In retrospect... (Should I bail while I still can?)

[Fernand]

Robius, the fact that *some* people are resentful is a result of hype-- hype that is just a lawyer's hair short of what is known as "lies", that by now we should all spot in our sleep -- in elections, in commercials, Russian brides, and in promo "literature". Watch any TV, Robius?

Guys like you were hyped on the implied supernatural artificial intelligence of the unit, that somehow was going to map itself to various things YOU wanted to control. You looked at Live, you looked at the Quneo, and you *wanted* to believe that the two would just work together like apple and pie. But, detail, Quneo's just a versatile MIDI controller, and Ableton Live is just one of hundreds or thousands of programs that they'd have to customize the firmware to, to meet your specific dreams. Hey, they gave you two (2) Live Presets, so there you go!

Tweaks and Trekkies were oversold on the "community" aspect, and got a warm fuzzy thinking it was going to be open source. Yet for some zombie reason the company won't even release the development kit that would let the Tweaks and Trekkies make much better editors for it, which they would gladly do, for free, 'cause Tweaks are like that. No, KMI don't need no stinkin' cool software. OK.

And I guess *everybody* thought the company was going to take the $150,000 and put it all into the Quneo, instead of branching out with more ... hype. Live and learn?

But Robius, Dahlink, this is still a very, very, flexible controller. You won't find a cooler set of pads for the money, and even if all you do with it is trigger General Midi drum samples, using pressure or X/Y to modulate the sounds, I think it's probably still well worth it. And the colors are surely worth something! I'm using it with orchestral sounds and it gives me all sorts of ideas ... for later.

Now, if the two hundred bucks are critical to you, then of course return it and look for a gizmo dedicated to Live. But read the hype and glossies like a paranoid lawyer this time, or you'll be disappointed.

[demcanulty]

Thanks for the kind words Fernand, and believe me, that 150K went right back into making the Quneo real. As far as the open sourcing goes, we haven't dumped it all on the doorstep of the internet, but we are releasing specs and software as we feel they're ready. Knowing that we're about to release 1.2, I've been giving that my full attention, but as soon as we have a relatively frozen preset structure I'll be be making an effort to help more with the independent development work that I've already been helping with in the linux thread and others, and I will be putting more work into opening up the communication specs. Additionally, in our spare time, the lead programmer for the editor and I have been working on a 10 to 14-bit raw sensor SDK which the plan has been to bring as far as we can and then open up. I also wish it could all happen at once, but with a small team we are trying to hit the big things first. It may be that as we open up to open source, the user feedback will astound us. I hope so! It is a learning process for us. I think, when there is a little more time in January, I will start an open source thread where we try to iron out what power-users want to wrestle with and how best we can assist that. Somebody else could start it before me, if they're so inclined.

Also, Fernand, if you do know 'Tweaks' who are down to do serious stuff, let's get a thread going for sure. The linux crowd is doing some really cool work, but I think if it could be opened up so we can all work together to find common needs, that would be really exciting.

[dijidave]

"The linux crowd is doing some really cool work,"
True dat,............bin makin'me jelous out here in the cold ov windowz world

" but I think if it could be opened up so we can all work together to find common needs, that would be really exciting."
Yay
"But Robius, Dahlink, this is still a very, very, flexible controller. You won't find a cooler set of pads for the money, and even if all you do with it is trigger General Midi drum samples, using pressure & or X/Y to modulate the sounds,"
2 true 2 (Dhalynk)

'I also wish it could all happen at once, but with a small team we are trying to hit the big things first.''
If only, imagine the consternation amongst "standard level users" who already struggle with the status Quo & start to 'fade out ' @ tha mention of 3 or 4D let alone 5D ( I tried 2 eplain QuNeo 2 my local "Muso supplie's retailer', whoze gaze, glazed after the 2nd sentance, abeloved friend, but def OldSchool, should'a just mapped this mutha out onto some Melda'Prod MultiBands & HyperDij'd his head right outa inner space) OK, enuf toying with the trivia of utha's.....challange..


Accepted,
Luv'ya WurK GuyZ,
Keep it up
Dave

[Robius]

I'm really glad so many people are speaking up!

It can give you kind of a bleak outlook sometimes, reading forums like these ("Happy people don't post" and all that). So I'm glad som many are pleased with their QuNeos, this is exactly what i needed to hear.
Personally, it's growing on me. I was never disappointed really, just afraid of ending up with a hamstrung product that was never able to live up to its potential.

So no, I wasn't exactly expecting this controller to descend from the heavens to map itself to my brain and make all my dreams come true (while solving world hunger and curing cancer to boot). My only major concern was that software development and after-market support would just kind of stop dead while KMI moves on to their next project - leaving a lot of loose ends and unfulfilled promises. It's an all too common case when buying electronics these days after all...

I'm willing to wait for good updates and expanded capability. Its the uncertainty of whether those updates will come at all that bugs me. I'm definitely willing to get stuck in and tweak the hell out of this thing. But I'm not quite as keen to spend hours and hours learning the ins and outs of something only to hit an arbitrary wall because a certain features never ended up getting implemented.

[Jonah]

Buying things based on what they might do is generally going to lead to frustration. If you're happy with it now, keep it. Otherwise, see if 1.2 comes out within your return window.

The qunexus software looks decent. I wonder if there will be a quneo 2 with CV.

The QuNeo does some novel things, but if you're willing to put in the time there are other ways to get there. The functionality is only as good as you can use it to make music. If you're a Live user it's easier and faster to work with the QuNeo in M4L. NI adding OSC support to Reaktor probably means they're going to let you do some interesting controller programming too. Basically, having a nice controller is going to be the next progression for a lot of software.

[Fernand]

@demcanulty, I *know* that 150k doesn't go as far as people think, so forgive the hyperbole. But the sooner you publish some in-depth info, the better. I would hope there might be individual MIDI messages to set specific parameters on specific pads without having to send over the whole contents of a config file? If you could document those, people might start building some better editors, or adding Quneo configuration commands to scripts.

[jscott]

Hey guys, I just noticed that it's all been exhaustively documented over in that Linux thread including posted code with the sysex format and a parser for the JSON patch format by one of the developers. I know, probably didn't notice it if you're not on Linux and assumed that thread doesn't apply.

But it's clear they are working on it.

Also, when they add features, the format changes, it's not stable yet since people are still asking for new features. When they publish formal documents, they're going to want to have a more stable API. Right now, what the developer posted is pretty great and sufficient for those who want to program the controller directly to do so.

I had already written my own code to parse the patch format so that I could easily modify multiple parameters at once and map out interesting pad arrangements, but having the sysex format posted there is really helpful since figuring it out was next on my todo list.

It seems to me that the claims they are not providing development kit info are not quite correct, they are being provided but as it's in a state of flux, it's been disclosed in a bit of an ad hoc basis such as in forum posts. It's premature to produce nice final documentation since things are changing, and with their small team I'd personally much rather they focus on getting the improved feature set right from interacting with people here than duplicate effort producing docs that will be obsolete by the time they finish writing them. Their posting of code is sufficient to figure out how to directly program the instrument without the editor and is much appreciated. It's also useful whether or not you're on Linux. Since they are making progress in this it's not correct that they lied or misrepresented. This is a small shop of craftsmen and its pretty clear they communicate with users regularly in the forum (much more so than NI or Apple for example) and they are actively working on product improvements. I understand that it's hard to keep up with all the various posts, so I thought I would respond here and point you guys to the thread where a bunch of development info was disclosed so you could find it and also see that they are definitely working on these things in good faith.

[se_are]

Hey guys,

I just wanted to talk toyou about my experience with QuNeo.
I did wait it for almost an year and when I received it I could not update the firmware (my bad cause I was using out of date version of the software downloaded moths before because of the hype ).
After I switched to the right version I could not update the preset. The software was just crushing and nothing was sent to the device. This was really upsetting. I asked for support with this issue and I had none, not even a guy telling me "you are the only one having this issue, wait and pray".

But I did wait and pray and with the release of 1.2 the issue is magically gone. Yuppiiii!!

I immediately tried to achieve what I bought the controller for. I wanted each pad to be mapped as X/Y controller in Ableton. The result was once again upsetting. The response is poor with all the settings combination I tried. I flichers and it is simply unusable.

I've opened a new thread in the forum about it just before, hoping to get better support or just an explanation of why this is not working well. Let's pray

[Jee-Bee]

As far as what i can remember there are two things from the intro movie that don't work.
- The led volume bar. But i like it i wanna know how far my fader is open and not what the volume is i can hear that
- The fancy thing with the drum that change the sound on the side of the drum pad... But how that works??

I like the controller very much. I don't exactly understand why there are so much user who are hating/don't like the Quneo because of no full bit support (jet). in june the aid they wanna do it. a lot later as the backing date...

[Stevee00]

I want to love it, now I tolerate it, like a sexy but bi-polar girlfriend.

Got some things to work, and they give me more control than any of my other controllers--it's a real turn-on when it works. Spend lots of time decoding the manual and learning the ropes. Struggle with bugs and mysterious problems.

I'm willing to be patient because the QuNeo is an ambitious and pioneering piece of gear. I see lots of potential and have lots of ideas for making my live music set better. But my patience isn't endless. KMI guys, if you keep fixing things, improving the basic functionality and stability and comprehensiveness of the whole package, I'll stick with you; don't get distracted adding new features until you get the basics working right. If it takes too long to get this thing to be a reliable instrument, I'll give up at some point and spend my time learning pioneering controller apps on the iPad, like Lemur. (At the moment, my plan is to have my iPad and the QuNeo side-by-side in my performance setup.)

I have the SoftStep, and that's why I bought QuNeo. Softstep is wonderful, extremely well thought out, and does exactly what the "hype" said it would do--and more. Make QuNeo as good as SoftStep!

Thank you for venturing forth with such a wonderful concept. Please make it solid.

Steve