What's Going On With Muse?

[JayVee]

I've just seen a few posts... CLOSING DOWN?

You know what ~ as someone who's been through 3 different machines, 3 additional upgrades, and has easily spent over $8000.00 with with Muse Research, not to mention an equal or greater amount on software.
I find it odd, unprofessional and insulting that they couldn't notify their customers directly, never mind their 'long term' customers; such as myself.

At times, over the years, I've spoken with Bryan, Nick, Gary (was the best!) and several others...
Probably 30+ Help Desk tickets - for the most part, quick and helpful responses.
They've got all our info - I just don't understand how they could go from having such an awesome Customer Support model, to being distant & petty.

Someone might suggest "why should they bother to communicate directly...?"
I actually love my Qu4ttro, and have loved all my previous units, and certainly wouldn't have continued to use & invest here, had I not experienced such a (sadly) unique and positive Purchasing & Service experience!

It seems very unclear how things will progress, and what hardware, if anything, I'll have to migrate to sooner or later - why couldn't they work this out, before closing down?

Why, for example can't I even view any of my (many) previous Help Desk tickets?

I'm pissed. I'm really concerned about my future professional use of my unit, and I'm sad and disappointed.

[emcee]

I'm feeling the same - surely an email to their customer base to say "hey, we appreciate your support but we're exiting the hardware business, but we're still around to help" rather than reading on their website the "effective immediately.." blurb.

Can't say I've spent as much as you, but I was an early adopter, and currently have three Receptors (the Original R1 rev B, an R2 and an R2+). Support has always been great when I've had to use them, and always a postive vibe.

But yeah, the way it was done - kind of like coming home from work and finding your partner has moved out and all their stuff gone, with just a note on the fridge, rather than "hey, it's not working, lets talk about it" - Ok, maybe a bit of a stretch, but that's the feeling I'm getting from it. Taken the easy road out, for sure.

I can also add that discussing this with the local Muse Dealer here in Australia, he was kept in the dark as well.. I'm wondering now how I go about my planned upgrade to 2.0.1 that I was budgeting for in the next month or two.. I tried adding it to the cart, but came back "unknown item".

I'll still be using My Receptors the same was as always, albeit with a bit more caution and care, and a regular backup plan..

[PhilMuller]

Oh boy, I am in the same boat. I have 2 Receptors and every plugin known to man and including the big buck ones like VSL, Brodway Big Band, Smaple Modelling etc. etc. Is Muse completely out of business? Is anyone going to do support for a fee?

[hopkihc]

PhilMuller:

Are they under a support contract? If so, those contracts will be honored (contracts, after all!)

Otherwise, per the support website:

"If you would like help to troubleshoot specialized receptor problems related to programming, startup issues installation issues, and anything that may require a remote login to Receptor, you can contact Kevin Bryson, our former support and QA manager, at kevin.muse.research@gmail.com Kevin does support on a paid-only basis, so please do not ask him to support you for free."

That's the only official word right now.

-John

[PhilMuller]

I had a "lifetime support" with Muse per Bryan, Farhan and Rick. I love my Receptors and finally have them synced to handle all the plugins I need with the single exception of Omnisphere II. I have must have indirectly sold 25 of these through referrals. Many of my friends do not know about this tragedy with Muse. Poor Bryan first EMU and now Muse.

[Fishoow]

I do not have a business degree, nor am I running my own business any more, so with the assembly of forum strings and concerns, is it fair to ask why the company was not able to pull through. I mean this entirely as a support question. I see posts by old-timers (computer world) and a few relatively newbies that really love what they've got and push open new doors with their equipment. I ask as a hope that maybe more user feedback will help the board of directors make decisions for newer companies, partnerships, etc. Receptor will fade and morph but not die.

[emcee]

I run a small business and it concerns me when a business like Muse closes it's doors - well, ok it hasn't closed the doors, merely offered the doors to someone else, and in the meantime a digital equivalent of "we're not here right now" without at least some level of consult with it's community. Ok, we're all biased, they have a great product, that's why we're reading this and only released a new flagship product about 18 months ago - so it puzzles me how it has come to this. And still no email to customers - I find that somewhat rude, ok perhaps their A-List customers may have been contacted, but even that irks me - why should I as a registered owner of three Receptors not get the courtesy of a "hey guys, letting you know that...." when perhaps others may have? Surely in this digital age it's not that hard to do an email to their registered customers?
There is a common theme on this thread and some others, that there's life in the unit yet, and whoever picks it up I do wholeheartedly hope they do so with the existing customer base in mind, and not just tag us as "legacy" users.

[howarddavidp]

Kickstarter project to keep it going?

There are so many ways to go with this, get another backer, go open-source, crowd-fund the continuation, etc.

If it really is going to get abandoned, we could ask they release the code so others could continue the project, maybe even on other hardware? It is a shame to let so much progress on a project like this end here...

David

[emcee]

eff it - I'm going to email Muse and see what the mood is for a kickstarter/crowd-fund option for them.
But there's two three parts of course..
A) The hardware - whilst most of the guts of it is semi off the shelf (board/cpu/memory), the other parts such as the audio board, display/front panel - a lets call it "community" of owners would need to support that as well. Having suffered a broken screen earlier this year, this happens.
B) maintaining the images. Off the back of A - hard drive failures. I believe Muse's previous preference was for customers to purchase a new drive in the event of failure, rather than an image available for FTP download etc. I'd like to see the various images available as hosted, with an instruction (perhaps an installer?) on how users can self-image on their own hardware. Option 2 of course if they aren't that tech savvy or have access to the required resources would be to ship pre-imaged drives.
C) The Muse OS and ongoing support/maintenance/testing and improvements. I have maybe enough tech contacts who could help with the code, but only so much they'd do as a favour - how to make it worth their while to say upgrade WINE to the latest version?

and probably D - how would that relationship then work with the various plug-in providers, such as Native Instruments/Rob Papen/Spectrasonics etc? Could the "new" Muse OS distribute the currently bundled plugins, the way you can with certain sold models?

Either way I'm going to shoot them an email now to run the idea up the flagpole to establish if it is a viable option..

[emcee]

email sent to licencing. And now we wait..

[emcee]

Well that just sucks.. mail bounced to licensing.. guess that door just slammed shut.

Tried from another email address, just in case a false bounce, same result.. licensing@muse is dead.

image.jpg

[Meestor_X]

B) maintaining the images. Off the back of A - hard drive failures. I believe Muse's previous preference was for customers to purchase a new drive in the event of failure, rather than an image available for FTP download etc. I'd like to see the various images available as hosted, with an instruction (perhaps an installer?) on how users can self-image on their own hardware. Option 2 of course if they aren't that tech savvy or have access to the required resources would be to ship pre-imaged drives.

This is the critical thing, I think. Have a couple of older Receptors that need new drives with factory images. Without the company that can supply the factory-fresh drive, how would I replace a failing hard drive on a Receptor?