Donald S. GriffinI would pick the first item on the poll but only half of it. I AM interested in a discount. ANY discount, on anything. 😀 But while you pointed out the price, discount implies it is lower than some other price. What would the NON-discounted price be? In other words: How much would we be saving?
I have bought a lot of stuff online, often with Share-it. Never with Pay Pay. I have often received SPAM con emails trying to get me to give my Pay Pal information to some criminal. Each time I am happy I can simply ignore anything that seems to be from Pay Pay. If you were to use Pay Pal I think it would seriously affect my buying decision since I’m on the wire anyway. BTW The fact that so many others are selling thru Share-it and not Pay Pal implies they know something and have made an intelligent decision.
I am interested in Podium mostly for its potential future. Without a discount I would simply keep watching to see what you add and how quickly after 1.0 comes out. Or do you take a vacation? 8) But if this $75 discount price is a lot less than the regular release price it would be more of an issue of whether I want to “gamble” on my faith that you will do some really cool things with Podium in the near future like applying curves to velocity or layered effect curves. Otherwise it would just be adding one more pretty, but complicated sequencer without MIDI FX or notation.
Donald S. GriffinTracktion has a button to lengthen the time it takes for tooltips to pop up so that you can make them less annoying once you get the hang of things. I found it worked pretty well for me. I have seen other programs that let you set how many milliseconds until they pop up.
Donald S. GriffinFixed on my MOTU 828 MkII ❗
Donald S. GriffinNo, I don’t have any other applications running when this happens. Again I wonder if it is just so slow in resonding that it appears to be unavailable.
Donald S. GriffinCubase format would be sufficient for me personally. I was also thinking that since you support VST plugins it is more logical for you to lean towards a steinberg file format support. Cubase is possibly the only format for which I have an ALMOST full set of files for the instruments I have with the combination of plugin cards I have installed.
One thing I have always wanted was an alpha search for patches. I have not delved far enough into Podium to know if you support that with patches that have been imported into Podium’s format. If not then its something for the wish list. See, that’s the problem with getting this stuff all in the right forums. What starts as a support question often becomes a feature request only after we find it is not already implemented.
Donald S. GriffinI have the most complete collection for myself in the Cubase format. However. It is very similar to most of the other formats I have seen. I few lines of header info followed by (in various orders) patch name,MSB LSB, patch number. One problem is that each format uses a different order for that data and different conventions such as quotes or commas etc.
The only really tough one is Sibelius because of the way they have it organized.
I think Cubase and Cakewalk are the key formats to consider though.
I’ll try to dig up a couple of those for you tomorrow though I would be surprised if you did not have some sort of Cubase and Cakewalk, maybe even just demos, on your system just so you can understand what everybody else is doing and where your market niche delivers what they do not.
Donald S. GriffinAs far as I am concerned the heart of my idea is using bar type curves to imprint the strong vs weak velocity patterns. Is this possible ❓
You referred only to spline curves. I don’t know if you meant ONLY spline curves or if you were using that as a generic term for ALL Podium curves 😕
In summary, can BAR curves be applied to velocities?
Also, is the hierarchical weighted nesting of curves possible ❓ (for other data types than velocity.)
Donald S. GriffinActually I do have an SW1000XG but when I do my own patch list for it I include the patches for the VL daughter card I have installed onboard.
I also have an EMU Virtuoso 2000 with several other sound set cards installed inside that.
I have a Korg KARMA and I have a MOSS (physical modeling) circuit board installed inside that. I have created about 5 128-patch sets for the MOSS that I switch between so I have 5 versions of the KARMA sound set and I just use the one that matches the MOSS sound set that I have currently installed in flash RAM.
I sometimes like to use non-standard names that include the patch and even MSB LSB so I have some portability to programs that require I manually input that data to bring up the same patch.
Musicator lets you easily organize patches in sub menus so I like to do that when I can.
I also have a Yamaha VL-70m which I use with a controller so I like the patches for that handy as well. There’s also a Yamaha CS-6x and Kurzweil K2000s.
I use VSTi synths more and more nowadays but I try to avoid sequecers that place my hardware virtually out of bounds. 😕
Donald S. GriffinI always like it when software immediately tells me how its different than others. When I see a long feature list I know they are just trying to dazzle me with BS. To hide that they really have nothing special at all.
I also like it when there is a jpeg with lines leading onto it to labels not just pointing to what things are, but making a comment about why THIS one is different (better) than what you are used to.
Also, in something like this, where there are bound to be new paradigms, its critical to have small pictures every time you mention some part of the program so a person can immediately know what part of the screen you are talking about and where to find it rather than trying to remember what the thingy is and where to find it from a previous chapter.
Your online manual is very professional looking. In fact that gives me more confidence that Podium will be worth checking into. I am just saying. More of the little pics scattered around when you refer to anything that may be confusing. I think we are all comic book readers at heart. 😉
Donald S. Griffin@Zynewave wrote:
I’ll admit that writing manuals is not my strongest side. Could you be more specific and point me to the parts that was confusing? I may inadvertently have skipped over some parts that needs clarification.
It turns out that when I thought I was reading a synposis of Podium I was reading the first pages of the manual. I got the page from clicking the like for more info so I didn’t realize it was a manual.
But here is one example that would sure scare away anybody’s grandpa from trying it out. 😕
“The combination of device mapping, device definition, preset and parameter objects are used to encapsulate the configuration of plugins and external devices along with their different mechanisms for handling presets and parameters. The purpose of these objects are to shield you from the complexities involved in communicating with different types of devices, but it also provides a uniform way of accessing plugins and hardware devices in the arrangement editor.
Preset objects are used to recall and store settings for your plugins and external devices. Preset objects can be configured to select predefined programs in your devices, or they can be used as a storage container for a plugin preset or a MIDI SysEx preset for an external device. This enables you to build your own library of presets within Podium projects. Podium stores the library presets using a zip packing mechanism to minimize disk and memory usage.
Parameter objects are used for automating single parameters in your devices. They can be configured to use e.g. MIDI control changes, NRPN messages or SysEx messages.
You use device mappings, presets and parameters by assigning them to tracks in your arrangements. Once a device mapping is assigned to a track you will have access to the list of presets and parameters that are available for that particular device.”
Donald S. Griffinwell, no. Because it would have still taken me a year to figure out how to do all that audio routing. In fact, when I read the overview pages, on the web site, of Podium’s general layout and features it went totally in one ear and out the other. And I have practically made a career or reading software manuals.
Donald S. GriffinGeez, I didn’t even see that you had a Podium Guide or I would have been reading it. When did you get that up?
Donald S. GriffinIt seems products are partly judged on their price. If the price is high it is assumed to be good. Too low and it is assumed to be pretty simple stuff. HOWEVER. If its too high only pros can afford it and they are happy with what they have for the most part. I know guys that try out new stuff but not as likely when its priced high. Some of the most successful stuff succeeded by maintaining a low price over a long period while keeping a steady progression of improvements and adequate support. Fruity Loops comes to mind but Cool Edit is another. Some of the higher priced stuff used to fall into that category.
One problem you can have with a low price is a huge user base that all demands support. It just seems that the lower the price the more likely you will get beginners who tend to need a LOT of help on the simplest of concepts. On the other hand, if you give them a good product you can catch them before they even learn about other products on the market. With moderate charges for regular updates you can have a steady income from these loyal costomers for years.
I have been involved with MIDI sequencing practically since the beginning and one thing is clear: People would rather stick with the software they have become used to than switch to something else even though it may be better. If you get people new to computer music hooked then you will have many of them hooked for life. The trick then is to reach them first, keep them happy and do this without blowing your profits on tech support.
A good community message board really helps. Caligari trueSpace (a 3D graphics program) does this really well. I think one reason there are so many helpful people on their email list is that they have a plugin architecture and the guys trying to sell thier plugins watch the boards and help out with the payoff that people learn about thier plugins and buy them.
I don’t know if you can be succesful having a unique plugin architecture but if you were able to support MFX plugins, possibly both Cakewalk and Steinberg’s versions. Then you would be the only app that does this as far as I know. And that alone could bring a lot of business.
I regularly check a VST themed web site called
http://www.kvr-vst.com/
that has news on most of the VST and VSTi plugins as well as SOME info on hosts. I learned about Podium via that site while checking ALL the hosts for features I want. Steinberg recently released a new version of their SDK that finally provides access to thier MFX plugin architecture and so far I have not seen any plugins. One stragegy would be if you could both support Steinberg MFX plugins and create at least one or two of your own to sell on the side. You could make money on the plugins separate from Podium but you could also offer a bundle discount when buying both Podium and a plugin. This way you could use people’s insatiable desire for plugins to get them interested in Podium as well. Naturally they would then spread the word back to their friends. As people learned there are now two apps that support Steinberg MFX plugins that would both encourage the development of those plugins AND they demand for the one or two you are selling, but ALSO the demand for applications that can use them. Podium, for example. Hah, you should be paying me. 🙂
Donald S. GriffinSeems like a good idea.
Donald S. GriffinYou’re the first using the MOTU with Podium. It is most likely that something in its ASIO driver is confusing Podium. If the CPU indicator is red and the play button does not respond, then Podium has (wrongfully) detected some sort of buffer overrun. Could you try and switch to the MOTU Wave drivers instead of ASIO, and see if this works?
I tried the MME drivers and even at 2048 they are still crackly on my MOTU 828 MkII. However I saw somebody else’s response to your suggestion to try the ASIO4ALL drivers. So I decided to try them myself and they seem to work very well. 2 buffers at 512 works fine on your demo material using the recommended plugins. But it SEEMS as though his driver only supports a single pair of outs though his web site says it supports more than two. I’ll have to look into it more carefully.