There is NO compelling reason for me to ever buy from Arrakis. There's better options out there with better support. My question is why use Arrakis when they suck so bad?
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
New Wave Automation
- Thread starter oldiesstation
- Start date
J
JayDavis82
Guest
You guys all sound like a bunch of bitter old men. So far no one here (except me of course) has used the New Wave software and no one here has spoken to their support (besides buying some parts) recently. I'm going to defend them because frankly I have had good experiences with them. Their support is friendly and their product is great. You guys can keep holding your grudges, but I'm guessing that since Arrakis has been in the business for over 30 years and has sold thousands of product, that they must be doing something right. I think you guys need to grow up and move on in your lives. Isn't there something better to do than sit around on a blog waiting to say something bad about a company? Step outside, take a deep breath, and tell yourself "there's more to life than being bitter about some company."
Again, I really don't think anyone's comments here hold a lot of value about the New Wave. And I think, if you are going to be a mature engineer about it, you need to look at each product subjectively. You can't just spout out that you had problems in the past with a company and that your generic statement applies to everything. It's like complaining that you got crappy service when you had your Apple II E and that is why you'll never buy an IPad. That's what I call draconian.
The guy asked if anyone has tried the New Wave and all he gets is childish responses like, Arrakis sucks. You guys are souring me to this engineering blog. I thought you guys were engineers. I'm disappointed.
Again, I really don't think anyone's comments here hold a lot of value about the New Wave. And I think, if you are going to be a mature engineer about it, you need to look at each product subjectively. You can't just spout out that you had problems in the past with a company and that your generic statement applies to everything. It's like complaining that you got crappy service when you had your Apple II E and that is why you'll never buy an IPad. That's what I call draconian.
The guy asked if anyone has tried the New Wave and all he gets is childish responses like, Arrakis sucks. You guys are souring me to this engineering blog. I thought you guys were engineers. I'm disappointed.
I haven't used their software. With the bad history of their company, wouldn't it be a bit silly to "try them again" unless there's proof they have fixed their issues? NO schematics, no good support for their console line, poor design that BLOWS UP when there's static electricity in the area, etc... The bad attitude is theirs. Why give them a chance when they haven't went out of their way to deserve it?
Let me also add a bit to this topic. The reason why I and probably others seem "like sour old men" is we hate to see management types, etc. throwing their money away on something that's probably going to be substandard based on the reputation of the company they are buying it from. Guess who gets to deal with the problems after some management-type buys a lemon? We do. We get to hear about it for years and years and deal with all the problems. If support stinks, it's difficult to do our jobs properly. Price is always a consideration, but many in management use it as their sole source of buying decisions. Frankly I try to run from those kind of owners. I do work for some very, very tight people on a contract basis, but they actually don't buy the lowest price thing they can find. They buy mid-grade and drive the hell out of it for a decade or so. They are also the most critical on when support stinks. They like to see value in what they buy. Again, I've never used Arrakis' software. I don't intend to either. I someday may try their studio furniture as support for it isn't an issue. I don't need a diagram really. Yes. I do have an open mind and will allow their woodworking in as a consideration someday. 
OKCRadioGuy said:Let me also add a bit to this topic. The reason why I and probably others seem "like sour old men" is we hate to see management types, etc. throwing their money away on something that's probably going to be substandard based on the reputation of the company they are buying it from. Guess who gets to deal with the problems after some management-type buys a lemon? We do. We get to hear about it for years and years and deal with all the problems. If support stinks, it's difficult to do our jobs properly. Price is always a consideration, but many in management use it as their sole source of buying decisions. Frankly I try to run from those kind of owners. I do work for some very, very tight people on a contract basis, but they actually don't buy the lowest price thing they can find. They buy mid-grade and drive the hell out of it for a decade or so. They are also the most critical on when support stinks. They like to see value in what they buy. Again, I've never used Arrakis' software. I don't intend to either. I someday may try their studio furniture as support for it isn't an issue. I don't need a diagram really. Yes. I do have an open mind and will allow their woodworking in as a consideration someday.
I use the studio furniture in one of my rooms... You are correct. No support needed. It is actually of a pretty good quality.
chriscollins said:
Totally agree. I purchased their Modulux system for my webcast studio and when I I moved I donated to my high school station's master control room build. Great furniture, but keep in mind it was pretty much the brainchild of Rod Graham, who is now independent of Arrakis with his own Graham Studios with expanded furniture offering for broadcasters. I don't know how Arrakis manufacturers their current line of furniture.
Bill DeFelice said:
Yep... I had to contact him when I needed a new keyboard drawer.
Hey JayDavis-
I've worked with Arrakis as well and will add my vote that the products (except furniture) are cheap and better left alone. I'm certainly not a bitter old man. I left most of these products some time ago and moved to mAirList--never looking back. Rock-solid and designed by a company that truly cares to build a high end product and to make sure the customer is happy. Oh, yes, the support is outstanding.
Now, come on, how are things over at Arrakis, anyhow? I mean, I'm guessing that your gonna' admit that you work for Arrakis, right?)
I've worked with Arrakis as well and will add my vote that the products (except furniture) are cheap and better left alone. I'm certainly not a bitter old man. I left most of these products some time ago and moved to mAirList--never looking back. Rock-solid and designed by a company that truly cares to build a high end product and to make sure the customer is happy. Oh, yes, the support is outstanding.
Now, come on, how are things over at Arrakis, anyhow? I mean, I'm guessing that your gonna' admit that you work for Arrakis, right?
)ChiefOperator said:Hey JayDavis-
...Now, come on, how are things over at Arrakis, anyhow? I mean, I'm guessing that your gonna' admit that you work for Arrakis, right?
Ha Ha Ha, I didn't notice until you made that comment, but look through "JayDavis" post history and EVERY SINGLE POST this guy has ever made was to promote ARRAKIS automation. Either an employee or just a major fanboy.
I noticed... I was just trying to take the high road... Since you guys said it, I will through in my 'Yep'. Has to be an employee. Arrakis has no fanboys.
He probably wrote it.
He probably wrote it.
I was trying to remain open minded to his posts but it seems if you sport a contrary view of Arrakis it then becomes "Don't listen to these bitter old men, they don't know what they're talking about" as quoted from a previous thread regarding Digilink Free. That very same phrase was also posted in a message in this very thread.
Mind you, I'm not against anybody being able to voice an opinion on a product - especially if its another one of our engineering peers who's worked in the trenches to keep stations on the air. When I hear other engineers sharing they have had their own problems dealing with a product or company I am quite grateful. This usually equates to either saving a client from adopting questionable products or allowing the engineer to advise their clients to update/upgrade to equipment less problematic.
Regardless of how long a company's been in existence, the very fact that multiple engineers have had problems not only with a product but with their support would suggest there's obviously a problem with the manufacturer in question. Cockroaches have been around for centuries but that doesn't make them any more popular with people.
Mind you, I'm not against anybody being able to voice an opinion on a product - especially if its another one of our engineering peers who's worked in the trenches to keep stations on the air. When I hear other engineers sharing they have had their own problems dealing with a product or company I am quite grateful. This usually equates to either saving a client from adopting questionable products or allowing the engineer to advise their clients to update/upgrade to equipment less problematic.
Regardless of how long a company's been in existence, the very fact that multiple engineers have had problems not only with a product but with their support would suggest there's obviously a problem with the manufacturer in question. Cockroaches have been around for centuries but that doesn't make them any more popular with people.
As the engineering director for a bunch of stations using Media Touch, I had to laugh at the slams aimed at that product...in 2009, a post predicted that they were in lousy financial shape and wouldn't last to the end of the year. We just bought another system from OMT, so I guess they're still around some two years later.
Arrakishit has done nothing to earn my trust or respect. That's in consoles or in radio automation. They make one fine, reliable product I can endorse, their studio furniture. And forget about an Arrakishit running in an RF field reliably, they eat Op Amp chips like candy. And Digilink is a synonym for PITA (pain in der arse). Support has an attitude and is costly. On a budget, get BSI WaveCart and Simian or Op-X and use the hardware they recommend, set it up correctly once, and enjoy it's dependability. I use lots of BSI WaveCart and Simian, I rarely ever have issues (and when I need support, it's friendly and there for me).
I have fanstasies about how to destroy our Arrakis Extreme system. It's the most user-unfriendly piece of crap I've ever seen.
I've made countless call to Arrakis, with the promises of fixing things, changing things. Whatever. Not one single thing in our list has been changed OR fixed.
-Audio output is on one single slider on your board. If you're a satellite station, great, fine. If you do ANY kind of live radio, get ready to pull your hair out. This one is udder idiocy to me, and a serious DESIGN FLAW.
-We cannot run the latest version. It crashes for us every 3-4 hours. Thanks for never looking into why, Arrakis.
-If you try to switch from your "jingle" page to your "directory" with automation off, you get an error. VERY handy when you're trying to do things on the fly.
-If the system crashes, or is even shut down, your "logs" tab, gets dumped. Thanks, that's helpful.
-The system hangs for about one second if you're in the library and hit Windows Files. Yeah, it hangs ON THE AIR. Nice. POS.
These are just a few things wrong. We've had it over a year, and did not renew our "support" agreement with Acrappis. Why would we? We've had this same list of issues (and many more), since the system was installed, and they've never worked on ONE of them. I wouldn't recommend this to the President of Iran, and I hate his ass.
I've made countless call to Arrakis, with the promises of fixing things, changing things. Whatever. Not one single thing in our list has been changed OR fixed.
-Audio output is on one single slider on your board. If you're a satellite station, great, fine. If you do ANY kind of live radio, get ready to pull your hair out. This one is udder idiocy to me, and a serious DESIGN FLAW.
-We cannot run the latest version. It crashes for us every 3-4 hours. Thanks for never looking into why, Arrakis.
-If you try to switch from your "jingle" page to your "directory" with automation off, you get an error. VERY handy when you're trying to do things on the fly.
-If the system crashes, or is even shut down, your "logs" tab, gets dumped. Thanks, that's helpful.
-The system hangs for about one second if you're in the library and hit Windows Files. Yeah, it hangs ON THE AIR. Nice. POS.
These are just a few things wrong. We've had it over a year, and did not renew our "support" agreement with Acrappis. Why would we? We've had this same list of issues (and many more), since the system was installed, and they've never worked on ONE of them. I wouldn't recommend this to the President of Iran, and I hate his ass.
I still have DL 4 memories I am trying to forget. Promises made and never met. I still didn't post.
You bitter old men. When a company is so tactless it has to publicly attack people who express the integrity of it's system it clearly shows the place is ready to close it's doors or should be closing it's doors.
Arrakis has always Arrakacrap.The original inventor of the name and the countless who publicly use the name have reasons. It always makes money by marking up support. How many off the shelf hard drives were 5 times the price of a hard drive because it had the special software?
How many times did I install new chips ala shotgun to a whole console? (which now sits after time 6 in a closet.) A Shure mixer seems more reliable.
The support for "legacy" products doesn't exist unless you have a credit card. I could go on. I don't ever recall any other company ever using a public forum (or employee) to attack users of it's equipment.
You bitter old men (and all of us) should be ashamed of yourselves if you ever for buy Arrakacrap, again.
You bitter old men. When a company is so tactless it has to publicly attack people who express the integrity of it's system it clearly shows the place is ready to close it's doors or should be closing it's doors.
Arrakis has always Arrakacrap.The original inventor of the name and the countless who publicly use the name have reasons. It always makes money by marking up support. How many off the shelf hard drives were 5 times the price of a hard drive because it had the special software?
How many times did I install new chips ala shotgun to a whole console? (which now sits after time 6 in a closet.) A Shure mixer seems more reliable.
The support for "legacy" products doesn't exist unless you have a credit card. I could go on. I don't ever recall any other company ever using a public forum (or employee) to attack users of it's equipment.
You bitter old men (and all of us) should be ashamed of yourselves if you ever for buy Arrakacrap, again.
What a wonderful use for a Arrakacrap board! Excellent! That's what is wonderful about the good 'ol internet... It's very hard to combat the truth. Bad vendors and manufacturers are only a couple searches away. Vendors and manufacturers best try to do right by a smaller community like broadcasters these days. "There's a new sucker born every day" isn't quite as easy of a scam to pull off anymore. Sure, there's some that don't bother to resarch stuff before buying it, but at least there's hope that there won't be enough to keep companies like Arrakacrap in business. The industry is getting their education right here Ain't the internet grand? LOL!
My equipment checklist is:
#1 check this board and a couple other listservs to see what others think
#2 check with a couple of my broadcast distributor friends and see what has and hasn't bounced back on their sales-wise
#3 call others in my market and ask
I assure you Arracrap would fail a minimal of three of these tests easily.
Ain't the internet grand? LOL!My equipment checklist is:
#1 check this board and a couple other listservs to see what others think
#2 check with a couple of my broadcast distributor friends and see what has and hasn't bounced back on their sales-wise
#3 call others in my market and ask
I assure you Arracrap would fail a minimal of three of these tests easily.
My first experience with Arrakis was a Digilink III system with a 300 disc Pioneer jukebox. There was a bug in the software that caused it to dump out of whatever song was playing at the top of the hour every hour and start the next hour. When Arrakis insisted on a credit card to talk to them, I said "Why don't I just box this piece of crap up and send it back to Harris?" Voila - free Arrakis tech support.
They finally fixed the issue, but it took weeks. If I recall correctly, the original Digilink developer had left the company and they had a new guy writing the code. Apparently, he was having a hard time making heads or tails of the legacy code.
Many years later, I took over a station with a 12,000 series console that had motherboard issues. If I recall correctly, the motherboard sat too low in the console enclosure, and the channel strips wouldn't make solid connections reliably. I think I ended up raising the motherboard up a little bit by putting washers on top of the standoffs and it worked OK after that.
I feel really, really blessed that I haven't had to deal with anything Arrakis for many years now.
They finally fixed the issue, but it took weeks. If I recall correctly, the original Digilink developer had left the company and they had a new guy writing the code. Apparently, he was having a hard time making heads or tails of the legacy code.
Many years later, I took over a station with a 12,000 series console that had motherboard issues. If I recall correctly, the motherboard sat too low in the console enclosure, and the channel strips wouldn't make solid connections reliably. I think I ended up raising the motherboard up a little bit by putting washers on top of the standoffs and it worked OK after that.
I feel really, really blessed that I haven't had to deal with anything Arrakis for many years now.
And FWIW, I am a bitter middle age man. I am 47 years old, been in radio and engineering since I was 9 years old. And know fine gear and crap when I see and handle it. P.S. I took an Arrakashit console out back, took a Barrett 50 caliber to it, and reduced my blood pressure by many points and the performance of said POS. When a slightly modded Gates 1967 Snowplow beats a 20 years newer Arrakashit, there's real problems with that design. And the Snowplow got reinstalled in that control room and earns my trust and respect and even love. And is much nicer looking and sounding to boot. And is on the air daily.
- Status