Hi @James
Thank you for your response and for all the information. It’s great to hear that all these points are being addressed in some fashion. I acknowledge that many users are happy and productive with the current state and that many of my annoyances are from a self-imposed desire to have the Duo act as “the brains” for my musical rig. The device and the supporting platform have so much potential that in some weird way it works out for me as a point of frustration because I know that technically all these things can be made to work and I don’t have much control over when.
Before purchasing my Duo I researched everything I could find about it and I decided that the MOD vision was something I wanted to get behind - the open source roots and “computer as audio device” concepts appeal to me. I’ve been active in the forums for the last few years, learning a lot from others and answering questions when I can, suggesting improvements. I participated in the now defunct beta testers group. I’ve had some ups and downs with my Duo unit, including not booting right before one of my first gigs This has been an experience
It sounds like the features in the pipeline will make many of the items I outlined possible. Being priveleged and impatient, I decided to use a different product for now which has all the features I desire today w.r.t usability, hardware mapping/control, and file transfer. When my Dwarf comes I’m hopeful to use it for vocal effects, synth, and probably some additional send/return guitar processing. I still believe that Dwarf / DuoX with 2 footswitch and 1 exp. pedal extensions could exceed the capabilities of other products like Helix, Headrush, etc. That’s exciting to me. Yet as a developer I can see the massive hill that needs to be scaled still to get the user experience on par with the market leaders. (and I’m not assuming that MOD is trying to compete specifically with those products / companies)
I agree that the routing is a unique and uniquely powerful feature. I’m skeptical that most users in the broader consumer market will care about that as a foundational feature when considered against other aspects like:
- variety in effects available - a good set of effects in each classic category, well-tuned to the DSP hardware, tempo awareness, reverb spillover,
- quality tones / IRs / good simulators; easy expansion with third-party options
- usability - the “CRUD” actions for pedalboards, snapshots, presets, actuator assignments needs to flow well and the hardware / displays should provide context-aware options and visual feedback during editing
I recognize that I’m biased as a guitar-player and “infinite routing possibilities” isn’t something we’re used to thinking about whereas this might be more natural with other musicians and genres. For me, I’ve used the capabilities of infinite routing approximately zero times in the last few years, but have logged hours of frustration due to shortcomings in the usability. I’m using another product where the whole experience of building, modifying, and navigating/organizing is fluid and powerful. I know that I’ve traded away some of the potential experimental flexibility, overall variety in effects, and multi-instrument capabilities. However, I’m able to put together and demo a lot more sounds in a fraction of the time and the results have been very good. Problems with noise/static are effectively gone and I don’t miss the chore of polluting level meters and pre/post gains all over the place to understand what’s happening at each plugin.
I understand the MOD team’s philosophy that the platform exists to aggregate the work of others and let the end-user decide what to run on their system. But we both know this will basically never happen (users reporting issues to plugin authors). I’m a long-time developer and I use Github everyday. This is sad to say, but it is unlikely that I’m going to interrupt my creative time to go log a ticket. From experience, I’ve looked through the source code for some of the plugins - in a few cases it wasn’t trivial (to me) after a few google/github searches to find the source for some. I doubt most users will be motivated to acquire Github/Bitbucket/SourceWhatever accounts and regrettably I’ve seen numerous occasions of innocent, well-intentioned strangers wandering into technical corners on the internet and not being well received. I also know from experience that if I spend 30 or more minutes composing a detailed report in hopes the author will be motivated and equipped to take action, there’s no guarantee that I will even receive an acknowledgement.
I don’t have a good solution here, but MOD could improve their stance around all this. For example, including links and reporting instructions into the plugin descriptions would reduce some friction and show MOD’s commitment to following-up on these third-party relationships.