Raw Talent Guitar

I'm only writing this review to share my experience, which I have been assured is an anomaly, but I suspect may be more common than Raw Talent Guitar will admit. I purchased RTG last year and was surprised to learn that it was not Mac compatible. Really wanting to use RTG, I went out and bought one of the cheaper PCs I could find. I installed the program and was off to the races. Unfortunately, there were two major problems. The first was audio/video sync issues. The lesson videos were not perfectly in sync with the audio which made following the instructor difficult. To make matters worse, I could not jump around in the lesson. If I tried to move the spot in the instruction, it would take me back to the beggining of the lesson, but the video would keep running from the original spot. The second issue was, I could not get the tests to score.I raised the issue with the company and they said I needed to practice more, that I needed to be very precise. I am not a beginner, but I took them at their word and made sure I was completely accurate. After some back and forth, I had a phone call with one of their tech support guys, who listened to my playing and said I was playing it perfectly. He then remotely logged in to my computer and noticed that the metronone was also not running during the tests. I also showed him the video/audio sync issues. He suggested that I reinstall the softwared, which I did and the problem persisted. I told him He was perplexed and said he would have to talk to his team about the problem.In the interim, I looked and noticed that the PC I purchased didn't meet the stated system requirements (doh!). So, I went out and purchased another brand new PC, this time making sure that all of the system requirements were met. I installed the program on the new PC and the same problems occurred. I went back to their tech guy and he suggested that it might be a problem with the discs I received. He mailed me a new copy of the discs. I uninstalled the program and then reinstalled with the new discs. Still, the same problem.He then went back to his team, and it turns out that this was a known problem. Apparently, it was a ".NET issue." He offered links to external websites with suggested fixes, some of which involved registry editing and the such. I'm no programmer, so I can't be sure I applied the fixes correctly, but I attempted, and none of them worked. The problem persisted.Eventually, I asked for a refund (after months of back and forth working on suggested solutions). I was completely bummed because I had invested so much time and effort into using this program. The support guy was very nice, but I came away with the impression that this program is extremely buggy and that the even the developer does not know how to fix all of the bugs. I'm only giving two stars because they gave me a return outside of the 90-day window and from what I could tell, the program looked good. Again, completely bummed and anxiously anticipating the release of Rocksmith for PC as a substitute.

My problems with this product have been endless even up to the point where I can't find the information on how to return it and get my money back. I experienced several issues: 1) Could not register per the softwares instructions. Time after time, I received a page that informed me of a script error and that IK Multimedia Tech Team would be automatically informed. 2) Could not change the stealth plug control panel to 512 as the instructions told me to do. I kept getting an error that said I could not change the control panel while the stealth plug was being used. Huh? It wasn't hooked up to anything. 3) Trying to un-install the soft ware in order to re-install was a nightmare as well. The stealth plug would not un-install. I kept receiving a dialogue box that told me to unplug the stealth plug. Huh? I put it back in the box while trying to un-install the software. Now let's talk about the customer service. Oh I'm sorry, there was none! I couldn't talk to anybody by phone. I dialed the number only to be redirected to the website. I must have emailed IK Multimedia four or five times, explaining my issues. The first reply I received explained that their support desk is operated by one person and to keep that in mind as I await my reply to help download the system I paid $200 for. I finally did get a reply that simply said the problem was fixed and to re-install the software, another hour out of my life that I'll never get back. Same issues, so I sent another request for help. A second reply directed me to "Retry it now, it should be fixed". (I saved all the emails). After another failed attempt, I was asked to download an "authorization manager". I emailed back that yet again, I continued to get the script error that I could not register. IK Multimedia left me hanging after that...about a week since I sent that one. So then I tried emailing Raw Talent Guitar and I didn't even get the common courtesy of a reply to either of my attempts. I'm giving the product one star because I can't give it zero. This thing is absolutely fail.

I had some problems at first with getting the product to work. They have no direct support number, but if you use the e-mail address they supply, they will call back and try and work out your concern. In my case it took a few days but they DID work it out. Today they even called back to follow up with me.*The lessons are good and easy to follow. It rates your progress which is cool. You can plug into the computer with the gutair which is cool also. I thought I was all set with open cord changes and was well on into bar cords but based on my average 75% score I still need some more practice. *It has a feature where you can use different style amps and effects, I think I still might be having some difficulties whith this but it could just be that I am not using it correctly yet.Overall I do like the product, its not perfect but still very good.