Is there a way customers could be alerted to updates?

[stpete111]

Is there any other way for me to know whether I should download an update for one of my IS products other than just arbitrarily checking Pulse? Maybe email or even an RSS feed? Anything?

I feel like I see the suggestion on this forum to “get the latest update from Pulse” as a response to some posts about issues - and then I realized that I’ve been an IS customer for 10 years and have never once received an email or other notification alerting me to the availability of an incremental update of any product I own. I’ve only ever learned of major version updates, and that’s been via YouTube.

[zircon]

It's difficult for us to figure out the best way to notify people of these things. Since moving to Pulse we've been able to put out updates much, much more easily. Many of them are small bug fixes. For example over the last 6 months we've updated inSIDious, Ventus NAF, Ventus Duduk (3 times), Super Audio Cart, every single guitar in the S3 series at least twice, etc.

So, if you own multiple products, you'd potentially be getting multiple update emails a month, something that I think would frustrate many users. For awhile we put update notifications on users' account pages when logged in to ImpactSoundworks.com, but almost no one saw them.

That being said, we have emailed about major updates too... I count at least 11 separate emails related to updates that we've sent out over the years for products like Shreddage 2, S2 IBZ, the S3 series, Pearl, Juggernaut, and Ventus Duduk. We also post on social media about major updates.

Pulse already auto-checks for updates, but the next step (IMO) is for it to gently notify the user every so often when updates are available. This is how MOST software applications work and I think it's pretty reasonable. i.e. You turn on your computer and get a notification, "2 Impact Soundworks libraries have updates waiting!", or maybe once per 24 hours if you leave your computer on. I've expressed this to the Pulse developers and I think they're on the same page.

What do you think of the Pulse app being the central hub for update notifications, so you don't have to actually keep opening and checking it, but rather can keep it on in the background?

[stpete111]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post with such a comprehensive reply. It really renews my faith in your commitment to IS customers.

I certainly understand the complexity around the situation as you've outlined. I can't speak for everyone, but I personally would not be too picky about the vehicle for the updates, as long as I'm aware of the updates. That said, I believe your suggestion of notifications from Pulse is definitely a great one that makes perfect sense to me.

Again, this is just me, but getting lots of emails about updates wouldn't bother me (assuming I'm only getting emails about IS products I actually own ). But I certainly can understand your point about folks who wouldn't want to be inundated.

So back to to notifications from Pulse - to me, this is a great solution (assuming Pulse gets on board and implements it correctly). I am on a Mac and the app notifications system on Mac is super straight-forward. I would most definitely have Pulse updates turned ON. Absent having it hook into macOS/Windows notification system, I also wouldn't mind having it run it's own process in the tray and alerting via native notifications (like Avid and Gobbler) although I'm sure there are plenty of folks who don't want yet another app running in their system tray.

So this is my long answer to your short question - I would feel great about Pulse being the central hub.

[DrMEM]

I don't mind the Pulse hub being the central location for app updates, but one thing that sucks about it is if you want to update a library, Pulse's solution is to re-download the entire new version of the library, including every sample, instead of just the parts that changed. An update to .nki files that could be a few MB turns into a download of multiple GB. I am on a band-limited connection (I know, in 2021, UGH), so I have to ration my internet usage. Just another thing to consider.

[zircon]

That should not be the case. It will only download the update files. In the case where the entire sample set changed, it will of course need to redownload those, but otherwise what you described should not happen.

[stpete111]

I can confirm that what DrMem is saying is true for me as well.

[DrMEM]

Pulse is doing some major updates this week. I’ll check back and report whether or not this is still happening by the end of the week.

[pulsedownloadapp]

Hi guys, as Andrew mentioned, Pulse should only be downloading just the updated files and nothing else. However, if you're on a very old version of Pulse there may be an issue. Could you please email us directly at hello@pulsedownloader.com if you have any product update issues and we can look into it?

Also, as Andrew mentioned, we will eventually release product update notifications (in your tray) via Pulse. We're doing some upgrades to our system first before releasing this. We will add this functionality in such a way that it can be turned off in your Preferences page in Pulse once we release it

[DrMEM]

Pulse is doing some major updates this week. I’ll check back and report whether or not this is still happening by the end of the week.

Just wanted to say I figured out how to make sure Pulse download only the updates (instead of re-downloading the entire library).

Click on your instrument in Pulse. Make sure it shows Version Base as installed. Even if your library is installed and Pulse shows an "installed in" directory at the top of the software, it's still possible for Version Base to appear as not installed. This is what was causing Pulse to try to re-download the entire library when I asked it to upgrade.

How I fixed it:
-First, I closed Pulse and renamed the folder that my instrument was installed in.
-Then I re-opened Pulse and clicked on the instrument to verify that Pulse thinks the instrument is not installed.
-Then I closed Pulse and renamed the folder that my instrument was installed in back to its original name.
-Then I re-opened Pulse, clicked on the instrument, and clicked re-locate. I selected the folder for the instrument (which Pulse already knew) and clicked the OK (Re-locate) button. This got Pulse to recognize the currently installed version of the instrument as the Base Version (even though I think the actual installed version was higher than the Base Version, but whatever).
-Then I clicked upgrade to latest version, and it downloaded only the updates.

[pulsedownloadapp]

This works by basically forcing Pulse to re-detect your product as the "Base" version. Your case was rather unusual and we've never seen that before, but glad this worked for you

[stpete111]

Back to the original topic of this thread - I wanted to check in with Andrew and Pulse to see if there are any updates on the feature of some kind of way to alert customers of IS software updates?

[pulsedownloadapp]

Yes we are still planning this. We had to spend the last 6 months making changes to our system to allow for this functionality (and others) - this work is all done now so we hope to be able to release this functionality in the next 2-3 months.

[pulsedownloadapp]

This feature has now been released in Pulse. When a product is updated you'll get a small notification in the bottom right corner of your computer to let you know - you can turn off these notifications if you want in the preferences tab of the app.

Please note, this functionality is available in Pulse v40.1.0 - your app will auto update to that version within the next week (we are rolling it out slowly). In the meantime, if you want it immediately, you can download direct from the website.