Offline Editor?

[Brian]

Yeah, the more I look at this, the more upset I get.

Both the Dlive and SQ series had 6 or 7 firmware updates in the first 12 months of being released. The Avantis has only had 2 in the last 13 months and nothing for the last 9 months. We are still lacking some very basic functionality on the board and there is NO excuse for taking this long to release the firmware.

I don’t want to hear that the “pandemic” caused any of this delay. The pandemic should have made it easier for the team to focus on their work without all the normal distractions that would come from touring professionals and performances. Plus software engineers are perhaps the easiest people to transition to at home work because all of their work is done on a computer anyway.

This is a much deeper issue within Allen and Heath and it is inexcusable.

[Jgrift]

For perspective. We had one of the first Yamaha PM10s that shipped. And it didn’t have an offline editor for awhile. Didn’t have auto mixer for even longer. Had a slow interface. And was missing features that had been avalialbe in the CL and QL for years! I would say it took about 2 years before most of that was resolved. And even now you can’t monitor wireless like you can on the rest of the lineup. And all of this on a $150k console.

Now I’m not a software engineer, and I can’t speak for A&H timelines. But certanly A&H is not the only company that takes the time needed to do it correctly.

Keep up the good work A&H. Hope to see the editor soon.

[SteffenR]

I don’t want to hear that the “pandemic” caused any of this delay. The pandemic should have made it easier for the team to focus on their work without all the normal distractions that would come from touring professionals and performances. Plus software engineers are perhaps the easiest people to transition to at home work because all of their work is done on a computer anyway.

If you have no idea what you are talking about, then please…

[Mfk0815]

Hmm, Steffen, can you go into detail what you mean? I personally work as software developer beside my musical job. And nowadays I work more often at home using remote access to resources of my customers, team meetings are online. But because most of my customers are used to work with teams located on several places, some of them around the world, also before the pandemic, there is not so much difference today. So, technically it is quite easy to develop software not only in the company offices.
So, give us more deep knowledge about software development nowadays.

[SteffenR]

Do you develop software for a mixing desk?
I bet this would be different…

[Mfk0815]

What is the difference between developing a User Interface with a remote protocol for a mixing desk and, lets say, a classical client server application. You don‘t even have to have a physical device because you can use a remote simulatorfor most of the tasks. And we are talking about an offline editor, which should do the work offline, which means for me „without a mixing engine“. You have to develop the UI, and implement the storage of the data model. Most of the design definition should be available with the source of the console firmware. So that should be no big deal for a medium skilledsoftware developer.

BTW I am working among other task as a cross platform UI developer for big multi tier applications.

[SteffenR]

and if you come up with a real offline editor, everybody will complain about that… why no real solution?
You know the people around…

Don’t get me wrong,
I’m upset about the delay to the dLive firmware and the lack of an editor for Advantis as much as others
but to say that the pandemic didn’t affect the development is at least strange

or do you live your life like it was before?

[Brian]

Well the off-line editor was talked about and a estimated release date given long before the pandemic. So there is that too.

Allen and Heath has released firmware and software updates for their other lines during the pandemic as well. The frequency might be a little slower, but at least they are getting releases.

[Mfk0815]

or do you live your life like it was before?

Regarding the IT job there is no big difference. Ok, less face to face meetings but more online sessions but the rest is quite the same. Because I am working on soltions with strict release schedules there is no pandemic excuse possible. Releases have to be made on pre planned basis, so nobody can say „hmm, lets postpone the release, it‘s still a lockdown.“ the release is planned with a given feature list, which have to be implemented and tested. All those releases are part of a contract and if one is not delivered on time, penalty fee has to be paid. No one wants that.

But back to a director version of the Avantis. I personally do not see so much difficulties. A lot of puzzle pieces already exists if you look at the similar system dLive. All visual elements can be reused, the communication protocoll can be reused, the software architecture can be reused as well as the storage system. It should be easy to adopt these parts for the Avantis. If its not possible something went really wrong with the software architecture of A&H consoles. Nobody will build each new product completely from the scratch nowadays. There too much similarities between all models to not reuse architectures from one for the other.

And one last thing. As far as I know, David did the development og the first version of Mixingstation only on basis of the given remote protocoll of the X32, without a physical mixer. This sounds possible, but might also be an urban legend.

A different story is to create new effects or other audible algorithms. That would be impossible without physical devices. Thats true.

[volounteer]

my observation is that covid has changed everything.
how much depends

if the coder for some AH project is sick there could well be a big delay on that deliverable
besides that, biz priorities shift all the time depending on many factors

I would expect that new devices get more updates early on and then slow down as the device ages
update schedules would depend if it is a problem fix, an enhancement, or a new device is imminent
possibly even what the competition did as sales competitiveness is a high priority
although keeping old users happy is too. balancing everything is not a trivial task.

my experience back when I did software is that remote teams have many more ways to have problems
and are nowhere near as productive as when we all worked in proximity to each other and to the gear

although one time we did do documentation over a weekend at home, faster better cheaper easier ,
because we all had more horsepower at home than that company provided at work:)

[Scott]

An offline editor and Firmware 1.1 should be released in the very near future. These were demo’d at NAMM this past week. So we should see it sometime in next few months I would guess.

[volounteer]

@Scott

if they demo it at NAMM why have they not announced it here and identified a release date?

[Brian]

Because it is still being beta tested. As much as I give A&H grief, they are very good about not releasing software before it has been fully tested and they consider it ready to go. Therefore they aren’t going to promise a release date. As they noted in the release preview video, the day they consider it ready to go is the day they will release it.

Ultimately, it sounds like A&H rewrote much of the underlying code to speed up the operation of the console. Hopefully the annoying pauses (like when you try to copy/paste/reset) will be gone. I’m guessing this has been a bigger process than they originally expected and probably accounts for the majority of the delay.

My only concern now is that they keep referring to the Avantis Director as an “off line” editor. Originally it was compared to the DLive Director software which is an offline editor and online controller. Plus, they have always said that their MixPad software isn’t fully functional but that the Director software would be. I hope the Avantis Director is going to act as an online controller. If they leave that functionality out, I’m going to be very disappointed.

[SteffenR]

My only concern now is that they keep referring to the Avantis Director as an “off line” editor.

This is exactly that what I was saying before…
An it happened much faster then I expected

[Brian]

I turned in a support question about the “online” functionality of the Avantis Director and got a response back. They confirmed that the Avantis Director WILL have both offline editing and online control of the console. That is a relief!

They also said that they hoped they were in the second to last round of testing. Meaning there are a couple small bugs they are fixing and they will then send out a last beta version to be tested. If no additional bugs are found in that version, the firmware would be released in a few weeks. Of course if there are additional bugs found, it will delay the release because they will have to correct them and send out another beta version to be tested.

Still, this is good news and if all goes to plan hopefully we see the release in a few weeks instead of a few months.

[Author]

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