Re: the electrix repeater

[Kim Flint <kflint@loopers-delight.com>]

At 3:08 PM -0700 8/1/01, Brett Maraldo wrote:
>
>i suggested they just release the damn thing and fix the software later 
>and
>issue updates. i don't think they understand how software releases work
>(ie. you don't have to make the thing perfect)

i don't agree. maybe that is acceptable with PC's where everybody has come
to expect crappy quality, and it is relatively easy to update. But with
hardware products this is not the case. Dealing with updates is a major
pain for both users and the manufacturer. And people have the view of
hardware that it will be solid and work right. I've found that musicians
are very unforgiving of bugs in a hardware product, and I've got the scars
to show for it. :-)

also, as somebody else noted, real-time software is very difficult to
develop and even harder to debug. Loopers are different from other effects
devices in this way, because the user constantly interacts with it and the
code is very real-time and must be able to respond instantly to do whatever
the user wants. There is a huge array of possible states the machine might
be in at any time, and the user might hit any button at any moment. Just
testing all of the possibilities alone is an enormous job. Even bigger is
thinking through all of these possible cases and figuring out what it
should do in every one! This is why it takes us years to do Echoplex
upgrades. :-)

So to me the time Electrix has taken is no surprise at all. When they
demoed the repeater for me at NAMM in january, they were still talking
about features being added and function details being worked out. And there
were clearly bugs. I knew then that they were a loooong way from being
done, based on my experience of doing a very similar thing. anyway, I wish
them luck. hopefully you guys won't completely filet them before they get
it out. (probably you will save that for after it is out and you find the
first bug. :-)

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com