So we @ #midiwarez efnet decided to try and strighten out a few of the issues surronding OxYGen.

[Interview Date : January 2000]

<Pain_E> hello UniSOn_ the First question I guess we should start with .. is when and why was Oxygen formed ?

<UniSOn_> Hi to yourself Pain_E , hmm OxYGeN was just an idea of a few very close friends who wanted to give people the ability to test stuff before they go and buy it (and feel sorry after).Our first release was on the 8th of december 1999 about a week after we started officially.

<Pain_E> nice ... so what are your feeling towards the other groups who are already out there ? As we know there are already some excellent Audio software cracking groups out there

<UniSOn_> My feelings towards others? Hmm , We aren't trying to proove anything nor are we competing to others. I wish all groups best that can happen for them and hope they feel the same towards us.

<Pain_E> Good I'm glad .. are any of your group members from cracking groups we may have heard of ?

<UniSOn_> No, I know many people may think or have thought that but the answer is a simple "no".None of the first members (actually the ones most involved still) were/are connected to any other group out there.

<Pain_E> ok thats that cleared up .. as your probably know a lot of peopel ahve been speculating to who may have been involved especially with the release of WaveLab, speaking of which was that a particularly hard program to crack ?

<UniSOn_> Hard to crack... hmm. I'll explain how the protection works. Wavelab has a wavelab.exe and a wavelab.bin file.The exe inflates using the .bin as "source" so that normally its uncrackable bacause once U close it the bytes changed in the inflated part are restored to original again.I managed to solve that using a virtual patcher which patches the program in RAM while it is running.That explains the MSDos-box U see when U run our wavelab.exe and

<UniSOn_> in fact only one byte is changed to avoid the cd-check and thereby the closing of wavelab.

<UniSOn_> Speaking of this , maybe this is a good time to set a few things right about complaints we have received from ppl.

<Pain_E> yeah please do

<UniSOn_> First of all anybody who still gets the "Please insert your original Wavelab CD"-message is probably running the wrong .exe U have to run our wavelab.exe(37k) and not the main.exe(77k). Further more ... we have tested the ISO/Full same as our version and altough our crashes sooner , the full/iso also crashes and on this dll mostly UIFramVCPH.dll which handles the frames/windows in windows.But on the other hand I can say that our release runs

<UniSOn_> 5-10 times faster then the FULL/iSO as the cdcheck slows it down terribly. I guess Steinberg will have to release an R1 soon as for most people it works fine but on some configs no matter what U use iSO/FULL/OxYGeN it crashes as if it's a toy ... but it's not it will be great.

<Pain_E> right I'm sure that helps a fair few people out there ... I dont use anything stienborg makes my slef but I'm told some people do

<Pain_E> The obvious comparison especially with a release as big as wavelab is to compare your group with Radium, everyone in Radium is or at least was a musician is everyone in OxYGeN a musician ?

<UniSOn_> Yes every Senior and most of the first members are musicians.And here comes Radium , let's get back on that compare thing l8r. So yes we are al musicians , not all professional but some are which gives us the right to say we can test software in a descent way :)

<Pain_E> Good .. out of interest whats the procdure you uys use for testing and cracking software ? Do you have like a week to test a crack'd app before you say it works properly or what ?

<UniSOn_> That mainly depends the protection itself . If it is a DX plugin which just needed a registration then testing wont take very long. If it was a demo on which we had to force it to enable some function more testing is required. And for difficult cracks we just test untill we all think we are done testing ... its a family aint no boss/rules. And if U mean the Wavelab crashes in this question , well first of all it won't surprise anyone that

<UniSOn_> a version *.0 by Steinberg is bugfree ... second here we get to the compare thing We aren't Radium , nor are we trying to be them or like them , maybe Radium had the power to make some software better then the producers did but we can't (now)... With 6 active members and all beeing "new" we are just trying to be as good as we can be ... that is to give people the best chance to test everything .

<UniSOn_> I think if people want to compare us they have to give us an equal amount of time/people/experience as the group we get compared to.But we don't want to be compared ... we aint racing .. just enjoying :)

<Pain_E> Excellent, its learning for everyone, some people aren't to keen on people using warez even if its just for learning so while we are at it .. do you have any message for groups such as the CCS the BSA or the software houses them selves?

<UniSOn_> Point about them is that I don't even understand why they exist and how they can stay alive. I know all there is to know till the smallest details about BSA,CCS.. Their claim is :"That the warez is keeping a lot of money out of the companies' pockets" ... We say "Warez is FREE advertising ... most people would have never have heard of most programs if it wasn't for pirated releases and anyone with a clean professional consience will buy something they

<UniSOn_> like ... and last this CCS,BSA hunt gets sponsored by the Audio companies <---- that last point is money which is out of their pockets ... We all know that kind of service isn't free :)

<Pain_E> yeah for sure.

<Pain_E> So u said before that you were a group of only 6 people and you are all new to cracking? ... are you looking for more members perhaps with previous expirence ?

<Pain_E> (heh no i wasn't asking if I could join - I couldn't crack an egg)

<UniSOn_> Yes we are a VERY small group , 6 active members and 5 of being testers :) But the current members are all good at something , very good , thats why we got the releases to look/act ok (in our eyes :D) and this really isn't a thing to do and be careless...meaning just take in whoever claims to have experiance or is interested in helping. As I said before we aint Radium but if we would have our own Deepz0ne that would help of course :)

<UniSOn_> So yes we will take in other people but only if we are 101% certain ... that's why we ask the people to give us a break , cuz all the good reviews/remarks pump our morale the bad ones wanna make us just give up and tell people to try and do it theirselves

<Pain_E> ahh if we could all have our own deepz0ne the world would be a better place hehehe

<UniSOn_> Point taken :)

<Pain_E> well I think at that point we should leave it .. its a nice ending note .. thank you very much for your time .. any last words to the warez users out there ?

<UniSOn_> Take live as it comes , one day at a time .. :) Thx Pain_E and cya 'round

<Pain_E> cya around man the people in #midiwarez and the rest of the scene thank you