Fellow working on CP, YC, CK editor/librarians

[ElmerJFudd]

http://www.jmelas.gr/stage/index.php
 

He’s done this for Motif, Montage, DTX before.  
Win and Mac builds. 

[Stokely]

It's kind of silly that Yamaha (and others) won't even put out a librarian with their products.  I am not saying "can't" because obviously they could.  Novation does it for the Peak/Summit, and Nord of course has their sound manager.   Until I started using these, I would have kind of shrugged them off as a "nice to have" but they really are very useful and one "pro" in the column of those brands IMO.   Novation's is really easy because it simply runs in a web browser.

[Docbop]

45 minutes ago, Stokely said:

It's kind of silly that Yamaha (and others) won't even put out a librarian with their products.  I am not saying "can't" because obviously they could.  Novation does it for the Peak/Summit, and Nord of course has their sound manager.   Until I started using these, I would have kind of shrugged them off as a "nice to have" but they really are very useful and one "pro" in the column of those brands IMO.   Novation's is really easy because it simply runs in a web browser.

 

 

Not crazy if you look at it from the corporations POV.   Okay we have to develop it,  QA testing,  documentation,  and support it and update it for when product(s) update.   First cost develop is the smallest of the bunch.  QA can get expensive especially if it has to work with 3rd party libraries or worse user created libraries.  Documentation cost about the same as development.   Now the nightmare cost supporting it to a bunch of whiners and people that want to break things doing stupid stuff and call it bugs and public demand bugs be fixed yesterday.    All this for a free piece of software for a product we're having trouble keeping the price competitive with already.    To a corporation Support is not a profit center in fact it's a necessary evil so limit the number of things you have to support.   

 

The high cost of QA and Support is why we don't have lots of nice little add ons. 

[AnotherScott]

Yamaha used to supply their own PC/Mac software for some of their boards... and honestly, it wasn't very good. I think we're actually better off with having them outsource it like this. Yeah, it's 40 euros, but it's probably better to pay 40 euros for something well made and well supported, than to get something free that isn't.

[ElmerJFudd]

1 hour ago, AnotherScott said:

Yamaha used to supply their own PC/Mac software for some of their boards... and honestly, it wasn't very good. I think we're actually better off with having them outsource it like this. Yeah, it's 40 euros, but it's probably better to pay 40 euros for something well made and well supported, than to get something free that isn't.

Oh for years Yamaha would put out PC only software, sometimes half baked mac ports. Thank goodness they bought Steinberg, because they just aren’t a strong software company. 
 

 

[Mike Kent]

Yamaha has soundmondo, a librarian and sharing webmidi app:

https://soundmondo.yamahasynth.com/

[Stokely]

On 5/7/2023 at 12:40 PM, Docbop said:

 

 

Not crazy if you look at it from the corporations POV.   Okay we have to develop it,  QA testing,  documentation,  and support it and update it for when product(s) update.   First cost develop is the smallest of the bunch.  QA can get expensive especially if it has to work with 3rd party libraries or worse user created libraries.  Documentation cost about the same as development.   Now the nightmare cost supporting it to a bunch of whiners and people that want to break things doing stupid stuff and call it bugs and public demand bugs be fixed yesterday.    All this for a free piece of software for a product we're having trouble keeping the price competitive with already.    To a corporation Support is not a profit center in fact it's a necessary evil so limit the number of things you have to support.   

 

The high cost of QA and Support is why we don't have lots of nice little add ons. 

Fine, but that makes you wonder why Novation (which has got to be hundreds of times smaller than Yamaha) and Nord (likewise) and others bother.  

All I know is, its a feature that I really value and a company who provides a good free one has that much better chance of having me buy their product.  Of course, that's one feature among many.   That said, I have owned several Yamahas and have considered getting the Melas tools, but the Modx larger screen and live sets have made it not such a priority.

I wasn't aware soundmondo was a librarian, I knew it was for sharing patches.

[Docbop]

44 minutes ago, Stokely said:

Fine, but that makes you wonder why Novation (which has got to be hundreds of times smaller than Yamaha) and Nord (likewise) and others bother.  

All I know is, its a feature that I really value and a company who provides a good free one has that much better chance of having me buy their product.  Of course, that's one feature among many.   That said, I have owned several Yamahas and have considered getting the Melas tools, but the Modx larger screen and live sets have made it not such a priority.

I wasn't aware soundmondo was a librarian, I knew it was for sharing patches.

 

Hey it's just life in the business world big companies cut corners to increase profits and small company have to do more to attract customers with feature and customer service.      I've worked for both and worked as Product Manager in both and big and small so know first hand how they think.   If you have a small company you like that's great support them.   For me in music both guitar world and keyboard I use products from big and small companies.   I vote with who I spend my dollars with. 

[AnotherScott]

2 hours ago, Stokely said:

Fine, but that makes you wonder why Novation (which has got to be hundreds of times smaller than Yamaha) and Nord (likewisr e) and others bother. 

Companies also have different skills.

 

Related... I'm not sure I've ever seen a good Mac/PC application come out of a Japanese company. I'm not sure why. It may be related to why, for decades, so many of their boards have had weak interfaces and manuals (even apart from the obvious problematic Japanese-English translation issues). Maybe it has something to do with the language differences. Some believe that your language actually affects the way you think. It makes me wonder if some of the things we have found confusing in Yamaha/Korg/Roland products actually make perfect sense to their Japanese consumers.

[Stokely]

I guess its all good if there's a 3rd party librarian (or even editor)--you just have to budget a bit more is all if its not free.

I find the Modx OS pretty intuitive though I know others differ greatly.   I figure if you can design something as complex as that, you should be able to design at least a librarian.    They don't have to be PC/mac, Novation's is browser-based.  Of course that one is for a synth (no samples), and it's "just" a librarian.  Very handy though.

[Al Quinn]

I have the Librarian and Editor for the CP73 from John Melas. They’re good products. They do what’s advertised. Well worth the price.
 

However, I liked the way I could drag and drop patches to different locations with Nord’s Sound Manager. As best I can tell, the Librarian by Melas doesn’t provide that type of functionality and I wish it did. Patch management is kind of unfriendly without it. Nord makes it easy peasy. 

[ElmerJFudd]

3 hours ago, Al Quinn said:

I have the Librarian and Editor for the CP73 from John Melas. They’re good products. They do what’s advertised. Well worth the price.
 

However, I liked the way I could drag and drop patches to different locations with Nord’s Sound Manager. As best I can tell, the Librarian by Melas doesn’t provide that type of functionality and I wish it did. Patch management is kind of unfriendly without it. Nord makes it easy peasy. 

First thing I do is write the developer when there’s a feature I’d like to see. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don’t. But you never know! 😉

 

I personally think they like to get emails from people who are actually using what they made and often would love to hear about something they didn’t think of.   What they don’t care for is “doesn’t work, 0 stars”. 😃

[JFN]

15 hours ago, Al Quinn said:

I have the Librarian and Editor for the CP73 from John Melas. They’re good products. They do what’s advertised. Well worth the price.
 

However, I liked the way I could drag and drop patches to different locations with Nord’s Sound Manager. As best I can tell, the Librarian by Melas doesn’t provide that type of functionality and I wish it did. Patch management is kind of unfriendly without it. Nord makes it easy peasy. 

 

I have the librarian and editor for the CP and YC as well. I am able to drag and drop patches and re-arrange them, but it does not update the CP in real time like the Nord software. What I do is first download all the live sets and save that as a back up. Then I save a new version of the same file and start re-arranging things the way I want them. When I'm done, I transmit everything back to the CP. Not as convenient as Nord but it gets the job, and I'm picky about how I like my stuff arranged and use lots of custom created live sets. Hope this helps.

 

John

[Al Quinn]

Thanks John. Yeah, your description is spot on. I would still say it’s a less friendly tool for patch management but as you’ve said it still gets the job done. 

[Docbop]

You're hitting on the difference between a 3rd party programmer whose only knowledge is published API data and a company programmer who has access all the internal data structures and APIs.   

[AnotherScott]

2 hours ago, Docbop said:

You're hitting on the difference between a 3rd party programmer whose only knowledge is published API data and a company programmer who has access all the internal data structures and APIs.   

and related... Nord can build into the keyboard's firmware the things they need for their software to work. IOW, if the Melas software doesn't do something you'd like, it's not necessarily that they don't have access to the inner data structures and APIs of the board... it's possible the APIs you're referring to simply don't exist! In theory, an in-house editor programmer could call down to the board designers and say, "hey, I'd like my software to be able to do X, can you please build in a hook that will let me do that?" But John Melas probably can't get Yamaha to insert code into their keyboards in order to facilitate what he might like to do, whereas another Yamaha employee might have more of a shot.