Silly change coming

I see the key replacement fee as an administration charge. Leif’s company has to employ someone full time, provide office space, email facilities etc just to process licence requests. Add in all the other costs of employing a person these days (I am much more familiar with Australian regulations, but there are costs like superannuation contribution, insurances etc as soon as you put someone on the payroll). Up until now, for the past 20 years, Leif has absorbed those costs, but he has now decided to look at a “user pays” scheme.
I don’t know exactly what is involved, but it would at least involve retrieving information from a database on just what the requestor has licenced, generating the new key, updating the database accordingly and then emailing the key to the recipient. If that takes 15 minutes to complete, the charge is totally justified.

I personally don’t have a problem with that in principal. However, I’d like to think that, if anyone experiences a “difficult” installation where multiple attempts are made to get BA1 installed and registered, that there would only be the one fee charged. I’m sure if you wrote to them in a situation like that, they would make exceptions.

I’d also like him to consider a sliding scale of charges, rather than a flat fee. Some users of the software have multiple cores, the remote admin option and other licenseable options, so I believe that they should pay a premium for that. Maybe $10 for those who just have an HD core, through to $25 for those with much more complex options.

Hi Folks, just wanted to stop by here and clarify some stuff.

People have suggested the sliding scale or reducing the cost. Sliding scale based on what license you have is hard math. Someone with a passthru core and livewire for instance just to use as a streaming encoder at 5% the original value would be $5.40USD. It costs us 3%+$1.50 of that to even process your credit card. Flat fee just made the math simple for everyone. After the dust settles, your 15 bucks, we see just under about half that (taxes, fees, hosting fees, processing fees, fees for the fees, etc, the things we are trying NOT to do).

Going to an automated licensing system has huge costs these days. Commercial products available to people like me and Leif are upwards of $3500 a YEAR and $500 a month for hosting the service. This would have to be put somewhere. Either new customers would pay for it (hopefully?) or it’d be a sunk cost and we would be out of business really quickly. Either way the costs go up drastically. Hans also wrote his own system for licensing, which yes, it can be done, but he also has other ventures that utilize that licensing mechanism so it does pay for itself in his case. Changing ours to something like that has a huge cost (time and money) and we just haven’t been able to come up with a system that works and makes sense at the current prices. It’s not going to get better, we will have to do something, we just haven’t figured out what that is yet.

Right now every key is made by hand, by a human. We review every key request, every change, every order. That’s why it might take a day or two to get you a new one. We have familes too, graduation parties, school recitals, vacations, etc. Bear with us, it might take a day or two to get to your request, but we do get to them.

Leif is good at telling me this one line every time I ask for something I assume is “easy” to do. “…says the person who doesn’t have to write the code”. And he’s right. Something us non-programmers take for granted is that we think a “simple” thing like licensing or allowing the stereo pilot adjustment to move more comes at some greater difficulty we don’t see or understand where Leif does and understands that maintenance tax or implementation tax.

As has been said, that fee is not friction for those who change machines once every 5 years or so. We understand computers have a finite lifespan, things get struck by lightning, etc. This is more for the ones who abuse the thing we technically don’t have to do at all, and that is reissuing keys to allow you to move around. The downside is that we can’t apply that surcharge to just a handful of people, it’s across the board. (laws and all that) We aren’t dismissing that $15 is nothing, because it’s obviously something, but doing it for less than free all these years have now come at a pretty big cost, mentally, financially, even medically in some cases.

I hope this clears up a few things surrounding this new charge. It’s not meant to disuade you from buying, upgrading, or even transferring your software around. It’s to keep the ability to do so alive entirely and Breakaway Software available at an affordable pricetag.

//Alex

As I said before—and I stand by it—I have no problem paying $15 (or the equivalent in my local currency) to reactivate the license; I understand the need for it, and it’s not an exorbitant amount. All I ask for is more frequent improvements—specifically, expanding the pilot range (I really appreciate that this is coming in a future update to bring it to 6). I realize that coding and programming take time, but I’d love to see more life breathed into Breakaway. It would also be cool to implement the processor’s phase scrambler—like Leif did for the Omnia 9s—or the “auto-pilot” feature. Again, I have no complaints; I just want interesting updates that keep customers happy. Since we’re paying for and using the software legally, I think it’s fair to ask for improvements—simple as that. And I’ll say it again: I’m not the type to complain about paying $15 for a new installation; that’s nothing. Just look at the cost of physical hardware or big-name systems, and you’ll see what I mean—haha.

I registered on this forum specifically to support Leif. That is the first thing. Second, I want to reply to the wild message written by user djdiabolix.

Dear djdiabolix. First of all, you are contradicting yourself. Reread your message: you write that in Spain you CONSCIOUSLY go with the flow and EXCEED THE BROADCASTING STANDARD (beyond 75 kHz modulation). And then you write that you want a feature to REDUCE the pilot tone so that it remains within the STANDARD 6.8 kHz on your monitoring equipment. Don’t you see the schizophrenic notes here?

Reducing the pilot tone will in no way help you achieve better sound quality. You have already ruined your sound quality by broadcasting an overmodulated signal. Read up in books on what this leads to, or better yet—connect measuring equipment to some radio receivers (take different ones, at least 10 or so) and you will be surprised: exceeding modulation causes unpredictable distortion depending on the manufacturer’s implementation of the FM decoder. In other words, by increasing the modulation and pushing it beyond 75 kHz, you said, “I don’t care how my station sounds on receivers.” Your station will sound distorted on some, highly distorted on others, and the nature of the distortion will vary.

The MPX Clipper used in Leif’s products allows you to push the loudness up to -4 LKFS, and it will even sound somewhat tolerable (and within the 75 kHz standard, within the limit). What LKFS level are you chasing that makes you want to increase the modulation? Sorry, but that sounds ridiculous. And do all the broadcasters you compete with also use Breakaway, Omnia, or Stereo Tool? I doubt it. You were already told above that Leif’s practice is to make things universally convenient for everyone. The ideology is different from Stereo Tool or other products. My advice to you: stop doing foolish things and stop posting them here. You need to read up on the basics of FM broadcasting, not beg the developer to waste time on “non-standard” features.

—

Now, regarding the additional fee. Leif’s products combine convenience, excellent competitive sound, and his years of experience and research in both audio processing and creating cool, user-friendly software interfaces for its configuration. Unfortunately, his products were cracked and posted online, leading to piracy. This inevitably affects both his motivation as a developer and his financial ability to improve the program in the future. If he didn’t make money on Breakaway, he works on other projects and earns it there.

15 bucks for transferring a key is a perfectly reasonable barrier. But in my opinion, even that is not enough. For every new version of the program, you should pay a percentage of the new price, even if you already have a key. Breakaway should be installed on a pre-prepared system. Leif even has recommendations on the website—Atom Z, Celeron, etc.—this hardware doesn’t overheat and runs for decades without problems. Leif also provides instructions for installing Breakaway on Windows Embedded systems, which turns the processor into a bulletproof machine that is on par with (and sometimes better than) factory solutions from other manufacturers.

It’s one thing when you buy an Axia Livewire key or Audinate Dante drivers; they have hundreds of thousands of clients worldwide. It’s another thing for what is essentially a hobby project that has become highly professional, but is still “not for everyone,” aimed at a narrow audience—either those with tight budgets or passionate fans of audio processing. Those companies clearly do not make their money on an audio driver or a piece of software; they sell tons of hardware and maintenance to clients. In Leif’s portfolio under the Breakaway brand, there is only 1 program.

There is no need to be outraged. You would be better off offering to help him with the website, set it up properly, or help sell the program. An author/developer is rarely a good marketer (and even if they are an excellent marketer like Leif, there are only 24 hours in a day, just like for anyone else; it’s impossible to handle it all alone).

Sending rays of support to Leif. To the people who criticize here and threaten to leave: sit in the author’s chair, at least mentally, and look around. You are not in his shoes, and you are writing incoherent things.