Please be honest - will Beatbuddy Manager ever get updated?

BeatBuddy General
#1

Hi Friends,

I purchased a BeatBuddy in 2019. I love it for quick beats and for backing tracks.

I’m finally ready to add my own beats to the BeatBuddy…and I was wondering if someone can share legitimate news about whether the BeatBuddy Manager software is going to be updated for Mac any time soon?

My impression (reading these forums) is people don’t have much confidence in Singular Sound anymore. This makes me sad, but I might be misreading the situation…

Does anyone know if Singular Sound is capable of completing this software update? Are they still in business? I’ve watched companies fail for similar reasons - once you lose your loyal customers it’s difficult to recover. Any genuine insight would be very much appreciated!

Thank you,
Michael M.

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BeatBuddy Manager update?
#2

Who knows. This is my biggest gripe with Singular Sound. I have said many times the software is a great idea and when you know how it works (even the MIDI editor) it is simple and makes sense. But money needs to be spent on proper development. Throwing it out as Open Source as far as I’ve seen so far has got nowhere. Yes, you can use 3rd party MIDI editors, DAWS etc, but this SHOULD be part of the BB Manager package. It is NOT complete.

@DavidPackouz, @BrennanSingularSound et al really need to get this sorted. This should be a major part of the Beat Buddy, INCLUDING the MIDI editor. That’s what we paid for.

I’m not even sure when the last official release of the Manager software was. About 5 years ago I think. Really not good enough and the users deserve better. Singular Sound products I think are amazing and I’m running the BB and Aeros. They have their flaws in my eyes but they are working with firmware updates to try and give people what they want and will get it right soon. The BB Manager on the other hand is another story and they don’t seem interested.

As I said, I like the software, I like the MIDI editor and create most of my work with it but holy fuck it should be so much easier and without the bugs. A copy and paste feature in the MIDI editor for a start would improve it 500%!

I know I’m not the only one with these feelings and I think many have given up with it. I’ll keep whinging because I can see what is possible but $$ needs to be spent to get someone to do it and do it right.

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#3

After raising a ginormous amount of money through the Indiegogo campaign for the Beatbuddy (I was one of those supporters), and suffering through numerous delays in initial shipping, the Singular Sound guys seemed to get a little greedy, rushing out a new product or two without ever fully supporting us original adopters - you know, the folks responsible for helping SS get as big as it has? - shoddy software, poor app development, and not ready for prime time new offerings (except maybe the Cabli, since there’s nothing electronic about it)… I just received a MIDI Maestro and while setting up for my 2nd show with it, I power up to do my sound check and get EEPROM INVALID, so I couldn’t even use it… Doing some searching, here looks to be a solution, but honestly, should we as customers and supporters have to jump through hoops to use devices we’ve paid to use?

Like you and others, I’m still waiting for an updated BB Manager… it’s been ages since there’s been an update, and over 6 Months since a “new, improved and reimagined” version was promised to be in development… so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see - it’s not like this pandemic thing hasn’t given them some time to progress things along (insert sarcasm)…

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#4

Hear! Hear! -from another BB Indiegogo supporter

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#5

No.

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#6

Yes, I believe they are capable. The more realistic questions might be “when will they produce this update” and “will Singular Sound produce a successful update”?

Yes, they are still in business.

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#7

For so many who have become huge fans (including myself) and dependent on BB (at least in live settings) and where Mac is such a large segment of the music business it seems obvious to me - Singular can’t see how to grow their business by devoting resource to existing base business. Even those of us who bought a 2nd as a back up since it became indispensable. The pain is great enough now after 5 years that many of the 10000+ owners (they cleverly now conceal the real number on the forum) would pay a small upgrade fee for something that worked on a Mac.

I use it less now in favor of EZD2 (which works on my Mac) in the home studio since gigs are non-existent for many of us - but with useful SW as an open door the sound quality, time invested and immediacy of BB would bring it roaring back.

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#8

I’m not sure we’ll ever see a BB manager that fixes what needs to be fixed. I have started kicking around ideas on how to use the BB without BB manager as the song arranger portion of the equation. I been working with a bunch of different software packages lately, in my own training, development and composition. I’ve become more intrigued with the idea of using the BB as a sound module, driven by something like Ableton, but hopefully on an iPad.

Here’s the process:
1] BB kits can, without too much work, be converted into Kontakt .kni files which would play on the free Kontakt player.
2) BB songs are just a collection of midi files that get triggered on command, similar to Ableton scenes or clips. The exception being the accent hit portion of the file, which is a separate triggerable wav. 3)Something like that could easily fit the Maschine model, with a set of clips on 12 pads and accents on 4 pads.
4) IIRC both Ableton and Maschine allow for midi assignment of items that would be triggered by pads.
5 ) AFAIK, there is not a 16 button foot controller. Maybe there is a midi organ pedal deal that can transmit 16 midi messages, but that would awkward and expensive. There is an 8 button Morningstar which could be made to replicate the triggering actions of the Maschine pads with the foot.

So that’s my sketchy idea. Some kind of iPad app capable of playing an .nki, and midi that functions kind of like Maschine, but which can handle remote midi input. Does that already exist?

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#9

I know those of us who like to program the BB are moving to using different 3rd party apps to do it, and people like Phil Flood obviously have spent many hours trying different things, but at the end of the day it shouldn’t be the case. Singular Sound should get this done!.

This is it for me. Yes, they can do it and yes they SHOULD do it, for their loyal customer base. If the code written using QT is no fucken good, get someone that can rewrite it from scratch using a better code! Without throwing it open to open source hoping someone can do something with it, pay someone to seriously rewrite it and do it properly. Yes, good programmers cost money but they have an unbelievably good product with unbelievably shit software!

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#10

I feel like a broken record but I have been complaining about this for years.
I love the Beatbuddy and it has so much potential but…
The BBM sucks.
I bought one of the first BeatBuddy’s off the assembly line.
I will not be buying any more Singular Sound products if they don’t get their shit together.
If the code is spaghetti then it’s time to rewrite it properly.
Make it happen or you will be out of business!!

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#11

I know the feeling. I feel like a broken record as well as I’m sure others do but this can only be ignored for so long.

#12

Hello

I’m from France and i love my bb.
But i need some more basic functions in the bb midi editor to be able to produce backing tracks from french band too. I’m just playing little gigs for friends in parties and the youngest people want to hear telephone niagara and noir desir too. Not only 70’ 80’ stuff !!!
I will share the hope and insist to get a better version too.

Best regards

2 Likes
#13

I wanted to do this with Ableton. I’m quite clued up with Ableton and dug deep into this.

At the time it was easy enough to get main parts playing / changing. But I couldn’t get the fills to work like BB does. Have the midi clip start at whatever point ( or next 8th note etc ) from when pressed, play the full then return to previous main beat.

I posted on some Absloton forums but it didn’t seem it could be done at the time. Was when 9 was the current version. Maybe version 11 has some new bells and whistles to make this so.

I’ve lately been using beat buddy to send midi to Ableton so I can use the Slate kits. I’m very much enjoying them.

I haven’t looked deep enough but did stumble across a program that rips multi velocity samples from VSTs quickly. Would be keen to build a Slate kit to do way with having to use Ableton at a gig.

Great stuff - I very much enjoy this side of it!

1 Like
#14

Ok, so BBM has flaws. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Once you understand what it can and can’t do…it does well enough. I can manage my setlists, create a custom drumkit, import midi to create a one-touch song, and even use the built in midi editor to quickly create a new beat or fill.

IMHO, the manager is easily a 6/10, not the 3/10 that some of these posts imply.

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#15

I agree. It’s pretty close to what I’d want. The reality is that in my case, going out gigging again is probably not going to happen. During this whole Covid thing, I’ve evaluated a good bit about where I am at. I like composing and creating. I can probably live with the BB for me if nothing improves. But, I do like arranging and providing those arrangements for the community at large. And, when I do that, I see shortcomings of the product.

If I try to create a Drumkit, I can’t copy and paste one part of a kit to another kit. Why not? I’ve been copying and pasting in Mac OS since 1984. So, yes, I see that as ridiculous. I cannot sort a list in BBM. Yeah, I’ve been doing that in Mac OS since 1984, too, and in every version of Windows that I’ve ever run.

So, go ahead and defend it. Yes, it mostly works, sort of. But, it lacks basic editing functions that have been around for, wait for it.,…35 years.

3 out of 10 is generous.

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#16

It was a 6/10 in 2016 maybe. Not now.

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#17

Hi Phil,
Just a side note regarding the MC8. You can very easily add aux switches to it’s 4 omniports, giving you up to 20 switches/buttons total. They also can be expression in, midi out and fixed. But even with just the 8 buttons on the device, you can program a multitude of commands per press, release, long press release, double tap, double long press etc etc.and you can make them any assignments you could possibly think of. Plus you can set it up to message scroll, which will basically run 16 commands in one action. Plus, it has 30 banks, two pages of 8 switches per bank.
I love the thing.

#18

Although the BBM has so many shortcomings and bugs I have always defended it as a usable product and a majority of my MIDI compilation is done using it. Once you know how it works and what is represented it is a great tool. But holy fuck it is flawed to the shithouse and missing such basic functions as cut & paste in MIDI editor, play from a cursor position in the MIDI editor etc. Because of basic features missing from it it is slow and cumbersome to use and continuously having to work around bugs. I don’t understand why SS will not update the main software for their flagship product. Even worse when they don’t join the discussion here and have no interest in any updates. Disappointing.

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#19

Too busy making new products.
But it will bite them later.
Why would I invest in another product that may not get supported?
Doesn’t make any sense.

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#20

Just wanted to let you know that I had a bunch of problems running Beat Buddy Manager on MacOS 11.x.

What got it working on my Mac was to run the Windows version in CrossOver: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

Now everything works as expected… or as well as expected on Windows :slight_smile:

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