Exciting News From Air Music Tech Coming!!!

NearTao wrote:I'm not a lawyer, but in most NDA terms it is effectively removing the beta tester's ability to communicate anything about the beta or other communications to anyone but the business, but allowing them to use your communications to them in any way they see fit.

Yeah was mainly kidding. I have never seen an NDA formulated that way that you are not allowed to talk about it but communication is to be treated as if everybody can see it. Oh well. Whatever floats InMusic's boat.

NearTao wrote:I was working on a software project as a release engineer, and in a meeting an engineering manager refused to have his engineers write unit tests because he considered it quality assurance work, on the call I said "show me one engineer who refuses to write a unit test and I'll show you an engineer who shouldn't be writing software", the QA department took me out for drinks that night.

I am a full time Dev and DevOps and have a strict policy about providing Unit/Integration/e2e-tests with my code. But I was working for a QA department for a year once where automated tests where strictly forbidden because "you loose control if you test automatically" ... at some point I was in charge of conducting a multi-user test with 1000 test accounts MANUALLY!!! which would have taken me at least a month of repetitive manual work to complete the tests neatly written down in an Excel sheet .. yes! Because I am lazy I used some simple automation tools to create those 1k accounts within minutes. Then recorded the Excel cases and replayed them with all accounts in parallel and was finished in 2 days. F my laziness of course Anyway Mr Lance Bossington found out that I was already done and used automation and called me into his office to shout at me that "We have no time for test automation! ... But if you automate you tests, then at least do a workshop for everyone to learn how you did it" ... so yeah and that is also why I am not wondering why the MPC OS has so many bugs. It's people like this one boss that ruin it for everybody but feel good about being the micromanager they are.

EnochLight wrote:Saw this earlier. Looks like an announcement incoming on November 10 - what do you think they’ve got in the works?

OK, so in regards to my original post from last night it looks like all of the new plugins from the MPC/Force are now available in any DAW as VST/AU/AAX:



https://www.airmusictech.com/

It sounds like the licence you buy from air is valid for three installs including mpc standalone, plus as vst in daws. Isn't this more flexible than the ones you buy direct from akai, which are limited to mpc use only? Or did akai update the mpc installers to include the vst and au versions as well? Are the existing mpc serials now valid for the vst versions?

And do they have built in preset management yet or are you still reliant on your daws own preset management.?

Looks like the VSTs must be a separate purchase from the MPC Software/Standalone version, at least I don't see VSTs added to my purchases yet.

NearTao wrote:Looks like the VSTs must be a separate purchase from the MPC Software/Standalone version, at least I don't see VSTs added to my purchases yet.

I see this for Fabric Pro and OPx but not for MiniD and Flavor

That's good to see, common sense prevails

mrmarbury wrote:

NearTao wrote:Looks like the VSTs must be a separate purchase from the MPC Software/Standalone version, at least I don't see VSTs added to my purchases yet.

I see this for Fabric Pro and OPx but not for MiniD and Flavor

Fabric Pro? Do you mean Flavor Pro, or Fabric XL?

So, clearly a no-brainer to release these as vst plugins, I assume it's minimal extra work for them. But how will these stack up to all the existing competition in the outside world? who is going to buy the mini d when there's many excellent, mature Minimoog emulations out there already. Why buy fabric when there's so many awesome rompler/synths out there.

I'm not knocking the air stuff, in the mpc walled garden they are great but what's the usp for non mpc users?

MPC-Tutor wrote:So, clearly a no-brainer to release these as vst plugins, I assume it's minimal extra work for them. But how will these stack up to all the existing competition in the outside world? who is going to buy the mini d when there's many excellent, mature Minimoog emulations out there already. What's the usp for non mpc users?

Personally, I feel Flavor Pro is an absolutely great "alternative" to XLN Audio's RC20, so it boils down to cost IMHO. As for the others, Fabric XL is a pretty solid rompler, and OPx-4 a pretty solid 4-voice FM synth, and even Mini-D is absolutely a solid Minimoog emulation, but those seem more of a hard sell for non-MPC/Force users IMHO. Fabric XL (or rather, the "Fabric Collection") still costs $159 USD on sale, and you can bet your bottom britches that I'd likely buy VPS Avenger for $71 USD more if I wasn't an MPC/Force user.

But I guess I just look at them as "alternatives" to other plugins that are already out there, so it very much does depend on pricing IMHO. But maybe their USP is "all of these work in standalone on an MPC/Force, so hey - maybe consider picking up the hardware too"!

EnochLight wrote:
Fabric Pro? Do you mean Flavor Pro, or Fabric XL?

Yeah of course. These XLs and Pros confuse me quite a bit

NearTao wrote:I was working on a software project as a release engineer, and in a meeting an engineering manager refused to have his engineers write unit tests because he considered it quality assurance work, on the call I said "show me one engineer who refuses to write a unit test and I'll show you an engineer who shouldn't be writing software", the QA department took me out for drinks that night.

Yes, yes and yes.

How old was the manager? Writing tests is state-of-the-art since how long?

Masi

On another forum they said a copy off the vst is on our inmusic account to those that purchased them. I don't really care anyways, don't ever use computers for music but I can see how great it is if you are moving a project to live or something.. now you can create additional content that matches up from live without going back to mpc.

Just checking… is that the announcement? Cross platform support for plugins purchased? If so, yes, solid. Not sure I’d put in the “exciting” bucket personally, but hey, all good. “Exciting” right now would be next MPC standalone patch that fixed a bunch of broken things without, er, breaking unbroken things.

MuttBeats wrote:Just checking… is that the announcement? Cross platform support for plugins purchased? If so, yes, solid. Not sure I’d put in the “exciting” bucket personally, but hey, all good.

Yes, that's the announcement. The (new) plugins are now all VST/AU/AAX as well, so you can use them in any DAW without the MPC Software running as a container.

Just occurred to me, there maybe a link to an OPX4 Manual in the VST

Found the Open User Guide option.

404 Page not found

Oh well, at least it looks like they plan on writing one.