#125

we are probably arguing around the same thing despite probably general agreement bc we are different people with different perspectives and language. I didn’t watch the livestream so you may have additional context I am missing.

I want W/ to do the same thing it already does (happy to pay as a cost the features we are already tossing out) but as a stable module.

my understanding is that these conditions are mutually exclusive:

•the module as originally designed requires the SD to do the functions I want it to do.
•using the SD in this manner eventually creates critical failures on the card.
•2.0 creates new modes to maintain the viability of W/ as a hardware platform but doesn’t resolve that the original design (again, which is what I use) is essentially flawed and unreliable.
•“delay” and “synth” bypass the card completely, and my guess is that there is not enough available realtime memory on W/ to create a live looper of a length beyond the max of the “delay” mode.

I also do not want to noise up the thread as by now I think my perspective has been articulated, tho I am happy to clarify, but it’s probably time to just wait for more official perspective on this thing.

4 Likes
#126

Seems like you’d have to get a crow to accomplish the v1 stuff you liked on v2. Not my concern to sell you on crow, but it’s probably worth looking into a bunch of other cool stuff you might like to do with a crow simultaneously. It’s super useful and affordable for a multitude of tasks and flexibility. Good luck! I do appreciate your predicament.

I will say, as somebody who struggled a ton with v1, I have taken to v2 immediately and having a total blast! No cheat sheet required this time around. Amazing work and thank you Trent!!!

Definitely hearing some funny artifacts when modulating delay times. Sounds cool though. I’ll probably miss it when it’s “fixed“ like I missed the crunchy low speeds in v1 lol

1 Like
#127

You’d need more than crow to do it and even that’s not certain. Some folks don’t want to buy extra modules or figure out how to script that.

4 Likes
#128

in addition to @Jonny’s point, using Crow would not in any way mitigate the instability of a Tape mode accessing the SD

2 Likes
#129

Okay here’s my suggestions/requests for Tape mode

Play controls:

  • All these controls are super intuitive and are the best improvement with the new tape mode, don’t want any changes to these, except:
  • Would like ¼ speed and 4x speed back :3, not sure if this is in the cards already or not.

Loop controls:

  • Prefer “cues” to loops doubled or halved, I feel like it’s more playable without requiring i2c millisecond precision. Also, for non tempo synced looping easier to make on the fly adjustments. For tempo synced applications i2c or cv already enables a lot of flexibility already. Don’t care too much about triggering the start by pressing loop… Went through a few iterations of how these controls could work I think this is the one I find most intriguing,
I hope it's helpful and not just annoying:

Loop is empty

  • loop: tape will play from its current position and loop between the next cue point it hits and the previous cue point -> playing
  • loop+up: add cue and continue forward -> capturing

Loop is capturing

  • loop+down: add cue and begin looping between this and previous cue -> playing
    • nb: switches recording OFF

Loop is playing

  • loop+up: add cue which becomes new loop start
    • (because tape continues playing forward)
  • loop+down: add cue which becomes new loop end
    • (because tape jumps back to previous cue)
  • loop (hold): ignores cues to loop and deletes them while it’s held.
  • loop: stops looping, retains cue points -> empty

Notes:

  • the “up” and “down” controls are opposite from v.1 (down added cue and up added cue and began looping) but I think it makes more sense to have “up” be forward and “down” be backwards to emulate play controls.
  • there’s no easy way to jump to cue points, which maybe is the main point of cue points as a concept

Here’s another alternative:

Loop is empty

  • loop: set the start point of a new loop and add cue -> capturing

Loop is capturing

  • loop: set the end point of the loop and add cue -> playing

Loop is playing

  • loop: add cue
  • loop+down: jump to previous cue point
  • loop+up: jump to next cue point -> capturing
  • loop (hold): disable looping -> empty

Notes:

  • Loop+up/down would jump to cue points even when the tape is not playing. Loop+up allows you to jump to “fresh tape” by taking you to the end of your loop. BUT this means if you are looping (that is, if you have play engaged), loop+up would begin capturing, with the end loop point as your new starting loop point. If you don’t set a loop end, you could then simply stop hold loop before setting your own loop start.
  • there would probably need to be a way to delete cue points. Loop (hold) is the way to escape looping mode so it probably wouldn’t be good if that deleted cue points as well… but maybe in practice it would be okay if that’s what happened? You add cues, you jump around, always looping, and when you’re done you hold loop and the cues disappear? You’d have to make sure you’ve jumped to fresh tape at the end before deleting cues… and there’s the possibility of accidentally deleting your cues, although that possibility exists of accidentally deleting your loop currently… Not good for saving cues between power cycles… Okay I’ve looped (heh) back around, I don’t think it should delete cues.
  • Difficult for cues to serve everyones different use cases however, so it has to be assumed there will be a compromise somewhere. It’s not about how to make it work in this specific use case, it’s about what enables creative flexibility.

If you’ve read this far, I’m sorry for my carrying on.

@baleen v.2 mitigates the instability of tape mode accessing the SD card. I believe that is a solved problem in v.2 Using crow would allow you to jump to designated spots on the tape in a vaguely similar (although notably different) way to cue points, I think that was the point being made. That being said, I don’t want to have to buy a crow and I have pretty much no interest in i2c control of tape mode. Great for those who want it, but it should work without it, definitely.

#130

v2 addresses many points of failure of the SD card since it was rebuilt from the ground up (see above), so this probably would no longer be a problem. Of course, this is where beta testing will be helpful - I plan on writing some crow scripts to do just that.

1 Like
#132

I’m just about to get started with W/. I loved what I saw in the live stream (after all I ordered a W/ immediately after), but the more I think about it, sacrificing cue points is a real bummer for me.

The cues and looping are what attracted me to W/. Having to use an external thing (i.e., what you program crow with) to manage them runs almost directly counter to what’s great about them. It seems that one could write a crow program to do CV-controlled cues and leave it alone, but then crow is stuck doing one job way below its pay grade, and you’re basically getting v1 in v2, for twice the HP and nearly twice the price (albeit with more stability). This dependency feels awkward.

I’m torn, as I think others have expressed, between stability plus the (excellent) new features vs. a beautiful and unique (albeit imperfect) virtual tape paradigm. No disrespect whatsoever intended toward Trent - he does absolutely lovely stuff, and I realize a lot of this is down to personal preference. I apologize if I’m just whining here.

P.S. I don’t have a crow, although I would like one at some point. I haven’t worked much with ii/i2c outside of some really basic Arduino stuff years ago. I’m not super familiar with ii’s lead/follow paradigm and the ramifications thereof, but perhaps rather than basically having W/ v2 depend on crow for cues and the like, might it be interesting to instead make crow and W/'s relationship more mutually symbiotic? For example, W/ could continue to store cue points, but these could also be used by crow via ii to serve as a storage that could enrich crow scripts, say for sequencing. Just a (probably silly) idea.

1 Like
#133

[quote=“renegog, post:129, topic:34091”]`baleen v.2 mitigates the instability of tape mode accessing the SD card. I believe that is a solved problem in v.2 Using crow would…
[/quote]

i’m not buying a $200 module (Crow) to get the functionality of a module I have already purchased.

In general (as I think I’ve made clear above) - I find 2.0 confusing (three modes?) and disappointing in that the main features I use have been removed, and the controls for the feature I would use (Tape) are really confusing (other users here have accounted this quite clearly).

as i’ve written a couple few times in this thread, the main features I use on W/ are:
•cue creation, modulation around cues (not present)
•button press tape erase on startup, Mannequins reply:
“Not currently. I’ll consider adding that (or something similar) later. That feature was originally added because folks were ending up with glitchy noise on the tape due to SD card issues, so I’m less in rush to add it.”

I’m feeling really repetitive as I’ve written this a lot here.

I am actually going to check out of this thread bc I have nothing more to add beyond what I’ve already posted and continuing to circle these issues is souring me on the whole process around a module that I like.

1 Like
#134

totally understand not wanting to buy another module. I was just responding to the other point you brought up. I feel for anyone losing functionality they’ve relied on due to this (in-progress) update.

fwiw - and this isn’t directed at anyone in particular - by far my biggest v1 use case has been as a weird collage/sketchbook. I never gelled with cues and I’ve never erased a tape. in those ways + as a crow user this update is perfect for me. I don’t want that to come off as gloating or anything… really just want to voice my positivity and excitement.

8 Likes
#135

Thank you all for the feedback! I’m combing through the discussion to figure out what’s good and bad and ugly, and make a plan for finishing this update. There’s clearly still a lot to be done, but I’m confident the system as a whole is stable & extensible, so it should go quickly.

To quickly speak to the ‘cue’ debate— I’m listening, and have been thinking about these things a lot over the past few days (and years). I need to focus on getting the base functionality out the door, but nothing is set in stone. Once v2 is stable, I’m open to thinking of ways to make cues available again. I’ll bring proposals, hopefully in the form of a new firmware.

On 3 modes— This module isn’t designed to be a swiss-army knife. Each engine is opinionated and has its own character. By adding these new characters we hope to open up the module to a new audience (an audience less interested in the tape machine concept). W/Syn was originally an alternate firmware, but our alpha testers suggested it would be better all together. I’m happy I was able to make that happen, though I imagine most people will stick to just one engine.

41 Likes
#136

Not sure if this matters, but I personally don’t need 8 hours of tape. Even if that was 4 hours, it would still feel luxurious. I bring this up in case it would enable more memory allocation (either sd card or ram) to handle cueing or other things.

6 Likes
#137

Regarding this, I do indeed feel like the module having a synth makes it more like a disting (the eurorack Swiss army knife). I don’t quite see the relationship of an FM synth to the virtual tape machine concept (different on Just Friends/Just Type synth though). If it was something like a mellotron, then it would feel more at home. Not a big deal in the end, but if it shifts energy away from getting the tape stuff done, I’d rather it not be included.

This is all a matter of personal opinion, of course, but maybe others feel the same way and it will steer and contribute to the conversation. I consider the beta thread an open forum for concerns and critical feedback, so I hope these comments are welcome rather than discouraged.

8 Likes
#138

me neither. and with this 2hp UI it smells too much of “added value”, for people who can talk i2c to the w/

1 Like
#139

I don’t see it that way. It works fine on it’s own and doesn’t require i2c.

2 Likes
#140

I enjoy the new features and the directions w/ is taking with regards to UI. The synth sounds good, and the delay mode is wonderful! Tape mode does need the most work, but I love where we are going. Thanks for the work @Galapagoose!

15 Likes
#141

The only thing I would hope to see added to this is some way of fast navigation and returnal. Holding a direction and navigating 8 hours of tape at 2x speed sounds very bad. Perhaps there could be navigation by 5-10 minute chunks, or some kind of bookmarking.

3 Likes
#142

Following this thread with lot of attention, as this W/ module is perhaps the one i use the more extensively. I really like the fact that Mannequins team is trying to gives to this module the stability it was lacking. I think it needs a whole lot of courage to rethink the whole module at the begining in order to improve it.
But definitely i will not update, 'cos i feel a lot like @renegog about the tape paradigm and the primary reason why I bought this module.
Had really good result with cue point and sampling capabilities, and with the idea of history repeater.
Also, i don’t really get how to find your way in a 8 hours tape long… Assuming that lot of material can be recorded along…
So it leads me to a thought : If cue point are more likely to lead the engine / SD card to critical failures, Perhaps it would be a good compromise to turn those into some kind of snapshots, i mean, a limited number of specific user defined loops, let’s say 8 as the number of leds, wich would offer same functionnalities than the original cue points (CV jumping beetween sections, 1Volt/ocatve response) minus the possibility to record on the loop over and over. This would be a read only mode as soon as you access to the locations.
Second thought, following the first one… a second mode offering quick access to 8 steady timestamps dividing the 8 hour long tape into 8 equal divisions…It would be easier to wrap our ears along the tape.
Just my two cents, but i think this would be a good compromise…

3 Likes
#143

Observation:

  • Folks who are using W/ alone with no interest in all the Crow/Teletype stuff seem irritable.
  • Folks who love using Crow/Teletype seem excited.

Maybe the big question/challenge is whether both groups will find W/ 2.0 satisfactory.

9 Likes
#144

I like these suggestions, personally. I am one of the users who is currently in the middle of the road for this beta (well, okay, a bit more on the “hell yah!” side, but yeah). I LOVED the sound that w/ got from modulating speed. It was truly unlike anything else out there, in terms of result. And being able to instantly double or halve the speed with the flick of the switch RULED, when I could figure it out.

I think that the cue and tape speed system can probably come back in some shape or form and I believe that these methods of spreading the 8 hour tape across 8 one hour sections could totally work! I do think the UI of the original w/ left a lot to be desired. I actually had resorted to mostly i2c/Teletype style layout so I always knew exactly what I was doing. Hence my lack of concern for the new i2c tools.

But again, Trent clearly cares for the device and has bequeathed an embarrassment of riches for 2hp and $200usd. The work done is nothing short of remarkable. There is room in this beta to help the creators truly think through the next steps. That’s what a beta is.

As for the users feeling left in the cold, lets continue to brainstorm ways to have our cake and eat it too! Think of ways that a cue system, or variable tape speeds could work and a) not DESTROY your SD card and b) not confuse the hell out of folks like me.

Maybe if we all come up with something compelling, simple and elegant enough, we could begin to see these ideas implemented!

5 Likes
#145

so, why did the Cue system destroy SD cards? was it re-writing to the same blocks over and over again until they were useless?