KangaSound on Kickstarter

[roo2]

G'day!

There is now a KangaSound project on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter. This is an attempt to take the project, which includes Kangas Sound Editor (QI) software, to a new level where it becomes more useful to more people.

Should you be interested, here is the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/52 ... cts-from-s

Should anyone from here actually back this project, then thank you very much!

[roo2]

G'day,

In case anyone is interested, a sneak preview of what this KangaSound on Kickstarter project would deliver can be accessed from:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/52 ... ts/1094353

[Winstontaneous]

Hi there, if you don't mind a little unsolicited feedback...It's coming as I work on my own website, so I'm thinking a lot of how one presents one's passions to the world.

- As someone who isn't familiar with KangaSound...it's really hard to tell what it does from either the Kickstarter page or your website's front page. "Sound Editor" makes me think it's a destructive soundfile editor like Audition, SoundForge, Audacity. It's clearly more than that, more of a sound generator and harmonic/Just Intonation playground?

- It's hard to find the diff between the Kangas Sound Editor and Kangas Sound Editor QI...digging through the pages it appears one connects to an external DB while one comes bundled with a DB. Why would a person want to use one rather than the other, and what is the development impact of maintaining what appear to be two very similar products?

- About your front page, it contains a bunch of links to other areas/sites but very little info about what KangaSound is and how it sounds/feels to use. You're obviously obsessed with Oz and kangaroos, but that seems to be at the expense of clearly/compellingly demonstrating Kangas' strong points.

- Have you considered going with a PHP CMS (like Bolt, based on Silex/Symfony), or even a cloud-hosted website builder like SquareSpace or Wix? The latter would take care of your browser/responsive/security issues, letting you start with a clean basic design and freeing up your time for Kangas application development...for no more than $30 a month.

- Phrases like the following (from Kickstarter) don't really convey your confidence in either Kangas or your own abilities: "I see no reason why, with a combination of the significant enhancements that this project would deliver and the efforts of more talented sound-engineers and musicians than myself, some sound effects and music tracks that are considerably better than my own efforts to date could not be created with KangaSound."

Again, not to be harsh, I want creative people making cool things to succeed!

[roo2]

Hi there, if you don't mind a little unsolicited feedback...It's coming as I work on my own website, so I'm thinking a lot of how one presents one's passions to the world.

- As someone who isn't familiar with KangaSound...it's really hard to tell what it does from either the Kickstarter page or your website's front page. "Sound Editor" makes me think it's a destructive soundfile editor like Audition, SoundForge, Audacity. It's clearly more than that, more of a sound generator and harmonic/Just Intonation playground?

- It's hard to find the diff between the Kangas Sound Editor and Kangas Sound Editor QI...digging through the pages it appears one connects to an external DB while one comes bundled with a DB. Why would a person want to use one rather than the other, and what is the development impact of maintaining what appear to be two very similar products?

- About your front page, it contains a bunch of links to other areas/sites but very little info about what KangaSound is and how it sounds/feels to use. You're obviously obsessed with Oz and kangaroos, but that seems to be at the expense of clearly/compellingly demonstrating Kangas' strong points.

- Have you considered going with a PHP CMS (like [url=<span class="skimlinks-unlinked">https://bolt.cm</span>/]Bolt, based on Silex/Symfony[/url]), or even a cloud-hosted website builder like SquareSpace or Wix? The latter would take care of your browser/responsive/security issues, letting you start with a clean basic design and freeing up your time for Kangas application development...for no more than $30 a month.

- Phrases like the following (from Kickstarter) don't really convey your confidence in either Kangas or your own abilities: "I see no reason why, with a combination of the significant enhancements that this project would deliver and the efforts of more talented sound-engineers and musicians than myself, some sound effects and music tracks that are considerably better than my own efforts to date could not be created with KangaSound."

Again, not to be harsh, I want creative people making cool things to succeed!

Hi Winstontaneous,

Your comments are appreciated, thank you. I will endeavour to answer at least some of your questions now:

Maybe "sound editor" is a bit of a misnomer. To get an idea of what it actually does, here is a link: http://www.kangasound.com/features/features.html

Regards to the DB question: Kangas Sound Editor was the original product, and requires MySQL. Because I discovered this can put off people who don't want to install MySQL, I created Kangas Sound Editor QI which comes with its own bundled database (HSQLDB). So, people effectively have a choice of database. I intend to keep this despite the fact it takes more time to maintain the two database variants, but if a version is developed for Android, then I would just go for the bundled database version.

I have thought about the web solution, and don't really want something that looks and behaves like many other bog-standard websites - I want both the software and website to be distinctive (even if some people don't much like the theme), but for improvements along the lines I indicated in the Kickstarter project to be made. I am not for completely reinventing the wheel though, which is why I am planning to use Symfony and jQuery (and maybe SASS) to help with some of the website issues. Part of the time I have allocated for website work is content-related, mainly relating to the tutorial pages which have some inconsistencies.

With regards to my own abilities, they are stronger with software/web development than as a musician (My attempts on that front have definitely not been successful). I have had a little more success creating sound effects (some are rated quite highly and have hundreds of downloads on http://www.freesound.org/people/paulnorthyorks/), but the ones I create are mainly ones I stumble across while working on the software. The point is, I don't want people to be put off using the software simply because I'm not a talented musician or sound-effects person.

Anyway, I hope I have answered some of your questions.

[Winstontaneous]

Thanks for the detailed response!

I am interested in Kangas, will download and check it out. It's great that you're making a cross-platform tool for audio exploration that's not the same old-same old.

[roo2]

Thanks for the detailed response!

I am interested in Kangas, will download and check it out. It's great that you're making a cross-platform tool for audio exploration that's not the same old-same old.

You're welcome! I'm pleased to hear that you're going to do that, and would be interested to know what you (or anyone else who downloads and installs it) make of it. If you hit any stumbling blocks, let me know - I might be able to get you going again.

Regards

[Sendy]

That pure blue background on the website plays havoc with my eyes, and the logo at the top looks really weird on it, because the colours are so unrelated and the blue is so overpowering. It kinda sent my eyes funny

[roo2]

That pure blue background on the website plays havoc with my eyes, and the logo at the top looks really weird on it, because the colours are so unrelated and the blue is so overpowering. It kinda sent my eyes funny

I think you are referring to the features page ( http://www.kangasound.com/features/features.html ) ?

Thanks for this specific feedback! I'll take a look at this at some stage.

[roo2]

That pure blue background on the website plays havoc with my eyes, and the logo at the top looks really weird on it, because the colours are so unrelated and the blue is so overpowering. It kinda sent my eyes funny

I think you are referring to the features page ( http://www.kangasound.com/features/features.html ) ?

Thanks for this specific feedback! I'll take a look at this at some stage.

There has now been a colour-scheme change to the features web-page mentioned above, abolishing the pure blue blackground that Sendy mentioned. Hopefully you will find the new colour-scheme a little easier on your eyes.

Happy new year, by the way

[roo2]

Hi,

There is now an online article on Kangas Sound Editor from the Sep '14 issue of UK magazine Linux Format

I have posted an update to the KangaSound project on Kickstarter that has more details, including a link to the article itself:

KangaSound post on Kickstarter

I hope some of you find it interesting reading.

[roo2]

Hi,

I have just added a new reward to this Kickstarter project, which is at the £6 or more level.

I hope this new reward appeals to some of you

[roo2]

Hi,

I was just wondering whether any of you have ever heard a well-known tune synthesized using Kangas Sound Editor? If not, and you would like to listen to one, I have posted it to the updates page of my Kickstarter project.

This update is accessible to backers only; however, I do not mind if you pledge the minimum amount, which I think you won't have to actually pay anyway (no backers pay on Kickstarter unless a project is fully-funded, which doesn't look likely for my project).

[roo2]

Hi,

There are now under 24 hours left to fund this project! If you would like to be one of the exceptional few people who did at least pledge support for this project, now is the time to act!

Regards

[roo2]

There is now just 88 minutes left to back this project (less by the time you read this). If you are kind enough to back this project I will send you some Kangas Sound Editor synthesized ringtones/text-alert tones (just mention you are from KVR), even though the project will not be funded (so you won't have to pay anything).

The race starts now!!!!

[roo2]

G'day

Just to let you know, there is now a second (and almost certainly final) attempt to fund the KangaSound project on Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/52 ... esis-track

If any of you do decide to back it, thank you!