What i'd like for Xmas

This is a copy of my post from General Discussion. Maybe some traction here?

What I’d have liked for Christmas is the Aeros to have all the ‘basic’ functions as the Infinity Looper before new years. however…

Marty the Bass Player


i think you can do 3. already, just click twice to cycle it on to overdub before the loop ends

Crossfades are coming, very soon, it’s been mentioned, several times. I’d hold off on getting the Pig, that’s a lot of money when you already have something that’s gonna be able to do a lot more, shortly. I got rid of my Pig to get this thing, and I don’t miss it, at all.

Patience, bud, it’ll be worth the wait. I think Aeros probably shoulda waited until more of these features were in place before putting this out (or at least been more upfront about what was available at the time), but they’ve been very receptive, I don’t think they plan on just dragging their asses on this, not with all the time and money invested in this thing.

I do the ebow/soundscape thing, too, and there was a good thread on here a while ago with the main developer, where he asked a lot more about specifics on what would be the ideal crossfade scenario. Scroll down this thread, here, a bit:
https://forum.singularsound.com/t/ability-to-change-rpo-to-rop/15827/6

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I don’t need your pity, bro, and I don’t miss my Infinity, either.

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Although it’s obvious that you’re frustrated, isn’t your New Years’ suspense kind of arbitrary?

I think Singular Sound has replied plenty of times to forum users’ AEROS wish lists as well as to constructive criticism.

A little background: In response to the many issues users had with how the BeatBuddy interacted with the Infinity, David Packouz bought an Infinity looper and corresponded with David Koltai (Pigtronix CEO) on how to address those issues. Some of the issues could be attributed to the lack of understanding of how to set and use the Infinity and BeatBuddy features. I’m assuming that David “went to school” on the Infinity to build a list of requirements for the AEROS. That list likely included features not available on the Infinity.

Although the Singular Sound (SS) business model often makes me scratch my head and say “hmmm,” I like that SS continues to try to refine the firmware for their products. I do wish they’d update the BeatBuddy Manager (BBM) software but it works—although minimally. Sorry but can’t say the same thing for Pigtronix. It’s probably been a couple of years since they last updated the firmware or the app for the Infinity and other devices.

SS’ development of the AEROS does seem analogous to building an aircraft in flight, doesn’t it? :grimacing:. It would be nice if SS had the ability to concurrently improve their firmware and software more rapidly for all of their products. I also wish they had the capacity to be more proactive in anticipating user requirements and meeting their expectations. Maybe if they can grow their business, things will change. Time will tell. David has admitted some of the firm’s lessons learned and has promised to try to do better. One of those lessons learned was to not offer capricious delivery dates as it always resulted in disappointment.

My opinion—but if you own a Windows, Macintosh, Android or iOS product, you are using a beta version of that software; as users, we are constantly beta testing said software (even though the companies claim that they are “official releases”). The difference between those companies and SS is that they have large developer teams capable of concurrently working on several large-scale projects. SS has a very small cadre of folks working on coding for a single product.

I’m not sure that any answer that SS offers will scratch your itch but hopefully it will. So if you can hold off on any future rants and continue to offer helpful suggestions and add to your wish list, that would really be nice.

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No prob. I get that a lot of people are frustrated (and this is nothing, compared to MPC Live users). I think I’m not because I know they’re gonna fix all this and I have plenty of other things to keep me busy musically, until they do… like the Gary Willis thing, which, of course, I’ve yet to master.

One of the many reasons I got rid of my Pig was because the lack of new development. It wasn’t buggy, but there were simply a few workflow improvements they could have done, but didn’t.

Hi,

This analogy is great :slight_smile:

Was I a little disappointed when I got the looper? To be honest, yes, since in the manual it said it would provide free form mode but it didn’t…apart from some other features. They have changed the manual now but when I bought the product, the information was not correct back then. Which explained my first disappointment.

Why do I still hold on to it then? First, I still believe in its potential. Are we beta testing? Yes. But Ss seems to listen to our feedback from what I can tell so far. So it also means we can help shaping the looper to our needs.
I’m still using my old Boss RC-300 for gigs since I need some of features of the RC-300 (not all)…but I will happily exchange it for the Aeros if the features I need will finally be offered. The Aeros is slim, light and offers 6 (or rather 36) separate loops. That is amazing. If it works one day as intended ;-).

Furthermore, I am willing to give it more time since Ss is a rather small company and I want to support these kind of businesses that bring some innovative ideas to the looper market. The big companies don’t seem to be willing to. Headrush’s new looper has now 4 loop tracks…and (for me) an inconvenient button arrangement …all in all that was kind of underwhelming. So I am thankful that there are companies like Ss that intend to stir up the looper (hardware) market and want to support them. The customer support was also very friendly and helpful.

Having said this: I also would have appreciated it if Ss would have responded in any way to my thread in the “Aeros Feature Request”. I am aware that some of my requests might have been addressed in other people’s post but as far as I can tell, some of the things on my list haven’t popped up yet in other people’s threads…and it would be nice to at least get a feedback if Ss considers to implement these things.

I even mentioned a request there that I think is just a bug but I didn’t bother to open another thread in “Aeros Bugs” because I thought somebody from Ss would read my post anyway and reply whether the issues regarding ‘reloading the current song file’ are a bug or a “feature” :upside_down_face:

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Good to see I’m not the only person here with a ‘daughterboard’. How do you have the two connected? I have a buttload of cables, but it looks, at least based on the picture, you only have two. Or, are those two separate board, completely?

I suppose it was wishful thinking that I could somehow connect two boards with two cables. Ugh, what a mess. My big board’s just a tiny bit smaller than yours, and then the daughter board has the midi controller, clock pedal, buffer, etc. If I were to put em all on one board, I’d need my own personal roadie.

Generally, all of my bass gigs are conventional (at this point), so often, just bringing an octave and Roland MD-500. Only time I’ve gone public with the big board was at that radio show where I posted the clip from, a few weeks ago, but I’m hoping to start getting out more with it. Where I live, there’s not exactly a lot of venues for ambient soundscape stuff.

That’s funny. I know where you’re going with that. What’s even funnier is I live in Vermont, the granola belt, so to speak. There are two yoga studios in my tiny town.

And I have thought of that, but my soundscapes tend to be on the darker side of things, hardly conducive to the uplifting yoga vibe.

I simply won’t do the cover band thing unless there’s a ton of money involved. I mostly do jazz and funk, and I’m even kinda getting bored with that. I do actually have a few leads on some new-agey type events up here that I may be able to play… gotta wait for the freeform, before I can do that, though.

I think if I were to do the yoga thing, I would just drone out, but I’d also figure out a way to do a bunch of subtle changes that I (but they) might not even notice.

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1 can be sorted with a work around. Just have a blank song in your list, with nothing recorded. Then when you bring it up the tempo will sync with your beat buddy. Before you begin press the RPO for the first track and record a blank bar. Then stop the Aeros, and start it again with the beat buddy. You can now record a loop anywhere you wish by using the next track, and it will be in sync with the beat buddy. You can also mute it when you like by double tapping the RPO. When the song is done and you choose another, reply “no” to “Save this song?” so that it remains blank for next time. If the next song is the blank one, then hold down the left hand stop button to erase the tracks and it will sync again to the new tempo on the beat buddy.

NB: you’ll need a blank song for each different time signature (4/4, 3/4, 6/8 etc.)

I’m sure this isn’t the final outcome, and I agree that if this was always necessary it would be disappointing. There has been a steady improvement in the Aeros with each firmware release.


This is the Anki Vector robot (cute isn’t he?). Last year he was all the rage before Christmas. Many promises were made about things this little robot would be able to do in the future. Off site camera view/motion detection was what sold me. Unfortunately, at the time of release these things were to be implemented in future update, which was ok to me since he didn’t cost too much (and he plays a good game of blackjack), the company seemed to be doing very well for itself with other products on the market. A lot of potential. 3rd quarter of 2018 Anki assets were listed at 161 million (before the release of Vector) and they apparently sold quite a few of these little munchkins too.

Vector was buggy and didn’t fulfill on a bunch of promises.

By May 2019 Anki was in bankruptcy.

And no this is not a request for the Aeros to play blackjack.

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@martythebassplayer We have been super swamped with emails over the past 3 weeks because of the holiday season, and so we have been slightly less active on the forum. I am going over forum posts now, and will be more active here now that things have calmed down.

As a side note, if you (or anyone else) does not receive an adequate response from the forum, please email me directly at support@singularsound.com - I am always checking my emails, and typically speaking you will always have a response within 2 business days. That way, you will ensure 100% that we see your inquiry, every time. Once I saw your email this morning, I immediately searched for the relevant forum discussion, and here we are. :slight_smile:

We will definitely be more active on the forum in the near future.

I have responded to your email that you sent us, and I am responding here to your original post as well. For all answers below, you need to make sure you have the latest firmware on both devices (2.11.1 on the Aeros, and 3.80 on the BeatBuddy). This is imperative, as a lot of bugs/features are solved in the latest versions of the firmware on both devices. And we are coming out with new versions of the firmware very very soon.

To answer your questions:

1) Deciding if the Aeros will record, and will not record. ie, in response to Beat Buddy starting.

Yes, this is a setting in the BeatBuddy. Go into (BB) Settings > Main Pedal > MIDI Settings > MIDI-OUT > Start > Intro/Main Beat/Disable . (you can send the start message when the intro or main beat plays, or disable it)

2) Being able to start and stop the Aeros while the Beat buddy continues to play, and have it start logically on the measure and maintain sync.

The devices remain in sync, but just to be certain 100% that I answer your question as I should, can you elaborate on the gap between how it is synced now and how ultimately you would want it to be synced? Specifics? I apologize if I do not fully understand exactly how you mean, but I want to make sure that we don’t have a case of broken telephone here. (in which I did not accurately pass your feedback onward to those who can actually make these changes, David and the programmers)

3) Cross fades.

This will be added. We expect it to be added in the next 1-2 months.

As a side note, and just as important as the rest of my response above:

I do agree with you @martythebassplayer that reputation and user satisfaction is everything. As @Euan mentioned, this is not the final outcome, it will get better. Much better. And @persist is right, this is like fixing an aircraft mid-flight. That was a perfect analogy. We are only human, and we are not currently as big of a company as Roland/Boss yet (we are heading in that direction though, and Boss knows it, they try to compete with us constantly and fail every time), so we do not have the same availability of resources as they do, at least not yet. So the only option we have is to take off, and rely upon our own abilities and willingness to take risks mid-air, like the Wright brothers. And today we have fighter jets that the Wright brothers wouldn’t have been even able to dream of, imagine if the Wright brothers gave up because their first flight lasted less than a minute. :wink:

This WILL get better. And for 99% of all the possible issues and/or feature requests (including all the issues mentioned in this post), they will be solved via firmware updates, the hardware will be the same no matter what. Just like the BeatBuddy, which is physically identical to the original model, and only the firmware changes.

Most importantly what we do have that sets us apart from the big companies is a genuine love for music and all our supporters (like you) and we WILL listen to you. We make these products for you, not ourselves. Even if this was only about money (it’s not), listening to you and improving our products is the only way to go. We will not lose this love once we become a big company of comparable scale to Roland/Boss. We know how frustrating this is to be part of this beginning stage, but if you can pull through with us, we promise to deliver!

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In regards to number 2, I’m sure this is where the confusion lies,
Beat Buddy is playing. Aeros is not.
Start record on Aeros, close loop in any fashion, loop stays in sync. no problem.
Any track after that though isn’t adhering to the beat buddys barlines so starting another loop will not open or close the loop in regards to the beat buddies bar lines, only it’s own bar lines, and if those bar lines don’t line up with the beat buddies, do you think there will be a problem with that?
Stop the Aeros and try to restart the loop, It will not start in sync as the Infinity Looper would.
David did respond to this in a different thread saying it would possibly be in the next update, but no timeline.

Maybe rename Aeros to Icarus.

The rest I sent privately to your email.

This is such a common occurrence that this needs to be a feature of the Aeros rather than a setting (of BB or Aeros).

There needs to be a place in UI (or a feature) that “parks” the Aeros so that it ignores the midi messages. I know that philosophically is un-midi like, but it’s a very real and practical concern. Settings are a great way to make sporadic changes, but this is something I’m likely to turn on/off several times during a session. The “song edit” screen is a good candidate as a place to park the Aeros.

This however doesn’t work for me as a workaround. Problem here is that I don’t want the Aeros to start recording in response to the beat buddies playback. I do however want it to start playing back with the beat buddy if it has a loop already in it. So the issue is…
When I start the beat buddy, I do not want the Aeros to start recording.
But if I have recorded a loop into the Aeros and then have stopped the Beat Buddy (also stopping the Aeros) I want the Aeros to start playing back when I start the Beat Buddy again.

Basically could you just make an option to make Aeros respond like the Infinity Looper?