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Failed Muso
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22 Jul 2015

Did anyone else see the Props contribution to this presentation?

https://www.namm.org/nammu/special-a3e- ... sing-power (Props contribution starts at around 24m in)

If so, were you as embarrassed by it as I was?

I mean, Microsoft are never going to pull off a slick keynote the way the boys and girls from Cupertino do, but this was poor by anyone's standards. Subject matter aside, this was just awful and painful to watch.

And not wanting to stoke any OS flames, whilst Windows 10 promises to be a welcome and exciting development, I can't help but feel they're not quite there yet. So much of what was said was "We'll be doing this soon" or "It's on our radar". If they pull all of it off, it'll be exciting. But none of it is making me moist about the gusset just yet ;)

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EnochLight
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22 Jul 2015

Failed Muso wrote:Did anyone else see the Props contribution to this presentation?

https://www.namm.org/nammu/special-a3e- ... sing-power (Props contribution starts at around 24m in)

If so, were you as embarrassed by it as I was?

I mean, Microsoft are never going to pull off a slick keynote the way the boys and girls from Cupertino do, but this was poor by anyone's standards. Subject matter aside, this was just awful and painful to watch.

And not wanting to stoke any OS flames, whilst Windows 10 promises to be a welcome and exciting development, I can't help but feel they're not quite there yet. So much of what was said was "We'll be doing this soon" or "It's on our radar". If they pull all of it off, it'll be exciting. But none of it is making me moist about the gusset just yet ;)
Are you referring to Gerry's massive slide presentation fail, or just Microsoft's general presentation? I am surprised that Gerry didn't just play the video that Props put together explaining their Windows Phone/Azure work here at the 7 minute 15 second mark:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/KEY02
Win 10 | Ableton Live 11 Suite |  Reason 12 | i7 3770k @ 3.5 Ghz | 16 GB RAM | RME Babyface Pro | Akai MPC Live 2 & Akai Force | Roland System 8, MX1, TB3 | Dreadbox Typhon | Korg Minilogue XD

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gak
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23 Jul 2015

Image

I didn't listen to every single word but I'm not understanding what the problem is.

Not a coder. Don't care about presentation or special effects. Just info about the product. Dry is fine for me. The part I want to know more about is this latency/buffer improvement, but I wonder how asio will work? Will do more research later.

JackRussell
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23 Jul 2015

I've watched that presentation. Yes it's dry but didn't mind it. It's a great thing that Microsoft is taking audio seriously. It will benefit all of us. ASIO will be better too but only after the software / driver developers will implement it. And I'm sure they will.
The guys at the SonicState podcast reviewed that Talk here: https://youtu.be/gRUigawlgiY?t=33m33s
illegitimi non carborundum 

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Failed Muso
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23 Jul 2015

EnochLight wrote:Are you referring to Gerry's massive slide presentation fail, or just Microsoft's general presentation? I am surprised that Gerry didn't just play the video that Props put together explaining their Windows Phone/Azure work here at the 7 minute 15 second mark:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/KEY02
Mainly Gerry. That was hardly the best way of presenting the company to the massed audience. And what is it with Microsoft and the "man with the cam" doing over the shoulder shots of what's going on on-screen? How can anyone see the detail? It just struck me as very unprofessional, that's all.
JackRussell wrote:I've watched that presentation. Yes it's dry but didn't mind it. It's a great thing that Microsoft is taking audio seriously. It will benefit all of us. ASIO will be better too but only after the software / driver developers will implement it. And I'm sure they will.
The guys at the SonicState podcast reviewed that Talk here: https://youtu.be/gRUigawlgiY?t=33m33s
Yeah, Nick brought it to my attention. I agree that Microsoft finally taking audio seriously is long overdue. But a lot of what was said was "on the roadmap" stuff, and they never compared their performance stats with anything else outside of their ecosystem. But, a unified platform across mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop and embedded is a very exciting prospect.
gak wrote:
I didn't listen to every single word but I'm not understanding what the problem is.

Not a coder. Don't care about presentation or special effects. Just info about the product. Dry is fine for me. The part I want to know more about is this latency/buffer improvement, but I wonder how asio will work? Will do more research later.
My problem, as explained above, was the incredibly poor presentation skills. Seeing as I make a living from doing that kind of stuff myself, I was more than a tad surprised at the lack of professionalism. You may not be too bothered, but then we have the luxury of fast forwarding through the crap to pick out the good stuff. However, those who watched live, either in the room, or online, must've been cringing badly during all those ums, ahs and "WTF" moments when the man from Propellerhead was showing slides from Cakewalk and Presonus! :lol:

And ultimately, Gerry presented nothing new, nor exciting. Just a pile of stuff we already know, running on Windows 10, which we'd expect it to do anyway.

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EnochLight
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23 Jul 2015

Failed Muso wrote:And ultimately, Gerry presented nothing new, nor exciting. Just a pile of stuff we already know, running on Windows 10, which we'd expect it to do anyway.
So... Figure running on Windows 10 (and by extension - Windows Phone) wasn't new or exciting??! I'd say that's a pretty big deal.
Win 10 | Ableton Live 11 Suite |  Reason 12 | i7 3770k @ 3.5 Ghz | 16 GB RAM | RME Babyface Pro | Akai MPC Live 2 & Akai Force | Roland System 8, MX1, TB3 | Dreadbox Typhon | Korg Minilogue XD

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gak
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23 Jul 2015

These things are always a lightening rod. Being a very happy windoze user I'm looking forward to it. Better latency and performance that is measurable? I'm stoked.

Still not decided on this machine. Basically I have reason (which people seem to be saying is spiffy) and a focusrite FW card (no clue) and a nektar impact and my USB wifi (linksys AE3000) and everything works by and large.

Ok, do the old computer and see if things work, right? Well, but I need to do a clean install anyways.....this would be fine as I back up all of my songs/etc anyways. Indecision, my faithful companion......

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Psychlist1972
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24 Jul 2015

Hey all

Sorry to butt in here, but I wanted to explain the bit with Gerry. He's a good guy, and Propellerhead is a great company.

Gerry got a bit flustered because right before the keynote started (literally right before), the NAMM crew told me that his video was corrupted and they couldn't play it on their Mac. He was going to run through it and use it to help his narrative. As a result, he ended up missing some points, and looking at the screens behind him instead of the previews in front of the stage. I had to run out and get the slides back in position for him because he then hit "end slide show". It was, honestly, a bit of a mess as a result.

We had the camera for over the shoulder stuff at the recommendation of both NAMM and Bitwig (and us). They (and I agree) wanted to show the actual performance, not just an image of a pretty static performance screen. Thavius agreed as well for his performance. If the rest was dry/boring/whatever, I take full responsibility. I'd love to know what folks did or didn't like, though, so I (and others) can do better next time. Contact info below.

Beyond what he said about sharing and encouraging music creation, here are the main points Gerry was going to hit in his portion of the keynote:

- Figure runs (will run) on Windows Phone and Windows PC, with zero code differences between the two. It's the Universal Windows Platform.
- It's a prototype UI right now. They'll adjust for form factor later (Personally, I don't like showing a phone-like letterboxed UI on a tablet/desktop. If he had turned the tablet sideways, it would have filled the screen. But that's all prototype UI in any case.)
- The apps use the new low-latency audio APIs we introduced in Windows 10. These are a big deal for that type of app.
- Propellerhead Discover is partially moved and continuing to move to Microsoft Azure as the cloud service

Propellerhead has always been a good partner. We're happy they're continuing to work with us, and very happy they are moving more into collaborative areas with services like Discover.

Sort-of proof of ID. Email / tweet me if there are questions/concerns.
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/11210326-post835.html

Pete Brown
@pete_brown
pete dot brown at microsoft dot com
Pete Brown - Microsoft
@pete_brown | pete dot brown at microsoft dot com

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EnochLight
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24 Jul 2015

Psychlist1972 wrote:Hey all

Sorry to butt in here, but I wanted to explain the bit with Gerry. He's a good guy, and Propellerhead is a great company.

Gerry got a bit flustered because right before the keynote started (literally right before), the NAMM crew told me that his video was corrupted and they couldn't play it on their Mac. He was going to run through it and use it to help his narrative. As a result, he ended up missing some points, and looking at the screens behind him instead of the previews in front of the stage. I had to run out and get the slides back in position for him because he then hit "end slide show". It was, honestly, a bit of a mess as a result.

We had the camera for over the shoulder stuff at the recommendation of both NAMM and Bitwig (and us). They (and I agree) wanted to show the actual performance, not just an image of a pretty static performance screen. Thavius agreed as well for his performance. If the rest was dry/boring/whatever, I take full responsibility. I'd love to know what folks did or didn't like, though, so I (and others) can do better next time. Contact info below.

Beyond what he said about sharing and encouraging music creation, here are the main points Gerry was going to hit in his portion of the keynote:

- Figure runs (will run) on Windows Phone and Windows PC, with zero code differences between the two. It's the Universal Windows Platform.
- It's a prototype UI right now. They'll adjust for form factor later (Personally, I don't like showing a phone-like letterboxed UI on a tablet/desktop. If he had turned the tablet sideways, it would have filled the screen. But that's all prototype UI in any case.)
- The apps use the new low-latency audio APIs we introduced in Windows 10. These are a big deal for that type of app.
- Propellerhead Discover is partially moved and continuing to move to Microsoft Azure as the cloud service

Propellerhead has always been a good partner. We're happy they're continuing to work with us, and very happy they are moving more into collaborative areas with services like Discover.

Sort-of proof of ID. Email / tweet me if there are questions/concerns.
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/11210326-post835.html

Pete Brown
@pete_brown
pete dot brown at microsoft dot com
Wow Pete - thanks for chiming in! Very much appreciate the clarification; it was great to see Win10's new low latency audio-API's and Figure.

Cheers!
Win 10 | Ableton Live 11 Suite |  Reason 12 | i7 3770k @ 3.5 Ghz | 16 GB RAM | RME Babyface Pro | Akai MPC Live 2 & Akai Force | Roland System 8, MX1, TB3 | Dreadbox Typhon | Korg Minilogue XD

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tiker01
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24 Jul 2015

Psychlist1972 wrote:Hey all

Sorry to butt in here, but I wanted to explain the bit with Gerry. He's a good guy, and Propellerhead is a great company.

Gerry got a bit flustered because right before the keynote started (literally right before), the NAMM crew told me that his video was corrupted and they couldn't play it on their Mac. He was going to run through it and use it to help his narrative. As a result, he ended up missing some points, and looking at the screens behind him instead of the previews in front of the stage. I had to run out and get the slides back in position for him because he then hit "end slide show". It was, honestly, a bit of a mess as a result.

We had the camera for over the shoulder stuff at the recommendation of both NAMM and Bitwig (and us). They (and I agree) wanted to show the actual performance, not just an image of a pretty static performance screen. Thavius agreed as well for his performance. If the rest was dry/boring/whatever, I take full responsibility. I'd love to know what folks did or didn't like, though, so I (and others) can do better next time. Contact info below.

Beyond what he said about sharing and encouraging music creation, here are the main points Gerry was going to hit in his portion of the keynote:

- Figure runs (will run) on Windows Phone and Windows PC, with zero code differences between the two. It's the Universal Windows Platform.
- It's a prototype UI right now. They'll adjust for form factor later (Personally, I don't like showing a phone-like letterboxed UI on a tablet/desktop. If he had turned the tablet sideways, it would have filled the screen. But that's all prototype UI in any case.)
- The apps use the new low-latency audio APIs we introduced in Windows 10. These are a big deal for that type of app.
- Propellerhead Discover is partially moved and continuing to move to Microsoft Azure as the cloud service

Propellerhead has always been a good partner. We're happy they're continuing to work with us, and very happy they are moving more into collaborative areas with services like Discover.

Sort-of proof of ID. Email / tweet me if there are questions/concerns.
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/11210326-post835.html

Pete Brown
@pete_brown
pete dot brown at microsoft dot com
I would have been happier seeing a great presentation, but you never know it might have had to happen like this so now we have you here. ;) Welcome on board!
    
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jfrichards
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24 Jul 2015

One comment made by Gerry at 32:50 needs a little clarification and is near the center of the discussion on establishing universal platforms through the cloud. Gerry says that "...Discover, which is on the Propellerheads website where thousands and thousands and thousands of these loops are made by different apps and people just freely sharing their music. And other people on that site can remix your music, add to it, you get an email saying hey, so and so worked on your piece check it out, listen to it, it's a free collaboration service, and people are just joining in droves..." The clarification is that it is not yet a freely collaborative service, far from it. It is for collaboration using the three Propellerhead apps, Figure, Take, and Reason. If it really was based on using different apps, it would be revolutionary, not simply the step towards it that it is. I am very excited about the goal of all these inter-app cloud developments but I'm looking forward to those visionaries who can step away from their particular company limitations and speak from the perspective of both Windows and Apple users, iPhone and Android and Windows phones, and including all 15 major DAWs, in other words, from the perspective of musicians as a whole. Many DAWs are seriously developing these cloud systems, but it is still a pain in the butt to learn and use the specific company systems and even worse when you find out you cannot simply collaborate with someone who uses a different app/DAW. We need collaborative standards accepted by all the players before we can use the words "universal" and "freely collaborative". Microsoft Windows paying more attention to audio is a step forward and Discover is a step forward, but there are hundreds of these steps being taken this year alone. Despite the welcome technical advances, individual companies claiming to be THE solution to what all musicians want in the cloud collaboration realm is not only dumb, it is also slowing down the solution.

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jfrichards
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24 Jul 2015

Oh my goodness, the implications from this Build presentation for Reason and all DAWs are huge*! Add this stuff to a mutually agreed-upon wav stems framework convertor for each of the 15 major DAWs and we would be miles ahead on cloud collaboration for musicians. Imagine all the DAWs working on all the platforms and all able to exchange stem frames with each other.

edit: *gives a taste of why Ernst is so anxious to get the mobile app side going.
Last edited by jfrichards on 25 Jul 2015, edited 2 times in total.

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Psychlist1972
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24 Jul 2015

EnochLight wrote:
Failed Muso wrote:...

Are you referring to Gerry's massive slide presentation fail, or just Microsoft's general presentation? I am surprised that Gerry didn't just play the video that Props put together explaining their Windows Phone/Azure work here at the 7 minute 15 second mark:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/KEY02
In case you're interested, the two drummer demos (bluetooth sticks and the touch app) in that keynote were ones that I wrote/worked on. A version of the drum demo, showing the low-latency audio APIs, is available on my github:

https://github.com/psychlist1972

There's also an example of the new MIDI API up there. We're working with companies like Propellerhead to implement the new APIs where they make sense. The MIDI one is especially exciting to me because that's where we're going to innovate going forward. We have lots of plans there.

You may also like these couple videos I directed for the same event. The synth is the Tesla Coil; it's not reacting to the music, the actual sound is PWM on the sparks. We built it for Build but the crew chickened out a bit about having 600KV lightning on stage with execs and all that equipment, though, so we ended up just recording a video of the performance :)





No Propellerhead in those, though.

Finally, if you catch the end of the Day 1 keynote from the channel9 site, you'll see what we did with Staffpad and the Bond quartet. It was a ton of fun.

Pete
Pete Brown - Microsoft
@pete_brown | pete dot brown at microsoft dot com

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GeiddE
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26 Jul 2015

meh
I always found Gerry a bit blah - not exciting to me at all
Besides I'm just getting settled on Win8.1
blah blah blaugh
IMHO

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