Following to see response
@DavidPackouz Notable by your silence. Speaks volumes and simply confirms my suspicions. You drummed up (pun intended) interest in your BB idea, got people like me to invest in it, got your company off the ground with an incomplete package that provided terrible, bug ridden software that was not fit for purpose. Then abandoned BB users in pursuit of your next money making idea, Aeros. And now you don’t even have sufficient respect for your BB users to keep them informed about where it is going. Nearly 10 years on and the BB software is still unfit for use. Yet you are still pushing BB in Facebook ads, luring unsuspecting new users into buying an incomplete product. Shame on you.
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I’ve given up hope for a BBM update. My creating has dwindled and I’m considering getting rid of my 3…count em…3 Beatbuddys. I check in and see lots of excitement for new products on the forum and lots of disappointment for BB users. I no longer promote it or recommend it. It makes me sad.
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Hi @Jim_Jacobson
Yeah it is a pitiful situation. SS are clearly on a mission to sell as much hardware as possible with no consideration to offering support to previous products. It angers me greatly that they have abandoned the users that got their company started. It is a sickening way to run a business. And what makes me even more mad is the constant barrage of SS ads on Facebook still pushing BB (as well as all their shiny new toys).
I have posted numerous times asking @DavidPackouz what is going on but he never even has the courtesy to reply.
All I can do is post warnings on any social media channels I can about the way that SS treat their customers. And believe me I do that at every opportunity.
I would sell my BB but to be honest I feel bad doing that. The software for it is such a pile of garbage.
So @DavidPackouz if you ever feel like making an appearance and actually telling us what is going on, rather than the usual " we still love you and we are working on it but we dont know what ‘It’ is and dont know when ‘it’ will arrive", please feel free to speak up.
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Given the amount time that has lapsed from the last version of BBM, I would tend to think the original developer(s) that created that software likely has long parted ways with their relationship with SS and for someone new to pick up development of a fresh new version it may be a fairly challenging task, particularly if the record keeping and documentation for the BeatBuddy build is as organized as SS’s website(s) and rollouts of software/firmware (a game of search and find). What is the incentive for SS to create a new BBM? I would to tend believe sales of the BB (and their other gear) may be tapering off from a peak and I’m not so sure a new BBM would revitalize sales. You kinda needs sales to pay people like developers.
I’ve pretty much given up using BBM (clunky and non-intuitive) and just using the stock beats which are good enough for my use along with a Boss DR-01s and loading ToonTrack EZDrummer files into a Digitech looper pedal.
David did post an official response here:
I never go out of my way to disparage BB but I don’t promote it like I once did. I’d like to be able to promote it again.
That is not what I would call a response. It is a smokescreen, like all the other ‘responses’ @DavidPackouz has given.
The issue here is not Auto-Pilot. The thread is title ‘Will BBM ever get updated’. To ‘hide’ behind the ‘response’ of “auto-pilot was never in the original design” is just a sleight of hand to distract for the real issue and the real question. “Will BBM ever get updated”. Because as you well know, it is terrible. And just coming out saying something, sometime but we dont know what and we dont know when is not good enough after 10 years of waiting and tolerating the existing software. Software that isn’t even compliant with current operating system security installation requirements.
Auto-pilot is a feature request that many users would like and see as essential for their reliable use of the pedal when playing live. It is not the crux of the problem.
So please stop regurgitating the same old line about Auto-Pilot and show your user base some respect by telling us what to expect from BBM (if anything) and when (if ever).
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There is some clarity I can give there:
There will not be an update to BBM1.0, we are building a new version 2 from scratch, we definitely have tried to fix the original version we have but it is not a path that is viable for us. A refresh with a better UI and interface seems like a better approach to us than trying to fix something that is very old and does not want to be fixed easily.
There is an open BBM beta based on BBM1.0 but that is not moving forward as much as we had hoped, much due to the complexity brought by the original app’s code.
Please ask support@singularsound.com for any more information on versions of the BeatBuddy manager we have that are not official that may have improvements
Like David says, all we can do is move forward.
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Well @BrennanSingularSound I appreciate you taking the time to at least respond. But to be frank with you, this is nothing more than what your boss said. Basically ‘something, sometime, we dont know what and we dont know when’. And yet you have found time to design, manufacture and release numerous new hardware devices whilst the users that supported the startup of your company are left in the dust.
Having ran a software company for 30 years before taking up music full time, i know that if your development is in any way structured, you should have some kind of a design plan (prototype?, even just slides?) and some form of outline timeline plan. No software developer that ever delivered anything in a managed way ever starting coding with no spec and no plan showing what was being delivered and when. Ever.
So that leads me to one of 3 possibilities
- You have no clue what you are going to deliver and the developer is just winging it
- You have a plan but feel that, even after waiting for many years, the user base are not worthy of sharing it with
- You have no intention of delivering anything and this is all just marketing platitudes.
Whichever it is, you are treating BB users very badly.
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No matter what the reason, they are not inspiring any us to buy (or promote) any more of their products.
Think about how many more Beatbuddy, Aeros, Maestro, etc… that could have been sold if we had any faith in their ability to evolve, stay current, or even provide satisfactory support.
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I know I have seen mentioned in a few places ( I can’t remember who it was) but there is a member of the public working on his own software for BB. It sounded promising and I’m sure many wouldn’t mind throwing some $$ over to him to help develop it further.
I can’t remember who it was but sure I’ve seen it mentioned on these forums somewhere and on FB groups.
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If there was such a thing and a Fund Me was set up, I would support it for sure
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This seems a odd way of talking about a development that has apparently been ongoing for a number of years. I would have expected something like " A refresh… seemed like a better approach… " followed by something like “So that’s what we’ve working on for the past years”. Your phrasing seems to suggest you haven’t started yet.
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I’m putting my BB and footswitch on eBay. I have zero confidence that SS will commit to this issue. I also seriously doubt there is even any desire to do so.
I work in the software industry which would be bankrupt if it performed/responded the way SS does.
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Our company consists of multiple team members on multiple teams each with different priorities that best match their skill sets. We can, and should, work on multiple things concurrently as a company. There’s a hardware team, multiple software teams, a marketing team and a leadership team. I think you can agree (especially having run your own software company for 30 years) that to have all of our staff work on one project, rather than multiple, would be shortsighted and not in the long term interests of our company.
We do have a design plan and a timeline for executing on this project. We are keeping the information close to our chest because in the past, when we’ve shared information about the plan and then it hasn’t come to fruition, it’s (understandably) resulted in situations like this. Where people feel jaded and misled when the reality is that nothing ever truly goes according to plan.
We care about the BeatBuddy user base greatly, from the power users to those who’ve never even bothered to use the additional software. For those who don’t use the added software (the majority of the user base) the BeatBuddy offers an overwhelmingly positive experience. Despite this, we still have spent a significant amount of time and money on working towards a more exceptional experience for the power users.
You can see our dedication in the work on the BeatBuddy Loader (new version coming soon) and BeatBuddy firmware updates (4.1.3 just launched last week). While these are not the same projects as the BeatBuddy Manager, we hope that at the very least they can show you our continued commitment to the BeatBuddy user base as a whole over the 9 years it’s been on the market.
So to return to the original question of the thread, we no longer plan to update the original Beatbuddy Manager. Instead, work has begun on a replacement BeatBuddy Manager which we will share more detailed news about in the future.
Thank you all for your feedback. We take everyone’s comments seriously and take it to heart.
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Despite having ‘multiple software teams’ there is still not a version of BBM that can install cleanly in accordance with current security requirements for a Mac. And yet many thousands of one man band developers keep their apps up to date in the Apple App Store without the luxury of ‘multiple teams’.
And as for refusing to divulge your plans in case people get upset when you fail, you are too late with that one. Many many BB users are well past upset.
Sorry @DavidPackouz , but I just don’t believe you. Please prove me wrong and will humbly apologise.
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We will. And I’ll humbly accept your apology 
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Hi David,
Knowing for years now, BB users devise and share their own creative homegrown solutions by integrating the use of DAW/MIDI editors and other tools, can you share if singular has taken these workflow ideas into account, and will they be incorporated into the new BB manager? Will the new version lessen the need to jump around to different apps, thereby supporting a more integrated workflow in the manager?
I’m going to assume you are aware some users like me are not as motivated to spend hours to learn how to jump between other tools; sitting on the sideline’s hopeful the next bb manager will do it all. Already stated in this thread, “there is no perfect software solution”, and Brennan’s Apr 21st post, suggests the new manager will make MIDI and song editing more intuitive. And your intentions are noted in your Feb 21 response.
Can you share anything about the feature set for the next BB Manager, without comprising your concerns for failing to meet our expectations?
Personally, I’ve lessened my expectations for singular to deliver the manager in a timely fashion compared to other products I have. And for reasons you explained initially; you’re not a big company, and there have been some hiccups along the way, etc. I’m still hanging in here however, hoping for a more simplified workflow approach in the manager. But at some point, I will need to make the time to learn the current methods at the cost of personal time. I’m grateful for the BB community for their work and what they have shared but hope singular has learned and incorporated these ideas into the next version.
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Question is, how long will it take. Delivering ‘something’, ‘sometime’ doesn’t really count does it? I am astonished at your determination to withhold even the smallest hint of what you have actually done and what is coming. Utter disrespect for the BB user base.
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