Very disappointed that Autopilot is only for the BB2 as the following indicates: BeatBuddy: 2
Autopilot was a feature announced for the OG BB, released in Beta, delayed largely due to issues with BB Manager (IIRC), and now shows up as an exclusive feature of the next generation device.
Seems like there’s money to be had by selling autopilot enabled premium content to OG BB owners.
New BB2 is too wide to fit on my board. Even if it fit, I suspect the two buttons on the corners work best with a gap between pedals which would need even more space in some situations.
The Aeros plus BB (OG or 2) is a lot of board real estate that needs to be on the front row to make use of the buttons.
Really want a combined Aeros+BB pedal. That’s great for space, simplifies the cabling, and allows the drums to be aware of the loop and the looper to be aware of the drum measures, transitions, intro, etc.
We tried making Autopilot available for OG BB but we ran into technical issues that made it impractical, so we decided to make it available for BB2 only.
Regarding accessibility - you can put the BB2 on the back of your board and use our new 6 button SuperSwitch to control it - that can fit right in the front of your board.
We may build an Aeros+BB pedal, but not anytime soon.
There’s another method, but it doesn’t offer the same flexibility as BB2.
In BBMO, each song part has a repeat counter, so you’d construct the full song by arranging these parts and setting how many times each repeats.
When you click the export button, it creates a single MIDI file that reflects all the repeats. You can then re-import this MIDI file into BBMO as one complete song.
Is that possible?
If you need assistance with this, please send an email to support@singularsound.com.
With how much I’ve spent on the OG beatbuddy + premium library and additional footswitch based on the promise of autopilot that never arrived, there’s no way I’m spending the best part of £500 on the v2. My confidence in SS is basically zero after waiting for seven years only to asked for another £477 to replace something I never got any use out of because you didn’t follow through on delivering autopilot. We were also supposed to get a proper installable replacement for the BBM, but instead got BBMO which I don’t want, dont like and mostly work off line anyway so is no use.
I’m sure new users who have suffered SS lack of customer care, will be intrigued by the V2. But those of us who have been SS customers for a long time are probably far more cautious and nervous about trusting them without hard earned money!
Interesting choice of word: “impractical” rather than “impossible”.
Would there be something “impractical” about a full and transparent explanation?
My guess is they scrapped the old code base and restarted from scratch adding in autopilot. Technically they could have made it work on BB1, because clearly they had it working in beta. That would take effort, cost, and wasn’t anything they were excited about doing. Suspect they will not make any changes to the OG code base for beat buddy going forward which is more practical for the business versus maintaining two codebases. Just a guess.
If it’s any consolation there’s not much of their content which is enabled for autopilot. That will change, but it might be limited to the new content they own now and not the old content which they no longer sell themselves.
Was this beta ever released? (I don’t recall it, and it’s a subject I followed keenly.)
You know, it wouldn’t bother me a bit if Autopilot came out for original BB as a paid addition. Recouping real costs, making a profit, all valid IMO.
But orphaning the entire original ecosystem in this respect for any reason less than “actually impossible”, well, I just can’t feel that is a good decision.
Pre-enablement for AP is of course would be very convenient. I’d buy the (a) Premium Library based on that (if it ran on my hardware). Still though, opening an editor song-by-song and setting up the AP myself would be perfectly acceptable. Being left out stone-cold, not so much.
Perhaps. I don’t see why it should be a secret if that is the case.
If SS, for whatever complex of reasons, is no longer able or willing to support, improve, and extend the code base for the original BB, then I would suggest putting it in the public domain in complete and buildable form. Then there would be a chance that some dedicated genius(es) could add Autopilot (and perhaps other things), delivering something wonderful for all of SS’s patiently waiting customers/users/supporters.
The original hardware would then continue to have some resale value in the marketplace and take up an appropriate place in the food chain - doing a decent job for those on a budget, while allowing those who want to step up to the next generation do so at an incremental cost (e.g. $200-300) after selling their older ( but still valuable) BB gear.
Considering that there are many people that could/would buy the next generation at an incremental cost (but not full cost), and there are also many people that could easily buy the next generation regardless but -will not- after having been so “burned”, I really do think there is a case for SS to think deeper and do better (by their customers) around this subject.
David posted a couple of years ago about the trouble they had with modernizing the BeatBuddy Manager (BBM) which was supposed to include autopilot. He said that they had spent a significant amount of money to a reputable developer who failed, after more than a year, to deliver a product that met Singular Sound’s standards.
They also put the code up on GitHub but that never seemed to gain traction.
Ah, right you are! GitHub - SingularSound/openbbm: BeatBuddy Manager
I wonder if successfully creating Autopilot for use with BB2 yielded any information or insights not previously available that would be applicable to a renewed attempt at making Autopilot for BB1?
However, openbbm does not include the BB1 firmware (does it?), and presumably there would be firmware changes needed also to support adding Autopilot. Certainly it’s more than a casual project, in any case!
It might be a good thing to try crowd-sourced funding on. If 100 users pledged $100 each, that would be a $10k pot, payable on delivery (only) to whoever could make it happen. I imagine probably much more was spent on the prior failed effort, but there are so many possible reasons for that, it’s not a given that someone capable wouldn’t step up and have a go at it and maybe succeed.
Maybe the pot would have to be bigger than 10k, but regardless, if payment is only on successful delivery, there would be no risk for the pledgers. Why not see if there is free-lance talent out there willing to step up!