Perhaps. Don’t underestimate the cost of parts, assembly, shipping, support, and inventory for standalone devices. A combined device might sell for a lower price, but it would be cheaper to “make” and sell versus two separate devices.
A software only add-on to an Aeros might have greater profitablity at a lower price because the add-on can be sold directly to the existing owners of the Aeros … many of whom would never buy a second device but would buy a software add-on.
My guess/hope is the current Aeros could support this. That said, SS is limited by their software development capability.
Boss and others wont sit still and will eventually get it right. My guess is they rushed their last three products to market in response to competition … and they have more modern designs in the pipeline.
P.S. The idea of an Aeros Plus device is my pure fabrication and conjecture.
Since i just bought the Aeros, I’m not looking forward to another investment in a Aeros Plus system if it does happen after this experience. I switched from an Infinity since the Aeros was the same company as BB and i didn’t see anything on the internet other than glorious reviews so “I assumed” that the midi was a two way street and the Aeros would store the BB info on pre recorded songs. you know what they say about assuming! Anybody know if I could use a controller for the Infinity so i could store the BB info on the Infinity? thanks
The key there is integration, unfortunately, BB and Aeros are only brothers not conjoined. Still, we will work on perfecting that communication as best we can.
Hey @BrennanSingularSound, this might already be on your radar, but one way to accomplish this (that some people probably won’t be happy with, but whatever) could be to allow the Aeros to send a MIDI CC command on song load/song selection. There is a precedent for this behavior - some amp modelers and stompboxes can do this. (The Line 6 Helix has an option to send a MIDI CC command on preset change.)
While I’m sure that some people would still complain, this could be a good option to control other products while keeping the Aeros decoupled from other implementations. (No need to “store” outside settings on the Aeros.) A bonus of this is that these MIDI commands could be used to talk to anything, not just the Beatbuddy - a single CC command could change presents on multiple devices, or speak to a hub that could handle that behavior and trigger settings on stompboxes and other things. This would still require users to administer their own settings - it wouldn’t be a plug and play automatic process, and it would require setup - but that’s unavoidable given the level of customization that everything has (custom beat libraries, etc).
So last night I was messing around and thought I’d record a little riff with my BB and MIDI-connected Aeros. I gave the BB a start and was prepared for the Aeros to either start recording or playing whatever my last song was (the “active” song), but all I heard was the BB. When I looked at the song list on my Aeros (the Aeros was initially on the Home Screen), I noticed that no songs were highlighted, so I guess there was no “active” song to play or record to (and I didn’t choose a new song to record to). FWIW, all the normal MIDI-connected settings are on, so it wasn’t because of that.
My point for posting this is I’m wondering if this is a simple way to get the BB to play while not engaging the Aeros and without unplugging the MIDI cable? I don’t think we can “unselect” an active song (and TBH, I don’t know how one wasn’t highlighted on my Aeros), but this could be an easy way to get the option some of us are looking for (using the BB without the Aeros on occasion).
