Topic: Review and Assessment of Current Podium Abilities

Aside from our lists and discussions, a few items recently ‘shocked me back to reality’. One was the few problems that ensued after the Unicode update, but more important was that I suddenly realised that I was familiar enough with the MIDI issues regarding Podium, and I noticed I was spending entirely too much time building workarounds and band-aid fixes for a DAW that really should have these missing capabilities native in the first place. What really summed it all up for me was adimatis’ recent comment (paraphrased here) that he ‘did not want to be forced into using Podium AND yet another DAW merely to take care of regular business’. This is precisely where I stand in looking over the current abilities of Podium. I am in the position of having to use Reaper before or after Podium in order to get basic recording and editing chores taken care of. I can even go as far as to say I could survive with only Reaper (or perhaps some other DAW), but I could not survive with only Podium. Let me stress that I am doing no unusual work that might require a multi-station arrangement, even though I have tried that setup. Instead, all I am really attempting is to take care of regular audio and MIDI tasks, and I feel that having to rely on a second DAW is unacceptable when we look at the current state of the art regarding this type of software.

Setting aside features that I might like to see added — personal whims, nice touches, and other fancy bells and whistles — I think we need to focus on the features Podium really must have to be a professional contender, and which of these it really should have NOW.

You see, it won’t matter at all if Podium works on your fancy Win8-equipped phone or tablet if it cannot work as a completely professional piece of software. It instead will only pass as yet another curious app available on a tablet, for kids to sing into, add effects to their personal noises, and so on. And although I do believe having it able to function on a Win8 tablet is a wonderful notion, I see no real need for it or for any hurry. Even Microsoft seems more interested in other things lately — selling books and other media after its huge acquisition of part of the Barnes and Noble bookstores chain, more than it does in having a heavy-duty computing tablet. Expect to see something better than Nook and more like iTunes and Kindle on a Win8 tablet in about a year. And I can guarantee that this is where the lion’s share of their efforts are now and will be for a while. Much of what they will be looking at for quite some time will be putting their product in a position to take on Apple and Amazon.

[Thanks for filling in some facts there for me and catching a couple of points I missed all together. Win8 has a UI that is essentially designed for illiterates and phone junkies. Although I do think it will ultimately be successful, please note the detractors you mentioned. Also, as Microsoft does almost every time (try to take over the world), as always it makes one wrong move inevitably and shoots itself in the foot. Please see Windows Live, Live Mail (still has the jitters in most browsers after 4 years and still doesn’t run well in its own IE9 browser!), the IE9 browser is bad in 32-bit and a total disaster in 64-bit, can’t use its stupid Silverwhatever flash copy to view some national news pages, they just cut back users of its Skywhatever Cloud system from 100 gigs to a mere 7 gigs storage, and it takes ALL DAY to upload to it — and now not only a ‘better’ tablet with a new OS that gets a lukewarm rating from everyone in the know. The EU and Opera browser is going to sue the pants off them again for browser anti-trust issue, same as a few years ago. I think the mngmt. is all on drugs. If I was MS I’d probably have to step in front of a fast city bus and end my own lack of foresight and save you all major suffering. Get back to ya on this. Got to finish posting . . . ]

There are other issues I discovered regarding Win8, as I have become more familiar with that OS, that will affect everyone’s use of Podium on Win8. The most important one is the requirements for running Win8 on any computing device. The rock bottom system requirements for running the OS alone — before any consideration of DAW or DAW-related software — is 4 gigs of RAM and CPU strength of 1.5 gigs. Again, this is rock bottom, meaning that Microsoft would rather the user have something beyond these limits. Now, I think most of us can cover the 4 gigs for memory. That’s common these days. For CPU, I know for a fact that many users would be hard-pressed to make this amount available mainly for the OS. What this means is that many PC owners will need to purchase a new machine when (or before) they start running Win8. Suddenly, we are talking about a year or two before everyone has a PC powerful enough to run the new OS comfortably with all their favourite audio goodies. My own PC would be able to run Win8 and then probably have enough left over so as not to max out over the full digital audio chores and have no problems, yet I am close enough to worry and to know that this PC will not be running Win8 under any circumstances. I would hit the ceiling on very large projects most likely. This is yet another very good reason Podium on Win8 should be put off for at least another year, since virtually none of us will be able to use it. And let’s face it, we all know quite a group of DAW-users (several here) who still love their Windows Vista and will not be leaving that OS unless absolutely forced, and you and I need to respect that choice.

Meanwhile, it would be to Zynewave’s advantage to attend to its own product, remove the several shortcomings and become better prepared to play with the ‘big boys’. I will be very blunt here by saying it won’t matter to me or any serious musician or recording tech which gadget it runs on if it can’t handle what I consider certain basic chores, namely MIDI foremost in the various features needed under this subject. There are a couple of other features, too, that I hope to get covered here.

Some of you may recall me asking not very long ago, “MIDI improvements? Which ones? And why?” Since then, I’ve had ample time to follow up on this and understand the many requests for better MIDI features. Aside from, I believe, ‘timestretching’, MIDI features were the overwhelming top requests and the major subject on our many lists. Yes, and although someone wanted a slightly improved MIDI editor or piano roll, and a few of us really need a virtual MIDI keyboard added, the MIDI requests truly boil down to two ultimately important features that are needed right now and not sometime later next year: MIDI routing and MIDI effects.

[Believe it or not, I am about to get to this lack of a road map, as I wrote all this earlier. I still believe in polling, too — see main lead paragraph. I need to enter the rest of this but feel free to add to or clarify any of my points.]

The reasoning that MIDI must be addressed, and fixed, and soon, is obvious: There is currently NO MIDI routing on Podium. MIDI can’t come in from any source, can’t be sent out to any receiving software (aside from Reaper perhaps, but some other DAWs do not take to ReWire very well or at all yet, besides it is rather tricky opening each host correctly to set this up, a second screen almost a requirement). Add to this perhaps the biggest insult to MIDI, that it is marooned and isolated within Podium — can’t do a darn thing but render it and call it a day. Can’t tell what effects added to the track will sound like until bounce is done, and if unhappy with basic bounce track under the effect, have to GO BACK re-record or re-assign new VSTi, do it all over again, hope your second bet was wiser than your first. This is grinding me right to a pulp. I spend more time ‘fiddling’ with things than I ever do getting WORK done. I am a worker, not a fiddler at heart.

With MIDI routing and MIDI effects we users could then solve some of Podium’s other MIDI issues. As is now, it won’t allow anything new or novel. Runs fine with almost all plugins, except the ones that would liberate it from its straight jacket. I’ve spent a week total trying to set up my own MIDI virtual keyboard. Podium won’t have anything to do with it — it even changes its own rules when I get inventive. Won’t take MIDI IN where it asks for MIDI IN, It won’t let me run virtual cables, even uninstalled them just to show me how much it doesn’t like the idea! I believe in playing by the rules, but weirdly Podium either does not or changes them with each new attempt. ‘Source’ should be an input for any, but it’s not even an input half the time. It offers to send ‘MIDI Out’ but then won’t when I try it. It not only needs MIDI routing added; it needs the whole In/Out affair overhauled. Yes, stuff flows up from bottom to top –except when it doesn’t. All of this only adds to the lack and wasted efforts. This is perhaps the Number One thing improvements to Podium need to be about — MIDI connectivity.

Instead of spending all this effort trying to run cables and so on, this energy should be spent creating. Meanwhile and during, I ought to be able to run MIDI and audio where I dang please. Heck with the filing system, at least they go where they’re told — and they actually ARE a system. MIDI is not.

Look, if all of you are hearing about MIDI needs in Podium from me, a dinosaur rocker who swore he would never touch MIDI in recording a mere two years ago, then I think you can understand how important these MIDI feature improvements to Podium truly are. MIDI is extremely important these days in so many genres, even old-style blues, and it needs to be brought up to par so it can get full use.

I also think what is adding to this growing disappointment is the fact that even far lower systems — Audacity 2.0 being a perfect example — are already equipped with such things as dithering, their own crude and odd form of time stretch, and the ability to convert audio into many other file formats and export beyond pcm WAV. And these were in place long before the new 2.0 version was released.

I am also seeing lately another similarity, in this case among many Podium users themselves: great efforts and discussions about workarounds, frustration at Podium’s limitations, and/or a slow migration out once they get past the charm of the UI and discover that things don’t work quite as they appear they should. And these shortcomings are brought here, discussed, but then left unfixed, and fixes left unscheduled, and fixes not promised, often after many and lengthy discussions.

When I restarted this most recent discussion of features in Podium I already knew fairly well what would be requested…. My larger goal was to encourage a reconsideration of priorities for Podium design and development during the process. While I still like the concept of Podium on a tablet PC, at the same time I rate it as a rather low priority, because I really cannot see how it would benefit any one of the currently licensed, paying users of Podium. Even more, Podium on a tablet without a truly meaningful features update sound more like insult to injury. It will only result in the ability to take our limitations with us in a more portable manner — something I don’t even want to think about.

This brings me to our final and probably most important point regarding this lack of significant improvements. While I do recall one or maybe two users desiring the Mackie control upgrade, I do not know nor have I read of as much as one person who has been pushing for the Win8 tablet idea. Where did this come from? Why were users not queried about this beforehand? Where is the poll? What gives here?

In a new thread started by infinitoar, he points out something very important taken from the basic mission statement on the Zynewave Homepage. I will quote it here:

“Software updates are released frequently with a user-driven development cycle.”

I’m sorry, but I do remember reading that assurance when deciding whether to buy Podium and invest my efforts in learning the workings of this system, and I have been around since early last December and have read extensively in this forum, even going back some to get oriented. So, could someone please tell me when any of this has happened? These user-driven updates? Unicode, was I out of town for that one too? When was that poll about the tablet PC? I’m willing to bet that not one of you have the foggiest clue what features in which decade are ever going to be added, do you? I thought so.

I’m sorry again, but I see no user-driven anything going on here or even back the several months and threads I have followed. I see no promises, assurances, suggestions of fixes being executed in any sort of scheduled manner. I do see that users have been thoroughly polite in not demanding deadlines or promises of actual dates. But would it be too much to ask if we could be informed of which season the things we have repeatedly asked for might be accomplished? If something is going to be too hard or take much time, I think an explanation would suffice. I really don’t think that would be unreasonable.

Could we also ask that things NOT WANTED by users be set aside until we see the things we really do need? I think there are between six and ten items we can all agree on, perhaps starting with that nasty MIDI business that seems to be at or near the hearts and tops of everyone’s list? In fact, how about some promise of a total MIDI package? Routing, effects, editor upgrade, virtual keyboard, etc? What else am I missing in this department, chaps?

You see, the whole tablet business was never asked for and would be extremely time-consuming and of no aid to current users for a long long time. I think it might benefit rich kids whose parents give them $300 cell phones or $800 tablets. Would anyone agree? So in this ambitious project I do see the “driven” part of Zynewave’s pledge. But I haven’t personally seen any of the “user” side of it since I arrived here, yet I do feel that we users have done our part of the work by identifying important needs. Let’s see now if we can have the “user” part put back into the “user-driven,” shall we?

Cheers!

Comments, anyone else? So . . . are Podium feature upgrades “user-driven”? If so, where? When? What is the nature of the relationship, if any? Examples?