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EigenD News - Upcoming releases

We've now released EigenD 1.3 into Stable. This has represented over a years
work for the Eigenlabs team and contains some very significant improvements,
including Stage, our networked graphical control panel application, and an
advanced MIDI configuration and control matrix to get the best out of AU's,
VST's and external instruments along with dozens of other new features and
hundreds of bugfixes.

We will be making one more release in the 1.X series of EigenD, 1.4. This will
have no new features but will be a performance and stability release, along
with finally bringing the MacOS and Windows versions fully in line with each
other by completing the Tau and Alpha support on Windows 7, introducing full
headphone support for both. 1.4 will be the last release in the 1.X series of
EigenD.

It's been a long road from 1.0 and I'd like to take the opportunity to thank
all of you who have helped us improve and refine EigenD over the last two years
- your bug reports, suggestions and input have been vital.

From EigenD 2.0 onwards we will be introducing an annual subscription model for
EigenD which will cover all software updates to the base system, which includes
the Stage application. This will be charged at £90/yr or £49 for 6 months
(including VAT at 20%) and covers email suppport as well as software downloads
of the latest version of EigenD.

EigenD 2.0 is scheduled to contain a number of improvements and new features to
the current Eigend along with a considerable number of new bundled instruments
and effects. Subscription is by player, not instrument, so you will not need to
pay more than once if you own multiple models of Eigenharp.

Early subscribers will not have their one year period counted as beginning
until 2.0 enters stable release, but you will need to be a subscriber to gain
access to the early experimental and testing releases.

From 2.0 onwards we will also be introducing a new product, EigenD Pro, for
power users who wish to build and edit their own setups more easily. This
features EigenD, Stage and our new Workbench graphical application that allows
a user to build and customise their own setups quickly and easily. This will be
available by subscription in a similar way to the base EigenD and will cost
£249 a year or £139 for six months (including VAT at 20%). Customers who
purchase an annual EigenD Pro subscription during the period in which it is
classed as 'Experimental' will be able to do so for the discounted price of
£199 for the year.

Forum access will remain open to all registered players at the moment and will
not require a subscription to post. The open source release of EigenD will
continue to track the base system, and from time to time we will probably take
parts of the subscription release and put them in the public domain. The
decision hasn't been made yet but we may make a cut down read only version of
Stage for the GPL release so that there is a reduced functionality, completely
free release available with some Stage functionality. We won't be doing this
before next year though.

Purchasers of Eigenharps will get a one year subscription to EigenD (but not
EigenD Pro) included in the price, and if you bought your Eigenharp within the
last year you will qualify for the remainder of your years paid support as an
EigenD subscriber.

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EigenD 2.0 FAQ:

- Will 1.3 and 1.4 remain free?

Yes they will. You do not have to subscribe if you do not want the new features,
media and capabilities in 2.0.

- How long will they remain supported for?

We will be bugfixing against them for the remainder of 2011, after that they will
remain free but they will no longer be updated.

- What will happen to the open source release?

It will continue to track the subscription release, missing some of the newer
functionality, in the same way it does today. From time to time we will
probably release features from the subscription releases into the public
domain. We remain commited to Open Source and our developer community.

- What happens to my software if I let my subscription lapse?

Nothing. A subscription enables you to download the latest version, once you
have done that it will continue to work even if your subscription subsequently
expires.

- Do you offer any educational discount?

At the moment we do not.

- What are the new features in 2.0?

The feature list for 2.0 is not yet finalised, but to date it includes a large
number of performance enhancements and system changes to enable setups to be
more configurable, several new Agents that enable new methods of performance
(the Strummer to enable guitar like behaviours and Fingerer to enable wind
instrument style fingerings) and a number of new bundled third party AU/VST
instruments and effects. We'll be releasing more information about the new
features during the 2.0 'Experimental' phase.

- What does Workbench do? Is it going to be worth the extra £159?

That's a hard question to answer. It adds three new significant features to the
Eigenharps and EigenD. Firstly it allows one to visually see and inspect the
signal flow, Agents and Ports inside any setup that is 2.X compatible. Secondly
it allows one to edit and change those setups, modifying the signal flow,
changing keyboard layouts by defining new Keygroups and deleting and adding
Agents. Thirdly it allows one to build setups from scratch, as simple as you
want or as rich as your computer hardware will support. If this is something
that is intersting to you then the answer is probably yes. If playing the
instrument using Factory setups is what you want to do, then probably not -
Stage already gives you extensive control over those. If you'd like to build
your own Setups then yes, we think so.

- Can I do any software programming in Workbench?

No, Workbench is configuration and routing tool, it does not have software
development features. If there is an Agent to do what you want to a signal you
can plumb it in Workbench to do just that, but if you want software programming
abilities then the open source release is your best bet - coding an agent is
not that difficult if you know a little Python and C++, and Agents written for
the Open Source release will work with all 2.X software.

- Will setups built for the 1.X series work with 2.X?

No, they will not. It has proven simply too technically difficult to make this
possible. There will be new factory setups for the 2.X series which
will be very similar to the existing setups for an easy playing transition.

- Why have you started charging for your software? It was always free before..

We always intended to charge a subscription for software updates - it is a
significant part of our business model and the continued development of EigenD
is simply not possible without it. We had originally intended that this
subscription would be tied to peoples support contracts and begin when these
expired. Several issues led us to wait on this, mainly that Windows was not
supported across the entire range and we felt (and our users had told us) that
our UI was not good enough. With 1.3 we felt that EigenD had reached a
watershed. It was very stable (being used by a lot of people playing live,
sometimes to audiences in the tens of thousands), had a great and highly
configurable user interface in Stage and with 1.4 was finally completely
equivalent across the MacOS and Windows platforms. It seemed a good point
to make a the jump to a new product. EigenD 2.0 has been in parallel development
to the 1.X series for around 18 months and represents a substantial investment
of time, creativity and resources for us. It is a response to a lot of feedback
from players and users and we hope that you enjoy it.

- What's happening with the IOS version of Stage?

That is part of our Autumn plans, we'll keep you posted.

If the timer really does not start to tick until the software is really major and stable then I think the price can be justified. This is beyond an "enter open beta test" fee, so we can expect high quality software.
For pure EigenD imho it depends on the new sounds - easily worth it if they are good.

Interesting!

Greetings,
NothanUmber

@carvincode, we still haven't seen a bug report for 8 months from you, you've not contacted support either about the stability issues you mention. It might be something simple like a driver version that is stuck and not updating ... however you seem to be hell-bent on repeating yourself on the forums about stability issues without apparently wanting to get in touch with the people that can solve them for you.

I find it personally interesting that my 8 year old could figure out a lot of the functionalities of the Pico in a couple of minutes when I put it in her hands 2 years ago and gave less explanations than the tutorial videos provide. What 'reference manual' of 200 pages do you want about playing the Eigenharp Pico? The quick reference guide gives you access to all the functionalities in a summarized form and the video tutorials explain it in detail. I've never read the documentation of Komplete, Logic, Cubase, ... and I hate every piece of equipment that ships with a book to throw away when almost nobody reads it. Spend the little time needed to understand the few connections that are necessary to navigate through the Pico setup with the reference guide and the rest is just playing practice. Anything that's written will not make it easier for you to play music or learn muscle memory though, those are just moves you have to go through until they stick.

The Pro subscription 'one year clock' will not start ticking until we release the first Stable 2.0, sorry that wasn't clearer.

In terms of the open source release, we will be working on creating a standard API for writing Agents at some point , we have in fact had quite a few discussions internally about this. This is quite intimately tied in with our desire to migrate our wire protocol to OSC, so EigenD becomes a big OSC engine. This isn't a huge step for us, but it's not one that we're going to be able to do this year - getting 2.0 stable and in wide use is our current focus. If there is enough interest we could run a seminar on how to get started coding with EigenD at some point, if people are interested they could let me, Jim or Geert know and we'll get a list of interested parties going.

In terms of publishing a roadmap, I'm afraid we aren't going to be doing that. I have now been punished too thoroughly and routinely for making any kind of forward announcements, however vague. It sadly does not seem to matter how many caveats or how carefully a desire to do something, a target or an intention is worded, by the power of the Internet it transforms instantaneously into a hard coded promise with a hard coded timescale in peoples minds. I now understand why it has become the norm (Apple have set the standard on this) to say nothing about the future - I used to hate this but after experiences with Eigenlabs over the last couple of years I have come to understand it. It's sad, because it stifles discussion of the future, but I don't think anyone in our development team, me included, has enjoyed the negativity that that kind of openness seems to foster.

Great! Where do I sign up?

Thanks again for a great product and what looks like a practical way forward.

Happy camper, Mike

John, I'd be very interested in a seminar on the internals of EigenD.

Hmm, my earlier post got lost.

Thanks for the clarification on the timing John. I'm in for a Pro subscription for at least a year anyway.

I'd like to be part of a seminar on the internals. Any chance this could take the form of a G+ hangout so that we can actively participate? A periodic hangout for the coders amongst us would be really cool.

D

Fair point Mike, I would agree. Though I suspect the number of attendees might also be relatively small.

We'll do some more testing with the devices you mention. Just curious, did you at least upgrade the driver to version 1.0.8 and try with EigenD 1.4.6? We're rewritten much of the Windows USB support for that version so that it could handle the Alpha and the Tau. On certain computers this has also made a difference for Pico players.

I didn't try to belittle you, I simply stated a fact of what happened when I gave my 8 year old (not 2 year old) the Pico to play with shortly after I got it 2 years ago. This simply to illustrate that in terms of being easy to play, the Pico doesn't really need a 200 page manual.

Once again, if you want to get of the bottom of what might be your problem, please contact customer support through email.

Couple of questions...

Will it still be possible to use belcanto to reconfigure stuff under version 2 or will workbench be needed to make changes?

If you have ver2 but not pro, will it be possible to use a setup/config someone else makes with the pro version?

Do you not think asking for 50% of the purchase price of a pico every year for a subscription to something which has been promised (on the internet by you and your staff) for over a year, might be a little bit steep, especially as there is no certainty that there will be any major feature releases during that year?

I would have found a scheme whereby you charge for major upgrades but provide bug fixes free easier to swallow. I await the initial release of v2 and will decide what to do when I see the full feature list and have heard how stable and useable those features are. Personally, I wish Id never invested in a pico, excellent as it is. I was sucked in by the promises of workbench and now find those features are going to cost me a relative fortune every year.

lastly, any plans to support other versions of Windows such as Vista and XP as these platforms still constitute the major installed base of Windows.

Martyn