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written by: geert

Catoro, you definitely have to check out Metric Halo then, they had a 64-bit driver the day of Snow Leopard release! You actually talk to the guys designing the software and the hardware directly on their mailing lists (just like here) and they really take the trouble to assist you with your personal problems or approaches. My band also relies entirely on computers for rehearsal, gigging, recording. All my guitar sounds are now also made with Metric Halo DSP and various audio units. Anyway, enough of that, feel free to ask more info about these guys to me directly gbevin [at] uwyn d0t com

written by: catoro

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:36:08 +0000 GMT

After one week playing my Pico my only complain is related to the software. i´ve been pushing the software to its limits while learning how to use it, I think I can do more or less what I want with it.

I believe we have a terrific instrument but lets face it, the software is unusable, unintuitive and extremely unstable.

I´ve been doing music with computers and synths for a long time and I have found many good examples of usable software suites (e.g Ableton live) , plus being a programmer for more than 15 years I know how difficult is to provide a good balance between simplicity, usability and power.

I believe that something has to be done with EigenD as at its present stage because at least for me, is to unstable to be used on a live situation.

The Interaction paradigm is not intuitive, many functionalities appear from nowhere, scrolling is a real pain, Scheduler changes the octave of the recorded parts when the octave buttons are pressed.

Having the browser and Ableton opened at the same time eventually leads to crash on the EigenD software, you can still hear sounds but the leds don´t work anymore.

Why not having a normal drop down menu like every single application in Mac OS, I´m not saying that you should get rid of the "do it on the instrument" idea, but I don´t mind at all if I have to use my mouse more if I get stability and usability in exchange.

I will love to test any alternative to the EigenD software, even if is a beta.
I strongly believe that this instrument is a revolution, but the weak point is too noticeable ...


written by: geert

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:51:14 +0000 GMT

I totally agree, it's starting to be increasingly frustrating. I can sort of live with the reduced function set that EigenD imposes on the instrument (compared to what I hear about the Workbench), but I'm getting very annoyed at the lack of stability and clear lack of QA and testing.

The fact indeed that the octaves, scales and keys change an already recorded part, makes the small number of buttons on the Pico a real restriction since you are limited to that range for all the instruments in an entire song. I've been sort of working around the octave problem by using audio units and transposing the midi notes, but that's really a hack.

After my first week I'm feeling like you more excited than ever about the instrument but having it crash every 10 minutes is already really wearing me down. I don't even think about playing live with the Pico at all.

What I'm wondering about is what is going to be done for the release of the Alpha. I can sort of live with 1.0 instabilities for an instrument in the price range of the Pico, however if I'd order an Alpha and get the same software problems, I'd be screaming mad about it. I hope that EigenLabs realizes this point and they have one more month to get EigenD to a stable version, which might be enough.

I'm also a software developer (25 years) and I think that their main problem lies with QA. EigenD probably worked great on their computers and setups, but they didn't do enough real-world testing to iron out all the bug related to different computers, installations, usage patterns, ... The scheduler issue though seems to me that nobody actually used it with the Pico since it was developed. If I understood it correctly almost everyone at EigenLabs plays on an Alpha, and I suppose that this is using the Workbench. If I understand the little I know about the Workbench correctly, everything we see as behavior in EigenD (apart from crashes, disconnectes, ...) is programmed in the Belcanto language in the Workbench. So I think that each EigenLabs musician has basically just been setting everything up his own EigenD for his Alpha.

Finally, it seems that the Alpha has a totally different hardware architecture that (I hope) has been more thoroughly tested. The Pico's sole of USB and external sound card is different enough to create unforeseen bugs, certainly if the QA phase was skimped on.

Anyway, I'm starting to move to 'wait and see' mode since as you I'm starting to feel quite comfortable with all the functionalities on the Pico ... but I'm totally blocked by the bugs.

Me too I would love to test an alternative, but I doubt the stability issues will be gone in the Workbench as that seems to be in the underlying engine and not in the EigenD packaging of the functionalities.


written by: Lowdene

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:38:40 +0000 GMT

From my point of view, I think it would be best if Eigenlabs took a deep breath and spent time now working on a stable release that took care of some of the major issues (such as the un-useability of the Scheduler). I too suspect that testers have spent their time on the Alpha and not the Pico and also with their own Belcanto set-ups. The problem with the octave changing of the recorded loops is quickly obvious if you're playing the Pico with this setup.

I think the team have been fantastically responsive to our feedback, but almost too responsive, rushing out new updates at incredible speed (i guess because that can be done with Belcanto): I would prefer to wait a little longer and get something solid and comprehensive.

Nick


written by: steveelbows

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:34:54 +0000 GMT

The specific bugs dont bother me so much (apart from the crashing) but I have an unavoidable sense that they have made a big error in their approach to the software. Faced with a world of possibilities in terms of what can be achieved with the hardware, especially the alpha, and an idea that every aspect of configuration should be performed from the hardware itself, they have gone down a slightly crazy path in my opinion. Obviously I have not actually seen workbench, but when I hear talk of a pseudo natural language used to work it, I groan loud and long. There is every chance that all of the possibilities that are opened up are actually made inaccessible by way of picking the wrong paradigms to follow, and that many people are just going to give up when faced with relatively incomprehensible setup methods that have little in common with the modern era of accessible software.

Having said that I still have plenty of hope for the future. If they iron out stability problems, then it may not matter if only a small number of people get their heads round the fully configurable environment,so long as some of those people provide setups that do what most people need. Granted one of the issues with creating something new is that there is going to be a wide range of expectations about how the device should behave, and its difficult to cover every base. Throw in the wide range of different existing DAW and instrument software that people want to use with their eigenharps, along with control data from the instrument that is more sophisticated than traditional midi allows for, and there are many hurdles to be overcome.

If I were eigenlabs then I may consider a dual-path strategy for the future, ie continue refining their existing software whilst also making a setup that enables the eigenharps to work as OSC-based controllers that people can harness using existing development environments such as Max. Something can be learnt from the monome grid controllers, although the cost of the eigenharp alpha is going to be a bit of a roadblock to getting many 3rd party developers involved.


written by: john

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:53:03 +0000 GMT

Hi Guys

Thanks for your comments, we're reading and absorbing them all...

Regarding stability issues, we're making a new 'stable' release today, you will find the little green arrow pops up on your toolbar next to the EigenD icon prompting you to download it. It fixes a couple of really nasty bugs that were causing crashes on Snow Leopard. Many thanks to Geert and Louis who helped us track these down - we had real trouble reproducing them and you chaps were a great assistance in this.

Moving forward you will find that we will not be adding any feautures to the stable software release - it will only feature bug fixes. There will shortly be a new 'unstable' release containing new features, in particular the scripting ability that has been mentioned amongst other things. This will then evolve untill we stop changing and adding features, at which point it will move to being a 'testing' release until all the bugs have been fixed when we will make a new 'stable' release. This is actually the cycle that the existing software went through, over the last 4 months. Hard to believe I know given the bugs we've found in the first two weeks, but it did have extensive testing with our musician team, along with a whole load of automated testing. We have learned though that there is no substitute for real users - two of those bugs we found in the last few days, in particular the really nasty one that caused crashes, have actually been in the code for over two years and only just surfaced. I think the change to Snow Leopard had something to do with this, but also going from half a dozen serious users to over a hundred in a week played its part. Thank you all for your help and patience as we've sorted this out.

It is our intention that 'stable' becomes bulletproof, and we're going to work hard to make this reality. We've been running like this internally for over a year (with our musician team doing a lot of public performance, this hasn't been optional for us - a crash is a disaster live) and we thought we were pretty reliable on the stable branch. Contact with the real world has certainly disabused us of that notion!

You will be able to install 'unstable', 'testing' and 'stable' releases on your computer at the same time, and they won't interfere with each other, so those of you that feel bold, and are happy to help us out with feature development and testing can fall back to the stable release when you just want to play and not be bothered with potential bugs.

On the software design front, this is a difficult issue, particularly as many of you are power users who are wanting to do things immediately that the Pico was not intended to make possible to start with. Many of these things do not require any software changes at all - for example the recorders changing octave when you use th e octave up/down buttons is a change that Sam, a musician, has made for todays release, and its a change in the setup, not code. We are oing to be producing setups that start to accomodate many of the requests now being made - keep them coming and we'll try to be as responsive as we can - making new setups is not like making software releases, its a lot less risky and much easier to do.

In the longer term, there has been quite a lot of discussion in the forums wanting a standard, DAW style GUI like Logic or Ableton to control EigenD. We've been talking about this a lot internally. It's something we considered a lot a year ago, but rejected as both unnecessary and very technically difficult with the distributed system that is EigenD. And in the longer term, if you see Dave (who's been playing for a year) using the Belcanto system, it blows one away. Its hard to learn, but once learnt is very quick, much more so than a GUI could ever be. And you can use it while facing your audience and playing, which is very very useful.

Ideally we'd like to find a nice middle way that gives enough flexibility to beginners and allows them to learn the more complex system in their own time and we'll be looking into this in the next weeks as a matter of urgency. We do think that the new scripting interface may go a long way towards this and it'll be very interesting to see what you all think of it when we make the new unstable release. After we've done that, we ought to get together to talk about ideas to make things easier to learn and use. We do want to redefine what is meant by a computer system for live performers though. It's needed.


John


written by: catoro

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:36:46 +0000 GMT

Thanks John... I´ll download the new version as soon as you release it ... the scripting will be indeed a much appreciated improvement.

I guess the Monome case is something to have in mind, they have a very stable software thanks in part to the degree of involvement of the community of users.

As a convinced Eigenharpist (iI think I´ve just made that word) I believe that the hardware is superb and no comparable with anything in the market today, this is really something new and we are very excited to be part of this revolution.

If you guys manage to offer a compromise between stability and usability, this growing community will act as a sort of eigenharp evangelists when we use our instruments live, which at the end of the day is why we bought it in the first place.

Carlos.


written by: geert

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:54:29 +0000 GMT

Thanks John, a great post and very good information!

I second catoro that as soon as you get rock solid software out there that's suitable for live performance, I'll be out there evangelizing the Eigenharps. I'm really planning on integrating it in our band's setup, where the lead signer will probably start using my Pico after a while ... as I move on to an Alpha :-)

Maybe you should consider inviting over some of the early adopters to your offices for an afternoon of brainstorming in real life. Nothing beats a collection of enthusiast sitting in a room, spewing out ideas and hopes, to figure out how to shape the software for next releases.

Take care,

Geert


written by: steveelbows

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:16:55 +0000 GMT

Thanks for the quality reply john.

To revisit some of my earlier thoughts, Im not really sure quite how much I want to do with the Pico yet, maybe I just want to use it as a straight instrument controller and Im not worried about all the looping and other stuff anyway. So many of my thoughts about OSC and Max are probably overkill for the Pico. I think you were right to follow your instincts that the Pico should start off with a fairly simple default setup, its just that some of the detail on exactly what that setup should consist of has not been right, partly because user expectations vary somewhat.

When it comes to the alpha, I can still appreciate the desire to make all of the possibilities controllable from the instrument, and boy are there a lot of possibilities. But Im reasonably convinced that there is a flaw with the logic that whats important to a musician is being able to control it all from the instrument, even if that makes it really hard to learn. There are some settings that you would want to be able to change very quickly from the instrument itself. But the idea of all the configuration of every aspect of the instrument being done from the keys, by playing notes that translate into a language used to control the setup, still makes my brain hurt. I would think a more desirable scenario would be that a nice graphical friendly piece of software enables users to set things up as presets using a computer at their leisure, and then the important thing is that the eigenharp instrument itself can enable people to switch to these presets really easily without interrupting their playing.


written by: geert

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:43:03 +0000 GMT

Shame, after your message John I was hoping for a stable release this weekend, but it seems I'll have to wait. :-/


written by: steveelbows

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 11:32:48 +0000 GMT

Yeah no green update arrow bouncing with joy here either. I wasnt really sure whether to expect it as I thought there were not going to be any Friday evening releases after the problems with 1.0.3, but still a shame.


written by: clausd

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:42:04 +0000 GMT

+1 for the rethink suggested by steveelbows. Make it simple to configure the instrument from the laptop, and then make it simple to switch between configurations on the instrument.

Sounds to me like that would be simpler in a live situation as well, it's hardly easy to go into three deep menus, while you're grooving on stage.


written by: geert

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:48:51 +0000 GMT

I think we should give Eigenlabs the benefit of the doubt and at least try to get used to what they have envisioned. While I initially wanted to grasp the mouse to configure things also, doing it all from the Pico is now really starting to grow on me. John had a vision, built the instruments and designed the software ... maybe after getting used to it more, it'll suddenly all make sense and we'll wonder why we were questioning this. I don't think that anyone can get used to a paradigm shift like this in a couple of weeks, only time will tell how well this works out.


written by: steveelbows

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:51:01 +0000 GMT

Yes I am jumping the gun a bit. With sufficient tweaking I think the current software will be mostly be ok for the pico. For example I think its already been mentioned that having to rechoose which instrument you are playing after adjusting another setting is a pain. I would quite like to be able to instantly flip through presets of what instrument, octave, scale & tonic are being used, perhaps by using the keys currently reserved for scrolling. Defining the settings for each preset would be the same as how the pico presently does it, but then there would be a way to instantly flip between ones youd already setup without having to go into different modes and then reselect the instrument.

And Im certainly jumping the gun by questioning the paradigms for advanced config before even seeing the scripting stuff, let alone workbench. Ive tried to resist, but when John mentions the steep learning curve etc, I cant help but expect something that is a tad obscure to say the least. If I get the eigenharp alpha then I expect Id be ok as long as I could get my head round this stuff enough to be able to configure stuff such as that different ranges of keys do. But I do have this sense that its going to seem a lot more longwinded than if there were a gui on the screen where I could just click on a graphic of keys or ranges of keys, and then specify what those should do. I expect my brain to keep remembering the history of midi controllers, where configuring them via hardware was often tedious, and software utils to setup templates gradually got better and took away some of the pain. Meanwhile the hardware often got easier by way of including more display devices that tell you what a knob or button is doing. SInce the eigenharps are limited to leds for display, I imagine it repeating some of the problems of the past, or perhaps even weirder if the pseudo language via notes stuff is as wacky as it sounds on first impression.


written by: john

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:57:11 +0000 GMT

Apologies to all for saying there was going to be a new stable release on Friday - I was in the middle of the Birmingham roadshow and I had quite literally forgotten what day of the week it was. We really have made a cast iron 'no releases on Friday' rule and my suggestion that we make an immediate exception to avoid me looking foolish fell on stony ground I'm afraid.

On a positive note, the new release is all ready to go and seems to have fixed all the current showstopper bugs. Sam could not get any of them to occur in three solid hours of trying on Friday. If Louis or Geert have the time on Monday, I'd love them to have a quick go before we general release, as they seem to be able to get those bugs to occur much more easily than we have been able to. Otherwise, we will release the 1.0.5 'stable' update on Monday. Early feedback will be much appreciated.

On the use interface front, we're having a big design session on the Workbench (which is probably getting a bit of a rewrite before we subject you all to it) on Tuesday. Steve's point that he might be jumping the gun a bit on the configuration front has some value - the Belcanto language really does make a load of things possible that would be very unlikely to be supported in any kind of GUI. And its not actually that hard to learn (all our current musicians, all non technical, have learned it without difficulty) - the reason I talk about a steep learning curve is that there are currently no tutorial materials at all, not even a basic guide. This is the main reason we have not released it. Generating good tutorials takes along time, and we will get a lot of flak if they are rubbish. And there are a couple of conceptual jumps to be explained and made when engaging with our system at that level. There are also a couple of things that we currently do via Belcanto that we want to GUIify as the click/mouse model will actually be easier and faster (principally plumbing between agents and laying the system view out nicely), and they are not normally done in performance.

These conceptual differences between software that currently exists for audio and EigenD are real, and have a very serious purpose. We really do have a different conception of how software should work for the live musician. A year ago I was uncertain as to whether we were right or not, but I'm not uncertain any longer - its just too cool when you see what more experienced players can do, and exactly how little they have to rely on software programmers to do radical new things.

What you see in the Pico software as weird is really just this bleeding through into the beginners level of the instrument (factory setup 1 is only intended for this level really). For example, I notice that Carlos (catoro) has posted a way to name EigenD setups by editing filenames in your Library/Eigenlabs folder (it's very nice of him to have shared that but it isn't actually an undocumented feature, its a behaviour that will probably go away in a future release so its fairy inadvisable to use it, sorry). We will be enabling players to add a text name to the User setups in the near future to help you keep track of things, and adding a lot more user slots, but the main reason they work like that is that they can be accessed from Belcanto - the real names have to be words in the language and 'user' and '1' are for example. Otherwise, when you advance to using that you will find yourself unable to access all your old setups, and believe me that will be very very annoying. Belcanto users can save unlimited numbers of setups (defining the words for them on the fly if they want), in hierarchical multi word names, and save/recall then all from the instrument, usually in under two seconds. I never use the menus to change setup on the Alpha for example, it would seem really clumsy to me now. But it makes saving setups seem really weird on the Pico factory setup 1, which wasn't designed for power users.

I know that this is going to prompt a flurry of 'hurry up with the Workbench please' postings, but please bear with us - there's a reason that we haven't released it yet, it has to be right and be as tested as we can. Some of you have already expressed interest in being beta testers for it and we may well have something for you to try soon. And we've a lot of user feedback to take on board in the next week or so as we look at its eventual layout. It won't be a conventional GUI, its meant to be a tool for power users and there are important reasons why this is an inappropriate model in our system, but we think that we can incorporate many of the suggestions that you've been making to improve it a lot.

In the meantime, if anyone has a particular thing they want in a setup, remember to let us know. Sam will be making new setups for you at frequent intervals, and we'll try to accommodate your requests as soon as we can.


John


written by: geert

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:11:55 +0000 GMT

Hi John,

Thanks a lot for the detailed explanations, feel free to send me a test version of the new release any time. I'll test it promptly.

Take care,

Geert


written by: steveelbows

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:34:02 +0000 GMT

If you GUify certain things that make sense to do via a GUI as you have mentioned in last post, then the best of both worlds seems possible, and it will come down to the detail of the belcanto language. I certainly dont think you should rush workbench out. Personally Im hoping that the scripting in the forthcoming unstable branch will be enough for me, if not then I shall be requesting you to make certain setups, the detail of which I have already gone on about elsewhere on the forum (mostly midi tweaks), but Im in no desperate hurry, I just like to talk about this stuff.


written by: faye

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:58:28 +0000 GMT

I think we get to see some belcanto grammar in the bottom right of the browser, and also if you 'strings' the setups. I also had a bit of a look around pi and found a reference of tokens to numbers and numbers to positions on an instrument. Looks more like an alpha map than a pico though.

When I saw workbench being used at Covent Garden, it brought to mind spellcasting in Loom, or the musical equivalent of gesture input.

I'd really like attack and sustain in breath control and not just note on, on the wind soundfont preset in custom 2. I'd like to see breath being sent on cc#2 to MIDI rather than cc#17 to save on rewiring.

I'm wondering if some of the problems some of us have had with crashes/instruments dropping out is due to running low on memory and bits being swapped out that were necessary. I'm adding another 2gb of RAM to my MBP to ensure that's not the case.

I also wonder if there's anyone in Eigenlabs who's familiar with Reaktor. A couple of us are interested in using Silverwood v3 ensemble as an audio unit, but it only exports controls from one of the library modules which means we can't patch it in as documented. I've tried examining the controls but they look just the same to me, I'm obviously missing something.

I have to say that using the Pico as a MIDI controller for Silverwood has been incredibly satisfying. It would be nice to have it a little more integrated.


written by: catoro

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:59:14 +0000 GMT

Thanks John for the always informative post... count on me for any test versions if you still have room for one.
Being a software developer I know about the differences of testing the software in a petit comite and to make it public.
There are many power users out there, but features should be available to the vast majority.
Let me take this chance to thank you for reading our posts and taking the time to answer them.
To be sincere, having such a great support from Eigenlabs increases our trust in the instrument.
As pointed in other post, this instrument is so new that in a way bugs are to be expected.

Best.

Carlos


written by: gazgoldstar

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:32:30 +0000 GMT

I think what would be great is at some point if we could have an online text conference with various interested users plus John, Sam, Aaron and Dave (plus others). A realtime Q and A session where we could get a dialogue going on the various aspects of EigenD/Belcanto. John, you mention how we would be really impressed with what you can do with Belcanto and that Dave is a very advanced user, I would love it if we could grill him on what it is that you can actually do. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to organise? It would only need to be a couple of hours and I think it could be very informative to those interested parties.

Also, regarding tutorials and help, what I think would be great would be for someone like Dave just talking about Belcanto on a You Tube clip. At least then we would have some context to understand a little bit more.


written by: chad

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:02:48 +0000 GMT


John,

If it is helpful, the Eigen/Pico Community might be able to help build some documentation for you (and us) if we were given a kick-start and a place to put it. Perhaps you could host a one day workshop, or as some others have mentioned, try to do something online. A wiki might be a better technology for consolidating information and feedback ( you might have a look at SocialText )

Possible Draft Agenda topics:

How to use the Pico and successfully show the Pico to others

How Eigen Labs envisage the Pico being used in a performance setting

Ideal hardware set-up for the Pico

Issues that Eigen Labs would like tested by the user community

Software demo of EigenD / WorkBench / etc.

Belcanto

Discussion on how best to release main stream stable software without
compromising the innovation of agile releases of "unstable" beta software

Other suggestions?



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