cm -- with all due respect, VSL has released to the public a sample library system that does not work. Plain and simple. It seems to me that VSL needs to do an about-face and quickly remedy this situation by going with a system that works. You have to expect that after spending the very high prices charged for this library, that people are going to be very frustrated with the myriad of problems we've had so far, and if some may be calling it "a piece of junk" or whatever then that's pretty much telling it like it is in my book. I'm sorry, but this library does not work. I have gone from being one of VSLs biggest supporters after having used it on many scores so far with great success (Pro Edition and Kontakt versions), but I'm completely discouraged about the current state of affairs. If the license recognition were the only thing, then I might continue to work with the library in hopes that that might be soon corrected, but add that to these extreme load times and the huge CPU hit, well I don't have any faith that these will be corrected any time soon. I just got back from a two week vacation to read here that people are still having the same problems.
If, as you say, USB as a protocol is difficult and problem-ridden, then why did you go with it? How about good old challenge and response like Spectrasonics. The East-West QLSOs system works great, and nobody's copying that library illegally.
I guess I'll just have to force myself to finally make this decison as to whether or not to keep the entire library, maybe repurchasing just part of the string library for now, so I can keep tabs on any improvements that might be made, but without having so much vested in a system that's not working for me and shouldn't have been released at all as is. I've been holding out in hopes that things would have been fixed by now.