MOTUnation.com

This idea started at another post. I feel it should be it's own thread...

Ken's Korner! (no..my name is not Ken)...
Although, if it were me, it could be "Dave's Dungeon"

What do we all think of MOTU have a user representative on it's site that researches bugs, and pounds away on DP daily, with great honesty, finding bugs, tricks, tips, fixes.. offerring suggestions....taking some of the BETA testing out of all our lives?

Here's the original post:
I THINK MOTU CAN DEDICATE A GUY TO BUYING ALL THE LATEST STUFF AND WORKING ON FINDING BUGS AND SYSTEM OPTIMIZATIONS, POSTING DATA WAY MORE OFTEN AND TAKEN SOME OF THE BETA TESTING OUT OF THE USERS' HANDS.
One guy could do that all day, every day! Maybe one guy does but is not allowed to tell us anything?
The guy could be named "Ken" for example. He could have a place on the site called, "Ken's Korner" where he is like the unicorn nations user representative-letting us all know tricks and fixes and things he finds as he finds them. It would take a whole lot of honesty from MOTU now wouldn't it?
What do you all think of MOTU doing that?

PS-special thanks to Resonant Alien for planting the original seed for this> send 50% of all royalties to Resonant Alien care of my bank and I'll "make sure he get's it"....

<small>[ April 22, 2005, 01:09 PM: Message edited by: toodamnhip ]</small>

Holy crap, that's a job I wouldn't take if my life depended on it. I think the only way MOTU could afford that is if all the manufacturers *gave* them the gear to test everything on. Which may/may not happen 50% of the time. And that guy would most likely die of stress related causes within a year. You want that on your conscience??

I do not see it at all as being more expensive than a company like MOTU can afford...

One guy, full time, waaaay within the means of a company. Think of the message this gets out to us users...The regular, man on the street or producer in the trenches user being pushed power and backed by the company!!!

Are you listening MOTU?...

Originally posted by amplidood:
Holy crap, that's a job I wouldn't take if my life depended on it. I think the only way MOTU could afford that is if all the manufacturers *gave* them the gear to test everything on. Which may/may not happen 50% of the time. And that guy would most likely die of stress related causes within a year. You want that on your conscience??

<small>[ April 22, 2005, 01:12 PM: Message edited by: toodamnhip ]</small>

Cool idea ... way impractical.

How could he possibly test every combo of computer/plugins/audio interfaces/etc/etc.

<small>[ April 22, 2005, 01:20 PM: Message edited by: westla ]</small>

All the companies involved in software and hardware recording on computers should exchange their products among themselves for testing compatibility. Or at least form partnerships with some of them. If MOTU would do that, they would RULE the market.
SB

Oh yea, K K K Ken.

I saw him on "A Fish Called Wanda"

Originally posted by westla:
Cool idea ... way impractical.

How could he possibly test every combo of computer/plugins/audio interfaces/etc/etc.

Good point. All those permutations of hardware and software? Almost impossible, I think.

I don't think there's too much a software company can do, short of putting out PR fires when they spring up. If a widespread incompatibility problem occurs, they can publicly say "Got it. We're working on it." That's about all that's affordable.

Plus, given the irrational blurtings of some Unicornation posters, MOTU would likely have to solicit employees from the S&M trade. Who's going to pay for all that leather?

Anyway...

Hardware companies can run on-going lists of other hardware they've tested their gear against, but that's a lot less variable-laden than what we're talking about.

<small>[ April 22, 2005, 02:27 PM: Message edited by: chrispick ]</small>

Ok, if you're going to get serious about Ken's Korner, a repository of information aimed to track software/hardware conflicts and help to track down and eliminate bugs, then let me tell you the pitfalls we've run into before with this:

Consistency. That's pretty much it. And retrieval. But first, consistency. Let me explain. A few years back, I suggested that everyone put their gear and software into their sig so that we can start noticing when there are software conflict correlations to certain bugs. This was back in the DP 3 days. Several thought that was a good idea, and for a while we had a lot of people listing their equipment and software. But it makes for a rather unwieldy signature, and after a while it's just a nuisance to pick through. So, how can we do that and make it usable?

Maybe we can get some programming types to come up with a database, and get James Steele to install it in a cgi format here at UnicorNation. Everyone would list their equipment and software, one item at a time, along with checking off any bugs or behaviors they've been noticing. We would all be asked to update it periodically. Maybe it could be made to read System Profiler reports. Those can be exported, then maybe grabbed by the database.

Another idea might be to send in our MOTU preference files, if someone could come up with an algorithm that could read them and add them to our data list.

If we actually DID all this stuff, we might be amazed at what we learn. Right now it's just too big for any human to handle. We each know what makes OUR sytem work, but there are just too many variables to make sense of someone else's system.

Next, the database would have to be accessible to anyone who needed to use it. So, there would have to be some means of searching it and retrieving useful information. Over time, just the mere fact that people keep typing in their problems and adding to the bug/behavior list would mean that something useful would emerge: a list of preferences, software, and hardware that tend to be without problems. Not to mention highlighting stuff that always shows up whereever there are bugs.

But we're talking about a lot of work on the part of someone who volunteers to program and run this thing. That's a major job for someone who is capable of doing it, first of all, and dedicating himself to its upkeep, secondly.

Any takers?

Shooshie

Note: wherever I use "we" in the above post, I mean "the guy(s) who volunteer for this time-consuming job." It's far beyond anything I could do. I really do not expect anyone to do this. I'm just pointing out what I think it would take to make Ken's Korner actually useful in the way it needs to be.

Of course... if someone DID do it, we'd probably make user-group history or something. It's wayyyyy above the call of duty, and beyond the time that most people have to put into such a project.

Shooshie

yes my name is Ken,but this job would be more torture than my present one...........i do know tech support does try different gear configs all the time,i have had tech person ask other techs if they are having trouble w/ new equipment they trying in there dp system, there are so many variables w/ different software and hardware and then trying to make it all comply with each other. some techs i have talked to have worked on making other companies products work w/ dp(contour shuttle pro)there are too many variables out there for everything to be perfect.....a case in point i had a vs1680 system solid ,never crashed but it was very limited,i moved to a dual1 gig 896 1.5 gig ram tc powercore waves gold(dp3),10.000rpm scsi drive, sounded great but i couldnt get more than a few tracks without bugginess,now i use 4.52 (10.38) ni and ik synths(no more waves)this system still sucked until............ i recently installed an additional fw buss ,added a 7200 drive,added an additional usb bus(dont trust hubs)added another 7200drive for samples(ata)and turned off the scsi(still dont know if it is a drive problem .a card problem.or bad cable.......anyway some of my problems were trying to learn mac &dp at the same time(most of us are musicians learning technology)But alot of the crashs and limitations i had were HARDWARE RELATED and it might be all the variables in our systems are as much at fault as our lack of knowledge,new technology is new,and to expect it to work right in every combination with all the potential conflicts is wishful thinking..i go to other sites and i can tell you every application has people all saying the same things,if there was a perfect solution there would be only 1 company in business and everyone else would be closed...But if you look around there are all of these companies thriving...i live in NYC stores like Manny's or Sam ASH look like ghost towns,the paradigm for making music has and is changing ,look at the business ni , ew, motu, or mac for that matter they must be doing something right,hw companies like roland,emu ,lexicon,akai are all trying to get into the vi/computer game because the game has changed,in 5-10 years we will all be laughing @the archaic technology (soft and hw)we are struggling with now(a 3 gig multi core dual g5 w/ tiger 8 gig ram will seem like a tascam 4 track cassete),sorry about the rambling but what most of us are dealing with technologically speaking we would not thought possible 20 years ago when i had a linn 9000,simmons and a yamaha synth KG

<small>[ April 22, 2005, 07:03 PM: Message edited by: kgdrum ]</small>

Newbie here (coming up on my second month using macs & motu) and perhaps naive but we would characterize hardware to get an idea of how well it was designed & built all while assaulting it with varying feed to see if it held up. Checking each combination and permutation is simply impossible and ridiculous.

For instance, we baselined waveforms and handshaking at ambient, then would start varying the input power to see how well the regulators did their job. Then we would vary the clock to see how tolerant the internal digital played together. Then we'd throw the box into a chamber and start swinging the temperatures to see if signals started drifting madly or even if parts would start failing. If it still work, then we'd started messing with the power and clocks at temperature. We'd feed the boxes all sorts of simple to complex signals. For grins, we'd purposely went beyond the specs simply to see how well the boxes held together. Often times for consumer grade equipment, we found boxes exhibiting hysterisis--failing at the extremes and working again when the stress was removed.

Once we knew the box was capable of behaving like a box within the specs, that would speak for itself and one could "plant a stake" into the ground.

I reckon for here, a dedicated system, one busy interacting on a network, and one burning a disk in the background would be good "corners" to check also. Trying to play something like Doom wouldn't be fair... <vbg>

And yup, sometimes we'd purposely take a box and drop it from workbench height to see if it held together. Happened to drop my Nomad Jukebox 3 the other day off the coffee table -- Happy to say it still works...

Keeping track of firmware/sofware revs would drive us nuts but if the code ran on a baseline system, that would eliminate alot of the pedigree problems letting troubleshooters focus more on the specific platform that was burping.

Just trading notes and just an audio user...

Andy

:p

As far as shooshie's post...

Your ideas, as always, are very exact and well thought out. A couple things though...

I think MOTU should make this user's advocate a MOTU employee and pay them and have them based in Mass. at MOTU. This is not for a volunteer.

2) I don;t think a guy could possibly test every permutation of every system..but he could work on the latest computers with the main plug ins and soft synths around' and give SOME insight into what I orignally spoke of...Best ways to set up computer, tips on tricks and fixes, bugs etc. It will not be 100%. But compared to what we get now, it will be most assuredly welcome data. What do we get now? Basically, Zero without a phone call to tech support. I actually think if MOTU could pull this off, they might SAVE money. Reducing tech support calls. This Ken guy will be more than the Q&A data base that is at the MOTU site..that data base is pretty lame.

This is a really needed thing, a cool idea, and it does NOT have to be perfect. Just better than what we have now and helpful!

Originally posted by toodamnhip:
As far as shooshie's post...

Your ideas, as always, are very exact and well thought out. A couple things though...

I think MOTU should make this user's advocate a MOTU employee and pay them and have them based in Mass. at MOTU. This is not for a volunteer.

2) I don;t think a guy could possibly test every permutation of every system..but he could work on the latest computers with the main plug ins and soft synths around' and give SOME insight into what I orignally spoke of...Best ways to set up computer, tips on tricks and fixes, bugs etc. It will not be 100%. But compared to what we get now, it will be most assuredly welcome data. What do we get now? Basically, Zero without a phone call to tech support. I actually think if MOTU could pull this off, they might SAVE money. Reducing tech support calls. This Ken guy will be more than the Q&A data base that is at the MOTU site..that data base is pretty lame.

This is a really needed thing, a cool idea, and it does NOT have to be perfect. Just better than what we have now and helpful!

How is allocating Unicornation frequenters our own, dedicated whipping boy supposed to save MOTU tech support money?

Do you actually think they'd scale down phone support in favor of giving some techie a high-end Mac, some cables, a link to this site, and the promise of exponential bitch sessions?

Man, I'd love to see you give that Powerpoint presentation.

I'm telling you: Seeking a masochist this devoted to self-flaggelation will take us to places too deep and scary to mention. And I don't mean Massachusetts.

<small>[ April 23, 2005, 02:21 AM: Message edited by: chrispick ]</small>

Well..I dunno..I think one more employee and a comp with some software should be within MOTU's means....

By the way..I love DP and MOTU and when I mentioned we don't get much now as far as their database....,it's not really a knock..their data base is fine and in keeping with the standards of today's software world...

But Ken's Korner is a new way, a way to move ahead and really get interactive and send a message to the nation...

I would love to meet with MOTU at their corporate head quarters to pitch this idea...my power point presentation would be my index finger..and it would point to this unicornnation and the many members who'd love a daily piece of advice from a user's advocate....

Let's get create shall we?

<small>[ April 23, 2005, 02:35 AM: Message edited by: toodamnhip ]</small>

Well, if MOTU was willing to pay for it, the idea does indeed take on some merit. It might even work. Users would be asked to export their System Profile and send it in. That's pretty thorough, and requires almost no effort on the part of the user. He doesn't even have to be able to spell Microsoft Word. Maybe MOTU could even design a script that would retrieve the complete system profile and MOTU prefs, and send it in to MOTU. The script could even look for key elements in a Digital Performer file, searching for a user's settings and work habits that might lead to crashes.

Then it would just require some clever data mining. Every time a user reports a bug, it would be classified under a standardized name and filed with his data info. Over time, you KNOW they'd come up with some patterns, and maybe in places we would never think to look in a hundred years... like certain Frameworks or Extensions combined with certain ATA drives. A 100% correlation between a certain bug and some combination like that would tell us something very useful.

And these problems have got to come down to things like that. How else can you account for them? The fact that I don't have 90% of the problems reported in these pages says that they've got to be due to some fluke of setup or hardware.

I wonder if they would consider such a thing? Or better still, I wonder if several dozen manufacturers and vendors could be persuaded to support a single company who keeps tabs on such things across the board? They might all learn things about their software, and it may lead to changes as high up as One Infinite Loop itself. (And Apple might even chip in something) But when you start getting it that big, it reaches a point where it's impossible to do a report for every bug. It would require a huge staff and some supercomputers just to process all the data. It depends on the interest and funding, of course. Better keep it simple: MOTU and associated hardware and software.

Why do we bother to dream up this stuff? It's just not gonna happen. Still, it wouldn't hurt to propose it.

Shooshie