whole idea of the ASC is to save you time, and to provide a one-stop-shop for keeping your downloads up to date. Nothing more. Arturia aren’t getting more money if you use ASC vs. if you don’t, so your consipracy-theories don’t hold up to scrutiny. It’s literally in Arturia’s best interest to give you the smoothest experiences possible and not p*ss you off.

EDIT: I do empathise with people having problems with using ASC to install software, but the internet makes the problems seem more mainstream than they are, because users who aren’t having problems don’t join support-forums to say they’re not having problems. And that’s not to detract from your very valid frustrations, but the fact you are minority edge-cases is probably what makes it difficult to pin down for the devs.

[deepspace]

that earns a little...

lol

[Funtmaster]

Now I feel bad for having had zero problems with the ASC.

[tobiasuk]

Hi
I have never had any issues with ASC, but was having problems recently trying to download some updates in UVI’s Portal (same thing as ASC but for their instruments).
It turned out to be my VIrgin Media broadband settings.
This may have absolutely nothing to do with your issues, but I thought I would at least share the support I got from UVI that resolved my download issue completely. Here it is:
We’ve received several similar reports from users in the UK who are using Virgin Media as their internet service provider. It appears that the issue is linked to Virgin Media’s Web Safe feature interfering with CDN download links.

If you’re subscribed at Virgin Media, I invite you to follow the steps below to solve this issue:

1. Visit virginmedia.com/myvirginmedia and sign in.
2. Select ‘My Apps’.
3. Click ‘Web Safe’.
4. Disable the option next to Virus Safe or Child Safe.
5. Click ‘Apply’ to apply the changes.

Even if you are with another broadband service, they might have similar settings (features).
Throughout this whole issue for me, my internet was fast and accessing other services fine. And since changing the settings it has also continued to be fine, but UVI instruments can now download correctly.

Good luck

[ASC_does_not_work]

I don’t believe this is a network issue as the problem does not exist outside ASC. As mentioned, I downloaded every instrument in V Collection one at a time in Chrome without seeing a single problem.

I’ll show a typical log entry from ASC:

| 55561     | T1335498 | download    | notice  | Download start https://dl.arturia.net/products/dx7-v/soft/components/DX7_V__1_13_1_5024__vst3.pkg
| 56996     | T1335498 | download    | notice  | Download complete ("/tmp/Arturia/DX7_V__1_13_1_5024__vst3.pkg") 1434 ms
| 56996     | T1335498 | download    | error   | The size of /tmp/Arturia/DX7_V__1_13_1_5024__vst3.pkg is 16842219 while 22402901 is expected

You can the download starts, ASC marks it as complete, but the size is wrong. I have seen this over and over and over - the log file shows a complete download, but it is always smaller than expected. It doesn’t matter if the download is about 500MB for a smaller synth, or much larger.

If the download is marked as complete, then it should be complete. If the size truly is wrong, then why is the download marked as complete?

It’s unlikely to be a permissions problem. Permissions would not allow about 99% of a download to occur, but then prevent the last 1%.

[deepspace]

Something different, but another display of ASC’s buggy behavior:
The ASC is crashing in the background during the plugin-scan in various hosts, for example PluginBuddy

Apparently it’s happening for every single Arturia plugin. So congrats if you have the V collection and some other plugins, then you got the ASC crashing 40 or 50 times on every plugin scan…

[Jon_Vincent]

@deepspace

“Mr. Permission” will surely try to tell everyone that’s a permission thing.
Or that Windows OS can’t handle an .exe file, just like he did in that earlier post that contained 95% of pure nonsense

Frankly “Mr Permissions” DGAF if you solve it or not because it’s working fine for me, and for many many others, and I gave completely unpaid time out of my day to offer possible suggestions as to why some people are having issues. Conjecture? Yeah of course it was. Because it’s working fine for me. So I’m guessing.

Also I never said windows can’t handle an .exe file.

EDIT: I’m unwatching this thread. I try to help people and just get ridiculed in the process. So, welcome to sitting alone in your ‘let’s just have a moan about ASC’ thread, because there was literally only me - a programmer by trade, albeit not for Arturia - trying to offer you constructive answers that might have helped.

[Tim.Arturia]

Hello.

The crash have been fixed and will be released in the next ASC version. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.
We do have a lot of ASC reports lately and we are focusing on releasing multiple fixes as soon as we safely can.

I don’t know if you did, but it is always good to report the problem to our support even before claiming it here.
I didn’t find any support case referring to this problem so it seems you didn’t.

Thanks.