SGC - sonicTransporter Series and Signalyst HQPlayer 4 Embedded

[Jud]

11 minutes ago, mansr said:

Yes, either of those options is perfectly reasonable. Imposing both restrictions strikes me as rather greedy.

 

Perhaps we can have Mans-certified businesses that use only business practices approved by you.

 

 I suppose it’s up to those taking the business risk to determine what their business practices are, and up to us whether we feel sufficiently comfortable with those practices, and with the product, to purchase.

[mansr]

Just now, Jud said:

Perhaps we can have Mans-certified businesses that use only business practices approved by you.

 

I suppose it’s up to those taking the business risk to determine what their business practices are, and up to us whether we feel sufficiently comfortable with those practices, and with the product, to purchase.

Of course, but that only goes so far. That's why we have legislation protecting certain consumer rights, such as mandatory minimum warranties.

[Jud]

10 minutes ago, mansr said:

Of course, but that only goes so far. That's why we have legislation protecting certain consumer rights, such as mandatory minimum warranties.

 

Yep.  And I’m in favor of such things.

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, Jud said:

Yep.  And I’m in favor of such things.

And this licence double-dipping is precisely the kind of business practice that might find itself regulated.

[Jud]

3 minutes ago, mansr said:

And this licence double-dipping is precisely the kind of business practice that might find itself regulated.

 

I don’t recall seeing this in my legal career (a license with both hardware and software restrictions considered something worth specific regulation beyond that applicable to licensing generally), though it’s not an area of the law I pay particular attention to.

[mansr]

6 minutes ago, Jud said:

I don’t recall seeing this in my legal career (a license with both hardware and software restrictions considered something worth specific regulation beyond that applicable to licensing generally), though it’s not an area of the law I pay particular attention to.

In the US, the first sale doctrine might be applicable.

[diecaster]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

Perhaps we can have Mans-certified businesses that use only business practices approved by you.

 

 I suppose it’s up to those taking the business risk to determine what their business practices are, and up to us whether we feel sufficiently comfortable with those practices, and with the product, to purchase.

 

Perhaps your opinion does not matter any more than mine or mansr's.

 

Look, all the examples that Miska gave supporting his imbedded license are tied to the hardware only. I can guarantee that those oscilloscope options that cost so much, once enabled, stay enabled no matter who owns the oscilloscope. The race car ECU I talked about that has options that can be turned on? Yes, they alway stay on no matter who owns the ECU. Windows 10 OEM stays active no matter who owns the PC.

 

Either it is embedded or it is not. In this case there are two factors to the license which is not reasonable. I cannot support that model with my dollars so both Miska and vortecjr are not getting a sale because of it.

[Jud]

37 minutes ago, mansr said:

In the US, the first sale doctrine might be applicable.

 

That’s specifically been held not to apply to selling files ripped from CDs (with some way the business owner assured the original CD owner wouldn’t still have access, I forget exactly how) even where it would be perfectly fine if the CDs were sold and then ripped, so the outlook for other software installed on hardware probably isn’t great.

[Jud]

3 minutes ago, diecaster said:

I cannot support that model with my dollars so both Miska and vortecjr are not getting a sale because of it.

 

Certainly your privilege, but did you really have to inform us so frequently?  

[mansr]

12 minutes ago, diecaster said:

I can guarantee that those oscilloscope options that cost so much, once enabled, stay enabled no matter who owns the oscilloscope.

Yes, if I sell my Tek scope, any enabled features go with it. Some options are transferable (using a dongle), so for those I could choose whether to leave them on the scope or remove them before selling it.

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, Jud said:

That’s specifically been held not to apply to selling files ripped from CDs (with some way the business owner assured the original CD owner wouldn’t still have access, I forget exactly how) even where it would be perfectly fine if the CDs were sold and then ripped, so the outlook for other software installed on hardware probably isn’t great.

I don't see how that is in any way analogous to what we're talking about here.

[mansr]

34 minutes ago, Jud said:

Certainly your privilege, but did you really have to inform us so frequently?  

I don't see a problem with someone criticising what he considers unfair business practices.

[Jud]

2 minutes ago, mansr said:

Shady business practices deserve being called out.

 

Shall we count up the number of posts?  Even if simply licensing separately the hardware and some software made by a different company that can run on that hardware is “shady” - I personally don’t think so.

[vortecjr]

14 minutes ago, mansr said:

Shady business practices deserve being called out.

Excuse me for interrupting this circus show, but it's really in appropriate of you to insinuate that there is something shady going on here.

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

Excuse me for interrupting this circus show, but it's really in appropriate of you to insinuate that there is something shady going on here.

You're right, I shouldn't have said that.

[vortecjr]

There are two circumstances related to the licensing which I will explain next. No one has to like them and if you don't move on because it's not for you. If you are incapable of making an informed decision ask a question and wait for myself, Jussi or Andrew to respond. Anymore conjecture will not be tolerated. 

[vortecjr]

Just now, mansr said:

You're right, I shouldn't have said that.

Thank you. I will explain the licensing as best as I can next. 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, diecaster said:

Whoa! Are you telling me that the license is tied to both me and my sonicTransporter and if I sell my sonicTransporter, the HQPlayer license does not go with it? Now that is not anything like Windows 10 OEM or software activated in hardware Miska has referenced that I know about. Those are all tied to the hardware only.

 

You can't have it both ways and be reasonable. Either the license is tied to me and can be moved to other servers or it is tied to the hardware and stays enabled for the life of the hardware whoever owns it.

 

If you buy it from SGC it is tied to the sonicTransporter and it is transferred together with it.

 

If you buy it separately, it holds your name instead of device serial number and can be transferred to limited extent (subject to review). For example if you want to transfer it once per month or once per week, I'll so no. But you'll need to ask me every time.

 

If it becomes too much problem, I could stop selling it directly altogether and be more like the competing products. So far I just didn't want to screw over DIY server builders because I personally hate stuff where you need to be a big and famous company in order to be able to buy X. AKM's chips used to be like that and ESS still is, while for TI/Cirrus/Wolfson never has been a problem. Not long ago I tried to buy small batch of AKM DAC chips and the answer from local distibutor was "no, we don't sell small quantities" (read: less than 1000). Nowadays that distributor probably doesn't sell any anymore, because now people can order exactly as many they want from the big dealers.

 

[diecaster]

5 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

If you buy it from SGC it is tied to the sonicTransporter and it is transferred together with it.

 

If you buy it separately, it holds your name instead of device serial number and can be transferred to limited extent (subject to review). For example if you want to transfer it once per month or once per week, I'll so no. But you'll need to ask me every time.

 

If it becomes too much problem, I could stop selling it directly altogether and be more like the competing products. So far I just didn't want to screw over DIY server builders because I personally hate stuff where you need to be a big and famous company in order to be able to buy X. (AKM's chips used to be like that and ESS still is, while for TI/Cirrus/Wolfson never has been a problem)

 

 

Let me get this straight: if I buy the embedded version of HQPlayer from you for my sonicTransporter i5 and either find I need a more powerful server and get the sonicTransporter i7 or I upgrade my sonicTransporter i5 to a sonicTransporter i7 down the road sometime, you will transfer the license?

[Jud]

54 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

Thank you. I will explain the licensing as best as I can next. 

 

Thanks.  I was going to do some speculating of my own regarding the reasons for this particular business arrangement, but much better to hear the facts.

[Miska]

6 hours ago, R1200CL said:

What products have HQPlayer embedded included btw ?

 

Some of those are listed on the web page (near bottom of the page), more on the way:

https://www.signalyst.com/custom.html

 

[vortecjr]

What Jussi said:)

 

We wanted to offer this feature to as many pre-existing customers as possible and that simply required that the end user purchase the license and install the key. If at some point you want to sell the unit you need to contact Jussi and Andrew (via email) and let them know so they can assist you.    

 

For new units being sold SGC is buying the licenses and pre-installing them on new sonicTransporters. SGC is currently doing this if requested and at an increased price for the unit. When they do this serial number is something like SGC-1. This license is tied to the hardware as previously explained. SGC is not forcing this on all customers because not all customers will use HQ Player Embedded. However, the software can still be installed after the fact so it's your decision.

[Miska]

15 minutes ago, diecaster said:

Let me get this straight: if I buy the embedded version of HQPlayer from you for my sonicTransporter i5 and either find I need a more powerful server and get the sonicTransporter i7 or I upgrade my sonicTransporter i5 to a sonicTransporter i7 down the road sometime, you will transfer the license?

 

The way I see it, you buy sonicTransporter with HQPlayer license. You send it back for upgrade, SGC will refresh the license for the upgraded unit. One unit doesn't become two and everything is fine. SGC may charge you something for the upgrade, what happens between me and SGC is our business and you don't need to worry about it. You sell the unit and the license goes with the unit.

 

Now there's a more complex case of sonicTransporters from the times before you could buy one with HQPlayer Embedded license. So there's "soft upgrade path" with add-on functionality for pre-existing units.

 

What I don't want to see is that someone installs license on sonicTransporter i5, sells off that device, with the license and then wants to have a new license key for their new "upgraded" sonicTransporter i7. Now there would be two devices with license for the price of one. Rinse and repeat, there could be countless computers with "transferred" license where the old ones still hang around somewhere.

 

If you build your own server and want to run HQPlayer Embedded on it, I've been quite flexible for that case too, because I see it valuable and like to do similar things myself so I want to support it, but that is not subject of this thread...

 

[soares]

50 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

The way I see it, you buy sonicTransporter with HQPlayer license. You send it back for upgrade, SGC will refresh the license for the upgraded unit. One unit doesn't become two and everything is fine. SGC may charge you something for the upgrade, what happens between me and SGC is our business and you don't need to worry about it. You sell the unit and the license goes with the unit.

 

Now there's a more complex case of sonicTransporters from the times before you could buy one with HQPlayer Embedded license. So there's "soft upgrade path" with add-on functionality for pre-existing units.

 

What I don't want to see is that someone installs license on sonicTransporter i5, sells off that device, with the license and then wants to have a new license key for their new "upgraded" sonicTransporter i7. Now there would be two devices with license for the price of one. Rinse and repeat, there could be countless computers with "transferred" license where the old ones still hang around somewhere.

 

If you build your own server and want to run HQPlayer Embedded on it, I've been quite flexible for that case too, because I see it valuable and like to do similar things myself so I want to support it, but that is not subject of this thread...

 

That's a fair policy towards your clients and I thank you for it.My STi5 is the older model and I bought 2 weeks ago my licence. To whom should I send it if I decide to do an upgrade? SGC? Of course I would first need to sell my DAC and buy a new one, unless a miracle happens... As your Mojo with the NAS upgrade started to work, perhaps my Qutest will follow his little brother behaviour. I tried already with my resident USB cable without success. I will try with other cables...?  Cheers. 

[soares]

16 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, sorry, I talk to so many people here and over email that a lot of times I'm especially unable to remember whom I speak to over email is who here on this forum.

 

So Roon works to 768k PCM on the same computer and doesn't run into white noise? Interesting... For me that would be first player to work without white noise to a Chord DAC, because so far what didn't work: HQPlayer at 705.6/768k PCM (mostly works on Linux), Spotify on Windows at 44.1k PCM (works for about one minute), Spotify and Tidal running on iPhone and connected to Mojo using Apple's Camera Connection Kit at 44.1k PCM (works for about one minute). All these cases depend heavily on the USB cable used, some cables work better than others.

 

 

Are these both for HQPlayer Desktop?

 

 

I sell three types of licenses at the moment: HQPlayer Desktop for Mac/Linux, HQPlayer Desktop for Windows and HQPlayer Embedded. So if you want all three you need to buy three licenses. However you can get bundle discount when you get HQPlayer Desktop for all platforms - also if you want to add second platform later.

Yes Jussi. Roon upsamples to 768PCM and 256DSD without any white noise. But The SQ is not the same I have with HQplayer. That's why I bought the embedded licence to my STi5. The older one is Mac  desktop license.