Synthmaker roadmap?

[MichaelBenjamin]

apple has some of the best and most disgustingly perfect marketing that i know, and its backed up by reasonably ok products. microsoft on the other side got some of the most clumsy marketing in comparision, also backed up by ok products. and the difference is? 30-50% price. but hard to compare to sm, since its somehow the only app that offers that functionality besides synthedit. i could imagine the most of the "bad image" for these type of "toy apps" comes from the c++ coders which surely are afraid of loosing money and becoming obsolete when there would be a killer development program for all kinds of dsp which takes care of the shell and lets the user care about the code. so its not the marketing, but the changes in programming paradigms that keep being somehow in the way of sm (well plus its usual downsides like no sdk, green system).

[bootsy]

+1 for roadmap

[sunsynth]

damn dudes - wake up - Vote here +++

a really frustrating part is the missing crossgrade offer

[trogluddite]

Vote here +++

Shortly after the annexation of Tibet, the Dalai Lama visited the UK. As he was about to step onto the 'plane to leave, a journalist asked him,"So what do you think of Western democracy?".
To which he replied, "I think it would be a good idea".

As a conscientious citizen I naturally cast my vote. But as the old saying goes "No matter who you vote for, the government always wins". Commercial considerations trump democracy - Don't hold your breath waiting for a roadmap.

[exonerate]

I'm not so interested in a roadmap per say, but just a comment from Malc giving a time frame for the release of version 2 and the major enhancements which will be included.

"We are aiming to have version 2 and the new accurate event system in beta stage by the beginning of 2011" would be enough for me, obviously that could be any date. And it wouldn't really matter if they over shoot that by a year. At least we would know it's being worked on. As it stands now version 2 and accurate events seems like a pipe dream, a mere fantasy of what could be.

SM could be a great piece of software but it falls short in so many areas. These shortfalls are also in flowstone, the user of flowstone are going to want accurate events as well . I wouldn't pay £495 for a piece of software that cannot send a trigger exactly when I want to send it.

Cheers

Exo

[mwvdlee]

These shortfalls are also in flowstone, the user of flowstone are going to want accurate events as well.

Oh come on now, it's not like robotics and embedded electronics ever need real-time operations

[Shifrin]

Been some time since I've posted on these forums. These days I tend to use S|M to prototype algos, then port to C++ and use the VST SDK (2.4). I'd have loved to have seen some of the often requested features added to S|M. It seems Flowstone is taking development in other directions though..

Shif.

[Disco_Steve]

I think they are holding back release dates to try to keep the cash flow. When you anounce a new product or a new up grade people hold back until that day. By the looks of things outsim has been slowly growing and the cash-flow is steady, there is no doubt some debts to pay, and a good cash flow is most likely vital at this time. The fact they can take on a marketing guy at this time in the economic downturn, shows that outsim are doing well. Not badly. However I too am concerned with the multiple products based on the same thing and thus have similar bugs.which will make updating a hellish task, unless you keep the same base code and add modules (just like they are doing with Flowstone)

The arcetcture of SM in my view means that good timing of green is not possible. And in effect an entire rewrite would be needed to achieve what we all want. And even then we are not using a real time system coded without an OS, so blue is the best we can have so if you need it time critical use that, the need then is for blue versions of the green components we want, but those have been made green due to their computational load, and so achieving what we want is near on impossible.

The fact they have released flowstone, To me shows that the underlying architecture of SM is actually what gives it its highly appealing and intuitive working method, feedback loops for example, try doing that in lab view!
And so they are trying to maximise the profitability of the current product which should ensure the finances to develop the next version. I would guess that we are at least a year away from a major upgrade, At the soonest news will come at christmas, with a free upgrade to the next version if you buy this one sticker, everything needs to be rewritten, the amount of reusable code will be small.

I would greatly like to see a roadmap, but we will not be told as they know that it will in the short term reduce cash-flow, as us old gitts who want it arnt paying them any money!

[mwvdlee]

However I too am concerned with the multiple products based on the same thing and thus have similar bugs.which will make updating a hellish task, unless you keep the same base code and add modules (just like they are doing with Flowstone)

I'd be surprised if they had seperated the code base. Supporting two nearly identical products is ridiculously easy to do with some C++ preprocessor code and a half-arsed built-script. They'd be utterly, totally and completely stupid not to. I've been working on a code base with four far more diverse targets and it works like a charm. So I'm guessing we'll see bugs and general improvements appearing in parallel for SM|FS.

Then again, FS already has a few generic and audio-specific components and we're not yet seeing them in SM. The fact that we haven't wories me a bit. Since there is really no concievable technical reason why we haven't seen anything new in SM for a while, the only alternative would be a marketing reason, and marketing reasons never benefit the customers.

The arcetcture of SM in my view means that good timing of green is not possible.

Even though everybody says they want good timing of green, I think nobody really wants that. What I think most people want is to have a way of accurately triggering MIDI events. A simple MIDI output module with blue inputs is probably going to fix all the issues here.

p.s. One of the reasons I bought SM was actually BECAUSE it had regular updates. It had me convinced that whatever bug was present now would be fixed soon enough. For a few months, this was actually true. Had I known in advance the current reality, I would not have bought SM. Given the choice again, I would not buy SM at this date; it has severe bugs and no sign of them being fixed. I love tinkering with SM, but I bought it with the intention of releasing commercial products and SM is simply unfit for that purpose. So is FS by the way, which is why I have no intention of buying it.

[Disco_Steve]

sounds like you planned things through much better than we did on this one project I was on, a new customer wanted basically the same product, but with a tweek, and then another person with a different tweak, and before we knew it, nothing was compatible enough that updates across all the tweaked products could be made, and dev costs became so high we had to stop supporting the product. we then tried to start again, but we had a twat of a manager (who was then fired) who talked the talked (which got him the job) but in no manner of form walked the walk, so they never got past the basic architectural concept. because they couldn't decide the best way to do it. the end result was lots of money wasted, in an attempt to make the product indefinitely future proof which is impossible. in the end one of the guys in the team got really worried, and wrote a hacked together version in c# in about 3 weeks ('for fun') but was modular enough to work well enough and now that is being 'shipped'. software is crazy, its so hard to plan and get right. I don't envy outsim at all, as each bug must be harder and harder and harder than the last to fix, which is why they haven't been fixed yet!

steve

[Mo]

Even though everybody says they want good timing of green, I think nobody really wants that. What I think most people want is to have a way of accurately triggering MIDI events. A simple MIDI output module with blue inputs is probably going to fix all the issues here.

+1

[mwvdlee]

I don't envy outsim at all, as each bug must be harder and harder and harder than the last to fix

This really depends on the guy that fixes it, or -- sadly in most cases -- the manager that pushes to get the fix in now.
If you take some time, each bug fix will only make the code more robust and maintainable. If you don't, it just gets worse and worse.
We all know the g****mn 80%/20% rule. (IMHO it's more like 95%/5%). And still people refuse to fix problems but apply band-aids instead.

In the end one of the guys in the team got really worried, and wrote a hacked together version in c# in about 3 weeks ('for fun')

That's the way to go. If as a programmer you don't see the fun in coding challenging things, then why would you ever care about any code at all?
</rant>
(I spent most of the day finding bugs in somebody else's really, really crappy code. Being able to write code != being able to design software)

[Tzarls]

Wow! Please remind me of never ever showing you any of my source code!

I´d really love to have a peek at SM source, BTW - just thinking of how it must be working inside helped me to figure out how to approach programming a plugin using a "standard" language.

[attic]

Hi

I'm considering a purchase of Synthmaker but it seems like you may be getting close to a 2.0 version.. as I'm a very poor college student who is dealing with a huge tuition increase would I be best to wait for the 2.0 version or is that a very long way off?

Thank You

Reply
Malc

Hi

My apologies for the delay in responding.

I notice that you just purchased - many thanks for that.

We don't currently have a release timeframe for a second version of SynthMaker so don't worry, you're not about to find yourself out of date any time soon.

As you may have seen, we've been at version 1 for 3 years now. Over that time we've released over 15 updates many of which contained new features and enhancements and that has been and our main focus.

We hope you enjoy using the software.

All the best,

Malc
SynthMaker

[attic]

Even though everybody says they want good timing of green, I think nobody really wants that. What I think most people want is to have a way of accurately triggering MIDI events. A simple MIDI output module with blue inputs is probably going to fix all the issues here.

Yes that is what I want. It should have already been there and from looking at the product before I purchased it seemed that it already was. So +1 for me. Sigh!, SM not only needs better timing but also advanced voice management.

If I had known about the midi implementation or the lack off accurate output, I would not have purchased Synthmaker. It seems I was out of date before I even purchased it.

However this program is addictive and there is nothing else like it, not even Synthedit can hold a candle to it so I am glad I purchased it and am addicted. I'm a Synthedit user and it sucks for graphics there is no zoom on the build gui and it also has a very bad storage method for components. It does have an open sdk however and midi as well as sampling is well implemented. I think Malc could make the community happy with a few small tweaks but as with all things programming related it is slow going.

Modern developers should take a page from the Reaper community and allow the users to define the direction of development. Synthedit has set up a voting system for what will be included in the new updates. The last vote made it clear that the community over there wanted oversampling so that is the winner for the next upgrade to synthedit.

A road map would be good but direct involvement by Malc and interaction with the community here on a regular basis would be better.