Novation Vstation activation problem and free alternative suggestions.

[surreal]

Hi Everyone,

I wonder if anyone can help? The VStation that novation was giving away does not activate anymore. I searched the net only to find that novation does not reactive vstation anymore as they switched off the activation servers.

Is there any suggestions as to any free or paid alternatives that i can try that will be close to the features and sound of the novation vstation?

Thanks in advance for everyones replies here!

Just a thought, but have you tried contacting Novation support and seeing if there is anything they can do? I've contacted them for various things over the years, and although they might not be able to do much for discontinued software, overall they've been incredibly helpful over the years. It's worth a shot at least.

I will try that as well as I do have a customer account with Novation, lets see what happens.
Thank you for your suggestion

[sjm]

I found my fnlf file in the program data directory so yes on my main studio pc with win7 it is all there but the problem is when i re install it on my laptop I cant activate it. I read in the manual and as Sprnva correctly stated that the licence was locked to the computer that it is installed on.

Looks like you're right - after a bit of digging it turns out the license files are still machine-locked. There wasn't a license file provided with the downloads, you needed to click on Activate in the plugin which then contacted the servers and automatically downloaded a valid license. Given that this is dependent on the activation servers being online, it does seem like an incredibly myopic "solution".

[sprnva]

When they made them "free" they just removed the step that checked your account to verify ownership before providing the license file. So the plugins connected straight to the activation server.

This will affect pretty much all of the Focusrite and Novation tools (the BassStation and various plug-in suites) as they all used machine-locked license files. Another bunch of plugins that will eventually be killed off by their crappy DRM.

[surreal]

Hi Everyone,

I wonder if anyone can help? The VStation that novation was giving away does not activate anymore. I searched the net only to find that novation does not reactive vstation anymore as they switched off the activation servers.

Is there any suggestions as to any free or paid alternatives that i can try that will be close to the features and sound of the novation vstation?

Thanks in advance for everyones replies here!

Just a thought, but have you tried contacting Novation support and seeing if there is anything they can do? I've contacted them for various things over the years, and although they might not be able to do much for discontinued software, overall they've been incredibly helpful over the years. It's worth a shot at least.

I will try that as well as I do have a customer account with Novation, lets see what happens.
Thank you for your suggestion

I contacted support and explained the situation to them but it seems its like theres no way that they will release any unlocked versions (even at our risk ) to us the music community at large... There also seems from the supports sentiment that there does not seem to be a personalised solution to me neither. So I am gonna check the alternatives mentioned here...

I must admit that the Vstations filters and resonance settings are really nice where at full rez there is no bass frequency loss like a 24db ladder "moog" filter. Also I read in an older threaded post that polyiblit or Tal Noise maker could possibly suffice as alternatives.. so I will check and compare them with all the other suggestions in this post. Thanks once again to everyone for your suggestions.

[surreal]

One other Synth also came to mind as a candidate replacement for V-Station and That was RF Pneuma Pro but it also seems to just have vanished

[JamminFool]

this is a real shame especially after such a brilliant effort was made to re-skin them. all the goodwill which novation earned just vanishes.

[surreal]

So this is the official answer via email that came back from Novation's support guys

"I've just had a response from the Novation Technical Support Lead regarding this, and it is not good news I'm afraid to say.

They said that as the plugins are no longer under development support, and haven't been for a number of years, we became aware of compatibility issues on modern operating systems (unsolvable) so took the decision to stop activation support. Due to the incompatibility, there is no work around that we are able to offer here.

I'm sorry that this is not the outcome you were looking for. If you have any questions regarding this, or there is anything else I can help with, please let me know.

Best Regards,"

so that is the end of this quest of V-Station by novation

[concealed identity]

Aww that's such a bummer

[seafire]

They are not unsolvable, the sales don't make up for development time.

[sprnva]

Just remember the next time you're looking to buy a plugin that the reason V-Station is now dead is due to challenge/response copy protection.

Trust the vendors as little as they trust you and avoid anything that uses it.

[Kendaichi]

Yeah, for a short amount of time the early Novation and Focusrite plugins suites were made "free" and you could just directly connect to their activation server and unlock the plugin... it's a machine based authorization too so the key isn't portable.

Some months ago they removed all downloads for the legacy software and the activation page itself too... so the plugins really are dead now officially. I did contact them about keeping the activation page up but they declined as they are too outdated.

[surreal]

Just remember the next time you're looking to buy a plugin that the reason V-Station is now dead is due to challenge/response copy protection.

Trust the vendors as little as they trust you and avoid anything that uses it.

As i learned from this.. fingers burnt, lessons learnt..

Thats is why i appreciate freeware developers and developers that use customer friendly serial and keyfile based protection that use offline local methods such as uhe.. The same applies for DAWs

The offline or free software that is lacking IMHO is a proper unconvoluted sampler

[glokraw]

Hi, BleCat's Connector utility is desingned to receive audio over the network from one's other computers, or collaborators. I think it's not difficult, so your win 7 (V-Station) setup output could be received by the laptop

https://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/P ... Connector/

3rd-party video:

https://youtu.be/T-x1VoqOqag

https://youtu.be/Wzv9IdNcxHM

They also have 'Freeceiver', might be a light free version, and their free plugin suite is excellent.
Hope this helps!

[T-CM11]

Good thing that cracked versions exist. I'll never buy Focusrite software (again) and I'll advise the same to everybody I know.

[egbert101]

Trust the vendors as little as they trust you and avoid anything that uses it.

Good advice in our current narcissistic market.