What ever happened to EMAGIC SOUNDDIVER?

[Odditory]

Was the dropping of SoundDiver a casualty of the Apple rape/pillage/scorched earth/buyout of Emagic? Google searches don't turn up any news as to what happened to this fabulous universal editor/librarian...

Any current users feel free to chime in....

[autodafe]

i think sounddiver was PC only (or am i wrong?) and was dropped....

[Odditory]

Nope it was Mac/PC. I was a beta-tester for it back in the 3.0.5 days.. however since selling all my outboard gear a couple years ago in favor of going virtual instruments primarily, I haven't needed to use it. Now that I've started to pick up some more hardware synths again I was looking into it again. Too bad if its really gone.

[autodafe]

Nope it was Mac/PC.

i was wrong then...

[Frankyboy]

Try MIDI Quest XL from Sound Quest. Better than SoundDiver and it is Windows as well as MacOS

http://www.squest.com/

[aMUSEd]

Is that still updated? - it looks great but the third item on their news page is a 2003 review of Infinity - a programme they dropped a couple of years ago. Above it are a couple of undated news items about dedicated editing apps for Roland synths but it's hard to get a clear impression of programmes being actively worked on and bug fixed.

[DevonB]

I bought SoundDiver 2.0 back in the day and never really got it to 'work' well with my setup. I had an 8 port MIDI patch bay which it was 'known' to hate... of course I find this out after I buy the full blown version. I just had the single use one for my Kawai K5000r.

I have the VC-1 editor for the D-50 card by Sound Quest. It seems ok, but I've barely touched it so far. It works, but the interface is a bit small. At least it looks significantly better than their standard interface that requires scroll bars and looks generally like crap. It looks like it's a standard VSTi with no interface, so you get these big long parameter lists. Doesn't look inspiring to me at least. Not to mention, Scot bought it, and got 0 support for his problems... Not comforting.

Devon

[ew]

I've still got Sound Diver 3.0.5 for the couple pieces of hardware I still use. That's the final PC version, and while it works well on most synths, there's a couple (notably my VFX-SD) where Sound Diver will crash consistently while building the library. Michael Haydn (the main coder for Sound Diver) used to be active on the Sound Diver user group at Yahoo, but he's disappeared.

There's been a 3.1.0 beta for Mac available for about three years now, but from what the group says, it's been two years since an update and you need a Logic dongle to run it. After a while, the beta won't recognize the dongle and it's back to square one...

ew

[beej]

Nope it was Mac/PC.

Actually, it was Mac/PC/Atari

After a while, the beta won't recognize the dongle and it's back to square one...

The last beta should not expire. Mine is still going strong. I've always really liked Soundiver, but mostly for it's bank management functions, as I'm not generally keen on on-screen synth editors...

[Scot Solida]

For what it's worth, SoundDiver is still working with my Logic Dongle on the Mac. When I say "working", I mean it opens and scans for internal patches. I rarely use it because it doesn't work well with almost any of my hardware. Gives me an error when using the K5000W (didn't used to, but it does now), and won't recognize the ESQ-1 or K5. It's okay with the TG-77 and DX-21, and those are about the only reasons the thing is still installed.

MIDIQuest sits in a box in the closet. It was buggy as hell...I never got a single bit of work done with it. Too bad, since it was one of the few that supported the synths I have. Trouble is, SoundQuest hasn't upgraded the thing for years. I never tried it on the PC...but after my lousy experiences with Infinity on the PC, I couldn't be bothered.

My universal editor/librarians worked great back in the old Atari days. Beleive it or not, that's what I have resorted to now: an Atari patched into a MIDI patchbay, running software that allows me to edit the synths that SoundDiver doesn't like.

With virtual instruments reigning the day, and hardware synths being opackaged with built-in editors that send info along a USB connector (ala the Roland SH-201 and Lexicon MX200), I imagine that the univeersal editor/librarian has seen its day.

[ew]

My universal editor/librarians worked great back in the old Atari days. Beleive it or not, that's what I have resorted to now: an Atari patched into a MIDI patchbay, running software that allows me to edit the synths that SoundDiver doesn't like.

Funny you should mention that, Scot- I've been toying with the idea of using Steam to run an Atari K5 editor myself.

With virtual instruments reigning the day, and hardware synths being opackaged with built-in editors that send info along a USB connector (ala the Roland SH-201 and Lexicon MX200), I imagine that the univeersal editor/librarian has seen its day.

I'm afraid you're right...

ew

[Scot Solida]

My universal editor/librarians worked great back in the old Atari days. Beleive it or not, that's what I have resorted to now: an Atari patched into a MIDI patchbay, running software that allows me to edit the synths that SoundDiver doesn't like.

Funny you should mention that, Scot- I've been toying with the idea of using Steam to run an Atari K5 editor myself.


ew

When I first tried out Steem, the K5 editor was the first one I loaded. I did get that one to work, though I can't remember if it worked well... .

[Odditory]

With virtual instruments reigning the day, and hardware synths being opackaged with built-in editors that send info along a USB connector (ala the Roland SH-201 and Lexicon MX200), I imagine that the univeersal editor/librarian has seen its day.

I think you just hit it on the head - my thoughts exactly. The sales of SoundDiver prob. slowed to a halt and the upkeep involved with each new version was a major headache no longer financially feasible to emapple.

If anyone ever stopped to think just what SoundDiver was accomplishing in the process of 'supporting an instrument' - Sounddiver's author (Michael Haydn in Germany) not only beginning with an insane low-level knowledge of Midi and Sysex (he was maybe the best in the world) then case by case have to figure out documented and undocumented Sysex features of so many different devices, and then factor in variables like firmware updates that came out for a device which would break functionality with SoundDiver which would then need an updated module, well the amount of brain power for SoundDiver to work as well as it did for as many instruments as it supported was insanely amazing. Talk about "a million moving targets" when you multiply all the variables Michael Haydn was constantly chasing like loose pieces of paper blowing on the street in keeping Sounddiver updated.

Bit of trivia: Michael Haydn is in my eyes the real father of the what's today the "Mackie Control". Back in the day Emagic sought a hardware controller and Mackie's factory built the hardware for emagic (called a "Logic Control") but Michael Haydn's was the brains behind the midi/implementation. Then there was either a rift or the exclusivity contract just ran out and Mackie started selling it as a "Mackie Control", which is very well known today. Michael was also the creator of the Unitor8/AMT8 emagic branded midi interfaces, which included a feature called "AMT" advanced midi timing in Logic which got implemented in Logic 4.x, and provided sample-accurate midi playback and recording. It was enough of a killer feature that Steinberg wanted it and so AMT was traded to Steinberg in exchange for source for Native VST support for Logic. Steinberg went on to call their version of AMT as "LTB", and injected that into their Steinberg branded 8-port midi interfaces.

I had a Logic Control + two expanders when they first came out, and it was a huge turning point in my efficiency/workflow.

My studio screens and logic control, shown here in December 2002 under my self-built custom-welded triple-monitor mount (the righthand screen dedicated to Sounddiver as you can see): [/b]"