Imitone -- wow! Most embarassing post I ever started

[metamorphosis]

I'd just like to chime in here to say that, actually, in my view, the product needs a lot of work before it is ready for market, and ports are a long way off. I'm not defending it, I'm just stating that's the way it is, from my experience of using it. And I'm more than happy to wait for him to actually work on the core functionality and get that fixed/right, before looking at ports etc.
Not saying this to tweak anyone's tailfeathers, just stating my opinion.

[Compyfox]

You've mentioned many times that your goal is to make something which novices could use without any proficiency on an instrument.

I am more surprised that "novices" always seem to be the ones with a Mac or iOS device only... and we all know how expensive these devices are.

[interactopia]

So once more - why the hold up?!
The fundamental usability is there!

Rome wasn't built in a day. I've pledged to begin work on a VST soon, but I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot telling you it will take a week.

As to the "hold-up", I'm taking some time to step back from engineering and make a rigorous schedule for completing imitone. I usually do development by the seat of my pants, and you can see what kind of trouble that has gotten me into so far.

I appreciate all the engine recommendations, but take my assurances I know my stuff when it comes to porting.

...actually, in my view, the product needs a lot of work before it is ready for market...

...And when that work is done it will work like magic. Each update is another step toward that goal...

That said, the folks here have made me realize the importance of involving the VST in the beta.

Its noble of you to want to change the world, and I'm not dismissing that objective in any way, but don't you think your priorities might shift if you were to learn that 99% of your backers were experienced musicians? Sending out a poll might be informative... who knows- maybe we're just a small, vocal minority here at KVR.

My primary mission with imitone is to extend a hand to the people who have tried and failed to create with music technology, or who have never tried at all. Even when imitone is complete, reaching these people will be a challenge because many of them don't have high hopes for becoming musical. That makes a statistically-useful poll difficult.

I don't know if I'll succeed in reaching that audience in the way I hope to, but it's a driving goal of the project and I'll try for it regardless. I do know that pro audio people like the ones here will be a substantial portion of my userbase regardless, and I absolutely want my technology to fulfill their needs. So I'm keeping my ears open.

[bungle]

There is an old saying "put up or shut up" i suggest you shut up and get on with doing some of the things you keep coming here to say will be great because you are so great at creating them, prove it !!

[trimph1]

There is an old saying "put up or shut up" i suggest you shut up and get on with doing some of the things you keep coming here to say will be great because you are so great at creating them, prove it !!

^^^^this.

[trimph1]

You've mentioned many times that your goal is to make something which novices could use without any proficiency on an instrument.

I am more surprised that "novices" always seem to be the ones with a Mac or iOS device only... and we all know how expensive these devices are.

Don't.......go there.

[Compyfox]

Why not? In this case, it's the ultimate excuse. And it was also the(!) leverage to finally push the VST port for the Windows users.

When it will arrive, lies on a whole different ballpark however.


BTW Evan:
Can you change the driver usage from "exclusive mode" to "shared" on the Windows Platform? Maybe this will work as interim solution...

[coincidental]

I'll chime in here too and say that, as a Kickstarter supporter, I'm not unhappy with the progress and the communication (I didn't pay for a newsletter) but I wish I felt more confident that this was heading reliably in the right direction.

The prospect of a VST was the only thing that made me support it. I don't need a standalone thingummy, or an app, or whatever. That's not revolutionary, it's a neat gimmick or toy, no more. Audio-to-midi conversion capable of outputting more parameters than just pitch and volume, that's what I saw. If that's what Evan's work is capable of, I don't understand why he's hiding his innovation away.

Jam Origin's Midi Guitar etc is a tool, a box: audio in, midi out. Polyphonic too! It's excellent, and it just works. I can use it as a standalone if I want to - to play live. More usually I use it within a DAW and record both audio and midi from the same input. Or I can put it on an existing recorded audio track and convert it to MIDI. It's dead easy. It requires a little routeing, but even a total and utter non-engineer like me can do it. Imitone is a box too - really exactly the same sort of box - but Evan seems to be very proscriptive about what kind of box it is allowed to be and how it can be used.

I'm increasingly getting the impression that the aim is to produce a funky app so that people can sing into their phones and tablets and ... well, what exactly? Make your phone play back what you sang as a tinny piano? Save it to midi? But who wants midi much? Except people who are making music...with DAWs of some sort? All the use-cases he cites as motivations to produce Imitone would be (and in most cases probably already are) better and more easily accomplished with a DAW of some sort (some of which are giveaways these days, let's not forget). The standalone is fine as far as it goes, but it's more of a proof-of-concept.

Surely the aim is to produce a useful tool that can be used by tool-users? For some people the standalone is enough, but this is a forum of tool-users, and if there's some frustration here, I hope Evan can appreciate that this is only because we can see someone busy designing what sounds like the perfect hammer, while saying that they're going full-out to produce a novelty rubber version first (which will be great fun!) and seeming to put the iron one that could be employed to make other things on the back-burner, because... why?

So please, Evan, pay heed to the advice here. You can't "change the landscape of digital music" with a rubber hammer - give us a beautifully engineered tool that we can do things with! Don't invest time and inspiration cracking the "very difficult problem" of real-time pitch tracking only to hide the solution away. VST is a format accessible to 99.9% of computers - and all your users have computers. It can be used in free hosts, in paid hosts, in hosts for different operating systems. They can all work. If your algorithms are as good as you believe they are, make them available to be used!

[ThomasHelzle]

Very good post coincidental!

Cheers,

Tom

[klinik]

I'll chime in here too and say that, as a Kickstarter supporter, I'm not unhappy with the progress and the communication (I didn't pay for a newsletter) but I wish I felt more confident that this was heading reliably in the right direction.

The prospect of a VST was the only thing that made me support it. I don't need a standalone thingummy, or an app, or whatever. That's not revolutionary, it's a neat gimmick or toy, no more. Audio-to-midi conversion capable of outputting more parameters than just pitch and volume, that's what I saw. If that's what Evan's work is capable of, I don't understand why he's hiding his innovation away.

Jam Origin's Midi Guitar etc is a tool, a box: audio in, midi out. Polyphonic too! It's excellent, and it just works. I can use it as a standalone if I want to - to play live. More usually I use it within a DAW and record both audio and midi from the same input. Or I can put it on an existing recorded audio track and convert it to MIDI. It's dead easy. It requires a little routeing, but even a total and utter non-engineer like me can do it. Imitone is a box too - really exactly the same sort of box - but Evan seems to be very proscriptive about what kind of box it is allowed to be and how it can be used.

I'm increasingly getting the impression that the aim is to produce a funky app so that people can sing into their phones and tablets and ... well, what exactly? Make your phone play back what you sang as a tinny piano? Save it to midi? But who wants midi much? Except people who are making music...with DAWs of some sort? All the use-cases he cites as motivations to produce Imitone would be (and in most cases probably already are) better and more easily accomplished with a DAW of some sort (some of which are giveaways these days, let's not forget). The standalone is fine as far as it goes, but it's more of a proof-of-concept.

Surely the aim is to produce a useful tool that can be used by tool-users? For some people the standalone is enough, but this is a forum of tool-users, and if there's some frustration here, I hope Evan can appreciate that this is only because we can see someone busy designing what sounds like the perfect hammer, while saying that they're going full-out to produce a novelty rubber version first (which will be great fun!) and seeming to put the iron one that could be employed to make other things on the back-burner, because... why?

So please, Evan, pay heed to the advice here. You can't "change the landscape of digital music" with a rubber hammer - give us a beautifully engineered tool that we can do things with! Don't invest time and inspiration cracking the "very difficult problem" of real-time pitch tracking only to hide the solution away. VST is a format accessible to 99.9% of computers - and all your users have computers. It can be used in free hosts, in paid hosts, in hosts for different operating systems. They can all work. If your algorithms are as good as you believe they are, make them available to be used!

[interactopia]

coincidental -- The VST is on its way, and in the meantime the standalone is trivially interoperable with any music software. The only hitch is device exclusivity, and this can be solved with a throwaway peripheral.


As a counter to your hammer metaphor, consider the globe. It's a precisely engineered tool which solves a basic problem for the navigators of old: representing the world directly. It emerged from a legacy of other precision implements, and alongside these it saw situational use. But if we're to be quite honest, cartographers and navigators could easily have gotten by without this invention. To them it could be called a helpful novelty, or a time-saver.

The globe's most profound impact was, and continues to be, on the people who encounter it knowing nothing of the shape of the world. Considering that, it's a little tragic that it took centuries to find its way into public schools.

Rest assured I'll build you a tool worthy of professional use. But I don't expect it to be nearly so transformative for audio experts as it will be for those taking their first steps into music.

Can you change the driver usage from "exclusive mode" to "shared" on the Windows Platform? Maybe this will work as interim solution...

That's a standard option in audio setup, and has been since the beginning. imitone for Windows currently offers a Shared Mode with usable latency (WASAPI), Kernel Mode (WDM-KS) and ASIO. On XP I offer an alternate shared mode.

There is an old saying "put up or shut up" i suggest you shut up and get on with doing some of the things you keep coming here to say will be great because you are so great at creating them, prove it !!

Listening to my users isn't mutually exclusive with getting things done; many of the comments I've read here seem to suggest that I'm procrastinating by participating in this conversation at all.

That said, I've been checking in for about ten days now and plugin support seems to be the only real topic of importance. I have been explicit that I'm pushing it up my priority list... So I might bow out soon.

[tommyzai]

I love this diddy and now that I'm addicted, I cannot imagine going without it. I'm crap at translating audio in my head and voice to notes. I wish I had this 30 years ago. Who knows how many songs I've lost along the way.

[pleasewinner]

Just thought a friendly bump would be a good way to get the regular updates you promised a year and a half ago, I think that lasted, what, 3-4 weeks. If I might make a suggestion, I think you should hire yourself a boss. They are good at keeping you on track, and filtering out the B.S. excuses that you let yourself get away with. Not a sermon, just a thought.

[Kalamata Kid]

I am looking forward to the Imitone release almost as much as the
release of Absynth 6.

[fischkopf]

I think this has turned into the Duke Nukem Forever of plugins, lol. (but at least the game came out eventually)