Source Audio Sorcerers Society (S.A.S.S) Part 3

[davedamage]

I met with the senior leaders of the company today to discuss your feedback and situation at length. The notion that we don't care is not credible. The notion that we lack technical expertise is also not credible.

Had I been more available to you last week, I would have seen that you are looking at Soleman NOT as a general purpose MIDI controller (which is what it is intended to be), but as a dedicated Hub/Source Audio pedal controller (which is not what it is). The workflow you have in mind is not how 95% of our customers think when it comes to using our pedals with MIDI.

You have raised an interesting point. Perhaps we should have focused 100% on making Soleman a dedicated Hub/Source Audio pedal controller and treated the MIDI controller aspects as secondary. I think at the time we considered it important for Soleman to compete with the best MIDI controllers and when it came out, it was considered one of the best. We are also generally catering to a customer group who are already very familiar with MIDI, so we were influenced by that kind of workflow and not what you are suggesting.

Since Soleman came out there are other MIDI controller companies that have been very narrowly focused on that segment (Disaster Area and Morning Star are 2 examples). They now have many offerings and engage closely with folks here too. We also work with them to help ensure their products work well with our stuff. MIDI is an industry standard. Perhaps we should not partner with them to make their products better, but that does not seem right. We have not updated Soleman and done Soleman II. It is valid to say that Soleman II would be nice to have and probably address some of your requests.

With all of this said, the Hub is an incredibly powerful and simple means to create single or multi-pedal scenes. There is nothing like it in our industry, except for all-in-one things like Helix. While we have some customers who use Soleman with the Hub, we have many more who would rather use their own favorite MIDI controller brand.

We are a small company working very hard to create unique and useful tools. We engage very closely with our customers here and on the Gear Page. I have hired the best and brightest that I can find. I have invested money in new products and risky things like the Hub and Neuro rather than taking profits for myself. I make it clear to the team that customer service is job #1. I am always accessible to people here and elsewhere. I am not sure what else to do, but my mind is always open to new thinking.

I also got the Soleman expecting it to be more seamlessly integrated into the Neuro Hub and One series pedals, After an initial disappointment, I really started to dive into it. It's slow going, but both of my Disaster Area controllers (DMC 6 and micro.dmc) are on the shelf collecting dust. The more I use the Soleman editior together with the Neuro editor, the more I'm enjoying and streamlining it. More work isn't a bad thing for me when it finally gets me to a better understanding of MIDI, which I have been lightly tooling around with for decades without any real grasp on it.

 

[Gibs210]

live streams let you just do stuff on the fly… videos I end up getting into editing out the flubs and cutting to b roll etc…
If you do a short curated live stream onto YouTube you can enjoy the more instant and lower production of a live stream - while at the same time people in different time zones can watch it later - and it can probably be embedded directly into a talkbass post or something

I lack access to the source audio YouTube channel, and my personal YouTube account lacks the followers required by YouTube to do livestreams there. So Facebook is my only option really.

 

[odarellmc]

I met with the senior leaders of the company today to discuss your feedback and situation at length. The notion that we don't care is not credible. The notion that we lack technical expertise is also not credible.

Had I been more available to you last week, I would have seen that you are looking at Soleman NOT as a general purpose MIDI controller (which is what it is intended to be), but as a dedicated Hub/Source Audio pedal controller (which is not what it is). The workflow you have in mind is not how 95% of our customers think when it comes to using our pedals with MIDI.

You have raised an interesting point. Perhaps we should have focused 100% on making Soleman a dedicated Hub/Source Audio pedal controller and treated the MIDI controller aspects as secondary. I think at the time we considered it important for Soleman to compete with the best MIDI controllers and when it came out, it was considered one of the best. We are also generally catering to a customer group who are already very familiar with MIDI, so we were influenced by that kind of workflow and not what you are suggesting.

Since Soleman came out there are other MIDI controller companies that have been very narrowly focused on that segment (Disaster Area and Morning Star are 2 examples). They now have many offerings and engage closely with folks here too. We also work with them to help ensure their products work well with our stuff. MIDI is an industry standard. Perhaps we should not partner with them to make their products better, but that does not seem right. We have not updated Soleman and done Soleman II. It is valid to say that Soleman II would be nice to have and probably address some of your requests.

With all of this said, the Hub is an incredibly powerful and simple means to create single or multi-pedal scenes. There is nothing like it in our industry, except for all-in-one things like Helix. While we have some customers who use Soleman with the Hub, we have many more who would rather use their own favorite MIDI controller brand.

We are a small company working very hard to create unique and useful tools. We engage very closely with our customers here and on the Gear Page. I have hired the best and brightest that I can find. I have invested money in new products and risky things like the Hub and Neuro rather than taking profits for myself. I make it clear to the team that customer service is job #1. I am always accessible to people here and elsewhere. I am not sure what else to do, but my mind is always open to new thinking.

With all that being said your still selling the soleman as control central for your SA pedals and it is not. If you've relinquished control of that market to someone else please say so. Granted it's my fault for realizing too late that SA would provide want im looking for. It my fault for investing in this brand without thoroughly researching it. SA is fully justified, they can't see the future, or can they? Who would imagine that people would want to use a controller to select pedals, scroll presets and save those to scenes, who knew, now guess what, either sell all my SA pedals or after buying their device to control the pedals, I still have to spend more money to get it working and this soleman is pretty much 250.00 paper weight. would you by it back, I don't think so, my loss. So I have some decisions to make..

 

[davedamage]

With all that being said your still selling the soleman as control central for your SA pedals and it is not. If you've relinquished control of that market to someone else please say so. Granted it's my fault for realizing too late that SA would provide want im looking for. It my fault for investing in this brand without thoroughly researching it. SA is fully justified, they can't see the future, or can they? Who would imagine that people would want to use a controller to select pedals, scroll presets and save those to scenes, who knew, forget everything I've said SA is on the ball...and now guess what I have a soleman that you sell, now guess what either sell all my SA pedals or after buying their device to control the pedals I still have to spend more money to get it working and this soleman is pretty much 250.00 paper weight, would you by it back I don't think so, my loss. So I have some decisions to make..

Between this thread the one you started about the soleman scrolling presets, I have a pretty good grasp on what you want to do, and I'm not too far off with my needs. I followed one of the suggestions in your other thread and, with a little more work, you can make the Soleman do what you're looking for. I'm currently setting up panels to control scrolling presets in the C4, UW, Nemesis and Ventris, which I can then save into a scene, with separate panels to toggle each pedal off and on. The functionality is there, it's just not a simple plug and play operation.


While I'm here... can anyone shed some light on using two hubs to create and recall a single scene with seven One Series pedals?

 

[Gibs210]

Between this thread the one you started about the soleman scrolling presets, I have a pretty good grasp on what you want to do, and I'm not too far off with my needs. I followed one of the suggestions in your other thread and, with a little more work, you can make the Soleman do what you're looking for. I'm currently setting up panels to control scrolling presets in the C4, UW, Nemesis and Ventris, which I can then save into a scene, with separate panels to toggle each pedal off and on. The functionality is there, it's just not a simple plug and play operation.


While I'm here... can anyone shed some light on using two hubs to create and recall a single scene with seven One Series pedals?

Just have the hubs in the same midi channel, and hold the scan button on both when saving scenes.

 

[HelpImaRock]

The functionality is there, it's just not a simple plug and play operation.

I think the problem with midi is nothing about it is plug and play. We want it to be, but it's not. There's a huge learning curve for every ecosystem and they're all slightly different. And then you get users like myself who really struggle with the programming and need to learn incrementally. There's no other options for this depth of usability. Which is both good and bad.

 

[odarellmc]

I met with the senior leaders of the company today to discuss your feedback and situation at length. The notion that we don't care is not credible. The notion that we lack technical expertise is also not credible.

Had I been more available to you last week, I would have seen that you are looking at Soleman NOT as a general purpose MIDI controller (which is what it is intended to be), but as a dedicated Hub/Source Audio pedal controller (which is not what it is). The workflow you have in mind is not how 95% of our customers think when it comes to using our pedals with MIDI.

You have raised an interesting point. Perhaps we should have focused 100% on making Soleman a dedicated Hub/Source Audio pedal controller and treated the MIDI controller aspects as secondary. I think at the time we considered it important for Soleman to compete with the best MIDI controllers and when it came out, it was considered one of the best. We are also generally catering to a customer group who are already very familiar with MIDI, so we were influenced by that kind of workflow and not what you are suggesting.

Since Soleman came out there are other MIDI controller companies that have been very narrowly focused on that segment (Disaster Area and Morning Star are 2 examples). They now have many offerings and engage closely with folks here too. We also work with them to help ensure their products work well with our stuff. MIDI is an industry standard. Perhaps we should not partner with them to make their products better, but that does not seem right. We have not updated Soleman and done Soleman II. It is valid to say that Soleman II would be nice to have and probably address some of your requests.

With all of this said, the Hub is an incredibly powerful and simple means to create single or multi-pedal scenes. There is nothing like it in our industry, except for all-in-one things like Helix. While we have some customers who use Soleman with the Hub, we have many more who would rather use their own favorite MIDI controller brand.

We are a small company working very hard to create unique and useful tools. We engage very closely with our customers here and on the Gear Page. I have hired the best and brightest that I can find. I have invested money in new products and risky things like the Hub and Neuro rather than taking profits for myself. I make it clear to the team that customer service is job #1. I am always accessible to people here and elsewhere. I am not sure what else to do, but my mind is always open to new thinking.

Wait 95% percent of your customer's don't want to select pedals, select the presets then save those as a group, then I've most certainly invested in the wrong thing...and another wait, you didn't design the soleman to work with the SA ecosystem?

 

[Luke the Fluke]

If I recall correctly, Soleman may have existed before the One Series pedals came out.

Soleman still works for doing lots of stuff related to SA pedals, but just with a different workflow and smaller feature set than some of the other controllers such as those from Morningstar.

Bear in mind, SA is a small company with 14 or so pedals now, so that’s a lot to keep on top of. Morningstar is also small but they only make a small number of products, most of which are interrelated and share the same base concepts and coding. That does allow them to spend more time on improvements.

I don’t think it’s that bad; most other pedal companies don’t make controllers to support their own pedals. MIDI control and controllers have been around for a lot longer than SA has.

+1

its a set of digital pedals that sound amazing - and can be controlled via midi

I have a C4 and made a preset switcher myself with a Adafruit trinket m0 for about £20 it does what I need. And then there are a massive range of controllers around that have varying midi capabilities- source audio make one - I think a bit older than the current pedals
You want to control lots of SA pedals you’re going to need to find the right controller and go through a midi learning curve …

I think @odarellmc - I get you’re pissed off that everything isn’t plug and play, and there’s a learning curve but it’s unfair to take it out on SA - they make pedals controllable via midi, and then make one midi controller … you’ve perhaps mistakenly presumed that a midi controller made by the same company would have full functionality on the pedals… if I bought a new wheel for my Volkswagen it would be a bad idea to presume that every wheel that Volkswagen make will fit in every car they make…
For me my £20 diy solution was better than a Dmc micro, or a hub and a soleman - for others it would be awful

 

[Luke the Fluke]

Line 6 Helix is quite plug and play digital effects if you decide to make it simpler

 

[davedamage]

Wait 95% percent of your customer's don't want to select pedals, select the presets then save those as a group, then I've most certainly invested in the wrong thing...and another wait, you didn't design the soleman to work with the SA ecosystem?

Also, this is the description straight from the SA website. No mention of it being used for direct control of One series pedals. It is a MIDI foot controller. If you want it to do everything, you have to put in the work, which is what I am doing.

SOLEMAN MIDI FOOT CONTROLLER

The Soleman is a versatile, highly configurable hardware and software MIDI controller housed in a durable, compact package. It has two hardware MIDI outputs, which allow it to interface with any hardware that adheres to the MIDI standard. It also has a USB-MIDI interface for direct control of MIDI-compatible software such as DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), virtual instruments, synths, or VST plugins. The four footswitches scroll through scenes, launch individual MIDI messages, step through set lists, or trigger highly customizable MIDI macros. An external switch port allows for two additional footswitches to make navigation more convenient. The expression input allows the user to use a passive expression pedal to generate MIDI continuous controller messages in a very flexible manner, providing direct expressive control over MIDI-compatible devices and software. The Soleman’s high-contrast LCD is visible in light conditions ranging from a dark stage to direct sunlight. It displays relevant information about scenes, set lists, MIDI configuration, expression outputs, and other modes.

 

[benevan]

What @odarellmc is asking for isn’t that unheard of and is a basic feature of the Disaster Area DMC controllers. @Gibs210 even mentioned that it is a feature he had requested of the SA development team some time ago to add, but I guess not enough users were requesting this so it was not done. As I and others have stated there is some programming that can be done to achieve similar functionality, but I get the frustration.

I suppose a case could be made for multi effects in that they do eliminate a lot of these frustrations with midi - along with power requirements, cables, etc - particularly when setting up a single brand ecosystem.

 

[rsmith601]

Wait 95% percent of your customer's don't want to select pedals, select the presets then save those as a group, then I've most certainly invested in the wrong thing...and another wait, you didn't design the soleman to work with the SA ecosystem?

The SA ecosystem is intended to be modular in nature. While we want you to use our MIDI controller, we recognize that you may already have one that you are already invested in. While we want you to use our delay pedal, you may already have a Timeline and 100 presets there. We also want folks that have 3 Eventide pedals to consider Soleman. Yes, it is our hope that people will choose all of our products; however, the reality is pedalboards are generally created over time and continue to evolve. It was with this reality in mind that we created Soleman as it is. In contrast, the Hub is very specific to Source Audio. It does not work with anything else. Perhaps Soleman should have been for use with the Hub only. That would have made the market for it much smaller and perhaps a financial failure. We tried to make the best choice we could way back when.

 

[Luke the Fluke]

What @odarellmc is asking for isn’t that unheard of and is a basic feature of the Disaster Area DMC controllers. @Gibs210 even mentioned that it is a feature he had requested of the SA development team some time ago to add, but I guess not enough users were requesting this so it was not done.

but also even if the users we’re requesting it - if DMC and Morningstar are already doing that stuff - and doing it well - why spend money on r&d testing and tooling to have something that replicates the functionality- when there are things source audio can do in terms of ideas and implementation that would be fun/profitable that no other company in the world would do…

 

[rsmith601]

but also even if the users we’re requesting it - if DMC and Morningstar are already doing that stuff - and doing it well - why spend money on r&d testing and tooling to have something that replicates the functionality- when there are things source audio can do in terms of ideas and implementation that would be fun/profitable that no other company in the world would do…

This is a very important point. We have so many different areas where to invest scarce R&D $$. We support 4 different software platforms for Neuro. We have all kinds of ways for folks to connect to our pedals. We have new pedals. We are always updating old pedals. If other companies decide to be 100% MIDI controller focused, they will have an advantage.

 

[odarellmc]

What @odarellmc is asking for isn’t that unheard of and is a basic feature of the Disaster Area DMC controllers. @Gibs210 even mentioned that it is a feature he had requested of the SA development team some time ago to add, but I guess not enough users were requesting this so it was not done. As I and others have stated there is some programming that can be done to achieve similar functionality, but I get the frustration.

I suppose a case could be made for multi effects in that they do eliminate a lot of these frustrations with midi - along with power requirements, cables, etc - particularly when setting up a single brand ecosystem.

Exactly, I'm not requesting anything ridiculous. I just want a little future proofing. Some thought when planning "they may want to do this...." But here's the real kicker SA still telling me this and that but no one is giving the answer if the soleman can do it or can't... just flat out no , or this is how it's done. I do find it amazing that I'm the only person looking to use the soleman like this.. I do thank everyone for chiming in to finally figure this out. Nevermind my frustration

 

[odarellmc]

This is a very important point. We have so many different areas where to invest scarce R&D $$. We support 4 different software platforms for Neuro. We have all kinds of ways for folks to connect to our pedals. We have new pedals. We are always updating old pedals. If other companies decide to be 100% MIDI controller focused, they will have an advantage.

So is that what SA is doing, letting companies like Disaster Area and Morningstar handle the development of controllers for their pedals?

 

[odarellmc]

The SA ecosystem is intended to be modular in nature. While we want you to use our MIDI controller, we recognize that you may already have one that you are already invested in. While we want you to use our delay pedal, you may already have a Timeline and 100 presets there. We also want folks that have 3 Eventide pedals to consider Soleman. Yes, it is our hope that people will choose all of our products; however, the reality is pedalboards are generally created over time and continue to evolve. It was with this reality in mind that we created Soleman as it is. In contrast, the Hub is very specific to Source Audio. It does not work with anything else. Perhaps Soleman should have been for use with the Hub only. That would have made the market for it much smaller and perhaps a financial failure. We tried to make the best choice we could way back when.

Understood. I just think that with all the pedal releases since the soleman someone would have thought to put it together that way. It's just surprising that no one said " let's make a controller for our pedals that would allow users to select pedals, select presets and save that to a group....."

 

[Luke the Fluke]

So is that what SA is doing, letting companies like Disaster Area and Morningstar handle the development of controllers for their pedals?

it’s midi - it’s a language to control lots of things - including music and devices.
Like any language you have to learn to use it.
it’s not proprietary to one company

SA make pedals that can be controlled by midi.
They also made a foot switch controller a while back.

lots of people make midi controllers, both footswitches and desktop and whatever.

an equivalent to what you are asking is…
Apple make phones with Bluetooth capabilities
They make the earphones that use Bluetooth to listen to music on your phone. You can tap the headphones to pause the music.

Another company make Bluetooth headphones with more controls on the headphones so you can pause and control the volume.
How dare apple let someone else use the same language of communication to control sound on their phone!
(In this example I think you need to google and learn how to pair Bluetooth headphones)

 

[rsmith601]

Understood. I just think that with all the pedal releases since the soleman someone would have thought to put it together that way. It's just surprising that no one said " let's make a controller for our pedals that would allow users to select pedals, select presets and save that to a group....."

I get it. We could have done that, but at the expense of delaying the C4, Collider, EQ2, Atlas, and the Ultrawave. These pedals pay the bills. Not to mention the critical need for Neuro 3.0. We also have serious pressure to release Reflex 2.0. If someone has the algorithm for clairvoyant allocation of R&D $ and time, I would love to hear it.

If you want me to say that Soleman may not be the number 1 choice for all SA users these days, I would agree. Other focused midi controller companies are ahead of us in many ways. They are investing and we are not. Should we be investing and hurt other projects? Our best decision is we should not.
Should we tell customers not to buy Soleman if some people will be disappointed with the experience? Maybe that's a good idea. It's possible you are the first of many to express frustration. We will discuss this option.

 

[odarellmc]

I get it. We could have done that, but at the expense of delaying the C4, Collider, EQ2, Atlas, and the Ultrawave. These pedals pay the bills. Not to mention the critical need for Neuro 3.0. We also have serious pressure to release Reflex 2.0. If someone has the algorithm for clairvoyant allocation of R&D $ and time, I would love to hear it.

If you want me to say that Soleman may not be the number 1 choice for all SA users these days, I would agree. Other focused midi controller companies are ahead of us in many ways. They are investing and we are not. Should we be investing and hurt other projects? Our best decision is we should not.
Should we tell customers not to buy Soleman if some people will be disappointed with the experience? Maybe that's a good idea. It's possible you are the first of many to express frustration. We will discuss this option.

That's fair, and during this process I indicated that if the soleman couldn't do it then what could, still nobody is using controllers to the extent that I would like to which as a process should be the norm (according to me) but I've already spent the money if I don't get the soleman to work, it's a paper weight... But again a controller is brain central it's just crazy to me that no one thought "let's improve it, this thing is going to be obsolete with the new releases", granted I'm beating a dead horse. I'm just trying to get the soleman to work.....