Are we customers or beta testers?
I'm sorry intua. I bought this app to use it, not to babysit it. BM3 was a release candidate, not a finished product. You should have been open about this. If I had known that this was application was going to be released as a paid for beta I would have waited until it was a stable release. When I use this thing, I have to remember that my iPad is not a frisbee. So much potential. I've wasted hours jumping through the insanely badly thought out user interface, and spend more time babysitting workarounds and enduring crashes and battery drains than making music. Total vibe killer. This is bad. I don't want to spread negative tones as I can appreciate the duress of managing an app with the scope that BM3 has, and also that other people are absolutely fine with it the way it is, so I'm going to back off and stop reporting issues. Its great for factory sample banks and premade sample libraries, but I seem to do nothing but run into bugs when attempting to create new music... and creating new music in new ways is why I bought the bloody thing. Too many issues to list. In the spirit of full disclosure, I offered to beta test it as I would really like to contribute to the fix rather moan, but I think that time has passed. What is the roadmap for BM3?
Comments
@LucidMusicInc I'm not attacking you when I ask this - I must be missing something - what is the bigger picture in this context?
I think the bigger picture is great. Ios daw that competes with desktop and i can appreciate that. I struggle to with crashes and trying to remember the pathway to do something then I get lost. I'm not a geewiz guy but simple is best type. Why I liked bm2 it was simple and creative process flowed even though it was cheesy at times but it never crashed. I love bm3 I can get along with it well I hope to help to make a better simpler process if I can. It's everything I wanted.
The midi mapping from au and iaa is great. Mixer is awesome but some love needs to be shared on the real meat and potatoes the grid and being able to make adjustments without having to scream every time you try and do something on the piano roll whether it's panning or tuning or just simply changing a velocity or moving notes cause you have to select another tool and it deletes your notes. The window is so small and grabbing each note each time is simply slow. A select feature would be great. The simple stuff is missing before we go super deep on macros or modulation. Maybe just maybe firing up bm2 and seeing that process will open up some doors and ideas. I think in the end everyone was expecting that but better and more powerful.
I got some good ideas and some not but I think this product can be what everyone wants. I've waited a while for it and simply want a strong product.
Fair enough @LucidMusicInc - thanks for your thoughts. I hear you. Yes, a long term view is probably the best policy here, I just wish I knew this was going to be this apps path before I bought it. I'm going to drop it. I'll have my Octrack MK II in a few weeks, and I'll just beat the shite out of my gear when I get back to studio. There are worse things out there. Apologies for ranting.
I understand your concern @Nick but it takes time to make an app rock solid / stable. It took a lot of updates for BM2 to be considered 'stable'. iOS can be pretty random at times too.
I don't think it's fair to say BM3 is a beta - everything can be better, that's for sure, but it took months of beta-testing to finally decide it was stable enough for production.
Re: roadmap -- 3.0.3 will be about bug fixing. I'm analyzing crash reports as we speak. Stability is paramount.
Just out of curiosity what are the features/part of the app you use the most? IAA/AUv3? Just the sampler? Sequencer?
We're working hard to make the app better with every update, but it takes time -- BM3 is complex.
Cheers,
Mathieu.
@mathieugarcia I suppose the reason I used the word beta was that the more advanced features that I bought the application for (which I would have expected to standard fare) are still in gestation/development, so from my point of view, it appears incomplete. If you say its not a beta, it's not a beta.
I realise this was an open question
IAA/AUv3 > Sampler > Sequencer in that order.
I want to do live open takes, record them, chop them, then sequence generated samples.
Its impossible to assign pads to individual notes, so most drum machines (Ruismaker, DM2, SeekBeats, Patterning) cannot be setup correctly.
There is no support for multi-output/input instruments that I can detect which is a blocker (SeekBeats, Patterning, Model 15, )
Can't reroute channel inputs or outputs so submixes are out or save channel strip configs, so there is no point investing time with them which is disappointing.
Can't set a default project Bpm so everything defaults to 90 bpm with a new project.
Chords don't output to the apps I've tried (DRC last night)
The sequencer is frustration incarnate, up there with the 'four clicks' jumping around in the UI. I'm taken aback.
Recordings duplicated all over the place in the "unsaved sessions folder" - why isn't there a global 'recordings' folder that you can set the Sampler to save to by default?
I could go on.
I don't wish your team negativity, but I have to back off. Its too maddening,
I would much prefer to celebrate the possibilities of BM3 by actually being able to use it at the level I expected.
I actually love making music, and hands in the air, do tend to go apeshit when the tools I use can't be relied on. Maybe I misjudged.
I have a lot of respect for you @mathieugarcia. I wish you well and hope you get there.
Personally stopping my usage is the ridiculous amount of taps to do one thing, press the browser button 4 times to get it to open, left right markers are enough to make me want to smash the iPad, the added new left right arrows for sub banks that have to be clicked 4 5 sometimes 6 times just to get them to go up or down, yet on the same page the up n down arrows for pad pages works perfectly everytime, but the sub banks should be on the pads anyway as i posted in the other thread with an image mock up. (Example of easily removed kludge)
All the crashes and such i can ignore, but a problem like the never ending taps messes with your head because you are thinking "is it me, is my finger too fat, is there something on my finger" you try a different app and it works perfectly and ultimately makes you walk away from BM3.
I am new to IOS. Spent many years on hardware samplers. BM3 is boss. There is def a few things to sort but I'm very happy I went down this path. Cheers Intua.
First off, I'd like to say right off the bat that I do appreciate what the developers are going for, and I am excited about the potential that I see in this app. There are a lot of unique features that make it special, and set it apart from the other DAW's out there. I can definitely see making it a part of my creative workflow at some point.
Having said that, I do keep running into pretty serious bugs / UI issues. It's frustrating because I want to get busy making music with this thing, but at every turn something seems to come up that throws a wrench in the process.
I seriously don't want to come across as negative. I can't even begin to imagine the complexity of what goes into creating an app like this. Seriously, you all are rock stars in my book.
I absolutely want this thing to thrive, and it's only becuase I do see how awesome this app can be that I'm bothering to post bug reports and such.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed and eagerly waiting for 3.0.3.
Thanks for all the feedback, really. The forum is a gold mine for us, as people are pretty honest. Saying out loud what you think about the app is right (no need to be vulgar though).
Workflow should be as smooth as possible and not break the creativity. The good thing is that adjusting the UI is in general pretty trivial; it just takes time to get there and ensure most of the users will find the UX efficient enough.
Hard to make everyone happy but good ideas will click immediately.
Bear with us, being a small team means more time to get through all the feedback, plan ahead and work on the improvements. Update 3.0.3 will be about critical bug fixes and other UI improvements, before we add anything else.
Cheers,
Mathieu.
As long as we keep away from personal insults, everything here is very valid information, i think it is pretty obvious that everybody now thinks that BM3 is the most important development in IOS music making moving forward, because it is moving forward, there are other important platforms, like Cubasis and Auria, but they move at a snails pace and IOS is no longer that inbred 5th cousin of desktop software that will allow that slow development.
Is the iPhone version still not available because of all the instabilities with the iPad version? I figure because the app is supposed to be universal that must be an issue.
The developers have said elsewhere that they will be making a statement about the iPhone release in September, that does not mean it is being released in September mind you, just that there will be news.
By the way the iPad version is not really unstable, it is not so crashy, they are quite rare, much rarer than a lot of apps that some very loud AB forum users would swear are the best thing since the wheel was invented, it just has some usability tweaks and a lot of small niggly bugs that need ironing out quickly, but as stated by mathiegarcia the 3.0.3 release is a big bug hunt release.
I agree. Frustration is just an element of love at time I guess. To the future!
To infinity and beyond!!
LMAO!
Are the transient detection problems considered bugs and will be included in the 3.03 update?