Forums › Forums › SQ Forums › SQ general discussions › Next Feature Firmware release is aimed to late Q3 of this year?
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2018/04/20 at 7:06 am #70517
As Alex told us in is post https://community.allen-heath.com/forums/topic/user-profiles-system-access-restrictions/#post-70508 the next feature firmware release is planned for late Q3 (I read this as “not earlier as 30th of September”). This sounds not so nice. Since there are a lot of open points with that console it is hard to wait more than 5 Month for the next bigger release. There must be a great bunch of features planned for that version;-)
What I have learned from that that I should not buy a A&H product which is fresh on the market even if the promises sounds great. I have to wait at least one or two years beyond the first release because the it would be more or less complete.
Does that also mean that other missing things like Dante card, Offline/PC Editor, and so on will also not release before ‘late Q3’?2018/04/20 at 7:26 am #70518Sadly this seems to be case with nearly all tech devices with complex operating systems or complex firmware these days. Waiting until development is actually “100% complete” to release just isn’t a viable business model anymore when all of your competitors rush their wares to market in equally unfinished states. This seems doubly true in this “Budget” console segment. To me… A more important and relevant point of comparison is knowing which manufacturers typically continue to develop, refine, and support their platforms for a reasonable period of time before abandoning them to chase new profits with new hardware. A&H seems to score pretty high in that regard in my opinion. But these days, again sadly…, if you don’t have the patience and expertise and budget to deal with brand new “bleeding edge” hardware… You should give things awhile to grow into a more “finished” state before jumping in.
2018/04/20 at 10:46 am #70519I think it best not to buy anything based on promises (or worse assumptions) of what it will have added to it in the future. Stick to something that already does what you need.
I got a Qu-16 when they were still very new, but it already did everything I needed, and most of what I wanted. Today, it’s a much more powerful desk, and many of the extra features added are very useful to me.
For me to justify spending money on a new desk, it must have at least 32 inputs, Dante & digital scribble strips, so an SQ may be possible, I hope it will be – but it’s not yet.
2018/04/20 at 1:18 pm #70520I am a bit perplexed by this also. Why can’t these things be more fast tracked? Especially with their security omission. I already have sales pending that were expecting that one feature which should have been a priority.
2018/04/20 at 4:55 pm #70521what??? I hope this is not the truth!!!
That timing is mutch too late…I’m looking forward to get the important changes to fw next month!
For me the 1.2 FW is a good beginning but not more… do your homework A&H!cheers
2018/04/20 at 5:12 pm #70522I’m pleased cause i definitely will wait buying an SQ6 until David will have done his homework for SQ-Mixing Station …
2018/04/21 at 1:43 am #70528An off line editor and show files are critical. Only having scenes means you cannot configure before a show without taking the desk away from its current job.
I am still grumpy with no side chain compressor on the GLD. Seems they abandoned those customers.2018/04/27 at 1:20 pm #70656Haven’t I stirred up the hornets nest 😉
Can’t agree more with my fellow SQ enthusiasts.
The stated features at press release & in the technical manual should have been included in initial release (or very short thereafter).
Though, as SDCyclist stated I get that the general ‘bring-product-to-market’ methodology is now: promise stuff, release stuff without promises, maybe give promises in future updates. Annoying, but we have to live with it. All the other boards have a few years of maturity on the SQ.
Really bothersome, as I’d love to install SQ boards, but I can’t. This is halting sales.
2018/04/27 at 2:05 pm #70659Maybe we have to live with that strategy of half finished products on release date. But what i don‘t understand is that most of the missing functions still exists. FXs, Compressors, Scene managment… all exists even for FPGA architecture. A&H stated that the SQ is positioned between the QU-Series and the GLD. So why is it not possible to bring the SQ at least with all the features of the QU and some more to place it „between“ the two series? Hmm
2018/04/27 at 2:44 pm #70662Hi All,
Seem’s a bit mean to call the other members of the forum hornets, but maybe I can give at least part of the view from ‘inside’…
We all know digital consoles are very different to analogue consoles, they can be updated at the user end, and although the hardware and central processing remains, extra features and functionality can be added.
Sure, it’s like people are used to with computers and phones, but a mixing console is neither of these things.Software development can only really start once the hardware is close to completion, unfortunately it’s not something that can be run on emulators, and we spend a long time on the software before a product is even released. We could then continue to toil away at the software and not announce or release the product, but this doesn’t make sense when it’s a fully functioning device and can already do everything it needs to do for 90% of users.
This is where it gets a bit complicated… There will still be some features we are definitely going to add, and at A&H we also try to listen to our users, so rather than just going ahead and telling everyone what they should have, we look at the requests that come in, and see if they can be incorporated into the firmware releases.
I’m not sure where the aforementioned ‘promises’ come from, but I would guess descriptions of the product used on some websites and brochures. This marketing material is produced way ahead of time, and has to detail everything the mixer will definitely have, as in almost all cases, it’s not something that can be revisited. This is because once a description of a mixer has been listed, that description often never gets updated. So yes, it will sometimes list features that are not in first product ship, or not in firmware for some months, but as we intend the product to be around for many many years, these have to be added from the off.At every opportunity we will make it clear if a feature is upcoming – for example, just recently I was going through all the documentation and website to remove the ‘*coming in V1.2’ notes.
lightingman also mentions the technical manual, I presume this is the A&E specifications included in the Technical Datasheet. A&E specifications are put together as the guiding document for design of the product – this ties back in to what we are definitely adding to the product, if you read the firmware reference guide, that will tell you what is actually included in that version of firmware.
Coming back to SQ V1.3 specifically – we have consciously decided to bundle more features into a single firmware release rather than have lots of smaller releases. This partly comes down to what they are (if different features heavily interact), but also our testing procedures. We do a lot of testing! We run a lot of the same kind of testing on each firmware release too. So say we add a button on screen – we now need to check that the pan on channel 47 still works correctly, then check it again with a DX168 connected, then with an iPad… etc…
So although you may not get the feature you want next week, this is actually a way of getting more features out faster.If the SQ does what you want it to do today, fantastic! If it does not, but we have said it’s going to, then the choice is up to you. We’re just trying to bring you the best mixer we can, and I can assure you that the developers are not sat around twiddling their thumbs, anything included in the description IS fast tracked, and I can only apologise if it’s not fast enough.
Keith.
2018/04/27 at 3:42 pm #70665Hi Keith,
thanks for providing us with your view from the “inside” and your honest remarks. I’m only a sound-guy as an amateur but from my day-to-day work in a completely different industry I can only affirm that testing is always (1) a huge fraction of total development effort and (2) still most often underestimated.
I also completely understand that you cannot irrevocably commit to all the features that will go in V1.3, V1.4,… because it would rob you of all flexibility in organizing your releases.
On the other hand it would be brilliant if A&H could be more clear in what specific features (say, from the sub-section of this forum, or your own list) you see implemented within the next feature upgrades, maybe in a later larger release (V2.x), and more important which features you currently do not see to be implemented in SQ for the forseeable feature.
It would be great to hear from you if you could consider providing such information.
Chris
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