What i'd like for Xmas

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?

Hi @martythebassplayer first, let me apologize for the delay in responding to this thread. I wanted to get some more solid info from our software team so I could give you real answers.

They have informed me that they expect to have a firmware version to me for testing by the end of this week that will include a setting in the Aeros for what it does when it receives a ‘Start’ command: [Record] [Playback] – you will be able to choose one, both or none. That way you can turn off the automatic recording when starting the BB and start recording on the Aeros when you wish - it will start at the end of the BB measure to keep it in sync. If you have Playback enabled, starting the BB will start Playback on the Aeros if there are tracks recorded on it.

We’re hoping that crossfades make it into this update as well, but we’re not sure yet - we already have crossfades working, but there are some corner cases we’re working on (for example, when changing song parts immediately in freeform mode, the crossfade gets tricky, but we think we have a solution that we’re working on).

Again, my apologies for the late response - I know it’s very frusterating when you have something that could be really awesome except for one crucial issue. Thank you for passionately expressing how important this is to you – we have heard you and will act on it :slight_smile:

Interesting, so why the miscommunication that crossfades would be months away?

Maybe read the email I sent.

@martythebassplayer we just got an update about the crossfades this morning, and we got the good news that the crossfades are already working in most cases. We do still have the corner cases that I mentioned to work out, so I can’t give a rock solid release date for this because bugs are always unpredictable – it could take an hour to fix, or a month. But I would be very surprised if it took more than a month. @BeatBuddy_Support is just being cautious because he knows that you will be very upset if we miss our estimated timeline. So just to be clear… I am not guaranteeing that crossfades will be out soon, but I am expecting it to be not too far off, based on my current knowledge of the situation.

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@martythebassplayer we just released a beta firmware with the features you wanted (minus the crossfades): Aeros firmware 2.13.1 (BETA)

That’s great, but we still need some place we can park the Aeros so it ignores all of these midi messages (e.g., the new song dialog) so we can play songs without the Aeros or audition/adjust beats. Both features serve different purposes (and having to repeatedly go-to settings is pretty annoying).

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@Quad I’m not sure what you’re referring to exactly… what new song dialog? Play songs on the BB without the Aeros? For that, you’ll need to go to the settings to turn off the MIDI commands, or just unplug the MIDI cable.

audition/adjust beats on the BB? If you can be a bit more specific, that would be helpful. Thanks :slight_smile:

I think what he means, and I would like this, too, is a quick shortcut button on the song or home screen to disable midi start/record commands.

Sure, it could be done by menu diving. Or unplugging cables. But that’s a pain.

I personally would use this all the time, lots of use cases for it, making it a common thing to do.

For example, lets say you’re working on a riff or song section or whatever. You haven’t quite worked it out yet, but you’re using BeatBuddy to get your timing right, and so on. Ok, now you have it and you’re ready to record it in a loop. Press the ‘arm’ / ‘unpark’ button (or whatever), and now the Aeros responds to BeatBuddy like normal. Without having to menu-dive or unplug cables.

Hope that makes sense.

I’m new to the forum and before I new the terms to search for, I started a thread for just this. Several folks responded with work-arounds, but nothing as simple as a direct one-button feature to park/unpark (I like the term ‘park’ :slight_smile: ).

Menu diving is just a pain. Seems like lots of folks have asked for it, so that would tend to indicate it’s common enough that a lot of people would really appreciate this feature.

Thanks!

@DavidPackouz

The general idea is to have some UI “page” or “dialog” in the Aeros UI which causes it to ignore the (BB) midi commands to start/stop/record. The edit song dialog or the song list page are a few ideas. The Aeros home is another. Or create another page. Do it right, and it’s intuitive and reachable via a footpress (“why would I expect the Aeros to respond to midi when it’s on the X page”)

What @bsd said is pretty close; he’s suggesting an alternate approach that uses a command instead of a “place” in the UI that “parks” the Aeros.

Would use this feature to audition beats or simply to play some song with the BB without disconnecting the aeros midi or deep editing a setting on either device. We’re so focused on the Aeros/BB that we forget it might not always be wanted in a song. I’m unplugging/plugging the midi cable multiple times per day.

@bsd @Quad I understand what you guys mean. Thank you for the explanation.

As far as a footswitch command to turn MIDI on/off, that’s something we can build as a MIDI command so you can use a MIDI foot controller (like the MIDI Maestro) to do. I don’t think that we have additional room for features like this to be triggered with the Aeros built in footswitches.

We could build this setting into the home screen. This is what I’m thinking: Right now on the home screen it says “MIDI Sync” and under it, it either says On when it receives a MIDI Signal or Off if it doesn’t. If it says On, we can have the two buttons (Record and Playback) appear next to it that you can toggle On and Off so the Aeros doesn’t respond to the MIDI Start commands like in this video I made for another thread, that way you don’t need to dive into the settings to access these features – would that work for you guys?

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That would work for me. Using that, I could quickly disable midi start for some period of time while using just BeatBuddy. Then re-enable it very quickly when I want to loop.

Thanks for your willingness to accommodate this!

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That works and thanks. I do think a command or button to control a midi on/off setting is a complex solution.

As long as the setting is controllable from the Aeros’s foot actions, that is ok. I do think there are “places” in the UI where people would expect the Aeros to not handle these messages (if you’re not in a song…).

Fyi, the stop/start button does not work on the mixer page (and I do expect that to work there :love_you_gesture:).

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@Quad thanks for noticing the start/stop button in the mixer issue. I’ll get that fixed.