!Epoch, for the next 4 years

[ThomasHelzle]

If only it was 'just' a DAW. It's (nearly) a DAW, plus a visual programming language, plus a lock-free realtime virtual machine, plus a UI designer a la adobe XD, etc. How I envy those lucky DAW developers!

[firepile]

Ah sorry, I thought you meant the name.

It's a modular sequencing toolkit. Essentially, it's a visual programming language for building things that generate MIDI. You build your patch from a palette of some 300-odd modules, of which there are some high-level ones, such as X0X-style sequencers and arpeggiators, and low-level ones, such as bitwise operators and trigonometric functions. Modules can be grouped together into reusable macros, which can be shared. (Technically, modules themselves can also be reused and shared if you've applied certain settings you want to return to. I have, for example, a library of differently styled widget modules that I can quickly drop in when I want to build an interface with a certain style.) You can also script it with Lua, although it's flexible enough that you needn't go down that route if you prefer to program entirely with the visual language.

It has an arranger where you can arrange your composition. You can play it live by triggering patterns, etc, using a mapping system where you can route controllers to practically anything. You can build a fancy dashboard so that only specific widgets for your patch are visible. Shared macros can also export a UI, so you can just drop them in and be ready to tweak.

It also hosts other plug-ins and has a flexible mixer for routing plug-in input and output, including MIDI, between channels and other plug-ins. Or it can output MIDI data directly. Or write either audio or MIDI to a pool, from which you can drag and drop directly into your host or export as independent files.

It runs as an audio plugin, a MIDI plugin, or as a standalone application.

[Protocol_b]

This represents the missing link for me. I work strictly on a 'live' basis, running multiple midi channels in via multiple guitar synths. I need an all-powerful midi routing & switching environment with control over any message type. I have tried every Mac-compatible DAW / host I can find - nothing satisfies. It sounds like this may actually finally descend from the heavens - godspeed to you Mr. Dev.

[AZZIN]

I'm afraid it is looking very unlikely to get it out this year. I had every intention of pushing through the Christmas break to get it finished, but in the end I decided that exhausting myself to hit an ultimately arbitrary date just wasn't sensible.

Thank you again for all the emails of support I've continued to have about this project. I understand people are frustrated waiting; but one the other hand, the majority of people seem to understand that creative ventures take time.

Colin, I do really appreciate your words. Devs talking so closely to the customers (us) is not so common nowadays
I'm one of the people that keeps waiting. In the meanwhile I'll try to do... some music
Just keep going!

Alberto

[terminus_one]

It's a modular sequencing toolkit. Essentially, it's a visual programming language for building things that generate MIDI. You build your patch from a palette of some 300-odd modules, of which there are some high-level ones, such as X0X-style sequencers and arpeggiators, and low-level ones, such as bitwise operators and trigonometric functions. Modules can be grouped together into reusable macros, which can be shared. (Technically, modules themselves can also be reused and shared if you've applied certain settings you want to return to. I have, for example, a library of differently styled widget modules that I can quickly drop in when I want to build an interface with a certain style.) You can also script it with Lua, although it's flexible enough that you needn't go down that route if you prefer to program entirely with the visual language.

It has an arranger where you can arrange your composition. You can play it live by triggering patterns, etc, using a mapping system where you can route controllers to practically anything. You can build a fancy dashboard so that only specific widgets for your patch are visible. Shared macros can also export a UI, so you can just drop them in and be ready to tweak.

It also hosts other plug-ins and has a flexible mixer for routing plug-in input and output, including MIDI, between channels and other plug-ins. Or it can output MIDI data directly. Or write either audio or MIDI to a pool, from which you can drag and drop directly into your host or export as independent files.

It runs as an audio plugin, a MIDI plugin, or as a standalone application.

This sounds astoundingly great! Not to mention, a feat of engineering

Looking forward to when this eventually gets released

[pinki]

This quote, which catalogued a snippet of Loomer quotes across a timeline, should probably be re-posted once per page of this thread, going forward. Just to keep ourselves grounded in reality. Lest we find ourselves saying things like 'Still plenty of time' (to be released in 2017).... plenty of time ...

Sat Mar 17, 2012 9:36 pm
Tell me about it, I can't believe it's mid-March already: at the beginning of the year, I would have happily bet money on the new product being out by now too! Seems I'm much better at coding audio software than estimating timescales.
Soon, my eager followers, soon... !
( We're on the cusp of having the beta feature list locked down: when this milestone is reached, and the final UI polish is complete, all shall be revealed. )

Mon Oct 22, 2012 3:01 pm
Aiming for a public beta this year; we're definitely on the home straight now. I'm working my way through the a short list of outstanding development; unfortunately, I'm also adding to it each time someone suggests a good idea!

Thu Dec 06, 2012 3:19 pm
So we're now feature complete and onto final polish and usability testing. Not long now, my patient followers, not long at all!

Sat Dec 22, 2012 6:51 pm
'fraid so. With the best will in the world, the chances of this getting to beta over the Christmas period is pretty slim. So 2013 it is.

Thu Jan 03, 2013 4:34 pm
I wouldn't like to narrow the release down to anything more accurate than early 2013. It's feature complete in terms of being ready for a beta release, but there is still tidying and improving happening; lots of little tweaks, rather than any grand renovations.

Mon Nov 25, 2013 11:32 pm
Yes: I'm still aiming to get a public build out sometime before the chimes of midnight on January 1st 2014 (and I'm hoping that I don't cut it so close as to still be coding on New Year's Eve!)

Wed Sep 03, 2014 8:15 am
I'm aiming hard to still get it to you this year, and I sincerely hope to get it out this year. It's looking likely: the feature set is more or less locked in for version 1, and so a 2014 release is probable.

Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:44 pm
Thanks. I'm on the home-straight now; I'm confident that I'll have something for you all before the end of the year. I would say, "if not sooner", but I think that'd really be tempting fate.

Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:03 pm
It's looking likely that I'll have a beta by the end of this year or thereabouts, and then aim for a 1.0 release for some point in early 2015.

Sun Dec 21, 2014 11:05 am
It's all bug fixing and usability tidying now - no more feature development for v1 - so things are really looking good for getting it launched.

Thu Jan 01, 2015 2:35 pm
Thanks all for your continuing patience and support in this matter: I can confidently say, 100%, no excuses, early 2015 will see this in all of your eager hands!

Mon Jul 20, 2015 8:02 am
Still aiming for soon, and I can't see it slipping into 2016: there simply isn't much left to do,

Sun Nov 08, 2015 11:03 am
Long before that, my eager pals. By the summer, you'll all be nagging me for version 1.3, I hope.

Sat Dec 26, 2015 3:48 am
So close, you can taste it. I must admit, I didn't hit the coding as much as would have liked over the Christmas break, but I'm back on it full-time now, very refreshed, and ready to fix those last issues!

Sun Sep 11, 2016 7:38 pm
Aiming to release within the next couple of months. Admittedly I'm terrible at deadlines, but by sheer virtue of having little left to polish to get this ready for public consumption, I'm confident.

Wed Feb 15, 2017 10:13 am
At the beginning of the year I totted up the outstanding work, and based on this I'd have estimated completion at the end of February. A few other things - minor omissions that slipped off the development radar - have cropped up in the interim, and so have pushed the date back accordingly, so yes, next few months, March or April, seems likely.

Sun Sep 03, 2017 8:52 am
Thankfully, Zeno's paradox fails when one accounts for the summation of infinite series, hence Achilles (me) will catch the turtle (release this year.)

So I'm wondering: Is this a research project at a University, a PHD investigating how long a potential consumer base can be kept in the web of potential purchase.? It would make sense. Or a huge huge April Fool or pact that Colin made one drunken evening back in 2011?
There must be an explanation when you review the above set of collated quotes from Colin. It just doesn't make sense to string your customer base along like that. Really odd. Very very odd behaviour.

And...its never going to be released...that's the hilarious joke here. Come clean Colin sir, come clean!

[coincidental]

Oh ye of little faith! Clearly there's been the most monumental mission creep, but I can't help thinking that the main beneficiaries of this will be the users of this software. When Colin describes what he's (nearly) done, it's clear what an achievement it is for one person, and what its potential is as an all-in-one workstation/laboratory/platform...

Happy New Year Colin, and fingers crossed for a speedy release in 2018!

[colin@loomer]

Andy, you wag! As I've said, it definitely will be released. I can't defend my appalling track record when it comes to getting it out, but honestly, I am a little tired of having to. As I've stated, this wasn't Kickstarted or Indiegogo'd, no-one has paid a solitary penny for it, and no-one will until they have their hands on it. I hope that doesn't come across as an snarky response, and I appreciate that your comments are very much tongue-in-cheek: we've emailed before, and I know you're a good guy. I appreciate all criticism, although I am occasionally frustrated in the manner that said criticism is packaged. But the idea that I'm doing this to annoy people is a little galling: trust me, if anyone is annoyed waiting for it, try being the guy who has sunk literally thousands of development hours into it, and more depressingly, is spending the last few minute of New Year's Eve on it!

But in the meantime, Happy New Year, one and all.

[bungle]

So its nearly DAW Colin ?
Does that mean you may reconsider audio capability at some point ?

By the way, good response, pinkis post was completely out of order !!

[ThomasHelzle]

A good new year to you Colin and everybody else on this thread!

Even after all those years, I can't wait to finally see !Epoch/Architekt and explore completely new realms with it.

Creating some wild plot out of this whole thing needs a really twisted or bored mind. It was the same with Bitwig: The guys released a very simple website and asked if some people would be willing to test it. Then they were totally overwhelmed by the massive response and people to this day accuse them of "creating a huge marketing bubble" - they did not, it just was a very interesting product and it made peoples heads explode all on their own.
You can't win this kind of battle anyway, so I would ignore it as much as you possibly can.

Brene Brown has some great advice in this video:


All the best energies and vibes for you and yours!!!

Cheers,

Tom

[pinki]

Yes very bored...working over New Year...I wasn't being serious btw...but you have to admit its strange indeed to keep saying a thing and not doing it. I mean why? Why not just keep Shum and release it when you're ready or just say it's not ready and won't be for another year. I find the constant ..frankly...deceit just insane. You may think it's not and you are entitled to your opinion of course! Happy New Year ...and back to boring job for me!

[bungle]

@pinki
What a completely ignorant post !!!

@Thomas
There is a bit of a difference between Colin and Bitwig, first he is one guy that has done what looks like something nearly as complex as Bitwig with more potential, second, every single time the Bitwig guys announced anything was in conjunction with some funding they where applying for (you can easily check this yourself, they got a lot of external funding)

Colin has done this off his own back and to be perfectly honest his business has suffered a little, before he started this journey he was one of the up and coming flyers on the plugin scene, but he has never disappeared and has always kept people informed (which apparently now equates to deceit, if i was to give my true feelings about that poster i would be banned for sure)

I have been working closely with a software developer of a really successful piece of software of late, he is getting nothing but huge huge plaudits for his software, yet one bug on his monthly releases and he feels like he has let the world down and everybody hates him because some muppet somewhere screams and shouts that said bug is ruining his life.
I cant even imagine how crap Colin feels right now, and probably wont even feel any better after release and everybody starts screaming bug bug bug, so lets give him a break from the downright shitty attacks !!

[Michael L]

deceit

The opposite is true: Colin is transparent. He publicly shares the uncertainty involved in creating something uniquely useful in this ever-changing business.
A pinkie (tiny dick) in a "boring job" will never understand.

[Daags]

this won't be released in 2018.

[Michael L]

this won't be released in 2018.

Good one.